Ankur Sethi is Alive And Well

  • Weeknote 58: Chatty and Easily Distracted

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    by

    Ankur Sethi
    in

    Between chores, social engagements, and the desire to be as far away from computers as possible, it’s been difficult for me to find time to write these posts on Saturdays and Sundays. I’m going to try posting on Wednesdays for a few weeks to see if it suits me better.

    What’s Been Happening

    1.

    We’re building a new product at work, which means I get to put on my designer hat once more. The more time I spend wearing it, the more confident I feel in my skills, and the more enjoyment I get out of the design process.

    I’m at a stage where I’m reasonably confident about my visual design skills. I now want to focus on learning skills that will help me build UIs that don’t just look good but also work well. I don’t plan to stop writing code, but being able to contribute to the whole process of building a product is a powerful feeling.

    2.

    My brother is visiting from Delhi. Both of us are currently going through a period of bad mental health, so we’ve been spending a lot of time sitting around the couch and complaining about life. Sometimes we switch things up and complain about video games, or the state of rap music, or baggy jeans, or our poor gut health. It’s great.

    3.

    I forgot that I’m a decrepit old man of thirty-four and went out for drinks with a bunch of twentysomethings for two consecutive weekends. It was fun, but my back still hurts and the alcohol has made me stupid and sluggish.

    I guess this is my yearly reminder about the dangers of drinking alcohol.

    4.

    I’ve been co-working from a shared workspace with some friends once a week. It hasn’t made me particularly productive—mostly because I’m chatty and easily distracted if there are people around me—but I’ve been enjoying talking about programming and tech with other developers in-person rather than over Slack or Zoom. It’s something that had been missing from my life in these post-pandemic years, and I’m delighted to have it back.

    5.

    My daily routine has been out of whack this week, leaving me with very little time to write fiction. It’s frustrating. I could make more time for writing if I tried, but to do that I’d have to cancel most of my social engagements.

    I wish there was a way I could find time for my friends and family as well as creative hobbies, but I feel like one or the other must always suffer as long as I have a full-time job. We really do live in a society.

    What’s Good

    Win(s) of the week: pushed myself to be more active, and discovered I have a lot more energy than I give myself credit for.

    Looking forward to: taking a few weeks off work in October/November.

    I’m glad that: I live in a city where it’s relatively easy to make new friends based on shared interests.

    Links of the Week

    Media Diet

    • Reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
    • Playing: Elden Ring
    • (Re)Watching: Schitt’s Creek
    • Listening to: Anger Foot OST

  • Weeknote 57: Excited and Cheering Fans

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    by

    Ankur Sethi
    in

    Tired today. The good kind of tired.

    What’s Been Happening

    1.

    A friend I met recently through my writing group is playing for Kemp FC in the Karnataka Women’s League, which means I’ve been finding myself at the Bangalore Football Stadium rooting for them every weekend.

    I don’t usually watch sports, but being in a stadium with excited and cheering fans is fun. I suppose I find football to be a bit like jazz, in the sense that I find it more enjoyable when I’m there.

    2.

    I wrote for less than ninety minutes this week.

    Feeling a certain kind of way about writing fiction right now. I just want to lose myself in some massive JRPG and not think about doing any creative work whatsoever for the next three hundred years. Lash me to my Steam Deck and force me to play Persona until I’m drooling and oblivious.

    3.

    The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay continues to astound. I can’t help but notice how Chabon breaks almost every single “rule” espoused in writing manuals and workshops. He:

    • Tells instead of showing, constantly
    • Employs ten dollar words that send me running to the dictionary every few pages
    • Writes long, flowery sentences that I sometimes need to read twice (and they always take my breath away)
    • Uses the third person omniscient viewpoint instead of the more common first person or third person limited (I enjoy this viewpoint so much)
    • Foreshadows things in a way that sometimes spoils the plot

    Of course, Chabon is an experienced storyteller who had several acclaimed novels under his belt before Kavalier & Clay. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he’s doing it with intent. Yet, there are a few rules in that list that I think every writer should break, even if they’re just starting out:

    • “Show, don’t tell” makes sense if you’re a screenwriter, not so much if you’re a novelist. Novelists should feel free to sometimes just tell.
    • More writers should play with language, even at the risk of producing purple prose. I’ve read far too much science fiction and fantasy where the quality of prose was somewhere between office memo and Reddit comment. I personally enjoy reading mediocre stories with interesting prose much more than great stories with mediocre prose.
    • In the same way, more writers should experiment with different viewpoints. The third person limited is almost a default in SFF/horror, and first person seems to be more common in romance and YA. It would be refreshing to read genre fiction that breaks away from these conventions (one of the reasons I love The Locked Tomb so much is because of how Tamsyn Muir plays with viewpoint, especially in Harrow the Ninth).

