Week 2

Ooty, 2018

It’s a little sad that this is only my second weeknote and I’ve already managed to have the dullest week in months. I didn’t do much. I spent the last few months taking it easy and working on a single project but since last week I’ve been working on two projects as well as my portfolio. And when things get even mildly hectic, my knee-jerk reaction is to drop it all and do nothing. I didn’t work on the UI challenge, didn’t look at my portfolio, made extremely slow progress on the projects, barely touched my book, did not practice my Korean, and worked out only twice in the week. But let’s focus on a few things that I did do.

• I’d been procrastinating taking a picture for my portfolio’s “about” page for months. The entire process of charging the camera battery, unzipping the tripod cover, setting us the tripod, clearing out the memory card, attaching the camera to the tripod, making myself presentable, AND doing this all at the right time of the day to catch the best lighting made me never want to do it. After whining about it to my mother she suggested I split the task over two days and that helped.
  So on Tuesday afternoon, I charged the battery and cleared out the memory card. In the evening I set up the tripod. On Wednesday, all I had to do was to make myself presentable and take some pictures. It sounds ridiculous when I type this out but honestly, it is what it is. Some weeks are just incredibly lethargic and these small steps help me get things done.
• This week I only did this Cardio Barre workout by my go-to girl, Rachel. I never do long workouts but this one was quite well-paced with lots of stretching. Being a barre workout, the movements were unfamiliar but refreshing.

• When my days are slow, I find it hard to fall asleep because I have no sense of accomplishment or fatigue. On such days when my brain feels restless, Headpsace Sleepcasts are simply not enough — I require a more drastic step and that’s when I browse podcasts. Ten minutes into some sort of educational podcast and I’m out. They’re just the right balance of engaging (hence taking my mind off my day) and monotonous (I really can’t be engaged if there is no visual stimulus). I did, however, really enjoy Creative Pep Talk’s 4 Ways to Silence the Inner Critic and Unlock Your Best Work. I’m a big believer in the fact that I can only do my best work when I’m being authentic. Few things kill my spirit like having to do work that feels — for lack of a better term — scammy.
• Talking about the whole inner critic situation, I happened to have a conversation with my best friend from 7th grade, and turns out we’ve both been using the meditation technique of noting to keep the negative self-talk in check. It’s a pretty simple and effective technique.

• I learned to make chapatis and parathas this week. My mother feels relieved to have finally passed on some basic knowledge of Indian cooking to her daughter. I was surprised at how fun and easy it was, to be honest. My chapatis are almost perfect circles and I’m working on making them thinner each day.
• On one of the days, I randomly remembered the senior designer at my last job, Sahil, talking about how he watches Fresh Off the Boat so I decided to start watching it as well. It’s a pretty chill show, and I’m able to stop watching it after a single episode so that’s great.

I think it’s okay that I didn’t get much done this week. Hopefully, next week will be better. No pressure though.