{"id":11128,"date":"2019-06-06T10:30:01","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T10:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/?p=11128"},"modified":"2022-06-15T11:41:58","modified_gmt":"2022-06-15T11:41:58","slug":"0766-turning-29","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0766-turning-29\/","title":{"rendered":"0766 \u2013 turning 29"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>It&#8217;s my 29th birthday! I feel good. I think I feel better than I&#8217;ve ever felt on any birthday prior. I feel powerful, I feel alive. I feel like I understand myself and my world better than I ever have, and all of my relationships with everything in my life are better than they&#8217;ve ever been. I feel ready. I feel confident, comfortable, at ease (even with my uneasiness). <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What are these updates for? I&#8217;d like to think they&#8217;re for my future self to look back on. I can also have conversations with my past selves by comparing against past updates. (There&#8217;s some nuance there \u2013 how do you have a conversation with your past self, when your past self no longer exists in the world? Your past self, IMO, still exists in your mind. I feel like I&#8217;m always carrying my past selves with me. I wonder how many other people feel this way. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s ubiquitous.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But I don&#8217;t currently feel a strong urge to have conversations with my past selves right now&#8230;? Let&#8217;s just take a quick glance at past birthday update word vomits:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0704-honor-sadness\/\">0704 \u2013 turning 28<\/a> \u2013 &#8220;I do not want to grow up to be a cold cynical bastard. I believe that things can get better. [&#8230;] We\u2019re bad at talking about our feelings, we\u2019re bad at being good to each other. I want to get better at it. I\u2019m going to keep trying to transmute my sadness into a positive force for good. My sadness is a compass, reminding me to try my best to avoid causing suffering to others, to avoid being cruel myself. I will try my best.&#8221; <\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0672-turning-27\/\">0672 \u2013 turning 27<\/a> \u2013 &#8220;How interesting is my life right now? How can I make it more interesting?&#8221; [&#8230;] &#8220;Truth is good. Interesting is good. Good decisions are good. I should be moving towards those things. I don\u2019t always, why?&#8221; [&#8230;] &#8220;I\u2019ve been writing in a sealed bubble here for a long time, but there\u2019s something wonderful about answering other people\u2019s questions and helping them work through their issues.&#8221;<\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0574-turning-26\/\">0574 \u2013 turning 26<\/a> \u2013 &#8220;I am not too impressed with myself and my life so far. I have done some good things, but at a pace that I find somewhat mediocre. It\u2019s time to pick up that pace. I believe that I am capable of more. I believe that I am capable of running faster, lifting heavier, sleeping better, writing sharper, assisting others\u2026 I can\u2019t \u201chave it all\u201d, but I can have more all of the good things that constitute the good life in my estimation. I just need to shed my old thoughts and my old beliefs, and focus harder than I\u2019ve ever focused before on the task at hand. There will be time for idling later. We will make time for idling as necessary. But for now\u2013 to action!&#8221;<\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0357-actually-25\/\">0357 \u2013 turning 25<\/a> \u2013 &#8220;can\u2019t keep languishing in self-pity and keep trying to squeeze out more praise from things that I\u2019ve already done. I\u2019m 25 years old now. I can\u2019t keep hoping that mommy or daddy or senpai is going to recognize me. I have to recognize myself. I have to provide my own internal validation. I have to assemble and direct my own life, and I can\u2019t keep hoping that other people will validate me for it. I mean, I consider the feedback of thoughtful, intelligent people to be a sign that things are going well, but the point is to focus on making things go well\u2013 not trying to squeeze positive feedback out of people who aren\u2019t volunteering it. That\u2019s a surprisingly challenging\u2026 challenge. Happy 25th, Visa.&#8221;<\/li><li><a href=\"http:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0163-turning-24-my-problems-have-not-changed\/\">0163 \u2013 turning 24<\/a> &#8220;The past year has put me through more change than the past decade. Marriage. Home ownership. Employment. Bills. None of these were a part of my life 2 years ago, and now they are the most prominent, fundamental elements in it. They have forced me to face my weaknesses and shortcomings in a way that I never had to before, and they have similarly helped me become more clear about what my strengths are. [&#8230;] I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m so stubborn. I just know that I am, and that\u2019s a non-negotiable reality of my existence. And every day I try to negotiate, pretend that it might be different this time. And every day is the same. It\u2019s boring. We need to plot a prison break from this monotone.&#8221;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Alright, so&#8230; that was interesting? Looks like I used to be less confident, and probably rightfully so.  There&#8217;s a recurring motif of wanting to be more focused, more disciplined, to do more things, get more things done. Looking at it now with the benefit of hindsight, time and space&#8230; some of it feels like a kind of moral posturing, a sort of performative self-flagellation. I am not good enough, I need to be better. I am disappointing myself and others, I need to be less of a disappointment. And maybe there is some truth in that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8230; don&#8217;t really care, though! \ud83d\ude02 I kinda sensed that even before I went diving in. I feel like I spent many years churning \u2013 like, hammering away at the malleable metal of my mind, maybe. But now that I&#8217;ve done it, where I am right now, I&#8217;m not actually all that interested in how I got here. I might be interested if someone asks me about it, and I feel like it would be helpful to them, but it doesn&#8217;t feel like something that&#8217;s currently helpful to me. What would be helpful to me right now? I want to explore. I want to, as Ray Bradbury describes, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/quotes\/182597-every-morning-i-jump-out-of-bed-and-step-on\">step on the landmine called me<\/a>&#8220;, and explode into a brilliant flash of color and light. I want to explore aesthetics. I want to see and touch and smell and taste and feel things that I&#8217;ve never experienced before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I do want to be decisive. But an interesting difference is&#8230; I feel like the last time I talked about it, I didn&#8217;t feel like I knew how to do that. Like it was something outside of the realm of possibility for me, like I was talking about  a fantasy. But now I feel much more confident and comfortable. I recently flew halfway across the planet by myself, and had a great time. I left my job and I&#8217;ve been making money still. I feel loved, wanted, needed, appreciated. Luck is a variable here, but it&#8217;s also something that I&#8217;ve been actively working for, all my life. It feels good to be validated, from within and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We&#8217;re just getting started. \ud83d\udcaa\ud83c\udffe\u2764\ufe0f<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s my 29th birthday! I feel good. I think I feel better than I&#8217;ve ever felt on any birthday prior. I feel powerful, I feel alive. I feel like I understand myself and my world better than I ever have, and all of my relationships with everything in my life&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[146,331],"class_list":["post-11128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-birthday","tag-status-update"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>0766 \u2013 turning 29 - 1,000,000 words by @visakanv<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0766-turning-29\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"0766 \u2013 turning 29 - 1,000,000 words by @visakanv\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It&#8217;s my 29th birthday! 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