Books That Broke Me Open — Part 1: The Inner World

#263

I read over 80 books in 2025. Some, I tore through in an afternoon. Some took three weeks, a snack break, and a minor existential crisis. And then there were the ones that made me put the book down, stare at the ceiling, and go "...oh wow! What a journey this has been."

These are those books. The ones that didn't just entertain me, but had the audacity to rearrange something in my mind, body, and soul. The books that I opened, that then opened me. Reading, for me, is the quietest and most nourishing form of self-care — borrowing other people's hard-won wisdom, living other people's lives, and somehow making more sense of my own without having to earn every lesson the hard way myself. No spoilers. Just honest reactions, key lessons, and the occasional monologue from yours truly.

(Part 2 — systems, money, leadership, memoirs, and one fantasy series that snuck past my literary pretensions entirely — dropping next week!)

1: The Little Prince — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry I picked this up once when I was a kid. I had thought it was cute, a tad odd, and had fun illustrations. I quickly moved on, not thinking much of it. When I re-read it as an adult, I immediately wanted to call my younger self and say "girl, you completely missed the point." On the surface it's about a small boy hopping between planets. Underneath, it's a meditation on loneliness, love, and how we slowly stop truly seeing each other the older we get. The Fox tells the Little Prince: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." A sentence I've carried around for years like a small, wise pebble in my pocket. A forever book. No notes, because the whole book is the note.

2: The Road Less Traveled — M. Scott Peck My all-time favorite. Full stop. No contest. Dr. Peck opens with "Life is difficult" — that was the moment I knew I'd love the book. And of course I did. Dr. Peck says that ironically, once you truly accept that life is difficult, it no longer is. Because you stop being surprised by it. This book is basically a wise, no-nonsense uncle sitting you down and saying: stop expecting easy, start doing the actual work, and also — here's what love actually means versus what you've been sold. Same for discipline, delayed gratification, and personality types - character disorders versus neuroses. One of my "well, duh" moments (obvious but it really isn't; easy to understand in theory, incredibly hard to apply) from this book is about problems: "Most of us spend enormous energy complaining about, avoiding, or wishing away our problems — and exactly zero of that actually moves the needle. You solve the problem by solving the problem." I had to read that twice.

3: The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk Science-y but deeply personal. Hard-hitting. Not for the faint of heart. Incredibly illuminating and revelatory. Paradigm-shifting. Van der Kolk's argument: your body remembers everything your brain is trying to move on from. That tightness in your shoulders? The exhaustion that doesn't go away with sleep? Yeah. He writes: "Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body." This book gave me vocabulary for things I'd been feeling or seen in others but couldn't name or wonder why — and more importantly, told me that rest, movement, and self-compassion aren't soft options. They're physiological requirements. My e-copy looks like a neon art installation. Highlighted approximately 75% of the book. Whole paragraphs, pages even.

4: Can't Hurt Me — David Goggins I read this book twice in two months. Yes, he's a lot. Yes, it was an intense read. But it gave me rocket-like energy and enthusiasm and determination to get up and run, and lift weights, and just do everything with renewed gusto. The man runs 100-mile races for fun. For fun! I cannot run to catch a bus without requiring a full recovery day. (Yet!) But underneath all the extreme everything is one idea that refuses to leave me alone — the 40% rule: "When you think that you are done, you're only 40% into what your body's capable of doing. That's just the limits that we put on ourselves." I didn't finish this feeling inspired. I finished it feeling caught. Like Goggins personally reached through the pages, looked me in the eye, and said "really though?" Rude. Necessary. 10/10. I was hooked to this page-turner from the title of the first chapter onwards: "I should've been a statistic."

5: The Creative Act: A Way of Being — Rick Rubin Rick Rubin produced albums for everyone from Johnny Cash to Beyoncé, then wrote a book that has nothing to do with music and everything to do with how to be alive. I started noting one quote. Then another. Then another. Three pages later I looked up and went — did I just end up recreating those pages from the book verbatim? Yep! Here's a sampler before I get carried away again: "Art is not a noun. It's a verb. It's something you do, not something you have." And: "You are not the work. The work is the work. Your job is simply to get out of its way." Okay, just one more, I promise: "If you do something and it moves you, that's enough. That's the whole point." For someone who writes poems she doesn't show anyone and plays guitar in the bedroom when no one's watching, this was basically a permission slip delivered directly to my soul. The act of creating, he says, matters more than the audience. Accepted. Gratefully. Which is also exactly why this blog exists. Writing about what I love, what I do, how I live — started out as fun, turned into my most honest form of self-care. Rubin would approve. Probably. I'd like to think so anyway.

