Dotted circles look like boobs.
I operate at the assumption that I am a whole lot of darkness, capable of light (sometimes).. and that characters when mapped across time are just a great deal of crests and troughs.
And so this, most people might argue, is my “dark writing” and I am possibly at a ‘dip’ …….I’m okay with that.
Re: Boob jokes 👀
A boob joke or vagina joke will almost always generate a laugh amongst the women in the room, so long as you are unconscious (sorry.. that’s sad), or unaware that you are making it.
And the earliest at which you will know that a good boob joke has been made in good taste is only a micro-second after other women in the room acknowledge the joke and have a communal-laugh about it.
Only then, do you have permission to laugh at it (terms and conditions still apply)
Then there is also this…..What if a penis joke is made?
I’ll be honest..I don’t know. You tell me.
How should women respond to penis jokes? and should they make them?
For now, let’s address the boob joke incident(s).
Boobs are fragile and funny. Each of them, like a weird shaped glass-blown trophy.
And women have to be careful about it all the time. From start to finish. Don’t believe me. Here.
The ‘bahoobies’ nourish the newborn…. but could be bitten off by them sweet little monsters
A “nip slip”… and could you could be chastised or projected to fame.
That can very often become the highlight or downfall of one’s career at times.You could be ‘a bit too booby or flat-chested’ your entire life.
Even your clothes could be ‘a bit too booby or prude’ your entire life.“Watch your necklines and cleavage.”- a yardstick of modesty
Boobs, and Busts….. got to get them right in art…otherwise they are “exotic” art.
We watch out for the lumps and orange-skinned boobs because they’re cancerous and “YOU COULD DIE!!”.
On your period? …Got tender boobs?
Are you cold?…. Got hard nipples?
Breastfeeding?…. Got leaky boobs?
Hold your girls. Wear a bra… (and a singlet if you’re cold)
“What kind of bra?”…. don’t even get me started…
Don’t wear a bra?…… You’ll get asymmetrical saggy boobs.
We watch out for “peeping boyfriends”….(heard that one before ladies? )….. i.e. not to be seen bra straps.
Boobs are groped and grouped. Harassed and carressed….
The list goes on….
And as you can see, a lot happens from the ears to ribs.
So when people, (and more often than not, men), walk right past it (figuratively and literally), eyes-wide open, without acknowledging them….that sets the stage for laughter. Almost always..
And that laugh could be either a quite chuckle or an uproar….
But I can almost guarantee you.. that laugh is innocent. And nothing more than a noisy or muffled sigh of relief.
Girls will know, I am not letting out girl talk or girl secrets. This is very much open knowledge.
I write this with the absolute surety that unless a man studies this piece of writing everyday, he will forget the open secrets in this. And he will continue to draw a circle with a dot inside completely unaware.
That too is okay…because hell, even as women we have no idea what other things are out there that are boob-lookalikes.
But we will continue to laugh at these gendered open secrets. That’s just the way it is.
B(oo)bs will be B(oo)bs.
When PURPOSE doesn't grow in your garden.
A subtle jab at “Motivation Hub’ or Motivation Hub-like hubs on YouTube.
Purpose apparently make lives ‘worthwhile and full of meaning’ .
No hate against purpose, but capital PURPOSE, wherein-
you know exactly what you would enjoy doing the most for the rest of your life
you know your ‘gift’- what you want to give to the world;
the kind that gets you Nobel Peace prizes or written into history,
(the kind that I and secretly you too cringe at.. enviously)
is hugely uncommon. I would argue even an illusion.
The rarity of PURPOSE in this world of abundance…. its the biggest irony of ‘em all.
*****
What do you do when capital PURPOSE just doesn’t seem to be growing in your garden?
Well, for starters,
(and this is as old as the hills)- Grow small-letter purpose in the small things.
small-letter purpose is a seed buried in the everyday. Its free and everywhere and needs to be nourished by effort.
For the layperson, its in the documents they string together with passion; the emails they write with an intention to serve; its in the meals made for family; its in the paying attention to health to be one’s best self.
Its all those small, seemingly trivial things that you do with over-the-top dedication and passion that add up eventually.
“The sum of parts is greater than the whole”, remember? - or the other way round. But the point is..
Stop watching Motivation Hub :)
or better- stay optimistic about your own life’s purpose while your at it.
Being here is all the permission you need
My alterego, who is a very rich successful famous white man telling me to step the hell up. I should probably pay some attention.
“
Secretly you may know yourself to be a bum….
The person who searches entire buildings for a phone that’s in the back pocket of their jeans. The person who has a degree in hand but doesn’t know what to do with it. The person who has an idea but doesn’t know if its good enough to be announced. The person who believes they are undeserving of opportunity and success, and the right to make their own way.
And so you believe you need to wait for someone’s permission….
