The State of Nats #17: The ache of ambition without toxicity

01 May, 2026

[Everything between April 05 to April 30, Thursday]

Data

Movies watched: 4 (2 in a cinema hall)

Coffee cups: 5

It is a struggle to begin writing this because there is a state of immediate doom in the words to come. I am indifferent to time. I am not depressed. For the most part I feel happy, content, and harbour a deep affection for my life. But what I do with my time is a pit of aimlessness that I am unable to get past, of deep set indifference. Perhaps a question circles me like a shark, when nothing I do matters, what do I spend time on anyway?

I am sitting under a fig tree. And figs are rotting.
(More about this in The Bell Jar section of the piece here)

I would like to read the fig tree again anyway, so here it is below:

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Ambition without toxicity?

I can chart out my time off in three parts,

Happy phase, where the time off was positive
Panic phase, where I was looking for jobs, freelancing and being inefficiently productive
Action phase, where I was on a mindset to do creative things wholesome-ly And now I feel I am in part 4,
Defeat phase, where trying is futile as outcome is cringe at best and disaster at worst

What I am making now, design, or art, or writing, even journal art, is perhaps the worst I have ever made. I concur it is because I lack ambition, I cannot see a direction to present my energy at. And so I am at state of defeat. Somehow, my wholesome and satisfied living has hit the part of me that wanted to work to improve my life and circumstances, which it turns out was a primary motivation. I have not learnt to create art with a patron, I have made it to escape for required labour of day to day living and sustaining it. Love has made me dopey, safety has made me slow, and comfort has made me creatively bankrupt.

Yet it feels ridiculous to revert to glorifying struggle, to rely on hardship for quality outcomes of time.

So I know not how to get past this, how to inject voluntary struggle and gusto in a life that is being led with kindness and patience.

Heck. All my rabies shots are done. Maybe I can blame them all.

W.r.t. Living

I HOSTED A SUPPER CLUB

with two chefs Seldom will there be days in my life that will come close to the feeling, the mania of hosting a supper club for 24 people, some friends and most new at a cafe I was always a customer at. And it went smoothly, without too much worry or panic, like a train boarding all its cargo and heading to the destination in a pace that was changing but contributing to making it on time. We did it and we did it so well.

We had a small after party in my home and ended this supper club's chapter with people passing out of fatigue. Magnifique.

PEOPLE

A friend moved out of Goa with good intentions and plan ahead, and an inauthentic blessings from the friends she left behind here.
Ri wrote one of the best pieces on friendship in adulthood I have ever read.
Two friends visited from Bangalore with their baby, and we had the laziest most wonderful day around a pool.
I am digging a groovy funk band by Risa and unable to comprehend how I am getting to closely know a real life musician.

BOUGHT A CYCLE

Vids in her pursuit of leaving Goa gave me her cycle and I had refurbished it to make it fit to use. Could have bought a new cycle in the same cost but my emo-brain felt best to give this cycle a life as long as I could. I got attached to what this cycle means and where it came from. Contemplating two names for it, Cyclops or Spokerson.

THE GUT IS STEADILY IMPROVING

The throat burn is lower and on some days, absent. Things I did to manage it:

Remove (reduce really) acidic items from my diet
Sleep on an incline

STRENGTH IS LOW

All the gains from gym last year seem lost, and my strength is lower than before. This is an area in which I know myself as a hypocrite. There is too much talking on health, and no action.