I woke up around midday today still thinking about last night.
It was a good night.
Everyone had fun.
We laughed, joked around, caught up, and somehow even the little problems that came up didn’t feel as heavy as they usually would.
That was probably the part that surprised me most.
Because if the same kind of thing had happened a few weeks ago, I probably would have tensed up immediately.
I would have tried to understand it.
Fix it.
Make sure everyone was okay.
Make sure nothing got worse.
Today, I looked back at some of those things and thought:
that was such a stupid problem.
And I don’t mean that the people involved were stupid or that their feelings didn’t matter.
I think I just stopped giving every little problem permission to become a huge one in my head.
Maybe I’m loosening up.
Maybe I’m finally understanding that not everything needs me.
And strangely, I’m okay with that.
I woke up feeling fresh, but it was still my day off, so I stayed in bed anyway.
I had a DJ set later at Rosie’s at 9 PM.
Technically I could have gone back to sleep for a few more hours.
But I didn’t really feel tired.
Maybe anime instead.
Maybe doing absolutely nothing.
That sounded nice too.
Something else I’ve started noticing is how much writing all of this down has been helping.
Once I put a thought here, it stops taking up so much space in my head.
It doesn’t disappear.
That’s actually the comforting part.
I know the thought still exists.
It’s here.
Waiting for me whenever I want to come back and visit it.
So once I write it down, I feel like I’m allowed to let it go.
I don’t have to keep replaying it in my head just because I’m scared I’ll forget what I felt.
I think social media used to serve the same purpose for me.
I had a thought.
I posted it.
I saw something funny.
I shared it.
I had a feeling.
I threw it onto a Story or a Note.
But social media was never just my thoughts.
It came with everybody else’s too.
Their opinions.
Their happiness.
Their relationships.
Their faces.
Their problems.
Their lives.
Here feels different.
This feels like my space.
I don’t have to watch anybody.
I don’t have to perform.
I can just say what I want to say.
Yes, I’ve shared this blog with a few people I trust.
But it still feels different.
It doesn’t feel like I’m standing in the middle of a room shouting every thought and waiting for everyone to react.
It feels more like I’m leaving pieces of myself somewhere safe.
There was also a fire drill in the middle of the day.
There are 24 apartments in my building.
Fewer than ten people came outside.
Maybe everyone was at work.
I’m choosing to believe that.
😂
At some point, completely by accident, I opened Co–Star.
I haven’t opened that app in months.
I’m not a firm believer in astrology.
Flash news: I probably shouldn’t be.
But I also don’t think there’s any harm in taking something useful from it.
Sometimes I use astrology as a way to understand changes in my mood.
I’ll read something and go,
Oh, Mercury is doing something weird today. Maybe that explains why I feel like shit.
Sometimes I read a prediction and think:
Right. Let’s see if I can make this go my way instead.
I don’t want astrology dictating my life.
But today it gave me a line I really liked:
You deserve a life of your own design.
And then, a little later, I had my counselling session.
I told my counsellor everything that had been happening.
Everything.
And her advice was ridiculously simple:
Stop isolating yourself.
She told me to go out.
Meet people.
Make friends outside of work.
She pointed out something I had never really thought about properly before.
I already know how to talk to people.
I do it for work every day.
So why don’t I do it in my personal life too?
And that got me thinking about the two versions of myself that I seem to have created.
There is Alif at work.
He is vibrant.
Chatty.
Fun.
Confident.
He walks up to strangers without really thinking about it.
His whole job is basically making people feel comfortable.
Making them laugh.
Making them feel welcome.
Treating them like family so they want to come back.
And then there is Alif at home.
Quiet.
Shy.
Isolated.
Not particularly comfortable around people.
Would rather stay in bed than go outside.
And for a long time, I thought that was completely fine.
Work is work.
Home is home.
Maybe that was the problem.
My counsellor asked me what I do when I’m alone.
And my answer was:
I stay alone.
Even when I go out to eat by myself, I usually sit there scrolling through my phone.
When I walk through the city, my headphones are on.
I walk quickly.
Point A to point B.
If I go out drinking, it is almost always after-work drinks.
Which means I’m still with coworkers.
My friends are mostly people from work who happened to become actual friends.
There is nothing wrong with that.
I love those people.
But maybe I’ve made my world smaller than it needs to be.
My counsellor challenged me to do something different.
Go out.
Don’t immediately hide behind my phone.
Don’t use a book to avoid the room.
Watch people.
Smile at strangers.
Talk to them.
