This is the 4th year we are celebrating her birthday together. This time right from the heart of San Francisco, California.
Some housekeeping for the day: I handled the whole kitchen department as she presumably was enjoying the much needed downtime. Well, honestly I don’t mind when she rests! And, for the dinner we went to The Grove. I remember her saying, “I love the vibe here’.
Looking back the last one year has been blissful and utterly gratifying journey for both of us.
I remember she’d drink ‘Death Wish’ the world’s strongest coffee (they say) just to get through the days and nights of the exam week. Specially, during the two subjects wherein she had to grind her arse a whole freaking lot — Algorithm, and Modern Web Application by Prof. Paul Corazza and Prof. Najeeb Najeeb respectively.
I remember enjoying Grey’s anatomy together with her as we’d eat our lunch and/or dinner until i came to know that my favorite character eventually dies.
I remember her getting creative with countless ramen that were eaten back during the university days alongside F.R.I.E.N.D.S sitcom. She really really wanted me to enjoy the soap, and surprisingly enough, I have started being entertained.
I also remember the thrills of navigating through the preparatory phase of the real-deal interviews. The experience of giving them at par. The delight of landing offers alongside her and our long walks to the local Indian restaurant for a frequent treat to the tongue.
I don’t know about myself but I clearly remember we had just gotten back from our evening walk on the outskirts of Fairfield. And as we were opening her dorm door, the much-awaited call from Jennifer (the Head of Talent at Banyan Infrastructure) rang on her phone. Both our hearts sunk and thumped the same time at that moment. So, both of us quickly jumped on her bed that was by the door and listened Jennifer slowly, delightfully unpack the offer put-forth by her San Francisco based company. The best part of the whole conversation was that she got the offer for Senior Software Engineer position despite having applied for the mere opening role.
It feels heartwarming watching her friendship with Yohannes Kassa Yimam grow with months. Plus, we also made many amazing friends (I’m specially referring to the Nov 2021 MBA entrants at MIU).
I want to forever seal as much memories as I can tank up of our first initial days at San Francisco. As she acclimatizes with her work and the working environment. As she dissolves with the San Francisco way of living from buying groceries to paying rent to paying utilities to savings to adding essential stuffs on her small, beautiful apartment.
To the nutshell, I can’t say it enough :-
In the language of Sung, “You’re a lucky man to have someone like her.”
Solution is 27, today!
Happy Birthday love. As far as the choice of song is concerned, it’s her favorite song these days!
p.s. The other birthday posts I had written previously are:
You’re in a ship and it’s sailing across the stormy seas. If you’re hacking holes in it with pickaxe, you should probably pay attention to that before you sink. So, it’s a good idea to keep what stupid you’re doing in mind that you can stop doing it.
Jordan B. Peterson (on Why be virtuous?)
Joji – Die for you
To love truly,
is to commit fully.
Brainfully.
Heartfully.
Soulfully.
Beautifully!
If relationship-tree is to have the trunk, branches, leaves, flower and eventually the fruits — commitment gives it the vitality; commitment transports the essential minirals to nurture it; commitment inflates the breathe of life inside it.
For, commitment is the root, and true love (whatever it means to you) is the whole tree I know.
Alas, commitment is tough. Because, in the world where we live today the road to lust; the path to momentary cravings; the alleyways of impulsive desire; the address of loud, irresistible sexy-ness around is without-a-miss silky and icy. It’s proxy solid. It’s slippery. It’s frictionless. It’s bewitching. It’s bewildering.
At the same magnitude, real love for real is scant.
That, real love for real is limited to only the virtuous which unfortunately, there aren’t many.
To say the least:
Commitment is through which virtues such as trust, loyalty, kindness, sincerity, honesty, care, love, gratitude, gentleness, purity, tolerance, understanding and all the likes flows out and about!
Questions.
Are you committed?
Are you afraid of commitments?
Are you pathologiz-ing your love with lies and fabrication?
Two days ago, as I was walking to the gym (it’s a 23 minutes walk) I pulled up my phone, subscribed to Apple music impromptuly, and started listening to the sad playlist. Deliberately!
Not because I had a rough day.
Not because I had been going through a lot.
Not because I was hurt.
Not because I was sad.
Not because I was fucked!
It was solely and only because I wanted to synthesize sadness. Weird. I know.
Unpacking…
I wanted to soak in and soak myself with my forever friendemy — grief.
I wanted to step on the earth, again! Rest. Reflect. Re-calibrate.
Move. Shake.
For, it’s been a while I have been flying in perpetual happiness.
For, it’s been a while I had been living in a foggy, seemingly make-believe-world.
In a nutshell, I wanted to meditate on despair.
I wanted to refresh, relive, re-fill, re-feel my memories as far as my on-and-off relationship with sadness is concerned.
And, to say the least, sadness has always given me purpose.
I had forgotten I had to show up for musicpervs today. It’s almost 10 past 15pm. Normally I sleep at 9:30pm because i had to wake up at 4:45AM every weekdays.
This evening I had almost two hours long conversation with my uncle who I’ve not had a word for a long, long time. My eyes are yearning to shut themselves off as i type these lines in a pitch dark room, but I know I had to show up.
I wanted to write about meaning of happiness.
I wanted to write about living cheerfully in a mundane, routined life.
I wanted to write about potatoshrestha, and why someone who’s trying to avoid social media is posting just about every little thing that goes in, out and around him.
