soos_mite_ah

TLDR: In conclusion, it's not so simple to say whether stage green is losing or gaining ground since the election. We're living in a chaotic time where some people are regressing to orange and blue due to survival pressures but some people are being catapulted to more green in various areas of life. We're amidst a messy collective ego backlash from the influences and cultural zietgist of 2008 to 2019 for better and for worse.

I think whether or not stage green values are being rejected is not super straight forward in our cultural and political climate. Compared to 2014, as far as stage green goes, I feel like we're doing this dance where we take 6 steps forward, 4 steps back and osillate between these two in what feels like every 10 business days to where there isn't stability and consistency in terms of spiral stage when it comes to politics and culture. I think you see this more clearly when it comes to more left leaning feminist spaces the most. In 2010s, there was the whole body positivity and girl boss movement in feminism which I would characterize as both a mix of orange and green. The body positivity movement was good about moving away from the diet culture of the 90s and early 00s where emaciated bodies were celebrated and people started to accept themselves more and develop a better relationship with food. That's the stage green aspect of the movement. However, the body positivity movement quickly became overly commercialized as brands tried to use it as a marketing ploy to get people buy shit. In one way it's good and a move towards green in that there is more representation and diversity in the media (though there is still work that needs to be done) to where in the 20s, diversity isn't this radical, revolutionary thing anymore rather it's the standard. I remember like 15 years ago that if you're darker than tan, it's hard to find makeup to suit your skin tone where as now, if a brand releases makeup only to fair skinned individuals, there is a backlash from the public. Having makeup cater to a variety of skin tones isn't like a shocking thing any more rather it's the standard. However, in the commercialization of the body positivity movement, there was a lot of diluting in their messaging and for a lot of people, it got old and annoying quickly. As a result in the 20s, we have a return to the skinny standard of beauty and all of the celebraties are back to pushing ozempic over accepting yourself (a swing back to orange). Diet culture is back and while it isn't as strong as it was in the 90s and 00s, it is still very present and is masked with better marketing where rather than using the word "diet" people are using the words "wellness" and "clean eating" thus while it still has the same orange core, there is some stage green surface level greenwashing if you will. At the same time, there are also people who recognize that the body positivity movement got diluted due to commercialization but rather than swinging back to diet culture, they are moving further into green by going deeper into the origins of body positivity, fat activism, and how those things intersect with racism, sexism, capitalism, and classism. Then there is the girl boss movement in the 2010s where women were encouraged to go into male dominated spaces and hustle their way to the top as a way to achieve more equality in the workforce which leans more green. I think Hillary Clinton running for president is an excellent representation of the cultural zietgiest. While it's great that the girl boss movement was encouraging women to take charge in the work place and move through these spaces in a more confident manner, it was also very superficial and neoliberal in the way things actually played out. It came out that prominant companies that were predominantly female still had the same hiearchial structures and issues as male dominated corporations. It didn't matter if a woman was a CEO, she can still be abusive, power hungry, and exploitative towards the working class. The girl boss movement, though it had promises of stage green, was still pretty orange at it's core. Much like the body positivity movement, the reactions against the girl boss movement is met with partly stage orange regresssion as well as partly a deepening of stage green. I'm seeing two reactions to the girl boss movement. The first is the trad wife/ sprinkle sprinkle form of feminism. It's understandable that after the pandemic, a lot of women looked at the work culture and were like "you know what, being a stay at home wife isn't such a bad idea. I'm tired of working myself to the bone to be some kind of girlboss." I think there is some green elements to the trad wife feminism in that there is more discussion on the value of the work women put in the household, how the choice to be a stay at home mom isn't inferior to working, and how femininity should be celebrated. However, it's still a stage orange backlash in the way that it emphasizes traditional gender roles and puts such an emphasis on finding a man who will be a provider. A lot of people weaponize feminist language as a way to repackage traditional gender roles and rigid standards of feminine expression according to what will appeal to men the most. There is also a deepening of stage green as well where there are people who saw the pitfalls of the girl boss movement and shifted towards 4th wave feminism. 3rd wave feminism from the 90s to 10s is characterized with exploring the issues women with intersectional identities (mainly race and sexuality) face since 2nd wave feminism focused on labor rights and mainly on the issues that affect white women. 4th wave feminism takes the intersectionality in a deeper level where instead of focusing only on identity politics, there is more discussion of how capitalism plays a role as well as the exploitation of women in the global south who are working in sweat shop conditions. Unlike trad wife feminism, 4th wave feminism knows that marrying a rich man isn't going to save you from capitalism and that aspiring to marrying up rather than critiquing class as a whole is what keeps us in this cycle. --------------------------------------- Politically speaking, we're still in polarizing times, even more so than 2016. As far as sprial development goes, I would characterize neoconservatives (your old school republicans like Romney and McCain) are half orange and half blue. Neoliberals (like Pelosi and Schumer) are more half orange and half green. The alt-right and facists like Trump and his cronies are orange with a lot of blue and even some red (think of the Heritage Foundation and the amount of corruption / incompetence that runs through his cabinent compared to the standard bureucrat). While neoliberals and neoconservatives disagree on cultural issues like gay rights, they work in unison when it comes to upholding capitalism and causing conflict in the middle east for financial gain. A lot of them have the same corporate donors. This gives both groups a strong orange core. However, what we're seeing now is that economically, we're in late stage capitalism and people's quality of life and sense of stability is dropping, thus causing people to be more prone to populist messaging regardless of whether it's coming from the left or right. There are people who don't authentically align with the right at their core regarding bodily autonomy and gay rights but they are frustrated with the current economic climate and voted for a change without researching what that change was. Like the google search "what is a tariff" spiked after the election smh. However, I will say, that to be authentically green, Leo is right in that you need education and personal development. The school system is also a mess due to COVID as well as the No Child Left Behind policy from the Bush administration and the underfunding of schools (that's a whole nother problem for discussion). And when people are faced with economic uncertainty, people aren't thinking straight because they're in survival mode, thus they temporarily drop in consciousness are are suceptible to authoritarian messaging that scapes goats groups for said economic problems without actually addressing the real issue, the corporate class. At the same time, while there is a step back in terms of groups of people being more susceptible to right wing messaging, there is more discussion of left wing populism in left leaning circles. I feel like if you were to discuss things like capitalism, consumerism, and labor exploitation in 2014, people would look at you like you're fucking insane and an extremist even if you're in left leaning spaces. I remember when Bernie was seen as almost as crazy as Trump as he would rant about the 1% back in 2016 but now, more and more people regardless of if the vote Democrat or Republican are thinking that the guy has points and that he would have been a better candidate than Trump or Kamala. This is a step foward amongst the collective ego backlash we are facing. --------------------------------------- Finally, I am seeing a lot of discussion with the manosphere, podcast bros, and the Andrew Tates of the world. I feel like this is mainly an ego backlash to the progress we have seen since the 1970s where in the present day, women are more educated compared to men, we have our own bank accounts, and more autonomy than ever to where we don't need to partner up with any mediocre man in order to get base line survival. This is pouring gasoline on the fire of male insecurity since men aren't getting the marriage and family their fathers and grandfathers got simply by having a job and a bank account. Not only that, even things like getting a job that makes you a provider are few and far between due to wages not keeping up with the cost of living and us living in a late stage capitalist hellscape. Male insecurity, especially sexual insecurity, drives fascism. This is also a backlash to the stage green progress in feminism that I wrote about earlier. While the narrative around women and capitalism continues to evolve, the narrative around men and capitalism is stunted at the traditional notion of being a provider and protector. There isn't enough men in the left who are constructively talking about masculinity in a progressive sense to fill the void in the narrative which causes figures like Tate to swoop in and double down on the existing narrative as it's starting to erode with mainsteam feminist discourse.

Career Thoughts So I want to have a job that utilizes my international relations degree and allows me to travel and live in different places. I have also talked about this with my boyfriend and that is something that I want to unpack later on in this post. My options for utilizing my degree and travelling for work involve the following: Plan A: get a job directly Plan B: get a fellowship, go to grad school and get my masters, and work for the state department for 5 years Plan C: get a job not related to my degree but something that interests me and that I can get enough time off/ benefits to travel (like working for American Airlines for example) I've been looking at plan A and I've mainly been looking at jobs in th DC area. If I want to use my degree, I don't have much of a choice as to where foreign policy related jobs are. It's been a little discouraging. Most of the jobs are in the $60k to $80k range. For reference, I make $75k in Dallas. I looked at a few cost of living calculators and it's estamated that to maintain the same quality of life, I would have to make $110k in DC. Since I prioritized fulfillment over hoarding money, I wouldn't mind down sizing or making less money. However, I don't have much to downsize and I'm not exactly living lavish. I would say I have financial peace of mind. All of my bills are on autopay. I get lunch or dinner with friends every now and then. I sometimes go to little coffee shops. I have an apartment with an in unit washer and dryer as well as a dishwasher with no extra charge. I contribute to my 401k, put money into savings each month, and max out my Roth IRA every year. I also travel every now and then. In other words, I am living within my means and I'm content with the amount I make. If I were to make this much money adjusted for inflation for the rest of my life, I wouldn't mind too much. Like I look at these jobs and these salaries and I think to myself that I'm too good for these jobs. Not in a sense of *I'm above the people who do these jobs and this kind of work* but in a sense of *everyone is above this kind of pay because people deserve to have livable wages where they aren't stressed about money.* I guess part of me thinks I'm spoiled because I don't want to struggle. I did grow up upper middle class and never had to worry about money growing up. And rather than causing me to be blind to class struggles, it radicalized me in the way that I have always recognized my privilege while wishing everyone else had the same standard of living and opportunities that I have. I don't want to get my dream job at the cost of being in survival mode all the time. As for plan B, I'm not too excited about taking the GRE. I remember how much of a pain in the ass the SAT was growing up and I don't want to revisit that (low key still have trauma from the SATs lol). I also don't feel super confident about my ability to get into a good program since I was kind of a mediocre student in college. Also, I'm only down to get a masters if it's completely paid for by the fellowship. Plan C doesn't seem too bad. I think I'm content with having a job be just a job provided that I have work life balance, adequate time off, and a way for me to execute my personal goals. Maybe it's too early to tell but I do feel better about my life since coming back from my trip. I know that I have written about the aimlessness I felt with my job but I feel like travelling has given me a meaningful goal to keep me going. I also think part of the frustration was coming from a sense of burn out because I wasn't taking time off and that was contributing to this feeling that my life is just this on going blob where I'm essentially Sisyphous rolling a boulder up a hill. Then again, I wonder how temporary this feeling is going to be before the aimlessness comes back, forcing me to lock in to finding a larger sense of purpose. ------------------------------------------- As for what this means with my boyfriend, I have talked about this with him regarding how travel is important to me, how I aspire to have it be part of my job one day, and how I want to live in a walkable city. He did talk about how he wants to support me in my career but how he's nervous about moving out of his parent's house much less moving to a different part of the country. And I can't help but wonder how much of that nervousness is a skill issue that he'll get over once we're living together versus how much of the nervousness is him not wanting the life I want deep down inside but doesn't want to admit it to himself because he wants to continue this relationship. I don't want him to make these drastic changes for the sake of me and the relationship if it means that he'll be miserable. And low key, I don't know to what extent he swings either way himself. Best case scenario is that we move and we both like living together in a walkable environment while I have a travelling job. A mid scenario is that we both hate this and we move back to Texas. Wost case scenario is that I love it, he hates it, and we end up breaking up and amidst the breakup he will have to move his life back to Texas after I uprooted everything and isolated him from his family. The whole thing has me nervous.

