It is so easy to take for granted, the ease of a relationship that has lasted 106 months. That is almost 9 years, a little less than a quarter of my life. Our existences are so ingrained into each other’s lives that we cannot imagine how else we would exist otherwise.
I have never thought I could be with a person for this long. I just tire of people and things too easily, I tire of myself too. I often feel claustrophobic physically, psychologically, and within my own body and existence. To have another person who is my shadow, light and mirror seems too difficult to bear. In an alternate universe where I am alone, there would be no one to remind myself of my own immaturity and incompleteness, and I could remain in a depressive state for as long as I want without affecting another. But because she is there, I was coerced to learn how to love and care, to grow into someone I never thought I could be. I was so incapable of love, of true connection and intimacy. I still wouldn’t call myself a decent human being now, but at the very least there is a width and depth to me that never existed before.
If you knew us separately, it would have been inconceivable that we would be a couple, much less a couple that has lasted this long. Our personalities just seem antagonistic to each other, like we’re born to provoke each other to oblivion. We started celebrating monthly anniversaries precisely because I didn’t believe we would last, so every completed month together felt rare and precious. Even as we purchased a home together, we laid out the scenarios to handle to co-ownership in case we had to split. There is a minimum occupancy of 5 years in Singapore when we purchase a public flat, and that timeline felt extremely daunting and foreign to us.
Maybe this cognitive dissonance has kept us on our toes, not allowing us to fall into an ease and comfort like other long-term couples. It still exists even till now, in our 106th month together. I cannot comprehend how we can bear each other’s personalities in such close proximity.
She says she is glad I have a body — provoked by tv shows where personalities exist on an interface instead, also considering how often I tell her I wish I do not exist. She tells me if she were me she would find it difficult to exist too. This is the most indicative of her love and understanding towards me among everything else she has said. The way she comprehends my existential distress: only possible because of the mind she has.
I tell her I am glad she is born around me, within the same timeline and the same 50 kilometre-wide country. That our paths could cross, that we were not in existing relationships. Till today despite my ambivalent relationship with life itself, I still find it incredibly lucky that we had met, and that magically we still marvel in each other’s company in spite of our apparent incompatibilities.
Just now during breakfast I asked again, if we imagined us to as two separate individuals we knew in different social circles, would we have thought of us to be possible as a couple? Definitely not. We wouldn’t even have made it as platonic friends. I guess this is part of life that in inexplicable and complex: that we can’t neatly predict the outcome of putting two interacting complex entities together. How we continually respond to each other as we’re both growing as individuals as well as together as a couple, how there must be enough provocation so we continue to inspire the other, but not too much that it becomes an unbridgeable rift. People change, times change, sometimes the environment changes and that makes us change. Can a long-term relationship cope with all the changes and still remain thriving rather than coping?
I don’t think that is a given, and I also don’t believe in forcing a relationship to contain changes that it was never meant to contain. In a natural world, relationships form and end spontaneously. I don’t think there is value to make two people endure each other when they can flourish separately just because of some social norms.
Because of our fundamental beliefs about relationships and that we’re both people who value our individual growth, this relationship always had a precarious quality to it no matter how long we’ve been together or how intertwined we seem to be. We are not people who would compromise the integrity of our selves for the sake of the relationship. So there is a careful dance around each other, and we both innately want to push each other to places we’ve never been. There is a chance that one day she may take off, without me.
I think it is precisely this precariousness that makes us cherish our every day together, and it is this cherishing that makes the relationship thrive. Our relationship sustains, because we are both pessimists.
During the Obama years it felt like the world was on the cusp of great positive change – we were finally going to become people who are willing to care for other people, but in a short decade or so it feels like we’re now heading for civilisation collapse.
Human beings have always not been good at long-term thinking. We tend to prioritise short-term survival. Evolutionarily speaking, this makes sense. It is difficult to think about the future when we are coping with existential threats on a daily basis. But now our brains are still reacting as though we live in primal times. It is made a lot worse by mobile phones and social media as they have dramatically shortened our attention span and artificially increased our sense of threat (this internet stranger is attacking me). We need our attention span for many critical functions in life, including our capacity to think long term.
At this current rate, how likely it is for people to come together to do enough to reverse climate change, and to stop viruses from permanently damaging our health? First of all we would need people to be aware that there are these pressing issues, but the common response is denial. I actually understand this response too, things are so overwhelming that we have to be in denial in order to just survive our day to day existence. I too, wish to be in denial if it is cognitively possible.
Perhaps to seasoned buddhists, this is just like any day in existence. To them life is impermanent anyway, it makes no difference if we die in pandemics or wars, or if we die in our sleep. Even in the safest world possible, it doesn’t change the fact that life is impermanent.
As someone who was born in the 1980s in Singapore, it can feel like the world has suddenly turned hostile. But the reality is the world has always been hostile, and it is still very hostile in many parts of the world. These days, I keep reminding myself that we are not entitled to peace, safety or even justice. These were things that were brutally fought for. So the natural conditions of life means that it has always been precarious. I was just under the temporary illusion that the world was a safe and progressive place.