6: The War of Art — Steven Pressfield Yet another book where my notes == the whole book. In this book, Steven Pressfield names the villain and calls it Resistance — that sneaky, shapeshifting force that convinces you to reorganise your desk instead of writing, scroll instead of practicing, research instead of starting. He writes: "Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance." He doesn't offer a workaround. He offers a name. And naming it, somehow, makes it smaller. Short, punchy, slightly aggressive in the best way. I finished it and immediately opened a blank document. Pressfield would be pleased.

7: A Man of Two Faces — Viet Thanh Nguyen Emotionally gutting, politically sharp, and elegiac, this 2023 memoir is written in second person, so you don't just read his story: you're pulled so far into his experience of displacement and immigrant identity that for a few pages it becomes yours. Half the book is his story. The other half belongs to his mother — her fractured identity, her uprootedness, her sacrifices. Nguyen writes: "All wars are fought twice, the first time on the battlefield, the second time in memory." I ugly-cried at least twice, the hiccup-sob kind. Would enthusiastically recommend to anyone who has ever felt like they existed between two worlds and fully belonged to neither. And who enjoys, like me, poetic and literary writing that makes you scratch an itch in your brain you didn't know you had.

8: Things My Son Needs to Know About the World — Fredrik Backman Backman at his most unfiltered — part love letter to his newborn son, part chaotic meditation on what it means to be a halfway decent human being. He ping-pongs between profound and ridiculous in the same paragraph and somehow lands both every single time. "You can become whatever you want to become, but that's nowhere near as important as knowing that you can be exactly who you are." And then two pages later he's writing about IKEA cupboard doors and why they're never really about cupboard doors. "Find someone who doesn't love you for the person you are, but despite the person you are." I laughed out loud on public transport reading this. Sometimes with welled-up tears at the same time. Worth every side-eye I received. Then I immediately binge-read every other Backman book I could get my hands on — A Man Called Ove, Anxious People, Beartown, Britt-Marie Was Here, The Deal of a Lifetime, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer — and enjoyed them all rather equally, which tells you everything about his writing. Equal parts hilarious and transcendent, he taps into the human psyche with such precision and warmth that every page feels like he's been quietly watching all of us and taking very detailed notes.

Touch the Treadmill

#262

I get bored easily. Always have. The same route, the same routine, the same anything for too long and my brain starts looking for an exit. So the fact that I've shown up to the same gym, three times a week, for over tenth months running — that's not discipline. That's a good match.

CrossFit, for the uninitiated, is deliberately, structurally different every single day. The WOD — Workout of the Day — is programmed fresh each session: a different combination of movements, time structures, and intensity levels. One day you're racing to finish a set of rowing and kettlebell swings in under seven minutes. The next, you have twenty minutes to complete as many rounds as possible of pull-ups and box jumps — pacing yourself, managing your effort, finding a rhythm. The day after, you're learning the footwork of a power clean or grinding through wall walks. The programming is intentional — coaches cycle through strength, conditioning, gymnastics, and Olympic lifting across the week so your body never fully adapts and your brain never fully checks out. For someone who finds sameness suffocating, this is basically a cheat code.

And then there's the scaling. Every movement has modifications — lighter weights, resistance bands, shorter distances, scaled progressions. A beginner and a seasoned athlete can do the exact same workout side by side, each working at their own edge. Instead of a full pull-up, you start with a thick resistance band looped under your feet, then graduate to a thinner one, then thinner still, until one day — unassisted. Instead of a barbell, you learn the movement pattern first with a PVC pipe that weighs nothing. You meet the skill where you are, and work your way up. Being called an athlete throughout all of this — by coaches who use the word without irony, for everyone, from day one — it makes you feel like you've always been part of the roster.