Lonliness and Social Media Addiction Ever since I came back from my trip and realized how important friendships are to me and the way I want to structure my life, I found myself feeling lonliner than ever because I realized I'm far from where I want to be. I've also been triggered by a few things in my life relating to other people which I have been unpacking with my therapist. I have been dealing with grief, self deprecation, and social anxiety. In a nut shell, the grief has to do with mourning the fact that I'm in a different stage of my life and that making friends is going to be harder than in my school years. The self deprecation has to do with my desire to take responsibility over this situation causing me to doubt the extent of which I'm a good friend or if I'm worthy of friendship at all. And the social anxiety has me feeling scared to open up again with other people for both the bad and the good in my life, causing me to hyper analyze and overthink my interactions with other people. I feel like I'm 15 again because I'm up at night thinking about how people secretly hate me and how in time I'm going to lose all of my friends because we will all get too busy and drift apart. Instagram also feels like everyone has friends that are constantly hanging out with one another except for me which I know is a distortion but nevertheless, it's fucking with me. I think for the past few months I have been unknowingly coping with this with endless scrolling because I don't have a life. I find that when I'm travelling or when I have plans with people I'm not checking my phone or social media. It's only when I'm alone or I feel like trash. In recent days, since those feelings as well as the election anticipation and later grief has been a lot, I found myslf using scrolling as a way to numb myself and not sit with these feelings. Social media (especially Tiktok) has been feeling really icky because I know I'm using this to avoid my feelings, I feel overstimulated with content, and even though I feel like trash, I can't get myself to stop. I think part of it is that I get some kind of parasocial satisfaction from social media. Instead of talking to my friends about what's on my mind and what I'm interested in, I just search up a video essay on the internet and watch that. I was watching streamers cover the election because it kind of felt like watching the election with someone and listening to them put their commentary on what's going on. And while my parasocial tendencies aren't like super intense and delusionally attached to one person, I can see how I'm using parasocialiality to supplement the feeling of being around other people since that is what is lacking in my life and this is an easier way of getting that need met since making friends as an adult is hard and the few friends I do have are all busy. I have been doing things to help this situation lately. I deleted Tiktok and Instagram. I am doing work out classes so I'm forced to get out of my apartment complex. I'm volunteering at the animal shelter. And I'm currently writing all of this in a coffee shop so I'm not rotting in bed in front of my laptop. While the self deprecation is starting to wane as I'm doing the work in therapy to unpack all of these emotions, I still feel lonly on a day to day basis and I have like a crying spell like twice a week. I've been journalling privately on my phone as these rushes of emotions come up to see how I'm progressing and what is coming up and I have been keeping all of this out of my journal here because things feel too vulnerable at the moment.

Election Grief The stages of grief are as follows: Denial, Anger, Barginning, Depression, Acceptance. Since hearing that Trump won, I feel like I have spent a solid week in the denial stage. I'm not proud to say this but I think I dipped my toes into conspiratorial thinking. I didn't go in as full on Blue-anon but I did spend a good chunk of time thinking *something feels off about this election* and how I feel weirdly calm about all of this. My thoughts were as follows: The election felt like it was called to fast. I thought this was going to be a close race with a few recounts. How did we know about the results the night of? If the election in some states was like 1% off, isn't that in the margin of error? Trump said some weird shit ranging from "We don't need any votes, we have all the votes we need" to him mentioning something about an October surprise or an secret he will be unveiling after the election. Elon also started talking about how if Kamala got elected he will go to jail. And then there is the Joe Rogan anecdote of how Elon knew the election results 4 hours before it was called because of some kind of app. All of this is kind of suspicious. Trump has been weirdly quiet since winning the election. You would expect that since he won the popular vote he wouldn't shut the fuck up about it. We were told that there was a record number of people who registered to vote but there are 10 million fewer votes in this election. There was also a record youth turn out which correlates with a Democratic win. Not to mention, a lot of the swing states elected Democrats as their govenor or senator but they voted for Trump in the presidential. The astrology girlies are saying this isn't over yet. I'm not a huge astrology person but part of me wants to hold on to this hope. But then some people were taking these thoughts and jumping off the deep end. I saw a person say that Kamala Harris is leaving Taylor Swift esq Easter eggs as signs that they are working on things and not to worry. Tbh, some people are over analyzing somethings that she has said or posted. And people are saying that she and Biden look too happy with the results so they must have something up their sleeves. Don't get me wrong, they do seem more positive compared to the consession speach from Clinton in 2016 but honestly. they probably have decent emotional regulation skills and they don't want the public to panic and they want to portray a hopeful front. I have been watching various analysis about what caused these results and I have been glued to Vaush's streams. I saw a post from AOC on Tiktok where she asked people why they would vote Trump for president but vote blue down ballot. A lot of it boils down to populist sentiments and the feeling that both AOC and Trump come off as authentic. And I think Vaush is right that we now live in the era of populism and that people aren't going to respond to reason and policies because of their material conditions. Basically the way I see it is that right wing populism and left wing populism have the same vibes because they're both anti establishment but they have opposite policy proposals. The former group believes the elites are lizard people, educated people in blue states, and Jews and that we should take out our frustrations on women and minorities because the Jews are forcing diversity and critical race theory while the later group correctly believes that the elites are the billionaires and capital class who is exploiting everyone and that we need to advocate for things like free college and universal health care. However, while right wing populism and left wing populism are on opposite end of policies, left wing establishment policies have more things in common to left wing populism, which is why some people who assume that people are voting on policy will be perplexed by the contridiction of voting for Trump and then voting blue down ballot because if they vote blue, wouldn't they also resonate with a left wing establishment candidate? But because the median voter is a dumb dumb who is voteing strictly on vibes, they will go for whatever populist candidate that is presented, even if the policies make no sense with their actual values. That can explain why Democrats won govenor and senate in swing states while losing the presidential. It can also likely explain the youth vote as well because a lot of young people (and really people in general) are frustated with the system and will vote for something anti establishment even though this will be worse. People are frustrated with the way things are and they want a change, even if that change will result in chaos. And I think we all underestamated the degree in which people felt this way hence why the election felt like it was called too fast. There's also the fear mongering with immigration and how a lot of immigrants, once they get citizens, they become pick mes who want to assimilate into whiteness because they think they're better than other immigrants and because they want to differentiate themselves from "the illegals." That explains why Latino voters shifted right in recent years (that and religion). There is also the impact of the alpha male podcast bros that a lot of young men listen to. Not only is it reflecting voting patterns but it's causing a divide along gender and people's ability to find good partners in dating. I've heard of stories of girls going to high school and being yelled at by the boys in their class "your body, my choice." That's fucking terrifying and I'm so glad that I'm not in highschool anymore because things weren't like this when I was growing up. And I think some alpha male podcast bro logic is normal for teenage boys who aren't super sure about their masculinity but usually they grow out of it as they age. But now, since we don't have third spaces and we have been isolated from each other post pandemic, a lot of people don't touch grass and instead get sucked into toxic rabbit holes on the internet. And I don't think there is a drastic right ward shift in the general population rather left leaning people didn't come out to vote because of a lack of enthusiam from a lack of left wing populist messaging and policies. This is where I shift from the sense making part of unpacking my denial to the anger part of grief. The Democrats are incompetent when dealing with the rise of facism because they are too in deep in the pockets of corporations to have Bernie Sanders esq rhetoric and narriative around the 1%. It really feels like the Democrats and Republicans are in an abusive family dynamic. The Republicans are outwardly abusive and controlling and takes their anger out on the children (us) and the Democrats, while they feel like the safer parent because they are more sane, the Democrats are still like the parent who enables and complies with the more outwardly abusive parent. In other words, they don't take an adequete stand against the abuse and they allow it to keep happening because they don't have a back bone which they try to justify by saying that they're taking the high road. Not only that, but the Democrats aren't learning from this loss. Instead, they're blaming trans people because they think they as a party has gone too woke and they're blaming Muslim and Arab voters along with anyone who is outraged with the genocide in Gaza. They aren't taking away the fact that they need to move further left and adopt populist messaging that will resonate with voters and bring them out to vote. What they're taking from this is that they need to shift further right. And it's frustrating and scary. I don't know how much further we are going to go down this right wing hole. I know things will get a lot worse before it gets better but I don't know how much worse it's going to get. And historical precedent isn't exactly comforting either. And this is where I find myself in the barginning stage of grief. I can't help but think what it would be like if the Democrats leaned into populism and Bernie had gotten elected in 2016 or 2020. Or hell, if we go further back and we elected Al Gore instead of George Bush. What kind of America had we been in if we chose correctly in these crossroads? What would this country been if we had access to higher education, health care, higher wages, paternity and maternity leave, better immigration systems to help people get documents, stronger unions, etc? What if instead of climate denial we became the leaders of green energy and pushed for scientific advancement instead of lining the pockets of big oil and defense contractors who are profiting off of blowing up Palestinian babies and causing instabilty in the Middle East? What if I didn't grow up in slow but rapidly increasing decline of this country? What if I grew up in the country my parents thought they immigrated into? This isn't 2016. Sure we ran another woman and she lost to Trump, but there is more of a foundation for Trump's facism compared to 8 years ago. Unlike 2016, Trump won the popular vote and the religious extremists have had the time to come up with project 2025. I remember 8 years ago I was 17 years old and a junior in high school. I found out Trump won and I remember getting on the school bus with a heaviness in the air where all of my peers were going through the stages of grief. I skipped most of my classes that day to cope with what was happening around me. But I'm not 17 anymore. After this election I had to go into the office with a straight face and not pick fights with a couple of my weird coworkers. The office was eerily quiet but I didn't have the luxury to fall apart like my teenage self did. At the same time, now that I'm working, I have my own money, and some degree of agency, I'm also not the helpless teenager I was 8 years ago. I don't know what's to come since a Trump presidency this time around is going to be differnet but I know I have my passport up to date, I have savings, and I am in a better position to help my loved ones. I'm not really freaking out over this, again probably because of my own grief process, but every ounce of my body is telling me to wait and see and I feel a determination to get through this. I don't see a point of ruminating of every bad thing that can happen from this and come up with a plan A, B, C all the way to Z only to realize that I needed plan J. I'm going to deal with things as they come and come up with one plan as I get a better sense of the situation rather than come up with 26 plans preemptively and stress myself out. There is a part of me that wishes that the election was stolen and that people are working behind the scenes and collecting evidence to fix this situation. I'm angry at the incompetence of the Democrats and how they allowed something like this to rise. And I cannot help but keep imagining what could have been if we stuck to Bernie. Nevertheless, I am determined to get through this in one piece and continue to advocate for a better future in a level headed way.

