phases – untitled atm

049a – what else is coming up?

Excited. Excited to finish 50k words soon. Excited to begin my Delhi phase soon. I’ve never actually lived in Delhi apart from college (which almost doesn’t count because we were so sheltered, but I’ve great memories of Delhi). I wanna do some research around whether safety in Delhi is actually as bad as it was a few years ago. Just based on “vibes”, I feel like things might’ve improved. But I don’t know, vibes can be misleading. Excited to setup my house and fill it with a bunch of art and plants. I’ve ordered new painting supplies so I’m also excited to practice some art soon. Excited to see this person-I’ve-met-a-couple-times, again.

Content. I took a break from this because the excitement to paint took over me. It was a good idea since I painted a couple of abstract-ey landscapes which I really enjoyed. And they came out nice too. I was drained after so I didn’t get back to this until now. Content with some creative progress as well. I’ve gotten faster at painting the same things I was painting a few months earlier. I’ve also gotten better at leaving things at 90%. (Yes, going to the 100% is very important in certain cases, but personally, more often than not it’s better for me when I’m able to stop at a “good enough” state.) Content with this word-vomit as well, I quite like this grouping-thoughts-by-feelings thing.

Anxious. Anxious about a dentist appointment I have tomorrow. Anxious about spending too much time with mom, I don’t know why. Anxious that I don’t have too many social plans for the coming week, and my parents are traveling so I essentially won’t have anyone at home. Which.. I was excited about earlier but I haven’t planned the week well enough to still be excited about it. But maybe I can do some planning over the weekend. Anxious about some of the tasks on my todo list which I really don’t want to get to. But I’ll have to, so that’s going to be tomorrow and the weekend as well.

Unmotivated. Unmotivated to think about certain long-term questions that I thought I can take my time with, but.. since 2 months of chilling are about to be over, I might need to think about some of them sometime this month. Unmotivated to respond to a bunch of texts I haven’t been feeling like looking at.

Doubtful. Doubtful about how much social media usage I’m okay with. I’ve been trying to cut down on Instagram consumption a bit, but not super seriously, but I know deep down that as long as I continue to get some amount of dopamine from social media, I’m not going to put (as much) effort into other things, the more real things. But I know I can’t cut Instagram completely since it’s a big outlet for art-sharing for me.

Dissatisfied. Dissatisfied with the amount of physical exercise I got today. Definitely need to get more tomorrow.

Theorising. I do think it might be important to cut down (or completely eliminate) social media if I want to increase satisfaction overall. The wanting-to-be-everywhere problem only comes up more when you get a bunch of exposure from a bunch of people in different places.

030b – creative queues and time management

I finally had a gin and tonic the other day. They charged us a fortune for it. We found a table outside and talked for an hour. There were heaters above us so the air didn’t feel as chilly as it generally does. The time was perfect, most of the evening crowd had gone home, but it wasn’t dead either. The city’s quite beautiful at night. The moon was out, it was a little foggy (as it often is), there’s enough voices to keep you grounded but not so many that you get overwhelmed.

I got back home and realized I can’t do something like that every night. I mean, I wouldn’t want to. Part of the magic just lies in the novelty of it. I need to be okay with the routine and the day-to-day as well. I want to be able to enjoy that. I can’t always keep looking for something exciting, new, wild (??) to do.

I got a haircut the next day so that was fun. I’d let my hair grow out for more than eight months now so that’s been crazy. Today wasn’t great though. I ended up sleeping in the whole day, missed all the sunlight – and the week’s kicking off tomorrow so I’m a little worried about how it’s going to go.

I’ve been worried about all the things that have been brewing in my head and taking up space. So much so I’ve ended up procrastinating on this post as well. Now that I’m finally in it though, it seems fine – it’s not as much material as I thought it’d be. (As usual, I guess?)

I don’t think I’m excited about being in tech. Even though it’s one of the biggest “things” in the world and I’m sure I’ll have a ton of fomo whenever I “switch” fields (if I end up doing it, that is), yet I think I want to accept that it doesn’t excite me enough. I just genuinely really want to be successful at a creative job.

But there’s the hard part, right? I can’t guarantee the success.

I’ve been debating about what the next “phase” of my life is going to be. Where do I want to be next, where do I want to go next? Summer’s about to be over soon and I’m going to have to start taking some decisions, eventually. The uncertainty’s eventually going to get to me.

Time management’s been a little hard. I think I’ve been all over the place. Between my social goals, creative goals, travel goals, relationship (??) goals and my job and chores – I feel like I can’t get everything done. I’m also aware that this is a common problem and that it’s okay, but I wonder if there’s a way to prioritize or set some boundaries or constraints at the start of a week to have some guidelines to follow as you execute? That sounds like a decent idea. I’m going to give that a shot this week.

Welp, I hit 500 words exactly. So I think that’s a wrap. Time to celebrate – I’m finally done with the 30k milestone! Hope you all have a good week ahead.

