Monday 16 November 2020

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