Questions I Want to Contemplate / Answer with My One Month of Travel + Answers So Far I left the country on 9/30 and came back to Dallas at 10/25. I took time off work and was travelling around for roughly a month. I wanted to take this break not only to have fun but also take a step back from my life and contemplate some things. I came up with a list of questions I wanted to journal about a few months ago: I have been journaling about these questions privately throughout my travels and I have even dated the answers in the bullet point below so that I can track how my thought process has been evolving. I thought I'd also include it here in my online journal. What kind of role does travel play in my life and how often do I want to travel? 10/10/2024: I do think that travel plays an important role in my life especially while I’m young. I think of it as a tool for self-development, a way to connect with the people around me, and to try new things so I am living my life to the fullest. I’m not sure just yet how often I want to travel. 10/15: Honestly, I feel like a border collie that has just gone to sheep camp. I think travel to a certain extent is a necessity to keep me sane in the capitalist hellscape lol. But I will say, I am not someone who can travel for novelty since I already have exposure to a lot of things and I think a lot of places blend into one another over time. I especially felt like a border collie at sheep camp after biking and hiking and spending so much time in walkable areas. Also, check out the 10/15 entry for question 10 10/21: I don’t think I want to do long term trips that involves me bouncing around. As soon as I hit the 3 week mark, I felt a switch go off in my head about how I’m over travelling and I want to go back home. I can do an extended amount of time away granted I’m staying in one place. But to move cities and countries every 2-3 days does take a toll on me eventually. Also, I think me being a bit sick also contributes to this. Maybe if I’m feeling well I could push it to 4 weeks. Do I want travel to be a component in my career? 10/10/2024: Yes. I do think I would be adaptable enough to handle this and I think I’m intrinsically motivated by travel enough to get the most out of it even if it isn’t a luxurious experience. 10/15: I can see myself enjoying a travel aspect of a career is I find myself living in a country for a few months here and there. I think that when you’re travelling as a tourist, you’re not staying for long, and you’re trying to cover as much ground as possible, there is only so deep you can go in experiencing and learning the culture. But I will say, my main concern with travelling for work is my ability to maintain the relationships that are important to me in my life. I feel like it’s already hard to maintain friendships in adulthood with the constant life transitions and I feel like it will be even harder when you factor in travel. While I am enjoying myself, I do miss my friends and I am experiencing some FOMO. 10/21: My concern with traveling for work is the following: I’m travelling on the company’s time so I won’t have the chance to explore or have control over my schedule. How this will hit my personal relationships I’m also afraid of the possibility of travel getting old for me. I think now that I have hit the 3 week mark of travelling, I am a bit over it and I just want to eat some good tacos and cuddle with my man. I’m not over travel as a whole but I think it is something that I can do in segments. I think travelling for more than 2.5 weeks at a time is a bit much for me. Like it’s one thing if I’m spending 3 weeks or more in one place, but it’s another thing for me to be constantly moving around for 3 weeks. Week 1: I miss ice Week 2: I miss tacos Week 3: I miss staying in one place and being with my friends. Is my hobby regarding travelling something that is crucial for me to share with a life partner? 10/10/2024: I don’t think I have to share this hobby with my life partner, but they do have to be open to new experiences and accept my lifestyle. How do I feel about travelling to developing countries regarding what I can and can’t handle regarding navigating a new environment? 10/15: I think so long as I have google translate and maps I should be good to go in most cases. I think having a tour guide is important to have when you’re doing something more in nature, like hiking up a mountain, or if you want to do something in a more rural place like visiting a village since there is only so much you can prep for and navigate using google maps. Over all, I’m pretty good at navigating myself and adjusting but there are just a few things here and there where I would need help from a local. 10/21: The language barrier has been a challenge for me in South Korea and the maps can help so much. 10/23: Thankfully, I found a better app for maps and that helped exponentially. I will say for future reference, if I know I’m going to be travelling somewhere with a large language barrier, it would be good to have an extra day or more time in my schedule to figure things out regarding getting around so that I’m generally more used to things. How did this trip impact my degree of self-confidence, agency, and self-efficacy? 10/15: I feel like all of these things are rising. I feel like generally speaking, I have the unfortunate habit of overestimating my problems and underestimating myself and my capability to deal with said problems. I feel really proud of myself for doing this trip and paying for this myself. I think the tendency to overestimate my problems comes from my parents’ *hope for the best and prepare for the worst* mindset. And while they meant well, I think the mainly emphasized the prepare for the worst part. This is a little silly, but life won’t stop for you in the same way that the traffic won’t stop for you in Vietnam or India. You will always have challenges, and you will have to cross the street and do what you need to do. In order to do that, yes waiting helps a little but you will ultimately need to have the faith that you won’t get run over and the way to do that is to keep walking and don’t stop. Overall, one of my favorite things about travelling is how I feel so capable after the trip. It’s almost always a huge confidence boost. I don’t think that travel is the only way to achieve this rather, it’s more about challenging yourself and trying new things, which you tend to do a lot of with you’re travelling. Do I want to have a child and how do I see this factor in my ideal lifestyle? 10/10/2024: I do think that I can travel with a kid and that having a kid shouldn’t halt my life even though it will change it a ton. I’m still not entirely whether or not I want a kid but I’m leaning towards a no as of right now. 10/21/2024: I don’t want to have a kid of my own but I do want to have kids in my life. I don’t think I can be a full time parent but I do see myself being like a part time parent in the sense that I’m there to help my friends when they have kids. It take a village to raise a child and I want to be part of that village. And this also means making friends who view families in a similar way and who values friendship to the extent that I do. How do I feel about my current relationship now that I have gotten some distance from it? 10/10/2024: I find myself often thinking about how I want him by my side as I travel India. I have told him a lot of stories and I want him to see and experience them for himself. It’s like a constant. I want someone I can not only share my culture with but someone who is also open to travel and explore new things. .This is how I felt prior to this trip but I still feel it now: I want to marry him but I don’t know how that would practically work. 10/15/2024: If I do decide I want to work towards marriage with this man, I will need the following things Have him complete a few certifications and work towards advancing in his career. Move in together for a few months Travel internationally with him and also have him travel internationally once by himself He needs to be supportive of my career and the lifestyle that it comes with >> something we will need to sort out together in a conversation 10/24/2024: I feel even more strongly for him after some distance. However, at the same time, since I left my bubble, it kind of helped me not put as much pressure on this relationship and hold onto it so tightly since I have been reminded that there is a great big world out there and I’ll be fine if this doesn’t work out. In other words, my love has strengthened but my attachment has loosened. What role does my intellectual needs play in my overall satisfaction in the relationship? 10/10/2024: I think the lack of intellectual stimulation has more to do with alexithymia and less to do with intellectual incompatibility. As a result, this is something that can be worked on. To what extent is travel something that internally or externally motivates me? 10/10/2024: I think it mostly intrinsically motivating. I say this because of the way that I prepared for this trip by educating myself and how I tend to be kind of strict with myself to where I have to *force* myself to relax. In other words, I don’t think that travel is something hedonistic for me. That said, I do thing travel is a good way for me to break out of my regular monotony and that this along with creating other events to look forward to in the year is important to not turn into the Spongebob fish where everything in the year feels like a blur. 10/15: Here is something I wrote in my notes app that I have been contemplating: “I don’t think I can travel hedonistically. I feel part of the hedonistic drive a lot of people have with travel comes down to trying new things and exposing yourself to the exotic. But to me, a lot of things that feel foreign to a lot of people don’t feel that way to me. I think that things would be different if I were to live somewhere vs simply visiting but basically, I can see why some people who travel a lot say that a lot of places start to blend together. I’m not at that point with my relationship to travel but I can see it getting to that point in a decade or so. And I’m not saying this to diminish the uniqueness of different places but I can see who different places influence each other and how culture becomes more of a gradient rather than separate categories. And I think that this is beautiful in its own way. I feel like I can appreciate Vietnam differently as someone who has been to both France and India because I can see the cultural impacts of those two regions.” Is travel a good source of motivation for me? 10/10/2024: Yes. I think a lot of it has to do with that it’s mostly intrinsically motivating for me and it’s a good thing to incorporate into my life so I can take a break and then come back with fresher eyes. 10/21/2024: I think that travelling domestically once a year and travelling internationally every other year makes the most sense to me considering I have a normal corporate job. I think it also comes down to the notion that when you’re an adult, you’re also responsible for the fun you have and creating things to look forward to. That said, given my outlook on travel, I don’t think that this is likely to be a source of hedonism or escapism for me. What are some takeaways from the new experience I’m getting? What am I learning about the world around me and how I relate to it? I will make a whole post for this answer How can I be a more ethical traveler and am I engaging in ethical practices, especially as an American? I think things accommodating tourists are fine to engage with but coddling tourists is a problem. Things that accommodate tourists include being able to pay with credit card, having the option to use toilet paper instead of bidet, booking a tour so that the logistics of seeing the sights your interested in are taken care of, having some local services be available in English to meet growing demand, etc. However, things coddling tourists include things like opening up 5-star resorts that exclude locals from their land, using local culture as an aesthetic and vibe while treating locals like trash, having a number of restaurants in Vietnam for example that mainly serve burgers and pizza and even though they do also serve local cuisine, you already know that it will be adjusted to euro centric tastes, leaning into the colonizer aesthetic more to make a place more palatable, and really anything that hurts the local people to create a more comfortable experience for tourists to the point where tourists can remain in their isolated bubble where they don’t have to challenge themselves in the slightest. It’s also important to do a good amount of research in places you’re going to and why things are the way they are for the better and for worse, so you don’t show up acting like you fell from a coconut tree. And in doing so and taking in the context of your surroundings, you do need to check your financial and passport privileges. I think I’m pretty good about this both as a human rights major as well as my own personal life experiences regarding visiting India growing up. How do I feel about interacting with my family throughout all of this and what does it mean for my relationships going forward? 10/10/2024: I feel like the women in my family are cool and I want to continue getting closer to them. My cousin and aunt have Hindu Nationalist brain rot. And my cousin's 3 year old son is just fine especially for a 3 year old. What do the answers about the questions above reveal about my sense of purpose, my career, and how I should structure my life? Talk to my boyfriend about wanting to get married, what you need from him, and what your life plans are. Work on rebuilding your confidence socially in therapy. Make more friends who are aligned with your priorities and where you’re at in life. Apply to fellowships for your IR degree so you can do something like what your friend is doing. Plan a domestic trip once a year and an international trip every other year. Increase physical activity on a day-to-day basis and cut back on your screen time. How do I feel about navigating uncertainty before and after this trip? Idk yet What do I think of my life in this American capitalist hellscape after seeing different ways of living life? 11/2/2024: I think that this hellscape is not as bad as it could be but at the same time I did journal about anti-capitalist angst about my job and social life soon after. I also think that this is something we can bounce back from, maybe not immediately, but in a broader sense. I think this is because all of the countries that I went to on my trip this time around exhibit some form of transformation and resilience. Qatar was a poor fishing village with pearl divers prior to the discovery of oil and natural gas in the 70s. India was incredibly impoverished when the British left in 1947 and although the country isn’t developed all the way, there are pockets and there has been a massive improvement in people’s lives materially over the last few decades. It will just take longer since there are more than a billion people there. Vietnam had to fight off 3 round of colonizers and had all types of fuck shit happen there but it is on it’s road to being a developed country in 15-20 years. South Korea was the more impoverished Korea compared to the north from the Korean war but they manage to build up the country and educate their population to where it doesn’t even compare to the north. Yes, what is happening in the U.S. is rough, scary, and not what you expect from a developed democracy, and it’s normal and healthy to be concerned about current events, but in the grand scheme of things, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and things aren’t super bad. I don’t know how far the light is but it’s there and every day that passes we are getting closer to it. How do I relate to different immigrant groups in Dallas after going on these trips? I think there is a certain degree of relatability that comes from experiencing diverse places, ways of life, and just having a broader range of life experience. It felt pretty good to be able to talk to my Vietnamese coworker about my experiences there and hear about his experiences as well. Like I felt like I had more I could add to the conversation had it been otherwise.

