“So… have you always been a hermit?”
“I never thought of myself that way… but… I suppose so…” she replied
Time stands still at that dock, overlooking the languidly moving currents of the creek, laced by a thin film of dirt and grit.
“I wonder what you’re like when the sky breaks and it starts to storm….” she mused.
I don’t like to say “I’m too busy for that”. If I can’t find the time to do something, I try to say “that’s not a priority at this moment”.
What are you busy WITH if it’s not the highest prioritized items in your life? Isn’t life about finding time for what’s most important anyway?
Having said that, this week has been one of those weeks where finding time on my calendar has been tough. But you find time for things that are most important anyway.
If not, accept it for what it is and free yourself of the guilt of not having got to it. Just admit that it’s just not a priority in your life at the moment. If not, you’d have done it. And the thing is, there is nothing wrong with that as long as you’re happy.
Lean on me; and I will support you ’til I snap
’til we both fall to the ground; and rot
Or maybe I’m doing it wrong
Maybe I need to get stronger first
Strong enough to hold you up
’til I realize I needed to get strong enough for myself
’til I realize you were just dead weight
And you were just taking me down with you
Even though your initial reasons for wanting to work on yourself might have been flawed; one day you will realize, once you’ve grown past your initial reasons; one day you will realize that you are thankful for those reasons; because it helped you grow beyond yourself.
I had a thought today
Maybe I’m not making any progress at all
And then I thought,
Maybe it doesn’t matter at all
I just have to remain imperfectly consistent
Apparent progress being non existent
(oh wooo, I rhymed!)
Maybe everything I’m doing everyday
will add up one day
And it will appear as if things came easy to me
Because the results appeared overnight
But all the years where I remained consistent
blends into the oblivion
Let’s credit that luck
I’ll probably credit my luck too
Because surely, I can’t be that worthy
I worked from a coffee shop in Nashville today. It’s called the Barista Parlor Golden Sound, and it’s a converted recording studio in Music Row, with garage doors and a wide open floor plan.
As I sat down at one of the sparsely populated benches, it didn’t escape me how different working from a coffee shop felt in Nashville vs Bangalore.
I compare the two because I spent a considerable amount of time working from Bangalore during my 4 month work-from-India stint earlier this year, and it looks like I’ll be spending at least a couple of weeks in Nashville.
When I spend more than a few days in a city, I like to take it easy. I like to pretend like I live there, and do “everyday things”; things like laying in bed all day and not leaving my room. You get the vibe.
Something else I like to do is spend part of my work day at a local coffee shop.
After spending all day lounging around “working from bed” yesterday, I decided to find a local coffee shop today. After my morning workout, and my morning meetings, I headed to a coffee shop to grab some brunch and coffee, planning on spending the rest of my work day working from there.
As I looked over the top of my laptop screen, perusing the population, I felt an intense longing for being back on the front terrace at the Third Wave Coffee Roasters in Indranagar, Bangalore; feeling the warmth of the tropics mixed with the busyness of people bustling all around you.
Bangalore is a tech city. The coffee shops are filled with tech people. People pitching their startup ideas to potential investors. People talking to clients in a timezone where it’s past midnight. People busy with life. Bangalore felt alive in a very relatable kind of way. In a way, perhaps even more so than New York ever did.
Wrapping up my workday around 5pm, which is 6pm ET, I took a ganter around the wide open floor space of the coffee shop, looking over all the Barista Parlor merchandise available for purchase. My eyes landed on a package that said “optimizes water for coffee and tea”.
I thought this was hilarious. Seriously? Now we need to optimize the water for our hot beverages? So I took out my phone to click a picture. I zoomed in to make sure the subject was centrally aligned in my 1:1 snap. I gotta optimize the picture for instagram. I know. So meta.
And just like that, my eyes zoned in on the word “Third Wave”. Here in a coffee shop in Nashville, I found my Third Wave.
Life has a way of telling me that what I’m looking for is sometimes right in front of me. If only I zoom in a little.
Sometimes you see the perfect life in front of you. And a part of you wishes you had that perfect life, filled with imagined comfort and imagined warmth. So you take a picture of it.
And then you realize the perfect picture you’re looking at is slightly crooked.
And just like that, all you see going forward is how that picture is slightly crooked. And how you should have probably angled the phone slightly differently when you’d taken that otherwise perfect picture.
It’s so easy to find imperfection in something you’ve always thought was perfect, when you start looking for the imperfections.
The idea of perfection. Such a figment of our imagination.
What a waste of a perfectly perfect life, chasing the perfect perfection.
