ATTEMPT TO PROCRASTINATE PROCRASTINATION

Sticky notes, scraps of papers, markers and coloured pens – there I was, sitting muddled among piles of stationery and struggling to organize my thoughts. The clock struck 09:30 pm and I were still in a constant attempt to line up my tasks and start with this post. Alas! In my yet another battle against procrastination, I lost. At twelve in the midnight, I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling. Once again, I failed to defeat my biggest enemy, the procrastination monster.

Every year, I make a promise to my readers (more to myself) that I will be more regular with my posts, but I fail miserably. I guess that by now, you must have understood the reason of my long delays. Despite my continuous and futile efforts to procrastinate procrastination, I just couldn’t do it until the phrase ‘one fine day’ dawned on me.

It was just another ordinary day of my life. I was back from office and was in lookout for something that would soothe my tired senses. Suddenly, my eyes fell upon the pen and paper, which, in a hurry, I forgot to place at proper locations in the morning. And thank God I did so because that was the moment which brought me to my senses. Writing is, and will always remain, my passion. I forgot that pen and paper have been my best friends during my darkest hours.

Without any delay, I unfolded my writing desk and sat down to write with an enthusiasm equivalent to a child about to unwrap his birthday gifts. But, no sooner had the tip of my pen touched the paper, I felt my usual enemy – the procrastination monster – holding the pen. I sat there, battling hard with the monster. For a moment, I felt I would be defeated again, but I wasn't as that was my 'one fine day'.

I don't know what exactly propelled me - job dissatisfaction or the insults bellowed at me by my employer. I summoned all my courage for I suddenly became hell bent on defeating the monster that day. I succeeded. My joys knew no bounds, and I went dizzy with happiness. I thought of going out for a treat, but before that my readers of course needed praise. For you, my dear reader, it is just another post, but for me, it is my victory against the enemy that has chained me for days or perhaps for months.

However, as said by wise men, success is easy to attain but hard to sustain. I haven't given much thought to the 'how' part of my sustenance against procrastination. But, the one thing I do know is my sustenance is impossible without my readers' support. I hope that they will keep encouraging me as they have done always for my other posts and wish me luck so that I can always fight and win against my enemy - procrastination.

A TRIBUTE TO MY JOURNAL

Love, happiness, excitement, nervousness, hatred, anger, frustration and a lot more – my journal is a ‘pensieve’ that holds all my emotions besides my memories. I was in seventh standard when I started writing journal, which was in the year 2001. To be honest, I haven’t been able to visit it daily (something I’ve wished to do since a long time). But till today, my journal has been my only friend to stay with me through thick and thin.

Life doesn’t go easy on anyone but, it does grant a means of survival to everyone. This means of survival, be it a friend, hobby or anything, helps you to make it through the day. For me, it is my journal. This takes me back to the first episode of The Vampire Diaries’ very first season where Elena Gilbert sits beside a window and addresses her journal as ‘Dear Diary’. Yes, a diary is one of the dearest things to its owner. And why not? After all, this is the only place where incidents and feelings are entered unadulterated. There is no place for pretense.

However, when I started my journal, my purpose wasn’t exactly to report incidents. My sole purpose of writing journal was to improve my writing skills. But we got connected eventually. When I sat with it, all I could see was those blank pages eagerly waiting to be penned down with all I have in my heart and mid. When we were together, it listened to me so patiently. Anne Frank is so right. Paper is more patient than men.

From seventh standard till now, both my life and I have changed. In the last twelve years, I have metamorphosed from a nervous teenager to a confident spinster. So many things have changed except my love for my journal and its respect for my emotions. There have been times when I neglected it, even abandoned it for months. But, it never complained and every time I was back, I found the same warmth and love.

I am and will always be grateful to my journal for so many things. I’ll be grateful to it for helping me to maintain my integrity when other people have been losing theirs at such rapid pace. I’ll be grateful to it for helping me to believe in myself when others mercilessly broke my trust. My journal is and will always be my best friend.

P.S. – Before you start writing journal, find a good place to hide it, especially from your siblings. ;) J

EAT, PRAY, LOVE..!!

