Happy Birthday, Jims!

"She is your mirror, shining back at you with a world of possibilities.
She is your witness, who sees you at your worst and best, and loves you
anyway. She is your partner in crime, your midnight companion, someone
who knows when you are smiling, even in the dark She is your teacher,
your defense attorney, your personal press agent, even your shrink. Some
days, she's the reason you wish you were still a teenager." 

This holds true even today. It seems like we relived all these moments just a month ago and now today, on your birthday, you are preparing to fly back to the distant lands, for the good

.

Love beckons your course of life and you've directed my course of life- filled with learnings, gratitude , joy and immense love. I cannot thank you enough for being the friend that you have been for the years I cannot count back!

Have a marvelous day.

Wishing You A Very Happy Birthday! :)

Love immeasurable and blessings carefully chosen, just for you, my friend.


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Guiding Grids and Thinking Thoughts

Recurrence of moments of dissatisfaction from my own self makes me dig the holes of low self esteem and ever receding confidence. I do not know if this has anything to do with being in the field of art and design. The closed boundaries experienced within myself open my mind to experiencing the joy of living in this world where freedom is available, but with an asterisk.

"How do I think?", I thought to myself. I have an answer to that question. Do not question the shelf life of the answer for it holds true at least for this moment, as I type this, as I provide support to the recent visuals I doodled:

More often than not, I am hard on myself. Questioning, thinking, seeking meaning, seeking reasons, analyzing, sorting, slotting and grouping defines the thought process leading to an organized way of functioning- often making me believe that I think along the guidelines and base my voice in grid like structures.. It binds me. As much as I love order, I want to experience chaos. As much as the grids fascinate me, I want to break that straight line and the linear progression. As much as the squares and triangles intrigue me, I want to see what a circle does on a blank sheet of paper. I began with this experiment of doodling on hand-drawn .5cm square grid on plain sheet of paper. I wanted to see how far I was strict with myself to follow the grids and maintain the boxed look of the sheet.

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Questions + Responses = Many New Posts

People have their ways - some follow the ones who inspire them, some one carve their path to the lakes through the caves and the paths unknown. I do not know which route I am taking.

Since time unmeasured, I have looked for meaning in every small little thing I do: questioning, thinking, analyzing, reanalyzing, rating, not acknowledging and deviating from the simple joys that I find in the most unimagined activity and interactions. Tired of all the churning and baseless thinking, I have just decided to follow my gut feeling- letting it grow stronger and empowering myselg to jot down all that I think- visually.

I absolutely adore this pinterest board: Think, Thank and Smile. I live by it: It makes me smile, it encourages me, it makes me take one day at a time, it says "Yes, Khushbu, you can do it- Now and always". I hope it excites and inspires you just as much- do have a look at it.

The pinterest board is the same place where the following two 'pins' popped up on the page, caught my attention and hence led to a different journey in the day-today living and also on this blog.

> I would sketch, doodle, take photographs, create artworks and put them up on this blog.

> I would embark on a journey to the Himalayas, all by myself, spend a week in the heaven.

> I would sing- to myself, to the world.

> I would buy myself goodies I have longed for years together.

> I would break the rules- the ones I follow because I am expected to follow and not because I like to follow or because I believe in following them

As per the self-made commitments at the beginning of 2012, this blog will hopefully be a lot more visually interesting and engaging, hence challenging one of my biggest fear of sharing visual representations from my journals that have remained close to me- only me, so far.

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A pause.

Pace and peace as close as the two words appear when written next to each other, are often conflicting when brought together in real life. In the past one year, I seem to have opted the way led by pace. Not that peace has been missing in action. It's been a year in Bangalore and a year at Seventh Incorporated. There's more to verbalize the experience at Seventh and I'd be able to do justice to the experience and the year gone by only if I devote an entire post for this.

