Counting Stars

“Always hold this truth to your heart:
whether you are the artist,
the mathematician, the entrepreneur
or the gardener running your
hands through the earth,
nurture your curiosity, do not box yourself in;
read, write, stargaze, solve,
travel, illustrate, compose — explore.
There are an infinite number of worlds 
on this earth, you need only to
set off on the journey.”

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10 September 2017 – Welcome to the Jungle

It was an eventful Sunday evening — if ‘eventful’ can be used to describe the state of affairs in someone’s over thinking head.

I was feeling like an old loaf of bread — catching mould, sitting at the back of the refrigerator shelf — lonely, uncomfortable, cold, rotten, unwanted and close to expiry.

I never liked Sunday evenings. Or rather, I didn’t like everything that goes with them — the Sunday evening state of affairs. My head felt like the 10 kg dumbbell at the gym that I still cannot weight-lift. My reflection in the mirror was a shadow from a distant past — it had my eyes, my features — but, the eyes were looking beyond the mirror — as if looking out into the sea, searching for a lifeline. My body felt betrayed by time. My bones ached with the memories of early motherhood. My skin was all wrinkled up, like a forlorn Pug puppy having been separated from his master. And my mind — well, my mind was a strange place. I was hearing things.

Not sounds, but thick slabs of silence being dragged through the dark.

Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes

Distortions. Blurred vision. Time warp. Tides of confusion. Raging fire. Radiation and reactions. Premonitions tugging at memories. Memories tugging at premonitions. Skewed electric impulses. Synaptic hijack. Failure to eject. Colourless dreams. Endless circles of trance. Scientific poetry. Silences wrapped in high decibel clamour. Invisible voices. Deep roots growing in deeper soils. Finely honed razor blades. Aliens yanking at heartstrings. Unsettling memories, unfitting spaces, undone buttons. Boulders in space, comets under the sea, raindrops of molten lava. Utterly butterly chaotic.

It was like my mind was eternally PMSing, while my heart was busy hating my guts.

Wearing the inside out had never been my style. But these demons inside my head had to be let out into the night to dance around the fire, to spin straw into gold, to help me find my answers — even if those answers were as hard to spell as Rumplestiltskin. So, out they came. And, dance they did. And slowly but surely, the answers surfaced. They came in forms I wasn’t expecting, in shapes that did not exist, and in people I did not know. And one by one, ever fiber of my being, trapped in this cage, wanted to be freed. No lead roles left to be played in cages anymore. No ghosts waiting to be chased anymore.

Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day – you learn to live like an animal in the jungle where we play 

Welcome to the jungle, Guns N Roses

This was one year ago. One year ago, today. The day that I met an old friend and fell in love.

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15 September 2017 – Shine on you Crazy Diamond

On Friday evening, like soft summer rain falling on all the freshly mowed lawns of the world, my words came in clouds that couldn’t wait to rain their existence on the world — and hence began Mom’s aren’t Gentlemen — a sanctuary of everything sacred to me that I kept going back to every 5 days. It was my muse, my music, my magic. In falling in love with this new distraction, I began falling back in love with myself once again. In sharing my world with a bunch of strangers, I began finding my light again. And suddenly, my strange mind that was hearing things, heard only the melodies being strummed by the invisible strings of the universe. No thick slabs of silence being dragged through the night. No distortions. Only Technicolor dreams. And fluttering hope. And fireflies lighting my nights with their glow. From a tuneless track to a timeless symphony, I could finally hear those invisible voices exclaim ‘this girl’s got rhythm!‘. Or rather, she’s got her rhythm back.

Just when the last grains of the ‘sands of time’ were about to fall through my hourglass, this blog came along and inverted my sand timer. It gave me another chance to fight time. Fight fate. So, with hope and will compressed in me as if I were a pressurized cabin, I made myself believe that my hero had arrived. That it was time to take the plunge — make the dive without mastering the technique, or knowing how to breathe underwater. No life jackets too. Clearly, it was my ‘Fight Club‘ moment — “this is your life and it’s ending one minute at a time”. It was now or never. I had to change. And to say that I did it gracefully, would be to put it so gracefully that I’d be a big fat f$&@ing liar.

It took everything out of me, from me. But, I made a lot of changes. Tough decisions. Uncomfortable conversations. Painful confrontations. I began writing more, reading more, exercising more, eating better, listening to music again, feeling joy again. And through it all, this 5-day deadline of blogging gave me my reasons, my conviction, my purpose. It helped me escape the wrath of my own internal labyrinth. Deep inside, like fossilized specimens, I found priceless bits and pieces of me. I found this friend in me. And this time when I looked into the mirror, those eyes bore into my soul — and just like that, I fell in love with that friend inside me.

This love got me through one year of immaculate blogging — never missing a deadline, never publishing crap, never failing my readers. It got me through criticism when I began, jealousy when I got better, and hypocrisy when there was nothing else left to pull me down. It also brought me unbound joy, inspiration from the blogger community, encouragement from the ones that really cared, and in many ways, helped me understand that blood isn’t always thicker than water. That tectonic plates will shift — you gotta be smart enough to jump over to the next one before quaking into oblivion. Keep hustling. Bustling. Binging. Tripping. Rocking.

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15 September 2018 – Welcome to the Machine

A hundred life lessons later, I’m here today. In one piece. Living, breathing, surviving — like a well-oiled machine — the quintessential hustler. I do my thing, and while I’m at it,  I do my best to keep it beautifully messy. It’s never easy, it’s never perfect — and it definitely isn’t always rewarding. But baby, it’s a long way to the top, if you wanna rock n roll!

If there has been one takeaway from it all, it has been the joy of giving gratitude. For all the things that have been, can be or will be. Giving immense gratitude for you, my readers —we shall meet & greet forever at frequency ‘magic‘. For you, who make sure I eat my meals. For you, who love me when I don’t love myself. For you, my little one, for the sparkle you bring into my eyes. For you, my universe, for always nudging me towards what I seek but do not know. And finally for you, the perfect stranger living inside me — for always believing in my dreams while I’m counting stars. Not days. Not dollars. Not numbers. Only stars.

Everything that kills me, makes me feel alive

Counting Stars, One Republic

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365 days seem shorter when you conquer them 5 days at a time. See you in 5 days from now. Every 5 days.

Until next time,

XOXO