I spend a lot of time thinking about how I wish to live in this precarious world. I have no answers yet. All I know is how I don’t wish to live. I don’t wish to take anything for granted, so even if it means I live with a ton of added existential anxiety because I have to bear the reality of impermanence – that at any given time, anything can end – I am trying to co-exist with it. Who knew that our lives would permanently change in 2020? But again coming back to a mindset of a buddhist, my life could permanently change even without the existence of life-threatening viruses.
How would I like to live before my life as I know it ends? What truly infuses a sense that I have truly lived? It is very easy to become hedonistic in a world like this. But will that hedonism ultimately make me feel like I have lived? Does it matter how I feel about my existence anyway? Is the attempt to make a life well-lived rooted in some capitalistic value that everything must have value?
I like reading about the life of monastics and hermits, since they are mostly living a life that is contrary to the average human being. It just serves as a good reminder of how different human beings can be – it is easy to assume we are all the same and we want similar things – and how radically different people can live. It stretches my imagination of how I can think about my self and my life.
Last week I read about the 14th Dalai Lama: they have to spend a set amount of time meditating every day, what was surprising was that even as they receive visitors they are still practicing in their minds in order to fulfil their daily requirement.
I find it fascinating that many monastics spend hours of their lives practicing so that they can be awake the rest of the time, even as they reach their 80s or 90s they are still practicing. For some of them it is not just about meditating for themselves, their belief systems take other lifetimes into account, or that their practice can benefit other sentient beings. Regardless, it is provoking to me that for many of us it is about creating, creating, creating (yes I am guilty), whereas some people out there spend their entire lives doing “nothing” so that they can transform their minds.
As a self-identifying creative person, it is very difficult to escape the mindset that if I’m not creating I am not living. But I forget that when I invest time into mundane tasks and relationships, I am essentially creating myself too. Right now I feel like there is this experience of living, and I am not in it. I am trying to live according to my idea of what living should be, but I am not directly experiencing life. I am still living too much in my mind.
I feel like I am finally beginning to accept that the world has changed, and I have to adjust myself to living in this new reality. I no longer have aspirations. I just want to cultivate my psyche so that in difficult times I can have less psychological suffering on top of the actual physical suffering.
I am not optimistic about the future, as it stands I don’t think it is realistic to expect the system to change, and since the system wouldn’t change the people wouldn’t change either. At our core we are just mortal creatures terrified of losing what we have. If we don’t overcome our innate insecurity, we will keep on being violent people. There is no other outcome because how do you overcome a terrified brain? Every one of us has experienced some form of terror before. We can’t talk and teach that terror away. We have to change our selves fundamentally, to believe in a totally different world. That is a tall task for creatures that have been fighting for their survival since the beginning of time. We have been conditioned to kill, whether literally or metaphorically, to protect what is ours.
So the question remains, how do we exist meaningfully in an unsafe world? I guess some of us will find out the answer as this unfolds. Maybe many of us wouldn’t have the luxury of thinking about meaning and having a fulfilled existence. But until I lose that freedom I will continue to seek out various textures of richness and depth that is available in this existence. I think in any existence the only thing that truly survives, is who we had been.
I used to really dislike washing dishes. I would leave them in the sink, and they would feel overwhelming when I finally had to do them at the end of the day. Then I would hate doing them even more, because all I associate with washing dishes is that overwhelm.
That negative association with overwhelm and fatigue applies not only to washing dishes, but also to most chores or difficult tasks in life. I think being able to endure that discomfort when doing unpleasant things is a learnable skill and can be practised, but I didn’t learn it as a child, so as an adult I just got easily overwhelmed with everything. Having undiagnosed neurodivergence probably didn’t help.
But some time in the past couple of years I had learnt that in order to avoid procrastination we have to develop empathy for our future selves. Yes by putting off the dishes I am avoiding that discomfort for as long as I can, but I am adding to the suffering of my future self. It took a while – I started by seeing washing dishes as a game, or I put on music to make it more tolerable, eventually I stopped finding it a chore. I now wash dishes with a neutral state, and I no longer find it dreadful. Times like this I find the plasticity of the brain very fascinating.
I still find other things dreadful and overwhelming. I have “doom piles” accumulated in many places, and I find them impossible to sort and organise. These days I try to work on them in small doses, but I am not sure when will I ever get through them.
I think a lot of it is a self-regulation issue. People like me have never learnt to regulate ourselves, so we have very limited capacity to endure the unpleasant feelings that come with difficulties, slowness and boredom. Maybe enduring slowness and boredom is arguably the same thing. We get bored because it is slow. I had a lot of trouble with slowness in particularly: I couldn’t tolerate activities that required a lot of waiting – even yoga – I would get really upset when people were late, waiting for buses would drive me nuts, etc.
Social media and smart phones made it a lot of worse. Since we could keep scrolling for entertainment why would we read a book? Learning to draw seemed awful. I lost my ability to listen to music without doing anything else. As a child I used to be delighted even if I visited the same stationery shop every day, now I am perpetually bored even the plethora of shops in Singapore. I keep getting reminded of the reddit comment about novelty and the drug addict.
Though I’ve been reading a lot for the past 10-15 years, there was probably a decade or so in my life when I didn’t read a single book. Reading was a skill I had to pick up and get used to again. And till today it is still something I have to be very deliberate and intentional about. On many days it seems really difficult to slow down my brain enough to sit still and read paragraphs of linear black and white text. I mean, isn’t it more interesting to look at pictures on reddit?
