quips, qualms, and new quarters

june '24

May was a momentous month. Anya and I moved in together!

Our relationship began as a long-distance journey between Austin, Dallas, and New York for nearly two years, as we made weekend visits and planned short-term stays. Since early 2022, we’ve been settled in Austin, and have spent the last couple years getting comfortable with intersecting routines, awkward date nights, building friendships, international travel, and more. The in-person experience has been a lovely journey of growth and increasing familiarity.

I’ve been surprised at how easy it’s been to coexist in a shared habitat, joining forces for the smallest of tasks and arguing over which greek yogurt to buy. As we decorate the apartment with unique pieces from our travels and bits from our Indian culture, I’m excited by this new semblance of home. Moving in together has also signified growth for our families, who are adapting to modern relationship dynamics and redefining certain traditional beliefs as we write our own story.

I’m looking forward to new routines, hosting dinner parties, fixing random things around our new home, and generally enjoying the changing of the seasons.

---

i’m feeling lucky

My neck hurts from grooving to these tunes. We’ve got new appearances from SiR, BadBadNotGood, Ravyn Lenae (!!!) and so many new names that are set to be staples of the summer. This is a summer playlist, y’all - take your speakers to the pool and turn the volume up!

[Archive playlist can be found here, and in my spotify bio]

---

blank while you blank

Eat while you eat, sleep while you sleep, play while you play.

This was the cryptic quip I heard as a kid when my grandfather had something parental to say. The man was usually in his own world, humming a tune or making us laugh with Malayalam jokes. But when he caught his grandchildren multi-tasking beyond a child’s threshold or just not focused on the moment, he would recite the pre-recorded line.

My mom would use the same line as guilt-bait, to reinforce the idea of intentionality. It quickly took on more forms: study while you study, write while you write, train while you train, and so on.

As much as I’d love to carry this quip forward, I often find myself vehemently disobeying. As a product of unprescribed yet obvious ADD and OCD, I very rarely do one thing at once. Adulting often requires this sort of thing, with more responsibility building, as the years go on. Even if it seems like I’m focused, my mind is most likely running a marathon in an alternate universe.

So as a decade long response to my grandfather, my mother and the millions of others out there who insist on the intentionality of streamlined focus, here is a list of quips that is rooted in my own reality - one that is scatterbrained, multi-tasking, and just purely unfocused.

• Eat while you watch the latest episode of Suits - which you don’t really care about but your girlfriend sorta does and besides, you’d rather not play tug-of-war with the remote to find something better… or worse, sit alone with your thoughts.

• Write while you attend to messages, emails, tweets, and other pings - which are crucial to your procrastinative mindset because finding the perfect word or phrase is not easy, especially for a newsletter piece that will inevitably sit in the drafts for the next few months.

• Sleep while you fill an imaginary whiteboard of to-do list items that have to wait until tomorrow, while a small part of you wishes that you could’ve crammed them into your day and slept just a bit later than your already-past-2am bedtime.

• Drive while you look for directions on Google Maps and Apple Maps because you have navigational trust issues and aren’t sure whether to leave the fate of your journey up to an app, or to your own questionable knowledge of the city’s streets and traffic patterns at 7pm on a Thursday night.

• Climb while you replay the endless stream of emails you sent, wondering if your tone was right, if your responses were timely, if there was a more efficient way to handle the flood of communications, because deep down you fear the barrage will never end, and if all you do is climb, then you’re wasting a canvas of preparation for tomorrow’s emails.

• Cook while you browse your list of recent calls or favorite contacts in search of a familiar voice to keep you company in a moment of solo experimentation with familiar spices, pans, and ingredients that somehow turn into unfamiliar dishes.

For all my fellow neurodivergent thinkers, what is your version of this?

---

through my lens

taken on East 4th Street in Austin | June 2, 2024

This was a surprising scene from a recent walk through East Austin - something about the synchronized reds really caught my eye. I think my lens was a bit smudged too, giving the image a certain vintage haze. It even somewhat parallels the three women in this image from Bogotá.

