soos_mite_ah

@Forestluv I don't have much to add to all of the points you listed above and expanded on but I did want to say that I agree and I enjoyed reading your assessment of the campaign

I disagree. Calling Trump and Vance corrupt and dangerous can make them seem more powerful and suave than they are when really they're babbling fools with the incompentence of a 4 year old. Painting your opponent as dangerous and that they are this boogey man makes the opisition feel powerful and in control, that they have the ability to strike fear in if they please. Laughing at them for the fools they are and calling them weird is the opposite of that. Especially for a crowd that leans more SD Blue and values conformity because they think anything that deviates from straight cis white person is unnatural, calling their leader weird, deviant, and generally socially offputting hits them where it hurts. It's essentially using their rhetoric and world view against them in a way.

You Can Play With Your Friends After School I have written about my quarter life crisis before in a previous post where I was mainly focusing on my career and my romantic life. But I also think it's manifesting in my platonic relationships as well which I want to explore in this post. Phase 1: Locked In I guess I went through the feeling of being locked in friendship wise for a minute when I started thinking about how my ideals for wanting to focus on friendship in adult life feels too difficult and idealistic. I feel like it's an uphill climb systemically and socially because I think it's the path of least resistance to only focus on the nuclear family and your career once you're an adult and your friends are people you catch up with, not live you life along side one another as you would when you're in school. I have wrote about this in more detail in a previous post: I also talked about this more with another friend of mine who comes from a similar cultural background as myself. While I focus on the nuclear family and the career in the post linked above, I talked to her about gendered expectations for women and the emphasis on family in immigrant households. I feel like a lot of immigrant families have this mentality where you can't trust anyone outside of your blood relatives and friendship is generally a waste of time and not particularly important. Funny enough, they say that and then they get scammed by their own brother but that's none of my business lol. But it's like you have a friend confide in you or you try to have a girls trip and then your immigrant parents think that you're doing too much for someone who you aren't related to. And I think this can be emphasized when you're a woman and you're around the age when you're expected to get married or your peers are already married. Like I remember my mom talking about the time when her peers were getting married and how she was nervous about the transition to married life because then all of your time goes to caring for the home and the family and you don't really have the time with your friends anymore because they're busy doing the same. This came up because my friend and I are going through this thing where our married friends either ghosted us or would use the excuse *I'm busy with married life* as an excuse for being distant. I get if this happens if you have a kid or your families live near by and are as a result spending time with them but the people who we're talking about don't have kids and have family on their side and their husband's side that lives abroad. And then it's like *are your priorities different now to where all of the time goes to your man?* *are you being burdened by all of the household duties because your man is a man baby?* *are y'all fucking 5 times a day to where you can't balance anything else in your life????* Wtf do you mean by *I'm busy with married life*? And also, if you're not from a stable family or not married/ in a relationship, sucks to suck. Basically, what I'm trying to say with the paragraph above and the post linked above is that I feel like as someone who values community amongst friends or a chosen family (I guess which is more of a SD Green value), I feel like I'm pushing up against not only the expectations from western culture to put all of your time in the nuclear family, your job, and a mortgage, or in other words the typical SD Orange American lifestyle, but I'm also pushing against the expectations from my South Asian culture where collective values of community is mainly tied to one's family (including extended family), having kids, and serving your hisband, the typical SD Blue lifestyle expectations. I feel like I'm swimming upstream against not just one way of life that doesn't resonate with me but two as a South Asian American woman. And that really contributes to this feeling of being locked in and that my needs and values in a friendship is unrealistic and stupid. Dr. K's video also talks about a big reason why you feel locked in is because you're following the expectations of others or hypotheticals of the future to where you have aligned yourself in a path that doesn't feel authentic and that you don't feel like you can escape from because you're in too deep. I think I'm pretty good about being intrinsically motivated and it's great that I'm aware of my needs and desires for platonic friendship. However, I will say, I'm trying so hard not to fall into the trap of giving in to the external validation because it's easier and the path of least resistance and honor my needs for friendship and community. I'm not asking for too much when I say I wish I had people I hung out with on a regular basis and who would reach out to me and ask me how I'm doing every now and then. And I have to remind myself of this as I'm figuring out how to navigate friendship in adulthood. Dr. K also mentions in the first part of the video that when you're a teenager and you're restricted by what your parents and teachers tell you to do, you start thinking about how when you're an adult that you're going to do whatever you want. But then, when you become adult, you do get a sense of freedom but it's stiffled by the restrictions of the world around you and you need to find where you fit into the world. And it got me thinking on how my parents would tell me that once I finish up my education and get a good job, then I can do whatever I want and prioritize my social life more. Even though I'm in a predicament with the friendship recession now, I don't regret focusing on school over my peers because I value my education and I'm happy with the job I have which allows me to have time to pour into my friendships. However, there is a part of me that grieves the opportunities I had for community and friendship when I was surrounded by peers throughout school as flawed as they may be. I'm not going to pretend and say that making friends was easy throughout school and college and in many cases, I didn't like or click with the people around me. But it was a community nonetheless. It's less about the individuals I was around and more so that I was in an environment where you can make friends and life your life along side with them instead of just having catch up sessions. And as a result, there is a part of me that wishes I seized that moment more socially instead of thinking that I can play with my friends after dealing with school. It's the classic *you don't know what you have until it's gone.* I do feel like I'm going through a separation from my friends. Our dynamics are changing and so are the expectations since everyone is bouncing around trying to figure their lives out meaning that everyone has a a life transition or two happening. And it's a challenge to navigate that and figure out where your relationships are going to go from here. I found myself becoming the friend who is the main one reaching out because I have a more chill schedule and more work life balance, meaning I have the energy to reach out and the time to be flexible. I don't mind taking on this role but I've noticed that it's been getting kind of unhealthy recently since I have been in this role for a prolonged period of time. I've been trying to have this conversation with friends which has been challenging since this feels emotionally sensitive and vulnerable. While I'm typically good at communicating boundaries and talking about my needs, this feel vulnerable because I don't want this to come across tone deaf since I know that my friends are trying and are being spread thin in other areas of their lives. I don't want them to think I'm asking them to prioritized me over thier other friendships, their family, or their career. And it's been even more touchy since some of these conversations I have tried to have either came out wrong or didn't go as planned. I feel like my relationships are being tested and I'm failing. I'm not going to go too much into the interpersonal issues to respect people's privacy and because I'm also trying to navigate this as I'm writing this but I