Psychoanalyzing Myself

[soos_mite_ah]

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. 

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4:47 -5:24 "But for the last four years, Kamala has managed to stay clean from the major tablooid scandals that Fox salivates over. Even the latest right wing attacks on Harris has fallen short of their usual frothy barrage of woman hating....They're shallow, which is great if you want to condescend to powerful women I guess. But if you want to truly influence the mainsteam, influence those peopel who didn't like Trump but also didn't like Hillary, or maybe this time around aren't impressed with Biden, ditsy and cackling doesn't sound that bad."

5:49-6:02 " By not hitting her seriously over the last four years, the national electorate isn't primed to turn against her with Pavlovian ease. They don't have a trigger phrase like Benghazi or sticky nickname like 'Crooked Hillary'."

 

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. 

[soos_mite_ah]

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

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"Phase 1: Locked in- Phase 1 is indicative that a crisis is building in a person's life. It is defined by a central commitment (or set of commitments) within a life structure that is no longer desired, but which is not yet perceived yet as a realistic target of change. This leads to a felt sense of powerlessness and being trapped. The most common locked in person environments are a) a relationship that is no longer wanted, or b) a career path that is highly pressured or dissatisfying. Less common examples are being in a social group that is felt to be dissonant with values or personality or being resident ina dangerous or threatening environment. Such commitments are typically adopted for extrinsic motivations, such as being pressured by others, passively drifting into a commitment, or being bounded by a sense of duty to the status quo. Phase 1 frequently involves compulsive activities such as drug or alcohol use, particularly in males, which may add to the sense of being out of control. "

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.*

On 6/29/2024 at 6:29 PM, soos_mite_ah said:

Phase 2A: Separation 

Dr. K describes this phase as when you physically and mentally check out of our situation because internally you don't want to do this anymore but externally, you feel like you're stuck in this life that you can't change. However, this isn't a problem to be solved, rather a phase you need to go through. The research cites the following:

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 "The separation phase is the most affectively intense period of crisis; emotions experienced may include guilt, sadness, anxiety, excitement, relief and shame, while self-evaluation may oscillate between upbeat self confidence and self-disgust. During Phase 2A, for those who initiated the separation and change, there is a gradual de-coupling of identity from commitments and roles, leading to a conscious accpetance that leaving is possible and a growing motivation for change and escape. For those who don't initiate the act of separation but instead are fired from their job or their partner leaves them, the physical act of sepation occurs prior to the cognitive-affective separation. Having lost the identity that defined them during Phase 1, but not having yet gained a new identity to replace it, a temprary 'identity vacuum' is experienced/ The sense of confusiont hat comes with this is described as anxiety provoking and disacociating." 

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. 

On 6/29/2024 at 6:29 PM, soos_mite_ah said:

Phase 2B: Time Out 

Here, while you do have still have the sense of separation of phase 2A, often times people think it's beneficial to take a break from what they're doing to figure their shit out. Often times, this involves going to a different location to get yourself out of your current life to think about what else you can do instead. People often get stuck in phase 2A because they are dead set on making their old life work and doubling down because you want to cling on to the stability of the old rather than seeing what else is out there and jumping into phase 2B.  The research cites the following : 

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"Phase 2B: Time Out; During this phase, a person intentionally takes time away to reflect on their transitional situation, to resolve painful emotions, and to develop a new foundation for their adult identity. Durign the time-out period, whether before or after final separation, a person often travels or moves to a different physical location in order to gain some distance and perspective on the troubles of Phase 2A. The reason that the Separation and Time Out phases are labelled as sub-phases of Phase 2 is that they are two parts of the dtachment process, and phase 2B sometimes comes before Phase 2A while in other cases if occurs after Phase 2A. Motivationally, this period is described by avoidance- the desire to not mind in to new commitments or pursue future aspirations." 

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: 

On 6/29/2024 at 6:29 PM, soos_mite_ah said:

Stage 3: Exploration 

Dr. K opens this section by quoting the research.

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Phase 3: Exploration- In this phase, new commiments and goals are proactively tried out and explored. A person now purpsoefully looks for ways of developing a life structure that is more aligned with their own values, aspirations, and inner identity than pre-crisis. For those whose crisis revolved around the demise of a relationship rather than job, Phase 3 typically involves experimentation with relationships, sexuality, and new partners. For those whose crisis revolved around the demise of a job or career, Phase 3 involves trying out new career aveneues and options for retraining. A clear change in identity is present at this stage- participants describe becoming increasingly comportable with exploring their identity in an open- ended way, allowing it to evolve and change rather th to fix on  to a particularly externally defined role. The self becomes a question rather than an answer, and a process rather than a product. 

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.  

On 6/29/2024 at 6:29 PM, soos_mite_ah said:

Stage 4: Rebuilding 

The research explains the following:

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"Phase 4: The phase of Rebuilding involves a renewed engagement with long-term commitments and clear plans. Motivationally, this period is defined by a stronger sense of intrinsic motivation than pre-crisis; work and home life are described as more inherently satisfying and enjoyable, and more reflective of personal interests and passions, compared with pre-crisis. Typically, Phase 4 intrinsic motivations are liked to an enhanced sense of purpose and meaning, often based around a unifying aspiration or dream that is perceived as valuabel and helpfil rather than purely instrumental. Identity in Phase 4, when compared to pre-crisis descriptions, is distinct by being more coherent; inner values, perferences, feelings and goals are now expressed in outward behavior, leading a stronger sense of authenticity."

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. 

[soos_mite_ah]

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. 

Edited September 30 by soos_mite_ah

[soos_mite_ah]

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. 

 

[soos_mite_ah]

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. 

[soos_mite_ah]

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. 

1.  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.
2. 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.
3. 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.  
4. 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. 
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. 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.”
10. 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.
11. 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
12.  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.
13. 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.
14.  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.
15. How do I feel about navigating uncertainty before and after this trip?
    •  Idk yet
16. 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.  
17.  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.