something’s wrong with me. I think you’re what’s wrong with me

.

i am sitting in the hammock across from you as you lay in the tent we just build. i am feeling sad, about something completely different than i am feeling sad about today but I am looking at you. you tell me you are tired but you are smiling. this is the first time we went camping together. i feel like you aren’t telling me but it may be this is the first time you went camping ever. is that true? why would you hesitate to tell me so many insignificant truths? it bothers me. why do I have such a desire to know all the truths all the time?

i am still looking at you, writing in my journal about what’s making me sad that day. but i am also happy to be here with you. i am happy to hold the gaze lightly. we talk about how many days a week we would like to see each other every week and now we don’t see each any day of the week. it was such an ordinary moment but it feels so extraordinary looking back. I didn’t know I would miss that day but I do.

.

you haunt me: we had 50 summers to share and now we have none. i keep thinking, what can i say to you, to tell you to give this summer a chance. you tell me “you don’t trust anything I have to say” as I read you a 700 word letter telling you my heart feels broken with full teared eyes. i have never felt so desired and so bullied at the same time. it’s so intense. and the intensity keeps taking many many forms. its moving me in a lot of ways. you have always made me feel so loved and yet, you also scared the shit out of me constantly. i love passion but i hate criticism. is this the two sides of the same coin people keep telling you about? is it true that i cannot have one without the other? no relationship is perfect and is it the kind of imperfect i should take? is it something in me that i need to change?

.
i guess some love is easy. people meet, click and get together. and then stay happily ever after. they are no detours, no finding their way to each other, no stopping them at the airport, no showing up home with a boombox after a breakup to confess big feelings, no complications, no plot twists, no finding each other at the wrong time, no heartbreaks. may be love is supposed to be straightforward. may be its the rom coms that have fucked with my head. may be good love is supposed to be easy and linear.

i am yet to experience good love. i have only experienced I show up at your house with a boombox to confess my big feelings to you love after a bunch of things went wrong. you tell me you don’t love me anymore when you told me you had been in love with me for years before. you told me all the ways i felt short. i cried during and then every night since.

may be we weren’t meant to be. may be we were only supposed to be in love with each other’s idea at different times. my people villanise you. your people villanise me. is it that easy to hate me? i know in my heart we are both flawed humans doing our best. i am running through all the ways i fucked up in each corner of my mind 20 times every day. i am sorry for the ways i fucked up. i tell you i’ll do better but i don’t think you care about what i have to say.

there is this optimist within me that keeps thinking come on, lets have our happy ending. wishing, hoping, thinking, ruminating: i can tell you something magical and you would listen to me and give this world one more shot.

you say what’s meant for you will cross ocean, mountains and doubts to come find you. and i am here willing to cross ocean, mountain and doubts to come find you. is it meant to be?

i am reading a letter from a past lover. the one i couldn’t have imagined my life without. and yet, i lived. i cannot imagine my life without you right now. i wonder if i will live.

gosh, sometimes i wonder why does god has to make my heart so godamnn big. i envy people who do not feel that much. they tell me it’s a privilege to feel so much. but i am telling you i pay the cost.

I have been feeling less grounded than before. I don’t have all the answers. But the answer to

“Have you been finding less joy in things that usually brought you joy?
A. Not at all
B. Half of the time
C. More than Half of the time
D. Always “

is currently C: more than half of the time. Sometimes I have been finding glimmer of hope after reading “Either you’re going to make it, or you’re going to make it or you’re going to make it” on my phone wallpaper. But overall, its going pretty unwell. I am just not feeling good at all and need to drag myself out of bed every morning with a bit of come on girl, we gotta give capitalism a shot today. And weirdly my turmoil seem to have showed up for no good reason.

I have some new pursuits: a) I am looking for a new job work that makes me naturally curious which is a whole ordeal b) I am doing physical therapy to improve my ongoing body issues which has started to feel chronic c) The chronic injury has also caused my relationship with my weight & food quite stressful d) I have been “seeing” someone so I have a half boyfriend and I have half-boyfriend issues e) Spoke to a friend about my feelings about our relationship which seem to have fundamentally changed our relationship. And it troubles me intermittently & challenges my 1st principle world view on just say what you want.

So not NOTHING is going on. I feel a bit sad, confused, overwhelmed and disconnected with my previous very happy go lucky self. My nature is very cyclic in nature where I bounce from deep pits of sorrow to everyday is a celebration and unfortunately, I am in the deep pits of sorrow right now. So may be its my body doing its cyclic body turmoil things or its my bad attitude towards very neutral things, who knows.

*

No wonder I feel so depressed. I am currently embarrassed of my own big emotions. I am also afraid to express these big emotions. When that piece of shit unattended baby in my head yells, you’re fucked either way, I trust it and progressively feel more indecisive. The monkey in me that’s mad for all sorts of stuff is getting more mad, the more I tell her to shut the fuck up. I know I am empowering my anxiety muscle by worrying about all sorts of stuff all the time but I cannot stop. This, in turn obviously mean I don’t really trust myself at this moment. Self trust is a clear distinction between the happiest and saddest times of my life. When you don’t trust yourself, you feel like a stranger to yourself. And if you forget, the world is a GIANT mirror. The farther you feel from yourself, the farther you will feel from the whole wide world. Sometimes I walk towards the world, hoping it will bring me closer to me, looking for all sorts of answers. But the world is a rather ambivalent neutral state: its not positive or negative. It reflects back the energy you bring to it. If you bring lots of disconnection, it will bring you back more disconnection. Its an amplifier of the vibe. You can’t walk to it confused hoping for answers, it will reflect you back lots of confusion.

*

thinking of the thing ←——> the doing of the thing; lets call the space in between the feeling of the thing. there are time in my life when the feeling of the thing is short and sometimes when it is rather long. Often, the longer it is, the more unpleasant it feels. For example, i have now decided that I will be taking action towards finding a new job. But I thought about it for a while and as I am doing these things, it is clear to me that the journey ahead isn’t the most pleasurable and I am feeling bad expecting the badness. And I am mad at myself for how long “feeling of the thing” stage was. It didn’t make doing of the thing any easier, anyway. The happiest times of my life, “the feeling of the thing” is so small.

*
Today, my physical therapist said to me, You seem to be your worst critic. My therapist, my mom, my best friend and my half boyfriend will all be united in that feedback to me.

*

Anyways here is some positive life shit that keep me going in these trying times.

*

xoxo

Picture taken at Prithvi Theatre in Mumbai, an insanely cool live theatre place since 1978

Trip Stats:

• % of days I had a stomach ache: 50%

• % of meals I said “this is UNREAL”: 80%

Context:
I grew up in a small town in India called Akbarpur, where I lived until I was 13. Afterward, I moved to Lucknow for five years and then to Delhi for my undergraduate studies. I eventually moved to the US at age 22; I am now 29 years old.

These are my notes from my annual trip to India. I spent three weeks traveling through Mumbai (where my brother lives), Lucknow (where my parents live), Varanasi (where my grandmother’s family lives), and Akbarpur (where I grew up).

Notes on India:

• The food here is truly insane. You think you like Indian food in America? Babe, you have no idea how good it is gets. It is truly and irrationally delicious.

• In India, I cannot walk 0.1 mile without seeing some form of very good looking and very yummy food. So much of the culture revolved around food. Everyone is either constantly eating, feeding each other or else, talking about what to eat next. I have not gone more than 1.5 hours without having a food conversation.

  

• I have a city crush on Mumbai!! Inspite of the not so great weather, I love the culture, the people and the energy of the city. Everyone I met ( which I understand is a special sample) was warm, loving, and very interesting. I “clicked” with people quite effortlessly. Weird Gin culture in this crowd though.

• There were around 2k people at the Kaytranada concert I went to in Mumbai, and I swear to God I have never seen a higher density of more good-looking Indian people in one room. Sheesh!!

• I am also learning that the live concert scene in India is growing like wild fire.

