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So, it has been a little over a month since I moved back to Mumbai and I thought I should write it out. So gear up, for another long story lol.

Many times in the past month, people around me have asked me on various occasions, how does it feel? And I have never had an answer and I kept wondering why. Either I should be like really happy, or really sad or something, right? But the truth is I don’t feel anything. The biggest realization is that some changes in life don’t hit you in the face like a storm, in fact they feel more like a breeze, where every day is a new day, and you have no idea what to feel.

Life is not all black and white. Life is operating in gray constantly. Honestly, I have not felt completely happy or completely sad since a month and I don”t know if that’s okay or not. There have been some really good moments and then some bad moments.

Some good moments :

Diwali at home after 4 years (Fun fact : I realized I have never celebrated Diwali in the house we live in currently. We moved to this house in May 2019 and I moved to USA in August same year. Crazy, right? )

Birthday at home after 4 years.

A lot of good moments at work and I have started doing quite a lot apart from my work too, which is amazing and I am very proud of myself for pushing myself so much.

Proud of not skipping the gym. (Though eating a lot of fattening food, obviously)

A lot of good memories running through my head all the time. (the local train memories, the sukha bhel memories, the marine drive memories)

Some bad moments :

The infamous accident, I don’t think I have ever been more traumatized with any event in my life than this one. One of the few times in life, where I was like, Dude, what are you doing? This is heights. I am not that strong. Stop giving me so much to take on. It is not fair! Primarily, because this happened on my first Saturday after returning home. Literally, 5 days after landing in Mumbai.

One of the biggest realizations I have had after coming back (which I think anyone who is planning to come back should think about) is that all the relationships you had before moving, they have all moved on. I don’t know if everyone feels the same but this is what I have felt the most. If you are thinking, you will come back and all of your friends from before would be goddamn excited to have you back in their life that is probably not going to happen. Or at least it did not happen for me. People have grown up. They have so much to do, so many people in their life. It is very different from when you come back once a month a year and meet them once while you are here. Well, I have to also say that there is also a fair amount of cynicism and extra sensitivity on my end too. That has always been my case with friendships. Somewhere in my head, I don’t think I fully believe they are forever.

I guess, I am still in the same boat of uncertainty. Maybe one month is too early to judge, but I think I am going to have to develop thick skin and work very hard to create a life that I want here. Develop hobbies, immerse myself into work and build new friendships. My heart says in a few months, I am going to develop a f*** it attitude and do whatever the f*** I want. So if you see a single woman, watching a movie alone, or going to a series of dance workshops, or going to a bunch of cafes, going to meetup or music events, joining book clubs, learning new things, working on some cool things apart from the 9-5 thing, don’t creep out, lol.

Hello, again. I realized before I leave I have some very important thankyous to tell.

To my roommates:

• For tolerating me turning our bathroom to a swimming pool (because I would take hour long baths and dance in the shower while also compulsively changing the songs on my Bluetooth speaker, because I am just never satisfied with the YouTube suggestions).
• For not speaking to me in the mornings, and giving me my own sweet time to snap out of my “ugh I am annoyed it’s morning” mood. Between one of you brewing black coffee for 20 mins, and another making good old chaai, mornings in our house were pretty pleasant.
• For letting me sleep for a month every time I would come back from India.
• For sleeping with me on the floor when we didn’t have electricity for a week and for gossiping with me from midnight to 8 am.
• For being so excited about grocery shopping that I never had to take a look at any of the grocery shopping apps, to cooking all kinds of extravagant meals so that all I had to do was washing dishes.
• For being the first people I could think of when I could have used some strength, both of you in different times.
• For being there during the lows, and the highs. For celebrations, birthdays. For hosting parties. For wine and daaru nights. For so many Snapchat worthy memories. For not being roommates but in the truest sense of the word, friends.

However messy it may be, we didn’t just share an apartment, we built a home. A home where there was more laughter than tears. A home where small pet peeves didn’t get in the way of building a truly solid friendship. A home where you on most days, would find us, digging into some ice cream (or some cheesecake) bitching about the newest person we have a crush on or crying about how the previous one ended or gushing over how beautifully perfect relationship one of us is in.

To my neighbors in LA :

What do I say about these idiots?

• Thank you for accompanying me to the library for completing an assignment at midnight. Thank you for being my binging partner, whether it be horror movies, or shows where I keep forgetting the plot every time. Thank you for gossiping until the sun rises and taking long walks discussing everything and anything.
• Thank you for annoying the crap out of me. Waking me up while I am in the deep sleep zone, throwing my chappals anywhere and everywhere, and still continuing the annoyance without missing a beat.
• Thank you for being the smartest person in the group and still being the coolest person too. Tough to manage, no? From strangers to neighbors, from looking away to tolerating how much I talk, we came a long way.
• Thank you for always being there, through life’s ups and downs, for always being there to talk it out. For single handedly increasing my phone call durations. For accompanying me in impromptu trips.

If there was any semblance to having a family in US, it was these five idiots that I hung out with for those two years in graduate school. We really lived the F.R.I.E.N.D.S life.

I am super happy that the bond we shared has continued to grow, and is still a very big part of our life today. I know, life is going to change gears and we are all going to be very busy in different things, probably in different cities, in different parts of the world, but I know we are all one call away always.

I know whenever we would think of those two years, we would also think about the six of us. Casually hanging out, laughing at the same old jokes a million times, being there for assignments, interviews and everything in between. I know that picture of USC would be incomplete without our picture right next to it. I could not have asked for more!

