Day 4: Addiction

Just the second day and I am short of things to say. This morning, I caught myself thinking how much time I waste these days and decided to do a listing of how much time I spend doing various activities daily. In just a couple of days, I was looking at quite a few bitter revelations. I think there’s more unproductive time in my day these days than there’s productive. Of course, I could blame this on the funk I’ve been in, but even so, I need to change something very quickly for my own sanity. Isn’t confession the first step of change? So I’m laying it all out bare here, so whoever reads this page can also tell me how you deal with any (or all!) of these addictions that steal away our time:

- No prizes for guessing, the number one has to be the Internet.I swear, I have looked up symptoms of Internet addiction for my..ummm.. condition. It’s one thing to sit with a cup of tea and browse through your reading list or favourite blogs, but it’s entirely another to start reading a page, go back and click all the links in it and suddenly discover that the clock has moved 4 hours ahead. I don’t know what or how I am going to do something about this (I did think about giving up the broadband connection at home and shuddered immediately), but for now, I am thinking of trying to define some browsing time over the day and attempt to stick to that.

- When I’m not refreshing Twitter like a maniac or reading something off Thought Catalog, I’m day-dreaming about something and that, these days, changes into worrying about something or the other. I know. How very productive. I don’t know how one thing sets off another trail of things but I’m more than capable of always identifying and over-thinking about the worst outcome of all. This reeks of pessimism, I’m aware. It’s pretty recent and well, one of my more unpleasant addictions. I believe this has to do with having some extra time on my hands and these days, and should sort itself out when I get busier. I hope.

- Bad TV. Seriously. There’s something about sitting through episodes of Two and a Half Men or HIMYM or Grey’s Anatomy while being only half-aware of what’s going on. I think it just gives me a sense of being occupied with something when really, it doesn’t take up any active mindspace and I can just lie there being lazy and un-guilty about it. It’s getting so addictive that I don’t even really mind re-reruns and that’s just criminal waste of time.

- This one is so ironical I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. A large portion of my somewhat-productive (I really can’t decide) time goes into making To-Do Lists.  Long, elaborate lists that never get done.

Do any of you do these things and later regret them too? Any ideas?

Day 3: Celebration

I’ve been missing in action a long time and most of that can be attributed to just how many curve-balls life has thrown me the past few days. Before I let the whining take over, I will explain what brings me here. Some of the older blogger peeps whom I used to read rather religiously, like Monika and Rohini, have initiated an effort to come back to blogging and writing more regularly. I’ve been wanting to do just that and this seems like an opportunity where getting the oft-required nudge might be easier than finding self-motivation. However, given my current state of my mind and life, I am setting myself up for at least 20 days of blogging in December under this Blog Marathon and not all 31 (having missed 2 days already and setting real targets etc.) Here goes today’s post:

Yesterday, the husband A and I celebrated the third anniversary of our wedding day. Three years of being married and nearly six of having been together seem to have just fit into my life story like they were always supposed to, and yet my wedding day seems like a blurry memory from far far away. I don’t know if the learning curve in a marriage continues to be this steep when you step into, say, double digit years of being married to each other but so far, I can distinctly see how different I am as a person and a partner than I was three years ago.  I don’t think I have written about A very often, and I do dislike mushy public proclamations of love but this once, it doesn’t feel overt. Through many of my phases and moods and illnesses, he has been my rock and my best friend this year. I’m still going through a rather uncertain and stressful phase, and the one thing I never need to worry about is having his support in doing the right thing. With the hand I’ve been dealt, I am the weak one this time and as I lean on him to do the thinking and the motivating and the other tiring work these days, I cannot help but be thankful for him being who he is. My favourite memory of this year, grim like the tone of this post, has to be from August. Fighting the chicken pox and the fever and the headaches and the itchiness that come with it, I burst into tears and was crying pitifully unable to sleep one night. The meds were taking their time to ease my discomfort and I felt the worst ever. A, who must have been stressed and worried and tired like anyone dealing with a sick person at 3 a.m. will be, gave up on telling me practical things like trying to sleep, drinking more water and just started singing for me. It was so peaceful listening to him that I did manage to smile after a while and actually fall asleep. I woke up after a while to still find him humming and fell asleep again. It was a moment that will stay with me whenever I find myself being selfish and unreasonable with him.

Happy Anniversary to us

Avalanche

Of work and just random things to do. Yes, that’s what I feel like I’m battling these days. Over the past year, I have refrained from calling myself busy because it sounds funny to myself. How busy could I be, having eliminated long commutes (thanks to the new workplace being literally 5 minutes from home) and not having to deal with bosses that had no concept of personal life.. it’s ridiculous, really. But at the moment, it seems like while I’ve always been telling myself that those things were the real busy, another kind of busy seems to have been invented and well, I’m it. And what do you know, this is the real deal! Work – lots and lots and lots of it seems to be charging at me in waves and I think it’s time to accept that I’m very overwhelmed at times. It’s bringing out a new kind of crazy in me and if you know me well, you know that I don’t have the bandwidth for more types of crazy in me