    4.

    I had pretty bad anxiety for a considerable part of this week, which made it difficult to focus on anything except reading and watching TV. It dissipated towards the end of the week, and I still don’t understand what I did to make it go away.

    Working hypothesis: my brain is happiest when I’m able to focus all my attention on a single activity for a few hours at a time. This can’t be just passive consumption; watching TV, scrolling through social media, listening to music, or even reading a book doesn’t count. This has to be an activity where I’m doing something, something that will help me enter flow state—for instance, writing, programming, or playing a game.

    In contrast, continuous partial attention sends me into a spiral of frustration, dissatisfaction, anxiety, and depression.

    Evidence to back up my hypothesis: on the day my anxiety magically dissipated, I was able to spend several uninterrupted hours working on a design for my client, something that I hadn’t been able to achieve until then because of chores and social obligations. Those few hours of intense focus allowed my brain to soak itself in enough happy chemicals to drive away all the negative feelings.

    5.

    As a privileged male person in my thirties, I enjoy talking about myself. At length. Incessantly. It’s a habit I’m trying to break out of, but holy fuck it’s hard. Siri, how can I be genuinely curious about the other human beings in my life?

    What’s Good

    Win(s) of the week: got (some) things done, despite the anxiety.

    Looking forward to: visiting Blossoms with a friend to sell some of my old books and pick up new ones.

    I’m glad that: I’ve been feeling physically healthier than I’ve felt in a while (thanks in part to all the walking and socializing I’ve been able to do in my new neighborhood).

    Links of the Week

    Media Diet

    • Reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
    • Watching: Carol and the End of the World

  • Weeknote 56: Cosplaying as an Adult

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    by

    Ankur Sethi
    in

    It’s probably just a quirk of my own mind, but sometimes I feel utterly overwhelmed by work and chores, even though my inbox, todo list, and calendar are practically empty. That’s the sort of week I’ve had.

    What’s Been Happening

    1.

    Last week I complained so much about not being a homeowner that two different friends sent me the brochure for a beautiful apartment that happened to be on the market for a reasonable price. I haven’t yet convinced myself that I should spend all my savings on a new house, but I called the realtor anyway and went to look at the place on Friday.

    As the realtor talked to me about khata bifurcation and carpet area and RERA and offsetting capital gains, I felt like I was merely cosplaying as an adult. “What does that mean?” I asked her every thirty seconds, giving away the fact that I was a hapless kindergartener who had somehow wandered into the eighth grade biology class.

    I’m glad I took a few friends along to the viewing. The realtor showed us two beautiful apartments that were completely wrong for me, after which my friends sat me down for a short lecture on Words You Must Look Up Before You Even Think About Buying a House, You Unmitigated Dork. Now I know a bit more about the big bad world of real estate than I did last week, but I’m even less convinced I can afford a place of my own unless I aggressively save money for a few more years.

    2.

    This week I spent at least an hour every day writing fiction. I didn’t write too many words, but I learned a few things about how my creative mind wants to approach the writing process:

    • I freeze up if I plan or outline my stories in advance. Knowing the story before I start typing it out makes me not want to write it at all. I do better—and have more fun—when I write by the seat of my pants. Having a vague idea of the ending and a few pivotal scenes helps, but it’s not necessary for me to start writing.
    • Whether I’m reading or writing fiction, stories play out as movies in my head. Translating them into words is a massive chore, and it’s currently the biggest challenge I’m facing. In the coming week, I’m going to focus on writing one small slice of one scene at a time to see if it helps.
    • Writing comes easy if I let my intuition guide me. It gets impossible if I focus on story structure, themes, character arcs, subplots—all those things they teach you in writing workshops. They might be useful tools for debugging a story that doesn’t work, but they haven’t helped me much as I try to write one from scratch.

    3.

