The Marginally Above – Average Adviser

There’s a guy who sits in my brain. I think he likes it up there. Perhaps, he finds it safe, forever protected by the veil of an actual human being acting out his will. Perhaps, behind the curtain of the present situation is where he thrives – using it as a sieve to filter out elements that pollute, and refining the ones that don’t. I talk to him sometimes. I run ideas by him, and take his advice. He is often quite confident about the veracity of his assertions, although I am not always sure.

I have been through a few situations in the last year or so that I have, on initial inspection, assessed as failures. They were definitely setbacks on some particular front, and forced me to think, pause, learn, unlearn, plan, and act.

The guy in my head went –

“Well, that didn’t work out.”

Yeah, no shit, guy. Where do we go from here?

“I would suggest eating some chicken, followed by a healthy consumption of digital content on Netflix, concluded with many hours of sleep.”

I must admit, it worked. For a while. Inevitably, there comes another situation of questionable success, and the rhetorical –

“Boy, we really tanked that one, huh?”

Yeah, it’s been 6 months, you can stop reminding me.

“Hey, you know I only bring it up because we’re not done talking about it. There’s something you’re holding back.”

Yeah, a punch to your face. That’s what I’m holding back.

“You gotta stop fighting me, my man. I’m on your side.”

Your advice got me here in the first place. How do I even trust you?

“I know I don’t always get it right, and I don’t try to either. I simply tell you what I truly believe is right in that moment, and you do what you do best – roll with whatever road that takes us on.”

Yeah, I guess we gotta bear with our shit. Where do we go from here?

“Forward. How does that sound?”

Like you’re intentionally trying to deliver poignant-sounding advice.

“Sorry, my bad. Let’s get some chicken. And then Netflix.”

1987: A Short Story

2350 HOURS

He pushed the door open, jolting the rubber stopper out of place.
Back in the corridor, a flickering light bulb had its beams of light dancing on the shards of broken glass on the floor.
Clearing his desk of all the stray papers with one swift move, he dropped the brown, premium leather briefcase on the desk with a thud, oblivious to the small tiny troupe of ants feasting on a crumb of a leftover doughnut from earlier. 1987 – the combination that was clicked into the briefcase. An inbuilt light illuminated the contents. Busy looking for something while wiping the sweat off his neck, the buzzing of his phone went unnoticed, as did the focusing laser beam in the centre of his forehead. However, the silhouette in the corridor did not. The man said something indecipherable, perhaps commenting on the silhouette’s appearance, or on his current predicament. Nonetheless, the bullet that found its way into his skull a moment later, had an altogether different message to convey.

Two Sides

(Or, why Jai Vyas Writes lefts, but he’s here now so yay for that)

Realisations come slow. Acceptance comes with struggle. Especially when its about myself.

Its funny how some moments are so poetic. Its hilariously poignant, outrageously humbling. Whoever it is up there, writing this script is the best writer ever.

So, context. This thing you’re reading right now is me free-writing. Its not new but just something I’m trying after a long time. Its a writing technique where, quite simplistically, you just write. That’s it. Little to no mental editing, just getting it all down on paper (or the screen, whatever works).

I’m trying to get back to the basics. I lost my way somewhere.

Clearly.

My blog has maybe 5 updates in the last one year.

I don’t know what the right word is for my state of mind, but “satisfied” did not fit. I used to think that was good. To want to be more, do more.

I’ve learnt that everything does have two sides. The same thing that held me back, also propelled me forward. The same thing that made me doubt my writing, also made me explore a lot more in areas I never thought I would.

I’ve written some of my best works in the last year, and also some of my worst.

“The worst write-up a writer creates is the one he doesn’t write.” – Jai Vyas

‘Exhilaratingly turbulent‘, would be an appropriate phrase for my year. Maybe some day soon, I’ll write more about it. For now, let’s just stick to that phrase.

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If you’re reading this and you’ve been a follower of this blog, I can’t thank you enough for coming back. If you’re new here, welcome! Its lovely to have you here! I hope you’re liking it so far.

Until next time,

Over and out.

(Old followers, you guys know I did this before Stranger Things picked it up. Not saying anything, but I came before. Again, not saying anything.)

What Does Focus Even Mean?

Close your eyes.

Take a deep breath.

Relax.

Focus.

Teachers and invigilators tend to say things like these before an exam begins, in an effort to give us a pep talk to instantly calm our frantic nerves, all those neurons revising last minute details. They try to motivate us to write down every single answer that we didn’t even study while preparing!

