Inscriptions

 I finished reading another book, "The Picture of Dorian Grey" by Oscar Wilde. I am happy to say that I hit the minimum of two books per month goal for January. I have this sense of accomplishment and feel quite satisfied that in three days I read two books. If only I could just keep reading like this, but alas, it is not to be, I have so many other things that I need to tend to, so hitting pause on the reading for a brief period till I am able to complete the immediate tasks at hand. But before that I felt like I should put down a few thought I had about the book. The book was a good read, a little heavy and on the philosophical side, and I think it is something that makes you want to introspect about how you are. In my view it primarily deals with the concept of self, how we view ourselves in the sense of how we think we are and what we want to be, and what we actually are, and how others view us are  quite different. Carl rogers talks about the congruence of self-concept, ...

For the past one year it has been very difficult to make time to read anything else other than research papers, which was good because it helped me to complete my thesis but also not so good because I have fallen behind on my reading goals. So this year I wanted to read more books and at least try to catch up on all reading I have missed for the last year and a half or more. And I have some news to share on that front, I completed a book, the first book of this year, it has been on my reading list for a long time now, I finally mustered the courage to pick it up and start reading and I am glad I did.  The book is a collection of lectures delivered by Margaret Atwood entitled "On Writers and Writing", somehow seemed apt to start off my reading year with a book like this especially because I wanted to do more of reading and writing this year. I enjoyed reading the book, and just the fact that I was reading again after so long kept me going and the content of the book also was q...

 So this is my attempt to getting back to writing, I noticed how I wasn't able to write even a single post in 2023, but that's understandable I suppose, I had to forcefully tuck that part of myself away as I had to focus all my energies on completing my thesis. Now that I have completed that arduous task, I am free to once again distribute my time among my creative pursuits. Somehow it was easier to get back to setting up my bullet journal but getting back to writing has been so much harder, it's possible that I found it hard to write again because so much of the writing I was doing was academic or had to serve some purpose, I hadn't written anything simply for the joy of being able to put words together. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to do that.  In the recent times I have been thinking a lot about writing, and have had serious doubts about whether I can actually do it. To be honest it has been really scary to do that as I had been wondering if I was any goo...

  So, this is about fifteen days into the New Year, 2022, I cannot believe that it is 2022 already. I know most people will relate to this feeling, so many of us are mentally somewhere in 2019. Once the Pandemic hit us, we couldn’t fathom the way the world around us was about to change and how that in turn would change us. Since March 2020 I feel like I have been stuck in a limbo, not sure of what was going on and not sure of what was going to happen. To be honest, the past two years have been extremely tough, I know this is true for so many people all around the world. But on a personal note I don’t think it was just the pandemic alone that caused me so much pain mentally, it was to do with the things that were going on in my life as well, initially the lockdown served as a time to heal from past wounds some of which were freshly inflicted upon me just before the lockdown, but as the first wave subsided I was hit with something even bigger, my PhD being at stake, my whole career h...

 Today I was in a mood to write something, nothing in particular, but just felt like putting some words down, the weather seems so pleasant, it is raining outside and I'm in here listening to Billie Eilish singing 'Everything I wanted'. Something in her voice make me want to write and so here I am.  Things seem to be getting worse by the day on the outside, every time we see the news, or open any social media pages. Each time we receive a call from someone we haven't spoken in a long time, it worries us because we don't know what has happened to them. In these tough times, I am more and more thankful each day for the things that I have in my life, and I am trying to focus on the good things in life ad trying to make the most with what I have got, for who knows what tomorrow may bring. I keep trying to push away the things that cause me immense pain and try to focus on all the good I have as difficult is it is to do that. I try so hard not to think of the future and ...

I can feel myself drifting away from all the things I wanted to do, every time I try harder to stay on track it makes it so much more difficult to do them, and if I just stop trying, I am overcome with guilt which creeps up on me the moment I seem to lose focus and it weighs me down like a heavy burden on my shoulder. So basically I am stuck in a loop of trying to just take a break and feeling guilty and straying further away from my goals and aspirations. And sometimes when I contemplate hard about where things are going I go on a down an even more dangerous path and I am afraid of what would happen if I go there.  So I keep trying to shun the guilt and numb all feeling and escape to a place that doesn't make me feel uncomfortable. While I am able t do that when I am wide awake, I seem to have no control over what I dream, it taps me on my shoulder in my dreams and wakes me up so I don't sleep and keep pondering over what my life is going to be like. And that is one of the mos...