• Being in my hometown, Akbarpur, after six years was surreal in ways I didn’t expect. I stepped outside and the corner store where I used to buy candy was in the exact same spot. I turned right, and the tailor I visited twenty years ago was still right there. I walked a little further and found the stationery shop where I’d buy two pens every two weeks—still there. I think to myself, all the shocking ways my life has changed in the last 10 years and contrastingly, nothing much has changed in the streets of this town. I cannot help but think to myself: “Wow, to change your life, YOU have to change your life”. Obviously, there was so much luck and life stage involved in all the way I was able to change my life. It’s not just agency that changed my life. However, it propels me to imagine once again in vivid details all the ways I want to change my current reality.

• While I was in Varanasi, I visited the homes of my grandmother’s three siblings. Three drastically different houses: aesthetically, educationally, conversationaly. I wonder at the contrasts of the life choices each sibling did to end up in the same city but such drastically different situations and what seemed to be entirely different belief systems. We are mostly the product of our infinite small choices, aren’t we?

• There is SO much noise everywhere. I was literally on a boat in Ganges in Varanasi and as soon as a ceremony ended, everyone is honking: in the water??? Honking is so deeply rooted in India’s culture at this point. I truly worry about everyone’s nervous system. I know I am super privileged to have this take but come on, we have to worry about the honking culture. It’s most often unnecessary and you all are frying each other’s brain. We cannot live life this.

• It’s very dusty most places in India

• The way Indian people in India relate to each other is very unique and special. There is so much sweetness and deep care for each other floating around. They take this endless high capacity for showing up for each other for granted. “Obviously, I will drop you home”. Some really obvious things to Indian people are not at all obvious in American culture. I am delighted constantly by everyone’s kindness. I am grateful I am able to see India for its cultural magic now. I obviously had to leave India to understand this cultural nuance. And it’s not just amongst friends. An average stranger would go so far to help another absolute stranger in India. I LOVE IT!!

• It’s quite surprising to me that they don’t have toilet paper culture. There is bidet everywhere but how the hell are you drying yourself?? My mom’s working theory is that this gap happened as we moved from Indian bathroom to Western bathrooms. And since it is men who are building and maintaining these, they aren’t able to clock that a women may have a higher need for toilet paper to pat dry themselves after using western toilets.

• Everyone loves dressing up!! Every single person in all these cities loves to dress up in colorful ornate ways. I will add that I have always found that younger crowd in India are pretty conformative to trends. Compared to SF, where standing out is considered “cooler”.

• In Varanasi, I saw some serious religious people. At the Vishwanath Temple, I watched this group cry, howl, and undergo intense spiritual experience as they saw the “god” statue. I kept wondering how could any of this matter so much to them. Eventually I realized that it’s a meaningful experience to them because there is meaning attached to it. It’s not a meaningful experience for me because I don’t have any associated meaning for it.

• The chai sutta is really real: the kiddos (including me) love a masala chai and a quick cig ( side note: please stop smoking cigarettes, it’s bad for your stem cells; I promise I stopped )

• I am a serious Christmas person so I obviously inconvenienced everyone to go to a church on Christmas morning. I walked in to the biggest church of Lucknow to find Punjabi music being played out loud. My first reaction was to be severely upset by my crushed jingle bell dream. But I eventually saw the silver lining in India’s secularity.

• I have a deeper appreciation for everything India now that I don’t live in India. I get bullied by my Indian friends that I am “that” NRI. And to that, I say, YES I AM THAT NRI. i love motherland forever and ever. <3 <3

Bonus Content:

• Outside this really famous temple where you need to wait for 2ish hours to see this god statue, there was a paid VR experience where you could get the VR viewing of this god statue. What the hell!?

  

I am laying next to my sweet mother and she whispers in my ear “ i worry about you”. I am surprised. I am really surprised. I turn to my sweet mother and say “what are you worried about?” ; She continues “you live here alone. i worry there is no one to take care of you as papa and I are getting older”. I smile, almost grinning ear to ear, in response to her very concerned look “mom, i don’t live alone, i live with 8 people”. She continues, with genuine earnest, “yea, but friends will move on with their lives”. I turn to her with my smile getting even wider “mom, you don’t understand. they are my BEST FRIENDS.”

To give you all some context: I am 29, single, living with 8 of my bestfriends in a co-living house called “Turby” in San Francisco. My mom is visiting me from India. She is worried that my lack of boyfriend makes me alone.

Now, what she does not understand is my friends take care of me like a partner in a romantic novel written by a female author does.

I cannot explain this, but I find a way to tell T things before the thought even arises. As soon as I have a bad day, I text J and he drives to pick me up wherever I am. When I am talking to A, I feel so present that my mind expands. I turn to L and she lights up a joint with me giggling, shrieking. J listens to me with utmost attention every night when I talk in insignificant detail about how my day was. N takes me on adventures and introduces me to things I could never do on my own, like skiing. M is the reason I started working out. D sends me music I will love to the end of this world. M took me to Hawaii and changed my life. P lets me yell AAAAA enthusiastically all the time. R likes to ask me what I wrote last in my journal. G makes me soups that I didn’t know are my favorite soups. N gives me a good morning, have a good day cheek kiss every morning.

I wake up every day and feel the holy privilege of friendship I am surrounded by. People who choose to love me, show up for me unbounded by any explicit commitment of love. I look at them and smile ear to ear. They inspire me beyond my wildest imagination.

People go on and on about the loneliness epidemic. They think it’s because dating is hard ( dating is so hard). But I think the loneliness epidemic is happening because people are not shooting the shit with their homies on a very frequent non scheduled, pull up to my house kind of way. ( No, I don’t want to catch up with you two Fridays from now between 5pm -5:45 pm). I am never lonely when I am surrounded by my friends.

They also go on and on about about self discovery. “Oh, so you want to self-actualise?” . I have found myself exclusively through the portals of my friends’ minds. “What friends do with each other is to clarify matters of mutual concern. Friends are not only speaking but also listening selves. Listening, after all, is indispensable for clarification.” I don’t think I would have found my style, the fact that my hair is curly, my interest in writing, my humor, or my joy for life if I hadn’t met my friends. “Grow up” No, sweetie, YOU NEED TO STOP GROWING UP. I want you to lean into your inner child.

I know I can be a bit of an optimism whore but I am not delusional. I hear my mom’s concerns and know it holds truth. Friends have moved on in the past. They have found partners. They have changed their priorities. They have moved across the world. I have had my world crash and burn by losing my childhood best friend (for complicated logistical and emotional reasons). So, I get the risk of this precious investment. Friends could leave. I get it. The implicit contract of friendship is different than the explicit contract of romantic love. I get that I am young, wild, and free, and I won’t be young, wild, and free forever. I get it all. But I can promise you, Homie Wonderland is the town I never plan on leaving. Sure, it will look different than it does right now. All of the stuff I said earlier will happen in some capacity. There are no guarantees in life, no matter what people say, including explicit love contracts. But I know in no future am I a exclusively one girl one boy kinda person. I cannot imagine existing without my army of sweet angels to remind me every day why life matters. I cannot wait to continue sharing a bunch of ‘nothing days’ with pieces of my heart.

In my dream world, I am living together with friends forever at least in walking distance. You can call me a dreamer but there are lots of internet heroes ( priya, phil , ava, maja, etc ) advocating and living this reality.

As an adult who discovered 1) you create your own reality and 2) all rules are suggestions, I know my reality will be full of love. Our children will be best friends, whether they like it or not.

“OKAY, but what if i don’t have friends?” Girlll, hit me up! Go out there in the world and discover who could make your heart ring in a silly, mischievous way. This essay isn’t about discovering friends, but I promise to write about it someday. I wasn’t born into large friend groups. In fact, after my undergrad in India, I moved to the USA at 22 knowing absolutely no one, and was in turmoil for at least a year over the fear that I would never have deep friendships. But LOOK AT ME NOW.

I will say: I did get unbelievably lucky with my friendships, but so can anyone. There are so many million awesome people out there. I don’t think I have even met everyone I will love to the end of my life yet. I will keep on questing with the biggest smile, saying hello to everyone who makes my heart radiate in a silly little way. And I recommend you do too, it’s a GREAT TIME.

