Reflections of a restless eccentric

I've really needed the catharsis of writing in the past three months, but this weekend has been the first instance where I've had the time and space to get to it.  I had mentally labeled 2026 as a year full of hope and dreams. 2025 had the seemingly impossible goals - finishing my PhD, finding a job, my dad staying relatively healthy, and all these happened. And so, I let myself dream about 2026. This would be the year where all my PhD papers would get accepted. This would be the year where my dad would come to my convocation and finally smile after all the pain he's endured. This would be the year where I run my half marathon and cover a total distance of 5000km. This would be the year when, after 8 years of learning music, I would perform on stage and finish my level exam. This would be the year when I could finally take vacations without worrying about a million things. And mind you, when I say "dream" I do not just mean imagining these things. I am talking abo...

 I write this in celebration of Amod, an incredible human being I have the good fortune of calling my husband. Wishing you a very happy birthday! I was reading this post I'd written in 2021 about how who you marry plays an outsized role in your career and life. Looking back 5 years later, I find myself supporting this belief even more vehemently. Let me start at the beginning. I met my husband in late 2018, soon after I finished my Master's and was working at my first full-time job. We got married 6 months later, and 2019 was a dream come true. We were both in well-paying jobs, our parents and families were in good health, we traveled somewhere every month, ate out and shopped to our hearts' content, celebrated festivals with family, and much more. Life was perfect. By the end of 2019, I decided that I wanted to pursue a PhD. This was a long-held dream for me, and being with my husband and hearing his PhD stories made me want that experience for myself even more. My husban...

 As always, I write this post on my birthday, reflecting on all that life has given me. This year has been utterly magical for me, and I watched many of my long cherished dreams come true. But the biggest change, something that I think of as the reason for all these good things, is my perspective shift. I look at life very differently from a few years ago, and that makes all the difference. As Wayne Dyer says, When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. But first, let me tell you about all the wonderful things that happened this year. The biggest of them all: I finished and defended my PhD. This has been a dream for me since high school, and I can't tell you how good it feels to finally see it in reality. But it is more than the research I did, the papers I published, and all of that stuff, even though those are pretty cool too. The process taught me so much about life. The uncertainty, the rejections, the darkness. Parts that we struggle so much with...

 Ever have one of those days where everything seems to go wrong on multiple fronts? I've been having a few of those lately. Actually, if I'm being honest, it's been a few weeks now. And I haven't been too nice to myself through this phase. Many times, I relentlessly point out all the things I should have done better. Needless to say, this doesn't help me feel any better. Sometimes I'd wish, if only I had a compassionate friend who knew all the minutiae of my life and could point out all the things I'm doing right instead, it would feel so much nicer. While I'm blessed with many such people in my life, today, I'm trying something different. I'm trying to be that friend to myself and reduce all the negative inner chatter. So humor me, dear reader, and come along on this highlight reel of my life with me. This is really hard to write for me because I'm so used to criticizing myself ! :) I remember you from three years ago. In fact, I particularl...

Dear Stranger, I don't know you, and probably never will. But I have gone through periods of intense darkness in my life, and maybe you are going through one right now. I know it can feel very overwhelming, with no beginning or end in sight. Maybe you feel that your life is horrible, or don't see a way to make things better. First of all, I am really sorry that you are going through this. I really wish you didn't have to, because you deserve good things and happiness.  I hope you have someone who loves you very dearly, and helps you through these dark days. I struggled to talk to my loved ones through these phases, so I understand if you haven't yet reached out. Even if you feel you don't have anyone who really cares, you have me. It may feel strange to you that I care about a person that I don't know and have never met. But weirdly enough, I do. I feel deeply connected to you because I have gone through a lot of ups and downs in life (more downs than ups in rec...

 Acceptance is something I have struggled with a lot in the past 3.5 years after my Dad's stroke. Somewhere around last year, I fully accepted this event in my life. I made my peace with it. I even saw it as a blessing. I was able to appreciate how this seemingly catastrophic event forced me to take a long hard look at my life and make changes. It was the beginning of a new life for me, and as difficult as the journey was, I feel truly grateful for all of it. To say that it has been transformative is an understatement. I have grown into a much kinder, wiser and peaceful human being, and I see that it is not possible to get here without going through what I went through. However, the other side of the acceptance coin still haunts me. How could I accept this event for my father? He was a strong, able, happy person before. And after, it was like the light went out in him. He became a chronically ill, depressed, anxious person, constantly screaming, struggling and in pain. One of my fu...

 I have burrowed my head in self-help books for the past couple of years, and the one theme I found in several of them is this: taking responsibility for whatever shows up in our lives. I found this very hard to accept or internalize, and I often found myself saying:  But this is not my fault! It was so and so who was so awful. Taking responsibility for this means condoning their behavior, and why should I do that?  After my Dad's stroke, I felt that life had been extremely unfair to me. Here were all my friends and peers, enjoying the prime of their lives, traveling, celebrating, and surrounded by parental and familial love. Contrast that to my life: I already had a grueling schedule with my PhD program, and now I had to deal with hospital visits, logistic, and financial woes, not to mention the huge emotional toll. Even when I slept, I had nightmares. I was at the lowest point in my entire life, and I couldn't see how things would get better.  And so, when I first ...