SMFSLPP pt.2
(so many feelings, such less processing power) (this is a real thing) (pt.2)
this week’s Thought (singular)
why are blocked noses Like That
a very warm welcome to all new readers. i love new readers so much that whenever i get an email about a new reader, i manifest that they catch sight of an absolute stunning horizon soon. thank you for joining us. may you gape in awe at the wide expanse of the world and the line beyond which it distends.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
hi
i am sure you would like an explanation regarding my sudden and unexplained absence from your inbox last week, to which i say – my bad. there’s a picture of a cat somewhere below to make up for it.
what follows is something that’s been languishing in my drafts for roughly two weeks. i’ve spruced it up a bit, but it’s still got some elements that feel a bit incomplete. it’s a deliberate act to release it as is into the wild. onward!
a few months ago, i published this edition of thodi, where i had verbosely and melodramatically and metaphorically asked some Big questions.
i find that i have many more such queries now, so here are some bonus Big questions.
if you recognise that you’ve been running on empty for weeks, and that you’re continuing to run on empty even as we speak, what is keeping you upright? is it momentum? is it inertia? is it a deep-seated fear that everything you’ve flung on the wayside will catch up with you if you slow down? why is it easier to focus on the fact that you’re running on empty, than on the fact that you’re still running at all? do you get more tired by thinking about how tired you are or about how you’re persevering despite the tiredness? does it matter?
what is more difficult when you’re exhausted - holding on, or letting go? what does letting go even look like, when holding on is all you know? how do you go to bed not dreading the continued holding on that you’ll have to do the next day and not ruing the halfway accomplished letting go that you’ve done that day? does it matter?
what do you do when everything feels very difficult, and you feel very small in the face of this difficulty? how do you make the difficulty smaller than you? where can you store your tiredness and burnout when you just want to complete your tasks without feeling like they’re difficult and large? where can you store your feelings when you just want to deal with your tiredness and burnout as treatable things and not as more large and difficult tasks? does it matter?
when does it get easier to keep pushing? when will you have applied enough pressure for something to finally give? can you ever stop pushing? is there a version of adulthood where it is as simple as giving up the job as an impossible thing, wiping the sweat off your forehead, and sitting with your back against the wall that won’t budge? when can you sit with your back against the wall? is it really an impossible job, or are you just incompetent? shouldn’t whoever put up the wall give a thought to your competency as well? when can you sit with your back against the wall? does it matter?
is there a question more dangerous than ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’? what’s the worst that can happen? when does that question begin to become an excuse for laziness? why can’t you drop the everything-is-a-task-that-must-be-completed-perfectly rope now, instead of continuing to struggle to keep its heft aloft, just to see how much more it can unwind around every corner? why do you feel like the rope is superglued to your palms, and like the hemp has pierced several tiny holes in your skin, and that separating and dislodging all of it will be more cruel than your arms persistently burning from the weight? who put the rope in your hands, and why are you so reluctant to return it to them? does it matter?
how do you de-centre yourself? how do you stop feeling like you’re the sun in the middle of swirling feelings-universe? why does dread orbit so close, always about to dive into your core, so threatening in its potency and lightning-quick arrivals? why does hope and joy and laughter struggle so hard to pierce through the darkness, seemingly always another light year away? how do you stop thinking in metaphors to explain the overgrown gloom and future foreboding that too-tiredness shoves your attention towards? does it matter?
where is the lip of the tea cup that this storm is in? how do you find it, so you can crawl out and survey this uncertainty with a cool detachment, rather than from inside the hurricane that seems to have a slyly nomadic eye? what do the footholds on the edges look like, and from where could you possibly be acquiring the audacious, blooming, wretched hope that they exist? are there others in here? is anybody else in here? do any of you know how to get out? can we link hands so we don’t lose each other? that matters, i think.
ps: happy february! only a few more years before i have to stop saying ‘being in your early twenties is like’ in a non-fraudulent manner!
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A Picture!
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this week’s Song
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thank you for reading, and see you next week <3