friendship

“It’s Time To Trust My Instincts, Close My Eyes & Leap! It’s Time To Try Defying Gravity”: New Year, Old Challenges

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Today’s Mood Ingredients: Determined, Fearful, Obstinate, Risky, Adventurous.

Happy New Year! It’s taken me the past 10 days of January to decide if I was even going to make any resolutions this year. I, along with many of you I presume, am notorious for making a resolution & promptly forgetting it ever existed pretty much within the same week. This year I decided to “trick” myself. I’ve never broken a promise to someone, but I always shatter the ones I make to myself with some excuse or another. However, if challenged..by anyone, including myself..for better or worse, I rise to the occasion. Therefore, for 2018 I made those pesky little resolutions, but I’m going to take them as challenges & hopefully gain even more insight & clarity into what kind of a person I want to evolve into. So, here we go:

I. Anxiety: My very own version of a “Dark Lord” (you know I can’t go too long without an HP reference). This is my biggest struggle. I am plagued by this never-ending sense of abject terror when it comes to my family & them either being hurt or lost to me. My creative imagination (a bane & a boon, depending on when it acts up) goes from zero to catastrophe before I have any chance to try & make some sort of logical sense of any situation. The scenarios I’ve come up with in the midst of an anxiety attack are truly capable of earning quite a few creative writing prizes (or of getting me committed with a straitjacket, but I choose to see the positive – it’s new)! I’ve taken this challenge upon many times before, but this is the year that I’m finally truly fully focused on my mental health. Anxiety can be crippling, & my goal is to not only to keep it at bay this year, but to get a handle on this shitty thing once & for all. Goals: Write in a journal (not like Dear Diary, I like this boy), meditate more (Tibetan monks chanting playlist on YouTube, though!), think things through with a little more logic & actual thought (more Sudoku, less Word Search), & a little less death & destruction. I’m gonna be anxiety’s Avada Kedavra (sorry, last one).

II. Diet: Yeah, yeah, we all have this one. Mine is not to lose weight, it is to stop being internally toxic. Going to have to swap the daily Doritos & Taco Bell & never-ending pasta bowls for kale chips & quinoa this year so that my genetic tendency for “35-children-at-a-time bearing hips” does not come into fruition any time soon..or ever. Also cutting out liquor in 2018. I hate how it feels the day of, the day after, & I can’t be taking shots of anything that isn’t wheatgrass anymore. HOWEVER, touch my beer & lose a hand! 😛 Soda’s gone by the wayside & therefore my waistline is going to do the same. Goals: Meal prep (Can I pay someone to do this for me?), H20 toxicity (the new “chug chug chug!), & more green shit that isn’t a jalapeño pepper.

III: Friendships: This one is the hardest. I’ve spent my entire life being a Golden Girl (I prefer Sophia – sarcastic & scrappy) & in that, I’ve constantly gone out of my way to do/be the friend who will pull out all the stops for a friendship. My nickname is “Doormat,” & I’m way over being the base for muddy prints. I’m slowly learning to (& recommending to) remove toxic & “taker” friendships from my life. The energy it requires to keep people around just because you’ve been friends for years is taxing & unnecessary. I prefer a symbiotic relationship with the people that I spend my time & heart on (don’t be gross) & that doesn’t necessarily mean that I need to “get” something out of the other person, but someone else doing at least half of the advice-giving/taking interest is really the key to my healthy 2018 right now. Goals: “You may hate me but it ain’t no lie, baby, bye bye bye.”

IV: Relationships: A lot of the above, but maybe actually put time & effort into finding a long-term homie to hang with. Goals: Re-title my online dating app folder on my phone from “Painful” to something slightly more positive. 😛

V: Fear: Just face it. Look that beast in its beady little eyes & be my actual self before experiences & relationships & the darker parts of life dulled my innate fighting spirit. Goals: Do things that scare me (for me, that’s like not calling my mom the whole day or something). :O

VI: Creative Integrity: For all of the paths I’ve taken in my life, professionally or personally, I’ve always only had one true ambition; to be happy & content by living creatively. More than that, to extend my creativity outwards, rather than keeping it in its tiny bubble that no one else can experience but me. This is my year. This is the year that I post about something or say something to someone or articulate an idea & follow through. Not just think about it & “try” to do it & fail for whatever reason be it lack of time, support, or any other excuse. Uphold my creative integrity & see how far I can fly. Goals: Don’t talk about it, be about it.

VII: Positivity: Goes hand in hand with number 1. I’m a natural-born pessimist trying to transform into my brother. That sounds weirder than it is. He’s this ball of possibility & positivity, kind of like The Secret spit up all over him. I’m more like Eeyore meets Daria meets Chuckie (the Rugrats one, not the creepy psycho doll one) trying to be Olaf meets Happy dwarf meets Dory. I’m a true believer in you get what you put out into the universe, so I’m going to actively make it a point to do some drugs. JKJKJKJKKK..I’m going to actively make it a point to change my negative mindset so that I want to hang out with my mind more often. Goals: Think happy thoughts.

