music – Page 3 – untitled atm

071 – find ways to get over yourself

I realised why I haven’t been feeling the same amount of satisfaction on my music account lately (as I used to earlier). It’s not about the validation or the lack thereof. It’s about the fact that I’ve been holding off, a bit. I enjoy the freedom I have on this blog, I really do.

But I think because more “known” people follow my music account, sometimes I tend to hold back. I should accept that my style is verbose. I’ve been trying to “play” a part. I wanted to appear a certain way. But I think I’m happiest when I’m posting as much as I want and in the ways that I want. That’s always going to be the primary purpose. Even when I have secondary and tertiary purposes (ie connection, more engagement, good “quality” work etc) the primary purpose is still sharing your art AND YOURSELF in the ways that YOU WANT. This is my account and it’s only tracking my journey.

Being verbose actually helps me a lot. It helps me free my mind of the clutter. I also have really fresh learnings from yesterday about how new ideas sometimes only come to me when I make space in my brain from them. This actually literally means thought-dumping in all the various ways I need. Yesterday, it looked like finishing a song (even though I didn’t end up happy with the “final” result— more on this another time), making a couple of covers, journaling a few times, going over some of my older stuff and taking it a bit forward (even when I couldn’t reach too far), and then going out and sharing some of my thoughts on all this with a couple friends too. (Luckily there were people around me who like talking about stuff like this.)

I think about my first really great software engineering internship experience. I had a superb mentor. He was great at most of the things I needed help with— code reviews, technical advice, prioritisation stuff, debugging— all the jazz. But do you know what he was excellent at? Teaching me how to get the fuck over myself. He didn’t phrase at this way. He was gentler about it, and I’m glad. One of the questions that I would ask him on a recurring basis was, “Oh should I just ask other people for help directly or should I spend time by myself on the thing before that?” As an intern or a new grad, some of us tend to be very afraid of bothering people. We tend to be afraid of looking stupid. And yes, there’s a balance to be struck with all this, I’m not saying you want to be the person who’s walking up to one person 20 times in a day. But here’s the thing: You want to get over yourself because the work that you’re doing is more important than you. If you zoom out, everyone you’re sharing the space with has a common purpose, and you have to trust that everyone around you will remember that as well. (I’m going to write more about this in a more structured way).

But the point is, my social media accounts are currently PRIMARILY there to serve me. If they can serve me, I can get better. If I can get better, I can perhaps come up with and share more ideas with the world. Maybe there are people who are naturally able to directly serve others. But for me, serving myself is the only way I’m able to serve others.

So, I’m going to do this. I’m going to post more on my music account in the ways that I want to. Not hold back, because I don’t want to follow a template. I want to be my verbose, journey-loving, process-loving self on there. Whatever people think about that, I’ll leave that up to them.

Because if I really had to be succinct about my goals on my music journey (and really all creative journeys) at the moment, they’re just:

Making a lot of things
Understanding myself better

—

Anyway, that’s that. I’m a little hungover from going out (and drinking a lot) last night so that’s going to be it on all that. I’ve been feeling a few unpleasant feelings since I woke up today so maybe I’ll just share those and get rid of them.

I don’t like this feeling that comes when you’re hungover. I don’t want it. So I’m going to make it a point to stop at 2-3 drinks OR if I really do cross my limits, I really need to make sure to hydrate before I go to sleep. Definitely don’t want to be doing the early 20s kind of drinking anymore.
I also get triggered when I see too many couples doing couple things and I want to find a better cope for this.
I got a rejection from a portal for online tutoring that I’d applied to. It’s only a small bummer by itself but it opens up a bigger question. Obviously, part of me wanted this perhaps a bit “easily”. If I want to apply to a few places (or a few times) then I really need to decide whether this is the thing that makes the most sense for me to “try properly”. [for part-time paid work]
There’s a friendship I’m lowkey struggling with. We’ve been sufficiently close friends since college and this is perhaps one of those friendships where I feel close and intimate enough with the person to share a variety of stuff and we have a good amount of fun together and yet there’s something missing. Maybe I just want more quality time. Or more attention. I don’t know what it is exactly, and this is quite interesting. I gotta come back to this.