Post Travel Blues: Anti-Capitalist Angst The main thing that is coming up for me after this trip regarding the post travel blues is how much I hate that I don’t have control over my schedule and that 8 hours a day, a large chunk of my day to day life, is dedicated to a job. It’s making me think about how short life is and why I feel like I have to maximize every moment I am not working to living since I feel a scarcity of free time. It’s not that I inherently dislike work, I actually feel a new found love for my job and I feel refreshed from my role. It’s the fact that unless you’re a trust fund baby whose daddy won capitalism that all labor is forced labor. And that includes if you’re self-employed because in that case, while you don’t have a job, your beholden to your consumers and the market and if you’re a stay at home wife/mom, well, then you’re getting fucked by both capitalism and patriarchy even if you think you were able to bypass the capitalism rat race. Unfortunately, there isn’t escaping the system, just people who are better positioned in it and who are worse positioned in it. I’m also sad that I’m not in a walkable environment and that I am not hanging out with my friends. As much as I hate being in the suburbs, it also sucks that in the U.S. there are like 5 walkable cities and all of them are super expensive and kind of unlivable for an average/low income person because of the landlord class. Like as much as I would love to live in a place like New York or Boston or D.C. I know that unless I’m making bank and "living lavish" that I will have a dip in my quality of life. I’m so fortunate to have a dish washer, an in unit washer and dryer, a parking space, and a space free from rats and roaches for a reasonable amount of money. And I don’t think I’m asking for much and I believe that this is a reasonable baseline of quality of life in a first world country. But capitalism believes otherwise….. And then there is the friends. I feel like these larger cities have more opportunities to meet people because they’re walkable and they have more third spaces. At the same time because everything (especially rent) is expensive, commute can be a while because odds are your work is in Manhattan but god knows you can’t afford to live near Manhattan, and since you don’t have conveniences like in unit laundry, that can take up a lot of your time, not to mention that doing the groceries can be an Olympic level sport if you live in a 4 story walk up, everyone is exhausted and just trying to get by. You have the opportunities to be social but it’s not accessible to a lot of people unless you have the funds and cushy life style to not worry about things that can take up a lot of time and energy. Again, fuck capitalism. And even if you’re not in a big city like New York, I think that the path of least resistance is to prioritize your career and the nuclear family. Like even if you’re someone who does value friendship, it’s easy to fall into that habit and lifestyle again because **capitalism.** It’s easy to get caught up in the rat race of having a job and center your life around that especially right after college for some people who aren’t as lucky, whether it’s because it took them a while to get a job or because they’re trying to establish a certain career for themselves to achieve their dreams, or because they are financially disadvantaged in some way. As much as I don’t like hustle culture, I don’t blame people who get into it especially after graduation since people are trying to get a good footing for themselves to survive as an adult in this capitalist hellscape. Like what a privilege I have that careerwise I was able to get a job quickly after graduation and that I make enough to where I’m not worried about money because I don’t have a student loan and a car payment to worry about. What a privilege I have to where my main concern is having community and friends who have the same comforts as me so that we can all hang out. I mean all of this in a half sarcastic way. I do sincerely think that I am privileged under this system but I am still dealing with the alienation of capitalism. It’s the old saying that if you play shitty games, you win shitty prizes except in capitalism, you don’t really have a choice as to whether you play or not. And it’s so normalized to build your life with a man rather than your friends. Like it’s normal to talk to your man or hang out with your man once a week or more but when it comes to your friends…. well then you’re doing too much. Not to mention there are so many milestones that are rights of passage with romantic relationships but not with your friends. Then there are the type of people who end up ghosting their friends once they get married which are weird as hell. And then there is the whole thing about having kids. I feel like there are three camps to this. The first is the people who are completely bought into the nuclear family and their life is all about kids and their spouse and they don’t really care about friends anymore. The second are people who do care about their friends and want to prioritize them but because parenthood is stressful, they don’t have the energy to put to their friendships. And the third is people who have integrated parenthood and friendship to where their friends are part of their village that makes parenting easier. It feels like 90% of people fall under camp one and two. And who do we have to blame for the lack of community and the normalization of the nuclear family? That’s right CAPITALISM!!! I feel like most of my material needs / wants are covered. I have a roof over my head away from my parents. I have a parking space, an in unit washer and dryer, and a dishwasher. I have financial peace of mind because of my job and because my rent isn’t expensive. I can go out to eat whenever I want, which isn’t often but still, like I’m satisfied. I can afford a little treat here and there whether that be a matcha latte and a croissant, or a Sephora haul. I can afford to travel to the places I want to go. I got all the things that I want money can buy. Granted rampant consumerism and lavish things have never been my thing especially in this era of gross over consumption. On top of this, I want a job that more accurately reflects my interests, a decent quality of life in a walkable area, and friends who I live life with. I don’t want to live isolated and then plan to hang out with my friends as if I’m making an appointment with them and then have it be a catch up friendship. I want to make memories with my friends and experience mundane little moments with them. I want to be integrated in a community to where I can be like a supportive help to parents whether that means help look after the little ones or be a sounding board to the mothers. I want to be child free but I don’t want children to be absent from my life if that makes sense. Like if we were to talk about the little Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid, I would say that I’m rock solid for everything except the love and belonging section and the self-actualization section. But yeah.. that's my little rant on capitalism and me being a little upset about coming back to work after taking PTO.

Money as Freedom Sometimes I fantasize about having a lot of money despite the fact that I'm not particularly materialistic and I'm pretty content with my life on a regular basis. One of the main ways this shows up is me dreaming of luxury travel. I did a whole post about it. Another way that this shows up is that I find myself day dreaming about being in a content happy place in my life with a thriving career, meeting a man, having a good relationship with him, and then when he introduces me to his family I find out that he come from an extreme amount of wealth. Basically, it's the plot of Crazy Rich Asians. I started thinking about this and why this was coming up with me and I found myself thinking about how in the business school, when we were discussing how people value money, in most cases, it boils down to the following; People tend to value money as a source of status/power, as a source of security, and as a source of freedom. People don't necessarily fall neatly into these camps but these are common themes that people resonate with on different levels regarding their relationship with money. For me personally, I scored a 0 in the money and status category, I scored at a low level for seeing money as a source of security, and I scored pretty high in viewing money as freedom. When I look into my fantasy regarding luxury travel and/or marrying rich, I think so much of it has to do with feeling like I have a sense of free will in my life. And in order to have free will in a capitalist world, you need to have the funds to do so. I want to vacation in Monaco not because I care about the culture, but because I want to feel like I have the free will to go there, book a luxurious 5 star hotel, and then go into any store and buy whatever I want. I don't care about the designer goods or the fancy hotels, I just want to feel like I can afford it if I wanted to. If you ask me about wanting to buy anything designer, I wouldn't be able to give you a specific answer because deep down I don't care and I'm not paying attention to that world. Even if you take me to these store in reality, I'll probably just walk around and nothing will catch my eye. Maybe I'll look at a scarf and be like *that's cute* and then I'll keep walking. But then again, I'm like that even in stores like Target. So basically, to reiterate, it's not about the luxury goods or experiences themselves, it's about what being able to afford luxury implies, that you have a large amount of disposible income that you can do whatever you please with and create a life ever which way. When it comes to marrying rich, in order for this fantasy to occur, I have to suspend disbelief and imagine a scenario where the rich man I'm marrying doesn't have a crazy classist family, who isn't abusive or willing to take advantage of the financial power dynamic between us, and who is not exploitive systemically. In this fantasy where I marry rich, after I get married I can take some time off work to travel wherever I please, however I please, for however long I please because I have infinite funds. Then, I can continue taking time off work or become a stay at home parent without ever worrying about the financial or career related consequences. I could also get a job in something that I really care about but working and having a career is truly optional. I don't ever have to stick out a job I don't like or worry about things like PTO or budgetting. I don't have to worry about my husband leaving me, creating an unhealthy marriage, or dying and leaving me to fend for myself in this fantasy. It's basically a fantasy where I can do whatever I want without real world consequences because the money I have will free me from regular people problems. I feel like having such fantasies makes sense in my stage developmentally as someone who is stepping into adulthood. From 5:16 to 6:51 Dr. K says the following: "Early on we're teenagers and when we're teenagers, we don't have freedom. 'Oh my god my parents are telling me to stop playing video games, they're telling me to study, I don't wanna study, I don't want to do meh... I want to be an adult and when I'm an adult, I'm going to do whatever I want.' And then what happens is that you become an adult and despite having all of the "freedom," you have no freedom at all. You thought that the moment you became an adult, everything becomes easy. But what I see more and more is constantly these posts of 'Is this what my life is? Do I wake up everyday, commute an hour to work, work 9-5, commute an hour back, work out because I'm supposed to work out, have 45 minutes of recreation time and then go to sleep because I need to eat, get 8 hours of sleep at night, is this what my life is? This is not what I was promised, this is not what I thought. I thought I was going to be free and having fun.' And this is where the quarter life crisis starts. We have this conception that as we grow older, we will be free, but as we grow older, we discover out freedom is restricted by the world around us, that we actually need some way to fit into the world. So as teenagers, all we want is freedom and then once we get our freedom, what ends up happening is we realize we need to fit into the world around us and that leads to stage 1." I have journaled about this video more throughly on a couple of occasions as linked above but I don't think I have touched on the lack of freedom point rather I focused on the stages and how they applied to my life. While I didn't feel that sense of whiny pleaing for freedom in my teenage years, I definitely remember feeling this way when I was a small child, maybe like 5 or 6. I remember thinking about how I cannot wait to grow up and I remember that it boiled down to two reasons: to be taken seriously and to feel like I can do anything. The later not only had to do with a sense of skill and efficacy that I associated with adults at that age, like being able to drive a car or run errands, but also had to do with a sense of freedom to do whatever I please. And like Dr. K said, that's not realistic when you're coming into adulthood because the freedom is restricted by your surroundings and you need to find a way to fit into that. Later in the video he talks about in many cases, people's way of finding where they fit came from inauthentic means due to a lack of life experience and then they have a crisis where they need to craft a more authentic way of living themselves. I think one of the biggest restrictions is capitalism and how money makes the world go round so it's understandable that through my fantasies, I want to escape that. However, then we go back to the Slavk Zizek quote that says "Ideology is not just the world we live in, but especially the wrong ways we imagine to escape it." That is to say, capitalist ideology is not just what surrounds our daily life and the problems we face (especially alienation from our work), but it is actually strongest in precisely the ways that we fantasise about escaping it. Our fantasies of travelling to popular tourist destinations, of buying overpriced organic produce, of dressing talking eating and behaving differently from others et cetera, are not a genuine reaction to capitalism, they are part of its reproduction mechanism. So basically, I'm trying to use a fantasy to escape capitalism with capitalism. Rather than imagining a new world free from those problems systemically in a collective level, since I'm still living under this capitalist framework, I'm imaging a situation where I'm at the top 0.0001% of the capitalist system where I don't have to work, I don't have to worry about money, and I am free to do whatever I want like a trophy wife or trust fund baby. And again, I can recognize throughout this post that my fantasy to be in the top of the capitalist food chain isn't coming from an authentic place, rather it's more so about me wanting freedom and agency in my life. However, the fantasy is still the ideology's reproduction mechanism. It's easier to imagine yourself at the top of an unjust system rather than imagine a whole new way of life.

Friendship Breakup So I'm dealing with a friendship breakup of sorts that happend back in late July. It's almost October and basically I have a lot of unresolved weirdness with a friend hanging in the air which has been bothering me to where I tend to sprial about in therapy. It has gotten better in that the therapy sessions no longer revolve around this friend and I'm focussing on other things that are tangentially related. Some of those things include the following: how I feel like I have to take a disproportionate amount of responsibility in my life and how that comes up in unhealthy ways how I'm not the best with dealing with uncertainty and my lack of faith I have in myself to be more spontaneous/ intuitive/ instinctual my tendency to want to plan things out, journal, and just be in my head and how that impacts my results in therapy my fear of wasting my time and wasting my years making dumb mistakes the pressure to have it all figured out in your 20s (or just soon) Now that this person is no longer in my life, I'm starting to notice how this dynamic was influencing my other relationships and coloring how I saw them which was leading to some self sabatouging behaviours. The dynamic that I had with this person was kind of one sided in that I was the main person reaching out. I didn't think anything of it because I feel secure in my relationships and I figured we just got into the habit because my friend has a more demanding work schedule than I do. I was hoping to have a conversation about this but then shit kind of hit the fan and now I have a reason to think that there was something more to it regarding her not reaching out. But there is still a lot of ambiguity and we never had a proper conversation about any of this. The weird interactions were from text which in cases like this can cause more ambiguity since you can't always tell the tone of what's going on so as a result, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a good amount of misinterpretation and miscommunication on both of our parts. And because we never had a conversation, I'm just kind of left feeling blindsided as my mind kept going to the worst possible scenario. I've been trying my best to not internalize this situation and have it impact my view of friendships in adulthood but it has been difficult since so many dynamics are changing and it's easy to grow apart from people after you leave school. I find myself overthinking some social interactions regarding how I'm coming off. I find myself wanting to close myself off and avoid being vulnerable because I have some trust issues. I find myself questioning where I stand with people in their lives and how they view. This friendship breakup has been kind of rough for me and my over all self concept. Some thing that have helped include socializing with other people that makes me feel sane. It's like a confirmation of *oh, I can in fact interact with people like a normal human being and not make people feel uncomfortable.* Another thing is just me taking a break from reaching out to people and spending more time on other hobbies. Of course I'm also going to therapy and leaning on people that I talk to on a regular basis. And finally, I have been planning my trip which I feel is keeping the depression away when it comes to how I feel about friendship and career. Nevertheless, I do find myself missing and mourning this friendship. I have like 90% good things to say about this dynamic and person prior to all this shit going down. It's just that this whole situation is showing me a different side of this individual that I'm not 100% certain on how to interpret.... again because we haven't had this conversation. This is an otherwise very reasonable person so I do want to be charitable and give her the benefit of the doubt. But also, since this is a pretty reasonable person, that just makes her words and actions cut deeper because I don't want to discredit her negative experiences with me if there is some truth to it even though things aren't adding up or making sense on my end. I don't have an impulse to run back to this person. If our friendship is so fragile to where a simple misunderstanding can mess everything up, that's not something that I want to cling to since I want solid relationships in my life. If this person has no intention to reach out and resolve things, I'm not going to hold this person hostage in this relationship and demand answers like a crazy person. I've done my part in trying to take responsibility and resolve things and now the ball is in her court. And also, I want people who communicate well in my friendships instead of leaving me in this much ambiguity and I'm not trying to force anything. At the same time, I will say that the lack of closure is really messing with my head and how I feel like I can approach friendships in adulthood. But I also recognize that the ways that this situation is triggering me is something that I need to resolve on my own and closure can be something you give yourself which is something I'm working on. Anyways, I don't have a conclusion to this matter as I'm still going through this. I thought maybe writing about it can get something out of my system.

