MY FIRST ENGAGEMENT LETTER

Today I had a client sign an engagement letter, officially hiring me to be their lawyer/advisor.

SO MUCH HAPPINESS.

<3 you world!

If this isn't a gold star kind of day, I don't know what is!

Being a friend to myself

I had to take out a Demand Draft today, and predictably, I asked DF "So what's the procedure to take out a DD? Have you ever taken one out?" "Nope, I don't know, but I guess you go to the bank and figure it out?", he said, rather unhelpfully. I guess the last time I used a DD was to pay for my NALSAR entrance exam application form, and mommy dearest took care of that!

Anyway, I went to my bank in Bhogal, and figured it out. #win

ALSO, I went to the dentist PREEMPTIVELY which is a big big big step for me, - I feel like I'm ready to be an adult - especially because I will have to work like an adult to pay for all the miseries my earlier dentist caused me. :X
(Pro-tip - ALWAYS go to the best dentist you can, and ALWAYS get second opinions!)

I also made a banofee pie - the dulce le leche came from a Nestle condensed milk tin and a pressure cooker. 

I feel like something has changed. Like there's something in the air (literally, and figuratively, if you live in Delhi, but whatev), something changing.

Could it be as simple as a winter blues thingy clearing up? Because I haven't been as excited in a long time - and more importantly...

 #onwards

Complete it or Kill it

I've designated one day out of every fifteen in a month to be a 'Complete it or Kill it' day.

A couple of weeks ago, while researching efficiency and optimality, I came across this article which had a central premise.

Complete a task, or kill it - don't shelter it in the warmth of your todo list.

The premise sounds deceptively stupid and simple, but its so liberating to know that there's an option to completing a task, a helpful prioritization meter so to speak, that I've adopted this wholeheartedly.

Practcially thought, I realize it isn't possible, even for someone like me, to get to the bottom of my list everyday, so every fifteen days, I have resolved to complete or kill.

Its 5 06 pm now and I have around 24 entries to complete or kill. I've done three.

#crie #completekill

Mold

I have this obsessive need to work towards a Zero-Inbox*. This need materialised sometime late last year, and since then I have spent hours (HOURS NO REALLY HOURS) every week trying to label, and archive every single email in my primary email account (15000 +emails).

This is the stuff that filing nightmares are made off!

In the process, I often come across cryptic one-two line, no subject emails that trigger my curiosity, I stop to read, and before you know it, I'm reading everything I wrote to people in November 2012 and I am filled with eye-rolling + happiness at my stupid poetry-sending, guardian-discovering and mildly panicking self.

For example, this gem I sent to DF:

Sub: I ATE MOLD

am I going to die? What if it had mycotoxins (wiki says they are poisonous). My throat feels realy dry and sore, honestly. DRY and SORE.

(I feel like weeping a little).

I ATE MOLD - FACEPALM FACEPALM. 


As if you didn't guess already, DF sent back a "you're not going to die. I eat mouldy bread all the time' type terse response from a _blackberry_.

As you can see, I indeed did not die from (wtf are these?) mycotoxins. Hurrah.

I would laugh and poke fun at myself even more if only I hadn't had a similar outburst in Goa recently. Also, I'm not certain why I spelt it 'mold'. Also, I must have had a pretty sad day to eat mouldy bread for dinner - definitely one of the crazy deal-closing weeks.

Hindsight is love the second time around (aka I'm back bitches!)

STATUTORY WARNING*: I'm sorry if you have me on a feed of somekind - you probably woke up to 614 posts jostling for space and assaulting your attention, much like the armpits assault of the ladies compartment of the purple (violet) metro line at 6 pm to Badarpur on a warm spring day.
As you probably figured out, I didn't write them all in one night - duh, but instead painstakingly rewinded the procedure I performed three years ago (drafted all my posts then, undrafted them all now). ALL 614 of them. If that's not bravely crazy, I don't know what is. Welcome to the boudoir of my truest, deepest, showiest self. I'm scared you'll like me too much, and judge me too sweetly - I'm confident like that ya.

