15. Are you your routine?

And how we all hold the possibility for change

Feb 24, 2024

Hi, this is you are here, a newsletter that is constantly rethinking the labels it wants to identify itself with. If you’re new here, check out the about section or read previous issues here. Welcome (back)!

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about routines and change in our lives, especially as we get older. The structure of a routine is an easy thing to define oneself by. Some people like to travel, so their lives float around the holidays. Some people like to do theatre, or tango, or gin rummy, so their lives are defined by week after week of the social relationships they build around that. Some people take their morning tea or coffee prepared in the same way, in the same mug, for years.

As somebody who once moved five times in the span of two years, most of my life has been characterised both by peripateticness and the sort of self-regulating routines I have been able to create within that. I find myself tending to hug to a loose structure of sorts as a response to changes in my environment - when everything around you is changing, all you have as a constant are the people you hold close, the activities you lean towards, and yourself. For me, that has settled into mornings that start with tea and some sort of movement or writing, and a regular weeknight rotation of activities (quiz, comedy, art, food/movies) that allows me to systematically tug at the many threads floating around in my head.

I believe that routines can be helpful in so many ways. Among others:

To transition into activities or places (e.g. starting the work day by getting a glass of water or coffee and opening up your computer; travelling somewhere and unpacking your bags immediately so you can feel more at home),
As a reset for us to anticipatorily recharge our mental and physical batteries so we can show up as our full selves in some areas of our lives (e.g. an after-work snack or cuddle with a pet when you arrive home; choosing to walk or listen to a particular podcast on the way somewhere),
To create structure or consistency, which can be a form of comfort in a world where not everything can be taken for granted (e.g. doing the laundry on Tuesday evenings; having pizza and a movie on Sundays),
To help cultivate and nurture habits, social relationships or aspects of our identity (e.g. working out in the mornings; doing pub trivia every Monday with the same group of friends; travelling to Greece every summer).

I also find that routines, like us, sort of gradually change as time goes on. This is the nature of things. Rivers slowly erode banks to change their course, mountains get taller and shorter, the sun changes its location throughout the year, we sharpen and soften and change our minds. Life is repeatedly finding ways back to ourselves and our own shapeshifting equilibrium, even as how we do that may vary.

I was once told about a study that measured where people walk every day and that it found that there was very little change in how much people deviated from the same path each day, down to the centimetre. We all do that in some ways - in choosing the same breakfast or way to brew a cup of tea, in having the same settling in and wind up routines, in choosing the same playlists, the same gym routine, the same pool, the same cosy group of friends or vacation houses or meal rotations, year after year after year. Predictability, but cosy.

And cosiness is great until it starts to feel ever-so-slightly boring, or like quicksand you are too deeply mired in to ever consider the possibility of change. We are Ships of Theseus composed of our tastes and preferences and how much we choose to define ourselves by the things we do. In declarations like “I take my coffee black”, “I don’t dance”, and “I always go to x restaurant on Thursdays”, who is the ‘I’ really, and does that identity come from knowing a preference or from the comfort of tying that identity to an arbitrary fact?

The question that follows for me is: how can we practise non-attachment to our routines? How can we tune into them when they enable us to thrive, and let go of or challenge them when they start to feel like they are over-defining our perceptions of ourselves? When you hear yourself linking your ideation of yourself to something you routinely do, why don’t you try another way?

I remember reading about another behavioral science study* that studied people forced to take alternate routes to work because their regular commutes had been blocked by construction. It found that even six months after the change, a large number of people stuck with the new route, even stating they preferred it to the first. The results can either be interpreted to show just how tied we are to our routines, even new forced ones, or that we have the capacity for change, even finding joy in it.

When routines are intentional, they can become rituals. When they are not, they can feel like ruts. Treading the fine line between rituals and ruts requires a subtle reshifting of how and when we define them as we settle into the many homes we make in our lives.

What are some routines, rituals and ruts you find yourself leaning into?

Just reply to this email or post a comment to share.

Links!

On routines and ruts: this podcast on by Madeleine Dore
On change: this post on what’s going on Substack as this newsletter continues to search for a home
On how change can happen: this video of a talk/panel I did at the International School of Geneva about the future of work and the role of young people in it

That’s all for now, folks. If you liked this email, or it made you think of someone, pass it forward!