say this to say that this last month or so has been emotionally intense and uncomfortable. I feel like as I'm writing this, I'm in stage 2A/ 2B and I've recently completed stage 1, hence all of the material I have written about. I do find myself wanting to check out of friendships all together. Part of it is the feeling of discouragement of some recent experiences thus contributing to this pessimistic outlook towards friendship as a whole. I want to get out of my current circumstance and come back to it with fresh eyes. I also feel like there are somethings that I need to work out in therapy to deal with any baggage I have relating to friendship before I put myself out there in phase 3, the exploration phase. I relate to the notion of being dead set about making my old life, or in this case my old friendships work because I do care about my friends and I want to be able to navigate these friendships into a new stage of my life instead of just abandoning them. I'm starting to realize that I will likely have to start putting myself out there more and build on the skill of making friends an adult but I'm going to be honest, I'm not excited about it. I feel like the trial and error process for anything, be it applying for 100s of jobs, dating a bunch of guys on Tinder, or speed dating platonically to find good friends to be more exhausting than exciting. Sure, there are a lot of interesting people out there. But, there are also a lot of crazies. And honestly, maybe this is laziness on my part, but I want to skip to the point where you're just cool with people, you can open up to them emotionally, and y'all are hanging out in each other's houses rather than meeting a bunch of people in large social gatherings or in Bumble Bff. I was the same with dating where the thing that excited me most was wasn't going on exciting dates to meet people but getting to the place in a relationship where we can have a meal in silence because we aren't trying to *dance monkey dance* or most of our dates are quiet nights in where we cuddle. Here is a little bit more about Stage 3: When I was exploring this idea as it relates to my job/ life purpose and my romantic relationship, this felt exciting and inspirational. I especially loved the idea of having things be open ended and the emphasis of actively creating yourself rather than finding yourself. But with friendships, I find myself to be more hesitant since I'm still attached to my current relationships and I'm still working through some emotional baggage. Rather than feeling inspired by the section above, I find myself thinking UGGGHHHHHHHHHH............... I guess I'm just not ready for this phase just yet. It took me a minute to get to a point where it sunk in that I can't just avoid having to build the skill of making friends in adulthood. Not gonna lie, there is a part of me that thought I could skip over that chapter of life lessons by simply maintaining the relationships I have since I'm good at maintaining relationships in adulthood. But even if you are good at maintaining things, relationships can grow and change as people change and transition to other stages of life. And sometimes, you're left with having to make new friends because your new friends are just not meeting certain needs you may have at this point even if they are healthy and fulfilling relationships. Dr. K explaines that what got us into this problem in the first place is that we crafted a life without understanding who we are or exploring ourselves. As a result, there is a fundamental mismatch of the life around you and who you are. In order to get through the quarter life crisis, you need to recognize that this sucks for you, check out mentally, then intentionally check out, then you start exploring yourself where it's not about finding the right answer but discovering who you are. And unless you intentionally leave, whether that means going to somewhere else geographically, surrounding yourself with different people, you can't do that exploration. From that sense of exploration comes a greater sense of who you are intrinsically, thus causing you to be able to actively craft your life consciously to make your external life align with your inner life. I wouldn't say that I made any of my friends because I didn't understand myself or explore myself. My friendships always felt authentic and satisfying. However, rather than crafting a life without understanding who I am, I crafted a life without understanding what adulthood is and what terrain I'm working with. I don't really have much else to say about this section since I haven't even gone into Stage 3 yet but I hope I figure things out and learn the necessary life lessons I need to learn going forward in this area of my life. I can play with my friends after school.

You Think You Just Fell Out of a Coconut Tree? There has been so much that's happened in politics in the last month. We had a disasterous debate with two senile old men, one who was too old to form proper sentences and the other who was too old to make sense and the man who didn't make sense won because at lease he could speak. There was an assassination attempt. After the disasterous debate where the old man lost misearbly, he still tried to hold on and say he will still run so long he doesn't have any health conditions only to catch COVID the next day. And now we get all of the coconut memes. It's suffice to say that I'm pretty happy about Joe Biden dropping off the election and letting Kamala Harris run instead. I watched one of her speeches and granted my standards have been lowered from the last 8 years but I was like *wow, she makes sense and her rhetoric sounds effective and coherent.* I'm also just enjoying all of the coconut tree memes lol. I can't say that I'm 100% on board with Kamala (my heart is still with Bernie) but I am allowing myself to be at least a little hopeful. She also seems like she has good energy and in some ways I feel like I can see myself in her. I know it's the propoganda and the identity politics talking but hey, I'm not stupid, I'm human. Kamala come off as a genuine person even if I don't agree with her on various policy positions (don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to girly pop-ify things like genocide and I will go back to criticizing her after the election). I love her crazy laugh as it's something that I find myself having in common with her along with my South Asian heritage, and I can see my friends have a similar whimsical energy as her. It's also just generally positive and uplifting in times like this, not to mention effective in the face of egotistical facists like Trump who cannot stand the thought of being made fun of. I'm also living for all of the Brat edits of Kamala and her coconut tree speech as well as how that is being remixed with everything. I feel like if I were to run a presidential election, this is exactly how I would run it lol. While I am allowing myself to be more hopeful since things are looking up in the polls, in the amount of donations that her campaign is getting, and how there is a general vibe shift on people being more energized, I can recognize that this is probably what happened in 2008 with Obama where people got super hopeful with the first Black president but then not much changed. I'm hopeful, but not naive In a way, this feels like a combination of 2008 and 2016. It take the hopes of 2008 and the chaotic political meme culture of 2016, except this time it's more favorable with the left. It's also fun to watch the right wing media not know what to do or say since they feel like the rug has been pulled from under them. They spent 4 years attacking Biden and preparing their narratives against them. The best they have now last minute is to drag Kamala on her gender and race, and paint her as a cackling bimbo. I also think it was lowkey smart for Biden to annouce his drop off right after the RNC since they spent all of that time attacking him instead of Kamala. I feel like this video sums up my thoughts really well. There are people who are worried about the election despite the uptick in polls, energy, and money because they think that if America wasn't ready for the first White woman president, it sure has hell isn't ready for a WOC president. I can understand where the sentiment is coming from but I don't agree with it. Kamala doesn't have the same amount of political baggage as Hillary does and she does come off as more likeable and less condescending. The political landscape is very different after the Trump presidency and the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And I think it's great that the campaign is hitting the Trump campaign where it hurts rather than taking the *when they go low, we go high* approach. For instance, I loved this political ad. My boomer dad is also a fan. I don't know what will come of this but all I can say is that the plot is thickening. The aliens are on the edge of their seats with all of the plot twists. There are no filler episodes.