To all the DJ Fam :

DJ, my undergrad college, was a fantastic place with a lot of fantastic people. Turns out I chose to not interact with most of them during my undergrad period. But I am glad we connected while at USC and then in Seattle and even in Cincy. Just the comfort of having known people around, made it so much easier, whether it be making plans, being part of large parties, game nights, birthday celebrations, or smaller convenience things like getting a wifi setup, which mattress to buy, etc.

A very, very, very special shoutout to one of my roommate’s boyfriend. You know, those friendships, where you don’t have to explain a ton, don’t have to speak everyday, but whenever you speak, you are back to exactly how you were. We had / have (not confirmed) one of those kind of friendships, which is thoda strange now that I think of, considering it was all rooted in being mean to each other (mostly to me). Thank you for giving me suggestions I never asked for. For bud light platinum, and mac book, and Sarabhai. Some of the coolest stuff!

To my bumble bee group :

Thanks for being the coolest chicks ever. I could have never imagined that a random connection, a random state fair day, could turn into the friendship that we have today. Thank you for being there in the most difficult times, for helping me navigate the worst crisis situations, for saying the most encouraging, the most sweetest things. For introducing me to a bunch of cool women, and for showing me how truly empowering girl friendships could be. You guys are the best! Anytime you come to India, in any corner, you have to tell me. We have to see each other every time y’all come.

To my “special” friends :

For teaching me the life lessons I never wanted to learn, haha. Okay, bad joke but I hope wherever you are, whatever you do in life, you are very, very happy. Happier than humanly possible. All said and done, a lot of my smiles were because of you.

To other kind people :

To my coworker at Amazon, who made life better by co-bitching about our team always. Hope to see you soon in Mumbai!

To a friend I met during my internship at Amazon, for the nice time I had in LA.

To a fellow flight traveler in Cincy who turned into a friend, by being the sweetest person. Helping me, a five foot person carrying so much luggage to my new place.

To all my girl friends in the infamous bachelorette, we didn’t get too much time after that, but I’ll always remember that weekend as the most hap girl time ever. Any time y’all are in India, hit me up. I promise you it will be a lot of fun!

To my manager, who is the sweetest boss (friend) one could ever ask for. With whom I have ranted about my boyfriend problems and discussed about bollywood movies (having an Indian wife helps). Who made Cincy bearable. Who I have embarrassed a lot by crying twice in front of. I hope you always stay happy. I am going to email you time and again, giving you updates about my new job, how the arrange marriage thing goes, the bollywood movies you have to watch, etc. Anytime y’all are in India, hit me up.

Okay, I guess I have rambled. Like always. Just documenting the love, you guys. I hope you all know I am going to miss the hell out of you. So miss me, okay?

I hope years later, the time we have spent together, comes in your top rated happy moments. I am competitive like that. I hope years later, when we are all 40, with some kids, and an annoyingly boring partner, we rethink of the time we were in our twenties, wondering how could we drink so much and how could we be so irresponsible and what the hell were we thinking. I hope years later, you still think of me as a good friend, who you couldn’t give enough gifts to, and could not appreciate enough, haha. See y’all soon, just on a different continent!

Acha chalti hoon, duaaon mein yaad rakhna!

So, I and NYC have had a very interesting and tragic love story. You can imagine, New York is on everyone’s bucket list since the day you landed in the States. And it has taken me almost 4 years to finally be here. And I have canceled a trip to New York twice This is just counting the number of times when I have paid for the trip and did not make it. I am not counting the number of times I have made tentative plans with different people at different times. After all this time, I finally made it to New York. Things happened this time too, but I managed to finally reach there.

I live very far away from the airport and it takes me a lot of money and time to reach the Cincinnati Airport. It takes me only 2 hours to reach New York, which is very cool, and now that I have visited once, I think I am going to visit a lot of times in the coming year. But yeah, I reached New York around 10 am. Lovely, bright, but a little chilly morning.

For the stay, I decided to live in a hostel to save some money and still live close to the main NYC areas. I booked one bed in a female dormitory room and it was pretty cool. When I booked the stay, I was a little skeptical about the bed situation. I am quite claustrophobic and the beds were not like the open bunk bed kinda thing. When I did finally reach the hostel and was able to just sneak into what the room looked like, I thought it would be okay. And it was, more or less, okay. Fun, actually, had some chats with people there and it was fun!

The company that I work for, has an office in New York. As soon as I landed, I had to go there. They were supposed to get me lunch, so I had good motivation to go there. Traveling for the first time on New York subways is a task. And on top of that, I had the wrong address. I traveled to the wrong part of the city and had to get back on the subway to get to the correct address. So basically, my first 1-1.5 hours were just on Subways. After finally getting to the office, they saved up some lunch for me. It was good, I worked for a while and then left at 5 to finally begin exploring the city.

With all my experience planning trips in NYC, I had not planned anything or booked anything in terms of sightseeing or exploring the city. I was going to just go by the mood. Which is sometimes a little scary, when you have so much pressure of being in the most happening city in the world.

On Friday when I reached there, after leaving the office, I decided to just explore the area around. I saw some cool buildings. I saw the Flatiron Building which looked pretty cool. Had a slice of pizza (which you have to have when in New York) followed up with ice cream. I did the “Friends experience” thing. It was so much fun. Super super (keeping the two supers even when Grammarly tells me not to) nostalgic. That show, which spanned over 10 years but for me, it was more like 2-3 months was probably the first English show I have ever seen. I used to think that I won’t be able to relate to English shows and movies and watching this show did change that. I loved the show. The friendship among the six stars is so heartwarming. Got some cool pictures with Hugsy, the Pivot couch, and other memorable stuff from the best episodes. Post that, I visited Washington Square Park and it was a very fun visit. If you are lucky you can see the spiderman person who was pretty cool. I explored the area around Chelsea Market. Towards the end of the day, I was very tired. Had walked around 17-18k steps. So I decided to watch a movie lol. Tu Jhooti Main Makaar – the Ranbir Kapoor one. I have been wanting to watch that movie since it was released. This is the cool thing about solo trips. You can do whatever the hell you want, whenever you want.

