So much to say

There is a lot of that I feel like saying. I don't know if I will be able to say them all. But I feel like I should give it a shot.

Over the last several months (during the COVID-19 lockdown), life has changed for me. Some for the better, some for the worse. I'll start with the better before moving on to the worse.

I have learned so much more in music production. Finished a course and I'm just starting my last in the series. Wrote some songs, produced several others.

I upgraded my home studio setup. I got myself a powerful laptop, monitors speakers, a good electric guitar, and a cheap MIDI controller (that's not working too well).

My home studio setup

 

My new guitar

I have at least two active projects, both of which might end up releasing songs to the world soon. I have been working on songs for close to two decades, but haven't ever released something substantial in a trusted platform. I had a couple shots at it -- one solo and another with a band -- but both didn't quite materialize the way it did.

Now, with about 50+ full songs in the bag, about 300 more rudiments that could be fleshed out into full songs, and the ones that I could write moving forward, I think I could start the process of releasing them consistently over the next several years.
 

One of the projects is with a band, the members of which are part of another band that I love dearly. Over the last several months, we have been working on these songs remotely and some of these are starting to come to life.
 

The journey forward is challenging for me because I think I will be exposing myself to social situations where I'll need to spend a lot of time working on this music as a producer and engineer for this band, which I think is not my strength. Plus, I'm decidedly an introvert at the core, and spending long periods with people (even if they are my friends) will be extremely taxing.

So overall, this seems ambitious but I think it is doable. All I need to make sure is that I should not burn myself out, which I have a tendency of doing.

I have watched a lot of quality content, both movies and TV series. These are the things that generally inspire me to be creative, and I have conceded to the fact that they are not merely entertainment for me. These things make me think in ways that other forms of communication and media don't.

Among these, I must mention my dive back into the wondrous world of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, and the charm of good-quality Malayalam cinema. I still remember the time that I started watching Stargate with my friends and work back in 2014 or something, and they ended up finishing the series (the whole pantheon) in a year or so, where I languished in SG-1 for several years until I picked things up earlier this year.

I have rediscovered my love for gaming. I have started off with explore Xbox Game Pass on my Windows PC, but I think I am headed the way of purchasing an Xbox console when I can.

But I haven't been able to read too much. That's something I want to fix. I'm still stuck in Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton. I have managed to read a few hundred pages in the last few weeks.

Amazingly, I started this book on New Year's day in 2018. I haven't read much other than a few non-fiction books and comics then. I want to finish this off before I start something new, something that will inspire me.

At work, I have gone from the manager of a team to someone who is primarily involved in creating, ideating, and troubleshooting. I'm currently in the last phase of creating an online training course for copyeditor trainees who join my company. This involved a lot of creative processes (with a lot of opportunity for seeding, farming, and harvesting self-doubt, which has more or less brought be back to a phase of full-fledged depression and anxiety.

To add to the mix is the work pressure and stress. I love working but I seem to have a problem with taking care of myself. This sort of thing has been happening at work for over 3 years now, and I have contemplated quitting or seeking other opportunities (less stressful). With my music revenues drying up during COVID-19 lockdown, with very little hope of things getting back to how things were before, I need to have this job to sustain myself and to work on my music.

Working from home might be easy in the sense that I don't have to travel or meet people. But it is difficult to plug yourself off the grid. Plus, after a 10 to 11 hour day of tiring work, I have to spend time to do the household chores. Then there is the music work. This leaves me with not enough time of rest, relaxation, sleep. I am trying my best to achieve that balance by trying to take short breaks to do some chores in between my work tasks.

The one aspect of work that is challenging but sufficiently rewarding to balance the negative effects of stress is the talks that I give to students from various universities about the academic publishing industry and related topics. These tend to be the highlights of my otherwise productive, but stressful and self-doubting, weeks.

I have had a relatively steady state of therapy sessions over lockdown, and I have decided to step up the fortnightly frequency before to a weekly one, considering that I almost fell apart in the last few weeks.

During the lockdown, I spent a LOT of time holed up in my apartment with my partner J. Before lockdown, I never thought I could comfortably spend more than two days with anyone, especially J. We had a stretch of about 4 months together. We were with each other night and day without any breaks!

We were both surprised to find out that we could hold out for this long. Of course, we had fights and arguments, but we also had wonderful shared moments, with lots of wonderful food and shared TV/movie experiences. We regularly had our evening tea on the balcony, with the backdrop of mountains and clouds (on good days) and the cacophony of avian noises at dusk.

For this duration, however, I lost my sense of personal space more and more, and that also has contributed to my triggering of stress, anxiety, and depression. My apartment is tiny by world standards and average by Mumbai standards, and I need the space for my music and to feel free that I can do things I want to do when I want to do. When I am with people, I give away all my space to them. They become the primary beings of the shared space. This is probably why I could never be with people for over a few days.

