tea you cannot miss🍵 all things I loved in august.
mostly on learning and sticking with things + KATSEYE!
if you read my search query for friends last month, you will know july for me was chaos. it was giving restless all-over-the-place desperate girl summer.
I made every attempt to slow down but I still very much wanted to start this by writing taylor’s lyrics, august slipped away in a moment of time..
notice how I said attempt and not successful attempts 😅
I would say I almost made it - like I found pockets of time to soak in that bone-warming, soul-cleansing summer sun, took my parents to more of my favorite places, and read next to a pool. But confession - I never really felt summer fully take off??
an early sign of I am feeling more settled heading into fall is the fact that I am writing this on a sunday morning, and not scrambling to get words out here during the week.
so before my motivation to time capsule all the things I loved in august slips away, let me just get into it.
📝 how to stick with it by Mari Andrews on substack
for my spanish lessons, my tutor finds a topic we can debate on. basically she now knows I will do my very best to put together broken sentences in a foreign language if I wanna make a strong point about it (life in big cities, feminism, friendships, gender roles).
In our last class, she asked me..
Dit me, dit me sobre tu hobbies. Tiene algunas hobbies chhavi?
My wry, captitalist humor went not really. I think I have a tendency to convert all my hobbies into something with goals and metrics!
That’s not true. Tu gusta lire(read), no?
okay what is this my therapy session.🤣
but then I was like that’s true - I do read without any end goal, or metrics. and so I fully wholeheartedly put my support behind Mari’s theory on how to stick with something long term. You need to fall in love with the art of it.
[will I make my newsletter paid] feat 📝 the machine in the garden
there was a lot of chatter on Substack last few weeks on about who can call themselves a writer and charge for their writings.
while I followed the discourse on both sides religiously, I came out with a self-realization. for near and future, i wouldn’t want to write with the goal of monetizing this newsletter in future. audience sure, I love when people read what I write. but the thought of committing to creating consistent valuable content and track the readership graphs makes me nervous.
however I do love and admire and feel this deep comradery with all the folks out here finding time in their busy little lives and showing up in my inbox every week.
[can you learn to be anything you want to be?] feat 📝how to be more agentic
that brings me to learning - can you learn how to show up consistently? or better can you learn to be patient, to be charismatic or be agentic?
the answer I have found out is yes!
like Cate says in the article, you just need to have the patience and motivation to cross the moat of low status.
[me? a kpop girlie? shut up!] feat 📺 the pop star academy
this docu-series shows a very VERY glamorozied version of these girls learning to sing and dance in high heels - and so according to my last point, if I decide to I should be able to learn this too.
lol
S made me obsessed with this new global kpop girlie band KATSEYE. so ofc we spent the weekend binging it and watching all their youtube videos.
I absolutely loved knowing that there exists different version of preparing for IIT-JEE hell, and maybe the one I went through wasn’t the worst!
but I also loved the discipline and grit you learn in pursuit of a long-term goal. it inspired me to commit to a few goals I have been thinking about longingly for a while (more on it in future editions!)
also thinking about all the girls and girlhood - this article here is such a fun yet deep read. I loved it.
some other things from my notes app
• this huberman lab podcast on women’s health and fitness
• inside jennifer garner’s home (her reading nook is just so perfect!)
• lenny’s top fluff-free productivity tips
I can’t help thinking about sep as almost Q4 and Q4 to close out all the year’s OKRs - occupational hazard I guess. whenever I am pestered about not reaching my goals, my usual instinct is to work harder. like get harder on myself, push myself more.
recently I have trying to shift my mindset to question “what can I be doing differently”
coz clearly what I have been doing is not really working.
so yeah gonna end this one here for you with a little hug and nudge - is there something you should be doing differently?
talk next week!
chhavi x