Julia Roberts is a great actress, and I knew this right from the time when I watched her first movie. But, I was completely dazzled by her performance in Eat, Pray and Love. I know I’m not a critic and though I can’t give the minute details as a critic does, I can certainly keep my opinion and say that I liked the movie.

The literature freaks and the English movie geeks must know what I’m talking about, but if you do not belong to any of the category, then let me give you a brief on it. Eat, Pray, Love is an English movie, based on the novel of the same name written by Elizabeth Gilbert, and Julia Roberts is its protagonist. Coincidentally  whenever I watch a novel based movie, I always stumble upon the movie first and then catch the novel. It was the same for this one too.

The movie had a very simple (and common) theme, which showed a disturbed and confused woman trying to get her identity and her peace of mind back. What kept me glued to it was her stylish and impressive ways to do that. Julia, who portrays Elizabeth in the movie, is a successful woman married to her Mr. Right. In spite of this, after a few months, she finds the charm of her relationship fading away, and the reason was she had been desperately trying to fit herself in someone else’s life. After a long fight with her husband (who seems to be a wife fanatic), she finally gets a divorce. And during this fight, a theater guy, David, grabs her eyeballs.

But, her desperation to seek peace leads to another devastating relationship as she could not get along with David. The only good thing that happens to her in it is she comes to know about David’s Guru and her Ashram in India where he learned the power of prayer. After a broken marriage and a botched relationship, Julia once again finds herself tangled into life’s cobweb. It was during a conversation with her best friend in which she realizes that in an attempt to make her relationships work out, she has completely lost herself.

She used to have a good appetite, a taste for food, and most importantly, she used to love herself. So, finally, she decides to take a break and go on a year-long tour to Italy, India and Indonesia. Her visit to the three ‘I’ countries aids her in finding the ‘I’ within her and the break brings her back from her numbness and teaches her to EAT, PRAY and LOVE. The movie ended on a lived-happily-ever-after note. Of course, there’s more in the movie but I had better cut to the chase as I don’t want my readers to doze off.

What I want to point out is in today’s life, this has become a common problem. We study, we work and we do every possible thing to make our life stable, organized and meaningful. At the beginning, the intensity is on peak but, suddenly, a day comes when you find yourself lost. In the movie, Julia found this out after a troubled marriage but nowadays, marriage isn't required to make things complicated. This might not be the case with everyone but most of us do become a victim of this struggle.

The reason why I can say it with such firmness is because I've been a victim of it. I’m 25 years old young lady with a Bachelor’s degree and a coincidentally landed job of a content writer with an in-between-low-to-moderate-salary that’s enough to support me. My parents aren't satisfied with my job, but I can understand their problem and they understand mine, and hence, our mutual understanding removes all conflicts between us. But, what I've always found difficult is to adjust myself with total strangers. Though most of the times I've succeeded in doing so, I had also encountered troubles. Right from the day when I left home and stepped into my first hostel, I've been trying to fit into places where I found no space for myself.

After staying eight years away from home, all my true colors blended to create a very strong, strange color that I had never known or seen before. Coincidentally  I too found out about this strange color during my conversation with one of my roommates in my last PG. I realized that I've become a chameleon. I realized that I camouflaged so wonderfully with others’ colors that I've succeeded in losing my own ones. However, I was very fortunate to find few true friends who helped me to keep up my basic values.

What saved me from turning completely insane were my short vacations to my Home Sweet Home, and these vacations helped me to restore my sanity and get my Zen back. When I’m at home, I eat well, I work, I read, I sing, I dance, I cry and I even get to enjoy the bliss of solitude. I even fight with my ever loving parents – arguing with my Dad on inter-caste marriage (which always leaves him suspicious :P), sulking when my dearest Mom scolds me and banging plates with my Sis when I’m hungry. I revived my colors for short time and then lost them again, and I grew tired of it. So, during my last vacation to home, I decided to shed off my chameleon characters and transform completely into ‘ME’ again.