    Despite being tremendously unqualified for the job, I’ve recently found myself designing large parts of the user interface for a new product that my client is building. This isn’t the first time I’ve found myself in this situation. I mostly work with startups and smaller organizations that can’t always justify hiring a full-time designer. That means the role of UI and UX designer falls to the person writing the code that puts pixels on the screen i.e. the frontend developer i.e. me.

    This is not a role I’ve ever volunteered to fill or even believed myself suited for, but these days I find it to be the most satisfying part of my job. I can’t say if I’m producing good work without access to professional feedback from an actual designer, but user feedback tells me that I’ve managed to build a piece of software that meets the needs of my client and makes them happy when they use it.

    Since I keep finding myself in this situation, I’ve started to seriously educate myself about design. I’ve been reading as much as I can about both visual design and user experience, and paying more attention to the design of applications I enjoy using. However, most of what I’m learning comes from trying out different things and showing them to users.

    Here’s my design “process”: steal UI pattern from successful application, realize it’s not quite right for what I’m trying to build, throw away the code, steal another UI pattern, show it to a user, realize it’s not quite what they need, steal another UI pattern, on and on in a loop until I finally find something that works. It’s a time consuming process—doubly so because I’m working with code rather than Figma—but I find it relaxing and satisfying.

    4.

    This was a great week for catching up with friends. I had a long phone call with Abhinav early in the week, met Nemo and Pranav at Underline Center on Tuesday, had a movie night with some writing friends on Thursday evening, got a crash course on real estate from Tanvi and Neehar on Friday over lunch, and attended my regular Writers’ Club meeting on Saturday. Now it’s Sunday and I’m looking forward to meeting some folks for coffee later in the evening.

    5.

    Some of my clothes have mysteriously vanished. They’re not in the washing machine or the laundry basket or the wardrobe or the bathroom or the suitcase or anywhere else in the house clothes are likely to be found.

    I’ve bought three pieces of clothing in the last five years. Maybe the universe is telling me to stop wearing yoga pants everywhere and finally refresh my wardrobe?

    What’s Good

    Win(s) of the week: wrote for at least an hour every day, started planning the purchase of a house (even if it’s very far into the future)

    Looking forward to: an upcoming birthday party (a friend’s, not my own), more writing

    I’m glad that: I’m surrounded by a community of smart, kind, hilarious people who have endless energy and endless plans

    Links of the Week

    Media Diet

    • Reading: The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
    • Playing: taking a break from games for a bit because there are too many books I want to read
    • Watching: the final season of Psych
    • Listening to: whichever Punjabi rap playlist Spotify wants to serve up next, and also Brat by Charli XCX

  • Weeknote 55: Loud When There’s Traffic

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    by

    Ankur Sethi
    in

    Okay, let’s try doing weeknotes again. This time I’m stealing a few ideas from Pooja’s notes and a few of them from Tracy’s notes.

    What’s Been Happening

    1.

    I’ve had a number of major life changes since the last time I wrote. I’ve made new friends, had health scares both myself and in my family, moved to a new apartment, started a long-term contract with a new client, joined a writing group, and decided to spend my free time writing fiction. I’ve also had to let go of some close friendships, something that will weigh heavily on my heart for a long time to come.

    I’m a different person today than I was last year at this time, though I’d be hard pressed to recount every little thing that has changed. Part of me wishes I’d continued to post these short updates regularly instead of trying to write longer, meatier posts (none of which I was able to finish writing). It would’ve been a useful account of everything that has happened in the last year or so.

    2.

    I never thought I’d reach a stage of life where I’d be thinking of buying real estate, but here we are.

    I’m nowhere close to being able to afford a house yet, especially in the areas I care about living in, but that hasn’t stopped me from window shopping for apartments online. I’ve even been walking around my neighborhood drooling at all the new buildings that are being built.

    Thing is, I’m sick and tired of having to move every few years. I’m sick of dealing with landlords and brokers. I’m sick of people who don’t want me living in their neighborhood because I’m an unmarried man, or because I eat meat.

    Most of all, I’m sick of having zero control over my living space. The apartment I currently live in is close to a street, and it gets very loud when there’s traffic. If I owned the apartment, I could’ve replaced all the windows with triple glazed glass, but as a renter I’m not allowed to make any major changes to the house (and also, I don’t want to spend too much money on an apartment I’ll only occupy for a few short years). That means I have to learn to live with the noise.

