Even haircuts give perspective

 Hi people of the world, 

It has been a while... How are you doing? What's new, exciting, and fun in your life? Has 2021 given you something to look forward to?

I had a haircut about two weeks ago. I was so excited for it since I had been cutting my own fringe since about a year now, and I thought that I should maybe get a professional to do it once. Big mistake. Sometimes I wonder how professionals can screw up so badly, especially when they actually do care about their work and they charge quite a bit for what they do. 

When I cut my own hair for the first time, I spent about a month prior to that just observing how it was setting/falling by itself. I analysed where my hairstylist must have made the cuts, and imagined doing the whole thing by myself. I'd got a fringe about five years ago, so I opened up those pictures and tried to imagine how the hair would have to be partitioned to get the same effect. I checked out photos of models, singers, and actresses who had similar hair and hair cuts. And I finally took the scissors and made the first cut only on a small part of my hair. Week after week, I made adjustments, until it finally looked like how I wanted it to. 

This is why, when the person I went to for a haircut royally messed it up two weeks ago, I spent a couple hours patiently fixing it today. I cut the fringe into the exact shape I wanted it at, leaving a couple strands to fall behind my ears. And I also cut a single layer which made ALL the difference. 

Sometimes I wonder how professionals can screw up so badly, especially when they actually do care about their work and they charge quite a bit for what they do. 

Maybe they just don't care as much as you do, but they care a lot by their own standards. Maybe they just aren't that detail oriented about that particular task, and don't even see the things that you see. 

And I find that really funny, yet it hits home, because when I think about the approach to cut my hair, it was very methodical. I did an initial assessment, had multiple iterations of work, and after months and patience and continuous improvement, I finally have something that I like. 

Really need to apply both this method and attitude in all areas of my life. Good things take time, good things come to those who keep trying. 

That's something we all need to remember. :)

Whatever you have to look forward to - keep looking, keep trying, and stay excited. You'll get there soon!

Love,

Kanksha

Edit: After a re-read of my post, I realised that it has too many 'I's in every sentence. But you know what? I don't care this time. BECAUSE I'M BACK TO WRITING ABOUT RANDOM STUFF THAT COMES TO MY MIND AND I AM REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT B)

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