Notes to self

A set of reminders for a better everyday.

1.) Focus on being present in the moment . This has been a recurrent theme in my blog of late too. Learning the art of doing this from 14-month-old D.

2.) Set apart time for fitness. Work out at home, resume yoga, meditate for a while, go for a walk. Was regular with this but been lethargic ever since I got home to be with parents.

3.) Read good books. And read more often.

4.) Listen to music. Surprised that this is on the list because this is the one thing I used to do all the time. Now, though, my phone’s always on mute but I do play music in the background when D is eating or playing. But it’s mostly devotional or classical music, thanks to my family. Maybe pick different kinds of music too, so D is exposed to more variety.

5.) Mindless social media surfing needs to stop. My fingers and wrist hurt after a point!

6.) Start driving your car. Enough with the excuses and the baseless fears.

7.) Wear sarees more often, and learn to drape with more finesse. On a similar note, wear good clothes, give away stuff you don’t wear. Been doing this in regular intervals but wardrobe optimisation is a life-long process.

8.) Focus on self care. Seriously. It’s about time. Treat yourself to a good hair cut or a pedicure every few months at least.

9.) Practice patience. Easier said than done especially for someone like me who’s most impatient. But, but, I’m already doing a lot better than the last few weeks ever since I felt myself spiralling out of control. Point number 1 , aka, mindfulness, has helped.

10.) Get on top of your finances. Pending PF withdrawals, invoices, investment status, mutual fund returns, SIPs… get them all sorted one by one.

11.) Pick your projects. I’ve been turning down out a lot of work that’s come my way these days because I realise it’s not important now. Maybe it’s a good idea to say an outright No rather than reeling under the pressure once you’ve agreed to take on said work and then opting out. I want to spend more time with D. She’s my number one. Work scene seems more manageable now.

12.) Ask for help. You can’t and don’t have to do everything yourself. I can count on family and friends to help with babycare and more or just talk.

13.) Stay in touch with friends. And get out more to meet them. Also don’t shy away from forging new friendships.

14.) Do things you love. Sing, bake, cook, paint, photograph, write, work, laugh, play with abandon, with passion and zero expectations. And don’t think about how you’ll be perceived or if you’re good or bad. Treat everything as an opportunity to learn. Try it without holding back. Without seeking validation.

15.) stay grateful and positive. You are in a god place.

16.) Cut yourself some slack. It’s all right.

New year, same me

I’m not big on New Year Resolutions, but the last year has revealed several aspects of my personality I hadn’t encountered in a long time. Anger, frustration, anxiety, also unbridled joy and love – having a baby brought a whole lot of big big feelings and emotions to the fore. So I really feel the need to sit back, take stock and put it all into writing. It’s my version of therapy. So here’s a laundry list to help get myself back on track.

Exercise

This tops the list for various reasons: I need the endorphins because baby care drives me up the wall on some days. I quite enjoy working out but haven’t done any hard core exercises so far, so this might be the year of high intensity strength training work outs. God knows I need all that physical strength and endurance. Surgery has left me with a weak back and there have been times when I’ve hurt my legs and back sleeping or just standing or sitting. I kid you not. I toss from sleeping on one side ( night time nursing is no fun but slightly bearable this way) to getting flat on my back and my body literally creaks and goes: whoa, easy there! Literally a wake up call ( pun intended). When sleeping has turned into an injury-causing activity, you know it’s time. I do not like gyms so I’m just going to resume my runs and work out at home. Any good YouTube channels and app recommendations are welcome.

Self care

I spend my day in atrocious clothes, my skin is dry and scaly (why you do this Hyderabad) and my hair is messy, wiry and has a mind of its own. My self care aspirations are hence very basic – moisturise every day, oil hair, use good conditioner, brush hair. Yes, the bar is set really low. If I manage to have a consistent night skin care regimen (cleanse-tone-serum) then I’d have outdone myself, but I’m the least disciplined when it comes to stuff like this. Moisturising seems like a chore to me, that’s like five minutes of my time I’d rather have spent scrolling through my Instagram feed. But I need to muster the self discipline to do this because I kind of care about how I look. To some extent. I’m always such a mess so it seems like I don’t give a damn but I do. So this year, I might be putting in more effort into looking like a decently turned out human being, because I don’t want to look like I stole someone else’s baby.

Declutter

I’m passionate about cleaning up and sorting out the house; I get wildly excited about it, and rub my hands in glee just anticipating the whole process. It started when I was still in school, this obsession with cleaning, sorting, purging, rearranging, and it’s still going strong. M probably thinks I display serial-killer type tendencies what with the mad glint in my eye when I talk about spending the weekend tidying up the home.

