🗺️ 41 | processing travel life
dear friend,
I have travel brain fog, as well as too-many-people brain fog — both of which are strains of too-much-input brain fog. at the same time, I also have the brain fog of being with family, speaking only Mandarin, eating too much, and feeling barely unrecognizable to myself.
perhaps another day, I’ll tell you about China and what it’s like: how everything is a QR code, how 8-floor supermalls sprung up like beansprouts, how teenagers crowd around in electric car showrooms. China feels like an old country running, at full speed, into the future — but, panting a lot.
after a week in China, I realized that, actually, being here is easy. what’s really hard is digesting and processing the experience of it. this meta-layer is what this week’s letter is about.
this week is another abbreviated / travel version of guide.notes.
the practice of zooming out: contents vs. container
whenever I feel overwhelmed by the contents of my mind, or unfocused and uninspired, I try to become aware of its container & conditions, instead. it’s like checking the weather; or observing the state of a garden — instead of living in the weeds of thoughts, things, feelings, plans. I’m sensing into the negative space. the shape of rabbit holes in my mind. if I can give it a form, then I can choose to return to it later, calmly.
what does this practice look like?
perhaps, something as simple as this:
what’s taking up space in my mind? (the contents)
how do these mind-objects feel?
what is the space and environment that holds it? how does it look and feel? (the container)
it’s about traveling to the “meta-layer” of the psyche, rather than slushing through the swamp of thing-ness. if you’re a little bit detail-oriented / obsessive-compulsive / rabbit-hole-friendly, like me, then this practice of detachment can feel like a soothing balm.
the rhythm of processing: daily life vs. travel
these days: my mind feels like over-stuffed luggage. I’m bloated. sluggish. travel is like a sudden flood of intake for the mind/body to digest — fast.
what causes discomfort is not the sudden inflow; it’s the backlog of things to process. the problem with thinking/feeling deeply is a constant feeling of psychic constipation. the question is: how do I upgrade my internal processing power?
how to process while traveling (a list)
explore keeping a daily diary at multiple layers of experience: EXTERNAL (seen/heard/saw/events), as well as INNER REACTIONS (felt/experienced/thought), and a deeper layer of INNER VISION (sensed/imagined/wondered/dreamed).
experiment with diary forms: public vs. private. textual vs. visual.
focus on collecting threads of thought - instead of needing to follow a thread to its end. go wide & expansive now — knowing that you can go deep later.
centering the self comes before processing experience (aka, wellbeing practices).
condense your practice into micro-blocks of < 30 minutes.
find consistent windows of time where you’ll be undisturbed everyday (for me, it’s after 11pm, when everyone is sleeping).
being in china makes me feel like a jellyfish
Being in China makes me feel like a jellyfish — translucent and mushy. I’m floating in a sea of complications: feelings with no language. questions with no answers. history with no memories. each day is a wave of familiar sensations: the tastes and smells of childhood. people who knew me before I knew me. and yet, I don’t know who I am here. except, in relation to family. I don’t feel like I exist yet, except as a liminal being.
I’ll end this week’s letter here, my friends. more soon, next week.
🌸 goodbye with a wish:
I wish for you to find and follow your truest sense of self — in passion and purpose — without feeling the need to sacrifice belonging, community, culture, or family. this might require an initial period of deep aloneness. but, I wish for you to venture from the warmth of the village with trust that one day, you can — if you wish — always return, wiser and braver than when you left it.
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thank you for reading.
🪼 kening
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🗺️ this is guide.notes 41, a weekly letter on creative alchemy & growing digital worlds.
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