069a – passive writing, intentions for the week

I want to sleep before 4am today. Because I really want to wake up before noon tomorrow. Which means writing a word-vomit now, doing some reading and then literally just switching off the lights by 3:45am. Had some friends over today and realised I really care about them. One of them I was meeting after more than 6 months and he’s been going through a bit of tough time. Him getting me upto speed is when I realised how much I really felt for him.

I’ve been a bit triggered about lacking a romantic relationship over the last couple days so today was a bit of grieving the last person I dated. I thought I was mostly over them but today brought some new (old) inner feelings out, I guess. It’s been over a month since we ended things and I expected this much time to be enough for me to grieve. But maybe I need a few weeks more.

I’ve decided to purchase an electric and a semi-acoustic guitar soon but the research part of the purchases is not very fun.

I think I definitely want to complete 2 more songs before the end of this year. That’s doable, I think.

I haven’t taken a flight in a while. I think I’m missing the feeling. Even though flights and travel give me some anxiety, I think even WITH the anxiety, the overall feeling is nice and interesting. Maybe I’ll go somewhere early December.
I guess I used to think the net feeling in a moment is the “sum” of your positive and negative feelings but I think it’s not really that. It’s not [happiness minus anxiety = less happiness]. It’s just (happiness, anxiety). This is actually quite interesting to me. (#epiphanies)

This word-vomit is slow because I keep getting distracted. I’m really tired today though I don’t know why. I’ve slept enough and I didn’t do much. Maybe it’s just that. I didn’t do anything refreshing.

Do I really not have any thoughts at the moment? How is that possible?

I have many tasks to do this week, most of which I’m not looking forward to. So, then, what am I looking forward to, if not those tasks? How can I make this week a bit nice? There’s an open-mic I could sign up for potentially, but I don’t know what songs I’d want to sing. Okay yes, I think I can do this. It’s a task that’s the right amount of challenging, plus it’ll also be nice to move towards my medium-term goal of doing ten open-mics by the mid of next year. It’s also at this queer/mixer event type thing so it could potentially be nice to meet some new people, and I’ve been meaning to find ways to do that anyway.

I want to get back to 1000-word posts because I think more stuff comes out when you write 1000-word posts as opposed to shorter ones, so yeah– that’s something I’ll probably start doing soon. I’ve also decided I’m not switching to substack until I’ve written 10-long posts/essays that I’m actually satisfied with (where the satisfaction rating is at least a 7/10). Alright, these conclusions feel good.

068a – limited time + music journey

I’m a little frustrated with everything. Although last week, I’d told myself that I’m killing all expectations from November and December (because they already feel very packed with the festive season, weddings, etc), I’m realising that it’s actually very hard to kill expectations that way.

Lately I’m finding myself being quite selfish with my time. I’m very aware of how much I want to do within the limited time that I seem to have lately. Obviously setting stricter boundaries helps and I’m trying to get better at doing so, there’s still a lot that I end up giving away. This is not anxiety-driven, for a change, I’m just very sure that I want to be spending more and more time on making things. This isn’t an easy feat— really— because there’s a lot of skillset expansion that’s needed to make the things I want to make.

So yes, one option is that I make a LOT of things at my current skill-level, if I don’t want to worry about the learning aspect of the craft. Which is what I’ve been doing with these word-vomits / blogs, for example. And that’s okay too, yeah.

But with music, I feel like because there are just SO MANY areas, I can’t completely ignore the learning / growth aspect of things.

So, what are these areas?

Technical skills with instruments (guitar, keys, drums) + the vocal instrument
Composition / songwriting skills
Music theory
Production / recording

Production and recording I can safely ignore for now, sharing music isn’t my primary goal at the moment.