Can't say she's my favorite but I'm enjoying all of the coconut memes on tiktok. People definitely seem more energized and optimistic which is nice. I can't say how this will end but this season of America has no filler episodes and the aliens are watching at the edge of their seats lmao.

Luxury Travel Since it's the summer, European Summer as a seasonal tiktok genre is back. For those of y'all who are not on the clock app, European Summer is basically when a bunch of influencers blog about travelling/ vacationing in Europe and also preparing for those travels. Some of it includes funny memes about the cultural differences you encounter as an American in Europe from the lack of water in a lot of places, being easily identifiable as an American, missing ice in drinks, and the lack of AC. Other times, you encounter Europeans complaining about the tourists and putting much of the blame on Americans. And then you encounter people debunking those stereotypes. You also encounter lots and lots of posts of people packing for their trips, the outfits that are trending that will help you blend in with the locals, the old money aesthetic, along with any other summer must haves that the influencers are pushing. There is lots of money that are to be made from the influencers. Since influencers are either making a lot of money or already come from money and thus are able to follow this path or are given PR packages to take trips for free, a lot of the travel content on the surface of travel tiktok (not including niches like budget travel) involve expensive experiences and other things that contributes to Tiktoks general overconsumption problem. And as much as I hate to admit it, I have been influenced. I found myself falling down this rabbit hole of people going to all inclusive resorts such as the Four Seasons chain, buying luxury and designer fashion in their trips in Europe (which makes sense if you're an American since these things can be thousands of dollars cheaper in places like France and Italy), doing entire spa days complete with a massage, facial, and mani pedi, eating at fancy restaurants, and over all just being super indulgent in every aspect of travel. I guess my facination of this type of content comes from the fact that my travel experiences are very different from the trips described above. Most of my international trips involved visiting family which isn't the most luxurious, relaxing, and indulgent experience. Apart from trips visiting family, I've had the following experiences: a trip to Costa Rica for a week with my parents, visiting Delhi, Agra, and Jaipur to see the Taj Mahal and then some, and my study abroad experience along with the week that I spent travelling by myself. Two of those trips weren't in first world countries and the Europe trip was mainly a budget trip that was paid using a scholarship and my solo trip involved me sleeping in hostels, sleeping in overnight busses, and generally finding ways to stretch my money to get the best experience. It's far from the luxury European summers that are all over Tiktok. Even when I travel domestically in the U.S. my family had a certain travel style where we didn't give af about the hotel since it was only a place to lie your head so we opted for the cheapest option, and we filled the day doing a million things to make the most of our time. Half of the times my family has stayed in motels rather than hotels. I've also been told by my friends that I can be a bit of an intense traveller who's always running around since I try to do like 3-4 things a day and wake up at like 6:30 am where aparrently the norm is doing 1-2 things and sleeping in a little more. And then I go into social media and I see a whole nother way of travelling where people are splurging on hotels, waking up at 10 am, and sightseeing at a much more leisurly pace. There isn't anything wrong with that, some people have different travel style and priorities. However, the all-inclusive resorts are something that both intrigue me and rub me weirdly at the same time. In a lot of these resorts, your stay can be like $500-$1000 a night and I guess with a price like that, the whole appeal of the trip is to stay at the hotel/resort and not get out of the area. And with the over the top rooms, the foods, and the beautiful waters and pools, I get the appeal. I think this also speaks to a part of me because I feel a little burnt out from my job because I haven't been using my PTO like that so there is a part of me that wants to take off for a few of days, relax and treat myself, and then come back. I guess when I was younger I was more prone to judge people who wanted to vacation and relax as opposed to travel and were more drawn to touristy things but as I'm getting older, I'm working, and I don't get like a summer vacation and spring break anymore, I can empathize with those sentiments more. Like don't get me wrong, I'm all for doing things that immerses you in local culture but I think you can still balance it out with a few touristy things to get the experience of a place and just plain enjoy yourself. For example, yes enjoy the local food of New York and go off the beaten path, but also don't feel weird about going to Time Square and the Empire State Building. You're never going to fully be a local unless you move there and I think while there is an authenticity in connecting to the local culture rather than getting into the consummerist traps of tourism, there is also authenticity in admitting that you're simply a tourist and you're here to enjoy yourself, not to sit there and cry about rent being raised in the subway. At the same time, I feel like the all inclusive resorts rubs me in a very weird way because of the way that it isolates you from the people who are living there so much so that you don't really see them and are surrounded in a bubble of other tourists, and really you're consuming probably the most palatable, waterred down version of that culture for amusment's sake rather than actually connecting to the place you're in and educating yourself in a way that challenges your world view and your capacity for empathy. There is also the economics of these all inclusive resorts and tourism which can on the surface seem like it's bringing in the wealth to the area like the Caribbean when really, the owners often live in a wealthy first world country and the money is still being funnelled into foreign pockets. Tourism can really disrupt the way of life for the locals and the industries of small businesses. And it's also just weird to me because why tf would I spend all this time and effort getting to a location only to stay put and not explore? If I wanted to relax, I could find ways to do that in Dallas by taking a couple days off work and having a staycation where I get a massage and my nails done instead of spending a few thousand dollars. If I really wanted to go to the beach, I could go to Galveston. Some of these one night stays at these resorts are comparable to my monthly rent. It's wild. And it also feel wasteful and over indulgent in my point of view because if I were