I truly have no idea how much of this I’ll be able to have success with, but if I don’t challenge myself now, then I know I’m going to become this old complacent lady with nothing to show for myself but mediocrity & that’s just a longtime fear that I’m not willing to realize. Wishing you all a kick ass 2018..full of lots of Netflix bingeing, granola eating, juice cleansing, booty shaking, fear facing, goal fulfilling insanity.

See ya on the flip side, y’all.

Today’s Interlude: 

Thank You For Bein’ A Friend, Travelin’ Down The Road & Back Again: Long vs. Lost Friendships

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Today’s Mood Ingredients: Nostalgic, Understanding, Reflective.

We all have friends (this is a relatively secure assumption). We’ve made them over different times in our lives, on numerous journeys, at various ages. But how many of you still have them all? I know I don’t. Friendship is a funny thing in general. I mean, how do groups of people find each other & forge a bond that’s strong enough that makes them want to spend time together over & over again? I find myself wondering that all the time when I see people on the train or at restaurants or elsewhere; how did you all meet, where did you find each other, how did you connect? (Yes, I realize this makes me sound like a creeper, but I’m owning it, people.) Nevertheless, it happens & you go through life with these people who you’re connected to and when you’re young, you’re all BFFLS & BFFAES and when you’re in high school, you’re all about the cool kids & who’s wearing what to the pep rally if not a cheerleader uniform (btw, none of those were me because I was a bony little nerd, a fact I have finally accepted later in life). College comes around and you find like minded individuals with similar interests and passions (read: freedom & drinking, meant: poetry, dance, film, science). Real life finds you meeting people who are settling down, accepting responsibility, becoming “grown ups.” Now look back on all of those times in your life; how many of those BFFs are still around? 

If you’re like me, you have numerous & varied circles of friends. If you’re like me, you also have had incidences & circumstances which rendered much change in those groups & relationships. I can honestly say I vividly remember & still keep in touch with many of my friends from elementary school through college (thanks, Mark Zuckerberg!). Are we close? No. But our lives are interwoven with fond memories of becoming adults, and now, social media milestones that still allow a thread of a connection both to each other & to our common pasts. 

Unfortunately, time plays its part as do the growth and change of personalities & the people who have them. There are so many friends that cross my mind on a regular basis who I don’t think I’ve spoken to in months, & in some cases, years. So many of the girls from my college dance troupe who have witnessed many of my most catalytic moments, I don’t talk to much anymore, & this is after forming a close bond over 4-5 years of all night practices, 5 hour lunches, open bars, parties, performances, travel, tears, fears, laughter, girl talk, boy talk, & sleepovers. I admire them still & stalk lives via social media, but it’s a tentative connection, albeit based on true love for them. I can still say, however, when it so happens that we do meet, that core of friendship picks up quite quickly, & we will always be bound (in a non-criminal way) by the matching tattoo that 10 of us have depicting the passion that brought us together; dance. Medical school was a whole other story. We all became “family” very quickly (admittedly, due to me trying to make the best of an intimidating situation for all of us) and when you’re stuck on a tiny little island for 16 months (or more), studying instead of going to lay by the crystal clear turquoise waters that are right below your balcony, you become realllly close reallllly fast and things can get pretty dramatic pretty fast too. But what happens when you are back to reality (oops, there goes gravity..jk) and seeing your old pre-island friends and trying to readjust to non-island life? Some things can fall apart, and some things stay glued together. In my case, I was lucky to be able to hold on to some very true & real friendships with people who, although I’ve only really known for 7 years at this point, are some of the closest confidantes I have. They may not all be very good friends with each other, but they are very good friends to me, and that is probably the one thing I came away with from Caribbean Med that I treasure the most. Unfortunately, there are also some people who I was unable to stay connected to & although that gives me little pangs now & again, there is clarity in hindsight, and the reason for the disconnect was always valid.

At the end of the day, all of those little clichés about people coming in & out of your life whether for you to change them in some way or for them to change you (for better or worse) ring loud, ring clear, & ring true. I’ve had friends who have made me less trusting, friends who have made me more hopeful, friends who have made me more perceptive, friends who have made me more suspicious, friends who have made me brighter, and friends who have dulled my luster. But for a brief moment in the timeline of our lives, we intersected, we connected, and we loved; and sometimes, that’s just plain good enough.

To all of my own lost connections, be they by chance, choice, or circumstance, know that I think of you often. When a certain song comes on or when I smell something familiar or especially when I’m pondering on the past (which I do more often than I’d prefer), I wonder what you all are up to and hope that you are happy & well. There will forever be people and places that will own a sliver of your memory and a part of your heart. And to borrow from John, George, Paul, & Ringo, all these places had their moments, with lovers & friends I still can recall. In my life, I loved them all. 

Today’s Interlude: “In My Life,” The Beatles

The iGeneration: Text Me, Tweet Me, If You Wanna (Maybe) Reach Me

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ImageCulture: The iGeneration: Text Me, Tweet Me, If You Wanna (Maybe) Reach Me

Today’s Mood Ingredients: Mobile, Multitasking, Connected, Disconnected.