Share you are here

* The name of this study and the other one is fuzzy, as I’m sure are the details, despite intensive searching, so if you have more info on them, send me a fact check!

#14. Curation vs Algorithms

On making the internet 'fun' again

Nanya Sudhir

Jan 21, 2024

Hello, and welcome (back)! At some point, you signed up for this newsletter, which is currently coming to you from my cosy kitchen in Geneva, where at the time of writing, I look like this.

I was listening to Ezra Klein* recently on how the internet is changing as a result of our digital lives being curated by algorithms rather than by people, and it brought up a shift I’ve been noticing in how we use the internet over the past decade or so. This shift can be characterised by three small shifts in my personal digital cosmos circa 2013 - (i) Facebook and Instagram's algorithms started changing to reflect posts that were receiving more reactions first, instead of in chronological order; (ii) a music platform called Spotify started to surge in popularity because it recommended more of the same music you liked; and (iii) the StumbleUpon extension, a crowd-fed catalogue of random sites across the internet, was retired.

Those changes still bring up a little twinge of nostalgia for the internet as I had discovered it, a place where you could get lost and find things in its corners wholly outside your daily universe. The internet of 8tracks and Tumblr and becoming friends with other bloggers. This was not internet Phase 1, or even perhaps internet Phase 2, but elder-ish millennials will recognise this as the internet of their teenage years, where you could, in large part, curate your digital existence under the guise of an internet avatar. Before machine learning and algorithms and generative AI actively and perhaps unsolicitedly started to filter and shape the majority of our experiences on the internet.

Kyle Chayka reaches similar conclusions in his article on how the internet is not fun anymore:

"Remember having fun online? It meant stumbling onto a Web site you’d never imagined existed, receiving a meme you hadn’t already seen regurgitated a dozen times, and maybe even playing a little video game in your browser. These experiences don’t seem as readily available now as they were a decade ago. In large part, this is because a handful of giant social networks have taken over the open space of the Internet, centralizing and homogenizing our experiences through their own opaque and shifting content-sorting systems. When those platforms decay, as Twitter has under Elon Musk, there is no other comparable platform in the ecosystem to replace them."

With the advent of Google defining our search results, of Spotify pigeonholing listeners into the same kinds of music over and over again, even making a point to play music you have already heard on your Discover Weekly, of the viralisation of videos (Youtube), trends (TikTok), thought pieces (X/NYT/other US-centric newspapers), newsletters (Substack), restaurants (FourSquare/Eater/Google Maps), shopping (Amazon, Alibaba, Temu), and recommendations for near anything you instinctively reach to search online, I worry a lot about how much we are able to truly wander in the vast gardens of the internet and listen to people beyond the immediate reach of what is constantly being pushed towards us.

As our online world is becoming increasingly governed by those very dominant power structures that brought the world to a place where it distracts you with consumerism while encouraging you to tear each other apart. As US- and Chinese-owned networks take over our feeds and as a consequence, our choices over the information we consume, it is increasingly less enjoyable and more lonely to be on the internet. Even if you are an avid culler of the chaff like I am. And while we can infinitely scroll our ways out of situations that make us anxious or bored or empty, I would argue that our true selves exist in the spaces, in the intentionality of exploring the infiniteness of what we can create if we just give ourselves the time to wander. To tinker. To play.

Why does it matter? Perhaps because in my ideation of myself (and of human beings in general), I am a curator, an explorer, and finding the new in the vast swathes of the mainstream is as much tied to my sense of feeling free in this digital-adjacent in life as anything. Not so much tied to planting flags as to carving out pockets of community with people with whom I share little loves. I may never meet these people in real life, and we may not share the same political or world views, but for a moment, we can take a seat next to each other in the garden and nerd out about an obscure artist or a trippy website or an essay that touched both of us.

Over the past few years, I, like other people, have trickled off Instagram and other forms of social media, have shallowed my phone use to mostly for personal messages, puzzles and occasional browsing, and try to live my life as much offline as possible and in the real world. I wonder how much of it has been a reaction to the fact that it feels like there isn't that much internet left to find. Like other curators whose love language is sharing the things they chance upon in their amblings, I feel myself having to search harder and harder to find things that are truly fresh and not instead a result of a collection of algorithms jointly suggesting the same thing.

