Two days ago, as I was walking to the gym (it’s a 23 minutes walk) I pulled up my phone, subscribed to Apple music impromptuly, and started listening to the sad playlist. Deliberately!
Not because I had a rough day.
Not because I had been going through a lot.
Not because I was hurt.
Not because I was sad.
Not because I was fucked!
It was solely and only because I wanted to synthesize sadness. Weird. I know.
Unpacking…
I wanted to soak in and soak myself with my forever friendemy — grief.
I wanted to step on the earth, again! Rest. Reflect. Re-calibrate.
Move. Shake.
For, it’s been a while I have been flying in perpetual happiness.
For, it’s been a while I had been living in a foggy, seemingly make-believe-world.
In a nutshell, I wanted to meditate on despair.
I wanted to refresh, relive, re-fill, re-feel my memories as far as my on-and-off relationship with sadness is concerned.
And, to say the least, sadness has always given me purpose.
I had forgotten I had to show up for musicpervs today. It’s almost 10 past 15pm. Normally I sleep at 9:30pm because i had to wake up at 4:45AM every weekdays.
This evening I had almost two hours long conversation with my uncle who I’ve not had a word for a long, long time. My eyes are yearning to shut themselves off as i type these lines in a pitch dark room, but I know I had to show up.
I wanted to write about meaning of happiness.
I wanted to write about living cheerfully in a mundane, routined life.
I wanted to write about potatoshrestha, and why someone who’s trying to avoid social media is posting just about every little thing that goes in, out and around him.
I wanted to write about why it is important to be mindfully aware about the passing time and the opportunity cost.
I wanted to write about why I will never be perfect but perhaps grind my teeth to be the better version of me than i was yesterday.
I wanted to write about how I deal with my own anxious self.
I wanted to write about why not every what has to have why.
I wanted to write about why it is important to learn to do nothing.
I wanted to write about why it is so important to show up even if it means doing nothing.
One of the hardest things to do is to separate your work and the effort that you put in from the results. An actor doesn’t control the movie around them. They don’t control what the other actors do. They don’t control the marketing budget. They don’t control the distribution. They could do the role of a lifetime, but the director or editor could mess it up in post-production. If your happiness with your job and your career is dependent on how the movie does at the box office or how the critics respond to your role, you have placed your happiness in the hands of other people, and that’s a recipe for profound disappointment. – Ryan Holiday, The Unmistakable Creative
As It Was (Ambient Cover) – Vancouver Sleep Clinic & Amelia Magdalena
I’m past 30 years of age and in all these many years, off of many things I’ve been grateful to learn; one of them is to understand (and on-time) the leverage of the right mindset.
“Mindset is an “established set of attitudes, esp. regarded as typical of a particular group’s social or cultural values; the outlook, philosophy, or values of a person; (now also more generally) frame of mind, attitude, disposition.”[1] A mindset may also arise from a person’s world view or philosophy of life.”
Wikipedia
Now, if you dig further, you’d want to learn some more about Fixed and Growth mindset by Carol Dweck where in her book “Mindset”, she writes, “success comes from having the right mindset rather than intelligence, talent or education“. Debatable? Yes. But I’m not here to talk you about all that. I am no expert, not even close.
I’m here to share how a simple shift of mindsets can give us a completely different perspective and chances are it might as well give us a different life in the long run.
For example:
Awwwwhhh…I have to go to work or I get to go to work.
I’m not hurt or I’m healing.
I’m not losing or I’m learning.
I’m not anxious or I’m thrilled.
I’m not rejected or I’m redirected.
You see it’s inevitable and It’s beyond our scope of control to stop negative things from happening to us and essentially to stop negative thoughts from swelling up our brain.
Plus, despite, … despite all that, fighting back negative mindset makes them even harder if not done the right way.
Which is why, my two cents here, “Have right stuff in to get the right stuff out.”
Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Cold Cold Night – Raghav Meattle
For the last two days I had been occupied in a small treasure hunt.
I was preparing the introductory slides for Sauravi, and as I was adding the pieces and connecting the dots, I had to navigate through tons and tons of old photographs.
Well, I tell you, deliberately digging the past has its perks.
I feel more grateful that things are better today than it was before.
I feel I had been through so much that I can cry and still feel the warmth of perpetual joy.
I feel all the uncertainties and all the terrible shits I’ve been through gave me a unique skill to camouflage my colors; gave me skills to bend my ways as situation unpacked.
Those photographs also had me thinking about that one time when I went through a jungle of monumental panic attacks and heart pacing anxiety.
I almost disappeared for a month from Musicpervs. Not that I have not admitted it before that I don’t promise anymore that I’d post a post every Thursday. Because only after coming to the US, my life completely switched gear from a known-comfortable mode to the strange-survival one. And, I had to juggle many priorities balls. I still do.
For instance, in the last one month or so; so so much have happened. So, so many things have occurred. Let’s scratch the surface here and there. Wrapping up on-campus courses. DE Midterm Exam. Job Interviews. Interview Preparations. Incomprehensible fatigue and mental vomits. Landing offers. Accepting one. Moving to San Francisco. Walking like crazy looking for apartment after apartment. Exploring this awesome city. Investing time and energy on Marketplace. Arranging and adding basic stuffs in the apartment and so so much more.
Most definitely, so much happened!
The most important thing for me personally, however —
is I enjoyed each moment of every moment that passed the time they were passing.
is I was nervous but nervous for the right mission.
is I was afraid but afraid of the right adventure.
Every freaking thing was worth it. Perhaps, someday I’ll write in length about this mixed-bag experience on this anew city.
Samyog and I have been doing too much of ‘El dorado’.
And Sauravi is annoyed for sure. While I can’t tell why I keep saying ‘El dorado’ this, ‘Eldorado’ that, I am sure Samyog doesn’t have answer for himself either.
For me, it’s just a word that brings joy for now. I don’t know its meaning. I’d rather care not to know. And, perhaps … perhaps I will stick with it for a while.
“All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken, A light from the shadows shall spring; Renewed shall be blade that was broken, The crownless again shall be king.”
I am hitting hundreds and thousands of things at the same time.
I am preparing.
I am lost, I keep losing track of times, I am constantly distracted trying to get undistracted.
I am preparing.
I am watching tutorials. I am writing emails. I am helping friends with their coding problems. I am taking notes of things i learned. I am talking to people who matter. I am hungry and I am eating cookies. I go back to the tutorial again. I take notes again. I receive one message from a friend, I go and reply. I go on a restroom break. I feel like I need a break.
I am preparing.
I am watching one tutorial and then I would not understand one thing in particular. I go around the internet and try to get a T-depth understanding (as they call it). But then I end up picking something else. I end up remembering something else I once needed to work on or should’ve already worked onto by now. I end up finishing nothing.
I am preparing.
I don’t have one priority. I have four.
I am preparing.
I am trying to make sense-of-it-all.
I am trying to unblur the blur.
I am trying to take babysteps to not get overwhelmed with everything happening around me. Long story short, I was used to particular lifestyle of grinding and grinding and grinding for the lectures, exams, assignments and projects and now there’s an open road out there and I’ve to use my gut instinct to figure out the right path on my own.
This might come as an excuse but I honestly was exhausted because of the exams and other in-between errands here and there.
I don’t know why my right leg is paining so much. Perhaps, like solution said it might be an aftermath of the swimming that we did on the weekend. I don’t know.
Well, I’m well aware of the philosophy of ‘Showing up’.
