Happy one year of this. We made it!

It’s been three weeks since I published something – that’s huge for me.

I don’t normally take writing breaks. I love writing. I don’t need a break from it. I need a break from everything else so I can spend more time doing it. Normally.

This was different though, I think I needed the break. It wasn’t the usual suspects: burnout or writer’s block.

I think I wanted some time to chill before I figured out what to write next. After my last essay that unpacked some uncomf stumff, I needed some recovery time. It’s never been easy for me to talk about my unsolved worries and unhealed issues.

Also, the flood of kind words that came my way after that essay felt like a nice big warm hug. So I did what any self-respecting writer would do: I basked in the afterglow of reader appreciation. It was beautiful.

I basked for like a whole week, and then suddenly a second week passed, and then I realized – OMYGOD WE ARE COMIN UP ON A YEAR OF UNFINISHED CONVERSATIONS HEY? (Please read that again in an Australian accent because I said so)

So I thought cool, why not chill for one more week and publish a celebratory anniversary happy birthday essay. And that’s what this is!!! I am so so so so pleased!

Which is different from being so so so happy in three ways:

• Happy is for babies. Pleased is for adults.
• Pleased has some pride in it.
• Happy is super generic, like, you could be happy because of a bunch of things. Pleased somehow feels like it’s about something specific.

I’m pleased because you and I made it to a whole year!

I thought about how I could celebrate this milestone and came up with like 5 or 6 topics that I could gladly write 3000 words about, but then I felt like that would be overkill.

Over the last year, every single week, I’ve followed you around on Instagram and thrown screenshots of my writing in your face like an angry gorilla flinging poo poo.

I feel like you might’ve enjoyed this three week break too – and I don’t blame you. So I think it’s better if we get acclimatized to one another slowly and then I’ll get back to following you around with screenshotz.

Here’s what one year of writing taught me

A little victory lap around the virtual track of my thoughts, if you will.

I’ve become kinda okay with my opinions

I can’t tell you how nervous I used to get when I’d have to share something online that might cause strangers that have absolutely no bearing on my well-being to dislike me. It used to make me sweat.

Today, I’m still sweating, but I do it with conviction. I let people know what I think, and how I feel. I talk about my preferences and decisions. And if they don’t like it, I only cry for like an hour max.

I don’t need to write for everyone. It’s never been my job to make every single person on this planet happy. Or every single one of my Instagram followers. Which meant I suddenly had to start figuring out:

What are the things I want? What do I have feelings about? As it turns out, I had feelings about all sorts of things – some important, some less so. The stuff I cared about, whether it was internet culture, millennial culture, or just other pointless ramblings, suddenly had a place to go.

For instance: I loved writing about how we listen to too much music, and then a few months later, writing about how we don’t listen to enough new music. I especially loved writing about beige flags. I loved writing about how the song Sk8r Boi was written by a girl to her boyfriend’s ex and how that ex wrote an epic comeback after becoming a PhD or something.

Did everyone agree with the opinions I shared? No.
Is that okay? Also no. How dare they.

Writing has helped me with some of the hardest things I’ve ever been through

This was a super difficult year for me.

It’s like all the life lessons that people learn in a decade were crammed into one year for me. My daughter was 5 months old when I started this blog, she hadn’t eaten a single piece of food at the time. She had never tasted water. (This is normal for a five month old please don’t panic)

Today, she eats fish fry, tandoori chicken, and sometimes when I’m not watching, she eats magic masala Lays. The blue packet. (This is not normal for a one year five month old please panic with us)

Raising a baby has been the easy part of the last year. The most delightful, life-giving part.

There have been other much, much harder parts. Like navigating life without having a job. Coping with the significant loss of friendships. Dealing with disappointments, rejection, and uncertainty. Figuring life out in a new, strange postpartum body. Turning 30 in a weird way.

Every week, I had the privilege of sitting down and giving my thoughts and feelings (yuck) some attention in the form of words. I would write them down like they mattered. And I’d publish them. Which, if you’ve never done it before, is SCARY AS HELL because it gives people something to point and laugh at.