In Spanish, the word cura refers to both a priest and a cure, and the word curate shares a root with the Latin for a person who takes care of or cures the souls in a parish. That makes sense. A good curator looks out for the souls of those they are sharing something with in hopes to make the viewer feel something that stays with them and perhaps changes them in a way. Even if that viewer is yourself. Think of an exhibition you went to that you really enjoyed. Think of a playlist (made by a person), that you really enjoyed listening to. Think of a movie whose cinematic shifts you felt yourself ebb and flow with. Think of quote or a piece of paper you saved because it meant something to your distinctive experience as a human being.

All that is the power of curation. The power of putting thought and love (and time!) into how things are on their own, as a whole, and in the ways in which they are connected. To how they may find or re-find people in different states of their lives and simultaneously heal them, kindle something in them, or take a pickaxe to the worlds they make have otherwise taken for granted.

So, how can you curate a space for yourself on the internet and in your life as an act of resistance and togetherness? A few suggestions to get started:

Seek out different sources for the kinds of information you digest on the internet - music, videos, news articles, essays. Look out not for ‘the best’ or ‘the most popular’, but the less well-known, the niche, that one suggestion on one person’s list that you like the other things on.
Start to identify your own taste profile. You are the only person in the universe who will like the exact subset of things you like, so honour it, enjoy it, stretch its limits. Do a random search for an imaginary genre or mood rather than a ‘top ten’ list, stalk your friends’ (or strangers’) playlists to see what they’re listening to, see what writers you like recommend (e.g. on Substack). There is too much out there to let the algorithm put you in one box.
Ask people, not the first Google result you see, for suggestions. “I’m looking for new music/new things to read, what’s something you listened to/read recently that touched you?” Make a running list of recommendations, try some things out. You may not like it at all, or you may end up loving it, but you’ll never know until you try.
Spend time off the internet. Find events that are happening around you and try to pick something you wouldn’t normally do (yes, it’s hard, I know, but try). There are events all over on MeetUp.com, your city’s website, Facebook events(!), that local anarchist website that actually does a decent job of listing all the events happening each day. Try to do it alone, if you can (yes, yes, it’s hard, I know, but again, try). You might discover something about yourself.

Reply to this email or leave a comment with your own tips for you curate the internet. And share with someone you think might enjoy this!

*Yes, curious that what started this train off was a podcast that so many people seem to have caught on to and that perhaps I was unconsciously avoiding just to put off the mainstream for a little longer? But Ezra is a fresh 2024 discovery, a recommendation, in fact, and I'm so glad it found me.

Finally, a quick poll before you go!

#13: Does your food really have a vibe?

Or are you slightly woowoo?

Nanya Sudhir

Jan 05, 2024

Happy New Year, friends! Hope you had a restful and rejuvenating few weeks and are having a peaceful entry into this new calendar year.

I've been thinking and reading about Ayurveda recently, which is based on alignment with nature and its shifting seasons, both in the world around you and within you. One of the practices it focuses on is food as an act of self-care, setting in place rituals around food and varying what is eaten as the seasons change. As someone who has spent the last half-decade in a city with nearly the same weather and an abudance of excellent agricultural produce all year, this is something I am relearning.

I am fortunate enough to have moved to Switzerland, also a place with extremely high agricultural standards and commensurately high prices. But when a friend recently said to me over a meal sourced from an organic, local store, "You can really taste the energy in food, you know", with a blissful smile on her face, I thought 'Well, that's some privileged, hippie BS.'

My reaction was primarily governed by a socioeconomic justice argument for access to food. If the energy level of food (called 'prana' in Ayurveda) is proportional to price, does food bought or consumed at lower price points also have lower forms of energy? Does that mean that the people who eat it have lower pranic value? And when nearly everything new we produce on the planet is tied so closely to exploitation in some way (even salt), how can you possibly be sure that something that made it to your plate did so fairly?

In that light, my question became: Are you tasting the 'energy' in the food, or the eyeball-gouging price you paid for it?

