Life

August 13, 2024

I have the picture of the ideal life that I would like to live, and I have the life I actually live.

In my ideal life I’d have a lot more energy and discipline but also know when I need to chill-out. I’d read more, especially in the evenings when I watch news or Netflix for four hours — I’d spend at least half of that time reading. I’d also have a retirement plan in place. I’d walk more in the hill park and sketch more. 

Today, I don’t have to write that I would write more as after my return, just as I hoped it would, my writing brain, which I had worried was dead and gone forever, has fired up. There was a huge amount of space in my head that was occupied with karate and anxieties around it that has freed up and my head is brimming with ideas, though actual writing is still slower than I wish it would be in my ideal life. It’s weird how the brain can soak up anxiety until there is no space for anything else in it, and it becomes sluggish, and doing anything feels like pushing through thick membranes that have draped themselves around the body and mind and constrict the self. 

I still haven’t found the one project I feel I should focus on as the six that I have been thinking about all have an equal pull on me. Sometimes I feel I should prioritize the one I can finish quickly, while at other times I feel I need to permit the self to move wherever it wants to go even though it can be frustrating and undisciplined. But I can live with this abundance after those long arid months. I think the writing mind is flitting about trying to find the ideal perch and it will settle into something in a bit. For now, I am allowing it to flow and following it without expectation. 

And after finally seeing a doc last week about the stomped-on toe and being told to not train for two-three weeks, I’m using the time to do things I haven’t been able to do in a while. 

Yesterday I met a friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. I have written about her. She’s fought, called me too negative to be around, and broken off with me three times and for long periods in our seventeen-year friendship. Yet it was so easy to slip into talking with her; no need to ‘catch-up’ and no awkwardness. We spoke of whatever came up in any sequence that it did. Since I moved to Singapore, she might be the only person who knows everything that has happened to me — good or bad — and remembers how I felt about it. Visa versa too. 

I’m not sure if she will break off with me again but I feel that we have matured as we have aged and know our triggers better. She said her main, primal-preverbal, issue is not feeling good enough but now she has better knowledge about how she overreacts when she feels someone is criticizing her. Same for me, but my issue is never having felt loved as a child and fear of abandonment. I guess the two form a pair that is matched to create the most hurt, but also almost the most learning, about ourselves and how we handle conflict in relationships — if we remain open to dialogue during those times. 

Meanwhile talking to a friend that knows me so well and can add observations to the insights I shared about myself, and visa-versa, was like slowly savouring a very delicious matcha, bitter chocolate cake. I enjoyed every bite of the day. It was a watering-hole moment.