99 days

One lazy evening few months ago, I decided to sketch a bit in my nice tiny notebook. The one with yellowish handmade paper. I loved the black pens that I kind of took from my dad. He asked me if I would be using them. I was skeptical. But then I wanted them! I didn't know if I would use them ever, but I just said yes and put them in my luggage. And here I was, with the black pen and empty paper. Trying to draw. I had no clue what I wanted to draw. I just doodled a bit and was excited. I took some photos with my old phone.

I came across this blog where a lady drew for some 300+ days. Daily. And she posted the sketches online. Mostly pencil sketches. That's when I randomly decided to draw. For 99 days. Why 99? 9 is my favourite number and 100 is too cliche.

I used MS Excel to determine what would be the last day for the project. Well, it was my friend's idea. Obviously. Dec 18th it said. That's far. Super faaaar was what I thought. But then, one day at a time.

Slowly there was a theme  of sorts. I started drawing whatever inspired me on that particular day. It became this dear diary to me, but with pictures. I made my first tumblr blog. Uploaded them weekly. Learnt some editing techniques on picasa.

It was fun. I discovered myself in ways unknown to me earlier. My parents initially laughed it off. Because they felt that I used to draw much better when I was in 5th standard. I hardly got any feedback from friends. But he did remind me and would ask about my sketches, almost daily for reasons unknown.

Recently when amma was here, I was showing her pics of my latest sketches. And looks like she enjoyed. She really liked them. That meant a lot to me. I did get some feedback from Facebook friends. Not as much as I would have wanted.

Some of the questions that I encountered- Why did I do this? A lot of reasons. Did I plan this? Well, no. Will I do something about this? Maybe. Will I get anything out of this? Obviously. (Why would someone even ask me this question)

We are constantly losing our identity. Getting sucked into the corporate world. Falling prey to the materialistic pleasures in life. And one day, there you are, drinking and getting pained with life. Accusing life to be filled with boredom. Trying to find people to talk to.

If anything, I have learnt to be alone. I have learnt to enjoy my thoughts. I have learnt to keep my phone away and observe the sky and the roads and the traffic. I have learnt to lose myself and feel good about it.

Some small thing to connect to have that sense of belongingness. Some tiny thought to make you smile and feel good. One word to set you into that thinking mode. This is all you need. This is all I need. This is all we all need.

Here is the url-
upadhyaybindu.tumblr.com

Resolutions

Another year comes to an end bringing with it a ton of "top ten" lists. The year end reminds you of your resolutions. Well, remember all those things that you resolved for the new year 2014?

I am soon going to be an year older and probably a bit wiser. This year I am not going to have any new year resolutions. I never predicted 2014 to turn out this way. An international trip, a fundraiser, resigning from my first job, getting my "first pay cheque" for the second time- were some firsts.

I am not going to make any grand plans for my future. None of the well-thought-hundreds-of-hours-spent-in-thinking level five year plans. Why? I think planning to that extent kind of restricts you. It paves a path and forces you to see the route. You see far. Agreed. But do you see the alternate routes? And detours get painful as a lot of things tend to get connected.

What makes me write about this? Well, I saw a friend of mine setting goals for Dec. Pretty lofty goals. I was reminded of the days where I set those kind of goals. It brought upon me a lot of misery. I started feeling bad for not reaching them. I was feeling conscious as I might have mentioned those goals to some people around.

Goals are a way of keeping you motivated. But do we account for the peace of mind and freedom which is much much much needed these days. I read somewhere recently- We are human beings and not human doings. It hit me really hard.

This has been a crappy post. I hope to manage my time better after coming back from work, I need to find ways of spending time in the long bus ride to office and back. I need to.. I have to.. I should.. There goes the loop.