Attached For Your Perusal

The best part of travelling alone is that I get my thoughts alone to myself. I am free to think, to exist on my own terms. But of course, that comes with the risk of my thoughts running away from me and flowing away into crevices I don’t want it going into. There are thoughts that have become so ingrained inside of me. They have become “the usual” and, I was telling this to a friend today, it has become that one thing on the menu you will order regardless of what you are going to be eating that day. There is a difference you start to draw between the different thoughts, familiarity belies seeming comfort and acceptance but is actually all the more sinister. But again, familiarity is what we all stick to, so there comes an acceptance of the sinister (?), I don’t know, I probably am making as much sense as the next lunatic on the street.

I travelled today on the train, alone, for the first time on the train and it was a weirdly liberating feeling. Well, it was also accompanied by an almost crippling sense of loneliness because there was no one to talk to, not on the phone or in real life. So I read a book and well, I also suffer from mild motion sickness so I felt nauseous for a while after I was done with my book. But I didn’t regret the book, it was probably one of the best I have read in recent times. It was simultaneously heartbreaking and it is the story that I am better off knowing, the story I didn’t know I needed but once I read it, I cannot get over it. I have no doubt that it will feature in some form in my dreams today (if I dream, that is). I have been having quite a few dreams recently, sometimes I wish they were true because they are beautiful and I wish my real life were that way. But again, familiarity, right? My dreams, the ones I like are ones that have an element of familiarity, a reliability that is probably all the more sinister because real life does not provide me with that anyway. Real life is not as stable as I would like, and it is probably time I made my peace with it.

There is always the search for stability, I search for it everywhere. I search for a place to call “home” and right now, it seems like nothing shall fit the bill. I think I find it in a place but turns out I am not as stable as I would like to be over there. I am a traveller, but I don’t want to be, I want to stay somewhere (again, random fun star ‘fact’: Apparently Taureans hate change and always search for that solid ground, owing to their ‘earthly’ nature). I probably am never going to find that stability anywhere or with anyone, no matter how desperately I want to. And that devastates me because I realise that I relate so much to a character in that novel and I can almost envision my own raging emotions for the character take over, but this time for myself.

There are times when I wonder if maybe I am searching for stability only because I am told by everything around me that I need to have that thing in my life. That place, that person, that thing that keeps me stable and alright and ensures that I don’t go spiralling out of control like a kit whose tail has just been cut. Or if there’s something inane in me that is looking for all of these things. And regardless of the cause for the search, the search is still legitimate and it makes me wonder if maybe, in my misguided haste, I am looking for it in the wrong places. These are all just questions and I am an overthinker by profession, sometimes and heartbreak is real and it is painful and I would prefer to not have it. The thing is, attachment is scary, it is tricky, it is familiar but sinister, it is stable unstability. It is the thing on the menu I know shall happen, regardless of what other thing happens. And unless I remove it from the menu altogether, or change my restaurant, it is going to continue to happen. And well, it is probably not a bad thing, but it is still scary in its familiar unfamiliarity (there, I have officially reached levels that I would have made fun of a year back, almost). Talking in abstractions is actually quite a fun exercise, I should do it more often. What do you think?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Defeat, Pain, and Progress

I am extremely exhausted today, I managed to fall asleep without writing a post, finally waking up just now, at 2:20am, to write this. My brain is still half-asleep and my hands are weirdly typing around, it feels quite stupid to be writing this. But then, that has always been the deal with all my posts on days I was completely exhausted. Part of the experience is the weirdness I feel in doing this, the times when I feel like I cannot feel the tip of my fingers and every word comes out with an error that my laptop’s autocorrect finally corrects for me. Sometimes, I feel extremely demotivated by the comments of others, when they point out the pointlessness of my whole blog. People don’t really understand why this blog matters to me, why I put myself through a lot sometimes, just to write these posts.

I have stayed awake until stupid hours, I have fallen asleep and woken myself up at ungodly hours, prioritised this sometimes at the cost of doing my readings, I have written this blog through times of intense writers’ block that ruined my mental health, I have put myself through a lot to boast now of having done these many posts. But people don’t get it, they tried but they didn’t get it. There had been times when my blog had become somewhat of a joke, something to tease me about. Sometimes, I don’t really get it too, why I am writing this blog, what made me hold on so desperately to it, made me write every day for nearly 8 months. It is inexplicable, it is beautiful, it is painful, but it is still an experience very uniquely mine.

That is actually my definition for my whole life. Life inevitably ends up having heartbreak, having pain, having spellbinding beauty and grace, having inexplicable joy. Despite its many contradicting tendencies, everyone’s life is an experience, unique to their predicament, unique to them. It follows then, that it is useless to compare yourself with someone else, no matter how tempting that can be. This is with respect to everything, but especially with progress, because it is with respect to progress only that most comparisons take place. You perceive yourself as having done the same amount of work as someone else, with half the results, or (quite less frequently) twice the results. It is useless, petty even, this exercise. I want to learn to play an instrument, I am learning the keyboard by myself and I realised today that I had made some insane progress, more than what ‘others’ typically have. While that was extremely flattering for my ego, it was also harmful, to compare. There is a difference between being confident and being arrogantly confident, arrogance makes you someone who cannot accept it when things don’t go your way. And the last thing I want to be is arrogant (even though I am guilty of being arrogant many times).

Arrogance makes it difficult for you to learn anything at all. I want to learn to play the flute and I read that learning to play the flute was difficult, especially flutes like the Carnatic flute. That immediately threw me into doubt, I didn’t know if taking the course this semester was a good idea. The thing is, there is also a singing co-curricular that I am interested in, Carnatic vocals, and that is what is causing my confusion at the moment. On one hand, the opportunity to learn an instrument, one I have always wanted to learn, starting from absolute zero level, an instrument that is said to be difficult to learn to play. On the other hand, I have the opportunity to continue with a course I have already done before, starting from a comfortable level of singing, one I have always wanted to learn but can learn in other ways as of now, that I didn’t really find difficult. In the spirit of university, I am going to go with the Carnatic flute, and I am hoping I won’t regret my decision.

In fact, that is part of my arrogant self speaking, it cannot bear the thought of being horrible at something because it has drawn a comfortable dream in its head, of being at least somewhat good at the instrument. It perceives that it is good at singing, hence it has it as a plan B, if it fails miserably at learning the flute. But I hope I won’t leave the course even if I embarrass myself beyond repair in the first class, because it is important sometimes to accept crushing and humiliating defeat, for it helps you improve and to progress. In fact, that is something I have taken into mind now, especially after a few things that have happened, that are happening. With respect to my blog, despite these horrible timings, I am not ready to accept my defeat yet. In a way, I have accepted defeat by admitting to my flaws in keeping up with this blog, the problems I faced and continue to face. But it is not time to give up yet, I shall fight and push and progress because I have realised that there is no other way I know to live my uniquely defined life. That is adequate, I suppose?

And that’s my memory for the day.