But despite this, my house is full of stuff. I can never be a minimalist because I live with a hoarder and a baby. M’s strategy involves buying anything and everything that’s on sale irrespective of whether we need it. We have multiple shelves lined with toiletries that’ll probably last us a lifetime. A cabinet full of single malt bottles. A cupboard full of glasses. A bag full of old credit cards. Drawers filled with cables, endless loops of wires, cardboard boxes, batteries, remote controls, screws. I’m perhaps marginally better, but the home decor section is my kryptonite. Can not resist pretty kitchenware, bed linen and the likes. And also cannot stop buying cute dresses for D. Time to channel my inner Mary Kondo and give away things that don’t spark joy.

This year, I vow to buy less and give more.

Don’t judge

Im prone to making snap judgments about people without knowing zilch about them. This has to stop. It might help to get to understand them better and be more accepting of different points of view. This judging thing is coming directly in the way of my other goal of making new friends and rekindling old friendships.

Nurture friendships

I really thought it’d be easy to nurture friendships but it takes effort. I hadn’t really thought of it, maybe even took my friends for granted at some point, but it dawned on me after I hit 30 that things aren’t quite the same. People change, they grow, evolve, and your friendship must provide that space for it to sustain and remain healthy. At the same time, it’s equally important to put yourself out there and connect with newer people. I thought of myself as an introvert but I kind of thrive in the company of like minded people, so I must make it a point to engage with my friends – both old and new – because it makes me happy.

Develop a hobby

Raising a baby leaves me with little time to do anything else of merit but I realise that when I’m overwhelmed, even ten minutes away from the offspring helps. So it makes sense to use my breaks wisely instead of staring at my phone. I used to be clued into the music scene, now I hardly know what’s going on or who the new artistes are, so time to reacquaint myself with new music and old favourites. I must also read more. And bake more. Do a bit of gardening. Give my attempt at painting another shot. Resume music lessons. Take online courses. Get into yoga. Or photography. Take up interesting freelance work. The key is to stay inspired, maybe D will pick up my vibe too.

Stay calm

I cannot tell you just how angry and frustrated I get if D doesn’t calm down or if she refuses to sleep no matter what I do. Most of that anger is kind of directed at myself for failing at such a simple task, and at that point it’s hard to see that I’m asking too much of a ten month old baby. It’s ridiculous. I must absolutely calm the fuck down! It’s true that as babies grow older, they feed off your energy, so it’s important that you pass on only good vibes. This year, I’m going to focus on letting go of anger, resentment and guilt, and aim to be a much calmer and positive person. Maybe give meditation a shot once again or develop my own strategies to cope with negativity. Time to get my zen mode on and be a much better version of myself this year onwards.

And you, what are your personal goals for the new year?

Wishful thinking

I realise that I don’t have a ‘best friend’, so to speak, and it bothers me sometimes. I’m usually pretty good at staying in touch with people I love, but somehow I seem to have lost contact with my school friends and most of my college friends. It wasn’t a deliberate attempt at cutting people off but I’d have loved to preserve these friendships and nurture them, if you will.

I’ve shifted several cities, about 3 at least in the last 5-6 years, and while I’ve always had people to hang out with, finding new friends who are keepers, has been tough. I don’t know if this has to do with age ( inching towards mid thirties) or my choice of friends but things tend to fizzle out after a point. Sometimes I feel that I’m not putting in enough effort into these relationships, and sometimes these new friendships fade out despite my best efforts. It’s a two way street, at the end of the day.

I have a little daughter now and I’d love for her to have cool aunts and uncles to spend time with. My family ( parents, grandparents, mom in law and M of course) has been my rock, really, despite all the turbulence that lasted several years leading up to my wedding, sure, we disagree on a lot of things and have heated arguments but the kind of unconditional love and support from them has been beyond anything I could hope for. Yet, my friends and cousins are largely missing from the picture. I sometimes wish I had a more close knit support system – you know like friends who are family, and cousins who are like your own siblings. As a family, we’re quite distant – most of my extended family can be volatile and condescending and I’m not particularly close to anyone in the fam, for above mentioned reasons. Besides, I moved to a new city just a month or two prior to my pregnancy and couldn’t take up a full time job, so no work friends either. And work friends have been the only kind of friends I’ve had over the last few years. I can’t afford to sink into loneliness and feel like I’m friendless in a strange city. I understand that everyone’s busy with their lives, but I’ve come to value human connection to a great extent, and miss it sorely, at times.