Permission that might come in the form of validation or
actual permission itself- to do things; to start change; to be successful.
Yeah.. Stuff that! Life goes by too fast for that kind of waiting.
If you’re here, if you see a challenge and you have got most (if not all) of the skillsets to serve it, then take the initiative and do it anyway.
“
My alterego, who is a very rich successful famous white man is basically asking me to take his job. I’ll take it.
Action- and her cognitive companions.
When a driver runs one of the car’s wheels into a ditch, the rest of the passengers, onlookers (if you’re lucky), and the driver (if alive), will generally lift the car up and set it on its path.
If not, well it’s no biggie. The car will happily just sit there.
When we see the earth spinning off its axis, there’s less uncertainty than the simple case of car and wheel.
There is no question about action. It must be taken. Because the alternative - complacency, inertia, and inaction are lethal.
Then again, we ask ourselves- “the earth doesn’t fall off its axis every other day… so how do we take action when we don’t have a guide or example to follow?”
We’ve got to make a promise.
We’ve got to think.
We’ve got to come together.
We’ve got to engage and converse.
We’ve got to lift each other up.
We’ve got to cautiously experiment.
We’ve got to improve and improvise.
And we’ve got to capital ACTION.
I mean to say, we’ve got to “verb” action. Not “noun” it. Because we’ve got to keep doing.
We’ve no choice but to keep showing up for home.
And then, well we’ve got to make sure we keep our promise, and let ACTION and her cognitive companions meet again.
Out of my mind. Back in 5 minutes
I thought i’d not show up today.
You know, being able to be a no-show is an art in itself and I’d love to learn more. Because I have the opposite problem. I’m an “always show”
I could never bring myself to miss a day of school. (I hadn't missed a day of school from 6th grade all the way to the 12th.)
I show up to uni almost every day even if I absolutely don’t have to be. (Friends have a name for it now- the opposite of “chucking a sickie” is “chucking a Shivani”)
I will almost never miss work
Now, showing up is a really good thing. Most of the time.
Sometimes, it can drive you a little bit up the wall. Like when you could fall into the trap of showing up just to be busy. Here, the need to show up is driven need to not be bored. And before you know it, you’re in a fix, juggling ten thousand completely different things at the same time. That’s a problem.
It might be worth learning from a thing or too from the no-shows. They seem to be okay with not being busy. They seem to know how to say -
“Hey, I’m out of my mind, I’ll be back in 5”
Because there are no brownie points for just being busy.
Don’t be a broiler chicken.
I’ll give movie dialogues credit for inspiring my wacky titles.
If you know a 100 broiler chickens by name and identify them correctly every single time, you should get an award. Why you may ask? Well, for obvious reasons. Its virtually impossible to distinguish between broiler chickens. They’re grown to be optimum size, weight, to produce the same coloured eggs (you know, to basically be perfect and same). They’re even wired the same, producing eggs on schedule with barely any deviation. These days, broiler chickens apparently are so reliant on the path set out for them, that they can’t live without human intervention.
I keep broiler chickens in mind when I am tempted to pursue the path of least resistance. A path that someone else has travelled already that’s easy to follow. Because, it very well may be a struggle to take the path that never has been taken but I’d rather it be different from what we have already seen before .
Trust you’ll get there. Somehow things will fall into place. Don’t be a broiler chicken.
Stratagem: Effort-less and good enough.
I think the strategy for this blog is- effort-less and good enough.
For about 2 years, I had a website for a blog that I wrote nothing into. I didn’t make it public. Didnt design it. Didn’t have a name for it. But I was paying for it!
Then about a week ago, I decided that enough was enough. Enough money had been spent and time had been wasted. If the aim was that I should have pieces of my written work that make an impact out there, then I better get to work and for this I needed to develop the practice and the discipline that was sustainable enough to ship work.
In the next 45 minutes, this blog was born. And I made rules that force me to be committed to taking this slow and steady and being okay with it and made the work nearly effortless.
I can't spend anytime beyond noon on the website.
I have to publish something everyday on today’s post.
I can't do more that 15minutes of designing or developing my website per day.
I’d log improvements in my blog and writing everyday.
So far, those rules that were initially designed to stop me from procrastinating, and protect me from the one-time wonder ditch, have only accelerated and enhanced other parts of my life. For example, publishing everyday before noon on Today’s Post meant that I have to structure my time in the mornings. I’ve a reason to wake up early in the morning so I can give each post my best shot within the time I have. Yesterday, because I planned to be here- doing what I think is the most “effortless” part of my day, I had the best sleep in ages.
My hope is effortless and good-enough will hopefully snowball into something bigger.
And not that this is of any significance but The “BLAH”g is now The blog called the “Blah”g :).
Effortless, remember?
Laughing at yourself
Sometimes the silence of the morning can be harsh. It forces you laugh at the stupid things you do.