“ i want a world where friendship is appreciated as a form of romance. i want a world where when people ask if we are seeing anyone we can list the names of all of our best friends and no one will bat an eyelid. i want monuments and holidays and certificates and ceremonies to commemorate friendship. i want a world that doesn’t require us to be in a sexual/romantic partnership to be seen as mature (let alone complete). i want a movement that fights for all forms of relationships, not just the sexual ones. i want thousands of songs and movies and poems about the intimacy between friends. i want a world where our worth isn’t linked to our desirability, our security to our monogamy, our family to our biology.”

photos from Trisha’s wedding, held in Turby backyard and officiated by her best friend (me). Captured by her other best friend, Mark Goldbach.

“We’re collecting a life together. If that’s not romantic, I don’t know what is.”

Subscribe now

( my sweet mother approves of my take, thank you for asking! )

I was hanging out with R, a boy I had just met through a mutual friend, in an ambiguous “let’s hangout, want to get dinner kind of” way. And we were naturally talking about dating after talking about work, living in America, culture, twitter, the news: the usual. Three hours into the night, I joked with him: “I usually date people after hanging out as friends for 6 months”. He looked at me, straight in the eye for a solid four seconds, and says “So are you gonna hangout with me for 6 months as friends”. I did not expect him to say that. It shocked my nervous system. But I immediately thought it was very clever way to flirt: Straightforward but open ended.

I did what I usually do when I am not sure how to respond. I didn’t acknowledge it. I smiled, avoiding eye contact and said “Anyways,” with my eyes bigger than usual and started talking about something completely irrelevant.

The conversation was juicy. He was cute. But I wasn’t sure if I wanted to date him, (yet). Was he flirting with me? Did I want to flirt back? Did I “like” him? What the hell, how was I supposed to know?

As I said, my dating style is “hanging out as friends for 6 months”.

Most of my friends fall in one of the two buckets:

1. Friends OR Lovers: Friends who think platonic and romantic are two contrasting immutable boxes. This group explains to me that they live life in a very clear boxed way. When they meet someone new, they sort them clearly either in the friend bucket or in the romantic bucket, for whatever reason: they weren’t attracted to them, either of them were in relationship etc etc. And they tell me even if the underlying conditions were to change: one or both of them break up, one of them now really likes rock-climbing and you have always liked rock-climbing, they move in the same city as you: it doesn’t matter. A friend is a friend. A romantic interest is a romantic interest. Neat!

2. Friends AND lovers: Friends who think platonic or romantic interest is a sliding scale. These friends believe there are no boxes: romantic or platonic. Not that they think all their platonic friendships are romantic but they think these roles are very closely nuanced. A friend can be a lover. A lover can be a friend. A once friend could be a now lover. A now lover could be a future friend. This group also has a tendency to typically go to lover from the friend pipeline. Non-neat but very cool!

I know in life there is not a right way to live or think, just a bunch of ways with a bunch of trade offs. My friendship/love philosophy is very closely aligned to the second category “as someone who views romantic relationships as just a more committed version of friendship. “

My first serious boyfriend in high school was a friend for two years and I got close to him after my previous non-serious break up. My second serious boyfriend was someone I talked to every night for 3 months before I drunk smooched him one night. And since then, I have definitely kissed a friend (or two). And for the record, it hasn’t worked out (yet).

Everybody in category one (Friends OR Lovers) keeps me telling me that Friends and Lovers are SO different and it’s messed up to kiss your friends. Everybody in category two (Friends AND lovers) keeps on telling me, why would you not want to date your BEST friend?

The big question then is: What is the difference between romantic and platonic relationship? specially for the second group (including me). What slides you one way or another? I have circled back to this question a few time. I have some ideas but I am not very sure.

What is romance?

“Romance, in the context of human relationships, generally refers to feelings of love, affection, and attraction between two people, often expressed through actions and gestures that aim to make the other person feel special and cherished. It involves a sense of excitement, passion, and intimacy, and can manifest in various ways, from small, thoughtful acts to grand romantic gestures. ” That’s crazy. Because a lot of my friendships (if not all) are very romantic in nature. I deeply love them. I feel attracted and invested to their mind: Their hobbies, their future self, their past self. I show them love in very grand forms: I write them letters, I call them, I jump with enthusiasm in the air when I see them, I make sure they are doing okay, I give them goodbye hugs every time I say goodbye.

And the natural next question is, what makes it platonic then? Well, if friendship is romantic and romance is romantic. How then, do we differentiate between the two? I think, fundamentally, they are identical, at least to me. The only major way to differentiate between the two is 1) do you want to plant a fat smooch on them? how badly? 2) how willing are you to plan your life around them?

What I am getting at is: Romantic Partner then means 1) Romance 2) Sexual curiosity towards them 3) Willingness to change your life for them in a more intense way than a friendship which is a long way to say romantic relationships is a more committed version of friendship with (hopefully) a lot of kissing.

So *i guess* if I have a friend and for whatever reason, I want to kiss them and explore sexual intimacy with them. I am probably interested in them being my romantic partner. Ofcourse, it’s more risky than that. If now, this sexual exploration does not go well, can we go back to being friends? I kissed [x] and I don’t think we are best friends anymore. I don’t know if it is because we kissed but regardless, it did change our friendship. Am I willing to risk more friendship for something “more intense”?

And having kissed a homie, I can tell you, it does feel weird. Atleast at first, even if you wanted to kiss them. It’s like kissing a family member of sorts. Your mind and body cannot understand what just happened. It is unfamiliar territory on a very familiar land.

I have also had really intense sexual chemistry with someone without the exploding brain chemistry friendship I like to be consumed by. It was really hot but something felt missing. My friendship brain chemistry meter is: How do I feel about being locked in a empty room for 50 hours straight with this person? If that answer is yes. They are bestie material. And they already have their name tattooed on my heart.

This is why I find it hard to be in category one: Friends OR Lovers. People in this category: When you meet someone, how do you know you want to be locked in for 50 hours with them right away? You are telling me they are so hot that you don’t care about brain chemistry. Or are you telling me it takes you 5 minutes to know the brain chemistry? Or you are telling me that if you cannot have something “really intense” with them, you’d rather not know them at all? I am so curious how this works.

I am clearly still learning and exploring what all of this means in the general sense of the world but also what does all of this mean to me. I don’t have a romantic partner (yet) but I do have a lot of (platonic) best friends who rock my world.

I know love because I have so much love in my life.
Extraordinary love.
Be locked in a empty room for 100 hours and have the best time of your life kind of love.

I am still discovering what it means to be romantically loved though. I’ll tell you when I know more.

Hey lover,

If you’re reading this and want to romance me. Buy me flowers and be my best friend.

Love,
T

DJ queue:

If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends
Make it last forever, friendship never ends

“Kya pyaar dosti hai?”

1. Non-linearity shows up in all parts of life: quests, concerns, connections, interests, dreams, wishes, passion, effort. Sometimes it is hard to accept that x input doesn’t lead to x output and it’s hard to keep showing up knowing that truth. It’s also magical that anything can happen anytime and there is no way to know. Keep showing up for anything that your heart desires. Find the beauty in discomfort of not knowing. It all adds up in a way you can’t math. Stop mathing. One day you will turn and life will look different but never in the way you imagined.

2. “Your life will always feel unfinished and imperfect. Be incomplete. Be unfinished. Breathe deeply and stare at the ceiling. Do not pick up your phone. Do not ask anyone what to do next. Ask your body instead. Let your body be the boss.”

3. All your gifts are all your problems. I find that I am really good at the bigger picture things. I really care about the people in my life. I can gain and lose interest in things easily. I can be very tunnel visioned. I am intense. I am multi-dimensional. They are all my gifts and all my problems.

4. Some days you will feel like shit at the prettiest beach in Portugal and some days you will feel euphoric while sitting on your couch staring at the wall. The internal and external experiences have overlap but are often disconnected. It’s my perception of my reality that matters, not the actual reality that matters. Keep on living, no feeling is final.

5. “Getting the thing you want often involves extreme and prolonged discomfort. You can avoid that by, well, never getting started.”

6. Momentum is HUGE!! Motion sets motion. Fundamentally and very approximately, there are three states: { Non Flow , Transitory , Flow } for any task, habit or dream. The energy needed to go from Non-flow to Transitory is 1000X larger than energy needed to stay in Flow. When I am going to the gym all the time, going to the gym all the time is the easiest thing in the world. When I am feeling good all the time, feeling good all the time is the easiest thing in the world. So, if you are in Non-flow or Transition state for anything your heart desires, keep at it, sweet princess. It’s about to get so irrationally easy. Also if there is anything hard you want in life, JUST START and GO. You will figure out the rest. I have seen you dream and make things happen.