This post isn’t about anything novel and it isn’t written as well as the thousands of other posts about it, but I like having an opinion on most things, so here you go. I’m one of those individuals that is lucky enough to have been part of two eras of technology; the one where I used a pencil to wind an audio &/or video cassette, blew on Nintendo games to make them work, had a Walkman, had to just wait it out if someone wasn’t someplace at some time, and had dial-up America Online (“10,000 FREE HOURS!”) with a parentally mandated 1 hour of internet a day and the current “iGeneration” era where you Snapchat a photo of yourself to put on Instagram to simultaneously share on Facebook & Twitter while making sure none of it ever gets on your LinkedIn page and never having to get off of your iPhone to do any of it.

I’m on my phone pretty much most of the day. I watch TV on it, I pay bills on it, I check statements on it, I take pictures on it, I converse with people on it, I use both personal & company social media on it; hell, it even has a name (Pablo, btw). Strangely enough, I rarely take calls on it though. I don’t even use my laptop for weeks at a time, because it doesn’t fit in my pocket. I sometimes literally feel an urge to tweet something just for the sake of not having done so in a few hours. But alright, let’s say for the sake of being devil’s advocate (and using it as a fabulous excuse), that social media is a networking tool & I need it for my fashion brand, and in order to bring awareness to my fashion brand, I also have to utilize my personal network (this is great, I just convinced myself in that one sentence that I should be on all of my social networks at all times, I need an intervention). What about all the rest of it?  Texting other people while at dinner with a completely different group of people? Forgetting to eat the food on your plate because you’re busy rearranging it so it makes for a pretty Instagram or Foodspotting picture?  Making a completely unnecessary ridiculous face into your “selfie” (I’ll go into my rage at that becoming Webster’s word of the year in another, possibly beer-induced post) camera for the sole reason of captioning it with “OMG SO AWK!” and Snapchatting someone with it? TEXTING AT THE MOVIES WITH YOUR BRIGHTNESS ON MAX!? I’m a little concerned for my two & a half year old nephew’s generation because this will be the norm to them. He has already known for over a year how to maneuver iPads and iPhones and iLaptops. He accidentally uses the regular TV as a touch screen sometimes! iPad was probably his 4th word after vacuum, mommy, and daddy. WHEN IS IT ALL TOO MUCH!?!?

In case you haven’t noticed by now, recently I’ve been experiencing world wide webxaustion. I think it partially hit when I went to the AT&T kiosk and the employee showed his colleagues with awe (& I’m pretty sure, a little disgust) that I’m the first person that he had ever met who actually made full use of the unlimited data plan with the fact that I use 12GB a month (the silver medal of the iPhone Olympics was awarded to my brother with a close but no cigar 10GB a month). Then it hit when I noticed my family & friends, including me, all on our phones at the same time while supposedly spending time with each other! I’m guilty of all of the annoying things I mentioned earlier (except I refused to ever succumb to Snapchat & I stopped the movie one, I swear), but lately I’m okay with not being attached to Pablo palm to case. Sometimes I purposely leave my phone in another room so that I’m not even tempted to see what my faves are tweeting about or who had the perfect tiny portion of the perfect tiny dessert at the perfect [tiny] overpriced restaurant (but also, a lot of my posts are of martinis at Applebee’s & I could just be slightly envious of those other people). And I’ve become more aggravated at others who are constantly on their phones when with me. I haven’t 100% succeeded yet, but I’ve begun to make a concerted effort to not be distracted when I’m with company or when I’m out with people for a meal or a get together. I’m slowly realizing that the quality of time being spent with my loved ones has been significantly less in quality & more just sitting near each other while talking to others via data plans, and I’m not okay with that. Last Sunday, I told my brother to get off of his phone (while he was playing whatever the newest “____ Bird” game out there is, I’m sure) because I wanted to “connect.” Besides the fact that he was a little creeped out, he still had to finish his game first. I MEAN, WTH! CONNECT WITH ME, MAN!

There are of course positives like being able to call my 90 year old grandma in Bombay on her cute little Nokia phone, stay in touch with my amazing family in India and friends in other countries all the time via What’s App (until Facebook ruins it), being able to Google anything on the go like doctors’ info, nearby restaurants & gas stations, the option to use pharmacy apps to refill prescriptions immediately, etcetera (I’m still on the fence about Siri, though), but I’d like to know how my brother’s day was at work, what my sister taught my nephew that day, what my little sister ate for lunch (trust me, that one is always interesting) via conversation; not pictures, not texts, not Facebook posts (also, someone please stage a Solitaire intervention for my mom and an Indian radio app intervention for my dad). By the way, I typed this post on my laptop & only looked at Pablo twice with no social media checks in between!!! Ah, progress is such sweet sorrow.

Anyway, I’m going to go tweet & Facebook this post now so..text me, tweet me, if you wanna (maybe) reach me!

P.S. You can follow me here & here. 😉

P.P.S. Most importantly, seriously, PLEASE DON’T TEXT/TWEET/POKE/SNAP/BLOG & DRIVE. 

Today’s Interlude: The Kim Possible Theme Song

Photo credit: ashisaggarwal122.wordpress.com