That leaves me with the first three areas. Now, there’s two ways in which I can continue to expand on the skills in these areas:

Learning by imitation / Learning by “doing”
Learning by “theory”

I think the trickiest part (for me) is choosing at any moment whether I want to work on a cover or whether I want to work on something original. Sometimes covers are more appealing because you hear a beautiful song and you can’t wait to reproduce it. But sometimes original work is more appealing because you know you’ll learn and grow faster by completing a song you might have left unfinished.

And I’ve now gotten to a point where I can’t just completely rely on my feelings ie “oh I’ll just do what I feel like”. Not in every moment.

I think I need to set more smaller goals which allow me to keep a balance between learning songs and working on original music. Yes, that’s the answer.

So, what did we find out today?

I’m feeling selfish about my time. I want more of my time for myself. I thought I could kill expectations and wants from Nov/Dec but that’s not going to be case.
I’m going to be setting more boundaries, I will not be saying yes to everything. A little bit FOMO is to be expected, however. But likely it won’t matter too much.
Music growth is a little daunting because there are many areas to work on, I need to set some short/medium term goals again to find a balance with songs as well as original work.
- I’m not focused too much on production and sharing right now, next few months is going to be more about technical skills and songwriting.

065a – doubts, fears, inadequacies re: writing

“I thought I wanted to be a writer, turns out I just wanted to write.”

I imagine I’ll be saying this a few months from now. Thinking about money or monetisation from my art makes me anxious. I definitely need to find a day-job. I’m not ready to give up all my time yet, so I plan to start looking in February. I imagine it might take up to 3-4 months for me to be able to find one, because I’ll also have to do some research on the kind of jobs I’m willing to take.

But I want to make 10 complete songs before I start a job, and I’ve only made 2 so far. Will I push my “start looking for jobs” date if February arrives and I haven’t made 10 songs by then? I guess we’ll find out. I’m open to it, but we’ll see.

Why do I want to make songs? I don’t know, I just feel like it’s a very fulfilling achievement.

The college-student I teach on Sundays has been giving me a similar answer when I ask him why he doesn’t like Delhi. I’ve been teaching him English to help him with job interviews. He says “I don’t know but I just don’t like it”.

Personal writing feels like a very selfish pursuit. Or the kind of art that I gravitate towards (ie MY feelings and MY thoughts) feels like a very selfish, self-obsessed activity. Which then re-opens the questions I haven’t taken the time out to think about, yet. Who will my audience be? I imagine I can figure that out on the way.

I am definitely not someone who can quickly adjust to trends and what the world needs “right now” and drop comments on it. I do it sometimes but I can’t do it regularly. There was a time when people were more interested in the music I was putting out (although it was mostly covers) and they kept asking me to share stuff on streaming services but all of it doesn’t get as much engagement anymore.

I do wonder lately if you need to be more “gifted” or “talented” or willing to make more compromises if you want to stand out with all of these things.

But I haven’t really given anything a REAL shot yet. A real shot will have to be more planned, more patient, more sustainable. That’s fine, I can live with that for today.

I am still interested in this problem-space. That is, I want to write, I enjoy the process, are there ways I can be better and find overlaps between the things I want to write about and the things people want to read?

Maybe I need to go out and live more, also.

060a – making things vs sharing things

It’s all quite painful. But sometimes I genuinely think I’m meant to feel so much (especially the negative emotions) so that it can fuel my creative work. Which is also something that I think I’m meant to do.

A lot of the creative results/outcomes I’m truly proud of have really come out from moments of deep suffering. I don’t think I can yet come up with melodies without feeling deep pain or deep negative emotions. I hope this changes though. I really want to work on making more original music (I don’t know why, yet) and I wish I can do that even without so much pain.

Brain-chatter around “motivations for making art” have been at all a time high.

Lately I feel really called to music and writing.

Most of the time, I’m happy to “just be creating”. I’m happy to just be making things. Whether it’s a blog-post or a song cover or even doodles, surprisingly enough. However, I’m spending 20-30% of my active brain-power on the question around sharing the stuff that I make.

