Goodbye, I guess

This is a formal goodbye I guess, I think it is time I close this space and move on to other aspects of my life. Aspects that I can control and take care of, that I can deal with in a more productive way than what I am doing right now. This goodbye does not mean that I am giving up on this blog or anything of that kind (do I sound horribly defensive right now or what?). But in all honesty, I think it may be time for me to focus my energies in a much more deliberate way and the way I presume I can do that comfortably is to let go of things that take up a lot of time, sometimes with not much reason. This blog has helped me a lot over this time, but I think it may finally be time to move on and let myself explore new things.

One of the important things I am thinking of doing is coming back to this blog later, in the beginning of 2019 and start a weekly project where I set myself a theme every week and come up with posts for each of those weeks. It should ideally be a mix of different things like prose and poetry as well as a general post. I want it to be an intellectually stimulating exercise that produces work that I can confidently be proud of. This blog so far has given me a wonderful space to air out my thoughts and I know that when I come back to visit it later, I will be hit with memories, some good, some sad, but all of them valuable in their own right. I can only say at this moment that I am alone but I am strong and I will power myself through everything that is getting to me.

It gets really easy to feel overwhelmed all the time, I guess. There is so much going on, so many things that I am juggling on a day-to-day basis that, as my counsellor pointed it out to me during today’s session, I don’t get enough time with myself. I am not able to engage with myself as much I would need to and that shows in the way I treat myself, the utter negativity and toxicity that I throw at myself. I am extremely bad to myself and that reflects in everything I do, everyone I interact with. There is a deep fear and insecurity about myself that takes the front seat any time I get to do anything at all. And I feel that the only way to combat this would be for me to get my life somewhat in order, and that starts with eating and sleeping properly, cutting myself off from work that I don’t really enjoy doing and a few other things that I hope will help me get back on track with better mental health.

So this is a formal goodbye, and sentimentally, also a goodbye to the “me” that has been writing here all these days. It has been a good person but I (who is this, I wonder) think it can be better and it shall attempt to be better. A better person, a better friend, better daughter, a better student (is it quite funny that I am putting student later, almost like it is not of as much priority as the others? Maybe it is so?). So I am once again saying goodbye (like I haven’t said it a thousand times already), it has been a fascinating journey. Part of me is sad that I am not seeing this through to 366, part of me is also relieved that I am ending it now, part of me still cannot believe that this venture got to 303, it is quite a wonderful achievement and I am glad that I pulled through all this while. All that remains is to pull through the rest of the way. And I will, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

A Little Thinking

I absolutely hate the smog, I have always hated it with a passion that is equivalent to nothing else. The reason is my poor lung status, I have had wheezing and asthma for a major part of my life and I continue to do so and this smog isn’t really helping matters or making me feel happy just to breathe. Honestly, you’d think that the one thing humans can do quite easily and naturally is the one thing this smog is targeting. And people are inconsiderate and dumb enough to make it difficult for themselves and other humans to breathe. I hope the Delhi people choke and die someday, it makes me an asshole maybe but they’d deserve it.

I will be back timing this post (if that is even a word) but I actually posted it only on Thursday. So I had stopped writing this post yesterday because I was typing it on my phone and well, Anju aunty’s daughter might have kinda read the first line or two. I say this because she asked me if I wrote a diary and I had to awkwardly nod and say that I wrote different things at different points of time. I had gone to their house yesterday for Diwali and well, it was a very relaxing time. They did not have any celebrations per se, not fancy food or anything, they had a puja in the evening, but everything was really chilled. I had a good time, it was nice to just relax, sleep and laze around without any work to do. I did miss my home though because this is my first diwali away from home. Now I am back on campus and I have to admit, the campus is really lonely and quite isolating. No wonder, I feel extremely alone over here and it is not for lack of trying, but genuinely, I think I am a loner at the end of the day (which is kinda ironical because I really need human company and I thrive with company and not alone).

