October

with a strong dose of birthday anxiety

I celebrated my 26th birthday yesterday. Yes, I’m 26 now. Still finding it quite hard to believe, 24 hours later.

I can’t be the only one who feels a lot of anxiety about their birthdays, right?

As you can guess, I wrote the above lines right after my birthday, which was more than a month ago now. I keep thinking about writing and then end up not actually writing. I always tend to put my other hobbies above writing. Maybe because writing actually feels like a lot of effort, whereas my other hobbies are more like the “Eh, I’ll just do it” category.

Reading, for example, doesn’t seem to require all that effort, from me at least. I love reading; I could get paid for reading and still not get tired of it. I read everything, from the backs of products to novels to random newspaper clippings—you get the idea, right?

Anyway, I digress. What I’m saying is writing feels like a chore. Why? Because you have to think about what you want to write. Even if you do a no-thinking-just-writing sprint, you still have to polish up your thoughts into something coherent and try to see if you can make something sound cleverer, and that, my friend, takes effort.

So I ended up procrastinating a lot whenever I thought about writing this post. But here I am now.

For as long as I can remember, birthdays haven’t been a big deal in my family. I do have pictures of my very first couple of birthdays but other than that, I honestly don’t even remember cutting a cake or anything since I started forming memories.

I don’t remember if we used to do something else or not but that’s on me I guess. So, what I’m saying is, I didn’t use to hold too many expectations from my birthday. I don’t know if that’s why my birthdays didn’t feel like anything special or they just weren’t special, you know what I mean?

In my teen years, I started to feel a lot of anxiety around my birthdays which still hasn’t left. Either my birthdays will pass completely “normally” and that’ll make me feel disappointed or something bad will happen that’ll make me feel just horrible.

In the last few years, however, I took it upon myself to start treating my birthdays as actually something special. Something I should celebrate, enjoy, and just be loud about in general. I posted about it on my bookstagram, did birthday posts, and just everything I could to make myself feel great about my birthday and it worked!

I felt great about my birthdays even if I didn’t particularly do anything on the day itself or not even around it. I spent my COVID birthdays being at home, reading books, spending time with family and it was great. I have also taken a day off from work (if my birthday was a working day) ever since I started working in 2020. That has also been really good for me.

This year, however, I didn’t do the bookstagram countdown thing, I didn’t even post anything at all about my birthday before my birthday or even on my birthday. If you’ve read my last few posts, you know I’ve been feeling very shitty this year and have also had to go through some difficult things in the last few months.

That of course, resulted in a lot of people not knowing it was my birthday and hence, ending up not wishing me even though they’ve been consistent for however many years we’ve known each other.

On the other hand, I got to know how many people think of me even if we only contact each other a handful of times throughout the year or in some cases, only to wish each other a happy birthday. That felt good and overshadowed pretty much all else.

However many premonitions and forebodings I had about October and consequentially, my birthday, turned out to be just that. I really enjoyed my birthday. Things I was afraid of spiraling over didn’t even happen. I took the day off from work and went out with my sister to this gorgeous place in the city I had never been to. Had a great time looking at birds and ducks and goose and what not. The beauty of the place only added to the experience and made me feel that much happy. It felt like I was fine for a brief moment there. After that I celebrated it with my family and minus the shenanigans of my brother and mother (I love them but they’re very annoying in a team), it was pretty great.

Here’s a glimpse from my birthday:

Now without further ado, let’s move on to what I did in October:

Life Updates:

• Took the most therapy sessions I have taken in a month since I started therapy (late April). I felt I really needed them and also felt like I *could* afford them so I took them but that’s not the case this month. I don’t know how frequently I’ll be able to take the sessions going forward but keeping my fingers crossed for good things to come.

• Recovered from my surgery, which somehow still feels like “recovering” to me if you know what I mean. Like I’ll probably be recovering for a while longer. It has only been two months after all.

• Went back to working from office starting mid-October which wasn’t all that great but it’s fine. Gotta do what you gotta do, eh?