The sharing aspect is not something I enjoy very much.

With writing however, it’s low overhead, this blog is pretty easy to manage, and the more artsy write-ups sometimes even end up on Instagram, and overall it’s easy.

With music though, the overheads are pretty high. Recording stuff just takes so long, and for some reason I don’t enjoy it very much. Add to that the engagement on my music account has been pretty low lately, so that then adds certain amount of negative feelings and you have to regularly keep recovering from it to continue to keep posting.

Sometimes I think it’s okay if I don’t share the things I make right away as well. For instance, I wrote a bunch of poetry around three years ago which I shared with friends at the time, but I only started sharing it at open-mics and on socials a few months ago. And it felt.. okay. Almost right. Like it was finally time for it to be shared. And it’s also saying something that if you look at something you wrote three years ago and still felt like sharing it, that’s good signal for yourself too.

I also think maybe I have certain icky feelings around the sharing aspect because parts of it overlap with the “how can I monetise my art” aspect and I’m just not ready to address that question yet.

This helps for now. It’s almost 6 am, so I must attempt to sleep.

057a – some clarity

It’s been a difficult week. Anxiety has been super active, and I’ve found that it likes to focus most on two subjects: career and love.

The interesting thing to realise is that my anxiety doesn’t focus on geography as much lately. (I think this could be a sign that India is working well for me, potentially. However, I know that it could be conditional on the fact that I have kept my daily frustrations minimised to a high level. I think I do feel more number of smaller, daily frustrations here and yet feel more of a long-term overall groundedness. But if the frustrations were more for any reason, there is potential for that to rock that feeling of overall stability, of course).

re: career

I’ve gotten more clarity on this as well. I’ve found that music and writing are the two forms of creative expression that I gravitate most towards (for various reasons which I know very well but don’t need to list out here). I can legit sit at home and play, sing and learn music all day, and that’d keep me at peace and also happy and also satisfied, fulfilled. If I were living in a vacuum, I’d probably continue life the way it has been over the last couple months for at least another couple years. But because we live in a society, and money is a thing, I’m thinking I’ll start looking for part-time, remote jobs (what kind, I don’t know yet) starting January. This would still allow me to continue to spend on creative pursuits, I think. And then I can always reevaluate.

I also think I’m not a big fan of the term “career”. I don’t think I’ll be working on building another career, so to speak. I’m probably more aligned with the idea of jobs, yes, when you need money, and otherwise of course spending your time meaningfully is important, and for me that meaning can be derived from the little things. In the current phase of my life, majority of my “work”-time would be devoted to creative expression, whether or not I share the results with the world or not. It’s what allows me to best explore my inner world (and maybe even the external world), and it’s what gives me the most joy and meaning. Whether or not it’s enough for long-term satisfaction is something I’ll probably know with more time, but for now this is enough.

re: love

I’m learning to focus more on the present, as opposed to worries about the future. This is obviously valid for life in general too, but can sometimes really show up with relationships and dating stuff. I’m learning to work on some of my anxious-attachment symptoms, therapy has been super helpful with all of this. I’m learning to listen to my body and my gut as opposed to my mind. My mind is very loud, tuning into the body is often the only thing that helps me be closer to what I really want.

Time to head out for my vocals lesson. Cheers!

052b – forward-looking

I’m up at 5am like I usually am these days and figured it might be good time for a word-vomit. I have a few updates as well so might be nice to get this out.

Finally found a house! It’s a little heavier on the wallet than I’m completely okay with but the location is probably the best I could have imagined getting, and it comes with a sweet terrace, which I’m very excited about. I’m a little skeptical about the natural lighting, but hoping it won’t be a big problem. Hoping the outdoor space will make up for it. Excited to move soon and hang all my art on the walls.