7. “Pretty shitty how baseline human activities like singing, dancing and making art got turned into skills instead of being seen as behaviors. Now it’s like ‘the point of doing them is to get good at them’ and not ‘this is a thing humans do, the way birds sing and bees make hives.” Go Create. Art. Essays. Events. Magazines. Outfits. Businesses. Nothing will come between you and a good time, if you keep creating. And don’t forget to clock that Create:Consume ratio.

8. “If you’re blind to the wholeness that’s already present, you’ll never find it in other people. When you see it somewhere, you’ll see it everywhere.”

9. You have to say how you feel constantly!! Platonically. Romantically. I am where I am in life because I have had infinite courage to ask for things. I have gotten so many things. But somehow it took me 28 years to find the bravery to tell people I have a crush on them. I am definitely getting rejected, but it is 95% less scary than I imagined.

10. On days you feel awesome, you will think, everything matters. On days that you feel shitty, you will think, nothing matters. Walk through both of them with an open heart. Remember: “We seldom admit the seductive act of hopelessness. It saves us from ambiguity. It has an answer for every question. “There’s no point”. Hope, on the other hand, is messy. If it all might work out, then we have things to do. We must weather the possibility of happiness.“ Wake up tomorrow and try again. It will all matter soon. I promise.

11. “ If it is meant to be, it will be” IS BULLSHIT. Anything and everything that happens is hand-created reality. Often things that were not planned happen but it is never ever because it was meant to be. You hand curate this life: for better or for worse. The forward momentum of doing thing you could want will bring you to things that could be meant for you. But don’t think a relationship, a job, a friend or a good piece of thrift will come back, “if it’s meant to”. There is “no other universe”. It is a nice thought, but this is it. This is all we get.

12. Always start a question to strangers with “Can I ask a question”. People will almost always say yes, but they will feel like they had the agency when they answered your question.

13. Eat your supplements: Vitamin, Magnesium, Iron. Bill Gates is also taking them, from what I hear.

14. You can’t prevent damage no matter how hard you try. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try but just know that you can’t prevent it no matter how hard you try. You will hurt people’s feelings. You will say the wrong thing. You will forget things. Keep trying really hard. But be okay creating damage.

15. Humor is a really good entry point in stories, essays, conversations. Jokes are a cheat code to connections. The “let’s get deep” conversation style events in SF need to go away: BRING MORE JOKES, honey.

16. Think less, do more. “You say amateur as if it was a dirty word. Amateur comes from the Latin word amare, which means to love. To do things for the love of it.”

17. Don’t box yourself: just because you slept poorly doesn’t mean you’re gonna be tired all day. Just because this moment feels shitty doesn’t mean the whole day will be shitty. Be heart open to what every single moment presents: the good, the bad, the ugly, the magical.

18. Emotions are AWESOME. Anxiety moves you. It’s powerful. Try to respect your body when it is anxious because it demands you to move: physically, metaphorically.

19. I love and hate how single player life is. We can do whatever the fuck we want. Don’t outsource your decision. Do the scary thing of making your own goddamn mistakes. How lucky are we to make our own mistakes?

20. PUT YOUR GODAMN PHONE DOWN. Protect you attention like your life depends on it. Because your life does depend on it.

21. “People are not just high-agency or low-agency in a global sense, across their entire lives. Instead, people are selectively agentic. It seems like, by default, you are stuck with whatever level of resourcefulness you brought to a problem the first time you encountered it and failed to fix it.“ If a part of your life is consistently not working, maybe you aren’t really trying.

22. Our brain is a big echo chamber. The days I feel alone, I look for ways I am alone and continue to feel alone. The days I feel full and loved, anybody even smiling in my direction expands my heart.

23. Reciprocity is overrated. Don’t keep a count of the ways you love, show up, any of it. Show up with love, heart full of abundance every single day. Sometimes it won’t be reciprocated in a way you’d like, that’s okay. Don’t take a count of who is returning love to you in what way. If you don’t feel genuine affection towards someone, don’t be affectionate, just be kind. But never tally. If you have love in your heart to give, just give it.

24. Friendships will change. It will break your heart and it will suck. Accept people for who they are and what they can offer NOW. Not what they could previously offer or who they previously were.

25. The world is full of afraid people. You don’t have to be. Show up with courage every single day of the week. I mean: Fuck it, we ball.

26. Your life north star is: Big Cool Happenings ; Is it “cool”? Is it “big happenings”? Go get it, girl!

27. Everything will work out. Never take anything for granted.

28. “Keep searching, it never ends.”

Shoutout to all the people who entered my life and all the people who stayed in my life. You all rocked my 28th year on Earth.

Bonus content

28th year Wall of Fame

• Officiated my best friend’s wedding

  

• Spoke about storytelling at Google Data Science Conference

  

• Back to my startup girl era: Launched a pilot for Bulletin!!

  

• Trained for a 100 mile ride

  

• Dog sat several times

  

• Lowest body fat % of my life

  

• Started a writing club with friends

• Had no anxiety for 6 months straight

• Quit instagram

• Really improved my relationship with money

• Self Talk is popping!!

• Went sober for several months & had a great ball time doing it

• Practiced speaking my mind more and more and more

• Reunited with childhood love: Badminton

• Told people I have a crush on them

• Hosted an excellent Thanksgiving, cafe Turb, who the fuck is that baby, Hackathons, amongst many

• Really improved my relationship with my phone

• Did several improv classes

• Had my first intern

• Made all spaces I exist in a lot cuter

• Fell in love with reading for the first time in my life

• Fashion game was good!!

28th year Extreme unexpected joy entered my life

• Turby’s Christmas tree

  

• Diwali in India

  

• Japanese color book

28th year Adventure gal for life

• Went to Italy, Malta, Spain, Portugal for the first time

• Music Festivals: Same Same but different and Lightning in a Bottle

• Visited Trisha’s family & Grace’s family

• Hosted parents in SF for a month by house swapping with a bestie

• Attended a Texas Christmas

  

I am standing with Dad at Stern Grove, a free outdoor music festival in a forest in San Francisco, while Mom is sitting on a picnic blanket within our line of sight, surrounded by my friends. She’s close enough for us to see her clearly but far enough away that she can’t hear us.

Dad smiles and watches Mom rummaging through her bag. “She’s thirsty,” he says. Mom continues searching until she eventually finds her water bottle and takes a sip. Dad, still watching: “Her back hurts.” Right after sipping her water, she lies back on the picnic blanket and places one hand on her lower back.

I look at Dad, amazed. I’ve never thought of him as a romantic partner to my mom but maybe I just haven’t been paying enough attention. I smile, taking in the quiet magic of seeing Mom through Dad’s eyes. It’s like secondhand embarrassment—except instead of embarrassment, it was secondhand love. For a brief moment, I bask in the joy of second hand love with a full heart.

*

Love has been on my mind lately. Maybe it’s because I watched Rocky Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani with my parents. Maybe it’s because I read the best vows I’ve ever come across in my life, in Growing Together. Maybe it’s because I stopped talking to a boy I deeply admire and was kind of co-regulating with (because of logistical complications). But for whatever reason, love has been on my mind. I know love is on a lot of people’s minds, often, whether you're in love or not.

*

I think I use the word love very generously. If I feel it in the moment, I want to tell you, “I love you.” I want to express my love LOUDLY—in caps. I hug with all my body and heart. I like to say, “Love you” to all my friends when I say goodbye. I write to my friends (and lovers, when in season) lots and lots of handwritten letters, expressing in specific detail the what, why, and how of my love.

I used to think: that must feel good instantly to everyone, right? To be on the receiving end of my overwhelming love—has to feel good. But I’m learning that’s not always true. I feel both celebrated for the deep well of love I have to give—and, at times, I definitely end up overwhelming a person or two.

When I notice someone on the receiving end of my deep affection kind of curling up, I joke “ Sorry I am love bombing you”. But I’m kind of not sorry. And I kind of want to continue love bombing them. If I have love in my heart to give, I want to give it, unrestricted by anything. May be that’s selfish. Maybe my expression of love toward other people is a selfish act of wanting to be seen.

