A health and wellness update

Hi fam! It has been 9 months and some days since I last wrote anything on this page. I realized today that throughout my life, I’ve moved in and out of being someone who journals, occasionally records voice memos to capture moments and stories, and often turns to sticky notes as a way of reflecting. Depending on my life stage, and how i’m feeling, reflecting has been a challenge for me to figure out, and normally it results in me containing all my thoughts. I’m doing a digital format reflection today because it seemed to fit the mood and I want to start looking at my life with more purpose, instead of containing my ideas, letting them run free so i can figure out myself better and maybe inspire others as well.

A bit of a life update: I finished junior year, went home for the summer, worked as a project manager and part time photographer for my sister’s podcast, spent a month in lake tahoe, hopped on a plan to iceland, spent a lot of time attending gravel bike races and ultra running events, moved back to san diego and now i’m in the current thralls of senior year life. I’m living solo, taking bare minimum classes, working two jobs and trying my best to stay balanced. I was listening to a podcast earlier this week about how when we interact with people, especially in the dating scene we tend to explain ourselves to people in this way of list giving. We give people our life resume as a way to casually communicate our competence and status. I have been thinking alot about this over this week and i have found it frighteningly true that more than not when i talk to friends and family, strangers and acquaintances i jump to this part of the conversation where i hide my true self under this boring blanket of mundane life tasks that really when we look at it maybe influence 20% or maybe a little more of who i truly am. Someone said in an interview i was listening to that we have become the algorithm. We no longer have brain stimulation when asked “how are you doing,” we simply go into autopilot and forget to spice up the conversation with our own essence. We stick to the generalized boring script that we all follow, but I want to become someone who breaks the script and has important things to talk about. I’m not sure when i hit the age/stage in life where my ideal audio consumption is now charisma podcast and self help life advice media, but it has given me a lot of good hooks to think about.

Another interesting food for thought moment i had this week was listening to the Emma Watson interview on the on purpose podcast with Jay Shetty, where they discuss a whole array of topics, but specifically when thinking about what love looks like. Emma responded in a way that really struck me where she said:

“The disney movie idea of love is portrayed in a way that falling in love, once it sort of happened to you, it is like this irreversible portal you cannot step out of, because you have fallen in love. But actually falling in love might be quite easy to do in some ways, that’s the easy bit. The hard part is is finding someone who actually wants to be in a dance with you and be in some form of partnership with you. And things like can you argue well is the conflict you have generative, and can you make someone else feel safe”

I don’t know why this felt so striking to me, it is a thought I have heard before and have marinated on a bit, but finding these gems of advice make you step back and analyze what you truly think love is and can be a tool for later success. She later says in the podcast, in response to the question she often gets about why she isn’t married, that she believes marriage isn’t something we should assume we’re entitled to. Instead, it’s a miracle that some people get to live in and have as a part of their purpose, but to assume you deserve that miracle without putting in the work to be worthy of it is, in her view, rather misguided. She says that marriage “will either be apart of my purpose here, my destiny, or it won’t.” I think growing up in a christian household, seeing my parents get married at a young age, having this very traditional and beautiful life, hearing my grandmother praise this same timeline lead me to believe that marriage, partnership, love and lust should be placed on this hierarchical pedestal, that i’m just crossing off each day waiting for this magical man to walk into my life. But what a misjudgment. I think there is something beautiful and magical about this ideal, but at the same time it is not realistic. I have been surrounded by a community in college that views love as this answer to a checklist and a timeline fulfilled, but how are you ever suppose to be happy in a marriage when you don’t know who you are and what you want. I think there is still a lot more to dwell on in this conversation but, if you need some oxygen into you busy day i would highly recommend this podcast.

I think in my mind for some reason i pictured this life where once you live alone you all of a sudden become the best version of yourself. You finally have the space to do whatever whenever, create the most idealistic routine without any input from anyone else. You get to host dinner parties and have breakfast in bed whenever you want. But in reality, and maybe it is just the college space, it has been a bit lonely. I didn’t magically get a routine, people rarely come over unless i beg them to because everyone has off campus spaces now they don’t want to leave. Leaving myself is a challenge because the space now feels like my own, my home i get to enjoy. And the one time i had breakfast in bed, i felt like a lazy piece of trash who should probably wake up and go get stuff done.

This whole journal entry, chaotic and all over the place, was in hopes of me learning a little more about myself. I think that in general i tend to listen to these amazing interviews, have deep thoughts and go about life in the algaritham lifestyle where things stay inside and away from the life moving around me. But I want to start intentionally learning more about myself. Take the space to dwell on these big questions of what i think love should be for me, how i want to be a friend, a communicator. What do i want my fotprint on the world to look like and how can i start making it better now. I hope this reflection makes you feel that you get to look into my brain for a few secconds and learn more about the sophia who truly is and not just my life resume.