to do this, I would be spending a shit ton of money on things that I don't value as much when it comes to my travel style. At the same time, I feel like I want to try this type of travel once to push my comfort zone and see how I feel about the experience. The other thing is just the wealth flexing and how that contrasts with global wealth inequallity caused by colonialism. I feel like just in general travel can get a bad rep in terms of how inaccessible and expensive it can be especially when you live in the US where international flights are expensive and as a result most people don't leave the country unless it's for work or it's to visit family. Maybe on the rare occasion you'll do a vacation but that's statistically not the case unless you're like upper middle class in which case those vacation trips are more regular. As much I can attest to travel being this thing that can open people up to the world and educate them by causing them to leave their bubble, travel in some instances can also insulate you but also give you the perception of yourself becoming more wordly and cultured. There are plenty of assholes out there who treat travel in hedonistic ways because they able to afford to do so and then they try to act all superior as if they're more educated and sophisticated for having visited more countries than you even though all they did is get drunk in different geographical locations and hang around other similarly rich people. There is a whole show where rich people just travel around and while the locations are wildly different, the vibe feel unchanging because they're always surrounded by the same people doing the same things. And that show is White Lotus. This also reminds me of a quote I had in a previous post that I took from a Youtube video comment section of a video essay I liked: I'd imagine that going to one of these all inclusive resorts would feel similarly to getting a pedicure for me. Sure, there isn't anything inherently wrong with your individual choice to treat yourself every now and then, but the dynamic just feel weird. I don't mind getting my nails done on my fingers, but getting my toes done feels really weird, not because I have a problem with feet, but it's the imagery of me sitting on a high chair looking down at a person kneeling before me scrubbing my feet and painting my toes. If someone is doing your nails, y'all are both on the same level and helping someone doing your nails doesn't have the same connotation as someone rubbing your feet. The former reminds me of girlhood and sleepovers where you take turns to help each other do each other's nails since most of us aren't ambidextrous and usually needs some help so that one hand doesn't look significantly more fucked up than the other. The later reminds me of a dynamic of servitude. And I think its especially heightened for me as a South Asian person since the feet are seen as the most unclean part of someone's body spiritually and to be below someone's feet or serving someone's feet is this connotation of being below them. Nevertheless, there is still this intrigue around luxury travel in the way that it sells this fantasy of relaxation and overindulgence. And I think I'm more susceptible to this fantasy now that I'm in the working world because of two reasons: 1. I have my own money now and disposible income, meaning I have the option to give into hyper consumerism more, and 2. I feel kind of burnt out from my job and I just want to unplug for a little bit. I find myself thinking about this quote from a previous post that was under a YouTube video I really enjoyed: I guess I'm going to end this post by saying that the bolded quote above is something that I think about a lot when I think about the context of my desires, it's authenticity, and the implications of those desires in a larger picture.

Therapy Notes 3: Provider I discussed much of what I wrote about in the post below in therapy: Basically it boils down to the fact that there is a part of me that wants to have a kid, but only in specific circumstances. And if those circumstances don't come into fruition, that's fine because I can still envision having a happy fulfilling life because I'm not going into the notion of having kids is going to fulfill me rather I want to build a fulfilling life and pour into / share that with someone. And even if that someone isn't born, well I still have a beautiful life that I've built for myself. I think that I have a more nuanced view of this matter after these three sessions and I feel like I have a good head on my shoulders in terms of decision making and consciously making this decision. I detailed this in a past post but the three scenarios where I can see myself having kids is as follows: We discussed these scenarios in therapy and talked about how this is coming from a place of wanting to be well prepared for the common challenges of parenthood as it relates to money, childcare, medical matters, education etc. The thing is, there are a lot of unknowns when it comes to parenthood and I'm going to be challenged. But while there are a lot of unknowns, it's best to prepare for the known challenges of having a kid so that you have the bandwith and capacity to deal with the curveballs. I think I also need to trust my ability to handle unknown situations or at the very least trust myself to be able to reach out and get the resources I need to handle said unknown situations. I do believe this inner sense of confidence is something that can come with age and challenging myself as I continue to grow and change as a person who is figuring out adulthood and as I navigate other life transitions over the years from switching careers, moving, travelling, and more. I do have faith in the person I become and I think I'll know more concretely where I stand with the topic of having kids when I am a bit older. Not only that, who knows how much the world can change in that time. The world has changed a lot in the past decade, albeit not in positive ways. But I'm sure good changes can happen too and a decade is a pretty long time. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Not only did we discuss my ability to provide when it comes to having a kid but we also talked about how I would need to approach dating if I have the intention of potentially having a kid. I explored this in the same previous post I have been referring to: Basically, this boils down to the guy taking an active role in raising the kid and doing domestic labor, is reliable when for whatever reason I'm not able to follow through on these responsibilities (whether I'm struggling mentally, physically, or if I'm absent in the event of death), has thought through the implecations of having kids as carefully as I have and is compatible with my philosophies around parenthood, and has the material means of supporting the kid. In other words, I don't want to be alone in dealing with the struggles of parenthood materially in the form of monetary commitment and domestic duties or mentally regarding similar views and in terms of emotional support in challenging times We talked about how I feel about screening for such things in a relationship and having these standards. While I don't think there is a 100% chance of me knowing how a guy is going to react to being a father until the baby is here, I do believe there are signs in the relationship based on how he treats me, his attitude towards taking care of the home, and how living together would work. And of course I can have conversations with this guy regarding his thinking process around having a kid. All of that I'm comfortable with and it's also things I want to check out via living together before marrying someone even if having a kid is off the table. I also discussed the growing trend on the internet regarding traditional gender roles and *finding a provider man.