I couldn’t find much time to shoot this month, although I have started digging through old folders from Jordan, India, and Colombia - follow along on Instagram for more!

---

don’t sound the alarms

In 2017, I gave an overly passionate and poetic TEDx talk about the negative shift in social habits because of smartphones and social media. And while I don’t have the same passionate belief that the root cause of our isolation and depression comes from tiny glowing screens, I’ve come to question the constant sirens. Ironically, we scroll through feeds to find influencers and the like, warning us about how these little devices are isolating, and tearing the fabric of society apart.

This recurring alarm about technology's isolating effects isn’t new - it's practically a tradition. People have been preaching against these isolationist tendencies for ages, from the adoption of daily newspapers to the invention of the Sony Walkman.

This comic strip by xkcd perfectly captures this cycle:

Comic #1601 from November 6, 2015 [link to explanation]

Sure, the decline in tactile friendships and in-person relationships since the birth of the smartphone is very real. It's also quite a coincidence that suicide rates skyrocketed over 77% for young kids since 2009, ever since the launch of the iPhone with the self-facing camera and the simultaneous release of the like button. There are many ‘dangerous’ facets to the advent of the smartphone - the list goes on. I could easily add to that list and let the dogs bark at the sun, but I also understand that the smartphone seems to have solved a different issue in modern technology.

Unlike books or TVs, smartphones do more than passively present content - they actively simulate social interaction. Sure, reading a book or watching TV might immerse us in another world, but neither makes us feel like we’re hanging out with friends the way a smartphone can. Social media, texting, and video calls create a virtual reconstruction of social environments, making the smartphone a unique tool for connection, not just isolation.

“Day and night the telescreens bruised your ears with statistics proving that people today had more food, more clothes, better houses, better recreations—that they lived longer, worked shorter hours, were bigger, healthier, stronger, happier, more intelligent, better educated, than the people of fifty years ago.” - George Orwell, Telescreens (1984)

This quote from Orwell's Telescreens might remind us of today’s smartphones, constantly feeding us information about our improved lives and global progress. Maybe the real issue isn’t isolationism at all, but rather the overwhelming influx of information and the pressure to constantly stay virtually connected. This bombardment can sometimes obscure the reality of our day-to-day interactions, especially when what we’re fed on social media isn’t always enriching or intellectually stimulating. Generally, the information we absorb is short-lived and surface-level.

But the last thing I want to do is add to the alarms and stir the pot. Moral panic doesn't solve anything; it only fuels anxiety. Every technological leap has been met with fear of isolation, but humanity has consistently adapted and thrived. Instead of fearing smartphones, perhaps we should focus on how to use them mindfully, enhancing our connections rather than detracting from them.

Part of my ongoing 75-day-challenge is to limit phone screen time to 3 hours, and I’m happy to report my average has been around 2h 25m for the past few weeks. I try my best to leave my phone on its charging dock til lunch on most days, and only check-in for important messages that sync to my laptop or morning calls. I’m also spending less time on Instagram and Twitter, and more time on Substack and Posts, allowing for a more mindfully connected and digestive experience. I’m not quite worried about metrics or hyper-growth, but rather focused on balanced screen time and an intellectually enriching digital experience.

---

link dump

the truth about flight MH370

why are we turning psychiatric labels into identities?

a simple app to journal weekly

the famous Windows 10 background was a real photo?

---

I’ve seen a lot of posts on Substack about growing the subscriber rates and maintaining certain metrics. I’m all for celebratory checkpoints, but my focus remains to annoy you twice-a-month with overly intellectual and curious mindchatter. This newsletter is free and the small gestures mean the most to me - please continue to read, like, comment, and share to keep this ‘thing’ alive.

This June I’ll be working on some new spoken-word segments for Instagram, iterating on drafts that are almost a year old, onboarding new clients to Strike & Ripple, and dancing my ass off at a wedding in Toronto.

---

have a lovely June, folks.