My first segment

On Wednesdays We Love Ourselves

FYI, I rewrote this to be 0.00001% less corny.

I like a lot of things and start a lot of things, but I find completing things difficult. When I read, I skip words and sentences as my attention drifts, and I impatiently bounce ahead, chasing whatever I need to feel at that moment. I’ll watch shows halfway and abandon them for months, years even (my One Tree Hill box set haunts me whenever I go home). Consequently, it feels like even if I had all the time in the world, it would still not be enough for me to achieve everything I want because of my avoidant tendencies and deferred action.

Enough of that. More about me: I love lists, apps, creating, and consuming, be it food, media, art, or design concepts. Oh, and card (or mind 😆) games that help build intimacy and provoke reflection, of course. Introducing “On Wednesdays We Love Ourselves” — the first fully fleshed-out segment of this Substack. Join me on a journey of healing, creativity, healing my creativity, healing through creativity and loads of yapping and reflecting.

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I recently got the We Are Not Really Strangers: Self Love Edition card game for my 22nd birthday. I had just started a new job that I felt unworthy of and moved to a new city where my dreams felt too small. I found myself drifting into bad habits often, like excessively comparing myself to other people, projecting very harsh sentiments, and fantasizing about plastic surgery and all the things I could have done differently at school to make the work-life transition easier.

I tried to start journaling, but I realized that a lot of the chaos up there would translate onto a page, and I still wouldn’t know what tf to do with it. I try to use The 5-Minute Journal occasionally to practice a more positive approach to journaling since it focuses on gratitude, but I am useless at following routines. Now, I just try to keep a running list on my phone of good things that happen to me each day — something my roommate recommended. Writing by hand can also be daunting. Typing on my computer helps me slow down. I can organize my thoughts better and undo mistakes easily, which is in line with my perfectionism. I end up being attached to the things I type up, be it in my Notes app, Notion, Beli, Letterboxd, and now Substack. The barriers to sharing weaken. My ideas also funnel in more intentionally when I type because I’m not the fastest at it. Sometimes, I do it with one hand like a toddler touching a keyboard for the first time.

All that is to say, I feel like this newsletter could be a good way for me to do a couple of things:

1. Practise typing, even though as someone who codes all day, it’s probably not going to get better for me.

2. Get better at writing, telling stories, and formalizing my thoughts.

3. Learn how to follow a routine.

4. Let go of fears of looking stupid, putting myself out there, and being perceived.

5. Start my healing journey (cringing a bit, but I am holding on to #4).

6. Start finishing things. Start.

The Game Description:

Who were you before? Who are you now? Who will you be? Self-love means loving all versions of yourself, even the ones you may not recognize anymore, and the ones you haven’t met yet.

For falling in love with all of you

1 or more players

3 levels: past, present, and future

150 new questions, wildcards & reminders

1 final card

Warning: healing may arise

How I will be playing:

Every week Whenever I feel motivated, I’m going to tackle 3 cards: Past, Present, and Future, and write about it. Sometimes this might develop into something related or unrelated to the questions and other times my responses will just have to be enough. Hopefully, in the process, I can uncover things about past me, and reconnect with my present self again whilst figuring out the future.

As I said, I find it difficult to finish things, so this could end up being my first and last post. It feels like I’m talking to a void for now, but to whoever reads this, thank you for signing up to be an involuntary accountability buddy.

Hope you enjoy it! 😅