* While there are some decent relationship advice out there regarding red flags to look out for, I also feel like a lot of dating advice nowadays is hyper individualistic but not particularly individualized in that it cannot take an individual's situation into nuanced consideration and can be blanket advice. I feel like nowadays there seems to be this notion that there is only one way that a healthy relationship can look, where a man provides financially 100% and the woman is in her receiving energy. There is nothing wrong with that so long as it's coming from a healthy place for both parties but that is not the format that feels authentic for everyone. I feel like for me personally, I like taking a more active role in the relationship and sometimes pay for dates because.... well I like doing nice things for my partner and he likes doing nice things for me and it's reciprocal. Like it's not coming from a pick me complex where we're both keeping score and tallying up when it's someone's turn to pitch in. But this notion around dating to find a provider man I feel is coming from a back lash of the girl-boss feminism of the 2010s and how we're idealizing being able to provide for a family on a single income since the economy is going to shit and more and more women don't want to work and instead wants to have the option to stay home and take care of the kids. A whole generation of women have been told that we can do it all. And while this is empowering, a lot of us also heard that we need to do it all, and it's fucking stressful if you don't have an adequate amount of support. So people are pushing back against this. However, the problem around getting a provider man who will pay all of the bills is that it sells a fantasy rather than a solution. The solution isn't that we all get out of the workforce to be stay at home wives and mothers so that we don't have to deal with the stress of working like we don't have a family and providing for a family as if we don't have a job and other plights of late stage capitalism by opting out of the system. The solution is having the option for affordable childcare, higher wages, maternity AND paternity leave, access to quality health care etc. Nevertheless, I feel like this type of advice to lock in a rich man and the singular model of what a healthy relationship looks like has an appeal with the way that it gives a formula and sense of predicatability on how to achieve desired results in an increasingly chaotic and unpredictable world and dating landscape. Sure I can brush some of this off as chronically online but we also need to acknowledge that this is coinciding with the prevalence of online dating where you're essentially meeting people from the void of strangers in max 100 mi radius rather than the natural filtration process of your social circle. Besides dating apps, I think there is also an inherent level of unpredicatbility when it comes to dating and it's natural for our human minds to want to find patterns to explain this madness, even if such pattern doesn't actually exist, for a sense of predicatabily in having desired outcomes. I think for me at least, feeling like I need to date with the attitude of *I need to find a rich provider man* is me trying to craft a sense of predicatability in a relatively unpredictable situation (because hey, we don't know how exactly the guy will react until the baby gets there). As I started unpacking this in therapy, it's obvious that the blind spot of this is that just because a guy provides monetarily doesn't mean he will actively be involved in the home and child rearing. And while I know this, I guess there is a part of me that wanted to hold on to this misconception because there is a part of me that thought well maybe if he can provide financially, he's also likely to provide in the home and emotionally as well. The other part of me is just being influenced by the trends around me at this period of time where traditional gender roles are having a resurgance. Basically, I need to touch grass lol.

Fame I enjoyed this video and I got to thinking about my desires for fame as I grew up. I feel like my desire for fame was something that I always figured I'd outgrow at some point and it was something that I kept to myself growing up because I knew how crazy I would sound and how it's likely that it wasn't coming from the healthiest of places. I also felt embarrassed by this desire because of how unrealistic and delusional it was and how it kind of felt childish in the way that a lot of kids go through a brief phase of wanting to be an actor, singer, or I guess nowadays a Youtuber or streamer. I resonated with parts of this video to where I couldn't even feel called out. It didn't feel like a revelation slapping reality into me where it felt so obvious it hurt. Rather, it felt like a natural acknowledgement, sort of being able to see something you could make out the image of but now the fog has been cleared away and it feels crystal clear. I think as a kid who went through a lot of isolation and bullying in like elementary school, I had this fantasy of *sure I'm not popular now but I'll show them one day* and the whole concept of the ugly duckling turning into a swan physically and socially or the nerd that goes on to do amazing things once they have grown up. I think it's a narrative that I saw in the media and that gave me some sort of comfort during those times because it felt like my pain meant something and that it was setting me up for some thing greater than my peers. And sure, sufferring and challenges can aid in growth but unfortunately, sometimes there isn't a silver lining and trying to put a spin of toxic positivity on it instead of acknowledging *hey this sucks, it's a set back, let's feel everything we need to feel and move on* can be detrimental in it's own right. This happens when you reach a point in healing when you're past the point of survival mode where you're holding on to romanticizations and fantasies to keep you going amidst the storm. Along with the fame, I think other fantasies I indulged in for the topics of my day dreams included becoming a world traveller / digital nomad, and having a significant other so that I had a more positively exciting life. I envisioned myself as an actor because I had a creative inclination, I somewhat enjoyed it, and I felt like