Books:

• Stranger the Dreamer and Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor: Reading these books honestly felt like a fever dream. A weird, high definition, full of my favorite fantastical aspects dream. I loved both books so much, even though I had some very frustrated-murderous inclinations toward a certain character at the start of book 2. But all was well, in the end. Nora, if you’re reading this, I love you so much for gifting me these about couple of years ago. I finally read them xD <3

• Intermezzo by Sally Rooney: I’ve read other works of Rooney quite some time after they’ve been published for a while so reading this one while it was still hot off the press was definitely a unique experience. I had been already seeing this book all over bookstagram but I didn’t know anything about it, which is how I like my books haha. I don’t even read the synopsis, I like the mystery of finding out for myself. Anyway, needless to say, I loved this book so, so much!! I haven’t been able to sort Rooney books in a my-favorites order but I definitely think this one would be high up. It is a story about two brothers and how they’re going through life in the wake of their father’s death. Grief clearly ran the show here but there are so many more elements at play.

• The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston: Yes, I finally read this book everyone keeps on raving about. Yes, I liked it far more than I expected but unfortunately, the romance didn’t do anything for me. Had the same feeling when I read Geekerella by the same author (finished it earlier today actually.)

• The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.: The only thing I knew about this book before going in was that it was queer. My expectations from that, the title and the cover were a story that encompasses love in all its forms while being heartbreakingly beautiful. It gave off literary fiction vibes. I was definitely disappointed but not entirely. It is by no means a light yet painful literary fiction. This is actually a book about slavery and plantations and Black people’s struggles and their joys and their many, many different shades of being. It was a marvelous book and I’m glad to have read it.

• A Song to Drown Rivers by Ann Liang: I didn’t really know what to expect from this book but what I got was a fantasy weaved with war, court politics, and more. I enjoyed it to a certain extent but I remember feeling bored and just dragged on a lot of times in the story.

TV Shows/Movies:

• Friends S07E16-S10E18: Finished my rewatch of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. Second time I watched the show in its entirety. In fact, to tell you the truth, I’m already about to finish the 2nd season. Yes. I started again. To be fair, I don’t keep rewatching it because I’ve nothing to watch but it is such a comfort show for me. I can put it on literally whenever, but especially when I don’t have the bandwidth for something new which happens very frequently these days. Ugh send me shows/movies recommendations y’all!!

• Heartstopper S03: I don’t know if I was just pissed off with all things love and that’s why I didn’t have a great time watching this show or if it really wasn’t good. Idk. I mean I enjoyed it for sure, but I didn’t *love* it.

• Nobody Wants This S01: Watching this made me realise maybe it wasn’t the fact that I was pissed off with all things love because y’all!! The hype was real, I loved this show!! It was honestly so good, I’ll probably watch it again at some point just for that brilliant chemistry and banter!! I literally just found out there’ll be a season 2 so yay!!

• Maamla Legal Hai: Tried out this show and ended up actually enjoying myself. I had a great time for sure.

• Wake Up Sid: Realised I had never actually watched this movie in its entirety and given how everyone has only good things to say about it, I felt the need to rectify that and I was rewarded. It was actually really good!

• Love Next Door E1-3: This show honestly put me through all the emotions there possibly are out there. Put me through a ringer? A rollercoaster? No, something more severe than that. Probably what it feels like being a dish in a dishwasher maybe. I wouldn’t know (I have never used a dishwasher in my life, we do it manually here folks). Pahi recommended me this and it was just brilliant. I loved everything about this show.

• Khel Khel Mein: Decided to try this out when I was feeling bored and wanted to watch something new and yet not that long and it helped! It was funny and I enjoyed myself.

• Clueless: Went in not knowing this was a modern Emma adaptation, got clued in pretty quick and actually ended up enjoying it a lot.

• Do Patti: A good movie with a good message which I wish someone had warned me about. I wasn’t ready for this but it’s all my fault. The consuming-stuff--without-checking-CW habit was going to get me some time.

That’s all the media I consumed folks! If you’ve read until this point, thank you so much, I love you <3

I kinda hate when I’m anxious about something and nothing happens and then later on, things hit me like a ton of bricks when I’m not anxious. It’s as if being anxious doesn’t help or something haha. If only I could control it hahaha. :3

Let me know how was your October and if you’ve read or watched any of the stuff I mentioned! I’m always up for a discussion about things I consume xD

I know I’m a month late but…¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I hope November has treated you well, sending a warm hug along <3