Category: foggy mood

transition

I moved my furniture into a storage unit yesterday, and my apartment is empty. I am also trying to finish off all the wine I got from Trader Joe’s when I first moved in, so I’ve been getting blasted more often than I would like. It is a weird feeling drinking on my balcony in an empty apartment because it reminds me of transition. Every time I moved somewhere, the apartment would be empty, and I would reflect how I have changed since my last transition. In this case, the last time I moved was a little more than a year ago, from NY to SF.

So much has changed, and so much has not changed. I have on record videos and drawings I have made in the past year, so at least I have documentation of hobbies I picked up. I passed the CFA Level 2, so at least I didn’t waste my life on the 300 hours I put into studying. I am still hung up over the same people in my past. I still feel as lonely as I did when I first moved here. I’ve established a good reputation professionally, and I’m about to Hawaii for the winter. I will bounce around different surfing locations until they call me back to the office.

Even though I’ve made progress in my life for the past year, there aren’t that many moments in which I felt alive. In fact, the only time this past year I really felt alive was when I was doing my car tent tour around Iceland or when I was catching up with old friends in NY, both of which definitely not in SF. There were some moments I had fun in SF, like when I got matching tattoos together for a first date, or playing squash at the Bay Club at 2 PM on a Thursday, or my first park day at Mission Dolores. To be honest, these experiences are easily replaceable. Experiences that aren’t rare aren’t special. I don’t really reflect on these experiences. If they didn’t happen, then I don’t think much would change in my life.

The nature of relationships is asymmetric, and it will always mean more to one person than the other. There are some relationships that mean a lot to me, and I wonder if they mean as much as they did to me as they did to my counterpart. Knowing the nature of relationships, probably not. But that doesn’t stop me from still thinking about the people in my past. My friend recently gave me the advice, “You seem to still let people in your past to influence you even now. Maybe you shouldn’t.” I’ve been thinking whether I should listen to her.

I’ve realized recently that I’m a very sterile person. I would like to be warm, but I just don’t feel warm. I enjoy airports and workplace happy hours and international style architecture because they are also sterile, and they remind me of myself. Being warm is very… not me, no matter how much I wished things were otherwise. I feel like I am most attractive when people just look at me from a distance, and once I open my mouth, I just give off the vibes of a networking event. It is hard for me to be genuinely into someone, so the only thing I can offer is business casual chats. I’ve frequently received feedback that conversations with me are reminiscent of a job interview, which I would say is pretty accurate considering the importance and extent in which business casual is part of my personality.

I wonder in this regard if warmness is something you cultivate, or if it is something you are born with. Is this a personality trait I could acquire, like organization, or is this something you are born with, like work ethic? I wasn’t really raised in a warm household, and as an only child, there’s only so many ways I could cope before I run out of any emotion left to give.

I decided to release one of my songs on Spotify. It was a song I wrote and produced in 2021, when I was still living with my parents at the height of covid. I don’t know why it took me so long to release it. Part of the reason is that I didn’t want to engage in any outside business activities that I would have to disclose to my employer. I also didn’t take my own artistic pursuits that seriously either, and if I didn’t take myself seriously then I wouldn’t be hurt by others when my creations don’t live up to my expectations for them. But lately, after this summer, I decided to take my artistic pursuits more seriously. I want to accomplish something. I want to receive external validation, and this is how I get there.

I registered for the SF marathon recently. Today, I ran past a restaurant near the waterfront. There were a lot of people there, eating and talking. I realized that these things were unimportant to me. Besides this trip to NY two weeks ago, I haven’t really gotten dinner with that many people in my time in SF I don’t really enjoy dinner. I like conversations, so I usually ask people for drinks, which is funner and less commitment, in my head. For food, I prefer the same meal prep I eat every day: ground chicken and frozen veggies with lentils. I haven’t really met anyone I would like to get dinner with, so I don’t feel like I’m missing out.

I asked my friend in Iceland if she would be comfortable living in one of the small Icelandic towns we visited. She said no. I said that I would be okay in a small Icelandic town. What I actually want is routine. What I have is an existential pressure to do things. I would like to live in a small town and do the same thing every day. But, for some reason, I feel like I would wasting my youth and the opportunities I have been given to live in a HCOL city with so many resources, so I choose not to live in a small town and live a simple life. If I did live in a small town, I think I would be a lot happier, but I’ve never thought the point of life is to be happy. The purpose of life is to live a life with purpose, and usually purpose is found in HCOL cities with a lot of cultural and financial capital.

