when’s the last time I pursued something with singular purpose that wasn’t my career? You know those people who really know what they want and they go after it with everything they got and then they seize it and manifest it. I want to manifest the life that I want. manifest is a good theme for next year. What would I choose to pursue with a singular purpose right now? Is it being a good writer? Is it being a better engineer? Is it being a looked-up to person in the company? Is it being a good photographer? Is it being a good friend? I think what I’m trying to focus on right now is being comfortable in my own skin. Is being at peace in every moment and trusting of myself. As I was walking today, I was noticing how my attention is so often drawn to how I look or how people perceive me or getting to the next thing. Maybe that’s why I have such an addictive binge-leaning personality. I want to get sucked into the escapism because that’s the one time the voice in my head quiets, when I get to really relax and detach. My wants are a paradox. I want to both feel nothing and feel everything at the same time. One part of me wants to explore the entire world, experience the universe, manifest everything that I have ever wanted. The other part of me is scared of what that means, it’s afraid of the unknown, it gets anxious the night before the trip because it isn’t sure what to expect. It wants to stay at home and hole up in a room and explore the world through media, where it’s safe. It’s safe because I have no say, but I have no say. I want to be courageous. I want to increase my capacity for courage. I want my trust story climax here. I want to have the courage to risk what I have for what I love, to reach for the unreachable star, to shout earnestly from the mountaintops that I am here.

started watching never have i ever today. Good show about teenage drama and some characters that have a tough time finding themselves. They are lost. In many ways, I feel lost right now so I can relate. On the outside, everything looks stable, but I feel unmoored. I don’t have a stable foundation to fall back on. Where did that foundation go?

One big thing I need to stop doing is to push things back that feel like a lot. I get scared about things that require a lot of effort and investment, like deep conversations, because I get uncomfortable. I second-guess what i think of first. I should just turn my mind off and let it go, let myself say what comes to mind and then correct after the fact. Why do i watch what I say so much? I end up filtering my words through so many layers that it sometimes becomes unrecognizable. Be concise, be courageous, be true to yourself.

mantra: manifest what you want. trust your instinct. explore what you want.


This is the 48th installment in my experiment of publishing raw, lightly edited mini-essays every day towards achieving 100 public pieces. Check out the rationale and the full list here.