me&missing

My entire life has been a continuous series of missing everything I've lived through ever since I developed some sort of psychological conscience. I don't just miss things; I long for them -- I yearn for them. I miss everything and anything that has ever happened to me, or that is bound to happen to me. I could conclude that I'm someone who doesn't live in the present, so I will probably miss the present moment in the future, but I can't help it. I live in my own head, and there could be a million things I could be thinking about.

rays via my glasses

I could be missing how I would sing Bieber songs all day when I was 11, or I could be missing how my room used to smell after someone I loved would leave when I was 17, or I could be missing my grandfather sitting in the living room reading a newspaper while I watched Doraemon when I was 8.

So basically, what is missing, actually? Missing, for me, is longing for something that is bound to happen or something that is already over, and feeling so much that I couldn't find a word to associate with the memory because it made me feel so many things all at once.

But the actual trick comes with what I do with the feeling of longing. I sit with it most of the time. I try not to distract myself with anything, but I end up listening to my playlists and missing them even more. I sometimes wonder if, by wearing their sweater out in public, somehow or somewhere, they'd see that I still feel for them. I also wonder if I still go to that pani puri stall, I might run into the friends I stopped speaking to. I also wonder if, by reading the Kannada newspaper, my grandfather could be proud of me.

But missing and longing for things is what makes me human. It tears me with the warmth and joy I once got from those memories, the sorrow that I won't be able to go back, and yet hopefulness because those moments were probably never mine to possess. They were only mine to experience. Like everything else in this world, they arrived, stayed for a while, and then continued on without asking my permission.

Maybe longing is my form of love for everything that was once a part of my life. I still think about my grandfather whenever Dr. Rajkumar songs start playing. I still add songs to the playlist I once made for someone I was in love with, and I still think about all the songs we sang while walking home. Longing for something or someone could be an act of overcoming it or reminiscing about it, but what if I simply like attaching myself to everything that is placed in my path because I know I can never hold on to it forever?

That's enough ani in agony for today.

thanks for reading <3

byeye:)

References/Things which inspired me to write this :3

1. https://open.spotify.com/artist/3nnQpaTvKb5jCQabZefACI 
   
2. https://open.spotify.com/track/5Qv2Nby1xTr9pQyjkrc94J 

NOTE:

THE EM DASHES ARE MINE. THEY ARE NOT GENERATED. I WROTE THIS BY MYSELF 

                                     

sloppy = evolving

I AM AWARE AI IS SMARTER, AND IT CAN GIVE YOU ANSWERS IN MILLIONTH SECONDS, BUT HEAR ME OUT.PLEASE.(haha sorry for the clickbait or whatever we call it)

I understand that AI is really integrated, and it is one of the biggest things that helps us do things, i.e., finish homework or choose the type of university you're supposed to attend because you were just a kid with no direction. It was much better before because, a few years ago my brother ( age 22) would have gone through a lot of reviews of his choices for college and he might have gone through reddit pages where the students of the university would actively diss the college and tell their juniors that theyve made the wrong choice, and he might've done his research via his social circle which might include his family friends or any people he met in his highschool. 

Contrasting that, when I was supposed to decide which college I would attend (now 19), which was in 2024, all I did was have a very long conversation with an AI bot, which probably just pretended to understand me and know me because it was very well trained to do so. I really felt so understood and known, which probably is creepy because it is eod just a structure or a thing which is just made up of 0s and 1s, just like my friend used to say.

For me partiularly, I started understanding how AI is really dumbing me down, and it just started my brain all slimy and sluggish because I started seeing other people and started inculcating the habit of using AI for every other task in my life that needed my critical and cognitive reading skills. 

I also started noticing how my vocabulary and my formation of speech sentences started sounded like prompt answers from ChatGPT, I started thinking more backwardly, even in my debate sessions in my debate club in my university, where I thought, "Oh, maybe what if i think like an ai " or "um what would chatgpt do in a situation like this". And then it just hit me, and I thought, okay ani you're lowkey cooked. 

One of the recent studies from the research paper called "Writing Smarter or Losing Skills? The Impact of AI in Academia" by Shamstabrej Siddiquee, where they did a research on engagement with AI for academic writing showed that a majority, 44%, reported using AI tools on a weekly basis, while 13% indicated daily use, reflecting strong engagement with these technologies 

So, actually what led to this anyways?

AI is purely built to basically perform tasks which requires human intelligence and one of the main reasons why we love using AI is because it is fast and we dont have to sit and brainstorm for ideas or think through the entire task which literally defies or takes away the entire purpose of completing a task Dvelving into the same - whenever we sit and brainstorm ideas for something, we use a notebook and write down things or we open or word doc and type out what I could preasumably do. This causes me inconvenience - the inconvenience of having to use my skills and my potential, which just causes discomfort in my way(or in this context- friction ). But for me, I'm all about friction maxxing in 2026 :]

What is friction maxxing ?