The next morning, I started the day with a bagel. It was amazing. Apart from how busy pick-a-bagel was. I finally realized what the struggle is behind solo trips. The place was extremely busy. No one to give you recommendations. Ordered what I wanted, and then there was no one who would have reserved a table, obviously. I found a table outside. As soon as I sat there, I realized I have forgotten to take the tissues. And one thing to know about me, I do not eat without tissues, lol. When I went to take the napkins and finally managed to come back through the crowd, I realized there is no straw for the coffee. It had flown away. Following the 30-second rule and the fact that I cannot go and get a straw again, I decided to use that one. But you get the picture, that is me, wasting 10 minutes just to get started with eating. This is the real struggle.

I spent the whole day exploring the city. Roamed around Central Park, and saw all the famous spots, basically all places that SRK had posed at. The park is enormous. There are horse carriages to carry you around the park, but it is super expensive. Walked through the Brooklyn Bridge, and saw the park there. It was magical. Saw the empire state building, bull statue, and the fearless girl statue in the financial district. There was a place, Dumbo, which had a very cool view of the bridge. Throughout the day, I had Ramen which was amazing. Post that, I had cheesecake and wine. Going into a cafe and ordering wine and cheesecake without any food is awkward but who cares. It was superrrrr yummm!!!

Post that I went to the place I was anticipating the most, TIMES SQUARE!!! I have to tell you, it was the most overwhelming feeling at that moment. To think of what all you have been through, what all you have lived through, how many times you have wanted to see this place, it all seems overwhelming. I combined all this overthinking with a couple of women empowerment songs in my ears, and I started crying. As you can see, it is not very difficult for me to start crying. There was a Bollywood night near Times Square which I did want to go to. I had no one to go with of course but I still wanted to go because I love dancing, and it had been a while since I had listened to Hindi songs in a club. So I thought, worst case, people watching in a night club, does not sound that bad, right? But well, it was really nice. I made some friends and danced with a random group of people which was a lot of fun. I reached the hostel at 3 AM. That ride back in the cab was amazing. One of the most memorable nights. I am going to remember this for a very long time!!

If you ride at 3 AM with the windows down for good 20 minutes in cold weather, you can be sure of getting a cold the next day. It did not strike me the previous night, unfortunately. The next day, I woke up really late, with a very bad headache and cold. I went and saw a Broadway show. Visited the Friends Apartment. This was my first Broadway show ever. CHICAGO!! It was amazing. A lot of fun. Then, I made the bad decision of trying out the Dominique Ansel Bakery. It was a 30-40 mins wait. We were given hand warmers in the line, imagine. And it was not that good. Everything on Instagram does not taste as good as it looks. Post that, some Indian dinner, and I was done for the day.

It was Monday, and I was working. It is a new job and I did not want to take any leaves this early. I worked the whole day. Went on a welcome lunch with my teammates which was a lot of fun. Thai Villa – super amazing and yummy food!! So basically, post that, I went to one of the observatories – Edge NYC. I saw the sunset there and it was so amazing. Got a glass of champagne to toast to the sunset and to the trip in general. It was again, one of those overwhelming moments. It has an outdoor deck which is very cool. Usually, when you go to these observatories, you take a ton of pictures of whoever you are visiting with and then that’s all. Since that was not a thing I could do, I just stared at the sunset and the whole of NYC and it was very cool. Post that, I just saw the “Vessel” building, which looked pretty cool. Also, met a friend at a rooftop bar which was also fun. Finally got a picture with the Empire State Building.

Tuesday, was my last day. I had a flight out at 6 PM. I decided to do some small last minute things. Went to have a dosa in the middle of Washington Square Park. It was really good. Run by a Sri Lankan man. Very limited options though. I never realized that the cup had Sambhar until the end lol. Then I did the Roosevelt Island Tramway thing. A 4 minute ride which was very cool. Visited the High Line park and the Grand Central Terminal. Trust me to cross off everything on my list before taking a flight out. It took me so long to finally reach the airport and I was worried whether I will reach the airport on time. I reached at 4:45 PM. Pretty close. And I was very sick by then. I have a cold and a sore throat. The air hostess felt super bad for me and was trying to offer me hot water, snacks, or something. And of course, the story does not end here. United forgot my bag in Newark. I waited fro 30-45 minutes only to hear that the bag is still in Newark. By the time I reached home I was half dead. The bag was delivered today though, so overall a happy ending.

So, overall, NYC is beautiful, busy, and bustling. Very very similar to Mumbai. I love, love, love the city. Hopefully, there are many more visits to New York because there is so much to see in this city. I was overwhelmed at several moments. The big city, hundreds of people roaming around on the streets, the crowded subways, and millions of places to eat, probably can get anyone overwhelmed. Especially, if you are alone on a solo trip listening to beautiful women empowerment songs. Looking forward to a lot more trips!

Okay, so this is again going to be a long post. Maybe I just like to talk a lot.

