8:30pm

the magic hour

hi there,

it’s been a minute… and the minute turned into a month and the thought of writing this newsletter haunted me throughout the past 50,400 minutes since the last one i sent.

you might not believe when i say that i enjoy writing. i do write a lot — in my apple notes, my journals. i ramble and yap and think and cry on those pages, swearing i will do better and analysing and realising and … analysing and realising again. annotating, iterating and trying yet i rarely implement or share. the conclusion part is often missing. where do things begin and more importantly where do they end?! is end even a thing? a destination? a place? a country? how do i go there? it’s a place i would like to check out.

shit. another day gone by — 1,440 minutes later — it’s 8:30pm again. which is the unofficially scheduled time for the zoom call from my soul checking in on me wondering what excuses i have this time for wasting another course of 1,440 minutes like i got time like that.

let the meltdown begin like ice cream in your hands on a hot sunny day.

so what exactly happens at 8:30pm you might ask if you’re this far into reading. it’s only a half an hour call btw. goes by quite fast despite the intensity and before you know it’s almost 10pm and shit i should go to bed now because i have to get that 8 hours of sleep in and i want to get up at 6am to make the most of my day. you know.

— oh btw i quite like this cleaned up minimal interface of substack… nice UI and the experience feels smooth —

ok. back to what i was saying. 8:30pm, 2030 military time or is it a hidden sign of my impending doom i shall face in the year 2030. will report back if i make it that far. ok. reel it back again. to that magic hour. even my friend jokes about it. it’s a thing now. next thing you know i will actually set an alarm. lol. ok so back to what’s happening during the course of the call — you see btw this sorta avoidance is what fills up my day between 8:30am and 8:30pm. i get sidetracked, distracted, diverted, lost, confused, decision fatigued, …and insert the many modalities of procrastination —you name it. then i feel tired and exhausted and i want to take a nap but i’m at work and the thing i said i’m gonna do is not getting done or that the thing i set out to do after work is rarely getting done bc comfort and dissociation calls at 6:20pm and we chat for quite some time… you know just casually killing time — again, like i got it like that.

so now that you know what i confront at 8:30pm sharp, you might wonder the big why if you’re still here. well, we could conclude that i’m a narcissistic self-obsessed person thinking about myself all the more and fair enough it does sound like it and i can admit to it to a degree but it equally feels like an easy copout. as much as i (would like to) think i am a simple human i do have desires and aspirations i’m often scared to admit to even myself. it’s a soft spot after all. too personal, too close to the heart. i’m scared okay?

every day i wake up with the aspirations to optimise myself to do that thing i want to do: paint. yet i (+ societal pressures + capitalism) seem to make it so confusing and so over the top that the act of lifting a brush, dabbing it in some colour then splashing it onto the canvas and repeat rarely happens. no, you must film it, show it that you’re doing it, write about it, talk about it, send email about it, instagram post about it, document the process, then of course edit it and remember that BTS is valuable and whatnot, only to be left stripped of the precious little time you thought you had to do said repetitive-yet-oh-so-calming process of dabbing brush into colour then smearing said colour onto a stretched white piece of fabric usually neatly cut in a variant of rectangular shapes. wtf. what. the. fuck. am. i. even. doing.? where do i even begin?

questions and aspirations like: how will i find people that are interested in my work? am i even interested in my work? why do i want external validation? can i just do something for myself? but why do i feel like i’m doing everything for myself only and i never get to share the moment? i feel like i have no one to talk to, no one to discuss things that i’m into.. how am i supposed to create a corner for myself both IRL and URL where others feel invited to come? where can i find these spaces? i want to build a community but have no idea where to start… do people even like me? are my friends really my friends? …

then it continues like oh gosh, i’m such a drab. i feel like i’m either too much or too little. never just *enough* and so the spirals in my head continue spiralling ever so deep.

as scary as it is to write this all down and hit send and slide into your inboxes like that sounds devastatingly frightening to me, there is something that keeps nagging me to do it. say hi to 8:30pm — that’s it’s job it seems: to nag me, to guilt me into doing the things i say i want to do yet keep avoiding out of fear of shame and humiliation. and since i thought i have nothing to write about, 8:30pm gifted us with juicy material to squeeze onto these pages.

as i write this and probing questions to myself i realise creation is not so much as crafting out of thin air as it is curation.

and with that though i choose to draw a line and end it here. a place that isn’t a destination but a conscious choice.

bonus: i’d like to leave you with this reminder —

until next time,
B