Finally did my first music open mic last week! It went decently well, the nerves didn’t show up as much as I expected them to, my voice held up, and the audience was sufficiently engaged as well. I ended up having a bad hair day on the day of— a couple years ago this would have driven me crazy, and maybe even made me cancel, but none of that happened— so that’s a lot of progress as well. Of course, this was just the first one, and I’d love to do a few more of these to get a sense of how much I enjoy it. But so far, so good.

I started drums classes! I’ve just had two so far but they’ve been super fun. It’s challenging in a great way, and this is the first time in many years that I’m being super impatient about just getting to do something. Like I’ve always been a student who values theory and techniques etc a lot but this is the first time I find myself getting bored by whatever the instructor tells me and I find myself just wanting to play right away. But I’m quite happy to notice this, since it’s very different for me, and I do think doing is actually a better way to learn than all the theory in the world.

I’ve been working on an original composition with a friend and when we met a couple weeks earlier we pretty much nailed down most of it. Now we’re stuck on the “recording” phase, but I’m excited to do this soon and actually release the song as soon as we can!

Overall, I’m feeling pretty excited about all things music, so that’s been nice.

Three months of my break+move are about to come to an end soon, which kinda bums me out a little bit because it reminds me how fast time flies when you’re having fun. It also bums me out because another three months and then I’ll genuinely have to think about some of the hard questions I’m allowing myself not to think about much right now. ie jobs and money etc.

This break was a great decision. And I’m realising today that phases and times like these don’t come by that easily, so I’m going to try to cherish it as much as I can!

Onward 🙂

048 – solitude, after a while

Haven’t written a 1000-word post in ages. I’m finally back from Bangalore and it’s been an eventful trip so maybe it’s worth reflecting on and I can manage a longer post.

This was probably my longest trip (12 days) in many years. Although it was a different kind of trip (ie I was still staying at people’s homes and not in hotels or airbnbs), it was still the longest time away from “home”, in a way.

Something I found myself craving on a day-to-day basis was alone time. But not just alone time where I don’t have to interact with people (because I did get this), but alone time in the sense of not worrying about being perceived for a few hours as well. I found myself really valuing the experience I was having in between destinations (ie cab rides), just listening to music and chilling. I was reminded of my teenage years, or even the time you spend in hostels (dorms) in college, where you really have to work hard to find pockets of alone time as well as privacy. I was taking phone calls in balconies and in the common society areas, which was also really reminiscent of college, where we’d have to often get creative to find privacy. It was also interesting to see how many people were doing the same thing – ie when I was downstairs I’d often come across other people also taking phone calls, often long ones. It was cool to randomly feel connected by this activity.

I also didn’t play much music or sing during the whole stay, so I spent most of my time today just singing and playing, and I realised I was craving that a lot and thoroughly enjoyed it. Definitely experienced flow with it today.

Overall, I will admit that “experience” is so much more important to creativity than pure “time”. (ie the time dedicated to creative activities). Like the experience and the number of feelings I’ve had in the last 2 weeks has been quite valuable. I think I have a lot of material (maybe not direct) that I want to reflect on or use for art.

Got to reconnect with some of my older friends with whom I hadn’t had the chance to spend a lot of time over the last couple years, and also got to meet a lot of new people (some important, some just good in terms of meeting new people, but mostly good hangs), so pretty happy about that. Also, great food all around. Loved that.

Addictions went a bit up throughout the whole period so looking forward to cutting down on that a bit. At least, theoretically. Physically, thinking about working on quitting creates very strong feelings in my stomach, so that’s definitely worth noticing. I’ve decided on keeping a limit for 3-4 months, and then working on reducing the limit every few months. I’m committing to being more strict from today, and promising myself that I will come back to abide by the limits every time I fall off the wagon.

Other things: Most of my friends are software engineers, and observing them on a daily basis did make me think that maybe it’s not too bad to pick up engineering again. Apart from 2-3 months of higher workloads, I think most people’s work schedules are pretty decent. And a couple of friends also said work isn’t super mentally demanding, and although they meant this is a complaint, for me I think that’s a good thing to have. So, I’m optimistic about this option if I need to (or want to) come back to it a year or so down the line.