About to plunge into the bowels of the earth.
The 1 hour 15 minute, drive from Arenal to the Venado Caves was one of the better decisions I made during my Costa Rica trip in 2019.
When I got to the caves, I was literally the only tourist there. After a while, couple of other folks joined me, which made the experience slightly less creepy.
It blows my mind that the system of underground caves is privately owned. I’m also in awe of the first human that decided to go down that hole that I have my legs in, and decide that it was big enough for a human to pass through.
I highly recommend this mostly over looked destination that’s slightly different from your regular mountains/beaches vibe. It’s a whole different dimension. If you’re claustrophobic, you probably wouldn’t enjoy this.
The creepiest story the guide told us while we were underground was when he was down there with some tourists back in the 90s, and an earthquake happened above ground. He said they never felt anything down there… I couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened if the cave entrance caved in during that earthquake.
#costarica #venadacaves #arenal #lafortuna #costaricawaterfalls #costaricatraveldestination
Ever watched the downfall? Knowing exactly how to prevent it. Yet feeling so helpless.
————-‐—-
Watching the downfall
Seeing you slip away
Unable to do anything
Seeing the path to destruction
Knowing where this gonna end
Yet not knowing how to help
Trying to hold on to the moment
And feeling it slip between your fingers
Knowing that the end is nearing
Coming at me like a fast train
One that’s being driven by your crazy mind
Watching on in helplessness
My heart shrinking in on itself
You will be gone soon and I know it
Preparing myself for something
that seems preventable, yet only I know
If there was a way, I’d have done it
——
I love going through my scribble book. Most of the writings are driven by a muse. And often times when I go back and read it months later, I don’t remember what prompted the writing. But I’m always caught by a certain pun or a certain play of words.
In this particular one, what stood out to me were the lines:
“Preparing myself for something
that seems so preventable, yet only I know
If there was a way, I’d have done it”.
It feels very raw to me.
There is a bit of defensiveness there. Especially the bit that says “that seems so preventable”.
“Seems” indicates the subject (me?) is concerned what others might think, but wants to tell her side of the story.
It also sounds like the subject knew the situation was preventable. Saw the situation approaching like a fast train. Knew exactly how to prevent it. And yet. Couldn’t. Even though from the outside it seemed like the subject could totally have prevented it.
How many times have we not judged someone with the question “how could you have not prevented it?? Your situation was so preventable. That was a dumb move on your end”.
Truth is, no one goes into a situation thinking “Alright. I’m going to make a dumb decision today”.
Absolutely not. Whatever decision the person made, they made it wanting the best outcome. They made that decision using their best judgment, using whatever input parameters they had in order to make that decision (the engineer in me talking).
And nobody, absolutely nobody, has the right to judge that decision, if you’re not using those exact same input parameters (it’s like a good unit test. Keep the input parameters the same and you get the same outcome every single time).
Yet often times we are too quick to judge. “If it were me I’d have done it differently”.
Pause for a second. Again, truth is, it wasn’t you or your decision to make. This means, the input parameters are different.
Pause. Pause before you score how someone else handled a particular situation. Because… they worked around their parameters. And whatever decision was made, made sense for them; for the time. And that is the right decision. No matter what.
I would even take it a step further and say – don’t be afraid to make that decision thinking it might be the wrong decision. If you think it is the right decision, move right on ahead. You are working with your input parameters. And only you have the right to decide whether it is right or wrong for you.
And if you’re worried that a future version of you might not agree with the decision your current version made, well…. guess what? We are changing every day. I don’t think you will ever get 100% agreement from ALL future versions of yourself.
So go on. If you think it’s right. It’s right for you today.
Alright. I’m done.
When a movie is set in foreign land, but the makers pretend like the movie is set in India, you have movies like The Girl on the Train.
How do these movies even get made? Maybe they’re just like “oh maybe no one will notice”. I hope if I ever write a script that’s this ridiculous, I have at least a couple of friends who would stop me before I spent millions making the movie.
Sometimes I wonder
If I even remember
What life was like
Before it started
When the waves start crashing,
I hear the whispers, loud and clear
And you think it matters?
How I claim I’ve tamed the beast?
I probably think it matters
How I think I’ve tamed the beast
Yet have I really though?
Sounds like I’ve learned to coexist
Coexist, what a bumper sticker of a word
Coexist, like that flowery ol’ wallpaper
That’s plastered across every room of your life
Pretending to add some faded color
To an otherwise monochromatic life
Until the day you notice that tear
Oh you know the rip I’m talking about
You notice it one day
Until that’s all you see everyday
