vulnerability – untitled atm

090b – intimacy and travel

There is something about leaning on people that feels incredibly rewarding. Intimacy is magical and every time you do something tough in the journey (asking for what you need or want, or something you’d like, or canceling plans with consideration)— you know it can go either way. It can strengthen a connection and add more “events” (data) to it or it can weaken it. Both outcomes are okay but it’s always fun to see where it goes.

I have been spending most of my time in other people’s spaces and lives, and slowly but steadily I allow my life to merge in their spaces, that’s quite fun too.

Today I spent my afternoon in a good friend’s room, he’s moved out of it but some of “him” was still around. I send him a picture of his desk and tell him I’m having fun and he tells me where the trees are if I’d like to improve the view. It was all quite nice. His desk was dusty and yet the afternoon light made it all quite romantic for me. Dusty surfaces in otherwise mostly clean spaces are an interesting little detail to me.

I visited a very old friend in her house in a far-off neighbourhood in the city and I was reluctant to go there, but the trip was quite worth it. I like seeing residential spaces and how different people have different lives. We talked about everything under the sun and I wondered when we’d meet again. In the past we’ve gone many years without meeting and I’m pretty comfortable with that too.

I haven’t been doing as much writing as I’d like to be doing but maybe I’m changing that right now.

We talk about how “if you wanted to, you could write about anything, really” but something stops us, still.

All (okay, most of) my friends are analytical as well as creative and I love that about them.

I was more careful of my energy this time though and I’m quite glad about that. I felt like I was able to balance self-preservation and getting “enough” out of travels pretty well.

Headed to Bombay tomorrow and spending three days there and although I was feeling like I’m done with traveling, I’m finding that I am looking forward to meeting some people. Pretty excited about that.

Also did some good amount of “exposure therapy” over the last few days which I’m happy and content about.

Indulgences though, ah. Back to tapering down from it now, hopeful I can keep at it.

I think getting any new ideas and or art (or cultural expansion) from any sort of traveling makes the travel (or other activities) very worth it. We clicked a lot of pictures, had some good food, recounted old stories, wrote new ones, and that’s more than I could ask for, I suppose.

That’s 90K words! Glad to be here. Don’t think I’d like to get away from this habit, really. I like documenting things, I like noting down how I feel about events and things happening in my life. I do find myself going back to reading these from time to time, which I think serves a nice little purpose for myself too.

030a – sleep schedules and the need to feel seen

All right! I’m awake at 5pm on a Saturday, well-rested and feeling good after a while. A couple of friends have recommended fixing my sleep-schedule now, and while a little annoying, I do know they have my best interests at heart. Also, the fact that people my age are really swearing by it and thinking it’s something really worth fixing makes me think that it might be time. Physical offices are probably also going to start opening by fall as well, so starting now gives me enough time to potentially fail a couple of times if needed and get back on track.

I realized a few things last night.

I really enjoy long phone conversations so finding some of those people in my time-zone’s going to be important. (Right now I spend a lot of time talking to some of my friends and family back home and for some reason the timing’s been working in a way that it stretches into my night).
Not procrastinating in the day is going to be critical. I really want to make time for hobbies and self-work and making that time in the daytime implies getting done with chores and pending “work” earlier in the morning, especially on the weekends.
Then of course, there’s the 10pm/11pm temptations. The caffeine cravings, for example. I’m going to have to be a little strict about not giving into many of the things I like doing post-dinner. It’s going to have to be wind-down period. Until my body clock adjusts (which, might take a few weeks to a month at least, I guess), I’m going to have to be very deliberate about this.

So, that’s enough on sleep and commitment to that.

(Random update) I bought a mic! I’m excited to figure out a little bit of recording technicalities and then I’ll potentially record some music and experiment around with that.

Lastly, the main thing I’ve been thinking about since yesterday. What is it about “feeling seen” and “feeling known” that feels so good? I would say I was a fairly private person up until two years ago. Eventually, opened up to people and eventually also started to really enjoy sharing my work and my “art” (and therefore more of me) with everyone.

Of course, one of the main things that spurred this into faster action was a breakup, for me. I doubt I ever felt a void when I was with my now ex-partner. Him and some close friends and family having “know” me was quite sufficient. After the breakup, there was definitely that need, that empty space. Savannah Brown (recent discovery) has interesting thoughts on this – she asks if anything really then has meaning unless “people” are involved. Unless “people” are seeing it? I’ve never tried playing music for an animal but I’ve heard it can be quite amazing. So it might not just be people, but maybe.. connection?