If I didn’t deliberately set a routine to write every sunday, this would be totally something I would easily give up. Writing takes considerable focus. I was never very good at focusing except for periods of hyperfocus, but with existential depression and fatigue, doomscrolling simply seems more accessible than to sit for hours trying to access my subconscious, and then translating those thoughts into something comprehensible.
For many years of my life, the first thing I did in the morning was to consume the internet. When I was much younger it was probably yahoo, then design portals, livejournal, rss, twitter, and finally reddit.
It took me a long while, but I finally broke the habit on 11th October 2021, opting to write morning pages instead. Now, it feels like I have been writing morning pages since forever, but it has only been roughly threeish years.
I still scroll reddit a lot for the rest of the day though. Once in a while I get a gem like the story I shared above on novelty, and I love threads like these – they really add to my life so it is not without merit. I use it to “rest” after doing difficult tasks, but it slowly seeps more of my mental energy away. After “resting”, I find it difficult to embark any task that require a reservoir of mental energy. Our brains can only have so many dopamine hits before it gets worn out, and my eyes are exceptionally sensitive to light.
For a long while now also because of chronic health issues, I have lost the capacity to do anything that requires long periods of focused attention. Meditators will know that attention is something that can be cultivated with practice. I know people who have similarly lost the ability to read books because they are so used to to short-form content available on the internet. But most of the time skills can be picked up again.
As someone with adhd I feel like having focused attention for long periods of time is something so unattainable to me – especially now – because it is something I have not experienced for a long time, if ever. There are also a lot of life skills that I didn’t manage to pick up as a child, so they feel practically impossible.
But I look back at my life for the past few years and I know I have become a radically different person from the person I was for most of my life. So who is to say if enough time is given, what is possible? We don’t notice small changes taking place within us, and when we’re finally ready to act, it feels like a huge leap.
Yesterday, I resolved to have a “no reddit during day time” day. I wanted to see what else I would do instead. So I ended up working on my sketch book, and I read a book. Strangely by the time I allowed myself to chill with reddit, it felt uninteresting. I thought it would be difficult for me to cope, but it was not.
Though it felt like a radical act and a huge leap, it has been probably stewing on my mind for a very long time. This sort of internal change is very fascinating to me. What does it take to get from merely having an idea, to mulling about the impossibility for eons, before acting on it? And how much does it take from the first act for it to become so ingrained that we no longer think much of it?
I don’t know if I can keep up with my “no reddit” days, especially if I am experiencing stressful times. But I would like to try. I don’t know if I am being too unrealistic and nostalgic, but I miss the child in me that was contented with merely books and music, and looked forward to visiting the same stationery shop every day. There was no internet (at least for me) back then, and it didn’t feel unbearable. I am not one of those people who aspire to go off the grid or cut myself off from social media, but I would like it to not take such a huge chunk of my life. It is not because I believe it to be unhealthy per se, but I am curious about the side of myself that would emerge out of this, because I have been so reliant on it for so long.
I think it is important to continually seek inner-enrichment, because when the self changes, the spectrum of future possibilities widens. To me, that is the point of living: to use our selves as a vehicle to experience as much life as possible.
Though I’ve already done something similar for people & blogs, I thought it could be interesting to answer similar questions in a different slice of time after being tagged by Naz Hamid for the blog questions challenge. Also I want to be a good sport for the indieweb, so here goes:
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
I had my first serious personal website built with greymatter around the year 2000. I probably saw some people using greymatter, and followed suit. Concurrently a colleague introduced me to livejournal, which set the precedence for the tone of writing that still exists on this website today. I saw “blogging” as a form of online public journalling, and I needed a place where I can express my thoughts freely. I struggle to express myself verbally, so writing is very cathartic to me. Only upon hindsight, I realised the preference to live on the internet and my website versus physical reality is a form of neurodivergence. Most people prefer real-life interactions, I very much prefer asynchronous interactions. Blogging is not casual to me, it is my way of life and it is continuously making my existence.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
I am using wordpress, and I wrote an essay explaining why. But the short gist is that I wanted a dynamic website so I can have bi-directional links and dynamic queries, so a flat file system wouldn’t work for me.
Sadly the reputation of wordpress has tanked further since, but I am loyal to Pods the plugin not wordpress, so I’ll be happy to follow if Pods makes a move. That said, wordpress is the hard work of hundreds of people, it is unfortunate that it is bearing so much damage simply because of one person.
Have you blogged on other platforms before?
Yes chronologically: greymatter, livejournal, vox, posterous, jekyll. I got tired of platforms shutting down, and I also didn’t want to have to build my website every time I publish or make changes, so I had hoped wordpress would be my forever home.
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
I mostly write my posts in the wordpress editor, I like that I can check the formatting as I go. People complain about gutenberg, but I have no issues with it. Once in a while I use iA Writer to write something that requires complete focus in a light meditative state.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
Inspiration is not a regular occurrence for me because of my mental and physical health. So I set myself a routine to write every sunday, rain or shine. It is the easiest for me to write early in the morning once I wake up and make my morning coffee.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
Most of the time, I publish it immediately after doing a quick scan once I am done with writing. I prefer to write posts that are more stream of consciousness. But there have been instances when I had to complete the post in multiple sittings, or the topic may be potentially controversial, or I was trying to express a complex idea – those instances I may let it simmer for a few days, but almost never longer than that.