The people who I feel most seen by are people I feel I can give love to endlessly without being afraid it’s too much. They are inspired to be on the receiving end of this love. I guess you can always make it work between two people but if their capacity to give and their capacity to receive is not compatible: it’s not gonna work. Naturally, these capacities evolve over time. But some of the best relationships have a natural compatibility not just in love languages but in love capacities.

(Romantics: keep looking, I guess! )

Some of my friends were describing the natural progression of romantic pursuits. When you start seeing someone, you say you “like” them. You don’t use the word love. “Love” should be reserved for something deeper—something you “work your way up to.” When you say it, it needs to hold weight. In this culture, love might mean: I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Maybe it means: I’ll be with you, by your side, no matter what arises. Not that I see people always end up forever with those they say “I love you” to—but people at least try to guard it. Beyond romantic pursuits, in cross-gender friendships, you have to be careful when and how often you say it. Saying it platonically is kind of a big deal and somewhat uncomfortable, even in 2025. I hear their concern. I get it. It’s supposed to mean something. I just think mine means something, constantly.

There is a lot of nuance to be discussed here. But if you squint with me, I want to ask: How did we end up in a culture where we need to be so careful and measured in love? We can treat love like it’s abundant and spill it everywhere unafraid. Or we could be careful and evaluative: make sure all future versions of ourselves align with how we feel in this moment, package it neatly in a “what does it mean?” box, verify that the other person feels the same way, verify you aren’t overwhelming them, and only then—show love. Gosh!!

I just enjoy being so wasteful with my love.

*

Ambiguity used to drive me fucking crazy. As it must for you, I assume?
I joked with my life coach that I can handle sad Tanya and happy Tanya, but confused Tanya is a fucking nightmare to deal with. And she gave me a loving note saying that she has no problem dealing with confused Tanya: that confused Tanya has to walk a perhaps harder path, but she has to walk that path to expand her horizons.

It got me thinking about one of my favourite quotes of all time:
“Life is like walking from one side of infinite darkness to another, on a bridge of dreams. They say that we're all crossing the bridge of dreams together. That there's nothing more than that. Just us, on the bridge of dreams.”

I love that! I’ve dealt with a lot of infinite darkness in all parts of life, as I’m sure you have — in matters of love, friendships, career, identity, all of it. And boy, do I live on that bridge of dreams. I have boundless curiosity to imagine what could happen, and an endless drive to make it all happen. My current life, in some way, is a curation of my imagination. I ran around in circles, sometimes neurotically, thinking of all the things I wanted, and I hand-curated this life. I didn’t get some things I imagined having, but I have so much beyond my wildest imagination. I don’t know if I needed the neurosis, but the imagination was definitely a precursor to this reality.

But baby, I am still so scared of this infinite darkness. When a really new ambiguity arises, which it does constantly, especially in matters of the heart — I feel like I’m lost in the jungle. I don’t have a map. A clear path forward. I don’t have a compass. A clear north star. I feel alone in my pursuit. I can hear voices of friends and family telling me, “You’re so fine, you’re not lost,” but I cannot see the horizon with my own eyes. Theoretically, I know I am okay, but I don’t feel okay. And I’ve come to learn: you can’t outsmart this knowing-feeling gap with over-cerebral rationalization. The heart doesn’t like the constant chatter of the brain trying to convince it one way or another. The heart feels what it feels. You can give your heart sweet little nudges, but it will continue feeling what it feels — most of the time.

Not only am I somewhat intolerant to ambiguity, I love intensity. I’ve been called “extreme” by several of my friends. And I’m not sure if it’s a compliment or not. Either ways, I’ve come to accept it as part of me, fully. I commit to the bit knee-deep, head-deep — whatever the bit is. If I see a really cold ocean, I run and instantly jump into it. I’m not the kind to get mildly uncomfortable slowly.

Naturally, you pair those two together, mix it really nice, and you get the urge to take quick, intense decisions to remove ambiguity as soon as possible. As soon as I feel confused, my impulse is to release the ambiguity. How can I either cut it off from my life or dishonor all my doubts and commit to it fully? I would rather tolerate the deep grief that comes from losing something completely than sit with the discomfort of not knowing if it will be worthwhile later. There’s of course wisdom in taking quick, impulsive action but there is also so much wisdom in not taking quick, impulsive decisions: the goddamn balancing act of life. I’ve definitely gotten better at this little dance over the years. I was a very black-and-white framework girl for most of my life. The tendency to catastrophize came very effortlessly to me. Slowly but steadily, I’ve come to terms with shades of grey and nuance every moment holds.

But lately I am pursuing the celebration of greyness:

Do you feel like you are lost in the jungle with no map and no compass? EPIC! I don’t know if your anxiety has told you this yet, but we were put on this earth to get lost. To look around and wander, with no rush to find truth. Feeling ungrounded is actually beautiful because it helps you find your ground again — a ground closer to your brand-new self that has emerged in this moment.

“The creative act of making something new always brings us face to face with uncertainty. ” And if you are going to create new things beyond your current reality, which I know is how you feel joy, you have to welcome not-knowing constantly with open arms. “Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage”. Remember, there is no solving uncertainty. The correct response to a moment of uncertainty is curiosity. Curiosity is “is an imaginative labor not a frantic attempt to shift the mood to steadier ground. There isn’t any. There are few tales worth remembering that don’t have uncertainty woven into them. “ “An ability to tolerate the anxiety generated by ambiguity is what allows us to respect, engage, and grow from our repeated, daily encounters with the essential mysteries of life. But the payoff goes even further. Certainty begets stagnation, but ambiguity pulls us deeper into life. Unchallenged conviction begets rigidity, which begets regression; but ambiguity opens us to discovery, complexity, and therefore growth. The health of our culture, and the magnitude of our personal journeys, require that we learn to tolerate ambiguity, in service to a larger life.”

What I’m trying to tell neurotic Tanya, who wants an answer real bad: One of the finest forms of art is a well-crafted question. Stare at it. Savour it. Get lost in it.

On an average day, if you asked me how my day was, I would say “Best Day Everyday”. And I fully, wholeheartedly and literally mean it. A cynic might say that’s over the top dramatic optimism. A grammar narc would ask, “How can you have the best day every day? ‘Best’ is a superlative—it’s factually and grammatically incorrect.” A realist would say “cool” and roll their eyes and to each of them, I say: grow up. It was the best day I could have had THAT day. I live in celebration of every day.

Fortunately, I didn’t just wake up knowing and believing this my entire life. This was the year—my twenty-eighth. This is when I fully discovered that I create my own reality. I had heard people say, “You create your own reality,” before, but I was never fully convinced I could create mine. I thought my reality is a fabric of my job, my friends, my boyfriend and how hot I was: the really BIG picture things.

But my reality was really the feedback loop of my self talk, my habits, the “truths” I was holding close to myself, the small win of the day, my capacity to show love that day and my capacity to express my truth that day. As long as I was able to do the loving brave thing of showing up for the relationship I had with myself through my many rituals (or “micro-habits”) I created for myself, I could come pretty damn close to best day everyday.

Surprisingly, the more I said, I was having best day everyday. The more I did magically have best day everyday.

“Today: Whatever you, personally, are convinced of; or have convinced others of, will inevitably become TRUE: as in “REAL”. Please be careful of what you think because it is contagious.”

- found in Urban Ore restroom, which btw, is a pretty dope place in Berkeley

Life, in some capacity is just an echo chamber and I am pursuing the upward spiral of best day everyday so passionately.

However, like Rome, the magical castle of rituals for my “Best Day Everyday” wasn’t built in a day. I voodooed that shit exactly the way anyone does anything: through the magical feedback loop of experiments. I have been paying really close attention to my habits and my self talk. I have been noticing patterns that bring me closer to presence and patterns that take me out of presence. I inspected with a magnifying lens what best day everyday meant for me and how could I continue having best day everyday. Below, I’ve captured some of the systems that have changed my life: for future me to remember, and for all you cuties to have a few habits to experiment with. Hope they bring joy. <3

I will add that these don’t work all the time. I don’t expect them to. Sometimes, I’m a slave to the monkey in my brain, showing me the big-picture whiteboard and telling me I’m in danger. But my many rituals help me give this very stubborn monkey a cheek kiss, erase the red scrawl of big-picture worries, and replace them with hearts and flowers. The monkey stares back at me with annoyance and worry at first but slowly, it trusts to just sit back and enjoy the best day everyday alongside with me.