Is feeling seen simply an indicator of connection? Or is it the acceptance, the apparent lack of judgement, the freedom that comes from it?

Ah well, looks like there’s clear evolutionary reasoning behind it. This was easy 🙂

Also, very excited to hit 30k soon! Have a happy weekend, everyone. :partyemoji:

029a – platonic intimacy and friendships

We don’t always get what we want. But we get other things. Other things that sometimes end up being silver linings.

I took a somewhat spontaneous weekend trip with few of my friends from grad-school this week. I’d never realized how platonic intimacy has many similar stages like romantic intimacy does. The obvious, tangible things like shared spaces, shared bathrooms and beds. But more than that, the smaller things – the newer fights, some of them caused by unsuspecting jokes, the small adjustments to each others’ habits. Quirks. The privilege of getting to see each others flaws. The vulnerability that comes with telling someone you’re a late sleeper. The vulnerability of being cranky when you haven’t had your day’s coffee. Then there’s the meditative moments when you all sit around someone packing their suitcase on the last night, watch them slowly fold their clothes, one piece after another. You realize how much at peace you all can be, together. Nobody says anything until it’s done and everyone suddenly realizes how magical the moments that just passed had been.

I’m all for virtual friendships and long-distance relationships, but I’m realizing that some dimensions of intimacy can only be achieved by spending actual time with people. I think throughout school and college, some of this happen pretty automatically, since trips and spending time with each other is kind of a default. But as adults, some of us often have to be a bit more deliberate about it. Glad to be able to do it though!

In general, it’s been a great year for friendships for me (of course, being single will do that to you anyway). But I have realized that I’m much more social than I used to think, and it’s been fun to lean into it. Though one new concern that’s come up for me is whether having “more” friends can affect the quality of friendships? (I mean obviously, but I wonder what the numbers are.)
I was definitely a believer of “quality over quantity” earlier, and though I have liked increasing the quantity so far, I don’t want the quality to be affected.

Am I making “enough” friends so that I don’t have to face disappointment when someone is unavailable etc, or do I just genuinely like having that many friends? I think it’s okay when I have multiple friends for different purposes, like enjoying different kinds of activities or when people fill different roles for me, but having multiple friends for similar purposes and roles might be an overkill.

My eventual goal though is to reduce my dependencies on social media and have just enough close friends that I can keep in touch with them and be able to reach them through the older mediums of connectivity. This should provide a good enough upper constraint, I guess.

Anyway, that’s all on this. Onwards.

021a – bridge the gaps through personal conversations

Something new I’ve been realizing is that I’ve been intellectually starved. When you’re not talking to enough people who care about similar things as you do, you can forget that it’s a major part of satisfaction. I spend a lot of time thinking about things like gender, sexuality and mental health, stories and narratives but many people around me don’t. The sad thing about some of these topics like these is that they often come up only personally or when someone seems to be demanding things or pushing an “agenda”. And that’s maybe the unfortunate fact with anything that has a history of stigma associated with it, or a “minority” topic in general. For example, nobody questions anyone talking too much about travel, or money, or grades, or games or real estate or family. These are perfectly acceptable dinner table conversations. And yet, these other things can often be “too heavy” for most people.

Talking to a couple friends yesterday about my personal history with anxiety and my sexuality, I realized that I enjoy talking about these things. But I also realized it doesn’t always have to be in the context of me or my history, I would probably enjoy talking about these things even “generally”. But I had to pave the way for these conversations through my own context. It makes me realize how much of “bridging the gap” might have to be done through personal conversations. Social media can be so loud about all of this in this day and age, and yet perhaps people end up paying attention only when they’re more involved, when they’re almost a bit personally (?) involved.

“Finding your people”, then seems to be an important pillar to keep in mind while navigating life. It takes time to realize how much you’re missing until you find the good stuff. Nilan has posed a nice question that caught my eye recently. What do I want my life to prove? Currently, authenticity is something that I really want to swear strongly by. Right now, I really want my life to prove that living authentically (more than we think we can hope to) has no limits. Calling a spade a spade doesn’t make you socially ignorant, there’s reasons why people don’t do it, and those reasons deserve to be questioned.