So, after all the job related drama (https://myreallifeversion.com/never-have-i-ever-been-laid-off/), I was convinced I needed a celebratory / relaxing trip. I needed to get out and just relax for a few days before beginning the new job. So, as always, I started looking up for places to go. I have been binge watching on this show called “Gilmore Girls” (watching it the second time actually) and that show is about a single mother and her daughter. It is a fun show based in a fictional town called “Stars Hollow”. While watching that show, I figured I wanted a vacation like that. In a small town, away from the city. The other things to consider were : closer to the west coast, walkable and overall needs to be fun. And that’s how I landed with “Santa Fe”. I watched a couple of videos on youtube and it seemed cool, so that’s it I booked the tickets and was all set.

It was a three day trip and boy, what fun these three days were. So firstly, there is no direct flight from Seattle to Santa Fe, you have to take a connecting fight from Phoenix. Only way to get there. And the only reasonably good flight was the 5:12 AM flight from Seattle which would land at 10:45 AM in Santa Fe. To reach the airport at 3:30 AM, a normal person would sleep at like 10-11 and would get up by 2. But that’s not me. I did not sleep the entire night, obviously and then proceeded to walk through the airport like a zombie. The journey was adventurous from forgetting the second boarding pass in the kiosk, running to get it and standing in the security check line twice, getting black coffee which was surprisingly not that bad after the first sip, getting three seats to sleep (which is all I need considering I am 5’1”) and still not managing to doze off even for a minute to realizing that I have only a 30 min layover in Phoenix which means this flight better lands on time. But well, everything worked out and I did reach Santa Fe in one piece. I forgot to mention I watched this movie a couple of days ago “Runway 34” since there was nothing else to watch which is about a pilot saving the airplane from a crash. Not a good idea if you are going to go on a solo trip a few days later.

So, sorry for derailing, but I did land in Santa Fe, and the airport, well here it is. To say, that this was one of the smallest airports I have ever seen is a big deal, since I have seen some crazy small airports, like Jomsum / Pokhara airport. It was cute in an old charming way.

On my cab ride from the airport to my hotel, had a super fun chat with Dexter, the cab driver. He warned me about headaches because Santa Fe is 7500 ft above sea level and he told me to keep drinking water. I did ignore all warnings because that is just what I do. The city was beautiful and sunny. The whole of Santa Fe follows the Adobe style of architecture. This architecture helps the houses to remain cold in summer and warm in winter. I would have never ever believed there is a town like this in US. It is crazy, a completely different experience. At this point, I was very tired and was hoping to get an early check-in. The hotel people were nice and just gave me the keys. I was hoping to sleep for a couple of hours, but could not for some reason.

I got lunch after that. Enchiladas. But they serve a dessert with it. Pico bread with honey. It is a triangle shaped bread filled with a sugarish stuffing. It was good, not too sweet at all and different. (Just added sugarish in my dictionary. It is good to think you can make your own words). The only thing I regretted was having a drink with it. Because, Dexter was right, severe headache. I had booked my tickets to an art experience so I had to go there but that was it for me for that day. Reached hotel, got some medicines to be door dashed, and slept. Oh, forgot to share pictures of the immersive art experience – Meow Wolf. It was pretty cool.

So as you can imagine, I did not do too much on the first day. For the second day, I had something really relaxing planned. A whole day at the Spa! Yes, I heard of this really fun Spa resort “Oja Santa Fe“, and I was very excited to do this. I thought this would be perfect for the kind of vacation I was hoping for. Soaked in a hot tub for almost an hour, got a massage done, enjoyed the steam room. Talked to random people in the tub as well. Fun. Relaxing and very beautiful. It almost started snowing. Apart from that, I got to meet some “Silkie Chickens”. Apparently, they are not good enough to be raised for meat. But they are very cute. I picked one up too. The first time I did, she flapped her wings and rejected me outright. Second time was better. Got a very bad picture clicked but it was fun. They also have a puppy area, where they have all these cute puppies and rescue dogs which are up for adoption and some petting too. There was one rescue dog who was so scared and timid and I got him finally letting me touch him when the owner was near. Then there were four very energetic puppies who chewed on everything. My jacket, cap, the spa id, everything. Saw some ducks too. So pretty cool. Also, ended up doing a jigsaw puzzle for some reason. I love puzzles. This one had a very beautiful question on top of it “When storms come, what anchors you?”

So I spent a whole day there. One of the best things I could do. To top it off, I went for the sunset view at “Cross of the Martyrs.” By the time I reached there, it was already dark and it was snowing beautifully. I cannot tell you how I felt at the top there. It felt as if it is snowing only for me. Took some really cute videos and pictures. Headed to the hotel room back and called it a night.

The third day, well, this was supposed to be the day I just walked around town. My hotel was really close to the Santa Fe downtown plaza. I went around a few sights. Loretto Chapel, which has this stairway an engineering marvel, two 360 degree turns without any central support. Read more about their story here. The St. Francis Cathedral which was beautiful. Some really cool art galleries. Kakawa Chocolate House where I had a chocolate flight with whipped cream on the side. Never heard of such a thing. The flavors on the extreme were nice. Not a big fan of nutmeg or unsweetened chocolate. How is it even chocolate if it not sweet at all? Ugh. The oldest house and church in USA exists in Santa Fe. Too much history. In the oldest house, there is a coffin which has a headless skeleton. Some really spooky story of two witches cutting off the head of a guy, when he complained about the love potion that the witches gave him. Weird. The church has an enormous bell which you cannot ring. Also, visited some stores and museums in the downtown area. There is just so much art to look at. Talked to a woman who makes these dolls for her living. It takes her a few hours to make one. Very pretty in their native attire. Carrying babies for some reason. There is also a lot of pottery culture here. They make a design which is called three feather design. The three feathers are for blessing, healing and protection. The clouds depict the rain and the cross depicts love. Made a final trip to the plaza. After sitting there for a while, I noticed the decorations were just made of red chillies. Weird. Overall, a very fun day. Good food, better wine, and very beautiful sunshine day. Finally managed to get some cool pictures of me too.

