Paint a picture of my life?

I'm graduating soon with a Master's degree and it's in my last semester that I finally made a decent website completely by myself. This is funny because I'm a computer science student, and making a website by myself is something I should have done in fourth grade (both metaphorically and literally speaking). Web development is something that I've consistently run away from my entire undergraduate and graduate degree. It annoyed me, frustrated me, and I just didn't want to do it. Everyone around me was doing it, and perhaps I wanted to be different... but in that process, I missed out on being confident about a very basic skill, and probably lost out on opportunities as well. Turns out, I ended up wanting to spend a night being awake and making my website better because I was enjoying it. 

I realised that I had so much fun watching things come to life, and was surprised that it took me 5.5 years to remove the negativity that I had towards web development... so I decided to write about it. 

The same thing happened to me when the whole world was reading Harry Potter. I refused to give it a shot until grade ten and then read the whole series in a week. I was born in a time when J. K. Rowling was releasing each book. I had the chance to be a part of the anticipation and stand in lines and buy the books as they came out. But I missed it. Because of my own inability to get one stupid block out of my own head. 

Imagine all that I could have discovered and accelerated in my life if only I had been more open and had less barriers in my head stopping myself?! I've resolved to actively do this in my life.

I've been silent on my blog for a while now. I've been silent with my running and don't exercise regularly anymore. This reminds me of how I'd begun running regularly and kept at it for 3-4 months starting this time last year (and then covid happened). I started reading silently again after years of not picking up books just for fun, and noticed my palette had shifted from mainly fiction to multiple genres. I've not-so-silently resolved to be more open to things in life. And I'm so excited to see how all of these silent and loud change will impact us. 

Where all of us will be in the next 7 years and what will we be working on? 7 years because that's also how long the human body takes to refresh itself. What all thoughts would we have hit the refresh button on. What all would I have opened myself to? What kind of person will I be? What stuff will I care about?

I'll be the kind of person I think I will be. I'll be the kind of person I want to be. 

I want to paint a picture of myself and my life. See it and feel it. KV had once asked me why knowing what I want to do in life is so important to me. He was trying to understand why I can't just focus on the present and find joy in my current work - whatever it is that I do. I guess the answer to that is that until I don't know, I can't work towards getting there. 

This is how I look like most of the times currently

So I painted a picture of my current life. I was about to go ahead and paint one of the life I want. But then I decided that I'm not going to do it. 

It can be present in my head. I'll find middle ground in having a sense of direction to steer in without finalising the destination. I want to be open to everything else that can happen to me and see how it evolves into something unexpected yet delightful. 

Happy thinking and (mental or physical) painting. :-)

Kanksha

part of life

The world does not stop. No one and no thing is irreplaceable. Everybody eventually figures it out... or dies. Okay that was slightly dark maybe.

I don't want my loved ones to stop living their lives. I don't want them to miss me terribly. But when they don't miss me, there is a sudden sadness that overtakes me and I feel like I'm being forgotten. I feel like I'm becoming something that WAS a part of their life. And even though the relationship you share does not change, stuff does change. They find other people to rely on. And so do you. And eventually, that's what you become - an important precious part of their life, but a part of their life in the continuous tense no more. And that is a hard truth to digest. 

I guess that coming from the Indian society, where families live together, and support each other all the time, where everyone is involved in everyone's life... coming to the Western society is interesting. It is a lot of things that we traditionally are not. Everyone is more independent. People are more involved in their own lives, and the lives of their significant other and children. Children leave the house after a certain age and learn how to live life by themselves - they find their own significant other by themselves and don't have the luxury of parents doing that either :P

Jokes apart, it was hard for me to decide how I feel about such an independent lifestyle. It is completely out of my comfort zone. I guess even more hard for me because I am so attached to family back at home, and take their opinions and suggestions, and look for validation all the time. And having this guidance is extremely helpful at a younger age, but transitioning from there to figuring out how I feel and what I want is a confusing process.

How do you find a balance between independence and wholehearted support? When do you think about your emotions, and when do you think about self progress? Which environment most supports growth? Exactly how does this transition from being a child to being an adult work? 

I'm sure I'm going to have the same questions in different parts of my life. If and when I have kids in my life, it'll be more along the lines of 'how the heck does an adult still figuring his/her life out bring up another life'? I'm already working towards understanding how two people accommodate each other into their lives, and go beyond that accommodation to get stronger and build a life together... Most of your life, you're told to do what you want, and suddenly what another person wants becomes equally important. How do you prioritise then?

Have you thought about this?

Love,
Kanksha