Everything nudges you. Sometimes ever so slightly. Things that you see,
read, do, and think--all of it does. And I guess these nudges change you.
Technically, everyone you meet and interact with you should too. In my case,
it's not so. Probably because I go out of my way to limit my interactions with
people. People are one of the most consistently disappointing things that I
encounter in my daily life--the reason could be high expectations that I set
for them, low returns that I get from them, or a combination of both. I find
myself checking out of conversations somewhere between 20 minutes and 45
minutes after meeting someone. Even with people I love and that I care about.
And yet, at least one such interaction has resulted in a nudge.
A few days ago, J told me that he was moved after reading my then
last post on the blog. He, I guess, could relate more to
me as a person through my post because I'm particularly pitiful in conveying
emotions in real life. I appear cold and distant. But it is representative of
what I feel like these days.
J also said he was exploring some of the older posts after having conversations
with AV. They get along well with each other on Facebook, thanks to their
shared interest in photography. In fact, they interact way more with each other
than I manage to interact with AV.
When I asked J about what they were talking about, J said that it was not
about my depression. AV had brought up some issues that he was having with some
posts on my blog with him and that's why he had started reading my blog.
Parallelly, AV and I have also been having conversations about how to get
people to not find
those posts about him on the blog. He
said he gets a lot of shit from antagonists on Facebook photography groups,
where he posts his idiosyncratically brilliant photographs and engages with
people in fiery comment threads (with questionable political correctness). He
now wants me to ensure that such posts don't show up on Google searches.
One of my most popular posts was a
photobiography of his life. This was my attempt at
showcasing his art to the world. His photography, through which his incredible
mind shines, had remained more or less inaccessible to the real world thanks to
his social anxiety/phobia. Within a few months of meeting him in 2007, I wanted
to help him display his photographs in an art gallery in New York. I thought I
could do it. I thought I could help him leave a legacy in the real world.
He had scoffed at my cherubic optimism. I couldn't do it like how I wanted
to, but I did manage to push him into opening accounts on Flickr and
Facebook. His Flickr stint didn't last too long, but he stuck with Facebook. It
is probably what keeps him going these days. He uses Facebook to post photos
and get comments and reactions from his friends and, more importantly, from
strangers. And some of these strangers look him up when they are upset with
something he posts or says, and that leads to my blog posts.
I have been naive and careless about the internet all my life. In 1997, I
started warming up to HTML. In 2002, I created a website for my medical school
batchmates. I had copied all the content available in a book that was published
after we graduated and then started posting updates on their whereabouts. The
website was hosted on GeoCities and the content still comes up on Google
searches. Some of my classmates are pissed by it, and I'm still trying to find
my way out of that mess.
Back to nudges. I guess everyone is figuring out how to find a way out of
their labyrinthine miseries. Like how I am trying to get past my current low
phase. I have heard a lot of people talk their way out of things with
superfluous stuff like, "It's all about the journey and not the
destination." Thanks to these nudges, the path that I take (and thus the
journey) deviates ever so slightly from what seems like a course of certain
doom. Mabye the destination doesn't change and it's just a slight detour. But
the journey does. Or it has.
Back to J. So when J brought up my blog, I felt a certain sense of pride. I
have always felt that I communicated better in writing than I could ever do in
any other mode of communication. Hell, I have met more people by making people
laugh and entertaining them on gay social networking chat rooms. So I went
back to the blog(s). I hadn't posted in a while. And then I posted
All I Want is Solitude,
Slide-show, and
The Last Best Things.
I felt satisfied. I felt closer to how to I used to feel. I felt like I had
done something meaningful. I don't feel that too often.
There were other nudges too. Two weeks ago, during the commute to an
outstation gig, I spent most of my time listening to an audiobook. It was the
audio version of
Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton--a book I
had started three years back. Sometime during the ride, I felt like switching
to something else.
I looked for music in my
dumber of my two smartphones.
It's dumber because it's older and it does not have access to mobile internet.
It is a Nexus 5 whose motherboard must feel like a teenager thanks to the number
of fixes it needed to keep it going. It does not have a functioning mobile
radio antenna and hence does not have a SIM card. It might be dumber, but
it is the one that I'm more fond of and feel more safe with. I feel that it is
safer because it is not the phone on which I have to interact with people.
People tend to bring bad news. Communicating with people make me anxious. That
overwhelming sense of expectations and responsibility.
So my dumber phone functions like an iPod. It has everything that I might
want to listen to. The vast majority of what I want to listen to is
podcasts--on combat sports, science, technology, astronomy, skepticism,
conspiracy theories, etc. Audiobooks occupy a much lesser, but significant,
chunk of its limited memory. I have a few folders in it with some music. Mostly
music that I
have to listen to for preparing my
sets. But there are also some folders with versions of some of my songs. I
keep these folders so that I can remind myself that I can be creative.
