Splash No. 52
Sorry for the lateness on this one. I’ve really lost all sense of time these days. It’s kind of funny that my year anniversary of writing these newsletters is something like 8 days late.
Happiness?
I’ve spent nearly 6 weeks in New York City now, which is incredible to think about. I hadn’t realized how much time had passed and how much everything has changed. Although I’m excited to return to the calmness of Atlanta in a few weeks, I’ve really been enjoying my time here. In particular, I’ve been much more social than I ever am at home. It’s easy to become hopelessly lonely when living in such a crowded city since everyone seems so occupied. Feeling alone in a crowd is such a horrible feeling that everyone seems to latch onto the people in their lives and stay connected.
That can be a great thing! I feel like the relationships I’ve formed in the last few weeks are some of the strongest ones I’ve built and feel very fulfilling and intimate (possibly more so than my long-term friends), possibly due to the sheer amount of time we spend together. These friendships create an immense amount of joy. However, I’ve noticed that the more time I spend with my friends and the less time that I spend focusing on myself and my personal projects, the less fulfilled and content I feel. The words joy and fulfillment and contentedness can all be considered synonyms of happiness, but I feel like you need a combination of all of them to be truly happy.
As an introvert, it’s difficult for me to have too much social interaction without burning out. Oftentimes, I’m unable to do any basic tasks or work towards my goals as much as I’d like to after I come back from hanging out with my friends. I just end up feeling too drained. As a result, I feel less fulfilled, since I feel like I’m not moving closer to my dreams and goals. It’s hard to not be swayed by my desires to find this social joy. Just like it’s our evolutionary nature to feast on plentiful food when we have it, I feel like I need to really take advantage of the amazing social life I have for once in my life because I know how terrible it can be to live without it. Despite it all, I know I must make time for myself, to recharge and chase my dreams by doing what is personally meaningful to me. That means finding more time to write and to design things that matter to me. It’s going to be tough, and I don’t have much time left, but it’s extremely important.
Drops of the Week
where I *drop* recommendations of cool things this week
Article
“Being Rational All the Time Isn’t Going to Do You Any Favors” by Zat Rana- this is a really interesting piece, click the link to check out my blog post about it!
Book
Basketball (And Other Things) by Shea Serrano- this was an extremely fun read (but the design had some low contrast pages that made it hard to read at times). Shea Serrano is one of my favorite twitter personalities and authors who brings a ton of humor to everything he does, especially when it’s his love (basketball).
Playlist
fancy flavor- I’ve been listening to a lot of 90s hip-hop, which inspired this playlist. It’s short but I’m really into it. I kind of think of it as a mixtape, and I might make some album art for it.
Thanks so much for reading! If you have any comments/concerns or fan/hate mail for me, you know how to reach me (links below). Feel free to forward this newsletter to your friends too! You can also hit this link to subscribe if you're not subscribed already!
:~)
Love,
Nikhil