*Not really, you know, because there isn't a statute that says so. Still, in Spaaxland we like our legaljargons wink wink.

Hey hi ho - I missed you gentle reader(s), and I missed you bloggy.

It's been a mega mega rollercoaster these these three years here in India, and really, if  bloggy is to be believed, I was the sanest and clearest when I left *STABILITY* in 2012 to find meaning, purpose and to fulfill a long-standing desire to i) wear orange clothes to work, and ii) find and work on something truly 'useful' (neither, you understand gentle reader, are things that a magic-circle law firm encourages wholeheartedly).

Pah - how manicpixiedreamgirl ish of me na?

In the years since, I've thought of my time in India as a comma, changed it to a semi-colon, and this year I fervently hope that it isn't to become an ellipsis (you will be happy to note my penchant for cheap dramatism in sentence structuring is still the same).

I've been more thoughtful in this time than in any other before (less of the zara, more of the zen), and the last eight months especially have been the hardest, both in terms of forcing me to dissect my life-choices, and in not making what I want fall into my lap like its always done before.

Wounds unaware have blossomed and left scars and fears some of which I find when I'm looking for something else - a scrap of wrapping paper, or a red petticoat, or an unexpected email search result, while some I've become friends with, proudly, secretly, reveling in the story of the how-scar and the old-scar. Scar-friends, you could say (Say hello to my little fear).

And with all of the little-fears, and the ele-beles, and the brave-new-casting away of sloth and embracing of change, my life is in such lovely joyous shambles and order equally both, and I'm exasperated and delighted by its sine-wave-ness in a way that's oddly reminiscent of the times in VIII semester. Its all I can do not to snort, wipe away tears and roll up my fullsleeves (not really, it's still a bit cold) and get back to typing. Really there's nothing like the orange-white blogspot interface and a cranberries playlist to make me want to hug each of my posts, and eat some cake and do a little bit of laundry for old time's sake

<hug>

So - what's this about being back? Let's get some things straight:

1. It's a new year and I didn't do a 'what I want this year' post (spectacular success, back to writing and lots of travel) - for which I am sad/sorry.
2. It was bloggy's 9th birthday last August (my bloggy is the best and I love love love it) and I didn't do a post to commemorate - for which I am sad/sorry. 
3. I went to Goa and I celebrated my anniversary of being married to DF (which I am secretly overjoyed about and which gentle reader way back in 2008 - 2009 - 2010 - 2011 - 2012 etc etc would have thought we'd end up married haha) and didn't do a post about the unhealthily tremulous relationship that this bloggy, I and DF have - the public/private tightrope we walk everytime I post such a post, and how it was all so much easier when I was heartbroken and secretly writing lame-weepy-love-letters to DF on this blog - for which I am sad/sorry.
4. I had a BIRTHDAY for which I did not do a post - and really, for this, I am sad/sorry/angry a little (note to self: do not watch a dystopic movie on birthday and take it all out on DF).
5. I took some mega-mega life decisons (or atleast I decided to print some business cards for myself - which are kind of funky in a professional sort of way) and I didn't do a post about it (god figuring out how to host a website argrgrhrhrhrhhrhrhrhrrhhrhrhrhhrr) - for which I am sad/sorry, though I am certain you are relieved. 
6. I had house-guests over for TEN DAYS (DF's parents,and no-one cried or fought or disowned anyone, and no plates were broken and much mimicking of downstair's aunty was done and much amazing food was consumed), and I didn't do a post about it, for which I am sad/sorry. 
7. (FYI some were broken later, but that is another post which also I did not do - but given the circumstances, not really sad/sorry). 
8. I went to see the tanks and the missiles at the Republic Day Parade, 2015 and I didn't do a post about it (or the filthiness, or the crowds, or the rain and cold, or the twitter-miracle that helped me get the passes - really the middle part of this story is like the desi version of Home Alone 2, but the ending is a little flop), and for this I am now getting exasperated at myself.
9. I've fallen off the bloggy bandwagon - and I can't for the life of me remember why! (No, of course I do - the denouement is a couple of paras below).

