Change is the only constant in life

If someone told me a couple of years ago that there would be a global pandemic that turns our world upside down, I would have told them that this is not a dystopian novel. Now, I am not so sure. We consume information about more and more violence every day, women are denied their bodily autonomy and wars can be waged without reason.
I remember writing in my slam book in college that I would be settled in life by the time I’m thirty, enjoying cocktails by my poolside. I guess I used to be much more optimistic as a person back then. It’s going to be a year since I quit my corporate job to pursue my master’s, which also translated as putting enough distance so that nagging relatives don’t ask me about getting married. My work ethic was something I took pride in. When I was in eleventh grade, I remember my Tamil teacher telling us he has never been not occupied with something in life, he got his job the same month he finished his studies. I guess it stuck to me. I did the same, got a job right after my studies and worked for 4 years straight. It took me a lot of conversations with my therapist to understand that I never really had a break in my life. That keep-on-winning attitude is eventually going to result in you becoming burnt out.

I still struggle sometimes with accepting that I am living on my savings, but I haven’t felt this happy in a long time. I remember having a conversation with a German friend who told me it’s a given in his family that everyone takes a gap year after school to live life the way they want. He went volunteering in Serbia to work with school children and fell in love with the country and people that year.I realised the hustle mindset is something we Indians are groomed into. I have never lived life at a slow pace before. To be honest, it’s boring sometimes, but it also gives you time to introspect. Who are you? What do you want in life? Are you doing things for yourself or expectations of others? I realised the reason I didn’t enjoy certain things in life is that I didn’t want them, there were things I was pursuing just because they were markers of success in the world. Once I let go of them, I feel so much freer. Breaking those rigid milestone goals in my life such as getting married at this age, buying a house at this age etc has done wonders for my mental health. Now, my only goal is happiness. It might change in the future, you never know but I feel content where I am.

Mental Health And A Global Pandemic

It is been a long time since I have posted on this blog. My mental health took a drop in the last couple of months and now that I am in a position to talk about it, I wanted to share my experience. I started working from home in March 2020. It was really exciting initially because I could spend time with my family for an extended period. But as time went on, the lines between personal and professional aspects of my life got blurred. There were days in which I used to work for 14 hours straight. It had a serious impact on my sleep and eating habits. I knew I was in a stressful situation but kept on going without a break.

There’s a concept called spoon theory regarding your mental health. We have 3 pieces of cutlery – spoons, forks, and knives. Spoons represent the energy you can expend today, forks represent the stressors or things that take up your energy and knives represent the energy you have saved up for tomorrow. As the days went on, the number of spoons I had kept on decreasing. When you do not have enough spoons, you start using your knives. One fine day, I was out of spoons and knives and I had my first anxiety attack. The feeling of helplessness and inability to breathe was one of the worst things I have experienced in my life. I knew I could not do it on my own anymore and I reached out for help. I started seeing a therapist.

Anj0_0’s Paintings #1

Oil painting is a new hobby I have picked up. I just wanted to post some of my works here to share with people. They may be imperfect but I am satisfied with what I have created. I will post some more later.

The Heart Wants What It Wants

It does not know color
It does not know race
It does not know gender
It doesn’t see the face
The heart wants what it wants

It doesn’t see your riches
It doesn’t see your clothes

Quotes That I Love

It has been a while since our last post. Both Anisha and I have been a bit busy with our final semester. But now, the holidays have begun and its time for celebration. I am going to clear off a lot of books from my to read list. To embark on this magnificent celebration,  I would like to show some of my favourite quotes.

This quote is to remind us that everyone has a destiny,

Boy: But what if I can’t?
Alchemist: Then you’ll die in the midst of realizing your destiny.that’s a lot better than dying like millions of other people, who never even knew what their destinies were.–” 🙂
–Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist” 

This line portrays a woman as an unstoppable force, something complex,

“So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”
-John Green, Looking for Alaska 

The Couch Lover

Many people have strange addictions, things that they cannot resist. Mine are two: chocolates and couches. There is nothing as good as the comforting smell of a leather couch and its tender caress when we come back home after an exhausting day. There are numerous occasions in which I fall asleep there and my bed gets angry with me. So I have decided to dedicate this post to my fellow couch lovers.

