Dear Lana,
I didn’t do much in these past two weeks. Mostly because I had covid, which knocked me out for a week and a half, but also because my social calendar has been empty. I returned from New York two weeks ago, and that was a fun experience. I am leaving SF next week after I meet up with the new IR at one of my covered companies. I technically have enough time to catch up with some of my friends in SF, but I really don’t have a desire to. I’m not really that close with the friends I made in SF, and because I am not close with the people I have met here in SF, I don’t really have a burning desire to say goodbye to them.
I feel lonely, which is nothing new, but I often wonder how unique my feelings are. The reason I feel lonely isn’t because I don’t have exposure to people or that I have severe social anxiety. I just feel different from other people, and there are very few people with whom I feel not different. I wish I could fit in more places, but I’m not sure if it is something that is a trait you could just acquire. What I have done is to make myself more interesting and attractive through my artistic and athletic pursuits . It does make things better — I feel more beautiful now than I did before — but it doesn’t do much to make me feel belonging.
At least when I travel I don’t need to feel belonging. I am a tourist when I travel, and by definition of being a tourist, I am not at home. Because I am not at home, I don’t feel pressure to feel like I am at home. When I travel, I don’t have the schism of being at home and feeling at home that causes me so much unhappiness.
I like traveling with people. It’s like a portable home. When I am around people I like, I feel at home. When I am traveling alone, I am with my own thoughts a lot, and I don’t like being in the company of my own thoughts. I want to come home, but there isn’t a home to come home to. I feel replaceable wherever I go. Even in cities where I do have friends, I still feel replaceable or otherwise unimportant. There isn’t anywhere I could go where I would be content. There isn’t anywhere I could stay where I would feel like I belong.
I want to build something in SF, something that would make me feel bad for leaving. I’ve built a lot internally, but I could take my internal builds wherever I go. When I leave for my MBA in 2 years, I want something that beckons me to return, as opposed to pushing me towards another HCOL city. It’s been 1/3 of my pledged time in SF, and so far I haven’t found anything that is pulling me back. Knowing myself, I will probably find my way to another city, maybe in another country. Similar to the hedonistic treadmill, there’s also an exoticism treadmill, where I need to constantly do things that are more exotic to get the same kick. If the west coast isn’t enough, I would probably need to move further west to Asia or Africa.
shades of gwei 