During the lockdown, I gave up my bedroom and desk to J for most of the day, which limited my access to my recording setup. He might do the cooking, but the cleaning responsibilities were harder and took longer. There was less quiet overall, and J was more or less in charge of the auditory environment.

When I'm alone, I usually have a variety of states where I'll play loud music or have absolute quiet, and I listen to podcasts and talk radio when I am not concentrating on text-based work. This world is shattered when another person shares the space with me. I don't feel like I should destroy their peace by auditorily invading the shared space, which is something that I don't usually get reciprocated for. This builds the tension and anxiety of losing control of the space. I don't know how to get out of this or have the feeling of a truly shared space.

I have finally started finding YouTube useful, especially to learn more about technology, music production, and my niche interests. I often dive into the YouTube maze and come out with learnings and best practices. This also happens with podcasts. In fact, the fact that I'm writing this post is because of the simple strategy that a songwriter espoused on a podcast.

They recommended starting the day and working on something creative. Maybe listening to music or writing. Writing songs or prose.

Because of the work-from-home situation, and because I want to try and finish my work as soon as possible, I end up starting work as soon as possible, which leaves with less creative energy at the end of the day. Today, I wrote some lyrics for a song that I'm working on, recorded a scratch version of it (both for the course), and I felt like writing this blog post.

Some of the lessons that I learned from the things that I read or seek out is how to do music production better. But the problem with knowing more is to find it difficult to get more done with less time. You tend to get lost in what you think you should do instead of what you should do. I used to wrap up demos in hours. Now, that has gone to days, if not weeks. That's not good and I need to figure out a way to make things manageable in terms of time. The latest course that I'm doing has an exercise that mandates that you set timelines for finishing a project. I will try to implement that moving forward.

My therapist tells me that I should try and stare out at nothing (or something pleasant) for short periods during the day. During our sessions, I found out that this activity made me feel like a heavy weight has been lifted off my body. My eyes started feeling relaxed and I felt like drifting off to sleep. This morning, I did that by staring at the mountains for a bit. I need to make it a point to do this more often than I have been doing.

I have been finding it difficult to fall asleep at night, especially when I am with J. I don't know why it is that. I tend to feel sleepy if I'm reading something or watching something, but the act of needing to switch off the TV or put away the book and switch of lights wakes me up.

One of the reasons could be the anxiety/stress overall, but I think the frustration of not feeling like I have done anything meaningful in the day is a constant contributor. Thanks to my wonderful upbringing, I have a tendency to feel I'm not good enough for anything or that I haven't done enough to merit existing.

This is both for things at work as well as my music. I know that I'm doing good work, but I always feel like I am not doing enough or that I could have done way better. At work, there is hardly a system where such anxieties are considered and taken care of. Many have left the company because of the unaddressed issues, with more leaving soon. I feel for them, as much as I should be feeling for myself. But as I said above, I need this job at this time.

Over the last year or so, I have more or less pulled out of most social media. The only thing I check occasionally is Twitter. I have also stopped sharing photos. In fact, the joy of photography has somehow been sucked up from inside me. I guess I should treat this as a phase too. Or maybe it is because I don't get to get out of my house anymore.

I am planning to switch of 8-year-old Nexus 5 to something more modern. Something with a decent camera and photography software. I'm not sure if I should go for Pixel 4A or something more expensive and flagship (like the OnePlus 8T or some version of the iPhone).

During the lockdown, I have rediscovered my interest in writing (physical, literal writing) with fountain pens. I have refurbished the ones that I have and I have purchased a couple of good ones. Now, I can even write lyrics paper with real pens!

My not-so-good handwriting

One of the unsettling aspects of lockdown has been finding out that I relate and empathize with the heinous characters in some movies. These characters show psychopathic characteristics. They are murderers, cannibals, and sadists. I don't think that I have any of these characteristics, but I have the sociopathy. What they say about human beings, their sufferings, and how things should end resonates with me.
I'm talking about Dr. Hannibal Lecter (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins) and Jame Gumb (Buffalo Bill, played by Ted Levine) from Silence of the Lambs, Tavis Bickle (played by Robert DeNiro) from Taxi Driver, and the young woman (played by Jesse Buckley) in i'm thinking of ending things.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter

Jame Gumb

Robert Bickle

The girl in i feel like ending things

I haven't talked much about Blumenthal. She is as pretty as ever. As I write this, she has gotten under the covers after having had her mail meal for the day.

Blumenthal in all her glory

So that's where I will end this for the moment. This was fun. This was refreshing. Maybe I'll follow my own advice and do this more often.

I wrote about photography earlier. Since drafting the post, I added some photos to it. These are the ones that I feel I should share or I should have shared.

The carrot for your rabbit

What is it that you chase that seems to move farther away? It makes you feel that there will be something at the end. Something that you hope you will have wanted all along and will continue to exist in a state of being desirable. Yet, with every passing day, what was once desirable becomes inconsequential. The chase seems to be here to stay.