I find my bored self occasionally going couch surfing (no not in the travelling sense, but surfing the web for couches). I have decided to contribute some of these which I love:

The Flight Fiasco

It’s been way too long since our last blog post. I’ve been a little busy with college. A lot has happened last month. Remember the horrible video I posted? I actually got selected. So, I traveled to Bangalore to the Google office there. I was really nervous about going alone by flight. So, I arrived at the airport, went through the security checks and was waiting patiently at the gate pretending like it was my thousandth flight. I happened to meet another single passenger. She was in her mid sixties, used a wheelchair and is very very talkative. By the time my flight left I knew about her entire family and had taught her what WhatsApp is.

As our flight was getting ready for departure, one of the tyres got ruptured and

Perfect Girl

Re-reading something I love…

Haruki Murakami holds the power to enthrall me with his words.

Just by using a simple, sentence he transports his readers to a completely new dimension. Obsession isn’t a strong enough word to explain what I feel about his writing . Since my exams are over, I decided to relax by re-reading a few of his works. It still gets to me like the first time. Maybe he holds magic in his pen. A web that pulls me in like a whirlpool into  an unending abyss .

I was reading his short story about how he met his 100 percent perfect girl. I love the way he describes her.

Just perfect.

He doesn’t remember how her nose looks, he doesn’t say that she was an extraordinary beauty, just that she was perfect for him.

My first YouTube video

This happened four days ago. I was busy with my exams, pulling off all-nighters and walking like a dead zombie when I was informed that I have been selected by my college as one of the candidates for Google’s student facilitators. They told me that I will be shortly contacted by mail, and they did. They asked me to post a video of me explaining any topic in simple terms within a day. So, I had to attend my exams, take a video, edit it and post it on YouTube within a day and the worst part was, I haven’t even decided on a topic yet.

One and Infinity

Based on the TED talk by Devdutt Pattanaik

Recently I looked at my syllabus for this semester and saw some words which haunts almost all aspiring engineers :

• Course objectives
• Program Objectives

These words represent our traditional mode of education where everything has a grade and a deadline. But, there are people who do not like to have time frames, who like to do things at their own pace. This TED talk was in a way inspiring, it explains why some people struggle with this system. To convey it in a gist, the western education system we follow is based on their belief that you only live once, they have rules and principles for everything. But, our culture has a belief of infinitism with births and rebirths. We don’t do deadlines, we like to bend these principles. If you are one of those people who thinks that you don’t fit into an organization or hierarchy, this is the talk for you..

How To Survive Your Sisters

Natalie is planning the perfect wedding. She knows what she wants, until her family comes into the picture. This book focuses on one of the greatest enigmas in the world, the relationship between sisters. The MacLeod family has four girls who are very different, and when they gather together a whole lot of hilarious craziness ensues.

SUBMARINE (#BLENDER experience 2.0)

It has been a while since I did my first project on blender. I will be doing a rough model of the Beatles submarine. Unlike my previous posts,I plan on giving comments step by step this time. However you should know the basics of the blender interface and the various views. So, here we go!

The first step is adding the image of the submarine as background.

This is how the submarine looks. Now, we are going to design it to an awesome 3D model.

Tower Defense

UNITY experience

Unity is a gaming engine used for developing 2D and 3D games. Some of the major games developed using unity are temple run, robocraft, world series poker etc. Its main advantage is  its massive cross platform support ( BlackBerry 10, Windows Phone 8, Windows, OS X, Android, iOS, Apple TV, Unity Web Player (including Facebook), PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS line )and  an easy-access user interface.

The official unity website has various tutorials and a complete online manual for nerds. But before creating  your game ,you must learn some game development basics such as game objects, scenes etc.

Mario’s Mushroom

For some time now I have been interested in Blender, an open source software for 3D development. So, I decided to try it out without reading the manual as usual. I searched for tutorials on the net and found some pretty good ones.

The interface was a little difficult to get used to but once you get the hang of it its amazing!