reflections (part II)

So why is this post called "reflections (- part II)"? I never posted "part I". Yeah, but I have typed it out (well, not a very clean, publishable version). It's just not something I wish to share, not right now. It's just such a raw, offensive, knee-jerk response to the goings-on of the 30 days that it's just .... unfit to be shared. It's so immature, it's not worthy of sharing, at least parts of it ...

Anyways, that's all besides the point. I mean, nobody's even reading this for god's sake!! It's self-indulgent in the most selfish way possible, I'm practically talking to myself here. This might as well be a personal diary.

I've got time to soak in my 30 days, 30 dances program. Quite frankly, it's come to nothing. It's just like any other goals I've set in my life (I feel such a burden even saying a big word like 'goals', it makes me feel so adult. It makes me uncomfortable honestly. I shouldn't be using words like that). You get to the end of the goal and, no matter how well you've done, there's a certain hollow satisfaction. The feeling of satisfaction that asks the questions I have no answer for: "Is this what I came all this way for? What was this all about really?" I look back and the dances don't add up to anything. They're a collection of days when I did random things, some of which I enjoyed and some were of which just plain 'meh' (really? mint.com?).

I'm glad I re-connected with two things: cooking and photography. I've always enjoyed cooking. But of late, I had lost the habit. I hope I can keep up with it, even it's just because it's lighter on my wallet and body. The fact that I was taking pictures everyday, even if they were of a puny little piece of paper, was really quite satisfying. It forced me to shift my ass off the couch.

For now, that's all I can say. Maybe more reflections will flash in front of my eyes in forthcoming days, who knows ...

So now what? Will I continue doing this?

Well, I will do this again, but I do need a break; I probably won't resume for another couple of months. Henceforth, the rules will be thrown out to a farther distance than before. I'm not going to force myself to do a dance every day. I'll do one when I feel like doing one. Screw destiny, destiny's overrated! At least, I'll be doing something that results in a higher satisfaction level.

So long ...

30. salad for dinner

So! After two misses (this and that), salad finally has its day. And that too on day 30. I've cooked so many recipes over the last 30 days, I still can't make myself a salad, as easy as it might be. I bought mine from Tomaydo Tomahhdo.

I'm not still not sure if I'll have a final post to 'review' the 30 days 30 dances program I enrolled myself in. I started writing that post, and but I fear publishing it here. I have a feeling it should be something I should read to myself. I don't know if I will publish it ...

29. call up relatives in india

I have lots of relatives, most of whom live in India. I have 23 cousins and many of them have kids. Not to mention all the uncles and aunts. So it can be a pretty busy affair keeping in touch with all of them. Unfortunately, I have to pick and choose the favorite ones. I haven't kept in constant touch since I moved to the US 11 years ago (wow! has it been that long?)

Very close to 30 days now ....

28. read 50 pages of a book you've already started

I have a bookshelf in my living room in my small one-bedroom apartment. It's almost filled to the brim; earlier this year, I bought a 5-shelf bookcase to replace the one with 3 shelves because I was running out of space for my books. Of the books that reside on that shelf, I've probably read less than half of them. I guess I like the idea of reading, rather than reading itself. Of course, it also serves to validate my intellectual side, even if I might not have one to validate.

I'm finding that my attention span for a book keeps diminishing over time. I'm not sure what it is. I wondered about it today and I partly blame the internet with its ever-growing collection of articles, blog posts and opinions about random topics. Anything that takes more than 15 minutes to finish seems like a burden. It truly saddens me that I don't read as often as I want to.

So I've been wanting to read The Fountainhead since I was told it was the most read book in the history of English literature. Some friends also told me that I 'had to read it'. I've attempted to read it before. I read one chapter and I forgot to get back to it. I felt proud of myself today to start all over again.

You know what I realized during those 50 pages? It took me around 2.5 hours to read them (yes, I realize I'm a slow reader. I read sentences a second time if I don't get them or if they amuse me). How long did it take the author to write those 50 pages?

It definitely seems like a great read. Now if only I could finish it. And finish it in a reasonable amount of time.