Join conversations.
Let things happen.
And I actually loved the idea.
Not because she planted something completely new in my head.
Because I realised I had already seen proof that it could happen.
A few nights ago, when I was drinking alone because I needed to get away from everything, a stranger noticed me sitting by myself.
He invited me to join him.
I declined.
I was overwhelmed that night.
I genuinely needed space.
Then, as he was leaving, he came back again and invited me to another venue with some of his friends.
I declined again.
Looking back now, I don’t regret saying no.
That was what I needed at that moment.
But it showed me something.
People can reach out.
Connection can happen.
And next time, if I actually want it,
maybe I’ll say yes.
Maybe designing a life of my own means allowing some of Work Alif to exist outside work too.
Not the version whose job is to make everybody happy.
Just the version who isn’t afraid to say hello.
And then at around 5 PM, because apparently none of these thoughts are important enough to interfere with my priorities,
I got coffee.
Yes.
Five in the afternoon.
Coffee.
I’ve accepted that coffee isn’t a morning drink for me.
It is a ceremonial opening of the day.
7 AM?
Coffee.
7 PM?
Also coffee.
The clock is irrelevant.
Later, I went to buy a vape pod.
And got ID’d.
Again.
This happens every single time I clean shave.
Apparently removing facial hair immediately removes several years from my age too.
Thanks, Mum and Dad, I guess.
Then I got to Rosie’s for my set and discovered something genuinely important:
they finally changed the setup.
About damn time.
I hate the CDJ-2000s.
That might be dramatic.
I stand by it.
During the set, Dyli got bored and started making experimental mocktails.
Guess who became the guinea pig?
Me.
Obviously.
At this point I’m less of a friend and more of an unpaid beverage quality-control department.
The drinks were good but,
I am now approximately 40% sugar.
I was supposed to play from 9 PM until midnight.
But Auckland weather decided otherwise.
Rain.
Cold.
Almost nobody around.
Eventually the manager decided we should close at 11.
And weirdly, I didn’t really care.
Not in a bad way.
I just didn’t treat it like some huge disappointment.
There was no crowd to impress, so I messed around.
Played songs I hadn’t played before.
Tried things.
Experimented.
No pressure.
No dramatic interpretation of an empty room.
It was raining.
It was cold.
It was a quiet Thursday.
That’s all.
I’m hoping summer will be different.
Near closing, I played Fly by Nicki Minaj and Rihanna.
It’s not really something I would normally play at Rosie’s.
It’s too slow for a nightclub.
Too pop for the usual Rosie’s vibe.
Honestly, I partly threw it on because we were almost closing and I thought maybe it would help move people along.
But then I actually listened.
Not just to the beat.
To what the song was saying.
There was something in it about hurt.
Feeling abandoned.
Feeling like people you thought were on your side somehow became part of the same noise.
And then somehow still choosing to rise above it.
That part got to me.
Maybe because of everything that has happened over the last few days.
Friends.
Enemies.
People misunderstanding things.
People taking sides.
People turning little pieces of a story into something much bigger.
And me trying to work out where I actually stand in all of it.
The song didn’t make me feel sad exactly.
It felt almost defiant.
Like:
Yes, this hurt.
Yes, this changed something.
Yes, I’m still figuring it out.
And I’m still here.
Still moving.
Still doing my set.
Still laughing.
Still talking to people.
Still trying to build something better for myself.
Maybe I didn’t play that song for the room.
Maybe I played it for myself.
And thinking back over today, I keep coming back to that Co–Star sentence.
You deserve a life of your own design.
Maybe designing my own life isn’t some huge dramatic reinvention.
Maybe it starts smaller.
Writing thoughts down instead of letting them live endlessly in my head.
Going outside without automatically disappearing into my phone.
Learning that I’m allowed to meet people outside work.
Accepting that I don’t have to solve every problem that appears around me.
Drinking coffee at 5 PM because apparently that’s just who I am.
Playing a song that doesn’t fit because the room is empty anyway.
Letting myself have days that don’t need to prove anything.
Maybe that’s enough of a start.
I’ve spent a lot of time designing versions of myself for different places.
Work Alif.
Home Alif.
Social Media Alif.
Maybe now I’m curious about what happens when I stop separating them quite so much.
Maybe I can be quiet without isolating myself.
Maybe I can be social without performing.
Maybe I can make people happy without believing I’m responsible for their happiness.
Maybe I can just exist somewhere between all of those versions.
I don’t know what that looks like yet.
But I think I’d like to find out.