Tag: wants

049b – desire

But what if everything I want, I already have? 

Love, peace, connection, security, health, beauty, worthiness, achievement, success, fame, pleasure, validation, all that jazz. Maybe I already have it all. 

Okay, this probably doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know. I’m pretty sober, but this thought came to me yesterday night. And I’d thought to myself that this maybe worth thinking more about. But, I don’t know if it is. Maybe it’s just one of those thoughts you’re supposed to feel and believe, without really diving deep into it. Because diving deep won’t really reveal anything you don’t already know. 

These days, I find myself getting swayed by material desire, but I don’t want to give in to that too much. 

In general, I want to be able to say no to all sorts of desires and cravings from time to time. Skeptics will say this is asking too much of yourself. 

There is a person I miss— but I know talking to them isn’t very healthy for my “progress” in life, so that is a desire I want to be able to say no to. I think I’ve been doing decently well on this, haven’t “given in” since January. I do sometimes wonder if this will ever become a non-issue. I know that if I meet someone new (ie fall in love), this will become a non-issue more easily. But, that could take a while. And I don’t want that to be the only way this becomes a non-issue. Point being, I’m surprised by the amount of time it’s taking to get rid of this person’s trace from my life. I started writing some of it in a “book” of sorts, because I wasn’t ready to let all of it go completely into nothingness, and that’s been “helping” quite a bit, and ideally, I should just be writing over there so I can continue “working” on this letting go process, but I didn’t feel like it today. So— surprise, surprise— here I am, doing the same thing in a different format. Eventually, kind of talking about the same thing I didn’t feel like talking about. 

Ah, that was a tiring paragraph. Felt clunky and circular to me. 

I’ve been stuck on a book I’ve been reading for over a month now, it’s not super engaging but I really don’t want to leave in the middle, so really need to pick up pace and finish reading it. Because I want to read something philosophical / spiritual after it, I’ve been feeling the need for it. Not sure what, though. Something in the Ekhart Tolle / Alan Watts realm. 

The other desire I’m struggling with is the one for social satisfaction. I met some friends earlier in the week but I’m kind of experiencing the need for connection again. Talking to parents doesn’t feel satisfactory enough. And while, yes, I can make plans with specific people and maybe attempt to figure this out, I kind of also want to be okay with the desire just not getting met. 

I might have overused the word “desire” in this post. It is what it is, is what it is. 

035b – dream cities (read: dreams) 

People often ask me what my dream city would be. Mostly when I’m complaining about how geographical movement is hard. But I don’t know if I have a dream city. I just have dreams.. and most cities I’ve lived in are capable of fulfilling them for me. 

I don’t think my dreams are too big. I want to sing for small-medium sized groups of people. I want a decent-sized sunlit apartment to spend my indoors time in. I want a guitar and a keyboard at home. I want relatively warm weather for as much time of the year as possible. A couple months of rainy weather would be nice too.

I want a sense of community, belonging: I think I’ve gotten pretty good at being able to build this, again, at least in places I’ve lived so far. I want to be around good friends. And I think I want to spend 20% of my social (and free)-time with close family.

I want a person to share all of this with. I want to be able to do fun things with them. I probably want us to co-parent a cat. And some plants.

And of course, I want to able to earn some amount of money to support all of these things. Ideally, I want a career that can help me earn some money and also help me fulfill some of my yearnings. But with a lot of remote opportunities and general globalization, I think the city I choose wouldn’t affect this in a big way.

I want some greenery I can access within 10-15 minutes of walking or biking, ideally. I want to be able to drive a car. And I want a city with infrastructure decent enough to make it fun to drive around.

Of course, I want to be safe while I do all this. So yes, half of the Indian cities I know get removed from my “cities I can live in” list. But Bangalore, Mumbai and even Delhi (with some caveats) stay on.

I want good food. I definitely want some cute cafes here and there. I want to be able to go dancing once a while.

– 

I was writing this between breaks from reading this brilliant read about picking careers. Went back and spent around 2 more hours on it, brainstormed and introspected a bit, and suddenly I find myself feeling very optimistic. Maybe it’s helping that I’m seeing 7 am after many days (my sleep schedule’s been really bad, so I ended up pulling an all-nighter today). But regardless, the optimism is real. 

I’m okay with perhaps switching careers at the age of 30, I’m okay with being single for as long as I don’t find the right person (and if that never ends up happening, I feel like I’ll be okay with that too), I’m okay with possibly never having kids (which reduces the time pressure on finding someone). And lastly, I’m perfectly okay with my place in this world – small or big. How liberating to feel this. Hope it lasts a while!