What do I mean, you ask? (Play along if you didn’t ask.) Being a control freak of the most terrible kind, I often find myself having to choose to delegate or let go of things when the volume of work is so large. It’s not easy. Not the part where I have to delegate, but the part where I have to look like the asshole who delegates and then wants things done like they do it themselves. I can literally see the “Then do it yourself” thought cloud on people’s heads sometimes. And then there’s the thing about being severely disorganized. I think I have mentioned this on the blog before about, oh, only 456323 times that I have a List OCD. There are organized people, there are hyper-organized ones, there are micro-organizing folks and then there are those who need a list for everything. I am the one with this last condition. I honestly believe my short term memory has been shattered to pieces because of my urge to jot everything down.. I just can’t seem to commit to remember things anymore. If it’s not on the list, it’s not going to happen. At this moment, there are about 5 lists in my folder and I have 6 subscriptions to List-y websites. I think I need a list of all the lists I need to look at. Now, for the problem. When things are hitting you at 1 per millisecond and everything gets done over a few days, it’s possible to lose track of their progress and it’s also possible that you won’t have time to keep updating your pretty lists. This, needless to say, is driving me to an early grave. I wake up the next day and realize that something that should have been done yesterday is basically nowhere on anyone’s radar even today and probably can’t get started till tomorrow. It is The Worst Thing Ever.

So basically, I haven’t had the time to breathe and just sort my shit out. BUT, I’m going on a holiday Details will come later. Before the holiday begins, the biggest festival of the year for us arrives in the next 10 days. Durga Puja. To me, it means good food and a lot of fun and I’m quite looking forward to it. What I’m not looking forward to is even thinking about the packing for the two trips. Between the work (refer the first two paragraphs), the meager one-day weekends to unwind, the workouts, the little sorry bits I try to do around the house and the internet addiction, I have my hands full.

Don’t know when I’m going to be back around here, but today, just felt like saying it all out here. Didn’t quite care if it came out coherent. The one thing that prompted me? Someone seems to have read a gazillion posts from my archives yesterday and not left a single comment. I do that to a lot of bloggers, but probably, I’ll say a little hello next time

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come

I didn’t say that, Shakespeare did. But as today happens to be my birthday (cue inappropriate and illegally youthful hip hop number about how we’re going to party because it is my birthday), this seems to fit beautifully.

Last year, I didn’t write a birthday post but the year before, I wrote this one. I was turning 27 then.  I was freaking out about getting old. This year, there’s no reason to freak out because I’m already old. Hence, the quote. Well, it may be my last birthday in the twenties but it’s not all wrinkles and creaking bones, because there are always some merits of any age:

- If you were brought up to respect elders, well, it’s finally time for self-respect!

- If a dentist scared you earlier, pending pap smears should make a dental consultation visit feel like a trip to the candy shop.

- If people didn’t care for your opinions earlier, they still won’t but you can wave a fat finger at them and ramble “young people of today think..”

TWENTY NINE. ok maybe, I am freaking out a little. I promise not to if next year, we can all agree to call my birthday the first anniversary of my twenty ninth birthday and the second anniversary the year after that and so on. Crisis averted, Houston.

Jokes apart (LOLJK, the jokes never end), the last year has been quite the ride for me. It’s going to be a year since my Year of Debauchery ended abruptly and I had to actually get up for breakfast in the morning. This year – as I never tire of sympathy gaining tactics – has also been the year I have been sick the most. Specially the latter half with ear ailments and chicken pox and an eye issue that I *gasp* forgot to gross you out about. I have also lost five kilos over the last year and all of it on my own terms (I will NOT give up cheesecake), but I feel unfit in general. This year’s most wonderful travels were Spain and Bali. And overall, I think I have shouted at people a lot lesser this year – the fact that this has to be a separate point in my life’s round-up is a telling point of how much worse it was. But it has also been a year of pushing barriers and learning a few things – for that, I am happy. Yet, it feels like a birthday in waiting.. err, for the first anniversary of this day. Seriously, if turning 30 doesn’t make all of my wisdom teeth sprout at once, I’m going to be super disappointed.

So here’s my somewhat vague wishes for this all-important year (please don’t call me out on my “getting inspired” skills if you read that 27th birthday post):

One day at a time. Read more. Cook more. Remember to ask “what’s the worst that could happen?” Be kind. Everything else is negotiable.

Growing Up

Just gonna skip over the back-after-a-long-time spiel. I am shameless now.

The last couple of months have been pretty whirlwind. First work, then some travel and then chicken pox. I am one of those freaks who never had CP as a child. Even when forced to live under the same roof as a sibling who had a full blown case of it a decade and a half back. And boy, has it had its way with me! Not going to relive the horror of it all, but damn, it was pretty scary and nasty and I’m just glad that I’m back to health. 99%. Most of the rest of that 1% is coping with the deafening sound of my crashing ego regarding the I-never-get-sick “thing” I have had. Just never mention it to me again, bro.

