There is something about the slow and calm days that makes me feel emotions from my adolescent years. I think sitting idle or ‘peaceful chilling’ is not the ideal form of relaxation for someone who has grown up with self-imposed deadlines constantly looming over their head. I think I chill best when I know something important needs to be done or delivered in that moment. Procrastination may be a bad habit in general, but for people who function best with a fast paced heart and the adrenaline kick derived from do-or-die situations, I think procrastination and the stressful relaxation attached to that is the ideal form of living.
I’ve lived a very fast, unpredictable, deadline-oriented & travel-heavy life for the last three months. With overnight journeys & travel fatigue from being in and out of Mysore, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai & Pune, all the while worrying about budget, pending debts, stuck payments, academic deadlines & professional commitments, I think I got so used to the grind that now when I finally feel that I have control over my time and money, I feel stressed about the fact that I have not much to stress about anymore!
I am worried about things I don’t need to worry about immediately. For instance, these days, I worry about the death of certain important people with whom I share strong love-hate relationships, I worry about hurting angelic figures who deserve nothing but my loyalty and love, I worry that I’m having too much fun and that I might have to pay the price (with interest) for these fun times!
People (by looking at my social media) often believe that I have a very colorful life when in reality I endure about the same amount of hardships in my everyday life that they do. I choose to approach my problems as passing stones, and I choose to disassociate my brain from my worries in the moments when I am supposed to have ‘fun,’ and this isn’t something I was born with. I had to cultivate the art of blocking segments of the mind when there’s a need so that I am able to do justice to the various hats I wear in a day. Perhaps that comes out as a ‘vibrant’ or ‘privileged’ way of living to some, and while their opinion is theirs to hold, when certain things reach my ears, I do get into the overthinking mode and write posts like this. That being said, if only social media could show more than just our life highlights, or people had more conscious realisation of how thoughtfully picked (although seemingly thoughtless) our online personas are!
Anyway, I had a slow day today, and not one where I had company. I have been alone in a room for a major chunk of the day, something I haven’t done in the last three months. I have been feeling very unhappy about this unaccompanied slow day and have had a sullen mood all day because of this but as I began writing this, I realised that perhaps it’s because of the experience I had of living alone, confined to a room while I was at Guwahati. My time at Guwahati has convinced me that I am not fond of my company, and that my thoughts can get really dark when away from fellow humans. As much as I detest being around people all the time, turns out, being around people for most of my waking hours is what keeps me sane. I value my lonesome times only when I know there’s going to be some socialising before and after. I don’t really know where I am going with this post. There’s so much in my head, but at the same time, all this stuff can be passed off as nothing. Because literally, there’s nothing going on!
Apart from having F.R.I.E.N.D.S play in the background, I watched, rather, I re-watched two movies today, and one of them is a 2011 Bollywood romance starring Saba Azad. Rewatching the movie today made me realise that I have watched it at least 5-6 times before (when I was still in high school and OTT platforms and unlimited data hadn’t made an entry, times when I shared a computer with my brother). I saw the movie this evening and realised that subconsciously, my college personality’s dressing was deeply inspired by the fashion choices of the protagonist. I still love her styling and perhaps that’s why I still find myself attracted to the same clothes, although I have made conscious changes to what I wear now.
Now it’s almost bed time again. I’ve been sleeping a lot these past 2 days…finally I have the luxury of time to do that! My high school self slept for 12-14 hours everyday and these days I function with an average of 5 hours of sleep each night. Adulting brings in all kinds of changes and I guess slow and isolated days like today are meant for jumping to and fro between past, present, trauma, nostalgia and all things in between!
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