whatever i've been up to
been getting a lot of lemons from life lately
this week’s Thought (singular)
what lovely weather we’ve been having (speaking exclusively to bangalore-dwellers)
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 unavoidable circumstances don’t force them to change their set-in-stone plans. thank you for joining us. may something go predictably for ONCE.
a very warm welcome to old readers as well. may good sense continue to prevail.
Before We Begin
it’s time for thodi together #3!
home - what spaces, apart from where you live, feel like home to you? it could be a friend’s place that you’ve been to a bunch of times, or a road you’ve travelled so often you would know if a stone is out of place.
as always, let me know your answer in the comments, by email, over text, whichever social media site we might be connected on, a hand-written letter if you have my address, etcetera etcetera. i’ll put it all together, and we’ll have a lovely community edition of thodi soon!
find tt #1, on warmth, here -
and tt #2, on long distance friendships, here -
hi
it’s been an odd few weeks. here’s what i’ve been up to.
i made a bunch of plans for the next two months that fell through. it felt like the rug had been pulled from beneath my feet, and also the rug was actually a magic flying carpet, and then i was free falling. it made me reckon with the part of myself that resents not being able to control my time and my activities, that’s uncomfortable with unpredictability, and it’s been a task staying steady in the middle of the buffeting wind.
found on tumblr i’ve been sleeping for 10 hours nearly every night ever since i came home, and it’s a luxury i had forgotten about. amazing things happen when you realise that you can just go to bed at 9:30 pm. i’m having the time of my life.
i’m trying to get used to things being slower, to becoming okay with doing things slower. sometimes, i get anxious about how i’m not spending enough time reading my current book (martyr! by kaveh akbar), or about how my list of links to read seems to be getting too large for me to keep up (dating back to articles from november). and then i remind myself that i can’t make my hobbies projects or things to achieve. that if i have to continue to find joy in them, i have to remove the deadlines and ‘optimisation’ that my brain now attaches to everything.
@titsay on twitter i’ve been in three different cities in the last two weeks, and my mind is playing catch-up with my body. slowly, i’m sure they’ll both be back in sync, but for now, i’m still on guard that something unexpected might happen and all my plans will fall through once more.
nausea, jean-paul sartre i miss who i was last year this time. i miss many versions of myself, and all the ways in which those versions enjoyed herself, built a life for herself. i’m trying to make this version of me something worth missing.
@em-iliart on tumblr i’m thinking about the feeling of home, and about how i get so attached to physical spaces. i came back to the city i’ve lived in and loved my whole life, and only felt like i had truly returned after visiting a spot that i used to regularly visit. it made me think about the effort and time it takes for a house to start feeling like a home, something i’ve written about at length here. i realised that this house doesn’t give me that feeling yet because there isn’t enough of me in it. i haven’t taken enough care and effort to get to know the light and fan switches, i haven’t been able to figure out how long the geyser takes, my clothes haven’t been arranged and rearranged a hundred times in my cupboard, i haven’t figured out the right volume for the music in my room. soon, i will do all of these things. making a house a home is a beautiful, painstaking process, especially if the previous house-that-was-a-home saw your growth from ages 9 to 23 and stays so incredibly fond in your memory. this one will see a different version of jahnavi, but a jahnavi nonetheless.
i’m trying to stop the incessant scheduling that got me through the last few months, back in college. it’s so tempting to to-do-ify everyday, but i know that that’s not how i operate when i’m not under a lot of pressure. i know that i like taking my time with things, i like when a day opens itself to me, i like having a loose guide with a lot of wiggle room. i’m trying to return to myself.
i’ve been wondering if this new, unpredictable thodi schedule is a part of the natural order of things, or if it’s something to be concerned about. two years ago, back when thodi was younger, i used to believe that the worst thing that could happen is not sticking to the weekly posting schedule. i don’t think i believe that anymore. it’s taken me some time to get to this point, but i think if i don’t have something worth saying, i don’t want to force myself to publish an edition. this newsletter has, first and foremost, been an outlet for me to process my early twenties and create a community of people who relate/appreciate these years. i hope i’ve been halfway successful.
until next time
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this week’s Song
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you next time <3