I was good at wearing various masks. News flash, I'm neurodivergent and masking is super common for girls. I was on the nose but also so far at the same time lol. And the other reason was because I didn't see any other South Asian people on screen and I wanted to make a difference in that representation. Social media became more of a thing as I moved into my teens and I too had a phase where I wanted to be a YouTuber. Part of it had to do with the content I was consuming but another part of it came from the notion that I could integrate travel blogging and my desire for fame, and the accessibility of it where I could theoretically get famous by doing little videos in my bedroom rather than having to know somone who knows someone after moving to L,A. As I grew up, the novelty of fame disappeared as I found other interests, as having your 15 minutes of fame becoming more common with internet virality, and once I realized that I hated the process of recording myself and editing footage. I also started finding out the realities of the entertainment industry from the labor exploitation of child stars, the dehumanization of people in the public eye, stalkers, drug abuse, sexual misconduct, the ways fame can stunt you, and detach you from reality, and so much more. The stalkers part freaks me tf out the most. I know a couple people who have medium sized social media following talk to me about retraining orders and how they're afraid for their safety on a regular basis. I couldn't live my life being that on edge regardless of how much love I might get from the public eye. Like the video said, it's takes a specific kind of person to seek fame out despite the consequences and a certain type of person to be able to sustain and even thrive in the limelight despite the challenges. And odds are that type of person is probably not a super healthy well rounded individual. That's not to say that you can't be famous and well adjusted, but it's to say that people who seek fame out for fame's sake are probably not those people and the way that people in the public eye are treated isn't for the weak. I can't say that I'm completely free from desiring fame. There is this tiny part of me that has this wish of being some sort of political leader, but of course I take it with a huge grain of salt due to the reasons discussed previously. Personally, I think it comes from the general sense of powerlessness I feel with the state of the world right now and I have this attitude from high school group projects where if I want something done right, I feel that I need to do it myself. I think about the types of things I would sign into laws or executive orders, how I would handle myself on a variety of topics and debates, and the impact I would like to have in the systems I want to implement. Also, I think Trump is causing me to have this hubris in the sense that I look at him and I'm like *if he can do everything wrong and be president, I could probably do a half decent job.* But the truth is that I don't have half the rizz Trump has, the long hours and constant media appearances will probably put me in a coma by month 2, and I don't have the privilege of being a rich straight white man so my behavior would probably be seen in a much more negative light despite having significantly less controversies. Trump could probably shoot someone and not lose voters but I think I would fall much more into the Obama category where everyone gets super worked up over a tan suit. So no, despite probably being more competent than Trump on numerous issues, I wouldn't be able to do what he does lol. And when I think about all of this and as I get older, I can't help but think about how fortuante I am to be a complete nobody. Fame, as I have gotten older, has moved from something I fantasize about to something that I more so fear due to the realities of it.

I've definitely felt the pressure to party and drink when i was first getting into college because the narrative is that you're living your life out to the fullest for those four years, and then you become a well adjusted calm adult because you get it all out of your system. Like it's a stage of development everyone HAS to go through or you didn't make the most of your time in your youth. Also going to a party school with a bunch of rich kids who are shielded from consequences doesn't help either lol. I was exploring this also in a sociology class before and I found those perspectives of the glamorization of binge drinking insightful, especially in my context of being in a party school with rich kids. There is definitely the socioeconomic status flexing of affording alcohol and living it up, but there is a socioeconomic status of getting so plastered to where your friends have to carry you back after you pass out or you end up going to rehab because there is this notion that you don't have to take responsibility for yourself and people can just swoop in and take care of you. Like to a middle class person, this shit can seem life endingly irresponsible. But for a certain kind of rich kid, going to rehab and getting so sloppily drunk to where you become other people's responsibility is like a trophy or badge of honor of having a good time. The glorification, and even the normalization of alcohol in various settings is crazy. You can even see it in some professional environments in certain industries like consulting and banking where you're considered weird and uptight if you don't drink and alcohol is seen as a solution to various problem, from stress to distracting yourself from your personal problems or crazy work load. There is also the relatability aspect of alcohol where there is the trope where the drunk messy character is considered more honest and "real" one as opposed to the uptight *always perfect* sober character trope. You also have kids who are like 18 who associate alcohol with faux adulthood / responsibility since there is an age limit so there is like an allure with drinking until you actually become of legal drinking age. And of course, even wealth isn't your motivating factor, there are preconcieved notions that alcohol makes you more fun and out there, that risk taking activities correlate with excitement and entertainment, and that to be young is to be wild and crazy. But let's be real, just because your inhibitions are lowered, sure for some people that means they're happier and more sociable but there are also plenty of people that when the mask drops, they're more aggressive, annoying and just down right crazy. Just because you feel more comfortable taking risks, doesn't mean that it will lead to an exciting fun story for you in the end. Drinking is really not all that it's cut out to be. If you aren't into it, your best bet is to find other people who aren't super immersed in it. I know it can seem like everyone's doing it, but not to sound like an old fart but there are plenty of people not engaging in this. Not to mention, that shit tastes like ass anyway.

You sound asexual but still heteroromantic with occasions where you feel sensually (but not sexually) attracted to women.