This wasn't easy at all as I had to give up my extra politeness and the habit of nodding my head to avoid conflicts. So, I mastered the word ‘NO’ and I learned how to speak this word bluntly on one’s face. Here also, books helped me a lot. Surprisingly, the day I decided to do this, things started working my way. I started caring less for others and more for me, even if it meant that I was a bad girl for someone, I didn't give a damn to it. This year, I missed home a lot but cried a little less because I enjoyed being myself.

While watching Eat, Pray, Love, I found myself connected with the story because my life had some similarities with it. But, THANK GOD, I didn't have to travel to different places because my home acts as my rehabilitation center. After the movie ended, I returned from my flashback, but I got the moral, which clearly stated that every now and then, you must boost your morale to live your life the way you want to live and for this, the most important thing is to be in touch with yourself.

So, I would suggest every person to watch Eat, Pray, Love at least once (especially if you’re not very patient with books).

P.S.: That’s just a suggestion. So, if you yawn during the movie, I’m not to be blamed. ;)

GETTING WORKAHOLIC....

I was watching Wake Up Sid (I have lost the count of numbers of watching this movie) when suddenly writing about my work and interests hit my mind. There comes a time in life when you finally realize what you are really good at. There may be many things on which you can get a good grip but rather than becoming "JACK OF ALL TRADES" it's better to be "THE MASTER OF ONE". It's important to have the knack of something in yourself that will help you in the long run to make and mend things up for you. At times when the day doesn't finish off as you want it to, when things don't go your way, when everything seems messed up; your work or interest can actually calm things down for you.

Sharing my personal experience, it's my passion for reading books and writing that has supported me at times when things were hard. I was still a teenager when I left my comfort zone and came out in the open to face things on my own. 2011 is going to be the seventh consecutive year of my stay away from home. Frankly speaking, it wasn't easy at all to live away from my Family but my books and my diary made it a lot easier for me. 

I was enthralled when I got my job as a content writer. This was something that I had been wanting to do from a long time. It was that very moment which made me realize my love for writing. It was that moment when my interests got redefined and I finally knew what I wanted from my life and what I have to give to the world.

My work reminds me of a famous quote which, I guess, goes like this - "When you start loving your work, your work becomes fun" and this is what has exactly happened with me. I'm very much content to work as a 'Content Writer'. With the passage of time I can actually feel the ' Alcohol of Work ' getting on me. In short, I'm becoming WORKOHOLIC. I don't know how long it's going to be with me but I hope that it stays with me forever so that I would be able to be in my senses to work and perform better each day.

WHO AM I?

It's amazing how words come spontaneously to us when we are asked to describe others. Starting from their name to every minute details; as if we are the ones who carved them out . I won't go into much elaboration as 'how to describe others' nor would I go into my classification details in the animal kingdom (trust me.. you feel like pulling your hair remembering all those chewing names). Right now I'm delving to describe myself. Okay, so let's start with the most basic information, my name. My name and a few general related information is already there on my profile. After all you must know whose blogs are you reading.

 

So I'm moving ahead. Speaking about my nature I can only say that it's a dish made out of some of the most common yet special ingredients of simplicity, complexity, humor, emotions and honesty (which is exclusively used in my case). Whether it tastes good or not is up to you to decide. As far as my judgment is concerned, you can only expect me to say that ' I AM THE BEST '. Well on this note you may think that I'm too boastful or over-confident but that's just difference of opinion. My logic behind writing this is that personally I feel that each and every person on this earth is best in something or the other and is special in his or her own way. I'm no exception and therefore I say, " I'M THE BEST ". 

My purpose of being here is to present as well as share my views and opinions on whatever I feel I should write about. Criticism, appreciation, comments as well as compliments are most welcome. One sincere request to all my friends; if you have clicked the follow button then please do follow the blogs. I'm not writing here just for myself. In that case, it's better for me to maintain a diary. It'll also be vice versa, i.e., I'll also be following your blogs. After all that is why we all are here for, exchange of views and ideas to give a better overview for a topic.

So, hope the journey of writing and following starts off well and goes long. HAPPY BLOGGING..   :)