I say all this because I want a far better community for D. I want her to be surrounded by people who love her and care for her ( apart from her parents that is) unconditionally. I want us to go on holidays with families and friends, celebrate festivals with loved ones, have friends and family visit us often and have this wonderful bond with them. I want her to know and believe that she is loved, cared for and has an army of people she can trust and lean on. It’s something I never had ( given that everyone at home and the extended family was conspiring against me for a while) but I don’t think it’s a big ask.

This is one big rambly, rant-y post and I want to delete it completely but letting it stay just for the heck for it. So excuse me while I go hunt for a local BFF and douse this fleeting sense of worthlessness in some coffee and cake.

Pet peeves 4: Friends who are ‘busy’

People, especially friends, who do not return a phone call or respond to a message deserve a special kind of hell. It puts me in that grey zone where I’m suddenly not sure what page I’m on with said person. It has happened to me so many times over the last year that sometimes I wonder if it’s worth clinging on to certain friendships or relationships.

For instance, I usually call my friends to wish them on their birthday, and if they’re busy or don’t respond immediately, I drop them a message. Now, how difficult is it really to reply to a Whatsapp message? A mere ‘thank you’ won’t hurt, right? But I’m met with deafening silence for days, weeks, even months, sometimes. And suddenly the person emerges out of thin air pretending that all is all, and being the frightfully prompt person that I am, I respond at once, although a part of me nudges me to play it cool and ignore the person for a while.

Last year, for example, I’d been trying to contact a friend who I am close to; called her some four times over a span of 3 months. No response. Not even a text explaining why she couldn’t take the call or what she’s been up to. Then she shows up in my city for a wedding and decides we must catch up, and when I bring to her notice that I’d called her and texted her, she just shrugs and says, ‘oh really?’. And then lame excuses start coming up: ‘I was unwell’, ‘I was busy’; and the issue is eventually sidestepped in an attempt to keep the conversation going.

I have taken calls and responded to mails and messages right after my surgery once I was shifted from the ICU, and even when I was in the thick of clinical depression a few years ago, I would be prompt with people. Which is why it’s hard for me to comprehend why some people are the way they are.

I do not particularly think these friends hate me or that they don’t value my time and friendship, but I guess it’s how they are as people – they tend not to make a big deal of it if a call is not returned or a message is not replied to. Being the Type A person that I am, I like to get down to it as soon as I can, not just because it’s basic courtesy, but also because I genuinely enjoy these interactions and love these people; so no matter how busy I am, I’ll make time for it because it’s a priority for me.

But I’m aware that not everyone is wired that way; most of my friends struggle with time management and sorting out their priorities, so they can be all over the place, thanks to poor planning. So while I set apart time to catch a dinner with friends after a ten-hour work day and a 3-hour daily commute (this was back in Delhi), make breakfast, pack our lunches, attend press conferences and what not, some of my friends complain about how long and tiring their day has been when they’ve only worked five hours at an office that’s probably ten minutes away from home. And their low threshold for ‘busy-ness’ and ‘tiredness’ gets to me; makes me want to shake them up and say, you’ve got to push yourself a bit more man!

My blood would boil when I see their barrage of posts on social media – Facebook and Instagram, specifically; well, how about returning that call or replying to that message? Suddenly you’re not so busy? Yeah, I’m probably psychotic about this.

I’m torn between calling them out on this shit and evading it for the sake of friendship. I do taunt them occasionally but I’m careful to keep it lighthearted because I don’t want to come across as an emo drama queen who’s touchy about trivial things. How do you deal with situations like these?

 

Blame it on the TV

There’s a 40-inch flat-screen TV in my living room. It’s bang in the middle, the centre of attraction. Every thing else in the room is kind of arranged around it.

When I really think about it, it seems downright silly and ridiculous that something as pointless as a TV should be the highlight of the room. And it’s becoming a bit of a problem for me. Because every time we have a party at home or have friends over, at some point in the conversation, M is playing music really loudly through the home theatre system and choosing songs from the TV screen through the Western Digital thing.

Of course, he’s cute and oh-so-savvy. But you know what happens immediately after that? People stop talking. They are glued to the TV. They are more particular about what song to play next, what artiste to choose, then someone wants to watch a music video, then a movie. Soon, people are trying to connect their phones to the TV or play songs through their bluetooth.

I like it when conversations flow freely and easily. And I hate my smug TV for bringing all this camaraderie to a screeching halt. Maybe I should move it to the bedroom but that again is terrible because it interferes with sleep quality. I keep telling M that we should simply play music in the background and make our conversations the real hero, not technology. Maybe someday he’ll listen. These men, I tell you.