I have been considering stopping these blog posts this week, they have been adding on to my stress because I am constantly worried that I won’t be able to post for the day. I know that I had a plan that I would get it to 365 but it is at 300 right now, this post is my 301st post and I think, I may have reached the end. I think it might be a better idea to concentrate my efforts to other things going on in my life, one of the most important things being my own dwindling self-esteem and will to exist. I think I need time to therapy myself, and help myself become a better person because there has never been a time where I have hated myself so often. I have come to resent myself and the worst part is, I think, I didn’t change, but my own attitude towards myself has changed dramatically. I need to do quite a bit of soul-searching and that cannot happen unless I actually make an effort. I won’t be bidding goodbye just yet, I will be posting until Saturday and when Sunday hits, it will be a new week and I will formally bid goodbye to this blog. I will come back maybe, next year. I have plans to actually do a meaningful blog rather than what I have done so far. I know that I will come back to read these and look back and think more about myself from time to time. But my next thing will probably be a weekly blog post where I will have a theme, some writing and other kinds of stuff. This is not goodbye yet, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

The I in WrIting

I think it can be argued that every text has a public, whether or not this public engages and interacts with it the way the author wants. In that case, even this blog has a public. What this public does with what I publish in this blog is completely out of hands, all I can claim about this writing is that I wrote it and that’s where my authority ends. I hold the authority in the sense that I control what goes on the pages/posts. This is an immense responsibility, regardless of the absolutely mundane and exaggerating that are being written about. 

I have always been passionate about writing, primarily because I found it to let me live a world I wanted to. Books gave me worlds but I wanted different worlds from the ones I found in books. I could not find what I wanted, so I created new ones for myself, filled with what I wanted and nothing more. I think I am so utterly tired that I am quite sure I had a few dreams in a short 10-minute nap I just gave myself. 

My head is aching and I am pretty sure I have an upset stomach but university life demands that I suck it up and deal with my problems like a strong child. And I do, I have been extremely tolerant and brave many times, I have pulled myself through difficult times and managed to hold on to my sanity through it all. So I tell myself all these things as I pack my things up and get ready for more studying and a night of work. 

Today, we workshopped a story I had written in my Introduction to Creative Writing class. I was left quite delighted, unexpectedly pleased because people had such nice things to say about it. I was quite not expecting that at all, in fact, in my head, I was convinced my story was the worst in the whole week and that people were going to be extremely savage and critical of what I had written. To get good comments, (and not to mention, extremely flattering compliments from both the TA and the professor) felt great. We could all do more with having such feelings in abundance, right?

And that’s my memory for the day.

(I) Better Work

The internet is not working at the moment and so I decided that since I could not access my readings, I might as well get started on my blog post for the day. But the problem is, I need the internet just to write my blog post. That realisation came moments after I jubilantly typed in my blog’s URL and was met with an error message that reminded me that my blog was not divorced from its very apparent virtual setting. I cannot help it, but sometimes reality evades me, not because I am a dreamer but because I am a slacker and I forget things, I forget that I exist a very material life, not in favour of a different kind of existence but a kind of non-existence. 

Writing as I do these days, I am met with a slightly unnerving realisation that I have started writing a lot like those theorists I am reading. Of course my ideas and thought processes are not half as complex (I am quite a pleb, so to speak) and my language not that complicated or elaborate, my vocabulary mediocre at best (and I am tempted to wonder if this was the humility topos speaking), but nevertheless, I end up writing long sentences and my analysing and close reading skills have also developed quite a bit. I am proud of that, yes, but I am also unnerved by it (not scared, but rather unnerved).

I have a lot of readings left to do and a lot of work to complete but I am writing this blog post now. But surprisingly, I am not plagued with the usual guilt that I normally would. In fact, I am not even feeling my general overwhelmedness. I am quite peaceful and calm, which can be an extremely foolish move at the moment because I really have a lot to get done. But I don’t feel that sinking feeling about my work, none of that hopelessness that I have come to accept as normal. So there’s that feeling of peace that is quite alien to me but which I am deeply appreciative of. 