It's different for everyone since people have different paces they go through when developping feelings. I know that for my current relationship that I have been in for about 2.5 years, it took my partner about 4 months and it took me 7 months. I remember telling him when he first told me that he loved me that while I'm not quite at that point yet, I'm getting there and I do really like him. So my general advice would be that so long as you like this person and you're seeing the feelings continue to develop over time and as you spend time with this person, that's a good sign even if you're process of falling in love is slower than others. Falling in love is a more gradual process of things slowly warming up. It isn't a light switch lol.

@Forestluv I don't have much to add to all of the points you listed above and expanded on but I did want to say that I agree and I enjoyed reading your assessment of the campaign

I disagree. Calling Trump and Vance corrupt and dangerous can make them seem more powerful and suave than they are when really they're babbling fools with the incompentence of a 4 year old. Painting your opponent as dangerous and that they are this boogey man makes the opisition feel powerful and in control, that they have the ability to strike fear in if they please. Laughing at them for the fools they are and calling them weird is the opposite of that. Especially for a crowd that leans more SD Blue and values conformity because they think anything that deviates from straight cis white person is unnatural, calling their leader weird, deviant, and generally socially offputting hits them where it hurts. It's essentially using their rhetoric and world view against them in a way.

You Can Play With Your Friends After School I have written about my quarter life crisis before in a previous post where I was mainly focusing on my career and my romantic life. But I also think it's manifesting in my platonic relationships as well which I want to explore in this post. Phase 1: Locked In I guess I went through the feeling of being locked in friendship wise for a minute when I started thinking about how my ideals for wanting to focus on friendship in adult life feels too difficult and idealistic. I feel like it's an uphill climb systemically and socially because I think it's the path of least resistance to only focus on the nuclear family and your career once you're an adult and your friends are people you catch up with, not live you life along side one another as you would when you're in school. I have wrote about this in more detail in a previous post: I also talked about this more with another friend of mine who comes from a similar cultural background as myself. While I focus on the nuclear family and the career in the post linked above, I talked to her about gendered expectations for women and the emphasis on family in immigrant households. I feel like a lot of immigrant families have this mentality where you can't trust anyone outside of your blood relatives and friendship is generally a waste of time and not particularly important. Funny enough, they say that and then they get scammed by their own brother but that's none of my business lol. But it's like you have a friend confide in you or you try to have a girls trip and then your immigrant parents think that you're doing too much for someone who you aren't related to. And I think this can be emphasized when you're a woman and you're around the age when you're expected to get married or your peers are already married. Like I remember my mom talking about the time when her peers were getting married and how she was nervous about the transition to married life because then all of your time goes to caring for the home and the family and you don't really have the time with your friends anymore because they're busy doing the same. This came up because my friend and I are going through this thing where our married friends either ghosted us or would use the excuse *I'm busy with married life* as an excuse for being distant. I get if this happens if you have a kid or your families live near by and are as a result spending time with them but the people who we're talking about don't have kids and have family on their side and their husband's side that lives abroad. And then it's like *are your priorities different now to where all of the time goes to your man?* *are you being burdened by all of the household duties because your man is a man baby?* *are y'all fucking 5 times a day to where you can't balance anything else in your life????* Wtf do you mean by *I'm busy with married life*? And also, if you're not from a stable family or not married/ in a relationship, sucks to suck. Basically, what I'm trying to say with the paragraph above and the post linked above is that I feel like as someone who values community amongst friends or a chosen family (I guess which is more of a SD Green value), I feel like I'm pushing up against not only the expectations from western culture to put all of your time in the nuclear family, your job, and a mortgage, or in other words the typical SD Orange American lifestyle, but I'm also pushing against the expectations from my South Asian culture where collective values of community is mainly tied to one's family (including extended family), having kids, and serving your hisband, the typical SD Blue lifestyle expectations. I feel like I'm swimming upstream against not just one way of life that doesn't resonate with me but two as a South Asian American woman. And that really contributes to this feeling of being locked in and that my needs and values in a friendship is unrealistic and stupid. Dr. K's video also talks about a big reason why you feel locked in is because you're following the expectations of others or hypotheticals of the future to where you have aligned yourself in a path that doesn't feel authentic and that you don't feel like you can escape from because you're in too deep. I think I'm pretty good about being intrinsically motivated and it's great that I'm aware of my needs and desires for platonic friendship. However, I will say, I'm trying so hard not to fall into the trap of giving in to the external validation because it's easier and the path of least resistance and honor my needs for friendship and community. I'm not asking for too much when I say I wish I had people I hung out with on a regular basis and who would reach out to me and ask me how I'm doing every now and then. And I have to remind myself of this as I'm figuring out how to navigate friendship in adulthood. Dr. K also mentions in the first part of the video that when you're a teenager and you're restricted by what your parents and teachers tell you to do, you start thinking about how when you're an adult that you're going to do whatever you want. But then, when you become adult, you do get a sense of freedom but it's stiffled by the restrictions of the world around you and you need to find where you fit into the world. And it got me thinking on how my parents would tell me that once I finish up my education and get a good job, then I can do whatever I want and prioritize my social life more. Even though I'm in a predicament with the friendship recession now, I don't regret focusing on school over my peers because I value my education and I'm happy with the job I have which allows me to have time to pour into my friendships. However, there is a part of me that grieves the opportunities I had for community and friendship when I was surrounded by peers throughout school as flawed as they may be. I'm not going to pretend and say that making friends was easy throughout school and college and in many cases, I didn't like or click with the people around me. But it was a community nonetheless. It's less about the individuals I was around and more so that I was in an environment where you can make friends and life your life along side with them instead of just having catch up sessions. And as a result, there is a part of me that wishes I seized that moment more socially instead of thinking that I can play with my friends after dealing with school. It's the classic *you don't know what you have until it's gone.* I do feel like I'm going through a separation from my friends. Our dynamics are changing and so are the expectations since everyone is bouncing around trying to figure their lives out meaning that everyone has a a life transition or two happening. And it's a challenge to navigate that and figure out where your relationships are going to go from here. I found myself becoming the friend who is the main one reaching out because I have a more chill schedule and more work life balance, meaning I have the energy to reach out and the time to be flexible. I don't mind taking on this role but I've noticed that it's been getting kind of unhealthy recently since I have been in this role for a prolonged period of time. I've been trying to have this conversation with friends which has been challenging since this feels emotionally sensitive and vulnerable. While I'm typically good at communicating boundaries and talking about my needs, this feel vulnerable because I don't want this to come across tone deaf since I know that my friends are trying and are being spread thin in other areas of their lives. I don't want them to think I'm asking them to prioritized me over thier other friendships, their family, or their career. And it's been even more touchy since some of these conversations I have tried to have either came out wrong or didn't go as planned. I feel like my relationships are being tested and I'm failing. I'm not going to go too much into the interpersonal issues to respect people's privacy and because I'm also trying to navigate this as I'm writing this but I say this to say that this last month or so has been emotionally intense and uncomfortable. I feel like as I'm writing this, I'm in stage 2A/ 2B and I've recently completed stage 1, hence all of the material I have written about. I do find myself wanting to check out of friendships all together. Part of it is the feeling of discouragement of some recent experiences thus contributing to this pessimistic outlook towards friendship as a whole. I want to get out of my current circumstance and come back to it with fresh eyes. I also feel like there are somethings that I need to work out in therapy to deal with any baggage I have relating to friendship before I put myself out there in phase 3, the exploration phase. I relate to the notion of being dead set about making my old life, or in this case my old friendships work because I do care about my friends and I want to be able to navigate these friendships into a new stage of my life instead of just abandoning them. I'm starting to realize that I will likely have to start putting myself out there more and build on the skill of making friends an adult but I'm going to be honest, I'm not excited about it. I feel like the trial and error process for anything, be it applying for 100s of jobs, dating a bunch of guys on Tinder, or speed dating platonically to find good friends to be more exhausting than exciting. Sure, there are a lot of interesting people out there. But, there are also a lot of crazies. And honestly, maybe this is laziness on my part, but I want to skip to the point where you're just cool with people, you can open up to them emotionally, and y'all are hanging out in each other's houses rather than meeting a bunch of people in large social gatherings or in Bumble Bff. I was the same with dating where the thing that excited me most was wasn't going on exciting dates to meet people but getting to the place in a relationship where we can have a meal in silence because we aren't trying to *dance monkey dance* or most of our dates are quiet nights in where we cuddle. Here is a little bit more about Stage 3: When I was exploring this idea as it relates to my job/ life purpose and my romantic relationship, this felt exciting and inspirational. I especially loved the idea of having things be open ended and the emphasis of actively creating yourself rather than finding yourself. But with friendships, I find myself to be more hesitant since I'm still attached to my current relationships and I'm still working through some emotional baggage. Rather than feeling inspired by the section above, I find myself thinking UGGGHHHHHHHHHH............... I guess I'm just not ready for this phase just yet. It took me a minute to get to a point where it sunk in that I can't just avoid having to build the skill of making friends in adulthood. Not gonna lie, there is a part of me that thought I could skip over that chapter of life lessons by simply maintaining the relationships I have since I'm good at maintaining relationships in adulthood. But even if you are good at maintaining things, relationships can grow and change as people change and transition to other stages of life. And sometimes, you're left with having to make new friends because your new friends are just not meeting certain needs you may have at this point even if they are healthy and fulfilling relationships. Dr. K explaines that what got us into this problem in the first place is that we crafted a life without understanding who we are or exploring ourselves. As a result, there is a fundamental mismatch of the life around you and who you are. In order to get through the quarter life crisis, you need to recognize that this sucks for you, check out mentally, then intentionally check out, then you start exploring yourself where it's not about finding the right answer but discovering who you are. And unless you intentionally leave, whether that means going to somewhere else geographically, surrounding yourself with different people, you can't do that exploration. From that sense of exploration comes a greater sense of who you are intrinsically, thus causing you to be able to actively craft your life consciously to make your external life align with your inner life. I wouldn't say that I made any of my friends because I didn't understand myself or explore myself. My friendships always felt authentic and satisfying. However, rather than crafting a life without understanding who I am, I crafted a life without understanding what adulthood is and what terrain I'm working with. I don't really have much else to say about this section since I haven't even gone into Stage 3 yet but I hope I figure things out and learn the necessary life lessons I need to learn going forward in this area of my life. I can play with my friends after school.

