Excursions

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.

I have too many hobbies or interests that I want to undertake, much more than my schedule allows. I enjoy reading articles from the feeds/newsletters I subscribe to, reading/listening to books, interacting with social media posts, writing and coding on small projects. Even if I club the first three above as reading, it leaves me with many options. I am not even counting the unplanned movie show or wish to doodle. Today I decided I want to address this.

As I scoured the internet (mainly Reddit and YouTube) to find the solution to this not-so-uncommon problem, one suggestion I kept hitting against was to reduce the list. As Cal Newport suggests, I should have a primary and a secondary hobby. Anything more than that and “the overhead counterbalances the value the activity brings.

So what do I want to get rid of?

I do not think reading is something I can stop doing. I enjoy reading this, that and everything. After many trials, I have finally arrived at an effective setup for my reading process. Someday I will go into the details of this setup. But overall, I do not want to eliminate any of that.

Is writing even a hobby anymore? I do this as part of my daily routine and a winding down activity. I need not find time for this. I already have. And hence even this ain’t a problem.

So how do I juggle everything I want but haven’t got time to pick? The search for a solution continues.

Who knew iOS had built-in background sounds for rain, ocean, stream and few others? Plays even while playing music or podcasts or when the device is locked. Wonderful! Available under Settings > Accessibility > Audio Visual > Background Sounds (h/t Recommendo)

Tile. And not much else. #mbmar

If only it was this simple to zip some mouths. #mbmar

One of the questions people like to ask lexicographers is this: Can you sneak something into the dictionary?

Source - Dord: How a Non-Word Made it into the Dictionary →

I have stopped using YouTube on my phone for quite some time now. Even my iPad and laptop, I use it very carefully. I do not like what it has become, especially the home page. Google’s aggressive recommendations and creator’s ability to game it have made it home to clickbaity and idiotic content.

Google wants to make YouTube addictive, and I want to fight back. Here’s the way that worked for me.

I either access the video directly (if I know what I want to watch) or browse my Subscriptions page (when I don’t know what to watch). The home page is useless without history turned on. And so are other recommendations. Trust me; you do not want them.

Well, Google has managed to ruin the subscriptions screen too.

As if the recommendations for sensational videos weren’t bad, Google found another way to spike engagement or our addiction to the app - shorts. I have been vocal about my dislike for this form of content.

What’s worse is that Google seems to be aggressively pushing it on creators, making it more profitable in some manner. Now my subscription page is full of short videos, with no way to filter them out.

The high-quality videos are getting lost in this drivel of mindless shorts, even from the creators I respect. I do not know how some of the most intelligent minds are ok with this. I have seen this play out to written words – the long-form essays are lost amidst the hot takes and rants on social timelines.

Google has done the same to the last sane space on the platform. I can now simply get rid of my usage of this platform altogether.

Congratulations, Google, and thank you!