I have been kicked out of my room earlier than usual because my roommate cannot tolerate light and sound when she’s sleeping and she wanted to sleep early today. I work the best while I am in my room but I have to leave when she comes to sleep. It is a bit of a shitty situation but I cannot help it at the moment, I did choose her as my roommate again this year. But I guess sitting in the common room is not that bad, it gives me a semblance of sociality, being surrounded by people who all seem like they are struggling too is a good ego boost, honestly. I am also meeting a professor tomorrow, I sought him out actually because I wanted to know things about translation and he responded quite nicely and asked me to meet him tomorrow afternoon. I am hoping that will go well. I am also getting through my work, little by little and I am hoping I shall get with at least some parts of it by tonight. Is that too much to ask for, really?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Raw Materials

Getting adequate sleep has become somewhat of a luxury these days. I find myself collapsing in the unlikeliest of places, falling asleep almost everywhere and embarrassing myself when I end up sleeping in the middle of doing something important. Even right now, I am extremely sleepy and I have readings to do. It is quite annoying because it feels like work never ends and the last week, I ended up leaving quite a bit of slack. So this weekend, I really need to work hard to get back on track. The thing with a course like Literary Theory is that all these texts mingle and talk and converse with each other. If you haven’t read any text, chances are you might get extremely lost in class.

I don’t like feeling lost in class because it makes me feel more dumber than I do on a daily basis. I then need to constantly tell myself, in quite an unconvincing way might I add, that I am not dumb. It just loses its meaning after a while, it just starts sounding extremely insincere and stupid. Anyway, it is not a big task to sound stupid, at least from my limited experience. I can sound extremely stupid without even trying, case in point, some of my own blog posts from the past and well, I still don’t know how this one is going to turn out so this one might add itself to that list. Regardless, I am quite stupid many times and today might just as well be one of those days.

What gives me some modicum of joy is the fact that I am quite wonderfully writing a story (around 500 words) every week. I have ended up writing quite a bit and that feels good, to have something to look at and say that I wrote them. Now, whether those are good pieces or not are yet to be seen. But regardless of the worth/value I assign them, they are still written pieces that can be worked on. They are extremely useful raw material and in the world of writing, raw material is great, it means there is something to work with. It takes a lot of pressure off the writer. You don’t feel as sad when you are not churning out something from time to time, you can work on stuff you started in a moment of inspiration (or compulsion, which is also a good inspiration sometimes, I feel) and never brought to fruition.

One of the primary problems with this blog itself is the fact that every day I write without much raw material to work with. The only raw material I have is the memories of the day and sometimes even that is extremely sketchy. With such a precarious position, it is quite no wonder that most of the time I have to force myself to type words. this compromises on stuff that I could be saying. It is really not about how frequently you’re producing, but rather, what you’re producing and how you’re producing. But anyway, this blog has been going on every day so far and hopefully shall continue to do that until the end of this year. Maybe next year, I can limit myself to weekly stuff. have a theme every week and write one post each time. It is all quite far off into the future and now is not the time to ponder over them. But nonetheless, sometimes the future and the raw material it promises, sound exciting and worth dreaming about, doesn’t it?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Writing Worth

I think one of the biggest challenges of writing a blog post every day is finding the motivation to write it as well as examining what happened during the day that could be used for the post. Of course, this is if quite a bit of thought goes into writing a blog post rather than being a plain stream of conscious writing. I tend more towards the latter, I have noticed, especially during times when I have university work to deal with. When I was home during the break, I had a lot of time to allow my thoughts to marinate in my head. Sometimes, I actually felt like what I was writing could be of potential worth and value in the world I was putting it out in. But of course, that is quite a crisis-inducing question to ask.

I ask myself a lot of these questions these days, I cannot help myself sometimes. It is like my brain decided that there are some hard truths I need to be forced to face and that it should be the ones that come to me at the hardest times. The worst part is, I am fully conscious of my brain trying to start the question and it is like I am so depraved that I want that pain, that crisis that will push me to completely lose it. There you go, I have said it. I have started fancying pain and crisis, I have romanticised it enough. This is my brain once again making me realise the hard truths. Who wants to admit that they like to see themselves in pain, to put themselves in pain? Not me for sure, I doubt there are many others who want that.