My current obsession is pull-ups. I've been working my way toward a strict unassisted pull-up by the end of the year — recently graduated from a horizontal resistance band to a vertical one, and that single progression unlocked enthusiasm and excitement to keep trying harder, to keep moving toward lower and lower resistance bands. Oh, the joy of measurable, visible progress! Gymnastics movements are my happy place in general: wall walks (still mastering moving more than a couple of steps toward the wall), and headstands, where I've only just built enough shoulder stability to balance my knees over my elbows for about a minute. The next milestone? Getting both legs to lift off and balance in the air. I think about it approximately every other day.

Olympic lifting is a whole other universe — complex, dynamic, deeply technical, involving a series of compound movements that have to happen in the right sequence or the whole thing falls apart. It's genuinely hard. Which is exactly the point. My motto this year is to do hard things — and CrossFit delivers on that promise constantly. There's a question I keep coming back to: When's the last time you did something for the first time? Every week at CrossFit, I have a fresh answer.

I've written before about how the community and the people are what first pulled me in and kept me coming back — in Finding Your People (#257). The short version: I go there for the humans. The working out happens in between. I've since found myself a lovely little ladies' group — we grab coffee or catch up outside the gym every now and then, and that warm, easy companionship has quietly become one of my favorite parts of the whole thing.

What I want to talk about here is the starting. Because that's where most good habits go to die. Twyla Tharp, the legendary choreographer, wrote in The Creative Habit about her non-negotiable morning ritual — it wasn't the hours of dancing or rehearsal. It was simply getting into the cab to the studio. Once she was in the cab, the rest took care of itself. James Clear calls a version of this "touching the treadmill" — on the days motivation is nowhere to be found, your only job is to show up and make contact. That's it. Often, you end up staying anyway. My version is pulling out of my garage at 6:15 AM for a ten-minute drive.

And showing up, it turns out, is the most underrated form of self-care there is. Not the most glamorous. Not the most Instagrammable. But the one that quietly compounds — into better sleep, better eating, better energy, better days. The one that makes everything else a little easier to do, and a little harder to quit. Epictetus said it best: "First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do." The 6:15 AM drive is where I do what I have to do. Everything after is just the good part.

"Resting" Guilt

#261

Problem Scenario

Last week, I had a headache and zero motivation. My body was clearly asking for a break, but instead of just taking it, I found myself doing that thing — you know the one. Lying still but mentally running tabs. I should check my messages. I should at least do something useful. My head hurt and there I was, negotiating with myself about whether I'd earned the right to do nothing.

I didn't win the negotiation, by the way. Not immediately. But eventually, I put the phone down and just... rested. No guilt tax attached. And the next morning, I woke up early, did a few sun salutations, and had one of the better days I'd had in a while. The rest wasn't the problem. The guilt was.

Self-care has a branding problem. Somewhere between the scented candles and the morning routine Instagram reels, it got conflated with doing more. More journaling. More cold plunges. More optimizing. And in all that noise, the most basic form of self-care — actual rest — started to feel like something you had to earn first.

Conflict

You know rest is good for you. Physiologically, psychologically, in every way the science agrees. And yet. The moment you stop, there's that low hum: shouldn't I be doing something?

It's not laziness. It's conditioning. We've been trained — by culture, by productivity gurus, by well-meaning people who love us — to equate stillness with stagnation. So the body rests, but the mind keeps running tabs. That's not rest. That's rest with a side of punishment.

The cruelest irony is that the guilt itself prevents the rest from working. You can't fully restore if you're simultaneously berating yourself for needing restoration. The very mechanism designed to "motivate" you ends up exhausting you further. Marcus Aurelius saw this clearly: "You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." Guilt is a mind event. It's not a verdict.

Mindset Shift

My partner has said it to me more times than I can count, in that infuriating-because-it's-true way: "It's okay to just exist." Simple words. Incredibly hard to receive. Because existing — without producing, without a plan, without something to show for your time — feels dangerously close to doing nothing. And doing nothing, apparently, is the one thing none of us are allowed to do.

The shift, when it came, wasn't dramatic. It was small. I noticed the guilt. And I chose not to act on it. I let the afternoon pass without accounting for it. And what I found on the other side wasn't failure — it was a quieter, steadier version of myself.