• flirt a lot

  • traditionally, flirting is used in a romantic setting. However, I invite you to put it out of that box and put it in a connection and presence making machine box. Flirting to me is a bid for connection, unafraid of outcome. “I’ve come to see flirting as a spiritual practice. It’s a way of engaging with risk, uncertainty, and possibility—and inviting others to do the same. It’s how I want to approach life: Existing in a constant state of play, exploration, attentiveness, and curiosity. Open to whatever unfolds. Awake to possibility.

    Now that I’ve flipped on the flirting switch, there’s no turning it off. There’s chemistry between me and everyone now. The mailman. The old couple at the post office. The grocery store clerk. Every single person at my co-working space. It’s obscene. I can’t stop. And I don’t want to!

    I have no intention of dialing it back. In fact, I want more. More banter, more office kitchen compliments, more hand-written notes.* If a few loverboys get caught in the crosshairs, so be it. “

  • say hello, what’s your name, make serious eye contact and swim in the presence of that conversation in the moment. It doesn’t sound easy but it’s really that easy.

• quit instagram: there are a lot richer ways 1) to be on internet 2) connect with friends

• write lots of handwritten cards: I have never experienced a bigger ROI in a single activity I have ever done in my entire life. I maintain a stack of 40ish cards at all time and write to all my friends, acquaintance, coworkers, crushes and lovers at all small and big things. It fills my heart with joy to handwrite a celebration. It costs almost nothing and everyone receiving it LOVES it.

  • also display handwritten notes you receive: On a good day, that feels good. On a bad day, that feels REALLY good. May be it’s my words of affirmation love language talking but I genuinely love looking at handwritten words of love. On my birthday every year, I ask people to write to me.

• track

  • energy and key moments: I have a calendar where I track TP, which stands for Tanya Power. Every night while brushing my teeth, I give myself a score on this calendar. Every time I give TP 100 on the calendar( which happens all the time), it feels like I am giving a gold star on my forehead. Whenever I haven’t had TP 100 for 3 days in a row, I pause and know, I need more rest and need to change something. It makes me feel like a loving scientist to myself.

  • your calories for one week every few months: Every fitness person ever will tell you that losing weight is calories in and calories out and while that’s true, tracking calories ALL the time is very painful. Every few weeks, I spend a week counting my calories and have an inventory check of current nutrition.

• look cute

  • being intentional about what you wear and how you look is about looking cute but it is way more about walking in the identity of a person who cares about how they show up in the world

  • if I wake up feeling bad, the first thing I am going to do is to put on an outfit that makes me feel like a godamm star. So what if I don’t feel good. I will dress my part and slowly, I know I will feel the part. So many times I have changed my mood by simply dressing up cute. And on every other day, dressing cute makes me feel cute as hell.

• buy physical alarm clock: I love the feeling of having an actual clock in my room with a date timestamp. I want to remember what day it is. I cannot let it dissolve into the grandness of the year.

  • and never ever ever sleep with your phone in your room: the real reason you need to have a physical alarm clock is because it’s criminal to look at your phone last thing before sleeping. If you love having poor sleep and having a really nervous system, go for it but I would strongly argue for a super chill system and a great night sleep. If I start a cult, this is one habit I am brining to it strictly: a minimum of one hour no phone before bed time.

  • and if you can, put your phone in default downtime

  • and don’t have your phone on the dinner table, not even turned down

• do an endurance sport and get addicted to moving your body: the secret to life is choosing a hard thing to do and then doing it. And one of the best ways to do it is to train for an endurance sport. This year I have been training for a 100 mile bike ride and it brings me boundless joy to watch me get just really slightly better every single time I pick it up again.

• slow mornings and slow nights: teach your body, there is no rush

  • As a side quest maximiser, it is exceptional practise to remind my mind and body that there is no rush. I can run around town all day everyday without feeling rushed or overwhelmed because I intentionally slow down in morning and night.

  • I wake up most mornings with a 30 minute chill time embedded in my schedule, which is ideally screen free with a book or newspaper in hand. I want to honour being slow first thing in the morning.

• conduct act of generosity to your future self daily

  • have a compulsory 10 minute cleaning routine before bed

  • make your bed within 10 minutes of waking up

• on a day you are feeling bad and have a long list of things to do, I encourage you to put everything aside and first clean your room.

• above all, say how you feel, (tactfully) , constantly, it’s 2025!!

There is a land far, far away from the land of cynicism and realism, called, “best day everyday”. I invite all of us a society to walk towards that land. 

I want to swim in joy endlessly through my many practises and beliefs. I hope this inspire you to experiment with rituals and beliefs that bring you to best day everyday land. It’s a good time.

I was always worried I was one of those girls who never stay single between relationships. The kind who hop from one long-term relationship to another without ever taking a real break. Serial Monogamist, as they call it. I had a couple of back-to-back relationships in high school and then ended up in a five-year relationship, most of which was long distance. It took me eight months to finally end it. Right after, I moved into a 70-person coliving house and started chatting every night with a boy who lived there. I was set on not dating him, to prove to myself: I wasn’t a serial monogamist. Then came Halloween—eight drinks in, a blackout, and a kiss I barely remembered. I was pretty determined not to date him, so we continued “not dating” —chatting every night, holding hands when drunk, and making out when really drunk.

Six months later, I ended up calling him my boyfriend. But 1.5 years later, he announced he was moving abroad. I knew if I had a grave, it would say, “Fuck long-distance relationships.” So, naturally, I broke up with him.

Now, I was 26. Single, heartbroken, crying myself to sleep every night. A few months passed, and for the first time, it seemed like my self-inflicted, blissful curse of serial monogamy had lifted. I looked around, and there was no lineup of suitors ready to sweep me into another oblivion of forever-togetherness. On a good day, I was proud of myself. On a bad day (and there were a lot of bad days), I was frustrated that Cupid wasn’t shooting arrows at me as swiftly as he had in the past.

“What if I never find love again?” I feared deeply. I kept telling myself, while trying to soothe my paralyzing anxiety: My frontal cortex had just finished developing, and maybe I didn’t have the logic-less sinking that love needed. Argh, maddening.

At the same time, I obviously spent hours scrolling Instagram, jealous of every high school friend getting married. I was farther from marriage than ever before, yet I wanted a husband more than I ever had in my life. I felt like I had failed completely in the traditional sense. So what if I had an awesome job, amazing friends, and parents who loved me more than anything? If I wasn’t working toward building a family, what was I even doing at 26?

I did what every frantic 26-year-old searching for love in the 21st century does: I downloaded Bumble and Hinge. Naturally, the horror persisted.

But this essay is not about that story. This story is about how, after 1.5 years of spiraling over boys I barely knew, I woke up one day feeling completely okay about being single.

You know that scene in Barbie where all the girls are brainwashed by the Kens, and no one knows how to snap them out of it—until America Ferrera’s character, Gloria, gives that powerful speech about womanhood? One by one, the Barbies start waking up, helping each other break free. Well, now that I’ve woken up..

Dear Barbie-who-wants-to-find-love,

Sweet baby princess, I hope you and I find love one day but I have to break the bad news, it won’t be as life-changing as you imagined. In fact, it might even make your life harder in some ways.

Lasting security doesn’t come from other people. It comes from creating meaningful avenues for your energy. Even if your “man in finance, trust fund, 6’5, blue-eyed” hunk responded to your messages and adored you with all he had, fulfillment would still be fleeting.

True security only happens when you find multiple ways to fill your life with love—for life itself. Not just romantic love.

The girlies (and by girlies, I mean the fierce feminists of the 19th and 20th centuries) married to losers fought battles so you could shine today. They fought so you wouldn’t have to measure your self-worth through the lens of the lover in your arms.

I hope their courage to stand up for themselves gives you the strength to imagine a life filled with infinite joy and love—regardless of your relationship status.