I have since reconsidered and reframed that initial reaction slightly. The social justice angle of privilege and who gets access to food and higher energy planes definitely holds and is the subject of another essay, but a few-months more mature Nanya will now attest that the enjoyment of food comes from many reasons. Among these, both the price and 'energy' (or 'vibes') of food have individual and important roles to play.

The price you pay for something is worth considering because it usually means two things. First, in an ideal world, the source of the food bought at a higher price presumably conforms to higher agricultural and ethical standards. Second, and more likely, when you pay a bit more for food, the value you place on that food and the reverence you give it is also usually higher.

That second part is important, because without due reverence, food is just fuel. With it, it becomes a vessel for nourishment, joy, even enlightenment. Have you ever had a moment of 'wow' or 'mmm, that's so good' when you've eaten something? Your body ripples with warmth, your endorphins kick in. If food is your spiritual language, you may even experience a moment of transcendence — you are grateful, present, filled with love and white light, one with the universe.

In other words, the quality of the food and how it was grown and cooked is important. Being truly present while you consume it is as important. This is my second and equally important point, so read that again. Being truly present while you consume it is as important. As with all aspects of life, the energy you bring to a situation is often also the energy you take from that situation. If you arrive to a meal tired, anxious, depressed or stressed, your body is biologically geared to divert resources to your mind and body, as a result numbing your taste buds to that meal.

But more than that, I have come to believe that you can in fact taste the love with which your meal was grown or made. There is a world of difference between a stiff, pallid carrot grown for durability at a big chain grocery store and a fresh, juicy one grown and harvested sustainably to maximise its flavour. And if the person who made your meal is tired or disinterested in cooking or simply having a bad day, they may, for example, be less present to how much oil they are using or how high the flame is, or hurry through some steps in the process.

On the other hand, fruits from a friend or farmer friend's garden, lovingly tended to, will likely always taste juicier. And sitting down to a meal caringly made for you, no matter whether it is mildly oversalted or burnt or of an, uhm, different flavour profile than you tend towards, will always feel special. As with any human interaction, feeding another person is one of the most intimate and nourishing things a human being can do, and to channel good energies through it is to send the receiver a prayer for their wellbeing.

I am biased because for me cooking is one of the purest forms of meditation, an instant parasympathetic system reset brought forth by the simple act of cutting vegetables and combining and looking after them, and in the process, of the person who will consume them. For most of my life, I have cooked simple, quick meals that require less than half an hour to make (One of my special skills is being able to lay out a standard Indian meal (dal, rice, veg) in an hour from start to finish). But that 15-30 minutes is all I need to hit pause on all the chatter living in the world brings to my head and instantly zoning into a place of peace. When I am chopping vegetables or stirring a pot, I am giving them my full attention — sights, sounds, smells. And is there a higher form of love than attention?

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
- Alan Watts, The Way of Zen

The recipe that I learnt for kada parsad, the delicious flour and ghee halwa offered at gurudwaras, indicates to accompany each step in the process with the beginning of the Sikh prayer, 'ik onkar'. This is literally translated as 'there is one god', but more generally taken to mean that all humanity is one and that everyone is equal. What a powerful sentiment to accompany something that is offered and accepted in a place of meditation, worship, surrender and togetherness.

My conclusion then is, even if it ascribes me to the woowoo hippie community: Food takes on value because of the attention you give it, and its inherent qualities — the quality of care put into raising the raw materials as much as in cooking them — do matter. So cook with love, source your food the best you can. Quality over quantity — a little goes a long way in nourishing the soul.

Links and Things:

If you're curious about Ayurveda: The Ayurvedic Self-Care Handbook by Sarah Kucera
If you're in the mood for something beautiful: Magnolia, a short book of poetry by Nina Mingya Powles that stuns with its attention to the everyday. 'Two days ago I smashed a glass jar of honey on the kitchen floor. The glass broke but the honey held its shards together, collapsing softly.'
If you're struggling with FOMO: This Economist article 'FOMO can never resolve itself, because it’s predicated on the ...conviction that if my life was really that good, it wouldn’t be mine.'
If you haven't had enough of your family over the holidays: Laughing Without an Accent by Firoozeh Dumas. An oldie but goodie that had both my parents in peals of laughter on the plane.
If you want a page-turner to smash your reading goals: The Murder Rule by Derla McTiernan. This was so good, I started it at 4 am today and was done by 8.

