Reflections of a restless eccentric

One of the things I love about life is the infinite possibilities it holds. As a kid, I used to marvel at all the people I could be, all the futures I could have. They were magical what-ifs, shimmering with possibility. A quarter of a century later, my path in life has become more defined. I have made choices, and they have had consequences. But the dreamer in me often wonders: What if I had instead done this? Or that other thing? Maybe I would have become like this other person. And these what-ifs have gradually become tinted with regret. Not because I don't like where I am today, but because I had to give up all the alternate realities I could have inhabited to be here. That every choice meant that I had to leave behind the rest. I have previously written about this in an Obscure Sorrows post called Onism . A few years ago, I struggled reading Plath's Bell Jar, because I felt sad looking at life with that perspective. A paragraph that particularly caught my attention was thi...

Yet another year has gone by, and I turn a year older today. Every year, I use this day to introspect and be grateful. This year though, as I stared at a blank window trying to write this post, I found it hard to be thankful. Like so many other people, I did not have good things to say about 2020. Here were some of my initial thoughts: I quit my job in the end of January, and transitioned to another in early Feb. This was a drastic change in terms of work for me, and Covid hit a month later. All of a sudden, I found myself working from home, struggling to get help or make progress. As if that alone wasn't enough, the nationwide lockdown happened and a ton of chores descended on me. I struggled through every single day, and got so little done. Things that I had meticulously planned out before leaving my job suddenly evaporated into a cloud of uncertainty, and the lack of control left me feeling severely anxious and helpless.  Then, my immediate neighbors tested positive for covid, a...