What does it mean to put something of value out into the world? What does it mean to write anything at all? How am I supposed to know that whatever I am writing, why, take for example, this blog post itself, how am I supposed to know that this post was meant to be written at all? That there is something worthy of being written and read in these words? I am pretty sure that there is going to be at least one person who could read what I am writing and wonder what made me write it in the first place. I wonder that enough about myself that it is not completely foreign for me to put myself in some unknown imaginary reader’s shoes. Well, I guess it is quite moot point right now to wonder, especially when I have already written 430 words. So there I go, wondering again, life has never been this confusing has it?

And that’s my memory for the day.

The Flow of Thought

Good news first, I got my period today. Now, there is absolutely no logical reason why I would welcome that painful experience in my life, but I do. Because it lays to rest some of the worries I had been having about my health while at university. The whole of my first year, I did not get my period even once. That meant that I went for a period of nearly 4-5 months without getting my period. It really messed with my head because my hormones were going everywhere (this I know in retrospect). So I am merely thankful that my period showed up on time, which means that I can be healthy and fine.

But here’s the bad part about these periods, cramps. I get horrible cramps and this month, I happened to get it on a weekend. What would I do if it came during a weekday? During class? There is so much at stake with the time my period shows up in and also, this is all contingent on my period deciding to be normal and show up every month. Another bad part about periods are my mood swings, they are quite funny in retrospect. but in their peak, they are important (even though I know I should not be taken seriously). I will switch from hating the whole human race to singing praises in a flash, and it is weird to see me spout hate because I generally am a loving, nice, happy person (even though my internet footprint as far as my blog is concerned is quite sad). I don’t really like the hormones controlling my brain like that, they make me feel out of control (which is again, quite weird, so hormones are not part of ‘me’? What?) Okay, enough crisis for a while, this is, but probably my period talking (and the fact that I am awake at 4am to write this blog after sleeping at around 12:30)

I do this a lot now, I wake up at crazy hours to write on the blog. But what worries me is the fact that this is not even a point in the semester when work piles like crazy. There are going to be much crazier points in the semester and I am genuinely afraid for the blog, will I be able to write every day? I probably need to reduce some kind of standard (assuming I have one at the present moment) of what makes a post. I probably will also have to put a check on how long I take to write this. I cannot afford to give myself too much time for this, for that will mean that I shall cut short on others’ times which would probably need to be prioritised. How long I take to write this is also quite contingent on me knowing what I want to write. Like right now, I am pretty much clueless and going with the flow (please get the pun), but maybe I need to start becoming more focused.

Also, I love my friends. They are the sweetest people on campus and I don’t know how I would survive without them at all. Talk about irony, I was just saying I need to be focused and brain decides to say something so utterly random. But I guess, that’s the greatest part, right? Thoughts travel so fast, they are wonderfully complex or simple, but they go everywhere (or can potentially do that). It gives me hope that there is always a chance that an imprisoned mind can set itself free, or can be set free (what is free, what is not, that’s a separate question in itself). Isn’t it truly marvellous?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Common Mistakes

Well, here’s the deal. I screw up a lot, I make too many mistakes because I do not know how to act and react in many situations. Case in point, when a message came from C, I was having dinner with my friends. One of my friends sees it and asks me a perfectly valid, innocent question, “who is it?” and I react immediately. I make a move to take my phone away from her, my face heats up (even though I don’t blush in the technical sense) and I end up escalating the issue enough that now, four other people know about it. And I feel like crying because I never intended for so many people to know and I cannot help but resent myself for my own stupidity and incompetence. In my defence though, this is the first time something like that has happened in my life and maybe hopefully, with more experience, I shall handle this much better.

But aside from that, I also have a tendency to do things I probably should not, all because I think I am doing someone something good. It is a case of misplaced generosity and it almost always comes back to bite my derriere, despite all my preparation to save myself from the inevitable pain in my derriere. But as I said, my interventional skills coupled with an exasperating memory (which can sometimes remember the dumbest things for ages and important things for a millisecond) is a disastrous combination that has left insane destruction in its wake before. Today, another such situation arose and well, I was so close to ruining everything for everyone. But I managed to somewhat control the situation and now, I think I should try my best to keep it there within the careful confines of rationality. Again, in my defence, I have never done this before and maybe hopefully, with more experience, I will handle it much better.