What are you generally interested in writing about?
I write mostly about my self. It sounds narcissistic I know. But most of us tend to put up masks or false fronts because of societal conditions. I think we need to witness more of the depth and difference that humanity can offer, yet we tend to seek out popularity and acceptance by writing posts that can cater the masses. Writing as honestly as I can about my self is my way of being the change I want: I want more of these writing to exist in this world too, so more people can feel less existentially lonely, and that we need not be so afraid to be our selves.
I also personally enjoy it when people write about themselves or obscure topics. Popular writing that cater to the mass are mostly regurgitating mainstream narratives, so I don’t find it interesting. I want to live in an interesting world that surprises me.
Throughout my life I have come across vulnerable or posts with rare topics that have greatly helped me in my personal journey as a human being. I wish to pay this forward.
Who are you writing for?
My self, again. My primary goal is to document my life and my state of mind. I find the process of looking back at some of my old entries enlightening, because I tend to forget what I’ve learnt and who I was. But through writing for myself, I find that the writing resonates with people who needs it the most: people who struggle and cope with similar issues. I think it is a greatly healing experience to know that we are not alone.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
I wish to surface the existing content of this blog in more meaningful ways. I think it is a pity that we are conditioned to consume content chronologically, only favouring the latest and the trending. But for long running blogs like mine, there are probably buried gems here and there, unable to see light because many blogs can only be navigated chronologically. There could be a great post hiding five years back, but nobody is going to browse the archives that way. Right now I bundle some of my posts together and call them playlists, we could also browse them by tags and “on this day“. Are there more ways?
I have also been wanting to experiment with more content forms apart from a long linear essay – I loved tappable stories and interactive essays for example – but I am limited by my health. Who knows, though?
Tag ‘em.
I am shy about tagging people, so I’ll only tag one person I know who wouldn’t mind being tagged.
I am still recovering from my failed root canal (and still have one visit to complete the procedure), so I have been hesitant in taking up my regular exercise again because I don’t want to distract my immune system from my tooth’s healing. So when I went to the gym today for the first time in weeks I tried to do only the bare minimum required – also known as the minimum effective dose. It may come as a surprise how little time we truly need at the gym to gain strength and muscle. I think it is all about sending our bodies the right signals. With the body it is almost always use it or lose it. So even though we are stressing our bodies for merely a short while, we are still sending a signal that our muscles are still needed.
I find the concept of the minimum effective dose fascinating. It can be applied to many areas in life, especially when it comes to learning. There are many people who tend to believe that it is all or nothing when it comes to practising things. It is either we commit hours to something, or else it is better to not start at all.
Nobody says we have to be good at everything we do. We can just seek a little improvement continuously moment by moment versus nothing at all. The Japanese call it kaizen. There was a time when I was very busy with work so I could only read 8 minutes a day, but 8 minutes a day adds up to 240 minutes a month which is enough to finish 1-2 books. That is 12-24 books a year, which is tremendously better than 0. These days even if I can only read 5 minutes before bed, I do it anyway.
I am actually one of those all or nothing people, that is why I tend to burn out on every thing I try to do. I had to go through so many years of repeated burn outs and bad health to barely learn how to do things moderately. I am still bad at it. But I remind myself, kaizen.
This year I bought a hobonichi techo in an attempt to maintain a visual journal. I try to make an ugly sketch every day. But some days I miss it, but I try to make up for it. So far I have been completed all 31 days of January:
left: antibiotics I had to take for my tooth infection right: my elevated heart rate in the mornings during my infection
I am not actively trying to improve my drawing. I just thought it would be meaningful to have a visual record of my year. It takes just 5 minutes or less – the minimum effective dose for me to maintain a drawing practice.
This is similar to how I finally learnt to exercise after trying for decades without success. I kept trying to do something out of my own league – obviously I didn’t know myself very well. I tried going to the gym, tried running before I even walked. It turns out all I needed was to do the minimum – walking for 15 minutes. Learning anything requires a positive feedback loop, and in order to create one, we have to know where is our threshold before it feels too exhausting.
In a world like this, every day life can be exhausting. I have spent countless days languishing because everything just seems too difficult to start and do. But instead of trying to optimise or maximise everything, what if I do the minimum for all the things I wish to do instead?
I think it can be powerful to remind ourselves how small amounts can really add up and compound over time, versus feeling the futility that comes with trying to do something really daunting.
Not every blog post has to be a philosophical essay. I can write small things, draw small things, exercise in small doses. What are the minimum effective doses for me to lead a fulfilling enough life?
Have you heard of the profession, “endodontist” before? I have not, until very recently. After suffering for a couple of decades from chronic illness, I have come to realise it is truly somewhat a blessing to not be in the know, especially when it comes to medical terms. There are reasons why we get to learn about these things.
