resistance – untitled atm

109a – december blues (contd)

Crazy couple of weeks. I have a nephew now! Feels pretty surreal, I suppose it won’t really sink in until I go meet him. Attended a couple of weddings, met a lot of people. Did realise (or re-realise) that I weddings are a lot for me, mentally and emotionally, and yeah, like I’ve mentioned before, seriously reconsidering how much more of this I can continue to do on a yearly basis.

The next few days are pretty busy, socially, still, and that’s okay. Perhaps I’m even looking forward to continue to meet friends and spend time with them.

I do miss my sister and kind of want to visit her in Jan/Feb, but I really absolutely detest the longass flight, so I suppose we’ll see.

January is really going to be about planning moving. It’s a bit stressful but honestly definitely looking forward to moving out of Delhi. It’s become a lot. Plus a change of scenery would really be nice.

I have an updated opinion on road-trips— I used to think they’re pretty exhausting and stressful, but I’ve realised that opinion was formed primarily because I used to mostly travel with family, and their opinions and energy would affect me a lot. Traveling with friends (or basically people you feel safe with) is quite different and as long my agency is not super-compromised, road-trips can be fun too.

Lots of stuff to process still, but I’m finding myself unable to write freely. I don’t know what it is exactly. Expression seems somewhat pointless these days. I think AI everywhere has got me a bit bummed about everything. I realised that people around me have integrated AI tools heavily into their lives, and I don’t know why that makes me so uneasy. Am I going to become one of those old boomers who’re always on about the perils of technology and get “left behind”? Is there value to my feelings of resistance or is it just change of any sort that I’m fearing? I’m not sure, I also don’t know where to begin introspection on this topic.

So much to do and yet such little motivation to do those things. I’m also not sure what my social values are— I find myself losing some connections and although part of me is okay with it, there is also a part of me which wonders if I’ll regret this later.. not very sure.

December is weird, that’s for sure. Anyway, I should probably just figure dinner and then get on with the day, whatever’s left of it.

Cheers, folks xx

061b – on the long-term goal of healing and being more well-adjusted

Sometimes all you need (or want) is for someone to tell you “It’ll all be okay”. I’ve been feeling pretty shitty since the last couple days, but just now as I reached this conclusion, I do feel better. Like yes, I know from past experience that things do work out and things do feel okay, eventually, even if that “okayness” doesn’t come in the form you might have thought it will.

Even though I’ve tried to be more action-oriented over the week, I still have this feeling that I’ve been spending way too much time in my head, I don’t know how to describe it exactly.

Went for a poetry workshop/slam type thing yesterday and I feel like that really ended up overstimulating/overwhelming me. (It was great! And met some really cool people! So) Very fulfilling, but yeah I feel like these kind of events can end up becoming heavy sometimes. Especially if I already had too many feelings going into the thing.

I think I’m still adjusting and getting comfortable with “Delhi”. I’d started feeling gloomy randomly around 6pm yesterday when I realised it was dark already and that it must be getting kind of cold outside (it’s started to get a bit chilly here). So, yeah, I think the adjustment can be a pain. No, it’s most definitely a pain.

I think I’m at a decent state with the nicotine addiction now. It’s been a month and although I’ve had a couple slips, they didn’t end up being relapses, and I feel like mentally, I’m still okay with the concept, don’t feel the urges as often, and can mostly remind myself that I would hate to relapse— so, let’s not.

But because life is still incredibly hard and I feel far away from being a self-adjusted individual, I know I need to seriously start thinking about which addiction to tackle next: ie my unhealthy sleeping habits, “thinking”, or caffeine. Sleep has definitely made life hell over the last couple days so ideally I should focus on this, even if it’s not fully resolved, if I can even make it a little better for the “short-term”, that could be nice. The other motivation to want to do this is that with the onset of actual winters, getting enough sun will not be easy, so needing a good sleep schedule will become extra important.

The lack of a “job” has started to feel a little heavy this week. But I feel like that’s just the resistance showing up, because this week has been mostly feeling a lot more motivated about spending time on creative work. And although I don’t deny that I’d want to find a day-job sometime next year as well, I don’t know why my brain wants me to “urgently” worry about it, when there’s no need to. So yeah, I think that’s the resistance. (“Resistance” as described in “Do The Work”)

Anyway, writing this down was nice and helpful. Hope your weekend starts off better than mine!

056b – blocked or directionless?

I think I’ve been resisting a lot. Moments, feelings, thoughts. Resistance makes everything so much tougher than it needs to be. What am I feeling, really?

Right now, I think I do feel some amount of boredom, lack of motivation. I do feel a pressure to “do”, in a specific direction. In a direction that might feel justifiable to the brain. But I’m tired of my brain ruining my life. I’m tired of my brain constantly asking for attention. When it’s my body, my heart and my soul that I want to give more of my attention (and awareness to). So, okay, maybe the resistance was present for a reason. Maybe the resistance was coming from my body, and not from brain. Maybe my body knows that we don’t want to give in to the brain right now. The brain acts like a dictator at times, maybe the resistance was a combined protest.

I’m actually also feeling blocked by an Amazon pickup scheduled for “sometime” today. They haven’t really given me a specific time and generally somebody comes by before this time in the day. I need to take a shower and get on with life, but this thing has been blocking me since the afternoon.

I wish I could understand my cravings better, how they shift from one to another. How different addictions play against (or with) one another.

Adulting and surviving has been quite tough lately. I need to start “living” more again. I think the weather has been a major blocker to everything. I just feel so bogged down by the tiny but very many problems in and around me.

Okay, gratitude and positives: I have a vocals lesson coming up in a couple hours which I’m definitely looking forward to. I also like the walk back home from the place, so that’ll be nice. I can also practice drums a little bit if I can get there earlier.

Hoping the weather improves a bit over the next couple weeks, so I can try going out more during the day.

I think I’m definitely observing large amounts of the need of “control” over everything in life. It’s just so difficult for me to “let go” of things and let them take their course. I want to get better at surrendering to moments.

The thing that’s been helping the most is this book I started reading called Conversations on Love. It has a lot of helpful perspectives and different philosophies that can be applied even outside the context of love. The thing that’s helped the most so far is an introspection of “longing” as a feeling, which I do often struggle with.

Since I’m actually struggling with this right now as well, I’ll try to write some quick thoughts on longing: wanting something different than what you have, feel or are right now. Often, it’s unexplainable why you want the present moment to be different than what it is.

For me, currently it comes from an overarching feeling of lack of direction in life. Though I don’t think it’s completely true that direction is lacking. It’s maybe just enough, yet. Like there’s some presence of direction, but maybe I want more of it. Like a stronger presence of it.

I don’t know, maybe today’s a little like walking a bit in different directions but finding each path blocked, so I keep returning to take a new path. But I keep coming back. That’s the main problem. Anyway, maybe this wasn’t completely futile.