And while wanting to live authentically should need no justification, it seems like finding our people would also be 10x easier if we did operate extra authentically all the time?

This also seems to me like a nice spin on vulnerability. What is vulnerability if not simply being authentic? Let’s normalize being authentic. It doesn’t need to be an act of courage. It doesn’t need to be a conscious effort. There’s no limits, and the benefits seem worth it. I don’t think it always needs to happen through social media or the internet but I think these mediums make it easier to reach or find the people we wouldn’t have found as easily in our own limited circles.

Also, one thing I’d like to tell you if you’re someone who’s practicing authenticity but feel like it’s not always reciprocated – keep at it. Often the seeds of such efforts bear fruit only a few months later, but know that there’s always someone who’s noticing it, and getting themselves ready to reciprocate.

019b – the mundane is all we have

Thoughts think themselves. Words write themselves. Is this what they call free writing? Just letting your vessel do its thing? Thoughts can create feelings. Feelings can create thoughts. By that logic one can never be out of words. And maybe it’s true. Maybe we’re never out of words. Maybe it’s just the question of which words we want to share, and which we don’t. Is writer’s block real then? Or does it become real only for writers who need to get paid for their words?

I was thinking about how vulnerability on the internet doesn’t really get easier – not as much I’d expected. I went back to doing a bit of private journaling and realized I preferred it. I thought it’d have gotten easier by now. This could be another reason that I’ve been leaning towards trying to fictionalize my thoughts. Or preferring to write fiction, even though it’s tougher and slower.

Any person who’s successful in any field will tell you to do as much of the thing as you can. And yet, it’s hard to subscribe to quantity as a goal by itself. I know I need to set up more feedback loops to stay motivated. Intrinsic feedback and motivation is not sufficing, I know it’ll eventually die out. Or I at least need them for a push when I’m low on the intrinsic motivation.

I scoff at the mundane sometimes. It feels overused and weary and tiring. The green of the leaves, the blue of the waves, isn’t it all used up by now? But I know there’s a reframe there, it’s just about the arrangement and patterns. There’s just seven basic notes in the land of music too, and yet people have created beautiful things out of those.

You gotta keep practicing, that’s the only thing I can tell myself. That’s the main reason I want to keep doing this. And to remind the 5th grade me that I haven’t forgotten her. I haven’t forgotten how she wrote an essay for fun and thoroughly impressed the secondary English teacher who had no idea who she was, but was eventually happy to learn that she was one of her favorite students’ younger sister. To remind the 9th grade me who’d discovered the world of fan-fiction for the first time and was completely mind-blown for years to come. So much of who we are is where we’ve been, so sometimes I find comfort in drawing inspiration from the past.

I suppose we all like sharing stories, sharing parts of ourselves with parts of the world. Some of us like to do so with crowds and tables full of people, some of us perhaps with fewer people. Some of us from behind our screens, some of us from right in the spotlight. Engagement (that social media easily provides) is nice, I’m not going to deny that, but there’s definitely something significantly more satisfactory about writing a post of a decent length. Of course, I’m the one who gets to decide what that length is for me, so it’s all chill.

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References: [1]

001 – all creative work is vulnerable

I’m stuck in a new place. I’ve 5 word-vomits sitting in my notes app, I’ve set up a WordPress website and everything, I’ve tried making one post public and hidden it again. Just five days ago I was super excited to write quickly and publish quickly, and get to ten published posts as quickly as possible. But today I feel like it’s a hard act, I’m feeling hesitant. I’m feeling hesitant about being vulnerable. Not about the writing per se, since we’ve established that we don’t need to worry about the quality, but about the content. It’s real, it’s raw.

I first saw the words “all art is vulnerable” on one of Timothy Goodman’s posts, and it resonates a lot from time to time. And while I’m not at the stage where I can call these word-vomits art (hence the title), the feeling’s still the same, of course. And since I’ve taken up this project at a time where most of my “battles” have reached their brim, of course all of my writing is going to be about all of it. At present, there’s three big rocks in my life that are not fully resolved and sometimes (often) cause me a lot of shame and pain. They’re 1/ my body dysmorphia, anxiety and occasional depression, 2/ my sexuality 3/ my relationship with my work. I’m also aware that they might never feel fully resolved and that’s okay too. But of course they’re going to show up if I talk to anyone honestly. And of course I’m going to be honest in a word-vomit, how can I not be?

