I feel like I am putting out fires all the time these days, no, this year. Some or the other problem keeps popping up and just as I solve it heaving a sigh of relief, another one pops up. This is keeping me on edge because I am anticipating new fires, new things to go wrong, and I am unable to relax. The good thing is most problems are small and even quickly resolved but the process is proving exhausting, mentally and emotionally… like jumping from one roller coaster to the other not knowing when I will finally settle back on the ground...especially considering I hate roller coasters.

I was thinking today that I have a very strong personality with its own quirks which only very few people are really able to "get" and fewer still are able to handle much less nurture. In spite of all the fires and storms brewing in my life I feel like I have the good fortune of being under a nurturing influence or under the shade of a huge tree. Because of all the stuff going wrong lately I am worried about things that might potentially go wrong...with my superstitious senses working overtime! What would happen when I no longer have this nurturing influence as indeed it does have an expiry date not too far in the future. What then? Will I feel like a child who goes out into the real world and realises how sheltered and protected it is…and wants to run back home. I can't imagine how it must feel if the child has no home to run back to. But perhaps it will learn to face the world? The truth is that I have faced the world for most of my life…but when you find a home and become used to its comfort and shelter, you want to hold on to it. Which is why people call it a ‘comfort zone’ I guess. But I mustn’t forget that I left the biggest comfort zone of my life when I ventured to this country all alone. I have done it before and I can do it again when the time comes. Except, a part of me wishes I won’t have to… and then I realise that everything is actually alright with the world… at least for now…because I am in my home zone.  

I am a bit lost for thoughts these days as you can no doubt tell. Or maybe it’s just the worry and stress of getting things moving from my plate… I feel like I don’t have time to sit back, relax, enjoy stuff for the sake of it. I was thinking to myself just the other day that until a year ago I always made it a point to not do any work on weekends, then I gradually started slipping in work on a Saturday, and now I seem to be working the entire weekend. This is not to say that I don’t take any break, of course I do… I do it after I am done with a deadline which is a good chunk of a month or more when I go slightly easy on myself for at least a week. The problem as I see it is that I enjoy a lot of aspects of my work say for instance the reading and because I enjoy it I very often feel like I didn’t actually do any work or that I did something ‘easy’ but the truth is that it’s something that absorbs the mind fully and is not really the same as taking a proper break or going easy.

I want to get back to my earlier schedule of not doing any work on weekends. It would be a bit harder these days to follow this because I can’t enjoy activities like pottering about the city or browsing in the shops the way I used in pre-COVID times… if I am at home then I feel that I might as well start reading something. But I think it’s worth forcing myself to think of something entirely different from anything to do with my work or research. Maybe cook something more elaborate or organise shelves or go for a longish walk or something of the kind. I feel that ultimately this will also benefit my work… I have always observed that when you come back from breaks you come with a fresh mind or see things with new eyes… I feel like I need more of that fresh perspective or fresh mind now. In a way by not taking proper breaks I have only been giving it less rather than more. I am hoping to correct this…not just from a work perspective but also as part of self-care. Let’s see how it goes :)

The new academic year has rolled in. Other than the chillier air outside everything seems rather different for this time of the year. Like we have all retreated into the internet and we can only reach out to each other in this artificial mode. To me the calendar seems to have stopped after last December when I came back from Dubai… and it seems another dimension of the surreal that I am going to be facing December again. What happened in between… nothing and everything… I know I write these posts longing for the old normal off and on…but I do long for it. I guess the passing of time which when I was much younger never weighed on me seems like another weight to bear. In a game one would expect to get a time-out or something if one took a break or expect the timer to be stopped when one is not engaging in activity, but there is no stopping the universal clock. We may make no use of all this time but it is still being counted… we are still getting older, by the day or month or year. It sort of makes me think about the fact that I never really thought about making time count when it wasn’t held hostage like it is now… it’s not like I was living every minute of it though I guess living every minute of it in someone else’s sense is not what I would do with it even if I had a free run of it now… but what I mean is mental freedom or the freedom to do what one liked, go where one liked, or just experience the normal routines of life… one can want the normal and mundane as much as one can want the exciting and adventurous, can one not? And one never thinks that even the normal and mundane will not be possible so this snatching away of it does make one think about it as one never thought before.

Speaking of routines, I have been sort of feeling a bit more debbie downish in the past week or so. Last year around this time I wrote about my new housemates and how it all turned out for the better… I was not expecting new housemates this time though there was every reason for me to expect them and as usual I resisted the change with all my might by settling into a sad mood. I couldn’t have gone on forever in this state so I am back to looking at the situation’s brighter side… it is brighter to be honest. I’ll perhaps reserve more about it for one of my next posts :)