Friction-maxxing is the practice of intentionally choosing less convenient options in daily life to build tolerance for discomfort, resist technology-driven ease, and preserve what proponents describe as meaningful human experiences. As observed, most of us lately view doing the littlest things like buying groceries, even when we're free, as very effortful and very uncomfortable and the bar for effort and hard work keeps lowering day by day because we are accustomed to being spoon-fed for each and every task we were meant to do "normally" just a few years ago 

Friction maxxing is basically choosing to keep that engagement alive.

It looks like:

• writing something yourself before asking AI to refine it
• sitting with confusion instead of immediately resolving it
• doing something manually, even when there’s an easier shortcut

How will friction maxxing help us, and how is assosiateed with the overuse of AI?

To describe in simpler words, every time we choose inconvenience and every time we choose to get uncomfortable, we tend to change (might not be tremendous but in the tiniest ways possible ) because we experience something new or we get exposured to something new. 

For example: Im trying to write a paper or an article on my favourite character in recent times , so normally what I'd do when Im a lazy potato is just to prompt the same in ChatGPT, saying"write a paper on the charachter Clementine Kruczynski from the movie Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless mind ". However if I was choosing to "friction maxx" I would do a complete charachter analysis on her and understand why I love her and what part of me resonates with her, which explains my attachment to the fictional character and probably conclude with the amount of love and how much she makes me feel so understood and seen.

"bad human writing is better than ai writing"

Addressing the quote, I do agree that even if there is a little kid out there who is trying to write without using any of the fancy words or with complicated jargon is much MUCH better than a middle school kid out there who is prompting the same, while watching cartoon.

But why hate on AI so much?

The whole narrative of hating AI or chatbots is because it is trained to perform human-like activities that resemble us, humans. We are made up of a lot of emotions like love, guilt, rage, sorrow and literally a million other things which just cannot be "replaced". Whenever we ask an AI bot to correspond with us emotionally or ask it to be human-like, it is just a large language module which was just meant to do it. 

What to do now? 

Honestly, for me especially since Im from a technical degree Im just bound to use AI but I refuse to use AI creatively and artistically because I dont want to, I dont mind going through a hundreds of reference pages or bibliographies in research papers or watch a lot of youtube videos for the same - because Im capapble of doing it , even if my research methodology is rigged or full of potholes I'll just learn to be better because I can and you can too:)

Because at the end of the day, the goal isn’t just to get things done.

References/Things which inspired me to write this XD 

-https://dsc.duq.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1059&context=first-class

-https://trfjournal.cdfaindia.org/index.php/trfjournal/en/article/view/33

-https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260227-can-friction-maxxing-fix-your-focus

-https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-025-02847-0

- https://youraislopbores.me/

-https://open.spotify.com/track/0kyCBfVUUG0pzk2MBF0h7R

-https://youtu.be/ECWpPKzN5I0

Note:

ALL THE EM DASHES ARE MINE. THEY ' RE NOT GENERATED. I REPEAT THEY.ARE.NOT.GENERATED

This is purely written from my perspective ( a 19-year-old student ). I think the article could be structured better, but please do let me know if you have any suggestions and opinions on the same 

Thats enough ani in agony for today

byeyeye<3

Kajal aur Kupsurat

A few days ago, when I posted something, one of my friend asked me,
"anu, why do you always write about the negativity in the world?"

So here we go. I’m writing about the most magnificent, divine, and alluring part of the world, something that can never be robbed from anyone - a woman's beauty.

Before we delve into that, I would like to quote Jo March:

"Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition, and they've got talent, as well as just beauty. I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for."

Growing up, as I developed my consciousness and started understanding the world, I realised that we girls put so much of our energy into worrying about how we look, how we are perceived externally, and how we present ourselves to society.

They say beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, and colours in any form that can be seen .But isn't beauty about how colourful my soul is ?Isn't it about how I treat people with love and empathy? Isn't it about how I treat myself and everyone around me with kindness? Isn't it about how deeply I love and yearn for everything?

People often define or rationalise their love based on their definition of beauty. They will love you only if you're socially accepted as a "pretty" person.
That’s exactly why I’ve always believed that if a blind person could love you, it would be for you  your real beauty  the kind that can be felt. For your scars and stretch marks that could be traced on skin, for your voice and your laugh that could be heard.

Young girls, begin to define their love for themselves based on how they are loved by the outside world.
But girls, isn’t love something you deserve from yourself before you ever depend on someone else to give it to you?

Body image is a concept that may not have been defined historically, but the desire to improve one’s appearance has existed throughout time. This can be seen in how cosmetics have been used for thousands of years across the world.