The Takeaway

Rest isn't a reward. It's maintenance. 

Your phone doesn't get to skip charging because it had a particularly productive day. Neither do you. 

A candle that never stops burning doesn't last longer. It just burns out faster. 

Even the best symphony has rests written into the score. The silence isn't empty — it's part of the music. 

The most radical act of self-care, sometimes, is to stop performing self-care — and just be. You don't need permission. But if you're anything like me and you do — consider this it.

Dear Dairy

#260

"Dear Dairy,

For thirty years, I consumed thee without question. Without thought. Without the faintest idea that milk and curd and paneer were choices, not commandments handed down in Indian households since time immemorial: more dairy, always more dairy. Your bones need it. Your skin needs it. Your soul needs it, apparently.

Then someone suggested I try veganism.

So I experimented. Four weeks without thee. And something wonderful happened—my face cleared like stone being polished smooth. The acne that had been my faithful companion since adolescence simply vanished. I started regaining my confidence and self-esteem.

Then I reintroduced thee as part of the experiment. And there it was again. The breakouts. The inflammation. My skin rebelling.

O Dairy, thou sweet saboteur of my days and mirror to my skin's betrayal.

How long hath it been? Six moons of exile, of almond milk—that pallid impostor, that whisper of a thing pretending to be my Nescafé's companion. A hollow substitute. A sorry stand-in. Thin. Hollow. A vessel with no substance. Lacking marrow, lacking soul. My coffee mourned in that glass, and I wept alongside it.

But listen now, dear Dairy. I come not with anger, but with negotiation.

The sensitivity test hath spoken thy sins clearly: cows' milk, sheep's milk, cows' ghee—all conspirators in the great Breakout Uprising of 2026. Butter alone showed mercy, though what consolation is butter without thee? Without paneer? Without yogurt thick as clouds? A sad, greasy footnote to a love story gone wrong. This is me trying to make peace with thy memory.

I tried thy vegan imposters. Vegan cheese—a plastic phantom. Vegan yogurt—absolute, smelly trash that dares not speak its name. But the homemade soy yogurt? Oh, that magnum opus of domestic failure. My Instant Pot shall never recover from that olfactory apocalypse. It smelled like a gymnasium had fermented inside my kitchen. Like a locker room achieved sentience and wept. The stench was so aggressive I couldn't shake it off for three days straight.

Dairy-free didn't feel like a choice—it felt like a sentence.

And yet. And yet.

Perhaps the goat shall succeed where the cow hath failed. Goat's milk, that humble underdog—I tried thee once and dismissed thee harshly. But now? Now I return, bereft and desperate, my usual options stripped away. This is no love letter, Dairy. This is a truce. A second act. A reputation rebuild.

Be kind to me. Let there be no breakouts. Let there be only the quiet reunion of taste buds remembering home.

After all, self-care is knowing what brings you back to yourself—even if it means trusting cautiously, reintroducing slowly, and hoping my skin remains merciful this time around.

Yours (again), with guarded hope and a prayer to the dairy gods."

Energy Conspiracy

#259

The Wall

For the past few months, I'd been caught in a 4 PM energy conspiracy without realizing it. Almost every day. Lunch would settle, I'd feel fine for about an hour or two, then suddenly my brain would feel foggy and my body acted as though moving through quicksand. Gravity felt doubled. A 20-to-30-minute power nap would seem helpful, then I'd be back to feeling groggy and sluggish until nighttime. And it kept showing up around 4 PM every afternoon like clockwork.

I wasn't eating poorly or sleeping terribly. My day-to-day habits seemed fine at surface level. But on further investigation, I learned I might have been suffering from post-lunch blood sugar spike, leading to the afternoon crash. On top of that, dehydration and lack of movement combined with sitting still causing my gut to work itself into inflammation. The power nap only acted as a band-aid, a stop-gap solution. Thankfully, I stumbled upon a book about energy that helped turn things around.