But I did it. And it helped. It helped me find dear friends that were aligned to my values and liked me for me. It helped me connect with some incredible moms. It helped me go to therapy. It helped me find a job.

Here are some of the essays that I wrote about hard things

My frustration with not being physically fit or exercising 
Lessons I learnt about making friends
The ickiness of being a jealous person
Coping with loneliness in a new place / season of life
Liminal spaces
My screwed up definitions of happiness

This blog is one of my proudest achievements. I’ve never been one for consistency, and the fact that I kept this up for a whole year is just amazing. I think it’s amazing. Gross who even says that about themselves online please delete this whole paragraph before I barf.

I understand the internet a lot better

I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it’s actually the opposite of a big deal in that it’s a HUUUGE DEAL. 

Granted, everyone has a different relationship with the internet and social media based on 

1. Whether they’re on it
2. How much time they spend consuming content
3. How much time they spend creating content
4. The extent to which it informs their opinions and beliefs

And most importantly –

5. The extent to which it shapes their understanding of themselves

The internet is a fascinating playground to me because it’s meant to be an off-shoot of society but because it’s so performative, it ends up being like a clown society.

The internet is like if someone hosted a potluck and told everyone to bring their favorite food and if everyone decided to bring chocolate chip cookies because let’s face it, who doesn’t like chocolate chip cookies, and who would ever ask someone, “Omg why did you bring chocolate chip cookies?! 🤮” And then if an alien species were to attend that party, they’d think that humans lived on a diet that primarily consists of 🍪🍪baked goods🍪🍪 in spite of it being a maddeningly unhealthy lifestyle choice, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. We also eat sushi.

That’s sort of what the internet is like, with everyone presenting a side of themselves that they think will be palatable to the masses, and everyone collectively suffering because of an overdose of that crappy diet.

This makes it sound like I fundamentally dislike the internet and internet culture. I don’t. I adore its chaotic energy. That’s why I still call ‘Unfinished Conversations’ an internet culture blog. So much of our opinions and beliefs are shaped by the internet. That’s why we need a healthy dose of awareness.

Before I began writing this blog, I had some undercooked ideas about how the internet worked. A year later, I’ve understood so much more. I’ve published stuff that I’d now cringe at, which scientists and doctors alike call growth.

Here are some of my favorite essays on internet culture

😣 Generational labels like Gen Z, millennials, and whether that helps anyone apart from the people trying to sell you things

😑 The annoying need to be ‘authentic’ all the time

😮 Our collective obsession with wanting to take pictures of everything and archiving ourselves to death (Fun fact this is my most read essay till date)

🤠 Aesthetics and the need for everything to be beautiful

😏 Adulting (Fun fact, this is MY personal favorite essay, if I had to choose)

I’ve gotten better at thinking

Good writing isn’t actually about how good you write. It’s about how good you think. Most writing that people appreciate involves a lot of thinking.

Forming opinions, making connections, drawing inferences, and coming up with ideas – it’s not about how fancy you can write a sentence, but rather how well you can wrangle your brain into submission.

Putting words to the ideas, opinions, connections, and thoughts is the easy bit.

I’ve spent many, many nights sitting in front of my laptop in the dark with my head in my hands, frustratingly close to clarifying my opinion, but not quite there. A few steps away from figuring out the mess of my thoughts, only to have some new idea show up and render everything I understood meaningless.

Critical thinking has become one of the most rewarding aspects of this entire writing journey. And I know this sounds like intellectual arrogance but it’s kinda the opposite. It’s a skill that keeps you humble.

The very essence of it is the acceptance of the unknown, the realization that there might always be another perspective, another layer to peel back. It forces you to challenge your assumptions, acknowledge the gaps in your understanding, and embrace the possibility that you might be (and often are) utterly wrong.

I’ve so enjoyed having my weird notions shredded to bits in the process of writing an essay. Writing has shown me how hypocritical I can be. It has exposed so many biases, prejudices, and other big ugly words that I sometimes hate it.