Maybe we are excruciatingly dumb, infantile physical vessels, hosting embryonic minds caught up in algorithmic urges while trying to make sense of the why's. The carrot chasing will go on forever. Those you grab will get devoured or discarded. And you start all over again.

If you don't see a carrot, you will try to imagine it. Imagined ones can metamorpihize to creations if you try hard enough. You may even give the physical representations by inserting reminders into your own environment.

Because carrots are ubiquitous, everyone will have an opinion about them. Some will tell you that carrots are good for you. Some others will want you to forget that carrots existed. Both sets of people would sound right and wrong depending on how hungry you are for the carrot.

The occasional state of satiation, often fueled by inebriation or hormonal supersaturation, may last for a day or three. The hunger will return, and you will go back to drawing, creating, and chasing carrots. Until the time that either you lose sight---not just of carrots but of perspective---or when you realize that carrot chasing has left you dissatisfied.

Maybe we should stay above ground while the carrots remain below. Or maybe we need them carrots so as to not lose sight.

Nudges

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.

All I want is solitude

I honestly don't remember how I felt a few months back. I think I might not have felt great, but I had the drive to do things out of what I would consider my main professional role. I was taking courses, planning trips, writing/recording songs, and what not. On top of it, I was doing a series of satisfying/rewarding tasks at work, most of which involved teaching or helping researchers/scientists draft and fine-tune the textual representations of their life’s work. With all of this, I was able to keep up with the demands of rehearsals and gigs of a busy multi-instrumentalist.

On the personal side, I had finally put together bits and pieces of my domiciliary life and I seemed to be on my way to stitch them together into a dependable quilt that I could snuggle under when I wanted to. My partner, who was a pillar through the quilt-making process, and I were getting along okay, having navigated the tricky 7^th year of our relationship without much turmoil. I was enjoying cooking and learning new recipes. On top of this, I was actively considering the scope of continuing my academics—hell, if I can help people get their research perfected, why on Earth can’t I do it on my own? I made some significant strides on doing research on that as well.

Although I was never too social to begin with, I was still able to maintain a decent relationship status with my friends (almost entirely virtual—and there is no shame admitting that in 2019), family, and acquaintances. Social media was still relevant and useful, at least for sharing memes, practicing on being clever/funny, and keeping up with how people were framing their thoughts on things.

I don't have to dig too much to find enough evidence to suggest that I was a highly functioning individual. I might have been juggling a bit too many things at any point in time, but I don’t think I was messing things up too much. There were warning signs. The usual, “You got too much on your plate, and you will go on a tailspin sooner than you know it” type comments from people who cared enough about me and knew enough about my life was—which works out to a rounded one person.

Then—sure as honking in Mumbai—things changed.

Not sure exactly when. Maybe in October. Because that’s when I was officially transitioned to a managerial role at work, with some limits on the other roles that I was already doing. At work, there is always too many things to do and too few people to do them. This equation is a great template for someone like me to divert most of my energy/attention to doing things—not getting things done, as managers are supposed to do.

There must have been that evening when I thought that there were too many people craving for my attention. There must have been this one day when I found myself too exhausted to come back and work on a song. There must have been that one weekend where all I wanted to do was to sleep. There must have been those two weekday mornings when I could not fit in therapy. There must have been those days when whatever I seemed to cook tasted terrible. There must have been those two weeks where I didn’t want to meet the guy who was helping me with some documentation stuff. There must have been that month when I didn’t care to finish the last two weeks of a Coursera course that I have been paying for.

That brings me to me to now. I have stopped meme-ing. I have stopped interacting with people even on instant messaging and social media. I have not written something or recorded something in a few months. I have stopped wanting to meet my band mates for rehearsals. I have stopped working on my personal growth. I have stopped doing research. I have stopped meeting people, including the handful that I might have wanted to meet. I have stopped thinking about traveling to places that I might have wanted to visit purely because of scenic splendor. I have stopped wanting to be with cat. I have stopped checking for movies to watch.

The only thing I have not stopped is to finish things I have to finish at work and to do my live musician duties whenever they are called for.

My personal malaise for creativity has given me sufficient room for consuming others’ – which means that I have series like Better Call Saul and The Walking Dead under my belt. Probably not the worst things to spend time doing, but maybe not at the cost of not doing the things I used to care for.

I have never looked forward to being a manager, and I was not too sure how things would pan out. Going by the simple parameter of how good one is in delegating tasks and getting work done by others, I guess I’m a terrible manager. And going by how much torque is on my tailspin, I could bore a hole through solid ground and never come out. On the positive side, people are at work are aware of my state and are cooperative to look for ways to fix this. I hope to restart regular therapy sessions thanks to the insistence of my partner and my work manager.

I still don’t know when I will be back—if I will be back. Until this probable possibility becomes a reality, I’ll try to pull through another exhausting, creativity-less day at a time.