Feeling ugly is a part of growth. Probably why being pretty at a young age is a curse. I feel ugly right now, so I know I am growing. I was too content before anyways.

pod

I’m back in New York for an industry conference. I am staying at Pod 51 in Midtown East, and it is the first time I’ve ever stayed at a Pod hotel. What I didn’t realize is that it truly is just a pod. I don’t even have my own bathroom, and the bedroom has only enough space for a bed and nothing more. I never thought of myself as a person who cared too much about staying at nice hotels, but it is only by staying here do I realize how much of my tastes actually have changed in the past couple of years. I haven’t stayed in a hostel for a long time. Mostly because I feel like Airbnb is more intimate for similar price points, but also because I don’t like sharing things. 

There is a sterile quality to hotels and airports that I like. It feels void of intimacy. A parallel to how I feel. There isn’t disconnection from how I feel versus how the world is. 

I am reminded of some feelings I had in college. A strong feeling propelling me to write in college was the feeling of FOMO. I felt that I wasn’t living the life that I wanted to live. I had this vision for the person I wanted to be in college, and I realized quickly that I wasn’t becoming that person. I felt that people who grew up with the same opportunities as me were living life larger than I was, filled with more professional accomplishment and more intense experiences. I felt it difficult to empathize with myself and my weaknesses knowing the source of the weakness isn’t any environmental variable I faced but just because of my personal weakness. And, as we all know, depression is rage turned inwards. And I used that rage to write beautifully for a while.

When I moved to New York after covid, I was in a relatively good space in my life. I had friends, I was in a nice relationship, I had a nice job, and everything was okay. New York had a lot to offer, and I was in a position to take what it had to offer because I had the people in my life to do so. 

When I moved to SF, I forgot about all that for a second. SF isn’t exactly known for its rampant materialism or self-image obsession or its “never sleeping” quality. Most bars close at midnight. The ones that don’t close at 2 AM, and there is nothing open after that. People wear the same Patagonia sweaters both in their own home and out and about. I don’t get much FOMO when I am in SF. I am acutely aware of how sleepy it all seems and how comfortable it is to stay inside on a Saturday night. I feel like I wasn’t specifically lacking anything in my life when I was filling my weekends with studying. I was uncomfortable because I am never comfortable. But considering that, I felt pretty comfortable on a day-to-day basis.

This time back in New York, I feel like things are lacking. I feel like I am not living glamorously. I feel like I don’t have enough friends to do intense activities with. It is a feeling I haven’t felt in a long time. I feel like my awkwardness is returning. All these feelings and insecurities I thought I had left behind in college are coming back.

I am currently in the process of blocking out my weekend for my friends. There are a lot of friends I wish to catch up with, so my weekend is blocked away already. I don’t really feel close to people at the moment. It has always been a struggle for me, and it is especially hard when I am off my meds. My capability of feeling intimacy has been reduced, and I don’t have the same consistency as I did when I was in my relationship. When I see my friends, I’m sure it will be fine, but my feelings of loneliness or whatever come and go frequently when I am alone.

I am in a state of turbulence when I am alone, when idleness becomes chaos.

post-vacation blues

I stopped writing awhile back because I realized I kept repeating myself. I wanted to give myself a break and change how I thought about things before I started to write again. I only write a couple times a year now. Hard to believe a couple of year ago when I was studying English in college. Now I want to write down some of my thoughts again, but I think I will be repeating myself once again. It makes me realize that the real reason I stopped writing was because I didn’t have new insights worth writing about. Nothing worth saying.

It’s been exactly a year since I’ve moved to SF. A lot has happened since my last essay. I passed CFA Level II. I’m single now. I got OWD certified. I went to Iceland for three weeks this summer. I feel somewhat heartbroken, but not too much. I’ve been working remotely for the past couple of months. I’m about to go to Mexico for a couple months in the last stretch of remote work. It seems like a lot has changed, and maybe it has, but I don’t feel too different. I keep on telling others that I have changed, but I really feel like I haven’t. The core features of my life are still the same. I’m still lonely. I still yearn for connection. I still feel weak.

It’s foggy out right now, so at least that matches my mood. Although, it’s currently wildfire season, so some of that is just air pollution. I don’t know where my life goes from here. I’m not living the life I want to live. I need friends to live the life I want to live. All I am doing is keeping myself preoccupied until I am in love again. Nothing matters otherwise. All this travel, all these first dates, all of this art I make — it doesn’t really matter, does it? I feel like I am just keeping myself busy. Otherwise life is too boring. I would rather die than live boring life.

