Excursions

Sky flies! #stories

I read a post today that I had written around 15 years ago. Reading my words from yesteryears, especially from my early days of blogging, reminds me every time how fearless I was in expressing what I had in mind. Not everything I wrote made sense. But it wasn’t bogged down by a fear of correctness.

Correctness of idea. Of language. Of grammar. Of words.

Is my #writing susceptible to that fear now? I hope not because, to me, it needs to be free-flowing. Sure, I am more alert to the mistakes in my use of the language. Or of words. But that’s bound to happen naturally over years of reading and writing.

This reminds me of a nice quote from an Indian actor I respect, Pankaj Tripathi. He was talking about how fame and money have changed the artist in him. An artist, he said, is much more courageous and adventurous when they are new and lack money. Their experience, popularity and earnings make them powerful but timid.

I believe the same applies to one’s experience with writing words. What I gained in correctness, I likely lost in courage.

So, which version of the self do I enjoy reading more? I like to believe that my writing has improved over these years. I am no master, but I am not an amateur either. Even though I am not the same fearless blogger from the past, I don’t mind this slightly mindful version of myself.

One productivity hack I have read the most often is just to get started. Not to wait for inspiration or motivation. Not to procrastinate. Even with writing, or any art form, many often allude to the importance of blank canvas.

Stare at the page; one’s mind will soon start filling it up with colours. Or words, in my case.

It has worked for me, too, for the last few weeks. The posts eventually happen when I make myself available in front of the laptop. With me travelling and visiting my cousins for the last few days, no surprise they didn’t.

It was a welcome and much-needed break. I visited Mumbai, a place that I have a love-hate relationship with.

On the one hand, I love spending time with my cousins. The togetherness lends me a reset when I can forget all the stress and burdens of daily #life. Over the food we love and the memories that we chatter about. As time passes, the animated environment gives way to moments of real connection. As individuals find corners where they catch up on others’ lives, I get surrounded by mumbles. But soon, as someone invariably gets hungry, everyone regroups, and the surroundings get filled with laughter again. This cycle continues throughout the day and late into the night.

Nothing’s more comforting than spending time with people you bond with.

But then I hate Mumbai when I need to visit the city. It’s too lively for my liking. Everyone’s moving too fast. Every place is too crowded. No one has time to pause. And if I do, I face a lot of glares from the Mumbaikars. This includes my cousins too. Why the hell will you do that - stop?

Some cities want you to pause and absorb their essence. Mumbai is not that city. It wants, needs you to match up with its speed. I struggle to do that. And I struggled this time, too. I returned home exhausted, drenched with the pressure of meeting the city’s high lifestyle standards.

As I lay tired in bed, there was a moment when I attempted to push myself to publish something. Anything. But I have already conceded that this place won’t follow a schedule. This place isn’t a journal that I need to update daily. This place isn’t a newsletter that needs to stick to a schedule. This place is my blank canvas.

I attempted to watch Netflix’s new docuseries “MH370: The Plane That Disappeared” - and it’s absolutely terrible. It gives focus to too many characters, goes all over the places and never returns back.

I don’t even know what’s the story they want to tell. It’s not what happened to the plane or who is responsible or even how it affected the people related to the passengers on-board. It tries to do all of it and does half-assed job at each.

I would recommend listening to the podcast episode on this topic by Stuff You Should Know. They do a far better job at explaining the mystery than this supposed to be well-produced documentary by Netflix.

I had heard a folktale as a child that I still love. The morale it narrates is loosely translated as “an entire tub full cannot retrieve what the drop took away”. But the real takeaway from the tale was to be wary of one’s instinctive reactions.

The spontaneous reactions taken in anger are as instinctive as instinctive can get. In that sense, anger is destructive. Rebounding from the aftermath that an angry reaction leaves behind is no painless task. It doesn’t matter how much one attempts to recover what was lost; the scarred mind cannot be easily healed.

Because anger scars both people, even the one who gets angry.

Hence I have moulded myself to not give in to the instinct when angry. I remind myself that my brain is muddled, and the best action I can take is to walk away and take a few deep breaths. It avoids ruining the remaining day for the other person and me.

Don’t recover. Resist.

I love USB C standard for charging - one cable at a fixed places charges everything throughout the day. My work and personal laptop, iPad, earphones, headphones, speaker. And my phone. Thank god i don’t use iPhone.

Today got as frustrating as the working days can get, shaking my confidence in my capabilities to the core. As I signed off for the day, I was left numb.

I toiled hard, but the circumstances fought back stronger. Key people went on unplanned leave. Approvals got delayed. Core systems faced unplanned downtimes. Folks got under undue pressure, and they began rubbing it off others.

The last one on the list of unfortunate events above is the worse. I hate when people do that.

Work one gets assigned can be delegated. Shared. Pressure shouldn’t be.

I am generally a lot more organized while handling my tasks with a clear goal for the day. But it gets frustrating when people pollute my day with their priorities. When they devalue my time because they can’t value theirs.

What’s even more frustrating is that in a corporate world, there’s just no way out of this at times.

As the day progressed, I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of tasks left untouched, the tasks that I should have worked on instead. The third day running of missed daily goals and the list keeps piling up.

Fingers crossed, tomorrow dawns better. That I manage to put my head down and pull my messed-up productivity out of the rut.

Silence is golden. Amidst friends, it is not. →

It was Holi today, and I was surrounded by friends or people I knew once as friends. Yet there was hardly anyone I could walk up to and converse with without things getting awkward pretty soon. I knew then that some threads between us were broken.

Silence is golden. Amidst friends, it is not.

It was Holi today, and I was surrounded by friends or people I knew once as friends. Yet there was hardly anyone I could walk up to and converse with without things getting awkward pretty soon. I knew then that some threads were broken within us. Some memories were lost. Some part of me was forgotten.

I won’t be too self-critical by blaming myself. Such has been the #life for the last few years that there has hardly been time to peer beyond the bounds of the close family.

The pandemic locked us in our houses. And we forgot what we had left out.

I have been attempting to come back to normalcy slowly. It was exactly a year ago when I reconnected with my extended family. My cousins. It was the same occasion as today when I’d welcomed them home. We’d made some of the best memories and relived them again today.

Memories. Such a remarkable aspect of our lives this is. Say it aloud, and many would come rushing at you, leaving you drenched with giddiness.

Many did come rushing at me today. Memories from yesteryears when I had spent some wonderful moments with these people around me. But instead of leaving me giddy, they left me wretched. Miserable. Angry that I let the threads break. Break they did because friendship needs holding on to – the tighter you do, the stronger it grows.

I aim to correct this - I won’t remain silent when I meet these folks for Holi the next year.

I knowingly broke a streak today – I didn’t upload a photo as part of a monthly challenge because I didn’t connect with the prompt. I was contributing anyway just for the sake of contributing – photos are not something I enjoy. I love taking photos, but I am not a master photographer. So why even try doing something daily that I don’t enjoy?

So neither didn’t I click a snap nor upload it.

I am also extremely tired today to spend any time writing significant nightly updates. So today, a quick observation will have to do.

I do not enjoy maintaining streaks. I do not enjoy taking photos without purpose. When tired, I cannot write anything profound. Or I cannot write. Period.