my ambition right now is to live the most quiet life possible
my current definition of success is making every day as dainty as possible in the next 3 months
FREE ME PLEASE FROM HOW I AM AVOIDANT OF THE THING I WANT MOST: A QUIET NORMAL LIFE!
SIMPLIFYING IT ALL. Because I am not simple, but maybe my life can be.
I want to give up on having the ambition and grinding myself. I made it to New York, I proved I can speed run the moving in, but now I need to settle in energetically.
Moving in: getting the job, the apartment, the friends, the routine, the basic bearings
Settling in: grounding myself in who I’m going to be as I grow up in this place.
When I was young, I thought that I wasn’t allowed to slow down because speeding up was what gave me value. Trying to outthink everyone, outpace everyone, became a sport.
I think I still have this pattern. I go fast because I can’t afford to slow down, be quieter, be less energetic. I’d feel out of control.
I don’t want to feel like a prisoner. So here’s my deciding to let go. Here’s me deciding to be the INFJ I always wanted to be and completely go balls to the wall into the one thing I feel unable to possess, but I want to be.
This is my version of an ideal life:
If every morning, I eat some toast and start absentmindedly cooking and I feel nourished and look forward to eating every meal.
If I revolved my life around getting things for my work done so I could look forward to sleeping and lying down.
If I felt more alive when I was by myself and did whatever I want without scheduling a million play dates to prove something to myself.
If I had the space and clarity to prioritize always 100% the grocery trips, the food I was eating, the deep listening I want to cultivate with my body. If I didn’t push myself to do anything but just work, daily, and not be worrying about taking more classes or honoring more connections or making the most out of things.
If I just literally sauntered down the street without a care in the world.
Would the god of space and time and innovation reward me?
Would he let me remember to never forget to be there with myself? Even when I’m stressed about work? Even when I’m depressed?
What if I just sat there and instead of feeling it all and making myself sick with sadness, I laid down and decided to move and use food as a way to heal?
What if I’m undernourished? What if I’m so burnt out I can’t even remember how to slow down?
I get enough sleep. I do enough reflection. I let my creative energy out. Still I am unhappy. I feel it more now that I’m with spirits, alone together with my friend.
Writing this makes me realize the point of this Substack is to feel alive.
If I have less instincts to spring out the door and into the night at the end of a day, and instead, melt into myself, what would happen? Magic? What if life were slower? What if I didn’t rush to write everything down because I trusted myself for it to emerge? What if I didn’t feel my youth slipping away, but felt my elderness coming to coexist with it together?
I am shutting everyone out for a bit because this destabilizing trip I took was… a lot. I reintegrated so much of myself, found respite in eliminating codependency, met new exciting people, had an erotic experience with barely any physical contact, and I am aware I moved so fast in meeting so many that I’m now left with no juice.
I’ve been connecting for so long that I didn’t notice that I want to stop.
Before I finish the second round of commandments (here’s the first), let me remind myself the peace I feel right now. I’m currently in my Japanese friend’s home. It’s Shintoistic. It feels like a shrine, but it’s just an apartment in West Hollywood, LA. Yet it’s sacred. It feels like there’s spirits that inhabit it.
They watch over the books in their place, the teas in their drawers, the mirrors that are arranged in a spatially aware way, the window cranked open a bit, the colors and aesthetics dancing together. It’s magical. I wish for a piece of that. I can feel I can have that?
These spirits that guard over Mari’s place are telling me now they can be in mine too. This is “talking to my possessions” on a new level! They are down to follow me out of this house in a bit and into the night, whispering in my ear of the things I’m allowed to desire and reminding me I can have my own flavor of homey.
I miss my place in Los Angeles sometimes. I miss how the shelves looked, how the desk was, how my bed felt, how there were so many Sailor Moon posters.
Right now, I rarely move slowly and lounge.
I don’t think it’s my space’s problem. I think Ridgewood is my neighborhood. I love my roommates. I know I’m meant to be here. But fuck I want to smile at my space because I want to be inside it for a while. I want that. That feels erotic to me, romantic in a way I haven’t experienced almost ever.
My new room is too small. All my possessions occupy the whole house. I am the one who stays home most of the day, so I feel like it’s mine to decorate. I in fact inherited a whole place, full of gentle old people’s energy from the previous inhabitants.
I realize that I avoid spirits when I avoid the entities because I’m trying to find the god in people again.
I remember now when I was a kid, the gods were my friends. They raised me when I felt unmothered, when I realized I hadn’t been properly fathered.
The spirits can only be felt if I spend the time alone I’m supposed to.
I can feel the image coming to me now of what must be:
If the office feels like a cozy haven.
If I drink teas and curl up on the couch with a blanket when I’m done with work.
If I spend the money I want and let it DO ITS JOB, I’ll get more.
If I don’t clench my relationship with money because I want to be normal and I’m afraid of no being.
If no distractions call to me from the outside, away from the truth I usually can access if I wait for long enough.
If my biggest practice is to look at my space and be like, FUCK YEAH THIS IS HOME. If the house I’m in can contain all of me, if the place I inhabit begins to feel like one I’m reluctant to leave, if I can find a sense of belonging in the physical as much as I do in the physical…. I’ll be happy.
I don’t want to analyze others’ energy right now and be in the excitement all the time to prove to myself I deserve it. I’m sick of how cluttered my life feels. As a representation of my inner world, it has a lot of spirits.
I don’t know myself at this moment as much as I could, which is crazy because I know myself a lot. But I’m comparing myself to where I want to be, and I’m willing to work for it. It feels clear to me.
My possessions like me, but we aren’t close. We’re family members that get along, but we don’t get cozy with each other the way I want to. It makes sense because I just moved to New York a few months ago, and that transition ripped my sensitive system apart even if I’m deeply happy and at peace.
I’m getting my social needs met, but just like how you can’t expect an instant connection to a friend to contain the same kind intimacy of longevity with someone you’ve been close to for years, I don’t feel settled in yet in a homey way in New York.
So I will start being very intentional, meditating on what I want to do, and just let life take me for a small ride. Narrow my focus with people and spend time honing in on the big picture.
Literally spend the time I need by myself.
Because I’m never alone.