    I just want to live in peace, and the only way to do that seems to be to own the house I live in. A boy can dream, right?

    3.

    Noise issues aside, I love my new apartment!

    My old apartment was impractically large (one of the reasons it was so cheap), but this new one is the perfect size. It’s easier to clean, easier to decorate, and I’m less tempted to fill it up with junk.

    It’s closer to where most of my friends live, which means I can walk over to their place for evening chai or snacks whenever I want. More than once I’ve run into somebody I know while doing a grocery run, which makes me feel like I’m part of a community.

    The neighborhood has quiet, tree-lined streets to walk on, a café that’s open late into the night, stores selling fresh fruit and produce, several small parks, and one of my favorite darshinis within walking distance. Now I can walk to most places I like to frequent, which means I don’t take my car out as often as I used to.

    On the whole, I’m glad I moved.

    4.

    I wrote in February last year about how I feel compelled to only engage with art that has some kind of, well, “artistic merit”. I’m still thinking about this today, more than a year later.

    Since I wrote that post, I’ve gotten better at enjoying media just for the heck of it, without it having to be some grand statement about the human condition or whatever. I’ve read and enjoyed a bunch of romance novels (Emily Henry, Carley Fortune) and straight-up pulp (Dungeon Crawler Carl); my driving playlist has more Miley Cyrus and Diljit Dosanjh than whoever Pitchfork approves of this week; I’ve played at least thirty hours of Vampire Survivors. It’s been silly and fun and I’ve never been happier with my choices.

    And yet, what I remember clearly and think about most often is the media that’s less accessible, that pushes more boundaries, that is considered to have more — I can never type this without scare quotes — “artistic merit”. For example, I hated reading Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, but I still can’t get it out of my head weeks after I finished reading it. The book gave me a new perspective on the dystopia we’re all currently living in, expanded my thinking to a degree that would take an infinite number of Dan Browns typing on an infinite number of typewriters.

    I suppose the real question is: what do I value more? Being entertained and comforted, or expanding my thinking and being exposed to different viewpoints?

    Or maybe: why not both, in equal measure?

    5.

    I recently read Dean Wesley Smith’s Writing Into the Dark, a guide for writing fiction by the seat of your pants. It’s less a book and more a series of loose blog posts, and most of the advice it contains only makes sense if you’re writing the sort of pulp that ChatGPT would scoff at.

    But it contains a few nuggets of wisdom that explain why I struggle with some aspects of writing fiction. I’ve never considered writing a story without plotting it out first, but Smith’s book has given me a few good reasons to at least try. It couldn’t hurt, right? I’ve spent months outlining a story I really believe in, but I’ve managed to write a paltry thousand words. Maybe coming at it with less planning and preparation will be better for my creativity.

    What’s Good

    Win(s) of the week: filed my taxes on time (for the first time ever), spoke to a couple of friends after a long while

    Looking forward to: co-working with a friend a few days next week, experimenting with writing fiction by the seat of my pants

    I’m glad that: I’m starting to feel healthier after months of feeling almost-but-not-quite-sick

    Links of the Week

    Media Diet

    • Reading: Funny Story by Emily Henry and Writing Into the Dark by Dean Wesley Smith
    • Playing: WarioWare: Get it Together! (and some old favorites I’m replaying while I listen to new music)
    • Watching: Psych
    • Listening to: Brat by Charli XCX

  • Personal Happiness and Creative Output

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    by

    Ankur Sethi
    in

    For many years now, I’ve believed that my personal happiness is tied to the quality and quantity of my creative output.

    I’ve held this belief without being aware of it until recently. Nonetheless, it has had a profound negative effect on how I approach my work and hobbies.

    According to this belief, I can have anything I want in life—a loving partner, good mental health, a big group of supportive friends, a fulfilling job—if only I can consistently produce software, blog posts, fiction, or music at a high enough quality.

    Conversely, the reason I have bad dates, fall prey to anxiety, or lose touch with my friends is because I’m not doing enough good creative work.

    Yes, I know how farcical it sounds when written out like that, but so many of the harmful convictions we hold sound like that when they’re written down in plain English.

