Thusly, I imagine people do not remember what I shared back then, so I will give a brief recap.

In 2017 I went through a deep depression that saw me go back home from the US. I had a lot of fun back home. I was back in the US in the fall of 2018. I wrote about the not so fun tinder dates I had in the fall of 2018. In the Spring of 2019, I watched my classmates graduate, and I expressed my feelings about this to the internet. Since then, I have lurked in the shadows, but I am back.

Today I googled, “Cheap hobbies.”

See, I just graduated, am job searching, and waiting for my work authorization. But while I search and wait, I want to be doing something fun on the side. I wanted to pick up cooking, but I cannot afford the ingredients. I recently fell in love with hiking, but I do not have a car to get to the hiking trails. I have tried reading but the hobby is still pretty expensive: I will need to buy books as the libraries are closed. But right below cooking in the long list of suggested cheap hobbies was writing. So here I am, ready to make the internet my diary. I hope I won’t have another moment of wakefulness that will make me delete my work again. So, here goes…

When I wrote my last post, I had a boyfriend. We broke up at the beginning of 2020. I went back to online dating, went on dates every weekend, until COVID happened. Then I started talking to a guy on bumble. We will call him J. J and I spoke until this November. But here is the thing, I wanted to talk, nothing more. The break up with my boyfriend was not a good one. I was not ready to date another white man. Although, when things started fizzling out with J, I tried holding on to a relationship that never was. I was used to having him as part of my everyday routine so much that I was not willing to part with him. But when I did, I came to the realization: I had used him as my emotional cuddle buddy. When we started talking, I had been depressed for over two weeks. When I recovered from my depression, he had already become a part of my schedule that I was afraid to shift my schedule around. But I finally let him go, and somehow, my routine fell into place.

As I write this, I just stopped talking to another guy I met on Bumble. Just like J, I had made this man a part of my schedule. Except, this time, I was not depressed. After my graduation, I had so much time, I still do, and I found myself incorporating this man into my routine. Having nothing to do disrupted my daily setup, and I desired to fill that void. However, when things started fizzling out, I let go. I did not try to save a relationship that did not exist. In fact, I deleted my dating apps. That is how I found myself googling about cheap hobbies. I want to find something to fill up my schedule. I want to improve myself, introspect, and grow.

I hope writing will fill the void introduced by graduating. And as I navigate the real world, I hope I form relationships founded on genuine connection rather than convenience.