So, overall, I am very happy I took this decision. Cleared my head and was the perfect vacation for me. I am really glad I took this call. Took the whole “Aisa mauka shayad pher kabhi na mile!” quite seriously. Because well you will always be able to go to NYC, LA, Miami but towns like these are rare to visit and that makes it so much better. It is special. I was back to Seattle yesterday night but I’ll miss you Santa Fe. I’ll miss the place, but more than the place, the people. The cab driver who warned me about the headaches, the second cab driver who told me he got so burnt out with the city thing, he moved here and now goes to learn tango every week. The old lady in the hot tub who has two houses, one in Texas and one in Santa Fe. Comes here every few months. The art gallery owner who had an Indian girlfriend who he dated for three-four years but never got to marry her. The two ladies in the church, one of them who visited India and had been to Mumbai, the other who had a grand son called “Arjun” and thinks it is a fascinating story. The hotel owner who refunded a small amount of the hotel because I complained of mosquitoes (even after me insisting to pay him back) and also told me how this was all a part of Mexico and how everything is cheap there. And the grand mother on my return flight who loved the language I spoke on the phone (Gujarati), was in back to back surgeries for 22 months, was super proud of her grand daughter “Nayeli” who secured a 75000$ university grant. Is it not wonderful? When you are open to listening, people tell you such beautiful stories.

I think every place you visit leaves you with a little more character and a little more wonder on how people live their lives. Please, please take a solo trip once if you can. It is scary, and could be boring, but you get to know so much about people, about the place, and about yourself too, if you pay close enough attention.

Signing off until next time. I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful day and if you are about to sleep, think of all the wonderful places in the world, that you are yet to see, yet to experience.

Well, no matter how prepared you are to celebrate 25 years of your existence, on the actual day, it still feels unreal. I don’t mean at like the exact hour 12 am, but in general, the whole thing about turning 25 is daunting. This whole adulting thing is in general, daunting.

Any aspect of your life that you do not have figured out yet, you feel like you should have already figured out by now. And this is happening while continuously second guessing the things that you have figured out already.

Somewhere in your heart, you feel like there is so much to do in life and there is a part of you which is also saying ah, you have been through enough.

So, basically, as Taylor Swift says “We’re happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time. It’s miserable and magical.” She says this about being 22 though. Nevermind, maybe I am a boomer.

If you look through the video, you will notice the tagline on her shirt. I think that could be the tagline of my life too. Let me explain.

A Lot Going On At The Moment

Yes, I think that is a perfect tagline for my life right now. The part that sucks the most is the follow up contradictions.

• Trying to lose weight while also trying to not skip meals or eat less.
• Trying to get promoted while also trying to strive for perfect work life balance.
• Trying to read everyday while also not sticking to only genres that I seem to like.
• Trying to chill out and watch movies while also not watching cringe shows but watch something that is informational and good to know about.
• Trying to reduce social media usage while also trying to keep up with long lost friends.
• Trying to go to sleep at the right time while also trying to get as much done in the day as I can.
• Trying to save money while also trying to not have FOMO.
• Trying to always be available for your close ones while also trying to maintain safe boundaries.
• Trying to find love while also trying to be completely happy by yourself.
• Heck, trying to write this blog post and share my personal story while also not sharing too much.

You get the gist. I have a long long list.

It is weird, right? I cannot make up my mind about a lot of things as you can make out from here. But well, the good part is how each item in the list starts with the word “try”, which really gives me a good sense of comfort. There is a sense of comfort in knowing that you can always try, and an equal sense of comfort kicks in when you write each of these down and it becomes clearer to you, that these long lists aren’t specific to a year or an age.

You have to do it all your life. Concentrate on all the million things that make up a good life. A contradiction in it’s own way. How could you be concentrating if you have like a million things on your plate? Well, I guess that is what we need to work on. The focus should always be on leading a good life. And well, the task is to figure out what’s good for you?

Okay, so, well I think this post was just a small rant I needed to express. But as for me, the best thing is I am really motivated, entering this next year, to create a life that I am extremely proud of and I have no doubt, it is going to be a long, wild but fun journey. Wish me good luck!

That’s all for this time I guess. Thank you so much for reading through this. Read more on what I am up to here. Also, the challenges that I am working on here.

Read more about me here 🙂

So first of all, 31st October was a few days back, so Happy Happy Halloween! And shout out to you if you too like me stayed at home this Halloween and painted or carved pumpkins instead. You are the real deal :p

Halloween is a festival we never celebrated in India. I don’t think I had an idea there was any such thing until a few years ago. But now, since moving to the US, I have seen so many people celebrating it, dressing up all scary and spooky and having a fun fun time celebrating the festival.

Pumpkin Painting

I had legit no plans of celebrating Halloween or actually, to be honest, I do not really care about it. I cannot think of me pulling off those weird costumes. Last year, we went for a Halloween Bar Crawl and saw some really fun costumes that people had put together. It was a fun night but I did not have specific plans for this year (which is perfectly okay). A petition to normalize not having plans for every single festival or event.

The only thing I did for this year, was yes, as the title suggests painted a pumpkin. A friend of mine who is a really good artist and an expert at painting hosted a pumpkin painting party.