    I only discovered these feelings while trying to puzzle out why every hobby I have stresses me out instead of helping me relax. I’ve tied my self-worth to my creative output to such a degree that every flaw in my work feels like a flaw in myself. Taking a break from the work feels like I’m giving up on a glorious future that’s just within my reach.

    This is clearly a bad place to be, but how did I get here?

    I feel that my early success with programming has led to the association I’ve formed between work and personal happiness.

    I started taking software development seriously right around time the tech industry in India was starting to grow at a breakneck pace. My programming skills helped me find work that paid well, and the money I made helped me gain financial independence at an early age. Financial independence led to personal independence, which helped me build a life I had only dreamed of when I was younger.

    At some subconscious level, this early success made my brain form an association between work and personal happiness. The correlation was clear as day: being good at programming improved my personal life. But we all know what they say about correlations, right?

    I have to keep reminding myself that the reason my personal life improved was because I made a conscious effort to improve it, not because I got better at writing code. It wasn’t my code that made new friends, went on dates, exercised, ate healthier, went to therapy, and sought out new experiences. It was me. Even if I’d been a terrible programmer—or picked a different career path altogether—it’s possible that I would’ve ended up in a similar situation that I’m in today.

    Being good at my work definitely allowed me freedoms that I otherwise might not have had, but it wasn’t the only thing that helped me become the person I am today. More importantly, just because it happened once doesn’t mean it will happen again.

    If I keep thinking of creative work as my one and only path to personal happiness, I’ll end up taking all the joy out of my job and hobbies. Even worse, if I choose to only focus on my creative output at the expense of everything else, I’ll avoid doing the work that actually helps me grow as a person. Writing more blog posts won’t help me run a 5k; learning Haskell won’t help me go on more dates.

    It’s easy to write all of this out, but changing what I’ve believed for fifteen years will take a lot of effort. Confronting this subconscious belief was half the battle. Now that I know, I can begin to change how I approach my life and work.

  • Default Apps: 2023 Edition

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    by

    Ankur Sethi
    in

    Everybody is making lists of the default apps they use in 2023. Being an inveterate trend-hopper, why should I be left behind?

    • Email: Fastmail installed as PWA on macOS, default Fastmail app on iPhone
    • Notes: Obsidian + Obsidian Sync, Apple Notes for quickly capturing rough ideas
    • To-do: Things
    • Photo shooting: iOS Camera
    • Photo management: Apple Photos
    • Photo editing: Apple Photos
    • Calendar: Fastmail installed as PWA on macOS, default Fastmail app on iPhone
    • Cloud storage: iCloud Drive
    • RSS: Reeder + iCloud (currently trying Readwise Reader for 30 days)
    • Contact management: Apple Contacts
    • Browser: Safari for daily browsing, Firefox for the developer tools
    • Chat: Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram (in order of usage)
    • Bookmarks: Raindrop.io
    • Read later: Reeder + iCloud (currently trying Readwise Reader for 30 days)
    • Spreadsheets: Microsoft Excel
    • Word processing: iA Writer, sometimes Microsoft Word
    • Presentations: Apple Keynote
    • Shopping list: Things
    • Budgeting and finance: Fold Money
    • News: Mastodon, other people
    • Music: Spotify
    • Podcast: Overcast
    • Password management: 1Password
    • Books: Kindle and Apple Books on iPad Pro
    • App launcher: Alfred
    • Code editor: Visual Studio Code
    • Terminal: iTerm
    • Git client: Git Tower

    If you want to see more, Robb Knight is collecting these lists on App Defaults.

  • Learning to Enjoy Short Fiction

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    by

    Ankur Sethi
    in

    Until recently, I hated reading short fiction. Every time I had a choice between reading a novel or a collection of short stories, I almost always picked the novel.

    If you’d asked me a few years ago, I would’ve rattled off a long list of problems I had with short stories: they refused to give me the sense of closure I looked for in my fiction, they were sometimes too experimental for my tastes, they didn’t give me time to fall in love with their characters and worlds, they omitted important context required to really understand what was going on. I could go on for days.

    However, earlier this year, I decided I wanted to learn to enjoy reading short fiction. I figured that the only reason I didn’t find it as much fun as reading novels was that I hadn’t been exposed to enough short stories that moved me. My frustrations were born out of an unfamiliarity with the form, which had a simple fix in my eyes: just read a lot of short stories.