I wanted to write about why it is important to be mindfully aware about the passing time and the opportunity cost.
I wanted to write about why I will never be perfect but perhaps grind my teeth to be the better version of me than i was yesterday.
I wanted to write about how I deal with my own anxious self.
I wanted to write about why not every what has to have why.
I wanted to write about why it is important to learn to do nothing.
I wanted to write about why it is so important to show up even if it means doing nothing.
Khwaab – Anumita Nadesan | Big Indie Bang | Bhavi Chandiramani
Part 2
So, after my rejection from US Consulate, Delhi, and before I’d return to Nepal in scars and claw marks, I stomached up enough courage to look at the next available appointment dates. Luckily, I found the closest one and the only appointment at that time in Mumbai.
In just about few days, I packed-up my bag, and I remember paying special attention as I packed up those newly bought pair of clothes I once wore on my first interview along with a pair of shoes my brother had bought me.
I took my brother’s credit card, flew to Mumbai with ample amount of cash I had in reserve with me. Having spent most of my time in palpable despair and having spent most of my times thinking about the thoughts of the thoughts I couldn’t stop thinking about, nothing was planned even until last minute. I knew I had to add pieces myself as soon as I land on Mumbai airport. That, I had to survive Mumbai for next 6 days all on my own, all alone. I confess, it was scary because a local-town boy had never done anything like that before.
In Mumbai, I remember, I spent most of my time practicing in front of the mirror. The mirror where I had also taped a piece of A4 size paper where I wrote ‘Seek Discomfort’ on the largest possible font size right at its center.
I practiced the questions. I practiced from when I woke up to when I passed out unknowingly late at night. I struggled to sleep. Most of the time I couldn’t. I didn’t eat much. I very much rarely left the room except for the one or two times to deliberately get familiar around US Consulate, Mumbai in the pretext of time and walking distance from my hotel. I calculated, it took me approximately 25-28 minutes to chill-walk to the Embassy from the hotel. It took me 13 minutes when I jogged.
Now, here is the caveat to the portion “I said to myself that I’d go to the bottom of the pit — seeking, enduring, embracing every freaking possible discomforts!“, which I had mentioned in Part 1 of this n-part series. That twist is: I had 200% made up my mind to quit the visa interview in Mumbai and run back to Nepal for two clear reasons: One — in my mind I thought the next rejection is on-the-way. I was shit scared, I was forgetting things I practiced. And, I cried a lot … a lot as a consequence of that mental meltdown just two days before the interview. Similarly, the number two reason I vividly remember was — one of the respected priest slash astrologer I had once consulted in Nepal had called me abruptly and told me that he’s shit-certain to help me get the visa in Kathmandu.
One of the hardest things to do is to separate your work and the effort that you put in from the results. An actor doesn’t control the movie around them. They don’t control what the other actors do. They don’t control the marketing budget. They don’t control the distribution. They could do the role of a lifetime, but the director or editor could mess it up in post-production. If your happiness with your job and your career is dependent on how the movie does at the box office or how the critics respond to your role, you have placed your happiness in the hands of other people, and that’s a recipe for profound disappointment. – Ryan Holiday, The Unmistakable Creative
As It Was (Ambient Cover) – Vancouver Sleep Clinic & Amelia Magdalena
I’m past 30 years of age and in all these many years, off of many things I’ve been grateful to learn; one of them is to understand (and on-time) the leverage of the right mindset.
“Mindset is an “established set of attitudes, esp. regarded as typical of a particular group’s social or cultural values; the outlook, philosophy, or values of a person; (now also more generally) frame of mind, attitude, disposition.”[1] A mindset may also arise from a person’s world view or philosophy of life.”
Wikipedia
Now, if you dig further, you’d want to learn some more about Fixed and Growth mindset by Carol Dweck where in her book “Mindset”, she writes, “success comes from having the right mindset rather than intelligence, talent or education“. Debatable? Yes. But I’m not here to talk you about all that. I am no expert, not even close.
I’m here to share how a simple shift of mindsets can give us a completely different perspective and chances are it might as well give us a different life in the long run.
For example:
Awwwwhhh…I have to go to work or I get to go to work.
I’m not hurt or I’m healing.
I’m not losing or I’m learning.
I’m not anxious or I’m thrilled.
I’m not rejected or I’m redirected.
You see it’s inevitable and It’s beyond our scope of control to stop negative things from happening to us and essentially to stop negative thoughts from swelling up our brain.
Plus, despite, … despite all that, fighting back negative mindset makes them even harder if not done the right way.
Which is why, my two cents here, “Have right stuff in to get the right stuff out.”
Our actions may be impeded . . . but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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Cold Cold Night – Raghav Meattle
For the last two days I had been occupied in a small treasure hunt.
I was preparing the introductory slides for Sauravi, and as I was adding the pieces and connecting the dots, I had to navigate through tons and tons of old photographs.
Well, I tell you, deliberately digging the past has its perks.
I feel more grateful that things are better today than it was before.
I feel I had been through so much that I can cry and still feel the warmth of perpetual joy.
I feel all the uncertainties and all the terrible shits I’ve been through gave me a unique skill to camouflage my colors; gave me skills to bend my ways as situation unpacked.
Those photographs also had me thinking about that one time when I went through a jungle of monumental panic attacks and heart pacing anxiety.