In the Substack-famous words of , “You (need to) do the terrifying, radical thing of building a life that is not a waiting room. You make peace with the possibility that this might be it—not in a resigned way, not like settling, but in the quiet, steady understanding that a full life is not made of missing pieces.”

Main characters like you don’t sit in waiting rooms. They go out and live—they breathe, smile, cry, and create. Find the courage in your heart to dream. Sit in this moment of uncertainty and remember the beauty of the unknown.

ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.

You are here to draw, write, act, create, dance, study, and build. So let’s go out there and do that.

And remember, ”if you love life, life will love you back.”

Love you,

the-other-barbie-who-wants-to-find-love

I found this quote in an art shop in San Francisco in Ghirardelli Square in 2022, and my life has improved by at least 20% since then.

Creativity and anxiety are almost identical feelings: powerful expansion of thoughts, almost boundless. When you are anxious or creative, you are taking clues from reality, but you are not confined by it. You are fantasizing—joyfully or miserably. Same muscle, different outcomes.

I used to be a deeply anxious person and once in a while, my anxiety revisits me. But in recent years, I have been able to live almost anxiety free. Shout out to my life coach, growing older and my ability to celebrate and reframe my anxiety. I often say, with awe, wonder, and deep belief: WOW! My anxiety is powerful. It is a flashlight illuminating my ability to visualize and imagine. It allows me to think of a reality that doesn’t even exist yet. I can picture corner cases, worst-case scenarios, other people’s reactions to my actions, and my reactions to their reactions—all instantly, within my mind, with no assistance whatsoever. WOW! I can really conjure up something from nothing. And WOW!! I can imagine all that in vivid detail.

You know my brain is running on crazy TPUs to process that fast. (I’m sorry, I had to make that joke.) But how wonderful and impressive is that ability?

The first time I reframed my anxiety this way, I said out loud, “HELL YEA, I have been training my whole life to think, process fast and IMAGINE”. Since that day, I’ve recognized that I have a deep well of fuel in me to be creative. I’ve had that muscle all along—I was just using it to spiral. Although deeply worrying about my life is a human experience I can’t escape, I could empower myself to be creative: TO CREATE.

When I meet someone with deep social anxiety, I remind myself to celebrate the space they hold. While their anxiety doesn’t serve them or others well, I know that if they channeled this agony into a creative outlet, they would be masters of human connection. If you pause and reflect, you’ll see they have perpetual fascination with visualizing another person’s feelings. They are attentive and continually looking for clues. Their tendency to overthink social situations is a muscle for excellent empathy. And that is worth celebrating!

Are you the kind of person who spirals easily and possibly scrolls through anxious attachment Reddit threads? Wow, congratulations. You are also the kind who can dream and be creative. You have been training your whole life to fly.

I don’t have advice for you because you have to go through that complex journey yourself. However, I do have two generic suggestions to experiment with:

• Every time you feel anxious, pause and say out loud: “COOL! I am feeling creative today”

• Next step is to bring you attention to something else that could use your creativity

  • Try to write things that bring joy. Start with 1. It could be anything. Extra points for esoteric ones: wearing cute clothes, looking at plants, making funny memes, making a TikTok, writing an essay, drawing a scene, and channel your ability to think so vividly in your pursuits.

I am the internet person looking at you smiling and yelling frantically “Go flying today and every day. What a waste of your wings if you don’t.”

New year is a time, typically, where my heart is full of same infiniteness. Somewhere middle of the year, the days blend into sameness if not, nothingness and I start to lose my dreams to the logistical complexity of the world. But not new year. New year makes me feel like anything and everything is possible.

.

The Netflix documentary series called “Netflix Explained”, explain the historical and psychological theory about unique topics. In the episode “Time”, they talk about how our sense of time is, in fact not linear. You’d expect 60 seconds that go by every 60 seconds to feel the same amount every minute but that’s not the truth. Our perception of time is a complex function of several things. To remember time, our brain needs bookmarks. New Years is one thing that unites all cultures as a celebration of time bookmark: “a fleeting moment of now.. vanishing into past”. We celebrate the 3..2..1.. “Happy new year!!!!!” together with (hopefully) a midnight smooch, and a new chance, to find the courage to dream big

.

Without further ado:

2025 INS

• massages: No matter who you are, you are underestimating the healing power of a perfect pressure touch. I only discovered massages in 2024 (I know, late bloomer) and I am now trying to get one every month

• staring and writing what day it is: Remember when we were at school, we could always tell what exact day it was: Jan 11. I want to be able to distinctly remember each single day. I cannot let it dissolve into the grandness of the year. Every morning I force myself to stare at my digital clock with day stamp. Write it in my little small pocket notebook I carry with myself everyday.

• saying “no” more: I am a chronic yes man. Very early in my life I decided if I ever cannot decide between doing or not doing something, I am doing it. It was a perfect prototype for someone who felt anxiety by indecisiveness and wanted to live a big life. Now that I am older, wiser and full of choices, I need to harness the power of no. No is powerful. No is sexy. No freezes may be’s and opens the frame for hell yea’s.

• complimenting a lot: I want to practice telling people the exact shade of radiance I experience from their heart. I want to be loud in my appreciation to strangers and my loved one: Not in a people please kind of way but in a spread joy candy kind of way.

• reading: I am discovering the joy of reading as an adult. I always brushed off reading as a hobby not meant for me. But lately, I am discovering the presence it brings in your day. It takes us away from screens and pushes us in this world of imagination. Try reading first thing in the morning and last thing at night, and watch yourself get back those 70 brain cells you lost on Tik Tok, one at a time.

• saying how you feel: it’s 2025, you HAVE to say how you feel. Kindly, lovingly and directly. Tell people how you feel. The more you practice it, the easier it’s gonna get. Sometimes it feels scary to say how you feel. May you find the courage in your heart to say how you feel precisely when you’re scared.

• asking for what you want: Very much adjacent to saying how you feel is telling people what you want.

• trusting your instincts: If I could only practice one and only one thing this year, I want it to be to listen to my instincts.

• leaving for work before 9 am: work from home provides the kind of flexibility that is awesome in theory and works great for some people but I personally, like to have few decisions out of my everyday decisions. Get up and GO.

• coffee shops: spend that $7 on that latte every weekend; in mental health dollars, that’s like $0.5 ( and people watching >>)

• cooking: try new recipes AND new cuisines ; smell and taste test > recipes

• Yoga: stretch that body

• gratitude jar: I have a phyiscal jar that I keep thank you notes and physical things I wanna save. Build that time capsule when you can

• hugging and kissing: I want to spirit the European cheek kissing greetings all around America ( with consent, of course)

• Sports: Sports bring you closer to your inner child, I am not joking

• dreaming big dreams: honor 17 year old Tanya

• wall clocks and alarm clocks: you should get a physical alarm clock. You would be shocked at how it changes your life.

2025 OUTS

• overthinking: less thinking, more vibing; I am going to tattoo that in my brain.

• Phones: A strong attempt at kicking phones out of my life. They are logistical tools meant to help us. I GET THAT. My family lives halfway across the world so I see the value they bring but I need to get my brain ducks in a line. The monkey in my brain and technology are fre-nemies. They act like they really like each other but the monkey feels so good when the technology is not in the room

• outsourcing your decision: I do love the power of group brain effort towards solving a problem. However, in the past, I have held way too many committees over frivolous or not so frivolous life decisions (I let my friends/family help me take lots of decisions). It walks me away from my intuition and I feel betrayed by the power I vested in people I love. It’s unfair to them. It’s unfair to me.

• hoarding clothes: GIRL, move on from things you don’t like and consume less. I know you hate to hear it but less is more

• social media: it’s a lot of fast food for your brain; have more green leaves, it’s time

• traveling: This one is (perhaps) controversial. I have enjoyed learning and experiencing the world. However, I am currently more interested in the compounding effects of magic that happens when you show up more consistently in places.

.

28 year old Tanya wants to tell you, you are beautiful!

if I read “find yourself’ one more time, I might kill myself. This is just an extremely dramatic ( read: Gen Z colloquial, millennial despised, my therapist loathed) way of me telling you: I am tired of hearing from everyone to find ourselves. What is self? Can you really find it? Has anyone found it?