That is also utterly why I am a lot more covid cautious and health conscious than the average person. I mean, why would I care about my sleep, diet, exercise, unless I have reasons to? Everybody thinks they can sleep at 4am and wake up at 8am until they cannot. That they can eat whatever they want. Nobody wants to be wearing a n95 mask and live in fear of getting infected by a virus, seriously – not even the zerocovid community. Do we not want to live our lives? Do we not want to move on? Trust me, 99% of us do. Except we would rather live a much more limited life right now rather than to potentially lose everything we have. Why are we so afraid of this potential?
Because many of us have lost it once before. I have had. Wearing a n95 mask that squeezes my face into a tight bunch and leaves enduring marks later, and being subjected to ridicule – I would very much prefer that than to lose my ability to even get out of bed. Lying in bed isn’t even that bad compared to the amount of piercing pain and nausea I have had to endure during my migraines.
It turns out my root canal has failed, much to my disappointment and fear. Fear of both going to the dentist and risking covid exposure again. After wearing a mask everywhere to protect my respiratory system it feels really scary to open my mouth wide open during an hour long procedure with no information about the air quality.
I have since learnt albeit unwillingly that there are specialists who perform root canals. I was in so much pain when I first got to the dentist (again very unwillingly and with much fear) that when she said I needed a root canal I didn’t hesitate much. It didn’t occur to me I should research more about it. There wasn’t a doubt that it would be unsuccessful. I had a root canal in the US once, and it went without a hitch.
The original dentist prescribed me some antibiotics and offered to retreat the root canal after the swelling had subsided. But after a few hours of mulling over it I decided I just wanted to give myself the best shot possible at recovery, so I chose to seek retreatment at an endodontist.
Thanks to reddit I learnt that apart from going through specialist training for a few years, they have powerful microscopes and they perform the procedure multiple times a day versus a dentist who may have a few a week. That sort of experience and muscle memory cannot be easily matched. I believe in the brain’s capacity to form a deep reservoir of knowledge and pattern recognition.
I had to go through the whole slog of cold-messaging google search results to see if there are endodontists that are willing to accommodate to my request for n95 masking, and also for the first slot in the morning for the air to be as uncontaminated as possible. I am almost always treated as a hypochondriac, so it is an unpleasant experience. I had to mentally prepare myself for a negative outcome – that perhaps I would have to take some covid exposure risk.
How likely that I would be infected at the dentist? I have read so many horror stories of people who diligently mask everywhere only to get covid at a medical appointment. 40% of transmission is asymptomatic, so it is not safe just because someone is not visibly sick. Surgical masks are only partially effective.
Thankfully, within my first 6 messages, there were at least 2 who responded that they were willing to accommodate me with zero resistance. It made my week, if not month, because it restored some of my faith in humanity. For me, it is not about whether they believe in my level of precautions – I no longer have faith in medical professionals’ scientific knowledge – it is whether they believe in making their patient as psychologically safe as possible. Ultimately being unwilling to be physically uncomfortable for an hour or so means they place their own individual comfort and ease above our welfare.
What do they value: being comfortable, or being compassionate?
At the endodontist even the receptionist was donned in a n95 (not my requirement). Apparently the endodontist requested them to do so. Air purifiers were running in both the waiting area and in the surgery room. The co2 hovered around 700+ppm, which demonstrates some level of filtration – better than many places.
I was on the verge of giving up on seeking an endodontist who was willing to accommodate, because it would clearly limit my pool of options, and therefore limit my chances of recovery. Psychological stamina is required to be persistent and trying, and I have very little of it. Thankfully my partner convinced me to keep at it. I could re-evaluate my options again if there were truly none.
I am so glad my partner kept me going. I think it is important to be philosophically aligned with the person who is treating us, if possible. Sometimes it can be a long journey, and we don’t want to be exhausted just being uncomfortable and in conflict with them.
I guess I have always naively assumed that medical professionals have a baseline compassion, but my chronic illness and the pandemic have taught me otherwise. Compassion is a very rare quality, condescension and being dismissive of our concerns are the norm.
I have also always thought that compassion is an emotional quality, but in recent times I think of it as an intellectual quality. We don’t have to feel for the other, we can simply intellectually believe in doing what is right for the person. In the context of medicine, if it improves the patient’s outcomes – why not?
But in this exhausting world, every individual has finite resources to cope. Understanding this makes me have even more gratitude for the accommodations I have been given by both my endodontist and dentist. I am under no illusions that they believed in why I needed those accommodations, but I acknowledge their effort in providing a psychologically safe environment for me.
I’ve been thinking a lot of about how I want to live in a world that is crumbling. What are the blog posts I would like to write. What is the kind of website I want to upkeep. What do I want to express, and embody? There is always a certain level of self-consciousness. Who wants to read about a failed root canal? And here I am, writing about my fears and exhaustion with covid yet again.
But at the core, this website has always been about my self, and for my self. Having an audience is a bonus. The self-consciousness exists precisely because nobody else is writing about these things. People mostly prefer to read about optimistic and positive things, and I am a self-professed doomer and wet-blanket.
But personally it is upsetting for me that there are not many people are writing about these things. Because it is important to acknowledge that they exist. Even if nobody else would do so, I want at least acknowledge I exist, and my feelings are valid.
I had the second sitting of my root canal last tuesday, and while the procedure itself went pretty well, I developed some pain after a few hours had passed. I asked the dentist and also read that it can be “normal” to feel pain for a few days, so I waited it out.
