alice's peephole

Everyone knows that change is hard. People piously talk about how change is the only constant. Most refer to change in the external environment. But what happens when the external world is excruciatingly unchanging, while only your internal world is changing, evolving, expanding, imploding? Life is still technicolour, its just on slow-motion. That will make any picture seem duller. It’s the flashing lights that make the most lurid images, the ones that flash by just fast enough to evoke a thought or an emotion, before it disappears. When everything is slower, every step takes longer, all the flaws are exposed. The novelty wears off and even the most sophisticated sonatas will seem mundane. When Covid started, it was a pleasure to slow down, to take a breath, to have time to do nothing. Nearly 2 years on, its hard either way – going back to pre-Covid pace of life seems beyond exhausting, but continuing in the middle lane is boring and somehow still more exhausting. I used to have

As soon as the job hunt and visa struggle showed signs of ending, the immediate feeling that set in after a year of grappling with these hurdles wasn’t, as I expected, relief and happiness. Strangely, its boredom. Having an immediate problem to solve, something urgent with an inflexible deadline was so stressful that it took all my mental capacity to deal with. Ideating not 1 but 2 businesses, while dealing with fluctuating pandemic anxieties in 2 home countries has been a journey. The strange part is that though the journey in its entirety has been an uphill battle, the daily snippets are boring. When we read the success stories, we read about the highs and lows. But I am beginning to ask myself if that’s really where the difference between success and mediocrity lies. Or is it in the repetitive tasks, the mundane, steadily checking off the admin chores? The middle. 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert? Is that really what it takes? Is that all it takes? Or are short bursts

This will probably be a very difficult post to write, maybe culminating in little more than incoherent rambling. But I have to attempt it. Difficult though I find it to get any creative juices flowing in these dried-up times, I would probably regret not documenting these unique days. Straight up, I have to acknowledge with immense gratitude that I have been lucky in terms of my health and that of my loved ones. Even putting this fact down on paper awakens a sense of superstitious foreboding – “don’t draw attention to it and therefore cause fate to curse it”. Very Indian way of (not) celebrating luck, lest one spoke too soon. Speaking from a place of infinite gratefulness, I still want to recognize and accept that this is probably one of the most difficult times I, like many others, are facing. My heart breaks when I read the news, especially now that India is suffering so very deeply. But this post isn’t about the general, its not about Weltschmerz, so I’ll try to focus. My challen