You Think You Just Fell Out of a Coconut Tree? There has been so much that's happened in politics in the last month. We had a disasterous debate with two senile old men, one who was too old to form proper sentences and the other who was too old to make sense and the man who didn't make sense won because at lease he could speak. There was an assassination attempt. After the disasterous debate where the old man lost misearbly, he still tried to hold on and say he will still run so long he doesn't have any health conditions only to catch COVID the next day. And now we get all of the coconut memes. It's suffice to say that I'm pretty happy about Joe Biden dropping off the election and letting Kamala Harris run instead. I watched one of her speeches and granted my standards have been lowered from the last 8 years but I was like *wow, she makes sense and her rhetoric sounds effective and coherent.* I'm also just enjoying all of the coconut tree memes lol. I can't say that I'm 100% on board with Kamala (my heart is still with Bernie) but I am allowing myself to be at least a little hopeful. She also seems like she has good energy and in some ways I feel like I can see myself in her. I know it's the propoganda and the identity politics talking but hey, I'm not stupid, I'm human. Kamala come off as a genuine person even if I don't agree with her on various policy positions (don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to girly pop-ify things like genocide and I will go back to criticizing her after the election). I love her crazy laugh as it's something that I find myself having in common with her along with my South Asian heritage, and I can see my friends have a similar whimsical energy as her. It's also just generally positive and uplifting in times like this, not to mention effective in the face of egotistical facists like Trump who cannot stand the thought of being made fun of. I'm also living for all of the Brat edits of Kamala and her coconut tree speech as well as how that is being remixed with everything. I feel like if I were to run a presidential election, this is exactly how I would run it lol. While I am allowing myself to be more hopeful since things are looking up in the polls, in the amount of donations that her campaign is getting, and how there is a general vibe shift on people being more energized, I can recognize that this is probably what happened in 2008 with Obama where people got super hopeful with the first Black president but then not much changed. I'm hopeful, but not naive In a way, this feels like a combination of 2008 and 2016. It take the hopes of 2008 and the chaotic political meme culture of 2016, except this time it's more favorable with the left. It's also fun to watch the right wing media not know what to do or say since they feel like the rug has been pulled from under them. They spent 4 years attacking Biden and preparing their narratives against them. The best they have now last minute is to drag Kamala on her gender and race, and paint her as a cackling bimbo. I also think it was lowkey smart for Biden to annouce his drop off right after the RNC since they spent all of that time attacking him instead of Kamala. I feel like this video sums up my thoughts really well. There are people who are worried about the election despite the uptick in polls, energy, and money because they think that if America wasn't ready for the first White woman president, it sure has hell isn't ready for a WOC president. I can understand where the sentiment is coming from but I don't agree with it. Kamala doesn't have the same amount of political baggage as Hillary does and she does come off as more likeable and less condescending. The political landscape is very different after the Trump presidency and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And I think it's great that the campaign is hitting the Trump campaign where it hurts rather than taking the *when they go low, we go high* approach. For instance, I loved this political ad. My boomer dad is also a fan. I don't know what will come of this but all I can say is that the plot is thickening. The aliens are on the edge of their seats with all of the plot twists. There are no filler episodes.

Can't say she's my favorite but I'm enjoying all of the coconut memes on tiktok. People definitely seem more energized and optimistic which is nice. I can't say how this will end but this season of America has no filler episodes and the aliens are watching at the edge of their seats lmao.

Luxury Travel Since it's the summer, European Summer as a seasonal tiktok genre is back. For those of y'all who are not on the clock app, European Summer is basically when a bunch of influencers blog about travelling/ vacationing in Europe and also preparing for those travels. Some of it includes funny memes about the cultural differences you encounter as an American in Europe from the lack of water in a lot of places, being easily identifiable as an American, missing ice in drinks, and the lack of AC. Other times, you encounter Europeans complaining about the tourists and putting much of the blame on Americans. And then you encounter people debunking those stereotypes. You also encounter lots and lots of posts of people packing for their trips, the outfits that are trending that will help you blend in with the locals, the old money aesthetic, along with any other summer must haves that the influencers are pushing. There is lots of money that are to be made from the influencers. Since influencers are either making a lot of money or already come from money and thus are able to follow this path or are given PR packages to take trips for free, a lot of the travel content on the surface of travel tiktok (not including niches like budget travel) involve expensive experiences and other things that contributes to Tiktoks general overconsumption problem. And as much as I hate to admit it, I have been influenced. I found myself falling down this rabbit hole of people going to all inclusive resorts such as the Four Seasons chain, buying luxury and designer fashion in their trips in Europe (which makes sense if you're an American since these things can be thousands of dollars cheaper in places like France and Italy), doing entire spa days complete with a massage, facial, and mani pedi, eating at fancy restaurants, and over all just being super indulgent in every aspect of travel. I guess my facination of this type of content comes from the fact that my travel experiences are very different from the trips described above. Most of my international trips involved visiting family which isn't the most luxurious, relaxing, and indulgent experience. Apart from trips visiting family, I've had the following experiences: a trip to Costa Rica for a week with my parents, visiting Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur to see the Taj Mahal and then some, and my study abroad experience along with the week that I spent travelling by myself. Two of those trips weren't in first world countries and the Europe trip was mainly a budget trip that was paid using a scholarship and my solo trip involved me sleeping in hostels, sleeping in overnight busses, and generally finding ways to stretch my money to get the best experience. It's far from the luxury European summers that are all over Tiktok. Even when I travel domestically in the U.S. my family had a certain travel style where we didn't give af about the hotel since it was only a place to lie your head so we opted for the cheapest option, and we filled the day doing a million things to make the most of our time. Half of the times my family has stayed in motels rather than hotels. I've also been told by my friends that I can be a bit of an intense traveller who's always running around since I try to do like 3-4 things a day and wake up at like 6:30 am where aparrently the norm is doing 1-2 things and sleeping in a little more. And then I go into social media and I see a whole nother way of travelling where people are splurging on hotels, waking up at 10 am, and sightseeing at a much more leisurly pace. There isn't anything wrong with that, some people have different travel style and priorities. However, the all-inclusive resorts are something that both intrigue me and rub me weirdly at the same time. In a lot of these resorts, your stay can be like $500-$1000 a night and I guess with a price like that, the whole appeal of the trip is to stay at the hotel/resort and not get out of the area. And with the over the top rooms, the foods, and the beautiful waters and pools, I get the appeal. I think this also speaks to a part of me because I feel a little burnt out from my job because I haven't been using my PTO like that so there is a part of me that wants to take off for a few of days, relax and treat myself, and then come back. I guess when I was younger I was more prone to judge people who wanted to vacation and relax as opposed to travel and were more drawn to touristy things but as I'm getting older, I'm working, and I don't get like a summer vacation and spring break anymore, I can empathize with those sentiments more. Like don't get me wrong, I'm all for doing things that immerses you in local culture but I think you can still balance it out with a few touristy things to get the experience of a place and just plain enjoy yourself. For example, yes enjoy the local food of New York and go off the beaten path, but also don't feel weird about going to Time Square and the Empire State Building. You're never going to fully be a local unless you move there and I think while there is an authenticity in connecting to the local culture rather than getting into the consummerist traps of tourism, there is also authenticity in admitting that you're simply a tourist and you're here to enjoy yourself, not to sit there and cry about rent being raised in the subway. At the same time, I feel like the all inclusive resorts rubs me in a very weird way because of the way that it isolates you from the people who are living there so much so that you don't really see them and are surrounded in a bubble of other tourists, and really you're consuming probably the most palatable, waterred down version of that culture for amusment's sake rather than actually connecting to the place you're in and educating yourself in a way that challenges your world view and your capacity for empathy. There is also the economics of these all inclusive resorts and tourism which can on the surface seem like it's bringing in the wealth to the area like the Caribbean when really, the owners often live in a wealthy first world country and the money is still being funnelled into foreign pockets. Tourism can really disrupt the way of life for the locals and the industries of small businesses. And it's also just weird to me because why tf would I spend all this time and effort getting to a location only to stay put and not explore? If I wanted to relax, I could find ways to do that in Dallas by taking a couple days off work and having a staycation where I get a massage and my nails done instead of spending a few thousand dollars. If I really wanted to go to the beach, I could go to Galveston. Some of these one night stays at these resorts are comparable to my monthly rent. It's wild. And it also feel wasteful and over indulgent in my point of view because if I were to do this, I would be spending a shit ton of money on things that I don't value as much when it comes to my travel style. At the same time, I feel like I want to try this type of travel once to push my comfort zone and see how I feel about the experience. The other thing is just the wealth flexing and how that contrasts with global wealth inequallity caused by colonialism. I feel like just in general travel can get a bad rep in terms of how inaccessible and expensive it can be especially when you live in the US where international flights are expensive and as a result most people don't leave the country unless it's for work or it's to visit family. Maybe on the rare occasion you'll do a vacation but that's statistically not the case unless you're like upper middle class in which case those vacation trips are more regular. As much I can attest to travel being this thing that can open people up to the world and educate them by causing them to leave their bubble, travel in some instances can also insulate you but also give you the perception of yourself becoming more wordly and cultured. There are plenty of assholes out there who treat travel in hedonistic ways because they able to afford to do so and then they try to act all superior as if they're more educated and sophisticated for having visited more countries than you even though all they did is get drunk in different geographical locations and hang around other similarly rich people. There is a whole show where rich people just travel around and while the locations are wildly different, the vibe feel unchanging because they're always surrounded by the same people doing the same things. And that show is White Lotus. This also reminds me of a quote I had in a previous post that I took from a Youtube video comment section of a video essay I liked: I'd imagine that going to one of these all inclusive resorts would feel similarly to getting a pedicure for me. Sure, there isn't anything inherently wrong with your individual choice to treat yourself every now and then, but the dynamic just feel weird. I don't mind getting my nails done on my fingers, but getting my toes done feels really weird, not because I have a problem with feet, but it's the imagery of me sitting on a high chair looking down at a person kneeling before me scrubbing my feet and painting my toes. If someone is doing your nails, y'all are both on the same level and helping someone doing your nails doesn't have the same connotation as someone rubbing your feet. The former reminds me of girlhood and sleepovers where you take turns to help each other do each other's nails since most of us aren't ambidextrous and usually needs some help so that one hand doesn't look significantly more fucked up than the other. The later reminds me of a dynamic of servitude. And I think its especially heightened for me as a South Asian person since the feet are seen as the most unclean part of someone's body spiritually and to be below someone's feet or serving someone's feet is this connotation of being below them. Nevertheless, there is still this intrigue around luxury travel in the way that it sells this fantasy of relaxation and overindulgence. And I think I'm more susceptible to this fantasy now that I'm in the working world because of two reasons: 1. I have my own money now and disposible income, meaning I have the option to give into hyper consumerism more, and 2. I feel kind of burnt out from my job and I just want to unplug for a little bit. I find myself thinking about this quote from a previous post that was under a YouTube video I really enjoyed: I guess I'm going to end this post by saying that the bolded quote above is something that I think about a lot when I think about the context of my desires, it's authenticity, and the implications of those desires in a larger picture.