27. donate $25 to charity

I originally wanted to donate to Adrian Fisk, who I first read about in this article. But it seems as though he doesn't need donations (I can't seem to find a donation page on his website). I'm not sure why I thought he did. His project is phenomenally simple, and yet speaks volumes just through the simple idea of one person holding up a white board with words that are on his mind. It's that simple! Yet so, so moving!

So instead, I donated to Born in September, a charity that provides clean water to people in developing countries. 100% of the donations fund a drilling rig. I was born in the month of September, so I suppose I am more obligated to contribute to the cause.

I've always been skeptical about donating to charities. I feel like I need to see the effects of the donation with my own eyes. And I'm not sure why that is. It's a small amount, it's just $25. $25 is not a big percentage of my paycheck. For me, it's a small amount. Probably not for many in this world. 

26. walk for 30 minutes inside / outside. climb 10 floors up and down.

I walked the entire length of my 14-story apartment building (it was too cold outside). You know what I noticed? The ceilings are higher on the floors at the bottom. I wonder why ...

And I also cooked my pasta, the one thing I usually never get wrong. I changed it up this time by adding some cheese and giving it the bake treatment (which I will do tomorrow morning).

25. do nothing

24. watch a documentary

During the 2008 Cleveland Film Festival, I checked out this great documentary Bomb It! about graffiti around the world and the sociological effects it had on cities. It looked at graffiti in cities like New York, Los Angeles, Paris, London, Sau Paolo and the different styles of graffiti in each city. It was great!

And so I was pretty excited to check out Exit Through the Gift Shop, of which I'd heard lots of good things. And to top it off, it's narrated by Rhys Ifans, who I'm a big fan of. Even though it's about graffiti and street art, it takes a whole other perspective. While Bomb It! focused on street art in general, this one focuses on today's prominent graffiti artists, namely Banksy and Thierry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash. It was quite brilliant and entertaining. And I love how it changes from a story about these individuals to how art has become so commercial and its meaning and appreciation has evolved. Even though there's speculation about how genuine the documentary really is, it made for great viewing.

23. take 50 photographs of 8 different objects / landscapes

Ok. So yesterday was a panic attack (I also call them man-periods). It's ok, they happen ...

I vetoed today's dance on day 19.

I love my 50mm Canon prime lens. I think it's fun to play with. These were some of the ones I liked:

22. call up a friend from school

The idea of today's dance was to keep in touch with friends and family. I'm pretty bad at it, for multiple reasons. I prefer calling people when I really want to talk to them rather than scheduling timely calls to notify that I'm still alive. And don't even get me started on the "what's the weather like out there?" question. If you want to know what the weather is like in my part of the world, all you need is weather.com!

I guess I'm not feeling all up there today (I blame it on the non-daylight savings changeover). I think today, for the first time, I genuinely felt like giving up. More than just giving up, I'm questioning the whole purpose of the 30 days, 30 dances. What exactly is it??!! Why am I doing this? Is it going to be as satisfying at the end of the road as I pictured it? Has it been a satisfying journey even? Or is it just a distraction from something more important? Aargh ...

21. watch 1 hour of a tv series you haven't seen before

I like Netflix. I like that I can cross off movies and TV shows off my ever-growing list. I watched the first couple of episodes of Arrested Development last week and I thought it was pretty funny. I wasn't blown away by it but it was funny. Now I'm not one for TV show marathons so I take my own sweet time watching them. I also want to catch up with Mad Men. As much as I like the show, I haven't made it past season 1.

20. sleep at 10 pm

No, no, no, no. I did not forget to pick out another dance for .... well yesterday. I just post today (and consequently late) because I did my dance yesterday. I feel fresh! I needed this dance.

I'd like to thank Great Lakes Christmas Ale for helping me out with this one. I could not have done it without you. And I most certainly would not have passed out on my futon without your help, and that too right before I was about to blog about it. Can you imagine what this blog post would read like if I had posted last night?? I know I can't. I'd also like to thank my office for making it a week worthy of the said Christmas Ale.

And I just had to share this:

19. log on to mint.com

So it happened again! Twice in 3 days now. I forgot to pick out a dance again today morning. Is this a sign of things to come? If so, what is it a sign of?