The journey has been super wobbly at times. I’ve published work and then had someone point out a perspective that I absolutely hadn’t considered before. But the destination – a more informed and humble(d) version of myself – is definitely worth the trip.

Here are some essays that turned my brain into spaghetti (which I then detangled and turned into mostly coherent thoughts)

🧠 Experiences vs. Things: Which makes us happier

🧠 This piece on saying no to self-indulgent self-care

🧠 This essay on beauty culture and make-up that absolutely steamrolled my brain

🧠 Being angry on the internet

🧠 And my personal favorite in this category: Why it’s so embarrassing when someone sees you take a selfie

I’ve developed a new love for the ordinary

Which is weird. Because part of the reason I started writing this blog is that I wanted to escape the ordinary. I wanted to do and build something extraordinary, something that I’d show my kids and have them go, “literally no one cares, mom” but I’d secretly know they (and everyone else) care a LOT.

This part has less to do with writing and more to do with where life has taken me – but I’ve become very deeply fond of the ordinary. The more I grow as a human, the more ordinary feels like the most true, most relieving, most beautiful kind of life for me.

I’ve borrowed this idea from the author Bell Hooks, who said, “living simply makes loving simple.” When I think of how that relates to ordinary living, I wonder – 

Does it become easier to love ourselves, love others, and love our little lives when we stop using extraordinary as the benchmark?

Everything becomes more simple when I let go of needing everything to become more.

Okay now that the LinkedIn post is over, if you want to read stuff about not hating an ordinary life, here’s an essay on chores (it’s nice, promise), here’s another on rituals, this one is on moving to a new place, and this one on self-awareness.

And finally –

I’ve understood the importance of advocacy

However small and insignificant my actions might be, I’ve understood that they matter. Not because they’ll change the world, but because everyone has a sphere of influence. And within that circle, our voices matter.

I’ve understood that sometimes it’s not just about the message, it’s about who delivers it. All of that makes a message more or less worthy of attention.

The last year has been a particularly turbulent time for anyone that reads the news or engages with the world beyond them. While I’m fortunate that the turmoil hasn’t directly impacted my loved ones, it’s impossible to be a truly engaged citizen and remain completely unaffected.

It’s affected me more than I anticipated, stirring a desire to understand, to care, and yes, even to vocalize those feelings. It was probably the most uncomf part of the last year for me. A sudden departure from my otherwise apolitical online persona.

I’ve outgrown that version of myself, and this new one (though still under construction) feels more engaged. And more human.

Here are some of the essays I’ve written about these topics:

This was the first one published after October 7th 2023.

This essay on World-Pain is one that I revisit every time I start to despair.

This piece on the Christmas Truce was a delight to learn about, and even more enjoyable to write.

And finally, this essay basically covers my stance on advocacy overall, and our role as bystanders.

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Final thoughts

Unlike a pair of boxers, I’m gonna keep this brief. The biggest thing I want to say is just thanks. Thanks for reading the stuff I write.

Whether you read one essay, or a couple of screenshots on Instagram. Whether you lost your way on the internet while trying to find a recipe for banana bread and ended up here – thank you. I appreciate it.

Publishing, at its core, is a social contract between writer and reader. This is a shared space and while it might be tempting to ignore that fact while writing, it is also impossible.

If you have ever left a comment on my writing or messaged me to tell me what you think, I guarantee that I have thought about you every single time I wrote an essay thereafter. Y’all are like the silent editors in my head.

My writing has undoubtedly improved thanks to the low-key simmering anxiety of potentially disappointing you, but hey that’s show business.

So thank you for being here. I’m hoping to carry this confusing, precious little project on for as long as I can. I can’t do it without you. I mean technically I can but what’s the point?

Okay you can go now. Have an excellent week and don’t forget to live, laugh, love, but do it responsibly.

If you aren’t old enough to recognize this iconic cultural moment then please tell me what youth is like. I’ve forgotten.