Now it has been five days after, and I am sitting here with a swollen upper lip with my oura ring telling me I have been running a low grade fever overnight. The pain overall has gotten better progressively though, so I am desperately hoping I’ve turned a corner and I am not going to die of sepsis (half-joking).
It is difficult and stressful for me to visit the dentist again, because I am more afraid of getting covid than having a potential infection. Each time I have to beg for the first slot of the day, request that they wear n95s, be psychologically uncomfortable because I seem to be asking so much of them in order to protect my own health, make sure I apply enough nose sprays and mouth wash before and after, then hope I don’t show signs of having a covid infection the few days after. This seems to be my permanent reality for medical visits now. I am very conflict adverse, so making requests stresses me out a lot. I wish I can otherwise.
And this is just teeth (although bad oral health can cause heart disease and cancer.) I can’t imagine if I develop more pressing health issues. Someone on mastodon told me that nobody masked in his chemo ward, so even a basic level of healthcare is no longer afforded to people who are obviously immunocompromised. I guess this is the world we live in now. Advocating for our own health is difficult, because it is against the norm. Society conditions us to simply let things happen to us.
So I have been pretty unwell for the past few days. I have no physical or mental energy to do anything except eat and sleep. I recovered from the first sitting of my root canal within a day or two so this is unexpected, since usually it is the first sitting that is more difficult to recover from as the tooth was just infected.
I am frustrated because exercise is my coping mechanism. I am tired of being tired and perpetually haunted by a pain that is not severe enough to be concerning, and yet it is still bothersome and disabling. At this point I think about the story of the second arrow: where there is the actual physical suffering, and the suffering caused by our response to the original suffering.
This was when I realised that knowing how to be, when ill, is also a skill. I can be sick and be equanimous about it, letting myself focus on healing and be zen whatever comes, or I can be angry and frustrated on top of being ill.
I am obviously angry and frustrated. Especially when I was expecting 2-3 days of recuperating time, not almost a week and counting. I can’t relax into my illness, worrying, fretting and googling at every other moment.
But I can see that there’s this other way of being, even if it is inaccessible to me right now. And this other way of being is not only necessary during times of illness, but also as a way to live in this horribly illogical world. If I have a terminal disease and have only months to live, I wouldn’t want to spend that time being angry and frustrated. I would want to spend every moment doing things that are meaningful to me, or savour moments that my health would permit, or at least be at peace. This is also how I feel about trying to live in this decaying world.
My migraines are always reminding me that I am human. Because when a migraine comes, I have to stop my work, my reading, my routine, so it’s always making me humble, helping me realise I’m mortal and vulnerable. Maybe if I was 100% healthy and energetic I couldn’t have become a writer. — source
I have personally written similar things in my private journal before: having had this clarity that I would have become a very different person if I wasn’t chronically ill. I am not saying that my suffering has meaning (I hate it when people say this), but just a recognition that there would simply be a different outcome.
My chronic illness and my writing are deeply intertwined. It is writing that has allowed me to at least express some of my actual reality so that my existence can be real instead of completely disappearing into people’s projections of me. That there is a part of this world that cannot erase and deny my illness. And I appreciate that even as I am sitting here with a painful swollen lip and exhaustion I am still able to write.
Being ill can be clarifying. There are no longer that many distractions, the distractions we seek when we are able and healthy. It is just us, our exhausted minds and our sick bodies. It is emptying. I have already become a lot slower as I age, but sickness almost makes time stop. I feel helpless but yet to an extent it is kind of liberating, because without energy there is nothing I can do that I think I should have done. There is very little doing, only being. I don’t like being a sick person, but I feel like I have to learn to be sick in order to not let this time become a waste. It is ironic I know, that if I could at least learn to let go I am still learning something even when I am doing nothing. So much for being zen.
Maybe one day I’ll stop thinking in terms of value and meaning. But today is not the day.
Last year I wrote that I wanted to be able to do one pull up. This year, I just want the year to progress uneventfully.
I first started using the word “uneventful” when my traditional chinese medicine physician asked if I had any symptoms between my visits: there were rare times when I would tell her I didn’t have any symptoms in the couple of weeks since I last saw her, and she would respond, “oh so it was uneventful?” – that was when I learnt that having an “uneventful” time was actually a good thing.
Once upon a time I read “Dark Mattter” by Blake Crouch (some spoilers incoming). I became thoroughly disturbed that the protagonist lost his wife because of his travel between parallel universes. The version of his wife in his new parallel universe was not married to him or in love with him. My partner has this tendency to have wild crazy dreams so we joked that she was visiting some parallel universes. Since reading this book I started this habit of whispering to her before we sleep: please find me tomorrow – imploring her to remember to come back to us regardless of where she travelled during her dreams because I don’t want to wake up in a world where this version of her doesn’t exist.
Yes I know the book is just a work of fiction, and it is highly unlikely that my partner would just randomly disappear the next day – even if this world is a simulation it wouldn’t be so glitchy I hope – but the point is not that this would actually happen in reality, but it is a little ritual to remind the both of us that I greatly love and value this precise version of her in this precise version of reality, and wouldn’t want it any way else.
