Tag: shortPost

Waking up on the left side of the bed

Thanks to a sleep tracker, I realise that I probably need to fix my relationship status. Read on.

I recently got myself a Whoop. It has been telling me that I sleep about 5 hours and thus I need more. Last night I decided that the world be damned, I will sleep at 10. And I woke up at 6ish. So a solid 8 hours. As per it, I slept for 7 hours and 39 minutes (compared to about an average of 5-6 hours).

See this chart…

Now, logic says I should’ve woke up fresh, ready to take on the world and conquer it all.

But no, I feel the same like I do on most days. Groggy. Slowly. I can feel various parts of the body start cranking and come to life. I can feel various parts of the body complain about various kinds of pain and moan with various kinds of discomfort.

I want to justify that my body has been scarred in various battles over the years but clearly, that is not the case. It’s at best scarred with all the food I’ve gobbled over the years while shaping the couches and beds around houses that I’ve lived at.

I dont feel any more refreshed, any more rested, any more changed that I do on other days. In fact, something different happened. I woke up with the feeling that I should’ve woken* up next to someone.

And I need to address this feeling.
For numerous reasons.

One, I haven’t felt like this in a while.

My last stable, serious, relationship was a couple of months before COVID put us in a lockdown. 4 years ago**. And over the last four years, I’ve got used to having the entire bed by myself. I can’t recall when was the last time in the last four years when I felt like waking up next to someone. So this is new.

Two, I had always imagined that I am the kind that would be a lone nut. My eccentricity and life choices would make me an unsuitable man for anyone sane. The odds of finding someone who’ll accept my shenanigans is like zero. And all my life I have trained myself to operate as a one-person army. I mean I neither feel the need for having someone around me and if I do feel that on rare days (like today), I quickly remind myself that all modern relationships are built on the bedrock of convenience and comfort and capital and these things are often easy to screw up. In my case, I saw one of my serious relationships go south because I didn’t have money. So, when I feel the need to wake up next to someone, this means that I am not fully trained and I need to do more work in my head.

Three, lately, I’ve been flirting rather seriously with a friend. The kinds where am actually thinking about what to text her and how to make her smile. The kinds where I anticipate her replies and make decision trees in my head on how the conversation would flow. And no, I haven’t done that in a while. Thus, maybe all those conversations and thoughts about being with someone have switched on those neurons and receptors that signal affection. And this need to have someone on the right side of the bed could be an outcome of that.

This third one is easy to solve, to be honest. I know that these conversations are temporary and the road leads to a dead end. I am way too invested in her life and I know that my eccentricity (see point 2) would lead to jeopardy.

Four, I am used to living a certain way and doing things in a certain manner. These things may count as eccentric (again point 2) but these could also be dismissed as negotiable behaviours. For example, I dont want a kitchen in my home. I want AC at 22. I want music playing all the time in the house. While a potential occupant of the right side of the bed may dismiss these as “cute” behaviour, over time, these start to become points of contention and then a pillow magically appears between the line of control on the bed. And then it’s all downhill from thereon.

So that.

I am sure there are more reasons. But I do have this feeling and I need to find a solution. And I dont know how to solve it.

I will see if the feeling persists and lingers on. If it does, I will find a way to solve it. If it doesn’t, I can continue to use the right side of the bed to store my laptop, iPad, phone, book and all that.

Time shall tell.

With this, over and out. Thanks for reading my bedtime and bedside stories.

*Repeat. Woken up next to. Not slept with.
** I have had a few conversations where I thought they would evolve into relationships but they did not.

The Health Hack

A short-post on something that I’ve on my mind (and not too keen on talking to anyone else about).

At am in a good place in life. Things are moving for me and I want to do more. I am surrounded by people I love and people that love me. We are doing ok work and we are respected by the ones around us. A lot of our experiments seem to be paying off. A lot of the ones that we are not hopeful about, I have decided I would shut those.

The point is, I am at a very interesting juncture in life – things look bright and cheery and nice from here on. I need all it takes to be able to do more. And anything that stops me from doing more, I want to stop doing those. Anything that enables me to do more, I want to do more of those.

Among the things that enable me (and / or stop me) is health. And I am fucking up on it. I am eating carbs, snacks, and whatnot. I am not working out and I can feel random pain in my chest, in my knees, my back (that reminds me, I need to go to a spine specialist) and a lot of other places. And no, none of these are battle injuries. These are merely lifestyle ones.

Oh, I’ve been unwell the last 2 days. And I am missing important deadlines – for clients (both old and new). And more importantly, I missed two things – P’s birthday party and M’s “farewell”. I also have a potential team member from C4E in Bom (from Delhi) and I wanted to spend time with her. But clearly am not being able to do that. So that.

Someone said, that maybe its 70+ hours that I talked about in this post that’s catching up on me. May be. But here’s the thing. I am not scared about missing work. I am merely cataloguing it here, acknowledging it and deciding that I would do better. And that, ladies and gents is the short post for the day.

Here’s hoping that I am better from here on 🙂

PS: Whoever is reading this, when am unwell, I don’t want to be talked to about it. I can order my soups, I can order my meds, I can find a doc if I have to. I do NOT ever want anyone to talk to me as if I where dying. In fact, I know that when I die, I don’t want to be around the ones I love. More on this later. Time to go make some mindmaps!

PPS: Oh the irony, as I write this, there’s Outlive on my desk staring at me!