Here’s what we drew (As you can see, all three are the same pictures with different effects. Yes, that’s how indecisive I am :p) :

It was a really fun morning and I enjoyed it a lot. But the actual fun part of it was that because of this experience and also because I wanted to write about it here, I read up on why do we actually celebrate Halloween and more importantly, what do pumpkins have to do with it anyway? Yes, I had no clue till now.

History of Halloween

After reading a good number of articles, here’s what I have learned :

The back story is originally from Ireland (around 3000 years ago). It is a celebration of the post-harvest time. The end of plenty and times of scarcity. This was a tradition of the Celts. The Celts were a collection of tribes with origins in central Europe that shared a similar language, religious beliefs, traditions and culture. It’s believed that the Celtic culture started to evolve as early as 1200 B.C.) Read more in detail here.

This is a time when the Celts celebrated their ancient festival of Samhain. Here’s a video about it. The Celts celebrated their New Year on November 1. It is a welcome to the “dark half of the year”. The Celts believed that the barriers between the physical world and the spirit world break down during this festival and the ghosts returned on earth.

Pagans have been broadly defined as anyone involved in any religious act, practice, or ceremony which is not Christian. Jews and Muslims also use the term to refer to anyone outside their religion. In order to remove the pagan religion, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 to be celebrated as “All Souls Day” in honor of the saints and martyrs of Christianity.

When it came to people, they celebrated in a way that was very similar to Samhain with huge bonfires, costumes and allusions to angels, devils and saints. Another name for the celebration was All Hallows’ Day and the night before it was called All Hallows Eve – which is where the word ‘Halloween’ comes from.

History of Pumpkins and Halloween

Now the second part of it. How does pumpkin get associated with “Halloween”? The story originates from an Irish myth about a man named Stingy Jack, who tricked the Devil for ulterior financial motives. At the time of his death, he wasn’t able to get in either Hell or Heaven and ended up roaming around the Earth for eternity.

People were scared about the wandering soul of Jack and hence, decided to carve scary faces into turnips to scare him away. And how did we land on pumpkins then, you ask? Well, when Irish immigrants moved to the US, they decided to go for pumpkins instead of turnips owing just to natural availability. Weird, right? A tradition that so many of us are following and it was just because of the availability.

This is also a reason why carved pumpkins are called ‘Jack-O-Lanterns’.

Ah, so as you might have guessed, the painting was fun, therapeutic in a sense but knowing about this spooky, weird turn of events kinda story was the icing on the cake. It makes me think there is so much stuff to know, if only we ask why for everything we do. Each ritual, each festival has some deeper meaning or at least a quirky, weird (in this case, spooky) story behind it.

That’s all for this time I guess. Thank you so much for reading through this. Read more on what I am up to here. Also, the challenges that I am working on here.

Read more about me here 🙂

As much as I like my job, or like being an engineer, one thing I have become pretty clear about recently is, I somehow am not passionate about it. There is something in me which just needs more ownership, responsibility or basically skin in the game, for me to give my 100%. Everyone loves the idea of having a well paying job, where your duty ends the moment it is 5 PM on the clock (on most days) and I am no different. I love that I have a great job, and I do like it very much.

But the thing is, I have been reading far too much about this flow state ideology. The state where your work no longer seems like work and you get so engrossed in it, you do it with all your heart.

The First Experience

During my masters program, I took up a couple of interesting courses. One of them was “Software Engineering”. I am really grateful I did take up that course because somehow after a lot of trial and error, I realized that I finally felt I reached that level, where I was really interested in what I was doing, did not mind staying up for longer and actually put in almost everything that I had to excel in the project that we (a team of eight) worked on. The course actually gave us the opportunity to interact with a real client and deliver a product for them. It was a lot of fun!

This was the first experience personally for me to feel that okay, even within the tech arena, I could find something that I am really passionate about because as you might have guessed, I am not an engineer by choice. I am an engineer just because I went with the flow. I took the decisions that felt right or more importantly lucrative at a particular moment and somehow, here I was, pursuing a Master’s program.

At that moment, I understood I thrive when I have responsibility and in high pressure situations. Tell me you just need to get this one thing done and I will take the whole day and still manage to not do the one thing that I was supposed to do. Tell me you have a hundred things to do, and I will be on a roll. That is me. You can imagine, this is not very helpful. Because, fortunately or unfortunately, my life right now is pretty basic and normal.

The Entrepreneurial Bug

So, from the above information, you gather that I like pressure and responsibility. Couple that with a lifetime of observing how much freedom my father had all his life because he was self-employed. Growing up, I have always seen my father enjoying the fruits of being self-employed. He worked hard in the initial years, but I have never seen him compromising on his life because of his job. Seeing his life, both the highs and the lows, I have always wanted that freedom for myself. Always.

Signing Up For The Competition

This time around when I was looking around for the new thing to do this week, I landed on an event. The title of the event was “GoVertical Startup Creation Workshop”. I was super intrigued and I had no idea what it meant or what was the event about. After reading a bit more, I understood that this was an event for anyone who was interested in learning about how a startup can be created and how the actual process is.

Obviously, the event was paid and it was not a small amount (a little over 100$). But then, I was like yeah whatever, it seems too interesting. And also, a random dinner now in Seattle costs like 35$. So, I guess I will learn something and of course, investing in yourself is never a bad idea. So, I clicked that sign up button and with a very heavy heart (lol) paid the hundred bucks.

The Kickoff Event

So, this was a regular Friday. When I had stopped working around 3, and then I was just sitting at home. The event started at 6 PM, but they asked us to arrive at 530 PM because they had arranged dinner. I went in. Very very nervous. Not knowing anyone, not knowing what to talk about. But I got in.