However, the active preoccupation with flaws in one’s appearance is a more recent phenomenon  and one that can be emotionally, and even physically, damaging.
Women’s self-esteem can be affected by poor body image. They can suffer from health problems caused by eating disorders or the use of dangerous chemicals marketed as beauty fixes.
Certain groups of women, like those who are physically disabled or visibly different from others, may be especially affected. Even women without poor body image can be negatively impacted by society’s judgment of their appearance  from emotionally stressful family pressure to financially stressful reduced job prospects.

Additionally, social media and the market fuel themselves by trying to make you prettier, skinnier, fairer , basically anything other than what you already are.
They feed off your insecurities, which were foundationally curated by society, just to sell you things to make you "prettier".

i kept thinking it was me.
but what if the mirror was lying?

What is actually the problem here?

Commercialization of Beauty.

  

Our economy  survives by selling us shame. It creates the insecurity and then sells you the fix. First your skin is "too dark", so they sell you fairness creams. Then your body is "too big", so they sell you diet pills, detox teas, and filters. The goal was never to help you. It was always to keep you buying.

Our entire lives, women are not supposed to know if we are pretty. We are supposed to wait for someone else to tell us.
We are supposed to wait for validation before we are allowed to feel it ourselves.

But isn’t that foolish?
We are all so beautiful, in our own ways.

The irony is, even though I preach all of this, tomorrow I will probably go back to using kajal just to feel “prettier”.
I will go back to adding things to my cart on Nykaa, maybe because it is so deeply embedded in me  the idea that I have to look good to feel good.  And I exist with the agony of knowing that I cannot completely get rid of this feeling, no matter how much I unlearn.

Reference-

- https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2143&context=isp_collection

- https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Okewa-Owoeye/publication/384197497_EFFECTS_OF_MARKETING_COMMUNICATION_ON_NEW_PRODUCTS_COMMERCIALISATION_AMONG_START-UPS_IN_THE_BEAUTYCOSMETICS_INDUSTRY/links/66ee02df6b101f6fa4f88681/EFFECTS-OF-MARKETING-COMMUNICATION-ON-NEW-PRODUCTS-COMMERCIALISATION-AMONG-START-UPS-IN-THE-BEAUTY-COSMETICS-INDUSTRY.pdf

- https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/fea2.12076

touching souls, yet drifting apart

In this era, we're closer than ever via calls, messages, Gmail, Locket app, and so much more. Yet we're all so lonely. We still lack emotional closeness, even with the person we love. We cannot confront people who are there for the betterment of us. Social media was indeed one of the best inventions for us. It helped us grow together as a community, socially. It allowed us to choose our social circles.

But individually, did we ever really change?

That empty void you feel when you see the followers of the person you love.

The mutual similarities between you and them.

When you see people liking things that are so unhinged and retarded.

Disguised Distance and the Lack of Emotional Confrontation:

We text people instead of talking to them.

We just react "liked" to their messages.

We send reels and memes to people and hold on to the superficial, the shallow.

And even when you know it’s shallow, you don’t know how to fix it,

because maybe that’s just how it works now.

Even when someone replies, it can still feel like you're talking to a wall.

Presence is no longer about being present.

It’s about being online, replying fast, and pretending to care through curated responses.

We’ve gotten so good at performing connection that we’ve forgotten how to live it.

Passive updates and shallow checkups have replaced meaningful conversations.

Abbreviations were made just so that texting could be made more "efficient."

We have voice notes, video calls, endless apps.

But somehow, we still don't know how to say “I'm hurting”

without fearing being left on read.

Constant connection has created more agony than comfort.

And even though communication is easier now, some people don't even try.

Technology makes it easier than ever to know if someone is doing bad, yet no one checks in.

Not because they don’t care, but because they suck at emotional confrontation.

It breaks friendships.

It ruins relationships.

It breaks people who love each other.

And sometimes, it’s not just the communication gap.

It’s what it reveals.

That feeling of being the third party , even when you're the one they say they love.

It’s when they say you’re important, but don’t text you.

When they watch your stories, but reply to somebody else's.

When they like pictures of someone you don't associate with,

and you feel sick inside, comparing yourself to someone who shouldn’t even be a part of this.

You know they love you. But maybe not enough.

Not enough to choose you loudly.

Not enough to show up when it’s inconvenient.

Just enough to come back when it’s easy.

And you sit with that.

The agony of knowing you’re loved, but never quite chosen.

Maybe it’s time we try to save what we have.

Maybe we call the people we love.

Maybe we stop assuming.

Maybe we stop waiting for something to break before we speak.

Note from me:

Writing this made me emotional, 

I used AI just to fix grammar and structure, everything else is mine :)

Thanks for reading if you did. <3