So I guess I need to accept that the only way I can write, write, and write, is to accept the following few things

These three things are a big part of me
These things do cause me some shame and hence I’m a little afraid to put them out into the world
There’s things that people will think (if they read this) and opinions that they will form
There’s a big part of me that worries about what they’ll think and what opinions they’ll form
The only way out is through

Well, there it is. Maybe it’ll be easier now. A lot of amazing people have said a lot of amazing things about vulnerability. It was slightly over a year ago when I’d first seen Brené Brown’s – A Call to Courage. This was the first time someone had made me think about life from the lens of vulnerability. Nobody had ever explained the word better than she had done it, or at least – nobody had ever talked about it the way she had. And I knew then that that’s all there is to life. Vulnerability and connection. So, I know, that it’s okay that I’m feeling this, and that maybe I’ll continue to feel this all the time. Yet, it’s hard. So I’d love to think about, in a little detail, what I hope to achieve by being vulnerable with these word-vomits. Why should I publish these? In the best case scenario, what do I get? In the worst case scenario, how do I cope and continue doing it anyway – if I need to?

I do have some experience with being vulnerable on the internet, so I’ll probably consider that as well.

How have I been vulnerable in the past and how have I benefited from it?

I started posting “artsy” pictures on Instagram a few years ago. I think I’ve developed as a “photographer”. I started from super basic stuff, really really basic phone camera stuff. Got a good amount of validation from various kinds of people – people whose skills I admired, people whose tastes I admired. Unexpected, genuine compliments. Great conversations. Confidence. Development of skills. Development of taste. Stronger connections with some of these people.
Then, I started posting some music stuff a couple years ago as well. This one was actually harder since it was much more vulnerable, since I’d had negative feelings about my voice in the past. I also posted videos, which was very hard too since I’d had negative feelings about my ~aesthetic~ in the past as well. Regardless, a similar thing happened. The compliments and validation made me genuinely wonder and eventually believe that I’m not “as bad” as I’d thought I was. I ended up starting singing lessons. I got better. I started owning the fact that I like to play music / sing. I even started dreaming about composing music someday.
Lastly, I joined twitter and started posting about my body dysmorphia and anxiety. Again, terribly hard when I started. Got a ton of engagement on all of that “content”. But so much to be grateful for! I remember it being super scary when more and more IRL friends started following me. But it opened the door for amazing IRL conversations as well. I realized I like conversations. I realized I like meeting and talking to new people! (Something I’d never thought about myself before.) I met new people through Twitter – it was pretty cool.

I mean, it’s all here. It’s all good things. So let’s get to the next question.

What do I hope to achieve from this project?

For starters, it’ll probably be a good additional point for the next time I’m questioning something like this again. Instead of 3 points in the previous paragraph, I’ll have 4.
Just based on evidence, I’ll probably be a slightly better writer at some point of time if I keep doing this. Or at least, my perspective on my writing could become more holistic. I could become okay with calling it writing instead of constantly calling them word-vomits.
@visakanv mentioned this in his reasons for doing this, but yes, I’ll probably be a different person by doing this, and doing it publicly. And I’m excited to meet her!
Of course, I could make some new friends because of this, have new and/or deeper conversations. Good ol’ connection.

In the worst-case scenario, what happens, and how do I cope, and go on if I need to?

People will know of details about me that they decide they didn’t really wanna know. I suppose they wouldn’t tell me if they realize something like that. So I wouldn’t really know that they thought something like that. Even if they say something like “oh you’re being too vulnerable”.. well, what is too vulnerable? It’s me. Of course I could be judged for these parts of me, but that’s probably a small price to pay for all of those benefits I listed above. So I’m sure I’ll cope.
I mean that’s all there generally is, right? Fear of judgement. The one that I feel most vulnerable about is my sadness. I don’t know. There’s this one word-vomit that’s super raw, reading it makes me feel a lot of pain. Now, I’m not assuming that a third person will feel it just because I do. But maybe I’m scared of the feelings of pity. Nobody wants to be pitied. Well, compassion is different from pity. So maybe people will know how to be compassionate instead. Regardless, I wouldn’t know. Or I probably wouldn’t care in the grand scheme of things etc. So I guess I’ll cope? I guess we’ll see.

Okay, things make sense now. I’m not sure in what order I’ll start posting these. In the order I wrote them or in some other order. But I think I’m ready.