Feeling stuck, an investigation

And how to [unsuccessfully] overcome it, for a few minutes at least

Hello! How are you this Monday? I’ve been feeling burnt out and fatigued and so I’m making a difficult decision to make shelf offering a monthly thing, for now. The next newsletter will be in August!

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Every time I sit down to write this newsletter, I feel stuck. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing this newsletter! But sometimes, I think of this whole process as being pulled into quicksand—a slow descent into a situation that seems impossible to escape from while my anxiety reaches a steady crescendo. Desperate times call for drastic measures, i.e. walking away. I shut my laptop and walk: into the kitchen to pace about and think of dinner; towards the refrigerator to stare at what can be made for dinner; to the bathroom to watch a couple of cats fight and make up; up the stairs to the terrace and stare at the darkness. Eventually, I make my way back to my laptop and stare at it for the whole evening before deciding to do something else. And by that I mean watch YouTube videos, re-watch It’s Always Sunny, or try to finish whatever book I’m reading (currently Iris Murdoch’s A Word Child). And eventually, I finish whatever I’ve started, spend sometime cringing at it, edit it twice, thrice, four or five times, and schedule it to be published. So far, the reception to my work here has been kind and I’m grateful. But when Monday passes I’m left thinking, do I have anything else to say?

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just a tree, the loveliest of trees on my walk

Last week, I read

Huw Lemmey

’s newsletter on walking away from your problems and felt seen on feeling discomforts—exhaustion, a feeling of dread, thinking myself inadequate when it came to some sort of intellectual thinking and writing, and envious at everyone else who’s publishing spectacular work¹—and trying to subsume them. Lemmey’s walk around parts of Spain encouraged him to acknowledge the discomforts that he was facing; soon, the pattern of walking took over:

The rhythm of walking allowed for something else to happen; a sort of silent thought below the chatter, slowly processing everything that flows daily beneath it. I felt like I was walking away from anxiety, as though I could outpace it through stamina alone

I haven’t journeyed to Spain, mostly because I don’t have the kind of money or ease of access via passport-visa, but I did journey to Besant Nagar, in Chennai, which is 10+km away from where I live. The reason was twofold. To buy cheese, and to get out of my head, and into the wilderness almost.

There is nothing wild about the city I live in, but often I feel like I’m in the jungle, both physically and emotionally, trying to navigate the bewildering complexity of anxiety, depression, and uncertainty, and the effect they have on my mind and body. I’m all too aware of their combined effects on my body. During the pandemic, increasing stress meant my body shut down in one way and thrived in another — my hair was growing stronger and thicker than ever. An actual jungle of knots and tangled mess! The journey I took to bring (a part of) me back (to my pre-pandemic self) was slow and is still ongoing in many ways, and it started with a step.

Instead of taking an autorickshaw to Besant Nagar and back, I decided to catch the bus to the depot and walk from there. My mum told me to take any bus from our nearest bus stop to the next stop (which is where the direct bus stops), and then catch one to Besant Nagar. Why waste time walking, you will only sweat. Wise words from a woman who loves to walk everywhere all the time. But it did make sense—the humidity was at an oppressive 80%.

I didn’t want to ponder too much on the choices, because I knew my anxiety would take over immediately. What if the bus takes too long to come? What if I sweat through my clothes? What if someone I know sees me and thinks I look straggled? Should I take an auto instead and be done with it? What is the point of an adventure in Chennai²? So many familiar thoughts attacked me; the kinds that usually keep me distracted from doing anything worthwhile and tire me out to the extent that I have to nap. So I decided to walk aimlessly around my locality at first to quiet the chatter, and then I strode towards the bus stop listening to an 80s playlist³ I had created just for this occasion. I decided to control my discomforts for a change.