Housekeeping: ‎This letter will be shifting homes again soon as its host website changes focus, so here's a heads up; things may look different around here!

And a reminder: Hit reply, say hi!

Originally published on Jan 06, 2023

#12: Caffeine Withdrawal

Hi, I'm Nanya and I'm an addict

Nanya Sudhir

Jan 05, 2024

Hello hello,

I trust you know how to find me, and more importantly, yourself here.

This issue is ~~primarily~~ entirely about coffee, so if you're trying to quit, go somewhere else. All other mortals, welcome to the abyss.

The nurse at work said this morning that I may have to go off coffee completely, which, if you know my obsession with coffee and my body’s concurrent rejection of it, is a Big Deal. I have in past years been trying to…for fear of sounding like an addict…quit coffee entirely, but in lieu of that, I am happy to just transition through decaf. I like the ritual, my body disagrees. Apparently, hereditary anaemia and caffeine are just not best friends. Who knew?

I am even writing this while tripping on caffeine. Trippin

g, yes, because that’s how it feels, like I’m walking around drunk though I haven’t had anything to drink. You’ve seen the spider diagram, right? Where NASA thought it was a good idea to give spiders caffeine and have them physically illustrate to us what it is like to work while caffeinated? Someone call PETA.

So I’m going to have to say goodbye to coffee. Excellent for my writing, terrible for my heart rate. Goodbye, already non-existent newsletter. Toodle-oo.

Before I do that, here is an ode to all the ways I love or have loved coffee over the years. A friend recently told me I’m, ahem, experimental with how I drink my coffee, so here are some recipes/not-recipes/coffee preparations to maybe convince you to enter this world that I will have to say goodbye to. (JK, I’m going to stick with decaf. And I’m going to continue to allow myself to (over)caffeinate when I’m hungover. Those are my exceptions. But other than that, oooh, transition city, baby.)

Here they are then, in chronological order of the good coffees in my memory. Please excuse any typing errors, because you know, coffee.

1. Flat White:

Let’s get this out of the way, shall we? Hipster that I am, I was introduced to these in the very home of hipsters, a back alley coffee shop in Sydney (all you Melbourne fanatics, get out of here). In Sydney (maybe in Melbourne too, who knows) they ask you if you want sugar in your coffee before they make your espresso, so that the entire thing gets just a tiny bit syrupy before that perfect microfoam is textured into it. That’s the amount of attention they pay to coffee. In terms of coffee culture, some of the very best.

Anyway, back to flat whites. Before they started showing up on Starbucks menus as simply double espresso drinks with some half-assed foam (in comparison, cappuccinos have one shot, looser milk and foam on top), the Australians conceived these to be similar to cappuccinos in terms of how much coffee they contained. However, instead of the espresso+milk+foam layers of a cappuccino, flat whites top their espresso (or double ristretto) entirely with a velvety, homogenous microfoam. All this requires more effort to make, because milk, my friend, separates into cream and liquid. But my, is a flat white made with attention worth the effort.

Globalisation means that a flat white in one city, or even one coffee shop, is completely different from one somewhere else, and even called by different names - Gibraltar, Cortado, Tall - all completely different things, and very much not flat whites. But call them what you will, flat whites, aka espresso/ristretto + microfoam, you will forever have my heart.

2. Cafe de Olla:

I really, truly grew to love this kind coffee over the five years I spent in Mexico. Coffee cooked in an earthen pot with raw palm sugar (piloncillo) and spices like cinnamon, cloves and star anise, this is usually served syrupy sweet with a streetside breakfast (I ask for mine with half an Americano). The best one I ever had was on the side of a highway in Baja California on a cold morning, warm, light, not too sweet, and brewed with, surprise, the rind and juice of an orange. Any previous conceptualisation of coffee blown away. Highly recommend trying to replicate this on a weekend morning, with tea and whatever sweet spices you have in tow if that’s more your vibe. This morning, I threw some ginger honey lemon tea (infusion) into a shot of espresso, and the repeat of that was why I’m still(!) overcaffeinated.