Like air quoting for example. I’ve got to stop “air quoting” when I try to articulate what I’ve got to say to people. Sometimes I catch myself air quoting even when I’m thinking of ideas in my head. Its a ridiculous habit.
“Nothing is too important to air quote”.
Much of what we humans have to say ourselves is generally a whole lot of bleh and very little wisdom anyway. Which brings me to the second thing I’m laughing at myself for this morning- I don’t listen enough!
Where does my urge, my hunger to fill up silence come from? Sure, it’s deeply uncomfortable to be sat in a conversation, waiting for somebody else to speak. But I think that’s exactly what I’ve got to do- wait for somebody else to speak. Because most of the time I have nothing valuable to say. Almost all that I value in a conversation, comes from the other person or from the few seconds that I take to think during it. Listen more.
Aha!- and this too- Why do I need so much stuff?!
When you make a buck, you gotta spend half that buck and save the other half- that’s fair. But we’re living through the investing revolution where buying pretty stationary is “investing in yourself”. Well, watch out. Lifestyle creep is a very real thing. You’ll spending two bucks for every buck you earn before you know it. (Again got to try stop air quoting, even in thought.)
So what have I got?
Filling silence with talk and space with stuff, and also air quoting. Those NEED TO GO.
Anyway, this exercise was good.
Leave it to the muse.
Creating anything is quite the responsibility.
When I started writing a couple of years back, I’d find it incredibly hard to rack up words despite loving the art. Putting things on a page required a tremendous amount of willpower. Added to this, I wasn’t (still am not for that matter) particularly gifted. I’d only write when I thought I was struck by a genius idea. Then I’d go through hours of critiquing my work, days, or months of writing and rewriting the same thing and then eventually, I’d bin it. That idea which I gave so many hours of my life would never see the light of day.
I’ll tell you what. Not much has changed. I am still a writer lost for words. But a few months ago, I started to deceive myself and I think its working.
These days, writing has become more tolerable as an art I practice everyday because I show up to the desk before 6am every morning with a cuppa to serve as a humble scribe.
My self-assigned job description is to literally play with the muse- to sit at the desk, and catch thoughts I imagine to be in the air, and just write. One word after the other. But this job isn’t without its ground rules.
Rule number 1 is to show up when the thoughts are ready and that time is 6am.
Rule number 2 is to clock out at 12noon but make sure what they (the thoughts I mean) have to say is written with enough satisfaction
Rule number 3 is- Once the job is done, its done. Go home.
And the last rule, number 4, which arguably is the most important is -Show up tomorrow.
Now, it is as silly and unintelligent as it sounds. But that’s the point.
Our greatest agony as humans is probably that we’ve got a story within us waiting to be told and expressed. But, perhaps an even greater agony would be if we ourselves stood as an obstacle to its telling. For those who are chronic over-thinkers like myself, showing up to serve as an unintelligent barren vessel for art rather than as its source is the perfect kind of humbling we need to get to work.
Leave it to the muse. Show up tomorrow.
“Shipping” BY NOON.
Shipping by noon is my practice of crystallising my thoughts into a post by lunchtime everyday. And I’ll be honest, some mornings I have nothing to give but some really corny title combinations and some other mornings like today, I am empty.
I’ve been sat at my desk since 6am and not a word has been typed.
But thoughts are there. And they creep in. Only they’re just not the kind you want.
Maybe.. today is not the day for the creative endeavour.
Maybe.. I should read some more. That might plant a seed of an idea that I can grow into a post in the afternoon (or tomorrow).
Maybe..I should leave it to the end of the day - I’ll probably have the greatest creative idea ever by then.
So on mornings like these what do I do?
I sit through the struggle of words until about 8:30am tops. I allow myself to be discontent and I probably yawn through my own writing because its shallowness both bores and exhausts me.
But I ship by noon anyway. I publish the post that I forced myself to write quickly. I keep my promise.
And although, I might have the greatest-ever idea for a post in the afternoon, I make a call to not post about it or carry it over the next day deliberately. I force myself to be content by writing it down those great ideas into my diary instead.
“But why?” - you may ask.
Because its a promise and a discipline that forces me to foolishly believe in the hope of a new day, of new possibilities and opportunities. Somehow that I think. makes for a better way of living.
See you tomorrow.
“Shipping, because it doesn't count if you don't share it.”- Seth Godin
Kill your darlings
A year ago now, I took a writing class at university. It was quite accidental. I chanced upon it much like how I discovered other things (by procrastination). But here, I heard the most useful writing advice ever.
Sometimes we get too precious about beginnings. The thing is- beginnings have too much packaging. The fluff that makes it land softer is unnecessary and such a waste of time. That’s what kill your darlings is about. It means- almost always, the first few sentences in your drafts (which people tend to be most precious about) is useless.