heart-heavy or head-heavy

I knew something had to change when one day I woke up and the things I used to optimize for didn’t feel satisfying anymore

SOFT, RIPENED GARDEN FALLS AT THE END OF SUMMER by Janna Watson

I knew something had to change when one day I woke up and the things I used to optimize for didn’t feel satisfying anymore. The food I was eating, the routines I kept carving for myself, the men I was dating, the ideas I believed.

One of the first questions I asked you:

Are you more head-heavy (you rationalize everything, logic feels soothing, things have to make sense for pursuit) or heart-heavy (you’re inclined to follow an emotion, a feeling, an instinct, even at the cost of status games)?

If you’re more heart-heavy, ambition is unevenly applied. Certain endeavors take all your attention, leaving little room for practicality, pragmatism. You tend to get swept away in doing things that don’t rhyme, in people who surprise you. If you’re more head-heavy, you like linear narratives. You throw yourself into work or people that plot points on a certain trajectory. Straying from the path, leaning into discovery, becomes the challenge.

For a large part of my life I was so head-heavy. I still like to control the narrative, the arc. I like to superimpose my thoughts into words. Crisp articulation. I intellectualize emotions well. I used to be so cerebral, able to think myself out of anything. Now I think, so much time wasted agonizing.

Of course, being head-heavy served me well for a while. It gave me structure, discipline. It made me successful if I tracked said success by a rigid set of measurements. But if I catalogued where the most beautiful things in my life emerged from, I’d find that they were always heart-centric. When I finally followed the tug of a feeling, I found an intimate sense of peace. It led me to San Francisco, to writing, to new, precious relationships.

When I came to California I felt overwhelmed with sensation, emotion. The wind carried the scent of coffee and bitter fog and fresh grass and jasmine flowers. Something felt mystical, magical, about this land of promise, its coastal edges, its dreamlike temperament. It’s no perfect place, but it marked a turning point in my life. A commitment to my vision of who I wanted to be. The self validation of that vision. In California, I was yanked out of overthinking and placed gently back in my body.

That shift was fundamentally meaningful. A direct flow of energy from the head to the heart. Less calculation. More sweetness. Ease. I biked down the hills, watched the world spin past me in a glowing blur.

In Four Barrel, an old favorite in the Mission district, A and I talk about the importance of having an internal compass. To hold steadfastly to a personal truth: “self authorship”, she told me.

Self authorship. I’ve never believed that a life could be casually built. I believe in effort. Intention. Crumb by crumb. Line by line.

But trying to predict an exact trajectory is futile too. Life is seasonal and sorrowful and triumphant and lurid, and still so beautiful because of its non-linearity. Perhaps there’s a way to be less calculating, less anxious about building my life. Let the poem be the poem. Let this life be a celebration of possibility. Let me write about it with my head, my heart, my hands.

PS: If you are so inclined, please like and subscribe to this newsletter. Your support helps me curate more posts and reach more readers, thank you :)

Other life updates

• Work has been time consuming, and writing/editing to my own self-set standard every week has been stress inducing! I am trying to stay true to my ethos of writing regularly and putting pieces out despite feeling like they are imperfect :)

• Mexico city is coming up, and a trip to Northern Europe is in the works

• I’m always looking for new substacks to read - leave me a comment, email, or DM with your favorites (or plug your own with a little description)

What I’m reading

Books: Finished reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories Unaccustomed Earth, picked up Impossible Owls after A recommended it, and Conversations on Love by Natasha Lunn

Substack: this piece on why no one listens when you give them advice —

You can't reach the brain through the ears

French Song of the Week