Promotion I got promoted at my job a couple days ago. The whole thing feels kind of empty tbh. I guess part of it has to do with how I overestimated how much of a raise I was going to get with a title change combined with how I don't really care about this job. The only people I told were my parents and my boyfriend. I told my parents because they're often worried about me because they think I'm lazy and because I didn't get my masters degree so that they get the idea that I'm advancing at work, that I'm fine, and that I'm continuing to make more money. I told my boyfriend because I talk to him everyday and the conversation came up. I have hung out with friends here and there. I thought of mentioning it but I decided not to since I have more interesting things to talk about and since this didn't quite feel meaningful enough to share. I got a 10% raise thus bringing my salary to a little over $75k. For reference, I live in Dallas and since it's not a high cost of living area, I would say it's decent money especially for someone out of college in less than 2 years. But it still doesn't feel like all that much. I think part of it is that I'm used to the life style that comes with making around $70k and making an extra $5k isn't going to impact my standard of living noticibly. I doubt I'm even going to notice it in my paychecks after you deduct tax and retirement and pay me twice in a month. And while I'm happy with my standard of living where I can afford a 1 bedroom alone and comfortably afford the life style I desire, part of me feels like $75k isn't a lot of money. I think if it weren't for the fact I don't have student loans thanks to scholarships, financial aid, and my parents helping out and for the fact that I don't have a car payment from using a hand me down, my financial situation would look very different. While I can put a decent amount of money aside for savings, I sometimes think that if I had a car payment and a student loan payment, I would barely be able to put anything away or I would be living paycheck to paycheck. I also find myself thinking about how I have coworkers who are supporting kids with the same paycheck I'm getting and I can only imagine the financial and quality of life implications that has. That's another thing, I think the reason that $75k doesn't feel like a lot of money is because I know I wouldn't be able to support a family under this income alone nor would I be able to buy a house, two symbollic goals people acheive in adulthood. And even if I have enough money for the down payment with the money I was privileged with saving while living at my parent's house, I wouldn't have enough money to comfortably afford the mortgage, the property tax, the insurance, or any mishaps that can occur that I would be responsible with fixing. While I don't think that homeownership is something I want to aspire to personally, it would be nice to have the option or financial ability. But I feel icky in feeling that $75k isn't a lot of money since that this is more than the household income of $60k (and I'm assuming they're factoring in the amount for a dual income household). I do know that I have a lot of privilege in the financial peace of mind I have from being able to afford things without panicking over my budget and being essentially debt free. I guess relative to people around me, especially compared to recent college grads and people my age in general that $75k is a lot. But in the absolute terms of financial milestones like being able to comfortably support a family and buy a house in a few years after renting, the signs of a "middle class," $75k isn't a lot. I found myself using my inflation calculator a lot as a way to further contexualize what I am feeling. I'm using: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl . According to this calculator, $75k in 2010 is equivalent to $108,705.99 now. $75k in 2018 is equivalent to $95,031.51 now. $75k in 2024 is equivalent to $51,745.08 in 2010 and $59,190.89 in 2018. For reference, I'm using the month of May for 2024 and the month of January for 2010 and 2018 to generate these numbers. I feel like the inflation calculator helps explains why $75k isn't hitting the way I thought it would based on my perception of that sum of money growing up. I guess the $75k number also hits different because I remember seeing studies on how happiness typically plateaus at that amount in the sense that making more money won't necessarily make you happier as it does at lower incomes. For example if you go from making $45k to $55k, that's going to make you much happier because that extra $10k is a lot in terms of helping you out on a day to day basis but going from $75k to $85k doesn't have the same increase in happiness and stability since by the time you're making that range of money, you're already in a relativly stable place and you have a good amount of disposible income to where you're living an abundant life style. However, it's important to note that this study was done in 2010 and a lot has changed since then financially so rather than $75k , the new target is more like $110k. And I think this adds to the uneasiness I have with the cost of living because I think back in 2010 or even 2018, $75k felt somewhat achievable with a college education but now, even with a college education $110k is questionable. Then again, I was also a child so maybe that had to do with me being able to fully grasp the numbers and how that translated into a monthly budget back then as well so idk.

Touching Grass Maybe this is an extention to me wanting to feel 17 again but part of me feels like things were better when I was a teenager because we touched grass more often then and I want to explore that notion more. I think part of it was because this was the world pre-pandemic and once we went into the lockdowns, socialization moved more into online spaces over real life. Because even back in like 2017, we still had social media and you could still make friends and find community online.I was still chronically online scrolling on Instagram looking at memes but now it's more so replaced with Youtube an Tiktok. But social media now feels very different from when I was in high school. There are so many times where I just stop scrolling because it feels too much and I feel like I need to go touch some grass because I'm being detached from reality which I didn't really encounter when I was a teenager. So let's review a few things I see online that makes me feel like I need to go touch grass: 1. Overconsumption: This includes restock videos for bathrooms and kitchens, makeup hauls, the normalization of botox, your fave influencer saying 100k is not a lot of money, life style inflation in the form of either day to day lives or in vacations, weddings, kids birthdays, special occasions etc. Basically, everything this channel addresses: 2. Dating Advice / glow up content: This is a both man and woman problem. On one end you have the alpha male pod cast bros and Andew Tate fanboys and on the other you have the "divine femininity," Spinkle Sprinkle, guru girlies that tell you how to get your life together. I'll also include faux spirituality here as well. The video below does a good job at dissecting this: 3. Anything old money ranging from old money fashion, the clean girl/vanilla girl aesthetic, and even European summer travel content. 4. The thin is in/ return to 2000s skinny and ED culture, wellness influencers, pilates princesses, that girl aesthetic, glow up content 5. The particular brand of NYC tiktokers who all live in Manhattan and don't factor in POC or any other NYC borough into their content and all go to the same influencer events and push the same microtrends and rebrand basic things like light blue nail polish as blueberry milk nails. 6. Fringe political beliefs becoming mainstream (think Qanon, Campists, leftys who mean well but are saying shit like supporting Hamas when they don't know wtf they are talking about, Moms for Liberty etc.) These are some things off the top of my head. I guess the other thing is that there are so many ego backlashes happening simultaneously from reverting back to old gender norms, idealizing old money, swapping body positivity with the thin is in mentality, issues with education and literacy, etc. There's also how social media has been getting more and more moneteized and it's not as much people just chilling and fucking around anymore. If I have to hear another influencer talk about how a regular person needs a "personal brand" I'm going to scream. Like bitch, do you mean having a personality lol, wtf are you talking about??!?!! I feel like sometimes when I'm online that i'm being constantly either marketted to for products I don't need or I'm being ideologically sold some kind of fantasy as the world around me burns. Finally, I think the other thing is that I lack a sense of community where I can really be myself at. I have work but I see my coworkers once a week and I'm in my corporate personality rather than just myself. Other than that, I really only hang out with people on a one on one basis and while that is nice, I do miss the exposure I got to a collective from when I was in school. And I think since I'm not socializing in the same way as I used to growing up, the bs you see on social media swoops in trying to fill up that void, whether it's in the form of using overconsumption to fufill your lack of community needs being met by getting an identity from the shit you own, or it's in the form of subscribing to some kind of guru who tries to sell you how relationships work via alpha male or sprinkle sprinkle logic. In conclusion, the internet doesn't feel as fun as it once was and sometimes I want to throw my router and smart phone into the trash and pretend like it's 1994 where everyone has to hang out irl.