I’m thinking about getting back into music. I’ve been thinking about what type of glamour I would like to pursue, and I think it is the glamour of a popstar. I like music a lot, obviously, but I realize I am not as driven in creating songs as I am in other pursuits. I do care about glamour and communicating what I want to say. I’m just not sure that music is how I want to do it. Writing is also so much harder for me now than it was in the past. Words just don’t flow out of me like they use to. I feel like I’m expending considerable energy in writing. It doesn’t really bring me pleasure anymore. I’m just writing now because it’s been awhile since I wrote last, and I feel like a lot has happened, so I feel like I should write something down while these events are still fresh in my head.

In Iceland, I had a thought about how everyone was in their own journey. Sometimes, my journey and someone else’s journey intersects for a bit. Maybe we’re in the same city for a bit. Maybe we go on a trip together. But just because we travel the same road in our journey for a bit doesn’t mean that our journeys are permanently intertwined. More often than not, people grow apart and leave to continue their journeys separately.

I feel like, for so long, I’ve tried to hold onto those moments when I meet someone real and our journeys intersect for a bit. I try so hard to make those moments last forever. When they do pass, I try to hard afterwards to relive what I felt through my writing and music and art. I had a profound thought while tripping in the wilderness that I needed to let these moments go. I was laying down on the grass with my friend, and then my friend wanted to keep on walking on the trail, and I started crying because I didn’t want the moment to end. I started ranting on about how the jellyfish surrounding us earlier was actually just the bubble of the moment we were both experiencing, and how it was fading, marking the end of the moment.

After all this time, I still have not found a way to live my life to be happy. Sometimes I feel beautiful. Sometimes I don’t. I’ve made so many changes in my life. I’ve developed some generalized artistry and athleticism, making me significantly more interesting than I was in the past. I guess it has made me happier, but not that much happier. I am a cooler person than I was in college, but I also have less friends than I did in college. It’s harder to make friends after college. I wish some friend group would just adopt me, but that’s just something that only happens in movies. I want to be found by beautiful people.

all these night i lied

It’s almost December, meaning it’s almost Spotify Wrapped season. I have a good idea of which artists are going to be my most played this year. But, in particular, I know which song is going to be my most played song this year, and it’s “Moments” by MitiS.

This song has been with me on and off for the past couple of years. In many ways, it has defined what I have felt, how my relationships have formed, the person I became after I graduated college. It took me awhile to start listening to this song again. I started listening to this song about two years ago, and then too many memories got attached to this song, and then I couldn’t listen to it without tearing up for awhile. I’ve only been able to listen to it again in the past couple of months, and I remember why I liked it in the first place.

Specifically, this verse hits me hard.

I know I can get so emotional
I’m grateful that you are someone to hold
Through all of these nights when I lay awake
Don’t know how much more I can take
All that I know is when you’re next to me
I can finally breathe

I’ve been thinking of getting it tattooed on me. Maybe that’s not that bad of an idea. I’ve been thinking about what kind of words I want on my body, and I’m leaning away from poetry since I don’t actually consume that much poetry. Lyrics, on the other hand, hit deep. I could live with these lyrics on my body for the rest of my life because it is reminiscent of a summer that was truly transformative with impact on the rest of my life. I feel like so much of the person I have become has been the result of things that have happened so recently, and I think I have encountered my final trajectory in life.

“Though all these nights when I lay awake.” I keep on repeating that line to myself. It truly captures such an integral part of me life — staying awake at night. It is not something that i want or don’t want; it is something that just is. It is night now, and I am awake. My antidepressants aren’t helping me sleep either because they have stimulant-like properties. In this new city, I don’t know how much more I can take. In some seasons, I feel like I could conquer in the world. In other times, like now, I feel like I am so helpless to my own emotions.

I don’t think things are going to change much from here. I can’t imagine that they do. I have become so secure in my identity to the point where it is hard for me to b influenced by other people at this point. I want to be changed, but I don’t know if I could still be changed. I think back in my life to everyone who has changed me. Some people I have changed in turn, and others I have not. There’s this imbalance that is at the center of all relationships — the assymetry of effect.

dreams

I feel like the one of the reasons I don’t write on this blog anymore is that I feel a stronger need to process what I feel in a more private way where I don’t feel I need to abstract all of my feelings in order to develop some sense of catharsis. I share this blog with enough close friends where if I added any details to my writing they would immediately know what or who I was referring to. I find that there’s something distinctly more effective about writing “I had a dream about X yesterday, who I haven’t talked to since Y” versus “I had a dream about someone I don’t talk to anymore.”