That afternoon, I passed by people gathering for hot soup and full meals around a street cart, some others who were looking to buy bedding and carpets, teens who were coming out of a driving school (the same one where I learnt how to drive a car and smoked a sneaky cigarette), and some like me who were walking to catch the bus. By the time I reached the stop, a mere 10 minute walk, I was overwhelmed by the amount of sweat I’d produced, which was enough to hydrate a small city. Hey, at least I wasn’t thinking! Four minutes later, the bus arrived and chugged silently towards my destination.

As humidity hung onto the branches of trees, clung onto the air, and fastened on our backs like impenetrable suits of armour, three kilometres into my journey, I let out a sigh, unclenched my jaws, and began to relax; as Lemmey wrote, “the inner peace turned out to be just a truce…” There were few of us on the bus, either listening to our phones or talking amongst companions, but always looking out of the windows, watching the bus turn around side streets that were clearly not capable of holding more than two scooters at once. We passed by pink apartment buildings where residents watched and waved at us. We passed by public toilets, startling men who were zipping themselves up in public with no hurry at all. We passed by narrow avenues, prompting the conductor to yell trees! branches! at the driver. Throughout, I didn’t have small voices trying to fit a thousand things, a thousand criticisms, a thousand anxieties into the crevices of my mind. I had no thoughts in my head, when Cyndi Lauper sang caught up in circles, confusion is nothing new.

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I guess what I’m trying to say is that walking away, dancing away, or moving away, is good—great even!—when something/some thoughts is/are trying to control you.

Once I reached Besant Nagar (I got down at the wrong stop), I walked around in circles before walking down the right path towards the cheese shop. No surprise then that it started raining—all that humidity had to go somewhere. It wasn’t a long walk, but it was a walk towards joy, towards cheese (which is also JOY), and, at least for a fleeting moment, self-actualisation⁴. The journey for cheese also became a journey away from anxiety, from self-flagellation, from the drudgery of writing that is sometimes torturous and miserable, from the feeling that everything will invariably fall apart.

There are days when I’m in front of a computer trying to conjure up words, sentences, and narratives that don’t exist; days where anxiety takes over and adds to the load, transforming me from a somewhat certain individual to an uncertain, fearful one. For every unsuccessful week or two, I have one day where I can conquer back—which involves trying not to feed the fears in my head and letting it take over—telling myself to find satisfaction in what I write and have written for some years now. Reminding myself of a line from Maggie Smith’s Good Bones, that you could make this place beautiful. That I could make this place beautiful.

Of course, I rarely have any control in trying to quieten my mind from the fear that I will be exposed as a terrible fraud, that I was never charming and neither was my newsletter, that I will never write a book or be a worthy writer, that everyone who reads me hates me, that there are constantly new things to worry about. When that happens, I’m going to take a walk far away from those voices. Or if possible, a bus ride⁵ that takes me 10+km away from where I live.

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Miscellaneous

• Cheese, the magazine that I co-founded with other brilliant friends in the food and publishing world, is up for a Guild of Food Writers award! This is such great, joyous news, also because we’re in the fine company of many writer friends!

• This piece on re-reading teenage diaries is such a throwback! I’ve been there, going through my teenage diaries in the hopes of realising that I was a cool genius after all!! Except, no, it was a mega cringe fest, which was kinda fun. Also, cheesy poems on unrequited love/crushes, eep! I guess we all have equally embarrassing past lives.

• A fun illustrated guide to mouth gestures(!!) and their meanings—it’s going to be a month of learning.

• This beautiful poem, Someone in Paris, France is Thinking of You.

• As I’ve been trying to keep things afloat, I’m glad I read Why Don’t My Expectations Line Up with My Reality?

1. Envious, yes, but I’ve made my peace with it! Not wishing anyone bad, just hoping I can give my best and make myself proud of the work I want to put out.

2. After having lived here for almost three decades of my life now.

3. Fleetwood Mac’s Go Your Own Way started playing, and no, I’m not making this up.

4. Not to go all Maslow on everyone, but I did feel peaceful!

5. In the interest of full disclosure, I took an autorickshaw back home because I was so dehydrated and exhausted and couldn’t manage another bus ride home.