    So I purchased recent issues of a few popular short fiction magazines from Weightless Books. I also bookmarked some of the freely available stories on the Internet and dusted off the anthologies I already had on my bookshelf.

    Slowly over the past year, I’ve worked my way through all these story collections. The experience has been a mixed bag — fun on some days, frustrating on others. But one weekend in October, I found myself looking forward to spending my entire day exclusively reading short fiction!

    It was gratifying to discover that my initial hunch was correct: to enjoy reading short fiction, I just had to expose myself to as much of it as possible. It was sort of like getting used to a new genre of music by listening to a lot of it for a few weeks.

    Besides mere exposure, there were two shifts in my approach to reading that helped me appreciate short stories. First, I learned to be okay with not getting a sense of closure from everything I read. And second, I let go of the expectation that I’d enjoy or even tolerate every story in a collection. They can’t all be zingers.

    I’m glad that I went through with this exercise. Reading short stories is a different kind of pleasure compared to novels, and I’m happy that I’m finally able to find joy in this form of storytelling as well.

    Here are some of the stories I enjoyed reading this year:

  • The Real Dubstep of My Soul

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    by

    Ankur Sethi
    in

    Here’s what happens every time I get excited about writing a blog post: I dump three thousand words into my text editor, whittle them down to a more reasonable amount, coerce them into a polished draft, format them for publication, and immediately realize that everything I’ve written is completely false. At this point, having found out that I’ve produced a thousand words of lies and fabrications, I have no choice but to throw all of it away.

    Then I get excited about a different idea and do it all over again.

    In the last six weeks—since the day I published my final weeknote—I’ve finished writing four complete blog posts and thrown them all into the trash without showing them to a single living soul.

    It’s not that I hate my writing, or that I’m afraid of sharing it with the world. Humility and discretion are qualities I’ve never been accused of possessing. No, the problem is that the simple act of writing down my feelings, opinions, or beliefs changes them beyond recognition. As I go from idea to rough draft to a polished blog post, my real feelings twist and mutate to a degree that the words I’ve committed to the page no longer represent what I believe to be true.

    Or, rather than changing them outright, sometimes the act of writing makes my beliefs and opinions more nuanced. My boldfaced takes about hustle culture or large language models get buried under more and more qualifiers until the final thesis of my writing is reduced to a noncommittal “it depends”.

    Writing is thinking. It’s a platitude that gets repeated time and time again in every lecture, book, essay, and tweet toot skeet about writing. Having heard it repeated all my life, I’ve always known on a logical level that writing down my beliefs would make me question them. But the problem with platitudes is that they don’t really sink in until you’ve experienced them for yourself.

    Now that I’ve experienced what writing is thinking means, this truism has finally left somewhat of an impression on the soggy birthday cake that is my brain. I’m also starting to understand why it’s true. Why would something as simple as writing down the words that are already inside my head make me question them?

    This is what happens: as I take the nebulous swirl of feelings and opinions in my head and attempt to pin them down into something more concrete for a blog post, I’m forced to interrogate them in a way that I can’t do while they’re still being pumped out by the fog machine in my hypothalamus. Writing down my beliefs severs the very personal connection I have with them, putting a greater distance between myself and my thoughts. This allows me to view them more objectively, almost as if they were written by a complete stranger. Under this scrutiny, they either dissipate into smoke or turn into something else entirely.

    That doesn’t mean trying to pin down these feelings is pointless. It’s still useful work, even if it doesn’t result in any published blog posts. Every time I write down what I feel with the intention of communicating it to another human being, I learn something new about myself. Whether the writing rings true or not, whether I publish it or not, I still end up with more self-knowledge than I started with. Any activity that helps me learn more about myself is worth investing time into, even if it results in no extrinsic rewards.

    I’m starting to make peace with the fact that most of the writing I do while doing this internal work will forever remain in my private journal. If I want to write things that draw from my very personal beliefs, feelings, and convictions, then I will have to be okay with throwing away thousands of words of perfectly good prose. If this means that my Internet friends never get to hear the real dubstep of my soul, so be it.

    But all of this still leaves me in a pickle. I very much want to write in public, and I want my writing to be deeply personal above all else. If my feelings keep changing even as I understand them enough to write them down, then how am I ever supposed to publish anything?