So many good stories, in little crevices, in the quiet moments, when you know, I wore orange clothes, made tea at 2 pm, and sat in my balcony and *tried* to be purposeful (tick, tick, tick) - all of these and more, and the times I did laundry, and the times I've gone driving down Motilal Nehru Marg at 11 pm, and the singing along to Mukesh, and the second dinners at Sundar Nagar chomping down bhelpuri, and walking 8000 steps a day, and actively meeting more new people, and licking my hurts well, and the ASOIAF forum fascination, and the getting of a new sheesham desk to inaugurate my work-space at home, learning to host a website (failing at it), using Google AppsScript to install a functionality, besting myself at spider solitaire, learning co-ordinate geometry and behavioural econ and thinking about AI, and crypto-tech, and biases in judicial thinking, and and altruism studies, and getting mildly scared at Black Mirror, and getting very impressed with the Good Wife, and getting mildly annoyed with the Big Bang Theory, and everyday trying to become a brave, kind and successful person and failing sometimes and breaking down while DF makes tea badly :), and twitter conversations, and remembering not to flirt much with online strangers, and making creative excuses for buying things I *want* and not *need*, in these times of austerity, and more, would, in hindsight, have been just the thing - just the thing to make my future self feel warm the way I've been feeling the last two hours.

But no, I've gone and been mean to my future self, and now I feel bad. Let me make amends?

They don't tell you a lot about life you know? The ones who understand it better. Someone told me this today, and it felt like a big significant truthy truth. Really I am glad I stopped subscribing to Vogue and switched to Jezebel, though a small part of me misses my shallow happy-cute self.  All of this sophisticated angst about the city-polity and the egalitarian-consciousness, just echoes around you, and builds up, and you're not even sure what the solution is, and really who's to sit you down, make you tea and talk truth to confusion?

This, this bit of becoming an adult is tough, and its what I've been struggling with. A blank canvas is scary, but liberating, and I've had to work much harder at letting go of the former, and embracing the latter. I've learnt some things though I wish I didn't have to learn it through such hard lessons - I've decided to write it down for you-gentle reader, and for my future self, as a manual say, and because its more organic, homegrown and artisanal than anything you'll see on Buzzfeed.


1) Life is short. Young people die all the time. Don't feel guilty about pushing work to the next day and going for a walk. Unless you're a doctor or something, it's fine. The world will learn to survive without you. It already knows how to.

2) Life is very hard in small ways and in big ways. Finding good ways to deal with the hard stuff is worth spending time on.

3) Working hard is non-optional. Genius, passion and brilliance are really no substitutes. Even for me.

4) To thine own-self be true. I didn't have to make tough choices when young, but I've had to make them more often recently, and it isn't easy. There is a banality to unhealthy compromise, and it slowly kills idealism and passion. Stick to your guns, and your positions, albeit politely. The comfort of doing the right thing is nice, though I can't say for sure that its always better than the ease of compromise.

5)  Being someone else is hard, but being yourself is easy. The tough part is figuring out where oneself ends, and someone else begins. It can be hard trying to figure out if you have a 'voice' even or if all you think and say is manufactured and reworked brilliance from the previous evening's bunch. I don't know how to tell - but something surges in me sometimes when I blog and the words seem to spill out of me because I know what I want to say quickly quickly before I forget, and it seems to fit, it seems true. Some other times, its more contrived - and I can tell it isn't right just by looking - so I guess your internal radar will ping too? It's worth trying to find.

6) Love yourself. Change is scary, and breaking new ground is scary. People are casually dismissive and actively cruel sometimes (why!?)  - you need to believe and love yourself enough to disregard the filth. I don't think this is nearly as easy, and the older we get, it can be hand to be anything but easy on yourself.  Try not to and have faith instead.


***

I hope this makes up for the silence - it took a while to learn some new things to talk about.
A spell of hindsight is a joyforever - said nobody but me.

***

You'll recognize this reference if you've been here before, but I had to do some laundry, and its done now. Time for some tea, and bed, and brunch tomorrow. Excuse the label, but we're pretty relaxed about that sort of thing around here. It *felt* right.