Three months into the new year and I have not updated my blog. This blog has been the space where I share my inner world with the world out there. Ignoring the blog has been equivalent to ignoring myself. Yes! I have ignored myself by relentlessly engaging in multiple activities- mentally and physically. This is what I thought while watering the garden at office:

"Moments interrupted with thoughts pouring out of the untamed mind and all I'd wish for is the mind confesses what the confusion is all about. I think. I recall. I revisit. I question. I fear. I fall. And I try to resurrect. Regaining consciousness, awareness about all that has moved, changed, eroded, exploded and exploited in the last few years strikes hard. Connecting the past to the present to the future appears surreal. Coming to terms with the state of "not knowing" further assures the existence of unbelievable imperfections. Questioning the disheveled belief system and the non-existing priorities, I wonder if it's absolutely essentially to hear your own voice. With opinions lingering in mid-air and thought process affected by multiple voices within myself and outside of me, I stand in the middle of nowhere, wondering if there is a direction to choose from and a voice to heed. A pause, a muted silence, a deep breath is the response to all that the mind questions. Peace. "

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Notes To Myself: Fear

I talk to myself. During one of such self talks in early 2011, I had promised myself to face all that is mentioned here with undying valour and utter authenticity. Unfortunately, on the way, I tumbled a couple of times and managed to stray away from the self made promise. This has been THE article that has been saved in my memory since December 2002 and in my computer system since June 2010. This is the same article that has been read over and over again out of the fear of going wrong. This is the same article that was to be posted in early April 2011. It’s only now that I’ve almost forced myself to publish it. It’s the very subject of this article that had kept me away from getting this out in virtual world of social interaction.

That was the day when I stood with my head dropped down, amidst a class of 30 odd students, off which, at least 15 (excluding myself), belonged to the intelligent lot, or at least, I uncomfortably accepted it. I had failed. Failed in one of 10 subjects in class 9; failed with a score of 9 on 25, 10 being the ‘passing marks’. Would getting 1 mark extra make me a little more intelligent? Would such a minuscule addition to the then significant score-card help me face the world set with rights, wrongs, brilliance and dumbness with openness?

Why did I mention about this real-life incident pertaining to classroom competitions and the rat race to gain the “best performance” or general proficiency awards? That’s where my fears started growing its roots. I’ve unknowingly gathered significant fears at times when I have failed. Though minuscule, this little way of having ‘failed’ has spread it’s affect like multiplying and mutating cancerous cells. It seems like a baggage which has accumulated so much of fear that the heaviness actually pokes. Fear of failure, fear to face the world post the failure, fear of encountering situations that may lead to recurrence of failure, fear of non-acceptance, fear of being wrong, fear of death- these have all been packed in this little pocket in my mind. These black holes of fear have partially engulfed the strong willed, the daring, the spontaneous and the never quit attitudes that existed within me. Today, here, with the help of this blog, which I dearly love, I’d like to not proclaim but share my fears, with the hope that this would help me get over them.

Have you ever made a list called “10 things you fear”? I have. And these are the 7 (and not 10) things I fear to death:

1. Losing any of my dear ones before having spent quality time with them.
2. Being a victim or seeing any of my dear ones suffer from any terminal illness/ disease.
3. Losing the job I have/ I will have and the job I love.
4. Being in that state where I am solely held responsible for something that did not work the way it should have.
5. Being a mediocre. Or rather, not being able to see the best in my own self.
6. Living now in a way only to later realise how I have lived my life in a way I never wanted to.
7. Witnessing or being a part of any road accident or a plane crash.

While most of these fears appear trivial, it’s when these surface in the thought process that it takes an ugly state. All the fears mentioned above seem to be based on some kind of insecurity. The need to be accepted, the need to do things right, the need to be good, the need to define my thought process- everything adds to the fear and the stress. Fear makes you live cautiously. But how cautiously can you actually live? I have not been able to justify the existence of these fears. Nevertheless, the courage of having published this article itself is a relief.

For all the times that I have feared, I have failed.

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