Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

Did God Block Us?

Sometimes it feels like life forgot to tell us something important.

These three poems started with that feeling and wandered through questions about God, identity, loneliness, and connection. I don't claim to have found any answers, but I found a few interesting questions.

Did God Block Us? is a trilogy of poems:
A Note in the Margin, Borrowed Language, and Part of What I Am Is Your Name.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

I Feel Very Ho Hum

Sometimes life isn't exciting. It's not a crisis, it's not depression, and it's not joy either. It's just the quiet middle. Lately I've been learning that balance may not feel as exhilarating as passion, but it might be just as important.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

When Mental Illness Became a Conversation

Mental illness used to be something people kept hidden. Today, it is part of a much larger public conversation. As someone living with Bipolar Disorder, I've witnessed firsthand how openness can reduce stigma and create understanding. But while we've become better at talking about mental health, many people still struggle to access the care they need. Awareness matters—but action matters too.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

dear nina, it’s me god—Repost

I don't know exactly what happened that morning. Was it mania? Was it a spiritual experience? Was it both? Years later, I still don't have a definitive answer. This is the story of the first time I heard a voice in my head, thought I was in Heaven, and began a journey that would eventually lead to a bipolar diagnosis.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

If My Body Had a Customer Complaint Department

If my body had a customer complaint department, it would be flooded with tickets. My knees are protesting, my memory is unreliable, and my back has apparently joined a labor union. A humorous look at the increasingly complicated relationship between me and the aging body I live in.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

The Olympics of Overthinking

Some people run marathons. Some people climb mountains. I spend my time imagining worst-case scenarios, replaying awkward moments, and preparing for conversations that may never happen. If overthinking were an Olympic sport, I'd be bringing home gold.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

The People I Almost Became

Have you ever wondered about the person you might have become? The therapist, the lawyer, the New Yorker, the parent, the version of yourself who made different choices. A reflection on alternate lives, unexpected paths, and finding contentment with the one life we actually get to live.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

The Exhaustion of Constant Self-Improvement

We are constantly told to be better, healthier, more productive, and more healed. But what if the endless pursuit of self-improvement is keeping us from appreciating who we already are? A reflection on wellness culture, therapy talk, and the freedom of accepting ourselves as imperfect humans.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

Somewhere Between a Song and a Scroll

Why do we keep listening to songs we’re tired of, watching one more episode, or scrolling long after we’ve stopped enjoying it? In this personal reflection, I explore our obsession with unfinished business, the comforts we chase, and the growing sense that technology can’t replace real human connection. Somewhere between a song and a scroll, I found myself longing for something much older: friendship, nature, and the simple comfort of being together.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

Somewhere Between Spirituality and Bollywood

Somewhere between the music, the food, and the inevitable questions about my marital status, I found myself reflecting on culture, identity, and what it means to belong. This essay explores the joy, pressure, spirituality, and pride woven into the experience of an Indian Sikh wedding.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

Aging and Other Humiliations

My body clicks, creaks, and occasionally injures itself for no apparent reason. Young people think I'm old, all blankets are now my favorite, and somehow I have wrinkles and pimples at the same time. Welcome to aging and the many humiliations that come with it.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

Maybe Happiness Is About Noticing

Happiness is complicated. Sometimes it feels impossible, especially when life becomes grief, exhaustion, and survival. In this piece, I reflect on caregiving, depression, healing, discipline, and the quiet realization that happiness can still exist beside pain. Maybe happiness is not something we find, but something we slowly learn to notice again.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

Narcissistic Interview—Repost

What possesses someone to interview themselves on their own blog?

Apparently… me.

This repost is equal parts confession, philosophy, ego, insecurity, humor, creativity, and complete emotional chaos. I talk about writing, Bipolar Disorder, meditation, attention-seeking, God, privacy, and why creating sometimes feels less like a hobby and more like survival.

Welcome inside my brain.

“Some of my best stories cannot be put on the page. They play in my heart.”

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

The Shape Of What We Are

Three poems about identity, divinity, and what it means to exist inside a universe that feels both endless and deeply personal.

These pieces explore the loneliness of being human, the possibility that we are all made of the same essence, and the strange idea that death may only be another transformation.

The Shape of What We Are is a meditation on selfhood, connection, and the quiet search for truth beneath everything we pretend to be.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

A Few Small Acts of Kindness

The smallest acts of kindness can stay with us for decades. A cashier’s patience, a stranger’s encouragement, a student wanting to protest for you, a person who makes you feel seen for five minutes in the middle of an ordinary day.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how disagreement does not erase humanity, and how kindness may be the only bridge we have left.

This piece is about the people I still remember because they were kind to me — and the kind of person I hope to become.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

My Emotional Support System Has Calories

Sometimes comfort comes in the form of melted cheese, oversized lattes, and desserts we know we probably shouldn’t eat. This is a reflection on emotional eating, modern food culture, and the complicated relationship between health, pleasure, guilt, and carbs. Funny, honest, and slightly hungry.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

Every App Is Holding Me Emotionally Hostage

Dating apps reject me, Netflix judges me, streaming services exhaust me, and somehow I still have 1,100 apps on my phone. This is a deeply personal investigation into how technology has emotionally manipulated me into subscriptions, scrolling, and questioning my entire existence through a weather app.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

My Attention Span Has Left The Building

Lately I’ve noticed I can’t sit with a thought for very long before I reach for my phone, music, or some kind of noise. Maybe I’m overstimulated. Maybe I’m lonely. Maybe we all are. This is a reflection on attention, modern life, and what happens when we stop fully inhabiting our moments.

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Nina Uppal Nina Uppal

Me: serving food and coffee and selling knives, bras, and children’s apparel...—Repost

I spent years serving food, selling bras, overpriced children’s clothes, and aggressively unnecessary knives while slowly realizing I was not built for retail capitalism. This repost is a collection of employment disasters, customer service trauma, awkward sales pitches, and the slow spiritual unraveling that happens when you’re forced to ask strangers, “Can I help you find anything?” every thirty seconds. If you’ve ever worked with the public, this one is for you.

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