• ideas & perspectives

writing || What kind of conversations do you want to have: A Reminder to venture outside your self-obsessed life

IoanaNovember 19, 2017

Hello Mistral Spirit. I’ve missed you. In 8 years of blogging, and 17 years of LIVING, I’m quite familiar with my fluttery ways – essays and books and academic ramblings for a few months straight, then self-help and lifestyle and art for some. My obsessions are predictable currents of excitement.

In fact, I never seem to do both in balance on this blog – and when I do one, I get fully immersed into it. Perhaps it means I’m highly focused. But it also means I’m highly unfocused because each phase never stays for longer than a few damn months. I’ve more or less resigned myself to my project-centered personality complex.

But recently I realized that this is the longest time I’ve been in a self-help, lifestyle, art phase. And I also realized something about this particular phase, because it was an obviously deep immersion, given the sudden explosion of my YouTube channel, and my one-day mastery (ha ha) of Adobe Premiere Pro, and my excitement and enthusiasm for having people actually want to read about this kind of stuff. I realized how SAD it was to be stuck like this, as I’d become to be.

I recently met with an good friend I’ve known since I was little. And at different parts in our lives, I’ve noticed that our conversations have been focused on different things. The last time we met, we had a great time. We’re both growing and becoming our own people, and it’s lovely to reconnect. But looking back, I realized that a large part of our recent conversation was so superficial. We talked about people, gossip, things we accomplished (only barely), relationships, things we liked, our plans, our goals, and our FEELINGS. No problem? Let me tell you the problem.

It’s so easy to talk about people and feelings, isn’t it? I feel insecure. They’re no longer together. I feel like I overthink things. He’s finally got a job, that’s so unlike him. I feel anxious. She parties all the time. I’m stressed, depressed, obsessed. Let’s share and feel normal together and enjoy the juiciness of our own endlessly exciting lives. After all, it’s what we’re always mulling over in our brain, isn’t it? Not to mention we’re teenagers, and truly approaching the climax of our fumbling explorations of ourselves and others.

(Let me just pause now and say I’m analyzing this from a purely scientific point of view, and also mainly from a self-critical perspective. I’m not criticizing my friend, who is awesome. I love talking about anything and everything with my friends, but I’m just saying that I notice I’ve tended to gravitate my conversations towards these topics a little too much lately.)

And yet I was thinking about this and about being a YouTuber and how you practically film your entire life, except it’s filled only with working out and meeting people and making healthy food and making study techniques and colour coding and drawing and planning things and then editing and it’s all so SUPERFICIAL.

What are you filling this life with? ITSELF?

I’d become so engrossed in this life and developing these habits I wanted to create and at the same time sharing the journey with the world that I didn’t realize

I was becoming brain-dead.

I wasn’t actually learning anything, looking critically at anything (besides my own feelings), or creating and applying my personal values.

What about the other stuff, the difficult stuff, the intelligent, meaningful, mind-grappling topics? The things you actually had to read about and learn and not just do from experience? I’d even completely stopped reading and I only did school to finish it or to take notes and study for tests.

Speaking of which: it’s not like the school system helps. I mean, it’s not like we do (or even have time to) debates or discussions in any of my classes to REALLY understand what we’re learning. We just read things from a textbook and memorize it. We don’t read a first-hand account about it, or investigate it further, or spend some time sharing OUR opinions. (Though as a side note, that’s very unlikely to happen anytime soon anyways – turns out having an opinion is a Bad, Offensive, Triggering, Thing nowadays.)

And so I was there, blabbing about all these things, these social-media age, breaking-news, SMALL-mind things, when I could have been talking about the last book I’d read, the character’s development, things I’d learned, morality, virtues, society, religion, the universe, stars, science, history, new personal discoveries,

THINGS OUTSIDE MY TINY, SILLY, LITTLE ATTENTION-SEEKING HUMAN BRAIN

I was just so annoyed at myself for having completely fallen down this rabbit-hole of introspection. Not to mention the rabbit-hole of social media (which I think plays a big role in this condition), where I’d open Instagram and browse for hours to see what people were up to and think about what other tidbit of a habit or activity I wanted to add to embellish my life instead of prop open a book and read about the world and think about something besides my own damn self.

Basically, I think it’s important to have some outrospection to liven up our lives and give our mind a little jab.

And that’s about it.

Oh, and yes as you can tell, I’ve also decided I’ll be doing more thought-inducing blog posts. Because as with my conversations, my posts have turned into lists and tips and tricks. Which is great, but it’s so superficial and … EASY. And I want this blog to be an outlet. P.S. If the emails are annoying you, change the frequency! There’s a “manage settings” section. Or unsubscribe. That works too. I’m not going to please everyone, however much I like to think I can.

Long Story Short

Basically, I’ve just been thinking that I need to re-evaluate my focus and not forget to work on my brain and critical thinking just as much as (if not more than) dissecting my feelings and relationships and lifestyle habits.

A bientot, Mistral Spirit!