This past week, it felt like I was running on an empty tank and a faulty engine. I was slow to wake in the mornings and distracted myself with doomscrolling or mindless mobile games. Finishing tasks was an uphill battle. The air around me was heavy; I kept finding myself holding my breath for some reason. Sadness followed me around. By midweek, I pinpointed the source of my woe. I was anxious, grieving and lonely.

Before the week started, I had just finished writing an essay. It was a personal achievement of some sort. I hadn’t written a reflective essay for years. But the beauty of the act of writing also became my downfall. Writing is a medium of thinking and feeling, and I kept thinking about the problems I encapsulated in my essay and feeling anxious even after I finished writing it.

Amid this hum of anxiety, somehow, as I returned to work after the holidays, a sobering and long-overdue realization dawned on me: To be a responsible leader, I can’t expect friendship from my team. For someone who craves deep connection with the people I spend time with, and boy do I spend most of my hours with people I work with, this realization took some life force away from me.

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It’s Sunday evening, and I’ve found solace and lightness. I’ve been forcing myself this week to get out there and find the connections I crave so deeply, and the universe presented me with gifts.

An hour and a half drive to Depok to attend a lecture got me a hug from a friend and a coffee date. “Let’s catch up,” she says. My heart swelled when she marked the event in her calendar as self-care, family and friends.

A visit to the Palmerah area for a meeting turned into a reunion with a trusted mentor and an old friend. “You can lean on us; we don’t expect you to be anything but Odit”.

A video call with an old friend, back and forth update texts with another.

A cozy brunch at a friend’s apartment became another reunion event, which made me feel glad I fought my inclination to flake.

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This morning, after years of ignoring Maria Popova’s newsletter in my inbox, I opened it and read her writing about Simone de Beauvoir’s deep love for her friend Zaza. It sent me down a rabbit hole of The Marginalian, and I found she is publishing a deck of divination cards. It’s a fascinating project. She would use an old 19th-century ornithology book written by James Audubon, illustrated by his wife. Maria would read it at night before bed and in the morning would cut words into a divination.

Maria said she doesn’t believe in signs, but she believes in omens. I’m with her on that. As I was grieving unattainable friendships and strengthening the ones I have, I received her divination.

Reading her and discovering her Almanac of Birds: Divinations for Uncertain Days was an omen for me that I would fill my love cup with friendship, which I did and will continue to do.