The Election We've all seen the dumpster fire of a debate that Trump and Biden had last week. It was difficult to watch Biden not be able to speak in coherent sentences and Trump dodge every question and ramble on whatever he wanted to talk about. People are talking about Biden stepping down and having a primary for the Democrats because Biden's performance was just that bad. And I'm with that consensus. That men, both men, but especially Biden, is too old to be running and doesn't have the energy to motivate people to vote. As much as I care about experience in public service and records, even if Biden has that going for them, elections are determined by theatrics and performance. And if you look like an incompetant fool on stage who can't meaningfully push back against a facist threat, it doesn't mean shit for what's going on back stage regarding policy. We're also waaaay past policy actually making sense and factoring into voting decisions. You can argue that it was never as strong as theatrics even in the past considering the political literacy of the average voter who votes purely on vibes anyways but especially after 2016, those days are gone. I'm not happy with Biden's performance as president over the last 4 years, especially when it comes to foreign policy and the genocide in Gaza. But whlie I don't think Biden deserves to be president, Trump most definitely deserves to lose. And after that debate, I remember trying to go to sleep and feeling my life flash before my eyes like it felt when I found out Trump became president back in 2016. Prior to the 2016 election results, I often found myself thinking that maybe this is just a weird part of history that we're living through and when I wake up on Wednesday, November 9th, I'll wake up to a Clinton presidency and the whole thing will just be a funny memory. Then the Trump presidency happend, 4 years of countless scandals a pandemic, an insurrection, and so much more. I felt like I was on edge for those 4 years politically to the point of exhaustion and checking out. Biden's presidency happend and while things weren't calm and hunky dory, there was at least some semblance of normalcy that was incrementally getting better. Nevertheless, I feel like after the Trump presidency, you couldn't put the toothpaste back into the tube and well... the alt right is still around, we have a Qanon crazy in Congress, and a number of anti gay / trans bills being passed. So while there is an appearance of calm and some things getting better on the surgace, things still feel incredibly chaotic. And that shit is not about to slow down. Biden lost the debate miserably and the Supreme Court made a ruling that laws broken while a president is in office is given immunity, thus causing the president to be above the law. With the stakes being higher than ever, the Democrats are being as incompetent as ever. I know the Trump presidency was bad, but I think it's going to be a lot worse the second time around because of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's conservative majority frustrates me. But what infuriates me more is the incompetence of the left leaning people. Some fuckers seriously had to vote third party or vote for Harambe as a joke in 2016 instead of realizing the political ineffectiveness of such a strategy, give Trump the election, and then now he packed the court to where I no longer have the rights to my body, my free speech is compormised, and the president is above the law. RBG just haaaad to hold on to power instead of retiring during Obama's administration where she could've been replaced by another left leaning judge, and then when she inevitably died and in 2020, nonetheless, she got replaced by a conservative justice and now we have a 6-3 conservative super majority who are enacting a bunch of unpopular regressive rulings that are sending us back to the fucking 50s. Listen, I get why people don't like Hillary or Biden, but shit like this is what is literally at stake and being politically ineffective is basically enabling the far right who doesn't give a fuck about any norms or institutions and are wanting to run this whole country down to the ground, erode democracy, and instate their authoritarian regime. Trump is too stupid, egotistical, and incompetent to pull this off since he's not a well versed stateman but I'm afraid of his supporters and those in power who are more intelligent and strategic who will use Trump's cult of personality to uphold white christo-facism. The DNC just haaaad to put Hillary Clinton's uncharismatic ass up there on stage instead of going with Bernie because the DNC has an institutional neoliberal stick up their ass and can't recognize the positives of populism and how that can help with people's quality of life when it's used to create New Deal type policies instead of hating on women and minorities. And now the DNC is digging their heels in more with another uncharismatic candidate who also lost the debate miserably last week. This shit is going to keep going on and the chaos isn't going to end soon and definitely chapter of the chaos isn't going to end well. I'm trying to come to terms with this and not be a depressed doomer and generally keep my head high and avoid complacency. And not to toot my own horn, but sometimes I feel like a sane person who is outnumbered by crazy people to where I don't know where to even begin in terms of pushing back. I feel like nothing has changed since 2016 but also everything has changed since then. I miss life before 2016 but at the same time I know that it doesn't deserve to be viewed through the lens of rose toned glasses since there were a lot of problems back then as well. Nothing has changed since 2016 in respect to the political chaos, gun laws, access to health care, funding for education, or just generally, anything that could help people and aid in their quality of life. But also everything changed in the sense of what is considered normal in politics, cost of living sky rocketting to where most people cannot affort to buy a house, everything that came with the pandemic, and the consciousness around late stage capitalism. I just don't know where to go from here collectively or individually; collectively in where we're going as country that is so divided and chaotic, and individually in that what the direction of this country means for my personal decisions in my individual life going forward.

I find this topic interesting because I feel like the expectations people had for things such as parenthood and even weddings has changed so much since social media and influencers started posting things. I feel like a lot of these things were much simpler in the past whereas now on the internet, they look like larger than life spectacles. I know it would be pretty chronically online to assume that everyone is having over the top weddings and are giving their children over the top childhoods but I do think that this type of content does affect what standards are seen as aspirational and even normal.