But aside from these completely sad states of existence is the fact that I keep on forgetting the simplest things. It could be something like forgetting my ID card and standing sadly in the mess during mealtime, it could quite literally be one of the so many things I do on a day-to-day basis. In fact, this blog post itself would not have been written had I persisted with my sleep. I have been doing that a lot lately, I end up sleeping as I am writing my post and I wake up much later, reminded of this endeavour I need to see to fruition and then I have to work again.

Sometimes I wonder how better my life would be if I were not obliged to write a blog post every day. But I also tell myself that we are near the end, almost, of this year. There are not many more months left, I have crossed a majority of it. Maybe I won’t continue this next year, or maybe I shall experiment with themes and things like that next year. But again, next year is still quite far off, nearer, but still far enough. And sometimes, I think, that is something we need to remind ourselves of. Sometimes boundaries are so thin, they can be non-existent. But that doesn’t mean the boundaries don’t exist. It is a very easy mistake to make, something I have made too many times, that has led me to quite a few situations, including the ones that happened today. Maybe I can take this as a lesson and move on?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Complicated Ordinariness and Extraordinariness

Today was probably one of the most unproductive days I have had in the recent past and that is saying a lot because my whole summer was a case study in unproductivity. But nevertheless, unproductivity is more starkly noticed when you have something to be productive about but you fail at that. I had a lot of work that I had to get done today but I did not get it done and now, I am quite obviously paying the price as I sit here, trying desperately to fight sleep (though I don’t know why I am this sleepy despite the fact that I slept a lot) and try and get something at least done. But I think that is going to fail, so I might as well just sleep after this blog post.

Which brings me to another thing that I worry about, this blog. I am afraid of how I shall maintain this blog as the semester progresses. It is just the first week, one of my professors is not even here yet so her class hasn’t started yet, and I am already drowning under the workload. I am not exactly very confident of the fact that I can do this, but I do know that I have gotten through this (if not exactly, but still a form of this) before and I have the strength within me for that. All I have to do is find it and channel it properly and pray that I become a great person as an added bonus. Sometimes I wonder if there is anything I can do to make me a great person and not generally meh. I don’t necessarily think that being ordinary or average is bad (regardless of the baggage that the terms generally come with). But I cannot help but wonder how different it would have been if I were not so, if there was something extraordinary, if you will, about me. It is not exactly a very great doubt to have because it throws my self-esteem into jeopardy almost all the time. And my self-esteem is not the greatest anyway. So you take something that was already at level -1 and send it on to level -6 or something.

That reminds me, I have still not received a reply from him and well, I don’t know how to deal with it, to be honest. I don’t want to give myself hope only for it to come crashing down, so right now, I am focussing on not thinking about these kinds of things. Because when you like someone or have a crush on someone, you do tend to become quite obsessed with them. For me, this physical distance means that I have to try and not let that obsession anywhere near me because it is pointless and shall never achieve fruition. I am just really afraid because I have never really dealt with things like this before. The one time before this, I had too much going on, too much was at stake. And well, as I had written, I moved on and maybe that’s what will happen with this one too. But right now, hope is the cheeky thing that continues to flutter here and there inside my mind and well, as pleasant as the feeling is, the after-effects is something I don’t think I want to put myself through (they do say that romance is intoxicating).

But anyway, aside from that, I have been sleeping a lot lately. I don’t even know why I sleep so much or why I feel so sleepy all the time. The last couple of days, I have not been able to sleep properly because there were too many things running on my mind. As they continue to do, even right now. There are too many thoughts that are fighting for attention, to be called to be typed out onto the screen. I am afraid of my classes, if I will be able to do good enough in them for my professors to like me and think of me as a worthy student. Does that make me ‘brown-nosed’? I don’t really know, because I would not equate wanting to be liked by professors to stupidly slaving away for them and saying a ‘yes’ to everything they say or do. I don’t think that’s how I want to be liked by them. I would much rather have them like me as a consequence of my smartness. But I am ordinary after all, so there’s that dilemma. Why is everything in life so complicated?

