The Importance of a Boulder

Why it doesn’t move and when it should.

Damn near two years ago, I finished my last bit of school and moved to San Jose, CA. For the first year — for every minute I spent in San Jose, I spent 2 thinking about home, “home-home,” where my family was in Stockton, CA. It was an interesting year, to say the least. I spent almost every single weekend driving back home to my family 93 miles away, telling myself I just really missed my dog, which I did ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Honestly, I constantly thought about quitting my job and moving back home. It wasn’t until roughly around the 9 month mark where I really got serious about calling it quits. I had some very real and honest conversations with everyone but my family. I was nervous, afraid, anxious, etc. The one thing I just wouldn’t classify myself as was depressed. I couldn’t face it. There was no way that I was depressed, after all, I wasn’t taking some sort of anxiety pills to handle my shit, right?

Wrong. But we’ll get there in a minute.

Eventually, I finally went and talked to my mom and dad about what was going on in my head. I just kinda hinted that work sucked and it wasn’t what I thought I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It was weird, I had never told them how I felt about anything. In fact, I’d almost never let my parents in. Growing up in an Indian/Asian household meant emotions didn’t really manifest themselves into day to day conversations, or into any conversation at all. Everyone lived in their own shell, couple that with dealing with the never ending battle of cultural conflict as the kid of an immigrant and shit got even more complicated.

But their reaction was something I never expected. It was supportive. It was loving. It was the side of my parents I wish I had known more of growing up.

It was in that very moment I realized why I kept coming home every weekend. My family was my boulder. And no matter how far I went, or how long I was gone, this boulder stayed there and made sure to hold me up when I was ready to fall. That being said, my dad told me one simple thing that’s kept my head straight for a while now, “You don’t get to love everything you do, just make sure you love the parts that matter to you.” You a real one pops.

Shortly after this conversation, I started to contemplate what was actually bothering me this entire time. I realized work wasn’t the problem, as I’d been lucky to get an awesome job that allowed me to use both my degree and my personal experience with people. It wasn’t that I had no friends, because I had a great support system holding me down that I saw somewhat regularly. I legitimately spent countless nights sitting there trying to figure this out, and eventually it clicked. I was experiencing a weird phase of post grad depression, or at least that’s how I classified it.

Now I don’t personally know the entire cycle (we all hop in this thing at different points), but I was able to finally identify the one thing that had been dragging me down. It was my boulder. The one thing that was a constant in the revolving shit storm called “becoming a young adult” was my family. I lived in a new city, a new environment at work, a new routine that made no god damn sense to me. But every weekend I could go back to the one thing that I knew was normal, and that wouldn’t change on me, my family — my boulder.

I spent the next few weekends trying to not go home. It felt really fucking weird. Part of me almost felt guilty for not going home. It was almost like a drug, I needed that weekend to reset and get ready for the upcoming week that I wasn’t very excited to dive into. Did I go home eventually? Yeah. Did I think more about how to deal with the issue? Hell yeah.

Everyone has their boulder, their constant, the one thing that they can rely on always being there for them. The problem is this, how do you deal with the constant when you’re in between being in an interdependent and a codependent relationship with that constant at the same time? What I’m trying to say is: how the fuck am I supposed to depend on this thing, when it barely depends on me, but I feel like I need it so badly to function properly? The solution wasn’t very clear. And it sure as hell felt like there wasn’t anything that could replace my family.

After 6 months of living on my own and trying to become a hotshot software developer, I decided to pick back up a hobby I fell in love with at the age of 14 — making music. When I was a freshman in high school I was set out to become the next Dr. Dre. By the time sophomore year of college rolled around, I quit making music because of how much time I was investing in music and not in my classes, which almost caused me to lose my biggest scholarship (ya boy was broke, so that shit wasn’t gonna fly). What I did pick up soon after was DJing. It was something that I knew I could do on my own, still put together sounds to create insane music that was fun as hell in my headphones.

I went online, spent 500 bucks on a DJ controller and started practicing at home every night. Started playing my Xbox less and less, and doing small gigs more and more. This was right around when I was trying to figure out why my happiness depended so much on my boulder. I don’t consider myself to be a musician, but I think there’s a reason why they say musicians have the most pain to share that makes music so beautiful.

Eventually I stopped thinking about what kept bothering me and just went along my way. With everything going on, I had enough distractions to keep my mind off things, and I still went home every few weeks to check in and see how things were going. What I didn’t realize, until a few months later, was that for the first time in a long time I didn’t feel dependent on my boulder. When I skipped a weekend here or there to stay back in San Jose, I didn’t feel like shit for not making the time to go see my family. Somehow all these distractions eased the pain of being alone in the real world. The point I’m trying to get to is: the dependency was gone, and for the first time I had created a new boulder for myself.

In this case, it was DJing. I’m not out here saying music saved my life, I don’t recall being suicidal at any point, but it did give me the constant I needed to keep my sanity in check. Every night I mix, it’s almost therapeutic to a certain degree. Yeah sure, there’s nights where I’m busy and I don’t have time, but I know that it’s not going anywhere and that sometimes you just need a break for yourself. But the dependency had shifted to something I could control rather than what I thought I needed. In someone else’s case it might be photography, for another it may be going in at the gym for them gains, and for another it might just be going on a walk in park for all I know.

Life never goes the way we planned it, especially in our early 20s. We think we’ll be ready to take on the world alone because of the false sense of security we’re given in our teenage years, but we fall. Everyone falls. That’s why it’s so important to take the time to find your boulder, it’s something you can rely on, just don’t let it become the only thing you rely on. Being patient with yourself and your progression can lead to a beautiful understanding of who you are and what you feel you need.

If you’re still reading this, it’s too late (HA just kidding, shout out Drizzy, pls drop More Life soon). But for real, if you’re still reading this, I’m sure you’ve experienced something similar. I’m sure you understand the importance of this boulder we all lean on. For those of you going through it now, trust me, it’ll be okay. Just take time to reflect, and actually see your progression for yourself instead of others having to point it out for you. And for those of you who were lucky enough to not have to deal with this, bless up.

I don’t really know how to end this, so yeah, hit me up if you feel like jamming.

Deuces.