And well, the networking time was fun. Met some people. Everyone looked very old. They looked like at least a decade older than me. I have understood it is tough to hold a conversation when you are just trying to guess what the opposite person’s age is or rather after you know they have been working since the year you were born. Okay, everyone was not that old. But they were just highly experienced and been in the industry for several years.

After the networking time, was another scary time. Now the idea behind this kickoff event, was for everyone to pitch startup ideas to work on over the weekend. So basically, you create teams of 4-5 people and work on a presentation for the idea. The presentation talks about what problem your idea would be solving, what is the solution, the financial model, go-to-market strategy and other super scary high level ideas.

Of course, having no business background, I had zero knowledge of what these terms meant and how to actually pitch an idea and anything actually. So I was sitting there, with one faint idea in my head but really unsure if I should pitch because that was so intimidating. Sitting in a room with unknown people, who are almost a decade older than you, who have done this a couple of times at the very least, is very very intimidating as you can imagine. But, the thing is, for me, it was like that was the whole point of signing up. The whole point of this was to push myself and if I was not going to do that, what was this all for.

So, I gathered all the courage that I had, and with my heart beating faster than I have noticed in a while, I decided to pitch an idea. I was the last person to stand in that queue for pitching since I decided after hearing a couple of pitches. And then the icing on the cake was one of the women pitching, kind of forgot what she was saying in the middle of the pitch and that got me more terrified. But I was already in the queue, there was no way of going back from there.

I did end up giving a very good pitch at the end. After the pitches, everyone gets like three votes and the top 5 ideas are the ones that get picked. No points for guessing that mine was not picked. But it did pretty good, actually. The top five ideas stopped at like 6 votes and my idea got 4. Felt pretty good about that but then had to pick another team.

I chose an idea that resonated with me a lot. “EldersHappy” – the idea was to build a platform that immigrants could use to manage and monitor their old age parents back in their home country. The idea seemed like it would solve a problem for everyone living far away from their parents and help them to not be that worried about it. We formed a team of five. I was very excited to see what was going to happen over the weekend.

Over the weekend

We worked on the idea for the whole of Saturday and Sunday approximately till 2 PM. Writing down everything here might not be too interesting but just a general gist of what happened. We discussed answers to a lot of questions – all possible features that we could have in this product, how would we attract customers to buy the product, is there a real need, do other solutions exist, what is the future scope, etc. You get the gist. All kinds of discussions around what the product could be and how it would be helpful for customers. Got to learn so much.

Just to give you a general idea of the people who were in my team. The team captain was an Indian and he had worked at some major tech firms and currently was running his own tech consulting company since about 10 years. One team member was a woman who was a co-founder of another startup.

Another team member had worked at a major tech company for quite some time and now was the CFO for a couple of startups. The last team member was a person who worked as a freelancer and was super experienced in UI. You can imagine, I was the youngest and also the least experienced. In the beginning I was not sure how much I would be able to contribute, but since the idea was so close to me, I was able to contribute quite a lot.

All through Saturday, we had mentors coming in. They listened to our idea, made suggestions, and helped us develop the idea in its entirety. It was such a satisfying experience. Listening to different point of views, listening criticism, understanding how different customers could require completely different features. As a team, we stuck to what made sense to us, but it was nice to get feedback. Post that, we made our presentation and kept refining it until the final moment.

Oh, before that, the female team member in my team was so supportive. We had like seven minutes to present, and then the Q&A was for another 8 minutes. We were already having one transition during the presentation since both the team captain and her were going to present, but she asked me to still present. She was like, you should take this experience. And then, as always, I was like, okay, how bad could it really go.

The final moment

Ah, we gave the presentation. And it went perfect. Exactly as we had planned. I did not stutter or screw it up. It was nice. I also actually ended up answering some questions in the Q&A. It felt like real world Shark Tank. Very exhilarating and also super fun at the same time. And guess what, WE WON! Our presentation was the best, and the work over the weekend was rewarded. I was so happy 🙂 A small but important win!

Final Thoughts

One of the coolest things I have been a part of. I am so glad I took the chance. Met some really cool people and I probably will always remember this as a fun, new experience that I had. Also, the idea that I pitched, I might actually work on it. Got feedback that it is actually a good idea. Who knows, one day you would see an app on the app store that says “Feya Shah” as the creator. That is the beauty, anything can happen.

Okay, okay, one more final quote. Actually, it is a title of a book. The female team member that I was talking about. She suggested that book to me, which I am definitely going to pick since the title resonated with me so much. The quote is “What got you here … won’t get you there.” So powerful and inspiring right?

The title basically says how each phase of your life demands something new from you and how when you are moving between phases, you have to understand that you need to put in a bit extra, you have to be willing to unlearn some and jump in to learn some.

This was one of the most fulfilling weekends in a long time and I am sure it would be helpful when one day I am self-employed and have a startup under my name. Okay, might be getting ahead of myself. But well, adding just one more in my endless list of dreams.

Here is where you should go, if you want to read about my other “first” experiences. Here is where you should go if you want to know more about the challenges I am currently working on. And well, if you want to just know a bit about me, well here it is.

Watching random videos on youtube can have several benefits. One of them is that you come across really cool things that people are doing. Tie Dying is one of those cool experiments. I came across this youtube video. And it inspired me to try this out! I thought you would require great amount of skill and effort to learn how to tie dye a shirt, but turns out I was completely wrong. It is not that difficult. And it is soooo much fun! Also, I have never done this. So yeah, one more of the never have I evers!

