Unlearning and Unplanning

Learning to be okay with unplanned things

October has been quite challenging month for me both physically and mentally. Have been feeling sick most of the days. My plan for October was to have a daily reading and writing routine.

As I am new to Substack, I decided to do a bit of research on some of the writer’s substack journey to learn from them. And the first thing, I found was, unlike me, most of them had a base audience from some other social media platforms. I do have an Instagram account where I have posted few poems with a recent photo from my phone gallery. Numbers there was bothering me too. Also, I was observing the world around me and noticed that people are usually attracted towards visually engaging content like reels, shorts etc. or short pieces of writing over any long ones. I observed myself for a day and found out I did do the same sometimes although I know the feeling after reading a long piece of writing which might feel like a hug. There was a part of me who was questioning my decision of pursuing writing. All of these thoughts made me feel sicker and slowed down my creative brain. The plan didn’t go as per the plan, I would say.

All of my energy was mostly consumed in navigating these thoughts. In the presence of all these doubtful thoughts, I wrote and posted my first post for my newsletter last week. After reading that one of my old friends reached out to me saying that she loves my writing, and she finds it very relatable. Reading her message almost made me cry. I wanted to hug myself and I wanted to hug her. I felt so proud of myself of letting all those thoughts exists and still moving forward to do something which I really wanted to do.

Also, I observed although things didn’t go as per my original plan, I did achieve something this month to be proud of. But I am more disappointed with myself than I am happy or proud. As a person, I really like to plan things beforehand and feel a sense of accomplishment when things go as per my plan. I was that child who prepared timetable to study before even starting my studies. So, whenever things don’t go as planned, I feel a sense of failure and a feeling of shame associated with it. This explains why I was more disappointed than happy with myself. This has been my pattern in every minor or major things of my life. May be planning has always given sense of control to my forever anxious mind. But I am learning to see beauty in the things which doesn’t go as per the plan. I am unlearning to let it define my worth.

I have recently started to believe that Universe/God whatever you like to call, is always trying to send you a message via things that catches your attention, heart, eye or any of your senses. So I will be sharing something in every newsletter that caught me this week.

I was roaming around a market and there was a shop which was selling some old style posters which I used to put on my room walls when I was in college. This was the top poster on one of their piles:

Lots of love and healing,

Harneek!!