Therapy Notes 3: Provider I discussed much of what I wrote about in the post below in therapy: Basically it boils down to the fact that there is a part of me that wants to have a kid, but only in specific circumstances. And if those circumstances don't come into fruition, that's fine because I can still envision having a happy fulfilling life because I'm not going into the notion of having kids is going to fulfill me rather I want to build a fulfilling life and pour into / share that with someone. And even if that someone isn't born, well I still have a beautiful life that I've built for myself. I think that I have a more nuanced view of this matter after these three sessions and I feel like I have a good head on my shoulders in terms of decision making and consciously making this decision. I detailed this in a past post but the three scenarios where I can see myself having kids is as follows: We discussed these scenarios in therapy and talked about how this is coming from a place of wanting to be well prepared for the common challenges of parenthood as it relates to money, childcare, medical matters, education etc. The thing is, there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to parenthood and I'm going to be challenged. But while there are a lot of unknowns, it's best to prepare for the known challenges of having a kid so that you have the bandwith and capacity to deal with the curveballs. I think I also need to trust my ability to handle unknown situations or at the very least trust myself to be able to reach out and get the resources I need to handle said unknown situations. I do believe this inner sense of confidence is something that can come with age and challenging myself as I continue to grow and change as a person who is figuring out adulthood and as I navigate other life transitions over the years from switching careers, moving, travelling, and more. I do have faith in the person I become and I think I'll know more concretely where I stand with the topic of having kids when I am a bit older. Not only that, who knows how much the world can change in that time. The world has changed a lot in the past decade, albeit not in positive ways. But I'm sure good changes can happen too and a decade is a pretty long time. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not only did we discuss my ability to provide when it comes to having a kid but we also talked about how I would need to approach dating if I have the intention of potentially having a kid. I explored this in the same previous post I have been referring to: Basically, this boils down to the guy taking an active role in raising the kid and doing domestic labor, is reliable when for whatever reason I'm not able to follow through on these responsibilities (whether I'm struggling mentally, physically, or if I'm absent in the event of death), has thought through the implecations of having kids as carefully as I have and is compatible with my philosophies around parenthood, and has the material means of supporting the kid. In other words, I don't want to be alone in dealing with the struggles of parenthood materially in the form of monetary commitment and domestic duties or mentally regarding similar views and in terms of emotional support in challenging times We talked about how I feel about screening for such things in a relationship and having these standards. While I don't think there is a 100% chance of me knowing how a guy is going to react to being a father until the baby is here, I do believe there are signs in the relationship based on how he treats me, his attitude towards taking care of the home, and how living together would work. And of course I can have conversations with this guy regarding his thinking process around having a kid. All of that I'm comfortable with and it's also things I want to check out via living together before marrying someone even if having a kid is off the table. I also discussed the growing trend on the internet regarding traditional gender roles and *finding a provider man.* While there are some decent relationship advice out there regarding red flags to look out for, I also feel like a lot of dating advice nowadays is hyper individualistic but not particularly individualized in that it cannot take an individual's situation into nuanced consideration and can be blanket advice. I feel like nowadays there seems to be this notion that there is only one way that a healthy relationship can look, where a man provides financially 100% and the woman is in her receiving energy. There is nothing wrong with that so long as it's coming from a healthy place for both parties but that is not the format that feels authentic for everyone. I feel like for me personally, I like taking a more active role in the relationship and sometimes pay for dates because.... well I like doing nice things for my partner and he likes doing nice things for me and it's reciprocal. Like it's not coming from a pick me complex where we're both keeping score and tallying up when it's someone's turn to pitch in. But this notion around dating to find a provider man I feel is coming from a back lash of the girl-boss feminism of the 2010s and how we're idealizing being able to provide for a family on a single income since the economy is going to shit and more and more women don't want to work and instead wants to have the option to stay home and take care of the kids. A whole generation of women have been told that we can do it all. And while this is empowering, a lot of us also heard that we need to do it all, and it's fucking stressful if you don't have an adequate amount of support. So people are pushing back against this. However, the problem around getting a provider man who will pay all of the bills is that it sells a fantasy rather than a solution. The solution isn't that we all get out of the workforce to be stay at home wives and mothers so that we don't have to deal with the stress of working like we don't have a family and providing for a family as if we don't have a job and other plights of late stage capitalism by opting out of the system. The solution is having the option for affordable childcare, higher wages, maternity AND paternity leave, access to quality health care etc. Nevertheless, I feel like this type of advice to lock in a rich man and the singular model of what a healthy relationship looks like has an appeal with the way that it gives a formula and sense of predicatability on how to achieve desired results in an increasingly chaotic and unpredictable world and dating landscape. Sure I can brush some of this off as chronically online but we also need to acknowledge that this is coinciding with the prevalence of online dating where you're essentially meeting people from the void of strangers in max 100 mi radius rather than the natural filtration process of your social circle. Besides dating apps, I think there is also an inherent level of unpredicatbility when it comes to dating and it's natural for our human minds to want to find patterns to explain this madness, even if such pattern doesn't actually exist, for a sense of predicatabily in having desired outcomes. I think for me at least, feeling like I need to date with the attitude of *I need to find a rich provider man* is me trying to craft a sense of predicatability in a relatively unpredictable situation (because hey, we don't know how exactly the guy will react until the baby gets there). As I started unpacking this in therapy, it's obvious that the blind spot of this is that just because a guy provides monetarily doesn't mean he will actively be involved in the home and child rearing. And while I know this, I guess there is a part of me that wanted to hold on to this misconception because there is a part of me that thought well maybe if he can provide financially, he's also likely to provide in the home and emotionally as well. The other part of me is just being influenced by the trends around me at this period of time where traditional gender roles are having a resurgance. Basically, I need to touch grass lol.

I find myself contemplating motherhood a lot in terms of me trying to make more long term plans for my life. I'm trying to figure out if this is the path for me, if this is something I should do, and if this is something I'm even cut out for. I also want my thoughts to be organized in one place.

Fame I enjoyed this video and I got to thinking about my desires for fame as I grew up. I feel like my desire for fame was something that I always figured I'd outgrow at some point and it was something that I kept to myself growing up because I knew how crazy I would sound and how it's likely that it wasn't coming from the healthiest of places. I also felt embarrassed by this desire because of how unrealistic and delusional it was and how it kind of felt childish in the way that a lot of kids go through a brief phase of wanting to be an actor, singer, or I guess nowadays a Youtuber or streamer. I resonated with parts of this video to where I couldn't even feel called out. It didn't feel like a revelation slapping reality into me where it felt so obvious it hurt. Rather, it felt like a natural acknowledgement, sort of being able to see something you could make out the image of but now the fog has been cleared away and it feels crystal clear. I think as a kid who went through a lot of isolation and bullying in like elementary school, I had this fantasy of *sure I'm not popular now but I'll show them one day* and the whole concept of the ugly duckling turning into a swan physically and socially or the nerd that goes on to do amazing things once they have grown up. I think it's a narrative that I saw in the media and that gave me some sort of comfort during those times because it felt like my pain meant something and that it was setting me up for some thing greater than my peers. And sure, sufferring and challenges can aid in growth but unfortunately, sometimes there isn't a silver lining and trying to put a spin of toxic positivity on it instead of acknowledging *hey this sucks, it's a set back, let's feel everything we need to feel and move on* can be detrimental in it's own right. This happens when you reach a point in healing when you're past the point of survival mode where you're holding on to romanticizations and fantasies to keep you going amidst the storm. Along with the fame, I think other fantasies I indulged in for the topics of my day dreams included becoming a world traveller / digital nomad, and having a significant other so that I had a more positively exciting life. I envisioned myself as an actor because I had a creative inclination, I somewhat enjoyed it, and I felt like I was good at wearing various masks. News flash, I'm neurodivergent and masking is super common for girls. I was on the nose but also so far at the same time lol. And the other reason was because I didn't see any other South Asian people on screen and I wanted to make a difference in that representation. Social media became more of a thing as I moved into my teens and I too had a phase where I wanted to be a YouTuber. Part of it had to do with the content I was consuming but another part of it came from the notion that I could integrate travel blogging and my desire for fame, and the accessibility of it where I could theoretically get famous by doing little videos in my bedroom rather than having to know somone who knows someone after moving to L,A. As I grew up, the novelty of fame disappeared as I found other interests, as having your 15 minutes of fame becoming more common with internet virality, and once I realized that I hated the process of recording myself and editing footage. I also started finding out the realities of the entertainment industry from the labor exploitation of child stars, the dehumanization of people in the public eye, stalkers, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, the ways fame can stunt you, and detach you from reality, and so much more. The stalkers part freaks me tf out the most. I know a couple people who have medium sized social media following talk to me about retraining orders and how they're afraid for their safety on a regular basis. I couldn't live my life being that on edge regardless of how much love I might get from the public eye. Like the video said, it's takes a specific kind of person to seek fame out despite the consequences and a certain type of person to be able to sustain and even thrive in the limelight despite the challenges. And odds are that type of person is probably not a super healthy well rounded individual. That's not to say that you can't be famous and well adjusted, but it's to say that people who seek fame out for fame's sake are probably not those people and the way that people in the public eye are treated isn't for the weak. I can't say that I'm completely free from desiring fame. There is this tiny part of me that has this wish of being some sort of political leader, but of course I take it with a huge grain of salt due to the reasons discussed previously. Personally, I think it comes from the general sense of powerlessness I feel with the state of the world right now and I have this attitude from high school group projects where if I want something done right, I feel that I need to do it myself. I think about the types of things I would sign into laws or executive orders, how I would handle myself on a variety of topics and debates, and the impact I would like to have in the systems I want to implement. Also, I think Trump is causing me to have this hubris in the sense that I look at him and I'm like *if he can do everything wrong and be president, I could probably do a half decent job.* But the truth is that I don't have half the rizz Trump has, the long hours and constant media appearances will probably put me in a coma by month 2, and I don't have the privilege of being a rich straight white man so my behavior would probably be seen in a much more negative light despite having significantly less controversies. Trump could probably shoot someone and not lose voters but I think I would fall much more into the Obama category where everyone gets super worked up over a tan suit. So no, despite probably being more competent than Trump on numerous issues, I wouldn't be able to do what he does lol. And when I think about all of this and as I get older, I can't help but think about how fortuante I am to be a complete nobody. Fame, as I have gotten older, has moved from something I fantasize about to something that I more so fear due to the realities of it.

I've definitely felt the pressure to party and drink when i was first getting into college because the narrative is that you're living your life out to the fullest for those four years, and then you become a well adjusted calm adult because you get it all out of your system. Like it's a stage of development everyone HAS to go through or you didn't make the most of your time in your youth. Also going to a party school with a bunch of rich kids who are shielded from consequences doesn't help either lol. I was exploring this also in a sociology class before and I found those perspectives of the glamorization of binge drinking insightful, especially in my context of being in a party school with rich kids. There is definitely the socioeconomic status flexing of affording alcohol and living it up, but there is a socioeconomic status of getting so plastered to where your friends have to carry you back after you pass out or you end up going to rehab because there is this notion that you don't have to take responsibility for yourself and people can just swoop in and take care of you. Like to a middle class person, this shit can seem life endingly irresponsible. But for a certain kind of rich kid, going to rehab and getting so sloppily drunk to where you become other people's responsibility is like a trophy or badge of honor of having a good time. The glorification, and even the normalization of alcohol in various settings is crazy. You can even see it in some professional environments in certain industries like consulting and banking where you're considered weird and uptight if you don't drink and alcohol is seen as a solution to various problem, from stress to distracting yourself from your personal problems or crazy work load. There is also the relatability aspect of alcohol where there is the trope where the drunk messy character is considered more honest and "real" one as opposed to the uptight *always perfect* sober character trope. You also have kids who are like 18 who associate alcohol with faux adulthood / responsibility since there is an age limit so there is like an allure with drinking until you actually become of legal drinking age. And of course, even wealth isn't your motivating factor, there are preconcieved notions that alcohol makes you more fun and out there, that risk taking activities correlate with excitement and entertainment, and that to be young is to be wild and crazy. But let's be real, just because your inhibitions are lowered, sure for some people that means they're happier and more sociable but there are also plenty of people that when the mask drops, they're more aggressive, annoying and just down right crazy. Just because you feel more comfortable taking risks, doesn't mean that it will lead to an exciting fun story for you in the end. Drinking is really not all that it's cut out to be. If you aren't into it, your best bet is to find other people who aren't super immersed in it. I know it can seem like everyone's doing it, but not to sound like an old fart but there are plenty of people not engaging in this. Not to mention, that shit tastes like ass anyway.

You sound asexual but still heteroromantic with occasions where you feel sensually (but not sexually) attracted to women.