Anyways, I woke up at 2:41 AM from a dream I had about someone I don’t talk to anymore. Immediately, I pulled out my phone and started playing “Don’t Wanna Live Forever” because that was the first song that came into mind to capture my feelings. It’s not that that song had any particular sentimental attachment to this person, but I really liked the idea of not wanting to live, especially if someone else isn’t there. Then I scribbled down some notes about how I dreamed about needing a tattoo from this person, and how she drew it from my shoulder to my hand, which I also needed her to remove because I didn’t want any design that would not be covered by my dress shirts. Super weird dream.

I’m sure you could find some meaning in this dream. I’m not really searching for any beyond how silly it is that my professional anxieties surrounding how my boss might discover my tattoos seem to also have space in my dreams. Usually, I would take some time afterward to figure out what I was feeling, but instead, I pulled out a printed earnings call transcript from Bloomberg and began highlighting all the commentary I thought was relevant to get back to a client request later. I guess that’s adult life.

A couple of nights later, at 3:43 AM, I woke to a different dream. I also talked to a different girl I haven’t spoken to in a while and congratulated her on something (intentionally redacted, but very important within the dream). I wasn’t sure of the exact contents of our conversation, but I just remember bumping into her in a bathroom and chatting with her about a series of topics (not redacted, just forgot). We were able to laugh some stuff off about our past in a way I’m not too convinced we could do in real life. Not because anything traumatic happened, just because our intense connection just exists in the past now.

I used to hate having dreams like these because it just highlights how much my life has changed since I’ve been intimate with these people, but lately, I’ve started to appreciate these dreams for what they really are: an honest reflection of my feelings of loss.

In some ways, I find that dreams can be tremendously cathartic spaces, where I am able to rehash out some emotions I wasn’t sure I was feeling in an environment that is entirely authentic with how I continue to be affected by people in my past. In the conscious world, I have become more-or-less better at rejecting how I feel in the spirit of productivity. But the emotions that I feel after the dream — the bittersweet regret and longing — highlight how rare certain relationships were in my life, especially in retrospect, and how moving forward in my life means that losing another intimate side of myself I had with someone.

Different periods of my life have different coping mechanisms. During it was college, it was mostly writing because it’s the most accessible medium of creation at any given moment of time. I feel like I’ve gotten significantly less creative now after graduating college. Now that I have a Bloomberg Terminal, I guess my new favorite coping mechanism is reading 10-K’s and earnings call transcripts.

I don’t really like this phase in my life. It’s fine. I’m trying really hard to make it fine. I really want to like this phase in my life, but there’s something still lacking about it. I’m not sure if I feel as beautiful as I did before. I need a little more time to hash out some things before I reach a time in my life where I have to accept my life for what it is.

tuesday night

I’m starting to think I made the wrong decision in my life. I moved from New York, where I had a lot of friends, to San Francisco, where I had no friends. Why did I do it? New job. More money. Things that seem totally reasonable at the time until I am confronted with the reality of living in a city where I don’t know anybody. It isn’t a stretch to say that I have no friends in SF. Part of it was conscious choice. Part of it was just how things panned out. But here I am sitting on my bed after my first day of work, after I made a short trip to check out a gym, after I ate Chipotle after my workout, alone.

It is 8:39 PM and I am sitting alone in my studio apartment and bored. I am typing this up on Word instead of WordPress, which I usually use, because I haven’t committed to an ISP yet, and I don’t have internet. I have not put together my bedframe yet because I don’t own a screwdriver. My desk is unassembled for the same reason. I am waiting for my Amazon package containing a screwdriver to arrive in a day or so. My clothes are scattered across the floor because I don’t have any organizing bins. I’m unsure which of my clothes are clean clothes and which are worn. I’m playing My Chemical Romance because I feel alone and because I just got back from Firefly two days ago, where they headlined on Friday.

There isn’t any “depth” to this feeling like it had been in other times in my life. I’m not thinking about the cyclicality of relationships or the inevitability of loneliness or whatever else I was thinking in my junior year of college. All I have is the sensation of loneliness. I am feeling lonely without all the intellectual theorizing that have plagued my previous experiences. It is just me and my feeling. I don’t really feel the need to intellectualize my feelings. It is just a feeling, and that’s it all will be.

I notice myself relying more on imagery instead of theory now. I exist more in the world around me than I do in my own head. It keeps me grounded to my surroundings. It keeps me in touch with the earth when I feel like I am floating away. But I still feel as if I am floating. My feelings feel distant to me. It is so much effort to just try to feel what I am feeling. Why must I try so hard to stay attached to something that is a literal part of my extended being?

I have the sniffles. I am not crying. I am just sick.