The Unfolding

The Energy Paradox: What to Do When Your Get-Up-and-Go Has Got Up and Gone by Steven Gundry talks about how chronic fatigue and brain fog stem from an autoimmune battle in the gut—a "leaky gut" combined with poor mitochondrial function. The book covers how to restore energy by healing the gut, boosting mitochondria, and using time-controlled eating to combat inflammation and improve cellular energy production. From this, I learned that my 4 PM crash wasn't laziness or poor sleep. It was my body fighting inflammation I couldn't see. 

The gut lining has tiny holes (leaky gut), so undigested food particles slip through and trigger the immune system to attack. Meanwhile, mitochondria—the power plants in cells—work overtime trying to fuel this constant battle. They get exhausted. Therefore, you feel exhausted.

The Slow Rebuild

I started small. Around 3 PM, post lunch, I'd move to my apartment's lounge with my laptop—somewhere with better lighting, brighter colors, different ambience. An hour there, doing something productive like writing, gave my body permission to reset and regain my energy. The environmental shift made a significant difference. I'd also have a quarter cup of coffee as a pick-me-up. Just enough to restore my energy for the evening without the crash that came with overdoing it. It felt like a small rebellion against the conspiracy.

Over the course of 1-2 months, I made gradual changes to what I was eating. I started mixing quinoa with my rice instead of eating rice alone. Swapped out potatoes for other vegetables and replaced dessert chocolates with a fruit. High fiber diet meant my body could actually process food instead of spiking and crashing. The goal to give my gut something it could work with instead of against. Suddenly, 4 PM didn't feel like a conspiracy anymore. It felt manageable.

Your 4 PM self doesn't need willpower or a dramatic overhaul. Just small interruptions: a change of scenery. A quarter cup of coffee. A small walk. Slowly shifting what you eat so your body stops fighting you. Listening to your body and honoring what it's asking for is one of the best forms of self-care.

Small Rituals

#258

Sometimes self-care isn't a grand gesture. It's a cup of tea. A cloud. A tiny pizza made on a Tuesday afternoon.

Tea & Windows

I started this recently — sitting by the window with a warm mug, just watching. No phone. No agenda. Just me and whatever the sky decides to float my way.

As I look at the clouds passing by — Seattle clouds of varying colors: white, light grey, dark grey, and the wind carrying them rapidly from one place to the next — my brain can't help but see faces and shapes in them. I learned that there's a term for this: "pareidolia". One day I saw an eagle with a rounder, fluffier beak. Another, a whale breaching. Yesterday? A sleepy girl with two cute ponytails. Once you see it, it's hard to unsee it. 

It may sound silly, but it proved to be grounding for me. For ten minutes, my only job is to sit, sip, and notice what my brain conjures. The ritual itself becomes the point.

The Tiny Pizza Experiment

I went on an experimental Costco run. A new location, new ingredients to try out. Mini naans, tomato paste cans, cheese - the pizza practically made itself! Added some fresh basil from my friend's garden on them, and voila, in ten minutes of baking them in the grill oven and sprinkling some oregano on top, I had myself a lovely evening snack.

Is it a ritual? Not yet. But it's becoming one. That moment of "oh, I could make this right now" feels lighter than ordering in. It's also helping me unleash my creative juices. The next day, I made homemade pesto. Made way for an instant pasta dinner.

Why This Matters

Small rituals anchor you. Bedtime reading to wind down from screens. Folding clothes with your partner while catching up on your respective days. Sipping a hot beverage looking out at what all nature has to offer you in that moment.

They're the quiet things that say: I'm taking care of myself today. Not because I have to. Because I want to. Because tea tastes better when you actually taste it. Because clouds are funny if you let them be. Because making something, even something tiny, feels different than consuming something made for you.

Sit. Watch. Sip. Notice.

Or cook. Mindfully.

Whatever floats your boat.

Finding your people

#257

The Gym Phase

I tried the gym. No membership—just a free gym at my apartment complex. Thought willpower and discipline would carry me through.

It didn't.

I had no idea what I was doing. Which exercises actually worked? How many reps? What form even looked like? I'd wander around, copy what others were doing, and hope for the best. Some days I'd show up. Most days I wouldn't. There was no structure. No accountability. Just me, a lot of empty promises to myself, and zero reason to show up tomorrow.

The problem with relying on willpower alone? It's not sustainable. As James Clear says, "You don't rise to the level of your goals—you fall to the level of your systems." I had no system. Just good intentions.