Had to cancel another trip that was due this week since I’m a little drained (mentally and emotionally) and as much as FOMO I’ll experience when I see my friend’s pictures, I’m quite sure that it’s the right decision. But definitely want to make a trip to the mountains sometime soon. Maybe August or September.

More other things: I realised that the reason other people’s emotions and problems affect me a lot is because I tend to sometimes take responsibility for it all. I feel a need to fix it or make it better or to really be there for them (even at the cost of my own thing sometimes). And I think I need to work a bit on this, ie I do want to be there for my friends, but I don’t want to feel their feelings for them. I guess I want to be able to empathise and be there for them without taking on (any part of) their emotions.

Alright, I think that’s all I have for the trip-reflection. I’ll now share some other thoughts that are coming up.

A progress-related thought on writing:

I used to worry that some of the stuff I’m writing about could already be covered in previous posts, but today I realised that it’s fine if that’s the case. If stuff shows up again and again, that just means it’s persisting, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it’s valuable information. In a way, if I thought repeats itself, the situation is still unique, because the thought repeating itself for the 2nd time versus for the 3rd time (at least when it’s written down) are actually two separate situations.

Last meta-writing thought:

I feel like I jump from vastly different topics and ideas when I write in a word-vomit / journal format. I think that’s okay, but I do sometimes wonder what the experience is like for a reader. For example, Ocean Vuong does that too in “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” but because his writing is so beautiful, I feel like it doesn’t matter whether the thoughts are super connected or not. In fact, sometimes the jumps create more beauty because they leave the reader a little bit curious about whether the “previous topic” ended or not. And if so in what way. Or rather, the incompleteness of certain thoughts adds more beauty, essentially. Anyway, that might be something worth working on. ie how to make seemingly disconnected thoughts connect, or flow, somehow.

042 – my relationship(s) with various art forms

I have a long weekend this weekend (really long, 4 days) and I’m currently on Day 2 of it. I wanted to take some time to out to reflect on.. well, what the title says.

Writing

This is my go-to choice of expression. While I don’t do “creative” writing as such, I’m pretty comfortable with my relationship with this. I regularly journal, blog, share small posts on instagram, and enjoy doing it. I generally mostly think in words, and there’s little-to-no inertia from a thought entering my brain to me putting it out on paper if I want to.

If I could improve on anything, that’d be working on more poetry + sharing it, long-form blogs so I can improve my ability to stick to a single topic or related topics. Eventually, I’d maybe want to write a book, if I ever come up with enough material for something that’s worth writing about / sharing with the world.

Photography

I really enjoy this as well. I like the activity, I’m also able to come up with enough “original”ish compositions, and I feel secure in how I’m able to use this as a form of expression. I like the idea of mixing aesthetics and meaning and I feel like I’m able to find a balance with this. I’m also comfortable with and enjoy sharing my pictures, and that’s always a good sign.

I like clicking pictures more than I like consuming photos, but I like consuming them enough that I never lack inspiration.

If I could improve on anything, I’d probably want to invest in some more lenses / a better camera, go out and do more photowalks (like I used to earlier), setup pipelines to explore selling prints, and try to find paid gigs or opportunities for collaboration.

Music

This is the tough one. I think (or feel) that I enjoy this the most, more than writing or photography or painting. But I think the “problem” is that I’ve only ever been playing and singing covers all my life. Although over the last couple years I’ve somewhat started to experiment with making some original melodies but it’s been very slow, and very minimal. And I don’t think I enjoy making original music as much as I enjoy making original write-ups or photos. So the “originality” is where I get stuck on this.

And I don’t understand the differences very well. Like I don’t know what would be the equivalent of a “cover” when it comes to writing. Maybe narrating a poetry I really like? Yeah I suppose. And I can imagine that being pleasurable as well, of course. I think it’s a numbers thing. I’ve probably written like at least 500 original essays (including journaling) in my life, so that comes naturally to me. With original melodies, I’m at like 10 or something. So yes, this one’s tough. But I want to commit to this, and increase my numbers on original pieces. And then see where I’m at. Will also want to resume vocal lessons, and probably invest in either guitar / keyboard lessons.

