Excursions

Often my daughter asks me the meaning of a word unknown to her. Which is fine, but she doesn’t stop at that. She wants me to enact the meaning too. Like today she wanted me to enact what a character “squealing” would sound like. Unfortunately, I’m neither that good at English nor at acting. Sigh!

I just got an external display in my workspace at home. I should have done this earlier, but I was afraid the large display will crowd the desk. On the contrary, I love this setup! It has instead freed up with so much space. Curious how something larger can occupy lesser.

My daughter just shushed me because I talked to her while she was engrossed in her adventure novel. Now even I want to read the book.

I love taking portrait shots of my daughter. Her expressions are the focus, and everything blurs away in the background. Anyway, what matters to me is my daughter’s smile or the lack of any. Each expression more priceless.

I hope to live my life in the same manner, in portrait mode. Put things that matter to me in focus. Blur the sidelines into the background. It might be messy around me. It always is. But to let it impact my perspective towards the moment or not is my choice.

So a friendly reminder for myself - put what matters in focus. Make the ugliness that surrounds me the blurred background. It may only heighten the charm of the moment.

And as with photography, not all perspectives can be portraits. But some certainly should.

For the last few days, I have been away from all the social timelines. No specific reason, just that life happened.

I love the visits to the library with my daughter. She loves spending time amidst the books – strolling through aisles, looking excitedly at the varied genres of books. Of course, she hasn’t read them all (duh!), but making her choose her book for the day is a difficult task.

According to a source, these questions “cover the full spectrum of human experience”. I don’t care if they do. I answer.

1. Best sandwich? Cheese Grilled
2. What’s one thing you own that you really should throw out? Boxes that old gadgets came packaged in.
3. What is the scariest animal? Spider
4. Apples or oranges? Oranges, any day. But I can’t get them every day.
5. Have you ever asked someone for their autograph? Yes. Brett Lee the famous Australian Cricketer. Indian players are hard to walk up to. I also want an autograph from many who make me feel starstruck.
6. What do you think happens when we die? Somewhere, a new chapter begins again.
7. Favorite action movie? The Bourne Identity
8. Favorite smell? Earthy smell after a fresh summer rain.
9. Least favourite smell? Spoiled eggs.
10. Exercise: worth it? Absolutely. But I don’t regularly.
11. Flat or sparkling? What’s sparkling?
12. Most used app on your phone? Photos
13. You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it? Abhi Mujh Me Kahin by Sonu Nigam
14. What number am I thinking of? 14 (this question I am answering)
15. Describe the rest of your life in 5 words. Aren’t those too many words?

(h/t Pete Moore)

Almost every morning, I get a notification from Day One reminding me of an entry I had made on this day in some previous year. It always brings a smile to my face. Most entries are from some 8-10 years back when my daughter was growing up. I am so pleased with myself that I have made these entries. I relive the charm and the excitement of spending time with a growing child.

There are no notifications that I look forward to more than the ones from Day One. This is a worthy investment, both the subscription cost and the cost in terms of time to note the entries. The words I might have found meaningless then read like a heartfelt memory today.

Excitement. Anticipation. Nervousness. A new job triggers all these within me, even after 15 years of knowing what it entails. Yesterday was one such day. I am looking forward to the next few days, months of a lot of expected and unexpected newness. A new role. A new phase.

With many avenues of tracking and improving my well-being already around me, I have decided to make the best use of them. I know I am not good at maintaining a healthy routine for any meaningful duration. Yet, I want to give myself another chance to succeed at forming one by constant nudges and tickles.

A reference to Whole Life Challenge (h/t Halsted Bernard) with its pointed question “What is healthy to you?” front and centre came in handy. The tagline, “don’t try to fit health and wellness into your life. Fit your life into the context of health and wellness” resonated with me. I always had the tools that allow me to track my progress towards a healthy lifestyle; with the recommendations from this challenge, I know what I need to track. I am not undertaking any challenge, but I am going to follow along.

So, I am tracking the seven habits – nutrition, hydrate, exercise, mobilise, sleep, well-being and reflect. With health apps from Samsung and Google, I make note of everything I eat, being cognisant of my diet. I don’t want to cut down on anything yet, but just understand what goes in. Keeping myself hydrated is not a problem I face, I drink enough water regularly.

Though I already do the running and stretching pretty regularly, I am now consciously walking while carrying out the daily chores instead of riding my motor scooter. Though I can’t sleep with a watch on, I now manually enter my hours of sleep. Sure, I miss out on the detailed reports of my sleep pattern, but this is better than nothing. With the bedtime mode scheduled on my smartphone, the screen goes greyscale, reminding me to rid myself of the clingy device. It helps!

Building a habit for well-being has been difficult for me. Meditation, the only well-being activity that I know of, never stuck. I can meditate, but I don’t do this with the right spirit. A constant thought of “am I doing this right” keeps pestering me throughout, and I know I’m not doing it right. Well, who knew there are other well-being practises too – picking up a book, reaching out to a friend or organising a disheveled space. Ah, now that I can do. And do well.

All said, these are early days. I am just a week into tracking these habits and I have already missed out on a couple each day. (I am using a wonderfully simple app, Loop Habit Tracker, to track these). But I am allowing myself the leniency.

This post was sent as an introduction for this week’s issue of my weekly newsletter. I have realized the updates I begin my newsletter with every week get lost once it is out. So I intend to publish these as individual posts also.