opportunities – untitled atm

104a – i want to be better at making decisions (faster)

It’s 2:30 am and I need to sleep soon. Too many thoughts swirling around in my head though which means I need to journal. Didn’t get to process my day very well so here I am. Today feels like it was a little bit surreal. I made a cool connection and I kind of feel proud of how it happened. I followed my gut over something and it resulted in something real.

I’m talking to someone about a job (internship, really) but it pays next to nothing for a good amount of time.. but I’m still curious about it. Would it make sense to go for it (since I can afford it, yes) or would it be kind of stupid to try it out.. I’m not sure. I need to sleep over it for a couple days. But I also know that if I let this marinate for too long it’ll lose steam. I guess like always it’s worth thinking about what are the fears around it.

Fears:

I don’t end up liking the work (That’s okay, I tried something and found it wasn’t for me)
I regret doing free work (It’s not completely free, maybe I gain something out of it anyway)
I regret “wasting a month” (But really, it wouldn’t be a waste I suppose)

I suppose it makes sense to go ahead and do it. It’s not like they need me for a full 40 hours, so the deal in that way does work for me. It’ll get me out of the house, and I suppose I can also make time for other things while I’m at the place.

The people seemed quite genuine, which seems like a big plus— because one of the big problems of working in the corporate culture is of course that you don’t always get authenticity around you. That could be a major plus in a work environment.

It fits well enough into my story, I think. Maybe I can do it for the plot, maybe that’s okay too. What is a month in the grand scheme of five years? Nothing, I suppose. Or I can ask for a trial period of 2 weeks too, maybe that is something that could work.

I’ll give myself until Friday to decide and then that’s it, no mulling over it.

Family time did end up triggering me a bit today, but it was still kind of nice to see everyone. Whatever, I guess.

I’ve been applying for some technical writing roles too quite extensively, thinking it could be a good fit for me considering I do miss “tech” again a bit and I still do love writing. Plus, I’ve always found a lot of joy in being able to describe “complicated” things/concepts in simpler words ie I’ve always found joy in increasing and widening accessibility of a complex/inaccessible thing. So thinking it’s worth trying out.

Anyway that’s it on September updates. I’ll catch yall on the flippety flip.

084b – trying to funnel life a bit

Been very busy— socially— over the last couple days. Haven’t had enough time to myself. Haven’t been sleeping too well either but I finally caught up on that earlier today. The sun hasn’t been out for almost a whole week now which sucked quite a bit although music and people have been keeping me sane and happy.

Finally bought an electric guitar after many months of mulling over models etc. Excited to practice and learn a few songs this month.

I’d been thinking about temporarily deactivating Instagram for a while now and I finally took the plunge. Current plan is to keep it deactivated for 2-3 weeks and then see if I need it or no. Reasoning behind deactivation is primarily that I want to minimise unnecessary stimulus. I want to be more careful and mindful about the kind of content I consume and Instagram is coming in the way a bit, I guess. Further, the two main reasons I was still keeping it around were that

it was one of my primary ends for creative expression (especially with photos as well as “thought dumps”) but I think I’m more determined to focus on journaling/writing/music as the primary forms of expression, at least this month, so maybe Instagram is just a bit of a distraction from those goals.
i think I also had a lot of space for new people and connections in life and I thought Instagram can be a good way to keep that channel open. And while it’s true that you do sometimes find interesting opportunities and people through social media, I just feel like I have enough on my plate for the next few weeks so maybe for now I’m alright.

So yeah, figured it’s worth testing.

Kind of excited about getting to 100K words soon(ish) but also wondering what the next steps would be. This is good practice, I feel like I tend to keep jumping ahead with things. Or maybe, I just leave this question here and let the answers come to me. If the answers haven’t arrived, then I can potentially keep going as well. [open question]

Focused on drums class, vocals exam, learning Corduroy Dreams on guitar this week, and that’s probably sufficient work to be thinking about, so maybe I can allow myself to not have to think about January planning etc.

Still have a couple of people I want to meet once or twice before they go back to their bases.

Lots of travel lined up this year and pretty excited about all of it.

I’d like to think about (and do some research on) whether long-form content consumption (like books, for example) is actually healthier compared to social media content consumption or not. Like obviously, intuition says it is, and I’ve heard a lot of such sentiments in passing, but I don’t think I’ve ever read about it properly. So yeah, that’d be good to learn more about. [open question]

Cheers xx

032a – act during periods of clarity

It’s been hard to sit down and write. I keep getting up do something or the other. My reason for restlessness is mainly one – I have to make a life decision. Where should I go next? But it’s also the reason I need to sit down and write. I’ve gathered a lot of information and opinions in the last few weeks, I’ve been swinging back and forth between my two options, literally going from one to the other every week. I’m definitely under a little pressure to make a decision, but I seem to want to make it without doing the hard work that goes into it.

The hard work? I’m not talking about the information gathering, that was hard only initially, once I started it was easy. The hard work seems to be thinking about interviewing for one of the options, the prep that I’ll have to put into it.

Anyway, for some context, my two options are: Amsterdam and India. I’m looking to move within the company I’m currently at, and looking to move within the same role I’m currently at (engineering). That’s the easy part.

I think I’m finally realizing that the reason I’ve been leaning toward India (that’s home for me) is fear based. The more I realize I really don’t need to pressure my life to become a certain way or “fall into place” by a certain time, the more I see and accept that Amsterdam seems like the better option right now. I want to settle down and have some stability, but how can I find it when I barely know myself? If I really want to find myself, don’t I deserve to give myself all the chance I can? Ideally I really should be giving myself the best opportunities to grow (not as an engineer or whatever, but as a person). A person who knows she doesn’t want to be working a full-time engineering job five years from now. If I really want to find what I want five years from now, I probably do have to dive into the ocean that is the world.

And it’s true, I really am only 26. Whoever said that’s old? Whoever said I need to hurry and settle down? And who’s to say I’ll find that at home? And I’m not even getting into whether home really is what I think it is, etc.

A new country is daunting, an easier decision might be easy to take, but there’s a reason I feel restless when I decide to go forward with the easier decision. If it was the easy and right decision, I probably would feel comfortable taking it. But I don’t.

I feel some clarity coming in. This might not last long, so maybe the best thing to do is take small actions in moments or periods of clarity, and see where that takes me. I’m going to ahead with kickstarting the processes that are needed to go ahead with the Amsterdam option. I can always decide not to go ahead if things don’t feel right a few weeks from now.