The Pilates Detour

Then came pilates. A friend suggested it. I thought: okay, this will be the thing. A structured class. Real instruction.

It was brutal. Too hard, too fast, too demotivating. Everyone was supposed to hold a two-minute plank. I couldn't. People with toned cores breezed through while the rest of us—including me—felt inferior in real time. Work was already hard. I didn't need fitness to feel like failure too. Three months in, I quit.

The CrossFit Plot Twist

Another friend invited me to try CrossFit. First day, I walked in expecting more of the same. Instead, I found coaches who actually cared about form, not ego. Who scaled workouts so everyone could participate at their own level. Who celebrated the person PR-ing their deadlift as much as the person finally nailing a pull-up.

The difference? It wasn't the workout itself. It was the people.

I realized something: I'll do almost anything if I'm surrounded by the right environment and the right influence. Like-minded people who are on their own journey, not comparing theirs to yours. Coaches constantly encouraging, not judging. A community where you're not ranked against someone else's toned core—you're celebrating your own progress.

Eight months in, and I haven't stopped. Every time I travel, I itch to get back. Every time I get sick, though I try not to, I focus on immediate recovery as my highest priority so I can get back to the gym. Miss a workout day? It bothers me now. In the best way.

I started reading more about CrossFit. Paid attention to my nutrition. My sleep improved. One tiny system—showing up to my CrossFit gym—unlocked everything else. It became my 'keystone' habit.

Why This Matters for Self-Care

Self-care isn't just meditation and green juice. Sometimes it's finding the people and the place where you actually want to show up. Where consistency doesn't feel like punishment—it feels like coming home.

Your environment matters. Your people matter. More than you think.

Counting Sheep, Not Hours

#256

"A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything." — Irish proverb

Lately I haven't been able to successfully maintain a wind-down routine. Chamomile tea, no-screens-after-9pm, humidifier with aromatherapy. None of it stuck.

What works? Tiring myself out during the day so I just crash. No graceful shutdown. No memory of the transition. Just - Close eyes. Gone.

There are people who regularly and very easily fall asleep anywhere, anytime, on command. A superpower, genuinely. I applaud them and strive to emulate this skill of theirs. 

My current, unglamorous sleep hacks: tire yourself out throughout the day in good ways, and cut caffeine after 5pm. That's it. No app. No ritual. Just physics.

On adrenaline-heavy days or evening workout days especially, guided meditation on Insight Timer earns its place — not as a spiritual practice, but as a physiological off-switch. Ten minutes, and my nervous system gets the memo. There's also the Navy SEAL technique: progressively relax every muscle group from feet to face, picture a still scene, and reportedly fall asleep in under two minutes. Free. Worth trying.

And then there's my Apple Watch. Which, in late 2025, committed the unforgivable act of abolishing "Excellent" from its sleep score vocabulary. Replaced with "Very High." Stricter algorithm, better at detecting quiet wake moments, more aligned with sleep science — all reasonable. I understand it. I do not have to like it though.

What used to be a proud 93 out of 100 — "Very High," thank you very much — is now just "High." Participation trophy for surviving the night with five interruptions. Apple never signed up to be anyone's hype person. Fair. But did they have to be quite so ruthless about it?

Nevertheless, there are days I score low but feel great. Other days, even the best score doesn't reflect my sluggish morning demeanor.

All in all, as tech folks say - YMMV. Your Mileage May Vary. Eight hours is a guideline, not gospel. Some people thrive on six deep, uninterrupted hours. Others need nine and still surface groggy. The number isn't the point. The feeling is.

Do you wake up feeling rested? Does your body wake up not craving more rest? That's it. That's the whole rubric.

Now if you'll excuse me — bonne nuit, shubh raatri, oyasumi nasai — this writer is going to go practice what she preaches. Zzz. 

Chop, Chat, Chew

#255

I started cooking with my partner recently. And what a revelatory experience that has been!

Not the cooking itself — I've done that plenty. But cooking together. Intentionally. As a daily ritual rather than a chore to knock off the list.