When it came to me, however, I never really understood what they were trying to achieve. I mean, I never really got what they meant when they asked me to focus. They say focus, I ask howww? What do you mean?! How should I focus, what should I focus on? You know?!

And so, today I’m going to try and answer the question: What does focus even mean?

It was about a year back that I began to understand what focus might mean. I was in the middle of this intracollege writing competition and I had advanced to the final round, and it felt like everything was falling apart because I had no creative clue of what to write next. I don’t know what wise old neuron gave me this idea, but I began focusing on my breath.

I remember being told right from my childhood, that whenever you feel angry, anxious, nervous, scared, just close your eyes, count your breath, focus on it, and you’ll calm down. Since I had nothing else to do, and nowhere else to go, I decided to do this. When I opened my eyes a minute later, I saw this third year student, who was supervising the event. She looked at me with her eyes wide, as if trying to say, “Time jaa raha hai, aankhein bandh kyu kar rahe ho! Likho jaldi! (You’re running out of time, why are you sitting with your eyes shut? Quickly, write!)” I smiled at her and for the next 15 minutes, I tried my best to write down whatever best I could come up with.

Later, I found out I won the competition. I’d never gotten to the point of hoping to win it, because in that moment, all I was doing was breathing, and acknowledging that process.

Of course I sound all wise right now standing here, but its something I just happened to do, and it worked. Since then, any time I begin to feel overwhelmed, I just breathe. I don’t know, maybe that’s what focus means, or at least that’s what it means to me. So, today I want to ask you, what does it mean to you?

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Remember, a few months back, I shared a post with you, which I said was a speech I gave in my Public Speaking class? Well this post was the latest speech I gave in the class.

I hope you liked it! If you want to read more of what I write elsewhere, or just see the stuff I do in life, go check out my Instagram and Facebook. You’ll find the links at the bottom and top of my page, respectively.

I’ll see you guys soon!

Your Mountain, Your Path

I have had a few thoughts about stuff, so bear with me as I try to compile them into a fairly sensible blog post. I might be incoherent at times, but trust me; there is a method to my madness. So here goes.

Bruce Wayne kicks off Batman v Superman by saying there were once ‘diamond absolutes’. I believe, in real life, there are none. There are no absolutes. It’s all variable and relative.

There’s a lot of idealism in most people’s upbringings, I suppose. I’d hate to generalize or speak for others, so I’m going to stick to me. I grew up with a lot of ideals being placed in front of me. I continue to grow with a similar buffet of ideals placed in front of me. “I must strive to be ‘x’ kind of a person”, “strive to achieve ‘x’, ‘y’ and ‘z’ things”, “look for ‘x’ kind of qualities in people I must accept as peers, friends, partners,” et cetera, et cetera.

Simon Sinek is a well known orator and in general, someone with great understanding of people, among, I’m sure, a lot of other things. There’s this one interview/speech of his where he talks about millennials, the why behind their troubles in life – faulty upbringing, skewed perceptions on life, low self esteem, lack of “grit”, and how society sees them. I am aware I’m not the typical prototype of a millennial, but I couldn’t help but relate to some things Simon says (see what I did there?).  

He says relationships are slow, uncomfortable, meandering, messy processes. He says, “I see young people these days standing at the foot of a mountain, with this abstract concept of ‘impact’ that they want to have in the world. What they don’t see is the mountain.”

The concept of this mountain is what I’m trying to get at here.

Its not wrong to have ideals like the ones I mentioned above. I have many of those ideals, and I’m sure many of you have a variation of them as well. They motivate us and keep us going. They give us somewhere to go. However, there’s some traveling to be done from where you are, to where that ideal is. There’s some climbing to be done, and there’s no one single path. I may walk 20 miles before falling into a ditch 10 feet deep, not coming out of it for a few weeks.

That’s how life is. There ain’t no map, no instruction manual. Each and every one of us is figuring it out as we go along. A different path, is not necessarily the wrong one.

I talk a lot about ‘moments’ and enjoying them, in a lot of my blog posts, but that’s because I believe in the process. I live for it. The ‘little innocuous moments’ as Sinek calls them, when you’re not doing anything, when you’re just sitting and looking around, observing, registering, and thinking. When ideas come and go, when people look at you like an idiot for not looking down at your phone or reading something and instead just gazing around. You’re not an idiot. In that moment, you’re human. And the great thing about that is that while you’re on a path to some esoteric land where you want to get to, you’re looking on each side, at the fields passing you by, the roads, the people, all the other mountains, the rain drops, everything. You’re looking, and that’s more than many of us can boast of having really, truly done today. So, look!

To not blindly walk, but appreciate the path others are on, while walking on my own path, is something I want to live by.