Over the New Year, a friend moved back home to UK. I feel a great miss – she enjoys going to restaurants and she would make us all meet up once monthly. Now that she is gone, I feel that I have to step up so that I still have friends. To organise a day to go out requires a lot of to and fro discussion and a possibility of rejection. Perhaps I am just worried about rejection – I don’t know the depths of my despair.

I am on some financial subs and I think the fantasy of Financial Independence has completely consumed me. I am engaging in it on a daily basis. Saving and earning money is hard work and being obsessed with it makes it harder. There is nothing complex about FIRE that requires daily engagement. All FIRE requires is a good handle on one’s expenses and having discipline to saving money. I am so obsessed I compute scenarios with every calculator. In the process, getting sometimes confused, sometimes hopeful by all those different numbers that the calculators spit out. I didn’t know or realise how obsessed I was until I came across a beauty related subreddit.

I was shocked to read about how obsessed they are with beauty rituals and how the poster looks. Long conversations on wrinkles and intense discussions on layering serums. The type of questions asked is bordering on unhealthy obsession. The detailed and extremely micro stuff that nobody can really tell (eg, which eyebrow hair is out of place?) shocks me. While I do take a lot of care of my skin – sunscreen, lotions, etc I think I look average / plain / below average to others. That is, not memorable. I assume if I am unmemorable to myself, nobody else is really paying that close attention to me. The ladies & gents on’ here sub reddits seem to think everyone is holding a magnifying glass to their face every second.

I don’t need to obsess over the numbers. I know that I do it out of fear and insecurity. The unknown is terrifying and I am always padding the numbers “just in case”. Some people enjoy thinking about money. I am not one of them. I ◦ it largely out of anxiety & stress. Stress over work & wanting the stress to end.

A month ago I had a fall that got worse, requiring spitalisation & eventually surgery. I took a month off work. During my downtime, I gain a lot of clarity over my life choices.

Every decision stem from a conscious preference to play life on medium mode. I created busyness & difficulty in my life out of boredom. When life was on hard mode, I still felt boredom. I up my stress level. This sounds totally crazy. It is illogical. Yet I do it! And what happens next? Increase spend & eating on default. Leading to more money anxiety, more obsession about financial independence!

Crazy! I know!

I was seized by a strange feeling of urgency these 2 days. It felt like stress. I started to worry about some work that I am not assigned to and not doing. As a reaction to that anxiety I started to obsess over a bag that I was convinced that I need. It is as if I was pressed for timelines yet I am exhausted and getting very confused by the rapid yet very minor changes to slides. (That happens a lot.)

Thing is, I have been on medical leave and not paying any attention to the office going ons at all. I have not worked since I was admitted to the hospital.

A friend of mine expressed amazement that I truly have no desire to turn on the work machine and check my mails or reply to messages. I don’t want to. I also can’t – I can’t sit or stand for long. I will need a lie down to avoid swelling after being on my feet.

I wonder if this is part of decompression. My brain is trying to hold on to this anxiety because it is used to it.

There was a moment today. A very brief moment my friends showed scars from healed wounds. We were all there and we knew of those bad times. We knew how bad it was. Yet, when I saw the scars, it made me cry.

We were sharing favourite songs. I told my friends, I cried at work reading those lyrics. The random colleague across from me must be thinking I broke up or something. They laughed. And laughed more at the picture I took of me blubbing away.

Donald Justice has a poem about being 40 and I like to quote that at each birthday. Younger, I read in it regret, of aging, of responsibilities. Older, I see the suggestion of looking forward to something bigger than ourselves. Scars are the rooms that we leave behind to experience something else.