Some time after ingesting the meaning behind the word, “uneventful”, I would add on hope tomorrow is uneventful along with please find me tomorrow, in that small window before we fall asleep.
Over the past few years I have woken up to heartbreaking messages, received terrifying phone calls, endured several stressful events, while the rapidly warming world broke out in a pandemic, waged several wars, and continues to have one major disaster after another, with many people-in-power and the general populace exhibiting very disturbing behaviour.
Like my bouts of health that were “uneventful”, I have personally come to realise it is precious to have days when nothing much is happening. In the world we are in now, being able to go about our days without much pain, anxiety, worry or sadness is almost like a miracle.
I like days when I don’t receive any texts or phone calls, don’t experience that awful sinking feeling when there is terrible news, don’t have pain plaguing my body, don’t have situations where I am worrying about someone, and I am able to breathe easily and plentifully.
I hope to have many of these uneventful days in 2025, is that too much to ask for?
Maybe it is just ageing, or simply an outcome of what I have personally been through in life. Lately I have found myself thinking more and more that I don’t wish to ask much out of life or my life anymore, I don’t want the gods to become angry (metaphorically, I am not a believer) because I have been too greedy. I don’t even dare to aspire towards more fitness goals. I would be glad if my health stayed in its status quo: allowing me to move around, breathe, eat, sleep and poop without much trouble. I feel like with age and god knows what systemic damage I have suffered with covid and other random infections, I’ve been developing niggling aches and pains here and there. After years of uneventful dental visits with reasonably average dental hygiene I have suddenly needed a root canal late last year, and since reading about people losing their teeth after covid I cannot help but wonder about the state of my teeth, if I would begin to suffer more dental issues in the oncoming years. The virus is known to compromise the immune system, and a functioning immune system is required for dental health. Yes my bout of covid was in 2023, but who knows what it has cascaded within my body?
At this rate my teeth is the least of my worries, considering all the existential threats that the world is facing right now.
So I just want average teeth with average health and live in an average world.
Seems really so simple, but it looks like more improbable as time passes by. Nevertheless, allow me to continue to be greedy: may I have an uneventful year this year.
Every year I tell myself I should start writing this post earlier so I don’t have to rush at the last minute, but every year I fail to do so. Next year, perhaps. I find trying to do a review post meaningful for myself, because I tend to believe that nothing much happened and the whole year went in a blur, but going through my documented archives may prove otherwise.
This year I had a system in Obsidian. I would write the day’s highlight in my daily note, then a weekly highlight would be chosen from that week’s daily highlights which would be recorded in my weekly note, then from my weekly highlights I would choose a highlight to represent a month in my monthly note, and finally the yearly note would contain all the monthly highlights. This way, I can quickly scan my yearly note to have a rough gist of what happened that year. I’ll take the opportunity of this post to test if this system works.
losing a friend
The best and worst day of 2024 both happened in May. I lost my friend, and managed to accomplish the one-pull up I aspired to do when I started 2024. Till now I am not sure if I have come to terms with that loss, and what it actually means to me. I feel like it is locked in some chamber I may not access for the rest of my life, and I know there will be more of these chambers forthcoming in the time to come.
one pull up & strength-training
I have since improved my pull-ups since I did my first unexpected pull-up, but till date I have not been able to do a strict pull-up. I’ll still take this as a win considering I have only strength-trained for a year. My progress has not been linear, and is often derailed by travel and sickness. I think I’ve become more accepting of setbacks and ill health this year. My body has done a lot for me despite not being in the best of condition for various reasons, and when I am lucid I feel very thankful that on most days I am still able to walk around painlessly and breathe deeply. Despite the uneven progress, this is the first year in my life I feel physically strong. It is not just about fitness, but the breaking of the preconceptions of myself.
Mid this year I also joined a gym that has branches peppered all over Singapore, so I had some fun checking out different locations.
606 days covid free
I count the number of days I have been covid-free on Obsidian. I am not one of those people who regularly test even when they have no symptoms, so I cannot account for asymptomatic infections. However, my biometrics are sensitive to any form of stress, and I am 98% certain even if I had asymptomatic covid it would show up on them —recently I had a tooth infection which messed up my heart rate pretty badly — so as far as I know I have been 606 days covid free.
Considering the state of the world where there are now perpetual waves with people confidently walking around infected, and that I still travel, go out pretty frequently, go to the gym, I think this is quite a miracle for me. I don’t expect magic out of my mostly one-way masking and covid protocol.
dysautonomia vs migraines
Prior to covid I would get a migraine each time I experience too much stress. Post-covid the migraines lessened considerably, and instead now I get an elevated heart rate. Because of my regular aerobic activity my normal walking and standing heart rate is in the 70s to 80s, but when I suffer an episode it goes to 130s without exertion. I also have trouble maintaining electrolyte balance in my body. It is quite disturbing to know that my body is unable to perform its autonomic functions at times, but I am just glad it is not worse.
am i actually autistic?
After very belatedly realising I may have adhd in 2023, 2024 is the year I started to consider if I could be autistic. So many things started to make sense to me. I started to become more self-compassionate towards my lifelong sensory difficulties instead of thinking I am a wuss.