Here's how it usually goes. One of us chops vegetables while the other gets the pan going. We catch up on the day — the mundane stuff, the funny stuff, the stuff that somehow never comes up when you're just sitting across from each other at dinner. The kitchen becomes this strange little confessional where conversations flow easier because your hands are busy and your eyes aren't locked in that "we need to talk" formation.

And then there's the sounds. The carrots snapping under the knife. Onions sizzling as they hit oil. The rhythmic tap-tap-tap of dicing that honestly feels like a personal ASMR session I'm creating for myself. You don't notice these things when you're rushing. But when you tune in? It's almost meditative. Mellifluous, even.

Does it take longer than ordering in or microwaving something? Absolutely. But here's the thing — when you've watched the raw ingredients transform, when you've smelled the spices bloom in real-time, when you've tasted and adjusted and debated whether it needs more salt — you savor the final plate differently. You're not just eating. You're enjoying your creation.

Every sense gets a seat at the table. Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch. All engaged. All present. No screens competing for attention. Just two people, a cutting board, a pan and spatula, and whatever the fridge had to offer.

As Thich Nhat Hanh put it: "When you are washing the dishes, washing the dishes must be the most important thing in your life."

Replace dishes with dinner. Same wisdom. Better ending — because you get to eat it.

Permission to Pause

#254

The Fun Phase

I had picked up my guitar sometime last year in the hopes of learning to play my favorite songs, strum basic patterns and seamlessly switch between common chords. I went in with no plan and no roadmap. No deadlines, no "have to do this and that". And I managed to achieve just that.

For the first few months, it was genuinely enjoyable. Ten minutes here, fifteen there. Longer, even. Learning songs badly. Struggling to play even a four-chord song that repeats throughout. But I loved that struggle; that phase was pure joy, no strings attached (okay, yes strings, but you know what I mean). I could play and practice the same easy song over and over without frustration, and quickly saw greatly-improved results. Even tiny progress felt like a big win.

When Joy Becomes Obligation

After some time though, I felt the mood gradually shifting. It had been more than 20 songs by now, most beginner, a few intermediate, and a couple of them truly advanced for me then. My mind started telling me I was supposed to be progressing faster. The beginner phase felt like a box to check. Intermediate loomed like homework.

I started asking: What's the point? Where is this going? Shouldn't I have stopped struggling on these basics by now? Why do songs with more than two barre chords still trip me up? And the moment you ask that about something that started as pure fun, you've already hit a sour note.

Here's the thing: hobbies don't owe you anything. And you don't owe them relentless optimization either.

Two States

What had happened? Comparison had crept in without me noticing.

At first, I was just playing. Floating like a confident butterfly in my own lane. Owning my naivete. But then I'd watch YouTube tutorials. See other people play guitar—effortlessly switching between chords I was still wrestling with. And somewhere amidst all that, I stopped being content with my own progress. And slowly started losing motivation.

Morgan Housel talks about how luxuries become necessities the moment you see someone else with them. Charlie Munger says: "The world isn't driven by greed, it's driven by envy." Watching someone else have it and thinking: Why not me? Why can't I do that yet?

One day you're content playing four-chord songs. The next, you're measuring yourself against someone else's journey. And that's when the fun dies.

Choosing What Serves You

Some days, the guitar calls out to me and I pick it up, get into flow state and an hour goes by feeling like minutes. Other days it feels like work. Classes get harder. The jump from beginner to intermediate isn't playful anymore—it's just demanding. Fingers hurt a lot more especially my left pinky (hello jazz chords!). Even my instructor urged me to keep at it saying this is where the early-on intermediate players tend to plateau and lose hope, but with persistence you shall emerge victorious soon enough. 

I still wasn't feeling it though.

And that's okay. It's your choice.

You can push through. Growth often lives on the other side of discomfort. But you can also pause. Put it down. Do something else for a while. Come back later with a fresh mind and heart, or don't.

The guilt? That's the hustle brain talking. Telling you that stepping back means you've failed. That rest is weakness. Or giving up.

Self-care isn't just meditation and green juice. It's also knowing when to amp it up—and when to lay low. It's being gentle with yourself when a hobby stops striking the right chords (literally in this case!), and trusting that if it does, you can pick it right back up. Whatever floats your boat. 

Either way, approach with kindness, especially towards yourself.