    I don’t have a permanent solution to this. However, at least for the moment, I feel like I need to anchor my writing to something outside of myself. This could be a piece of media that speaks to me, somebody else’s writing, an event that left an impression on me, a news story, or anything else in the world outside of my own self.

    That doesn’t mean I stop telling my own personal truth. It just means that I use something outside of myself as a starting point for my writing, and then I let my own truth flow from there.

    Maybe I won’t need this crutch in the future, but for now I just want to write and publish as much as I can. I’m happy to try anything that will help me get there.

  • Weeknote 54: Last Weeknote

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    by

    Ankur Sethi
    in

    This is the last weeknote I intend to write, at least for the near future.

    Posting these regular bulletins has given me great pleasure over the years, but I’m no longer enjoying the process as much as I used to. There are two reasons for this.

    First: I’m not a fan of arbitrary deadlines, especially when they threaten to make my hobbies feel like work. The weeknote format, by its very nature, dictates when I’m allowed to begin writing an entry, as well as the amount of time I’m allowed to spend writing it before I must post it online. This wouldn’t be a problem if I wasn’t such a slow writer, but I am. I’ve spent many Monday evenings scrambling to finish a post so I could publish it before bedtime, and it’s starting to wear thin on me. I don’t want to experience this kind of anxiety over a hobby that is supposed to be fun.

    Second: weeknotes take time away from other things I want to write. While I try to set aside some time for writing each day, in practice I’m only able to indulge myself two or three times a week. If I dedicate one of my rare writing days to weeknotes, I’m left with one less day to spend on everything else I want to explore. The result? A drafts folder full of unfinished blog posts, unexplored ideas, and unpleasant feelings.

    I’ve written fifty-two weeknotes since posting my first one in November 2018. A pretty good showing, if I say so myself. I’ve had a lot of fun writing these. However, I think I’ve wrung out as much enjoyment out of this practice as I’m ever going to get. It’s time to move on.

    Dear reader, thank you for following along. I promise you that I will continue to use this blog to turn my personal trauma into cheap entertainment for you. It just won’t be in weeknote format anymore.

    Onward.

  • Weeknote 53: Weird Angle

    —

    by

    Ankur Sethi
    in
    • I sat at a weird angle in bed and hurt my neck and shoulders. I thought this body had a few good years left in it, but I fear it might be time for me to check myself into geriatric care.
    • Reading Christine gave me nightmares for three nights straight. The closer I got to the end of the book, the more terrifying my nightmares became, until one day I woke up at 4am, sweaty and confused, and could not go back to sleep again. Ten out of ten experience, highly recommended.
    • Talking of nightmares: when I was a child, I watched an episode of Aahat in which people’s reflections were able to murder them through mirrors. For months afterward, I refused to enter rooms that had mirrors in them unless I was escorted by an adult. My parents were not pleased, and they banned me from watching anything scary ever again. Even today, I get spooked by mirrors. I’m guessing I’m not the only one who had this experience growing up, because “aahat haunted mirror episode” is an autocomplete suggestion on Google, and the first link in the search results takes you to the episode hosted on Sony’s official YouTube channel.
    • I’m now reading Lily King’s Writers and Lovers. The first chapter of this book starts with the most cliché protagonist-wakes-up-and-goes-to-work scene that you can imagine. This sort of opening — in books, movies, and even games — is an instant turnoff for me. That said, Writers and Lovers gets real good real quick, so I can forgive this minor transgression. It’s a sweet, well-written romance that tackles painful topics without letting things get too heavy. Just what I need to chase away the nightmares.
    • There’s a belief I’ve unconsciously held for many years that keeps me from fully enjoying all the different art I like to engage with. The belief goes something like this: all the books I read, movies I watch, games I play, or music I listen to must have some sort of artistic merit. This “artistic merit” is defined either by practitioners who make the same kind of art or — more often — by critics who have studied it all their lives. I’d never been able to put this belief in words until last week. Now that I’ve managed to do it, I can see how harmful it is, and I’m starting to question it. But that’s a topic for another, much longer blog post. If I ever get to it.

    Links of the Week

    Media Diet

    • Reading: Writers and Lovers by Lily King
    • Playing: Hades (Nintendo Switch)
    • Playing: Banner Saga (Nintendo Switch)