103 months together
Without my partner I am not sure who I’ll be and what I can do, because she gives me the stability and sense of safety I need in my life. I can’t begin to describe what it is like to have someone who knows me intimately for the last 8 years – the fact that she knows so much of me and yet she still loves me. I could endure so many difficult moments because she was there unflinchingly with me. She is my world, and my inspiration.
matcha obsession
Since having a very delicious cup of matcha latte over in Hong Kong I have been having a matcha obsession. I’ve basically tried all the matcha lattes available in Singapore, and went to try different matcha lattes in Chiang Mai.
Three-quarters of the year in I briefly flirted with vector digital art:
But thereafter I lost momentum. It is difficult to maintain a creative spirit amidst everything that is going on, including my own chronic health struggles.
…not including instagram and other miscellaneous posts. In feb I declared that I was going to really microblog, but it turns out even stream-of-consciousness notes require considerable focus too. However, it did give me the space to write about stuff I wouldn’t have typically written as a blog post, such as “life is all about novelty” – a note that was written very casually but has significant implications on my life. For some reason some things just don’t feel like a blog post but they end up having some weight on their own.
I also created new categories for notes, like “place“, and “sketchbook“. The former is for me to document places I like, and the latter is to document pages of my sketchbook that I may not post on instagram. As usual I lost momentum, but who knows what the new year may bring?
…vs 619km last year. I didn’t run as much this year compared to last, mostly because I exercised more in moderation this year exercising every alternate day instead of potentially every day, and half of my exercise time goes to strength training. There was also some down time due to health issues. After running mostly 5km the entire year I started increasing mileage around September, and managed to hit 8.6km in October.
6,479,889 steps walked…
vs 5,870,982 steps walked in 2023. Despite running less I did try to get my steps in nevertheless. A lot of these are done walking in place in front of the TV post-meals for at least 30 minutes.
55 books read
Some of these are art books, but art books are also books right? There have been long stretches when I had felt too mentally exhausted to read, so I am glad I still managed to average a book a week. I feel like my ability to read a book without falling asleep has decreased as I age. It could also be that I seem to have run out of truly great books to read, or I just don’t have the patience to try to discover them anymore.
other notable mentions
streaks: 1736 days of bullet journalling, 1178 days of morning pages, 371 days of obsidian daily notes, 601 days of 5000 steps, 153 days of 10,000 steps
This is why aspirations have to be achievable. I don’t think I managed any of those. Maybe it is better to stick to fitness goals.
overall sentiment
I struggled a lot with myself this year – something that is obvious if we look at some of the posts I’ve written. At the final day of the year, I feel like I am still struggling, but less. I think considering that I may be autistic is a big part of easing some of that struggle, and the other part is contemplating on the psychology of my suffering. But sometimes I feel my consciousness is a bottomless pit: there is always something deeper, darker, and more complex to work on. I think trying to know oneself is a dangerous journey, sometimes I cannot cope with knowing too much of myself, or anybody.
2024 is about learning how to live in a world that is slowly (or rapidly, depending on who you ask) getting destroyed. It is like the fire is burning but I have to learn how to somehow find ways to live despite everything is burning down around me, while most other people are either unaware or in denial.
I can’t help but feel like each year that passes now could be the last good year. I didn’t know 2019 would be the last pandemic free year, and I don’t know when will be the last year when there is still abundant food and water in most places.
I guess it is entirely reasonable to struggle in these conditions, and I foresee more struggling, but perhaps there is a way I can struggle with grace. Is this my wishful thinking?
Nevertheless, despite everything I still managed to live quite a bit this past year, I must at least acknowledge this. I’m trying to live as much as I can before the fire gets nearer.
I still wish I was a better friend to the friend I had lost. This haunts me every single day since she was gone. But this is what it means to live with loss and grief – and I accept it.
note: This is an unedited post written within a day, so please pardon me for the unwieldiness.
Chiang Mai is a city that is buzzing with creative energy, though I am not sure why. Is it the long history of their hill tribes and their crafts? I thought I’ll share some of the scenes that caught my eye:
Apart from selling these beautiful handpainted journals, one can paint their own at the shop with the materials provided. There are also a ton of other fun craft workshops one can do at this artists’ village:
Sometimes I’ll come across some random unexpected art while walking on the street:
I love handpainted signs like this:
This market i known for fabric crafts, so it was very interesting to see a fruit jam seller using sewing for his signage:
This is reminiscent of korea’s ugly drawings — there is something about ugly art that is very attractive. Does it appeal to the primal part of us:
Of course, everywhere we go there are beautiful intricately crafted temple buildings:
I loved the simplicity and modernity of this logo, and also the accompanying illustration on the bag:
It is interesting to observe how art and design is strongly influenced by a city’s culture. I went to Chiang Mai to chill without much expectations and was pleasantly surprised with the creative energy of the place.
I feel like each time I visit a foreign city the experience fills up an unconscious well of creativity. They make me feel like I want to make a ton of art when I get back home. But once home, I am caught in an endless cycle of paralysis. Will my unconscious well fill up one day and overflow into something? Or will I always be at the mercy of my broken brain?
But at the very least, taking photos of what I find creative and inspiring is also an act of creativity and enrichment, and I get to share them with you. Perhaps some of these may be inspiring to some stranger out there, or bring some additional colour to someone’s day.