As always, I still randomly picked a dance. This time, I had to cheat twice to settle on today's dance. The first time, I picked out one relating to photography and salad the second time (salad has been rejected twice in 3 days. The universe must really want me to have salad. Don't worry, salad. I'll make it up to you. When it's your turn to dance, I'm going to have tons of salad, with tons of dressing. I do not promise a home-made salad btw)

So anyways, mint.com is a financial planning website. You give it credit card information etc (horrifying thought for many) and it spits out pie charts about what you're spending your money on. I've had an account for a few months but I seldom log in. It's not like any of these pie charts are going to prevent me from spending more money. It's just good to know where the money's going. Technically, all I have to do is log in. For now, I'm just glad today's dance has been accomplished. Even if it's a boring and mundane dance (mundance n.: a dance that is mundane), it's still a dance ...

18. watch a Ted talk / RSA animate video

I've been watching Ted talks since a couple of years now and they cover a range of interesting topics. But of late, I've been more fascinated with RSA animate videos. It's such a creative way of portraying rather humdrum lectures. This one's pretty funny and interesting at the same time:

And this one too. I just love that she took a rational dig at Rhonda Byrne's The Secret.

17. read through 10 saved tabs / articles

So I kinda cheated my original dance today ("salad for dinner"). What happened was I forgot to pick out a dance after I woke up and left for office in the morning ("certain excitement every morning" my ass!). So when I was at office, I really, really craved some good home-made Indian food. I just had to have some daal. So I did my groceries and came back armed with the required ingredients. And since I had to pick out a dance for the day, I did. I just chose to postpone it to another day because frankly I just had to have daal (who wouldn't choose to have daal? It's simple and it's delicious!). I have no regrets in ditching the original dance because let me tell you that spinach daal: it turned out to be awe-freakin'-some, ama-freakin'-zing !!

Alright, so a little background about today's dance. Ever since I discovered the tab feature in internet browsers (thank you, Opera), I have pretty much been going hog wild with opening new tabs. With the way the internet is designed, one comes across a million interesting articles. And sometimes, you don't feel like reading it right then and there. One has to save it for another day, come back to it. The only problem is sometimes it can take a while till you come back to it. I have tabs from a year ago, for God's sake! And I close them when I want to close them. And I'll just keep adding more till it's against the law (not likely I'll stop even after it's illegal). This is what my tabs look like. To say it's pathetic is an understatement:

These are some of the tabs that were deleted today:

• how travel makes you smarter, sexier and more productive
• the power of time off
• how to transform negative emotions
• official guide to brown girls 2

And because it's late, I couldn't get through 10 tabs. Ah well ...

16. download and sort 10 new songs

So I've been downloading music for more than a decade now. In college, I started creating my own music collection (I speak of it as if I was creating my own music. I wish!), everything arranged neatly into relevant folders. My friends at the time can vouch for that because they relied on me for all new music, mostly Hindi Bollywood stuff (one sadly still does, much to his own disappointment). And most of it went through (what I thought at the time was) a thorough screening process. If I didn't like it, it was banished from my collection. I didn't care if it was top of the charts and playing at every pub and club. And then, I (somehow) graduated from college and now I have no time to look after my music collection. I keep adding new music to it but I never have the time (that's a lie) and energy (that is the truth) to sort it out. My 'unsorted' folder (yes I have one) just keeps growing and growing. I hate to admit it but even today, for these 10 new songs, I did not sort them ...

These were the songs (I couldn't find a couple of them on Grooveshark):

15. take 20 photographs of yourself, 20 expressions

Taking pictures of yourself (or sel-phortraits as I like to call them. I don't really like calling them that, I just thought it would be cool to invent a new word) isn't as easy as it sounds. Setting up a tripod and getting the camera settings right can be time-consuming. It's also a pain in the ass if your camera doesn't support a custom self-timer. My camera does not.

So anyways, these are my attempts at being expressive. Some are rather bad attempts, some are amusing ...

subtle smile

toothy smile

laughter

light bulb

excitement

elation

disappointment

suspicion

stink eye (horrible I know!)

surprise

anger

serenity now

warning

two thumbs up

one thumb down

two thumbs down

this guy!

o-face (just pathetic)

steve jobs

miss universe