May 30, 2020Comments are off for this post.

feeling like “less”

Quarantine is tough. My baseline, during what I considered “normal” life just two months ago, was having a routine: work, school, and gym. I craved organization and careful planning; my day-to-day schedule grounded me. My life wasn’t characterized by much more on a day-to-day basis other than the places I needed to be and the people I needed to see. I was constantly working towards the future - the next grade, the next work assignment, the next career move, the next appointment in my calendar.

It wasn’t until shelter-in-place that I started to consider why I devoted so much energy into my future. With my schedule stripped and my routine gone, I questioned my motivations. What was I even working towards when the future seemed uncertain? What or where did I turn in a time of stress? I wasn’t sure. The answers to those questions were the baseline of my passions and my interests, and my ambitions, but somehow I lost sight of what that meant.

Writing was important to me. I found comfort in writing my thoughts down and sharing my ideas - whether it be in a journal or on my blog - but I lost interest in the midst of my daily grind. So when quarantine started, I turned to other writers, picking up Less by Andrew Sean Greer. I bought it on a whim two years earlier, having gone through half the book in a few sittings but nonetheless neglecting to finish it.

The main character was a nearly fifty-year-old man named Arthur Less, who spent the majority of the book running from a fear of confronting his past. He dedicated his life and identity to his career as a novelist but felt inadequate and unvalidated. His ex-lover was getting married, and he decided to travel the world and avoid the wedding. In the span of 250-or-so pages, Greer builds a story based around the passing of time, the vulnerability of the human heart, and the experiences of an American abroad.

To my own surprise, I identified with some of Arthur’s struggles. He questioned his role as a writer, having built his identity around it. When Less was young, he felt inspired by the more experienced, high-achieving novelists around him. He was doe-eyed. But as he grew older, he became jaded, living in the shadow of other people, caused both by his own self-doubt and as a result of rejection from others. Writing itself was no longer something that brought him happiness.

I realized, when reading this book, that I owned a similar fear. I became so forward-thinking that I lost sight of where my ambitions were rooted: my passion for writing. When I entered the latter half of college, I reached a point where my personal interests became the basis of my professional curiosities. I was challenged and constantly forced to find new ways to become a better writer, and I looked towards those in the industry for advice. But I had lost my way. My identity had shifted from my love of writing to the pressure of finding a job, and it led to feelings of inadequacy. It took quarantine to slow me down, hold me back, and remind me why I was driven in the direction I was heading pre-quarantine.

I am a writer, and now in quarantine have returned to it for myself - not for anyone or anything else. It’s my passion, my interest, and my solace during a time of uncertainty and anxiety and stress. And once quarantine is over, it will continue to center my professional ambitions.

June 20, 2019Comments are off for this post.

Nostalgia: the end of another year

I spend a lot of time thinking.

It's a way to check in with myself, my thoughts, my feelings. It wasn't until I came home, breaking out of my college bubble, that I had people who told me that I always seem to be in a state of stress. Whether it be tied to academics, social life, work, or finding a balance between them all, I become easily overwhelmed.

Being someone who's an overthinker naturally leads to a lot of self-reflection whenever the end of another year comes around. It’s another milestone, another step, towards the end of my college career and a reminder that I'm darting towards some sort of unsure future for myself.

Nostalgia is defined as a wistful longing for some sort of past memory or moment associated with a sense of happiness. It can be tied to really anything in the past whether that be a person, a place, or a thing. But the key point is that it's usually unattainable or irrevocable — because it's in the past.

Sometimes it's harmful when you break out of the nostalgia and get caught up in the moments, things, or people that used to be tied to happiness. Now, perhaps, those things evoke feelings of regret or sadness at the memory of their loss. It's easy to get tangled in a web of 'what-ifs' with the past and conjure up all sorts of scenarios out of touch with what is already a reality.

I spend a lot of time turning my head into the past out of a fear of that uncertain future I mentioned earlier. And I don't think this mindset, this pattern, is all that uncommon. A lot of people struggle with it to some degree - young or old, wise or not.

The way you can turn this into a beneficial reflection is by tweaking how you frame the past. It's good to look back on yourself and your decisions and your experiences because it allows you to learn and grow — from them and within yourself.

But that only comes as a result of knowing you're growing up and out of the past, instead of letting it hold you back and lingering on what you can't change. Instead, in my experience, it helps to use a lens of appreciation for those moments and what they may have given you at that time.

Maybe I'm a bit dramatic. But if you can identify these feelings within yourself, it makes you that much more of a person for being able to build a sense of self-awareness and trying to change how you frame your mindset in regard to the past, and subsequently the present. You don't want to miss out on what's right in front of you, and that’s something I have to remind myself every now and then.