3. Espresso Tonic/Cold Brew Lemonade:

Cousins in flavour and how they make you feel, with subtle differences. Espresso tonics comprise tonic water poured over a lot of ice, with a shot of espresso poured slowly over the ice so that it cools down but remains in two layers. Nice trick, even better if you slip in a slice or two of lime on top, stir it all up, and then take a sip. As a friend who no longer drinks coffee said when we first ducked out for one from work, this is a “happy drink”. It’s up and up.

Cold brew lemonades, on the other hand, are what they sound like, first cold brew, then ice, then lemonade. Or the reverse, it doesn’t really matter when you’re hungover on a Sunday and need a cool, refreshing drink to gently buzz away the flies in your brain. Cold brew lemonade is a relaxed high. It gets the job done.

Similar preparations include the Mazagran, the Portuguese name for an Algerian version of the above, which uses espresso, honey and lemon instead of cold brew and lemonade.

4. Carajillo:

Another Mexican discovery, by way of Spain. Carajillos in Spain are a shot of espresso shaked with any alcohol of your choice, a perfect post-late-lunch pickup to carry you into the evening. In Mexico, a Spanish liqueur called Licor 43 predicated its marketing campaign on the carajillo made exclusively with it. Licor 43 is so named because it boasts 43 herbs but tastes like a shot of vanilla with a little something-something. Think espresso martini, but served in a special snifter. Carajillos and Licor 43 have since become inseparable in my (and at least most of Mexico City’s) eyes, and one of the best ones to be found is at Contramar, an otherwise upscale tourist spot famed for its tuna tostadas. Misgivings against the rich and privileged aside, a tuna tostada and a perfectly balanced Contramar carajillo (a little sweet, a little bitter, giant head of foam from the hearty shake your bartender gave it, all resting on tiny blended ice to mellow it out) is a good way to enjoy a weekend mid-morning while you wait for family lunch.

5. Café:

Un café, s’il vous plaît. The default coffee order at a French cafe. This comes last because I was introduced to it last. Somewhere between a tight shot of espresso and a watery Americano, this is a bold, fresh, drinkable cup that you can access almost anywhere in French-speaking part of Europe. Because coffee varies widely in what it’s called and how it’s made across the world, I don’t know how to access this exact method of drinking anywhere else. A café is less densely packed than an espresso, if I understand correctly. Perfectly paired with a conversation with a friend or a book or notepad, this is the in-between moment of comfort I will have the stongest withdrawal from, because it is also one of my most recent rituals of connection to coffee.

6. Aeropress:

Ugh, yes. Aeropress. Purveyor of fan clubs, instigator of championships, creator of cults. It is difficult to place faith in what is basically a giant, overpriced plastic syringe for getting your caffeine fix whenever the urge strikes. (The drug parallels of that last sentence are not lost on me.) Need your hipster coffee first thing in the morning while you’re camping? Check. Need it on an airplane when the coffee they serve you will just not do? Check. Aeropress TM. An ex-boyfriend we do not name introduced this to me just before he himself switched to Nescafé, so this has never really been something I gravitated to. Naturally.

But when I was visiting my parents last week and in deep need of a nice little cappuccino in a country where one espresso-based drink costs upwards of 10 USD, Aeropress saved the day. I hate to say it, but the smooth, rich coffee that came out of that Aeropress filter was the closest I’ll ever get to making method coffee. It was so good. With Starbucks blonde roast, nonetheless, which was the only unexpired coffee lying around in the house. Why? You know what they say. Beggars (Addicts) can’t be choosers.

The smell of freshly ground, freshly plastic-syringed coffee was so overpowering (read: addictive), I gave someone a literal migraine from it. Oops.

So that’s it for now. Caffeine rush starting to settle down. Taking my sunglasses off to settle in to actual work-work. Hope you’re well. If you can, write in with a sentence or a paragraph about how you like your coffee! And as always, feel free to share with someone you think may enjoy this.

#11: Parallel lines parallel lives

Rewriting, rewiring, growing out of skins

Nanya Sudhir

Jan 05, 2024

Hello, welcome back to you are here, a newsletter on being, becoming and everything in between. Let's pretend this newsletter is always on holiday, except for when it's not. If you're new here, or you'd like a refresh, check out this visual love letter to Mexico City, this post on food and memory, or this sample of stuff I make.