So I’ve been under house arrest for over half a month now. That’s meant a lot of TV viewing and Temple Run and other mindless stuff, and basically nothing productive. I also like to wallow in self-loathing and say things like “why me? why now? why this? why like this?” and demand extra care. All in all, I am the fussiest person you could ever have to care for – just short of that awful Sheldon Cooper making Penny sing him that ridiculous poem. Not proud but not embarrassed either, because I know that’s how it is and I can’t change it The only good thing that came out of this sickness, therefore, is the fact that my husband sort of gave up having to do all the fussing alone and sought my mom’s help and I got to spend 10 days with her after a very long time. On another note, I don’t think she is ever visiting me again when I am sick. Well, win some lose some, right? Right.

I have realized that some times we are put in situations coming out of which makes us feel grown up in a very short time. Thinking back, it always happens like this. One of the realizations of this growing up has been knowing that even though we pretend otherwise, we are not really in charge of our lives. In our script of our next few days or weeks or months, “this” is always going to be “such a bad time to be sick”, but what’re you gonna do because it’s not up to you. You’re always going to be dying to get back to whatever it is you think you ought to be doing, but viruses don’t play by rule-books. In a funny, heavily medicated and poxy state, all this seemed rather humbling. We make it look like going with the flow is a choice we make, when it’s the only way everything is actually happening.

Some of the telling signs of having grown up is that I missed only all the boring things in the last few days. Y’know – work, workouts and shopping. Work because I was feeling really good about it just when I fell ill, and I do think that I am going to take some time getting back in the groove. Workouts because I am terribly disappointed about how much this will have set me back in the gym. I am really really slow at any progress with my cardio, and I just know that it’s not going to be easy even getting where I already was. Shopping because I am out of so many things that I need and because I have missed out on some of the good sales and well, because I had my eye on so many things that are likely gone by now

There’s another thing I wanted to write about, today. In all this staying home and not  being able to do much, I have subjected myself to an inordinate amount of social networking in the last few days. No, not excessive tweeting or blogging or facebooking, but just observing trends and discussions and virtual personalities. Let me just say that without the commensurate amount of alcohol in your system, it is not a very healthy exercise. It could be my disillusionment with the world at large, but I’m starting to feel that the online world is a bit of a two-dimensional matrix. The black-and-white opinions, the hyperbole, the lack of decency and space for debate, the presumed ownership of platforms, crass jokes making people short-term celebs and many other things have made it tiresome. I feel no inclination to engage in conversations beyond emails these days. I do not mean to seem holier than thou when I say this, because I’m sure someone could be finding me equally tiresome on the internet. But I do believe that the time has come for me to step back from it. I just need to decide between all these various media and stick with one that allows me to air my anyway-infrequent thoughts. Will decide on that soon.

In other news, it’s less than a month to my 29th birthday. Or, as I am starting to look at it, less than 13 months to my 30th I’m strangely looking forward to it. Yay!

Corollaries – II

I know who I want to be. I know how I want to be that person. The only problem seems to be in who I am.

This thought has been running through my head, as I make ambitious castles in the air. If only I could change everything I am, I can be everything I want to be

Life Update:

1. They say age doesn’t shock you, it sneaks up on you slowly. I think it’s happening in my case. Freak injuries and random ailments are getting harder to brush off nonchalantly and definitely impossible to ignore. Last month, I had an ankle acquire a sprain I didn’t do anything to earn. In the latest news, I’m suffering a blocked ear of all things on God’s green earth! I am told it’s all those q-tips I have been using obsessively. Funny bit? My voice echoes in my head and makes me realize how stupid I am. Le sigh. 

2. Work has been exciting and getting exciting-er. That is one thing I never thought I would say in this lifetime, but here it is.

3. House-help is on leave. Again. Most of my epiphanies have been happening washing dishes these days. Isn’t it amazing how little housework has been spoken of as The Great Leveler it is? Is it another patriarchal ploy, or just my own elitist thinking? I know people in many countries don’t have helpers for everyday work, but having always had easy access to it combined with most work being manual has made me so totally dependent on it that I feel sorry for myself. I know. That’s disgusting.

4. For the first time in my life, I have been recognized in real life off this blog. And very interestingly, too. About a few months back, I used to meet this girl from my building on my morning walks and we would smile at each other. She landed on my twitter page through the blog, where I have a picture of myself and wrote to me asking if I am who she thinks I am. I was so freaked out! So we’ve been reading our blogs a long time, and now we are neighbours! Haven’t yet had the time to meet her but I will, soon. If she’s okay with it, will post her blog link here. I’m sure most of you have seen her around online as well.

More next time. I have a train to catch. LOLJK, just moarr dishes to do.

End of the Beginning

Wow. Landed here after a really long while today, and noticed that it’s been over two months since I last posted. It certainly didn’t feel like that long. The past month has simply raced by.

I guess, I come back to the blog mostly when I have some thing to get out of my system. But sometimes, I come here to just be. Specially when I’m by myself, this space feels like a no-responsibilities zone.

It’s been an exhausting day. Bad news, bad decisions, bad temper. A precious lesson. Some damage control. Some keeping the hope.

Unwinding with music.

Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life. Actually the second.