I switched to listening to my songs. Mainly because I wanted to check out
how they sounded on my new Bluetooth headphones, which have the necklace thing
along with the earbuds. As I guess is the case when artists revisit their
unfinished pieces after a long time, I was pleasantly surprised. I was enjoying
listening to the songs that I had written, recorded, and produced. They were so
out of my consciousness that I was intrigued by them initially. I remember
smiling and chuckling at the lyrics that I had come up with. If you are
wondering, I can't remember my lyrics to save my life.
This whole experience was another little nudge because I had revisited
something that I was proud of. I felt like I had done something worthwhile and
I was capable of doing something that could also help me leave a legacy. I
don't think I much care(d) about leaving a legacy, but I have always wanted to
showcase what I could do—at what I think I'm good at doing—to the world. I
guess I would also like some recognition, but that's not the most important
reason. I would like to think that I want people to feel what I have felt, and
I truly hope that I have translated my feelings and thoughts sufficiently
adeptly into these songs.
Another nudge happened around that time. Since starting
Judas Unchained
in 2017, I have just finished about 400 pages. It is the only book I'm
officially reading. It's fair to say that I was not reading much. At J's best
friend's farewell party, which I reluctantly agreed to go for, I found
myself checking out of people and conversations fast. In the middle of the
party, in one of several attempts to separate myself from the raucous
conversation, I walked into J's friend's bedroom and found a copy of
Narcopolis by
Jeet Thayil. I read the the first 30-odd pages. The sheer pleasure of
opening a paperback, sifting through pages, enjoying the different angles that
one could gaze the pages at, and getting lost in that brilliant chapter are all
cliched mediocre aspects of reading a physical book. But for me, it was another
nudge. I had suddenly rediscovered the joy of reading a new book, which opened
up the possibility of reading many more.
The next night, I found my Kindle Paperwhite and charged it. I logged out of
my .com Amazon account and logged in with my .in account so that I can access
the books that I have been reading on my
other Kindle.
Yes, I have two Kindles. The Paperwhite is mine, and the other (a much older
one with a physical keyboard) is a gift from Blummer. It was Blummer's father's
and Blummer gave it to me after his passing. In the last three years, I have
preferred reading on the older Kindle because it felt more like reading a
physical book (because it does not have a backlight) and because I loved its
physical page-turn buttons. But it is a problem if I wanted to read in bed with
the lights turned off. I either have to use my
dumber smartphone
(because it has kickback stand in its case) or the Paperwhite.
After the
Narcopolis experience, I wanted to get back to
being on my Paperwhite because I could read in bed and drift to sleep. Instead
of watching something and having to turn that thing off. Since then, apart from
continuing
Judas Unchained, I started a John le Carre book. Some
progress.
Reading goes hand in hand with writing. The more I read, the more I want to
write. That meant more posts, of which this, hopefully, will be the fourth.
There have been other nudges too in these past two weeks.
Buying those necklace headphones meant that I could listen to my podcasts
with my helmet on while riding my bicycle, which I primarily use for commuting
to work and grocery shopping. Listening to podcasts while cycling is
liberating!
In another conversation three weeks ago, J had asked me to figure out a way
to restart therapy and make it more regular. I had managed to get the first
session done two days after I posted my first post in a long time. I don't
consider the therapy itself as a nudge, but my efforts for fomdomg a fix to
remedy my current situation was one.
My maid has been giving me a fresh set of problems since she started coming
a few months back. Despite me requesting her several times to do dusting and
other types of cleaning more than sweep/swab and doing the dishes, she was just
following her usual routines. This past week, I had a conversation with her explaining
what I wanted her to do. The next day was a no-show from her. I was frustrated
and I wanted to set an example.
I spent about five hours in cleaning up the apartment so that she could see
how things looked if things were done properly. The next day, I did the dishes
and cleaned the counter and made the bed before I left for work. She must have
been surprised that I had done all of that. Today I met her and explained that
things are not working out the way they are being done. I proposed an alternate
strategy of focusing way more on dusting and deep cleaning on a fortnightly
rotating basis around the apartment. I also said that I'll continue doing the
things that I can.
The five-hour cleaning run was a nudge. I felt good after doing it. I had
tangible results of something that I had a lot of fun doing. I have always felt
a sense of satisfaction and pride after cleaning. This feeling is why I
volunteer to do dishes when I go to my friends' place for dinner.
So many nudges. Most will sound inconsequential to many. But they did change
the way I was doing things. The way I was thinking about things. Those nudges
changed me and my future. There I said it. Every time I come across a sci-fi
reference about the lack of free will, I chuckle on the inside. I guess I
chuckle(d) a lot when I used to watch Passengers or think about
Trafalmadorians.
Last night, I found myself telling J that I might be past my current phase's
nadir. Maybe I have. That's where I am now. Feeling better. Thanks to
these nudges.