Materials Needed To Tie Dye

So, firstly, if you want to try this, the easiest thing is to buy a DIY Tie Dye Kit. I went for this one. It makes the process very easy. Comes with everything in one box. You literally do not need anything more than what there is in the box. Except obviously, a white tshirt and some water.

The Tie Dye Kit comes with the following :

1. A set of 8 colorful dyes
2. A set of 40 white rubber bands
3. 3 plastic wrap
4. 3 sets of plastic gloves
5. A set of droppers

How to Tie Dye

Firstly, make sure you have enough time on that day. It took me a good 45 minutes – 1 hour to get through the process. And also, you need to keep the shirt dyed for about 6-8 hours and then wash it. So make sure you have that time. I did it on a Sunday and obviously did not have much going that day.

The first thing to do is to decide on the tie dying technique that you would like to follow. There are several techniques of tie dying and depending on how you would like the finished tshirt to look like, you can decide which one you like. Here are the pictures of some of the more popular ones :

Some of the more popular tie dying techniques :

I went for the basic one. The magic spiral one. Since that is the one I first saw lol 🙂

Once you decide on the dying technique, you just need to start folding the tshirt specific to the tie dye method. It is fairly simple and easy to do. Once you have that done, you need to secure the folds with the rubber bands. You make a flower like thing of the tshirt and the rubber bands and tada, you are ready to go.

The second step part of the process

After that comes the messy part. Firstly, you need to add water to all the dyes that you want and keep shaking the dye bottles until the powder is completely dissolved. Be mindful of how heavy the flow of your tap water is. I was super messy in this. Once that’s done, you need to find something on which you can do the actual painting. The thing is ideally you would want to do it on a surface through which the extra dye could fall off because otherwise it just rolls back to the other side. But apart from that, you can just start dyeing. The best part of the whole process!

Once you are done with that, you need to just wrap the tshirt in a plastic wrap and then wait for good 6-8 hours for the color to set in. Somehow, that is the most difficult part.

Depending on what intensity you want for the colors, you can keep it for longer. But I am usually a not very loud colorful person so I just waited for 6 hours. (I was also too excited so yeah). After that, you just remove the wrap, and then keep washing under the tap water until the water is mostly clear.

I promise you this is the last step. You just need to put in a little amount of detergent and wash the tshirt. Run the dryer and yay, you have the new tshirt. Here is how it turned out for me :

Finallyyyy

So I am really happy I did this. It was so much fun. And seeing the final product makes you feel super super proud in like a very weird way.

Well, this was a fun post. Thank you for reading through. If you are looking for some diy fun thing to do. This is real fun! Leave a comment here or an email (dolifewithme1@gmail.com) if you do actually end up trying this. Follow me on instagram @myreallifeversion. See you there!

Read more about what I am up to most recently here. Also, read a bit more about me if you would like.

The “why”

Well, sadly, this post does not have a very interesting why story. In fact, it was sad. I had signed up for an event on the meetup app and that event was going to be held in a library. I would have said library near me but this library was very far far away. It took me about an hour, had to change two buses to reach there and guess what, the event got canceled. There were three other people who were also there for the same event and just to do something since we were there, all four of us went for a walk for around 15-20 minutes.

Well, it was a nice walk. One of the guys there was going to give a workshop for Microsoft about Stable Diffusion. This is the first time I was hearing about it but it is a way of generating art from text. He also showed me his web portal where he had examples of text as input and it would create images as output. Read some more about it here. Enough about the walk. But then, I decided to check out the library since I was already there and the library looked beautiful. Also, I have to mention I have always wanted to read in a library and get into reading.

Getting into it

Firstly, look at how beautiful the library looks. It is one of the best libraries I have ever been to. Very peaceful and cute filled with almost any book that you could want.

I was just checking on the books and had no intention of getting a card, but then there were people taking a bunch of books and just scanning their card and I was thinking here I am spending so much money in buying books.

(Recently I have been working on developing the habit of reading. And since then, actually, I am obsessed with having all the books that I read with me. I don’t know it just makes me feel that what I learn from the book is going to stay with me forever. But I guess, at some point, you need to understand that you don’t make that much money :p ). Then the bright idea of getting a library card occurred to me.

Here are the books I got!

I went all out and checked out 5 books which are issued to me for 3 weeks. That is me. Always overdoing everything. But the good news is, the library card does not have an application fee. You can reissue a book before the three week time period ends (if there is no request for that book). You are not fined for not returning the books on time (apart from getting suspended). And the best part, you can return and pick up books from any of their locations (I could not have come here to return books after every 3 weeks obviously). Check them out : https://www.spl.org/

Here are the pictures :

These books were just the ones that caught my eye. It is weird how majority of the books are related to business. Maybe a side effect of binging on Shark Tank. If you live under a rock and have not seen this show, you definitely should. Check it out here.

Finally! If you are still here..

So overall, this was a really fun day. I am super excited for reading these books. Is it just me or everyone feels this rush when you buy new books? I remember being so excited about buying the next standard books at the end of every school year. I love the idea (and the smell) of new books. Will post updates here about how the reading went!

Well, this was a fun post. Thank you for reading through. If you are living in a city where you have access to a library, I would really encourage you to check it out. Reading is a fun way to move away from your regular mundane problems and thinking big and beyond. Leave a comment here or an email (dolifewithme1@gmail.com) if you do actually sign up for a library card or try reading once more after reading this blog (Well, you already read this blog. You can do more :p)

Read more about what I am up to most recently here. Also, read a bit more about me if you would like.