And that’s my memory for the day.

Defeat, Pain, and Progress

I am extremely exhausted today, I managed to fall asleep without writing a post, finally waking up just now, at 2:20am, to write this. My brain is still half-asleep and my hands are weirdly typing around, it feels quite stupid to be writing this. But then, that has always been the deal with all my posts on days I was completely exhausted. Part of the experience is the weirdness I feel in doing this, the times when I feel like I cannot feel the tip of my fingers and every word comes out with an error that my laptop’s autocorrect finally corrects for me. Sometimes, I feel extremely demotivated by the comments of others, when they point out the pointlessness of my whole blog. People don’t really understand why this blog matters to me, why I put myself through a lot sometimes, just to write these posts.

I have stayed awake until stupid hours, I have fallen asleep and woken myself up at ungodly hours, prioritised this sometimes at the cost of doing my readings, I have written this blog through times of intense writers’ block that ruined my mental health, I have put myself through a lot to boast now of having done these many posts. But people don’t get it, they tried but they didn’t get it. There had been times when my blog had become somewhat of a joke, something to tease me about. Sometimes, I don’t really get it too, why I am writing this blog, what made me hold on so desperately to it, made me write every day for nearly 8 months. It is inexplicable, it is beautiful, it is painful, but it is still an experience very uniquely mine.

That is actually my definition for my whole life. Life inevitably ends up having heartbreak, having pain, having spellbinding beauty and grace, having inexplicable joy. Despite its many contradicting tendencies, everyone’s life is an experience, unique to their predicament, unique to them. It follows then, that it is useless to compare yourself with someone else, no matter how tempting that can be. This is with respect to everything, but especially with progress, because it is with respect to progress only that most comparisons take place. You perceive yourself as having done the same amount of work as someone else, with half the results, or (quite less frequently) twice the results. It is useless, petty even, this exercise. I want to learn to play an instrument, I am learning the keyboard by myself and I realised today that I had made some insane progress, more than what ‘others’ typically have. While that was extremely flattering for my ego, it was also harmful, to compare. There is a difference between being confident and being arrogantly confident, arrogance makes you someone who cannot accept it when things don’t go your way. And the last thing I want to be is arrogant (even though I am guilty of being arrogant many times).

Arrogance makes it difficult for you to learn anything at all. I want to learn to play the flute and I read that learning to play the flute was difficult, especially flutes like the Carnatic flute. That immediately threw me into doubt, I didn’t know if taking the course this semester was a good idea. The thing is, there is also a singing co-curricular that I am interested in, Carnatic vocals, and that is what is causing my confusion at the moment. On one hand, the opportunity to learn an instrument, one I have always wanted to learn, starting from absolute zero level, an instrument that is said to be difficult to learn to play. On the other hand, I have the opportunity to continue with a course I have already done before, starting from a comfortable level of singing, one I have always wanted to learn but can learn in other ways as of now, that I didn’t really find difficult. In the spirit of university, I am going to go with the Carnatic flute, and I am hoping I won’t regret my decision.

In fact, that is part of my arrogant self speaking, it cannot bear the thought of being horrible at something because it has drawn a comfortable dream in its head, of being at least somewhat good at the instrument. It perceives that it is good at singing, hence it has it as a plan B, if it fails miserably at learning the flute. But I hope I won’t leave the course even if I embarrass myself beyond repair in the first class, because it is important sometimes to accept crushing and humiliating defeat, for it helps you improve and to progress. In fact, that is something I have taken into mind now, especially after a few things that have happened, that are happening. With respect to my blog, despite these horrible timings, I am not ready to accept my defeat yet. In a way, I have accepted defeat by admitting to my flaws in keeping up with this blog, the problems I faced and continue to face. But it is not time to give up yet, I shall fight and push and progress because I have realised that there is no other way I know to live my uniquely defined life. That is adequate, I suppose?

And that’s my memory for the day.