Dear Friend,

I am back from newsletter hiatus, but perhaps only temporarily, as all groundhog re-emergences tend to be. The landscape of my life has shifted — new-old city, new friendships, and an opportunity to tease my neural synapses into new patterns. I am enjoying what seems like an endless summer, long days ending at a lake that rests at the foothills of chocolate Alps, music a balm to the rustling everywhere else.

‎Last Monday, I walked through the same alley as I did when I was a teenager, opening out from the quiet suburbs into a field that formerly held horses, and now holds houses. The same thoughts that had swirled around my sleep-deprived, burnt out, 16-year-old head morning after morning surfaced again: If I walked into a bus right now, would it change anything? Does anything I do make a difference in the world? Do I matter? What's the point of all this — going to school, following the rules, keeping up the pretense of cultural upbringing from one world when I live in another — when so much is happening around me that I have zero control over?

At its bones, the purpose-of-life wailing of a 16-year-old.

But there's no need to worry, friend. I am no longer a teenager. I no longer identify with the person who questioned everything they were doing as proof of existence. I am no longer someone who needs a sign of permission to fully stretch the limits of living in the skin they were sent down in.

Instead, I am trying to rewire memory markers I put away in boxes a long time ago so that they serve not just as reminders of prickly pressure points, but all the magnificence that accompanied them too. In this case, not just the captivating whirlpool of dark thoughts, but also the sun on my face on a windy autumn day, the cherry trees in the cemetery we thought it would be rude to pick fruit from, the comfort and boredom of walking down the same path everyday on my way to and from school. And this song as the soundtrack to it all.

Oh, to be that age again. (No. Never again. Please.)

I recently heard Sarah Polley, actress, director and political activist, describe the advice her doctor, Michael Collins gave her when she was learning to deal with the heavy(!) after-effects of a concussion:

"Run towards the danger...The more you eliminate experiences of things because they are painful, the more you are ill-equipped to deal with them."

I have always thought of myself as someone who runs towards the danger, not in the sense of doing things that are foolish, but in pushing the boundaries of what causes me discomfort in order to build up my weaknesses. As I grow older, "run towards the danger" starts to mean not "thump your chest and run all daggers out towards the finish line", but rather "breathe, pause, feel the big, difficult feelings, give the wound love". More loving kindness, less inner whip.

In other words, meet the things that make you uncomfortable with generous, loving intentionality.

‎So here I am, nearly a decade and a half later. Relearning, undoing, rediscovering, letting go, resetting, and running towards the danger. Figuring out what is important to me right now, giving wings to the voices inside me. I find that the further I go, the more love I have to give to the world. And as I continue down this path, I am trying to give myself grace, make room for the liminal spaces, and perhaps the hardest one — pause to really feel the feels.

I wish you the same. ❤️

Gratitude/Examples of love in the world

Last weekend, a friend told me that she would meet me "here" and it was the most supportive thing that I have heard in a couple weeks full of only love and support. We all walk through life with our own burdens on coals, and I hope that you can find it in yourself to make space for your loved ones to meet them where they are, in whatever state they are, with love and equanimity.

Book I am currently nerding through

Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again by Katherine Angel, an incisive, intelligent book full of insights about sex, pleasure, vulnerability, power, consent and the nuances within all of them. With just four chapters written to an audience in possession of critical thinking skills (lol, humble brag, much?), this may well be one of the best books I will read this year. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for something that makes them think twice about consent and pleasure in their own lives, in sex or otherwise.

Audio gems

The Poetry Unbound podcast. City soundscapes. FIP radio.

Final words/Watercooler

Sooo, here we are, end of the newsletter. Whew. Sup? How are you? What are you up to these days? I know nearly all of you by name and life circumstance, and I would love to hear what you've been doing or enjoying these past few months, what you're reading / watching / listening to / cooking, and what (or whom) you're holding dear lately. Send me the goss!

Also, if there's something you'd like me to write about or a general life question you'd stake your life for my advice on, just reply to this email!

Originally published on August 03, 2022

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