Painting / Digital Art

This one is fairly new for me. I did this a lot as a kid and last year I tried getting back into this. I really really enjoy it, it’s satisfactory on a deep level. However, I do think that this is the one activity out of the 4 where I enjoy the results more than the process. I’m not super sure if I enjoy the process yet. I also feel a lot of inertia with getting the paint supplies + water etc ready to start working on something new. So I don’t know, I’m still learning how I feel about this one. Again, like with music, investing in classes would probably be the best course of action if I want to explore this more.

—

Since these are the main things I want to spend the next few months doing, going forward it’ll be nice to have a quick evaluation method for how everything’s going. I think the characteristics I majorly covered in the sections above are the following:

Enjoyment

How much do I enjoy the activity in general?
Do I like the process or just the results?
Am I wanting to be someone or do I genuinely enjoy the “doing”?

Originality

Am I able to be somewhat original?
Even if I am making copies, am I able to add my own touch to them?
Am I able to express myself, my emotions?

Ease, Comfort

What is the general ease, logistical ease like?
Am I able to pull numbers, am I able to engage regularly?

Sharing

Collaboration

Monetary Viability

This may or may not be important (or consequential), but it’s not irrelevant.

—

Wrote an almost 1000-word post after quite a while. Feeling good about it. Engagement is crucial. An obvious step after reflection would be goal-setting but I don’t feel like doing that at the moment. But I will, soon-ish. Let me know in the comments if I missed out on any important evaluative aspects! 🙂

031b – welcome, september

Humans don’t provide much comfort today, so here I am again. Have to get over more feelings I recently acquired. Vulnerability doesn’t feel easy either. Friends are good, nice, magical even, but things are hard still. Art is nice, helpful, magical even, but things are quite difficult anyway.

Been watching this show called Normal People and Hulu and it’s probably one of the best, most beautiful things I’ve seen on TV. Pretty emotionally intense, to the point that it can even become hard to watch sometimes, but man did they do a good job on it.

Life is a little tough lately, the matters of the heart have come around to bother me once again. I will be spending the next few weeks attempting to get over someone. Once again, I find myself wishing that feelings were easier, though I know that wouldn’t achieve anything. I want time to pass faster because I’m hoping it’ll do its thing, but I also don’t want it to – for multiple reasons, one simply being that I only have a few more months here in the States.

I spoke to an ex on call after a few months today, and if I’m being honest it made me feel really good – mostly because I realized how, given enough time, feelings do pass, and eventually you’re able to see people as simply friends, or people, regardless of how strongly you might have felt about them at a point in time.

I have 1.5 days of the long weekend still left with me, I’d like to catch up on chores and some housework before Tuesday arrives – things have been pending for quite a few weeks now. I also wanted to work on some music stuff, but unable to find the inspiration for it. I know the lyrics are decent and the melody for the verse is pretty decent too, just haven’t been able to figure out how the chorus should go. Ah well, should probably treat it with a little more respect and just sit down at my desk to work on this, rather than hoping that it’ll come to me in my sleep or something. Also want to make some travel plans for the end of this month. And as usual, need to follow up on some emails. Wow, this might just be turning into a verbose todo list.

Anyway, love (or lack thereof) is hard. I miss having constant friends (people) around. At this age people move around so quick, or they keep traveling, or they’re just busy. Everyone’s seems to be living in the abundance mindset, maybe I need to as well. My smoking addiction is off the charts – noting it down here so I have some accountability. Maybe I should get a vape to transition into quitting. Sleep’s been much better though.

Clearly haven’t written in a while since 500 words is getting hard to reach. I know it’s not a big deal but I’ll try to be regular again (for myself, of course). Happy September!