028b – flights

Adding this picture here since I think it has some interesting things worth noting. I love how it has things related to the pandemic as well as the fact that it’s the pride month – something else I wanted to talk about it in this piece, but didn’t end up getting to. Still worth it, though, I think.

I’m stuck in a five hour flight. Two of the five hours have passed and I’m slowly starting to enjoy it. Had a terrible night since this was a 6 am flight, and why past me thought it’d be feasible is beyond me. Spent the whole night in the “too anxious to fall asleep” and “too sleep-deprived to focus on anything” loop / limbo. But.. I’m here now, and not unhappy nor frustrated. The airport was terribly packed, by the way. In a way I’ve almost never seen before. It’s not completely unexpected since the pandemic is sort of coming to an end here, or at least a pause (who’s to say, really), but still took me a little by surprise.

I was trying to write a little bit earlier too. I was thinking about how it’s been difficult to sit down and focus on writing coherently. I was thinking about how inspiration has been fleeting lately. How it does knock on the door from time to time but flees before I can invite her in. But it’s interesting how a medium-long flight offers exactly the right kind of an environment to focus.

My body is, admittedly, quite uncomfortable, but I’m sure my plight is nothing next to that of the very tall boy sitting next to me who seems incredibly uncomfortable in the middle seat.
This got me thinking about the economics of shared but unequal travel, or in general… shared but unequal experiences. It’s been quite a while since travelers have been able to afford various privileges for an additional cost, but it’s one of the first times I’ve been on the more privileged side. It’s a weird feeling, I didn’t expect so much guilt around it. I wanted to let him know to let me know if he wanted the windows up or down, and for a minute I’d even felt like offering him my seat if it were slightly less uncomfortable. Then I remembered I’d paid more for my seat and there was no reason for me to have to do that. So yeah, the guilt around privilege was and is very real.

Anyway, my time in the States will be coming to end in around 7-8 months. And it’s weird how that changes things so much. I’ve noticed how ever since I got the confirmation of this news my perspective on my remaining time has shifted quite significantly. Every experience feels retrospective even as I’m living it. I was thinking about the people who made the last three and a half years worth recounting. Some of them were people I knew from before I moved, some I met once I got here. So, so happy and content with this last phase of my life. I think I’ve grown a significant amount and learnt so much about myself and what I want from life. Of course, I don’t know whether I would get everything I want or not.. but it’s still nice to feel more aware.

Flights always bring up a lot for me. Something I can’t stop thinking about is the first flight I took when I was moving here. I was seated with another girl similar to me in age, and a married man probably in his 30s. The three of us had ended up talking a lot and having a great time (flights from India to the US are terribly long), – and it just warms my heart to remember that experience. It was such a great welcome to this place, and I’ve always been so grateful to both of them for providing me with that. Hope I can pass that on to someone else at some point.

008b – rest and growth

Preamble: Wrote this a couple days ago since I was feeling quite “inspired”. But turns out it was just a passing feeling, hence the easy end.

I’ve been thinking about growth lately. There’s definitely a big part of me that likes to grow. I don’t like worrying about things too much and anxiety almost always feels like a constant problem, but sometimes I enjoy these problems, I guess. Or at least, I like the feeling of making my out of the darkness. Or even when it’s not as dark, even when it’s a “simpler emergence”, I do like chasing some sort of goals. Nothing special, pretty normal, a lot of us do it – it’s just new again for me since for a while I thought I only wanted to rest. I had weeks and weeks of wanting to do nothing, I just wanted to breathe and relax and take life in.

When things get hard, I enjoy dissociating from myself. I subscribe to Buddhist ideas like “I am not my thoughts, I am not my feelings”. And it’s pretty helpful. The less attached I am to the idea of “Me” or “I”, the easier it generally is to accept whatever is happening to me.

But when things are “okay” again, I sometimes find myself getting attached to myself again. I find myself looking at myself like a project again, something to constantly be improving and working on. In the previous post I realized I don’t value my time enough, and I think that’s a product of some of “detachment” (so to say) that I was trying to practice.

But I’m thinking about growth again, and I’m finding that I want to get over my fears “faster”. Where’s that need coming from? I’m finding that I “want” to value my time? Where is this sense of urgency coming from? Do I want to pay attention to it? Do I even want to act on it? Is it even correct? Probably not, I think.

I think many us go through this. Phases of growth, phases of rest. The sinusoidal waves of life.

But I need to be careful between the rest and the growth phase. Even though it’d be nice to keep failing fast, I want to be a little careful, still. Because emotions can be unpredictable. It would probably make sense to keep a decent amount of buffer for them. When I plan for a growth phase, I probably shouldn’t do the planning based on “how I feel during the rest phase”.

I suppose this ends up at the two common strategies we often debate on:

A. Under-plan, and overdo, if that happens?
B. Over-plan and be okay with meeting only a % of it?

I think at this point, strategy A looks like a better option to me, because it leaves enough time for me to have fun on the way.. not super sure why I was even debating this to be honest.