And why do we keep talking about self like it’s a tiger in a zoo. Only if we just had the right map of the zoo. Or if we walked around the zoo long enough, we will find the tiger and know exactly where the tiger is. And all our life problems going forward would be solved.

I would like to challenge and stop the find yourself narrative with there is no self. We are fluid, constantly evolving. Perhaps it’s not a zoo. Perhaps, it’s a jungle and there is no map, and there are lots of tigers with no real assortment of where to find it. The tigers are all moving: based on many social and environmental conditions. And sometimes, you spot one and go hell yea, NOW I KNOW WHERE THE TIGERS ARE but unfortunately, the tigers just don’t stay put like that and keep moving. ( Sorry to be a brag and compare my sense of self to a tiger. Feel free to be more humble than me and pick any animal you actively love).

I just want to walk far away from the idea that there is a definitive sense of self. I want to repeat to myself everyday, no matter how far I walked and how many countries I traveled, I wouldn’t find self coz there is no self. Besides, our sense of self is so relative. I am the most American person in every Indian context and the most Indian person in every American context. (Classic Immigrant identity crisis). So what is the “rational truth” here? Am I American or am I Indian? Do I even need to be boxed in a box with a country name stamp to find my “self”? This part of self, is popularly called identity. And I refuse to identify myself as an Indian or an American. I am a spicy mix as god and my life experience intended. I refused to identify as either to comfort that monkey inside me yelling, find yourself. Dear monkey in my brain, there is no self.

My therapist would argue “What are your values?” every time I hit her with a question of self. She would say “to find self, you need to find your values” and gave me a list of 50 adjective to pick and organize my values ( and hence, “self”) from. I glanced at it really hard and deter away from how overwhelming it is to construct my sense of self through a complicated process of organizing adjectives. I am “adventurous” and “compassionate” but also a bitch when hangry( hunger+ angry). I am appalled that we can imagine to capture the complexity of human mind through the self assessment of adjectives. I understand complexity builds off simplicity and it is the bed of values that help us draw out the corners of our mind. But I refuse to engage in the conclusive postulate of my therapist that once I find out my values, I will finally find my self. Values can give a sense of my directional compass at the moment. It can tell me: “north” ( “aesthetic”), “south” ( “honesty”), “east” ( “adventure”), “west”( “excellence”). It cannot truly construct self. Dear monkey in my brain, there is no self.

The only truth, if any, I have found in this big world with my short life is intuition. I am no intuition expert but typically, intuition is the sans evidence, vague gut feeling you feel in your heart and body when you enter a situation. I am currently entirely guided by intuition and find infinite joy and presence through this practice. Any moment I enter, I check how it makes me feel and make all my decisions accordingly. I have replaced my constant quest of map around the world by a compass in the center of my heart which says TRUST YOUR INTUITION in sparkly gold. Don’t let me mislead you into thinking that I always perfectly know what I want and do things that feel good constantly. None of this saves me from being wrong or feeling bad. It only brings me closer to things that feel right. The vast majority of trusting your intuition is to allow yourself (with enthusiasm!) to make mistakes and learn from it. The only caution tale I would add here is, if you are not used to trusting yourself and listening to yourself ( which I wasn’t for like 25 years of my life), you will often confuse this vague feeling I am talking about with a fear response in your body( popularly called anxiety). And you cannot make decisions from the place of fear. If you don’t know which one it is, try watching how you talk to yourself when things don’t work out. Intuition doesn’t feel crippling. Intitution feels empowering.

Dear monkey in my brain, there is no self.

If you could go to your 10-year-old younger self and speak to them in terms of only one life philosophy, what would yours be?

For me, it would be:

The meme I would show her:

( Am I delusional to think she would know what esoteric means at 10? She definitely didn’t know what fucking meant at 10 either, but that’s beside the point. )

I spent so much of my life being deeply afraid of making mistakes, of being wrong. I was someone who wanted to just get it right, the first time: Kiss the right guy. Wear the right dress. Say the right thing. Choose the profession I am gonna do for the rest of my life. I saw mistakes as trophies of failure. And I couldn't fail: I was the eldest daughter of my family, being told I was gifted my entire life. And I never realized then, how limiting is my fear of making mistakes in my growth. My drive to do things right came off as ambitious on the surface. But beneath it all, was severe, almost paralyzing anxiety of being wrong. Nobody told me I could just be wrong. Well, my mom did tell me, I'll learn from my mistakes. Every time I cried when I missed out on a perfect 100 score in a math exam (because I thought 2 * 4 = 6), she told me it's okay. She said you don't have to be perfect to be worthy. She said you are allowed to make mistakes in life. But that's not what I needed to hear. I needed to hear: measure success by how often you try, fail, and persevere. Celebrate mistakes. When you empower yourself to be wrong, you change your life. You discover parts of you, you didn't know existed. You stop spending time on rights that feel wrong. You take away the pressure of perfect thought by imperfect action.

Ava, an author I admire wrote in her essay, “taste”:

“You don’t just wake up knowing what you like. You get it wrong, you hunt it down. It takes practice. None of us are able to escape practice. It’s a burden and it's a privilege ”

I woke up one day with my life experience fairy whispering to me what I needed to hear. And then it happened, not instantly but almost magically. I started being excited to make mistakes. I stopped caring about executing perfectly and started executing. I got fiercely addicted to action. And as promised, My life changed. I started doing salsa. I started a co-living house with my friends. I started asking out people I find admirable. I ran multiple 10ks. I started publishing my essays. (Thank you for reading my 2nd bad essay. The fairy also whispered to me: You have to get your first 100 bad essays out of the way to write a good one. )

I used to dream of the day when I would arrive and just know it all. This is the right guy. This is my life's purpose. This is the art style I like. This is my best friend for the rest of my life. Now, I know, the day won't arrive. I need to walk to the day: through the wrong kisses, the wrong friends, the wrong outfits, the wrong hobbies. Destination is only supposed to give us some sense of direction so we can start walking. And when we start walking, we stumble on a lot. What is the trail like? How does it feel to walk barefoot? Am I the eat my first snack after 2-mile hike kinda girl? Do I want my hand held when I am walking? The wrong turns taught me all of the above.

So, walk with me. It almost doesn’t matter where we are going.

My mom always told me one of the most important things to know in life is when to leave the party. And I have thought about that question a lot in all parts of my life: at what point do you know it’s time to stop: at a party, in a romantic relationship, in a career, in a friendship, in an apartment? How do you know, this is the right moment to leave?

Life is a serious push and pull, and it’s unclear when is a "let me try harder" moment and when is a "let’s scratch that, try something new" moment. I have experienced some versions of both in my life and caught myself feeling differently:

a) I've been in a relationship way longer than I should have. I ended it at a point where, after it ended, I didn't feel anything. Five years of attachment to this relationship were gone once I walked out. At that point, I felt guilty about my lack of attachment to this situation and also guilty that I stayed in for so long. Perhaps, the guilt of leaving the party too late.

b) I ended a relationship that didn’t feel right due to various logistical challenges while in love, before I was fully done with it. I didn’t live it into its failure. I knew it was going to end at some point but I hadn’t met that point yet. My heart, nine months later, is still grieving. Perhaps, the weight of leaving the party too early.

Isn’t that interesting? You can run down the hallway completely and feel, "damn, I didn't need to go all the way to the end to know that this is not the vibe." But you can also stare into the hallway and never walk through. You go to the streets and say, “I wonder what’s in the hallway.” I have had some variations of both in different parts of my life. Not that I never know; I know sometimes. But the times I don’t know, I wonder: did I time it right?

In 2023, I wasn’t sure what to do about some things: many things, most things. I asked my therapist what to do and wished she just told me what to do. Fortunately & Unfortunately, she would refuse to tell me what to do consistently. She asked me, “What would knowing look like?” It was simple, but a cool moment in my world. They show you moments like these in therapy advertisements and immediately charge you $150 an hour. I was happy to write that cheque that day ( I mean credit card, who uses cheque these days?). I still didn’t know in that moment what knowing would look like, but in a lot of moments ever since, I have known. Whenever now, I notice telling myself repeatedly: I don’t know. I stop and ask, what would knowing look like?

That’s the duality of life. You never win. You never lose. But sometimes, you wonder: Is it time to leave?