Promotion I got promoted at my job a couple days ago. The whole thing feels kind of empty tbh. I guess part of it has to do with how I overestimated how much of a raise I was going to get with a title change combined with how I don't really care about this job. The only people I told were my parents and my boyfriend. I told my parents because they're often worried about me because they think I'm lazy and because I didn't get my masters degree so that they get the idea that I'm advancing at work, that I'm fine, and that I'm continuing to make more money. I told my boyfriend because I talk to him everyday and the conversation came up. I have hung out with friends here and there. I thought of mentioning it but I decided not to since I have more interesting things to talk about and since this didn't quite feel meaningful enough to share. I got a 10% raise thus bringing my salary to a little over $75k. For reference, I live in Dallas and since it's not a high cost of living area, I would say it's decent money especially for someone out of college in less than 2 years. But it still doesn't feel like all that much. I think part of it is that I'm used to the life style that comes with making around $70k and making an extra $5k isn't going to impact my standard of living noticibly. I doubt I'm even going to notice it in my paychecks after you deduct tax and retirement and pay me twice in a month. And while I'm happy with my standard of living where I can afford a 1 bedroom alone and comfortably afford the life style I desire, part of me feels like $75k isn't a lot of money. I think if it weren't for the fact I don't have student loans thanks to scholarships, financial aid, and my parents helping out and for the fact that I don't have a car payment from using a hand me down, my financial situation would look very different. While I can put a decent amount of money aside for savings, I sometimes think that if I had a car payment and a student loan payment, I would barely be able to put anything away or I would be living paycheck to paycheck. I also find myself thinking about how I have coworkers who are supporting kids with the same paycheck I'm getting and I can only imagine the financial and quality of life implications that has. That's another thing, I think the reason that $75k doesn't feel like a lot of money is because I know I wouldn't be able to support a family under this income alone nor would I be able to buy a house, two symbollic goals people acheive in adulthood. And even if I have enough money for the down payment with the money I was privileged with saving while living at my parent's house, I wouldn't have enough money to comfortably afford the mortgage, the property tax, the insurance, or any mishaps that can occur that I would be responsible with fixing. While I don't think that homeownership is something I want to aspire to personally, it would be nice to have the option or financial ability. But I feel icky in feeling that $75k isn't a lot of money since that this is more than the household income of $60k (and I'm assuming they're factoring in the amount for a dual income household). I do know that I have a lot of privilege in the financial peace of mind I have from being able to afford things without panicking over my budget and being essentially debt free. I guess relative to people around me, especially compared to recent college grads and people my age in general that $75k is a lot. But in the absolute terms of financial milestones like being able to comfortably support a family and buy a house in a few years after renting, the signs of a "middle class," $75k isn't a lot. I found myself using my inflation calculator a lot as a way to further contexualize what I am feeling. I'm using: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl . According to this calculator, $75k in 2010 is equivalent to $108,705.99 now. $75k in 2018 is equivalent to $95,031.51 now. $75k in 2024 is equivalent to $51,745.08 in 2010 and $59,190.89 in 2018. For reference, I'm using the month of May for 2024 and the month of January for 2010 and 2018 to generate these numbers. I feel like the inflation calculator helps explains why $75k isn't hitting the way I thought it would based on my perception of that sum of money growing up. I guess the $75k number also hits different because I remember seeing studies on how happiness typically plateaus at that amount in the sense that making more money won't necessarily make you happier as it does at lower incomes. For example if you go from making $45k to $55k, that's going to make you much happier because that extra $10k is a lot in terms of helping you out on a day to day basis but going from $75k to $85k doesn't have the same increase in happiness and stability since by the time you're making that range of money, you're already in a relativly stable place and you have a good amount of disposible income to where you're living an abundant life style. However, it's important to note that this study was done in 2010 and a lot has changed since then financially so rather than $75k , the new target is more like $110k. And I think this adds to the uneasiness I have with the cost of living because I think back in 2010 or even 2018, $75k felt somewhat achievable with a college education but now, even with a college education $110k is questionable. Then again, I was also a child so maybe that had to do with me being able to fully grasp the numbers and how that translated into a monthly budget back then as well so idk.

Touching Grass Maybe this is an extention to me wanting to feel 17 again but part of me feels like things were better when I was a teenager because we touched grass more often then and I want to explore that notion more. I think part of it was because this was the world pre-pandemic and once we went into the lockdowns, socialization moved more into online spaces over real life. Because even back in like 2017, we still had social media and you could still make friends and find community online.I was still chronically online scrolling on Instagram looking at memes but now it's more so replaced with Youtube an Tiktok. But social media now feels very different from when I was in high school. There are so many times where I just stop scrolling because it feels too much and I feel like I need to go touch some grass because I'm being detached from reality which I didn't really encounter when I was a teenager. So let's review a few things I see online that makes me feel like I need to go touch grass: 1. Overconsumption: This includes restock videos for bathrooms and kitchens, makeup hauls, the normalization of botox, your fave influencer saying 100k is not a lot of money, life style inflation in the form of either day to day lives or in vacations, weddings, kids birthdays, special occasions etc. Basically, everything this channel addresses: 2. Dating Advice / glow up content: This is a both man and woman problem. On one end you have the alpha male pod cast bros and Andew Tate fanboys and on the other you have the "divine femininity," Spinkle Sprinkle, guru girlies that tell you how to get your life together. I'll also include faux spirituality here as well. The video below does a good job at dissecting this: 3. Anything old money ranging from old money fashion, the clean girl/vanilla girl aesthetic, and even European summer travel content. 4. The thin is in/ return to 2000s skinny and ED culture, wellness influencers, pilates princesses, that girl aesthetic, glow up content 5. The particular brand of NYC tiktokers who all live in Manhattan and don't factor in POC or any other NYC borough into their content and all go to the same influencer events and push the same microtrends and rebrand basic things like light blue nail polish as blueberry milk nails. 6. Fringe political beliefs becoming mainstream (think Qanon, Campists, leftys who mean well but are saying shit like supporting Hamas when they don't know wtf they are talking about, Moms for Liberty etc.) These are some things off the top of my head. I guess the other thing is that there are so many ego backlashes happening simultaneously from reverting back to old gender norms, idealizing old money, swapping body positivity with the thin is in mentality, issues with education and literacy, etc. There's also how social media has been getting more and more moneteized and it's not as much people just chilling and fucking around anymore. If I have to hear another influencer talk about how a regular person needs a "personal brand" I'm going to scream. Like bitch, do you mean having a personality lol, wtf are you talking about??!?!! I feel like sometimes when I'm online that i'm being constantly either marketted to for products I don't need or I'm being ideologically sold some kind of fantasy as the world around me burns. Finally, I think the other thing is that I lack a sense of community where I can really be myself at. I have work but I see my coworkers once a week and I'm in my corporate personality rather than just myself. Other than that, I really only hang out with people on a one on one basis and while that is nice, I do miss the exposure I got to a collective from when I was in school. And I think since I'm not socializing in the same way as I used to growing up, the bs you see on social media swoops in trying to fill up that void, whether it's in the form of using overconsumption to fufill your lack of community needs being met by getting an identity from the shit you own, or it's in the form of subscribing to some kind of guru who tries to sell you how relationships work via alpha male or sprinkle sprinkle logic. In conclusion, the internet doesn't feel as fun as it once was and sometimes I want to throw my router and smart phone into the trash and pretend like it's 1994 where everyone has to hang out irl.

The Election We've all seen the dumpster fire of a debate that Trump and Biden had last week. It was difficult to watch Biden not be able to speak in coherent sentences and Trump dodge every question and ramble on whatever he wanted to talk about. People are talking about Biden stepping down and having a primary for the Democrats because Biden's performance was just that bad. And I'm with that consensus. That men, both men, but especially Biden, is too old to be running and doesn't have the energy to motivate people to vote. As much as I care about experience in public service and records, even if Biden has that going for them, elections are determined by theatrics and performance. And if you look like an incompetant fool on stage who can't meaningfully push back against a facist threat, it doesn't mean shit for what's going on back stage regarding policy. We're also waaaay past policy actually making sense and factoring into voting decisions. You can argue that it was never as strong as theatrics even in the past considering the political literacy of the average voter who votes purely on vibes anyways but especially after 2016, those days are gone. I'm not happy with Biden's performance as president over the last 4 years, especially when it comes to foreign policy and the genocide in Gaza. But whlie I don't think Biden deserves to be president, Trump most definitely deserves to lose. And after that debate, I remember trying to go to sleep and feeling my life flash before my eyes like it felt when I found out Trump became president back in 2016. Prior to the 2016 election results, I often found myself thinking that maybe this is just a weird part of history that we're living through and when I wake up on Wednesday, November 9th, I'll wake up to a Clinton presidency and the whole thing will just be a funny memory. Then the Trump presidency happend, 4 years of countless scandals a pandemic, an insurrection, and so much more. I felt like I was on edge for those 4 years politically to the point of exhaustion and checking out. Biden's presidency happend and while things weren't calm and hunky dory, there was at least some semblance of normalcy that was incrementally getting better. Nevertheless, I feel like after the Trump presidency, you couldn't put the toothpaste back into the tube and well... the alt right is still around, we have a Qanon crazy in Congress, and a number of anti gay / trans bills being passed. So while there is an appearance of calm and some things getting better on the surgace, things still feel incredibly chaotic. And that shit is not about to slow down. Biden lost the debate miserably and the Supreme Court made a ruling that laws broken while a president is in office is given immunity, thus causing the president to be above the law. With the stakes being higher than ever, the Democrats are being as incompetent as ever. I know the Trump presidency was bad, but I think it's going to be a lot worse the second time around because of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's conservative majority frustrates me. But what infuriates me more is the incompetence of the left leaning people. Some fuckers seriously had to vote third party or vote for Harambe as a joke in 2016 instead of realizing the political ineffectiveness of such a strategy, give Trump the election, and then now he packed the court to where I no longer have the rights to my body, my free speech is compormised, and the president is above the law. RBG just haaaad to hold on to power instead of retiring during Obama's administration where she could've been replaced by another left leaning judge, and then when she inevitably died and in 2020, nonetheless, she got replaced by a conservative justice and now we have a 6-3 conservative super majority who are enacting a bunch of unpopular regressive rulings that are sending us back to the fucking 50s. Listen, I get why people don't like Hillary or Biden, but shit like this is what is literally at stake and being politically ineffective is basically enabling the far right who doesn't give a fuck about any norms or institutions and are wanting to run this whole country down to the ground, erode democracy, and instate their authoritarian regime. Trump is too stupid, egotistical, and incompetent to pull this off since he's not a well versed stateman but I'm afraid of his supporters and those in power who are more intelligent and strategic who will use Trump's cult of personality to uphold white christo-facism. The DNC just haaaad to put Hillary Clinton's uncharismatic ass up there on stage instead of going with Bernie because the DNC has an institutional neoliberal stick up their ass and can't recognize the positives of populism and how that can help with people's quality of life when it's used to create New Deal type policies instead of hating on women and minorities. And now the DNC is digging their heels in more with another uncharismatic candidate who also lost the debate miserably last week. This shit is going to keep going on and the chaos isn't going to end soon and definitely chapter of the chaos isn't going to end well. I'm trying to come to terms with this and not be a depressed doomer and generally keep my head high and avoid complacency. And not to toot my own horn, but sometimes I feel like a sane person who is outnumbered by crazy people to where I don't know where to even begin in terms of pushing back. I feel like nothing has changed since 2016 but also everything has changed since then. I miss life before 2016 but at the same time I know that it doesn't deserve to be viewed through the lens of rose toned glasses since there were a lot of problems back then as well. Nothing has changed since 2016 in respect to the political chaos, gun laws, access to health care, funding for education, or just generally, anything that could help people and aid in their quality of life. But also everything changed in the sense of what is considered normal in politics, cost of living sky rocketting to where most people cannot affort to buy a house, everything that came with the pandemic, and the consciousness around late stage capitalism. I just don't know where to go from here collectively or individually; collectively in where we're going as country that is so divided and chaotic, and individually in that what the direction of this country means for my personal decisions in my individual life going forward.