Ripples of my Reflections

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Category: ADIT & ME (Page 1 of 8)

2024 highlights

December 26, 2024 /

Adit has already posted his account of the year. I will be listing a few highlights that I hold close to my heart.

My overall feeling about 2024 is Can’t complain, count your blessings. Especially after the lessons I learned during the pandemic, I take every normal day as a win.

Professionally, 2024 saw me racing through career growth, not the kind that is visible and pompous but rather the kind when you know you have come a long way. I am grateful for that. Despite many frustrations and disappointments, I still survived because the scales keep balancing themselves. In an attempt to continue overcoming my stage fright, I made myself present in front of an audience multiple times this year, and I am glad that I did. I grew with every attempt, and that inspired me for the next.

In terms of travel, this year took me to Singapore and The Hague, along with a few places within India. Travel feels like such a chore these days. Oh, how different it used to feel 10 years back! Anyway, I always end up feeling good about the trips in retrospect, so there’s a silver lining.

Health wise, I noticed some health troubles picking up, and my mind constantly reminded me about my age. While I am comfortable about making the shift into the post-prime phase of my life, I need to up my game when it comes to making my health a priority and being more responsible towards it. I did try Zumba for a couple of months and quite liked the format, despite my initial difficulty with coordinated moves. I couldn’t sustain it with the demands of my work and family. Maybe, I will have better luck in 2025.

As a new hobby, I started learning Carnatic music. It was a happy accident — We signed Aditi up for the class, since she has a lovely voice and was interested. A couple classes in, I felt myself getting interested and went to observe a class. Bam! I fell in love with the music teacher’s voice and singing. It doesn’t come as easily to me, I have to make a lot of effort to learn it. However, that does not feel like a deterrent. I am loving those 2 hours in a week when I forget about everything else. I also started reading more again and hope to keep it going. This year, I spent quite some time coloring, mostly mandalas, and found it super cathartic.

Financially, I felt closer to finding my balance between my childhood conditioning of how to value money and what the reality of this day’s world requires. I think I can still improve on that front, but I am comfortable where I am now. I understood the part financial independence plays in a person’s mindset, and also understand that it comes with a caveat of responsibility.

As a parent, my longing for those moments when Aditi still shows her innocence intensified. Time flew insanely fast — as all parents feel, it feels like she was born yesterday. Every time I hug and kiss her, I can’t help feeling those fleeting moments. I am trying and failing miserably to enjoy the present without worrying about how fast she is growing up.

Anyway, as I said, counting my blessings and feeling grateful as the year is wrapping up. Thanks for a wonderful 2024 and here’s hoping to a balanced 2025.

Until later 🙂

Yay on the gaming

July 12, 2020 /

Gaming was never my cup of tea. Even as a 90’s kid, I used to try and play simple games like tetris, pacman but even mario was too much for me. I used to be interested but I struggled to work the controls. Maybe not enough hand-eye-brain coordination. In college, farm frenzy was a craze and a group of friends playing it hunched over a laptop made it easy enough for me.

However, one of the perks of being married to an avid gamer is that it does not matter that you suck at playing most commonly played games. He finds you games that you can handle and yet are challenging and interesting enough. Adit even found my category – I do well with tower defense, time management, and business games. I never realized that I had a type with gaming until he proved it to me.

He slowly started buying me games that felt interesting enough for me and I had a chance of succeeding which made me want to play more. Then he sneaked in playing co-op. I never imagined that a hard core gamer like him would even enjoy co-op games such as overcooked but we had a blast with it. We became addicted so much to it that we played late into nights after our toddler falls asleep. We’d be so tired yet we’d want to play. We also had some real fights over something as silly as a game – when the levels got so hard that losing out on a level because one of us couldn’t do something right got intolerable. We fought, made up, then fought some more.. you get how it went 🙂

So after a stream of Overcooked (both versions), Kingdom rush (all PC versions), Plants vs. Zombies, Train valley (both versions), Stardew valley, a bit of Age of Empires (I didn’t persist enough with this one), world of goo, and now trying out the co-op game “Moving out” – I think I am getting interested in gaming. Just that, I am really interested in staying with my type. I don’t like 3D, life-like or violent games but the ones that have a bit of a distance from the game and maybe a bit childish, those are fun for me.

So that’s one more for Adit, his persistence in wearing me down to try new things has a track record that’s almost unbeatable. And I am not complaining 😀

Until later 🙂

The struggle is real

November 15, 2019 /

November has been a real testing time. In fact, the past 2 years have been about handling what life throws at us. If Adit, my husband, has to face the struggle first hand, I am the half-helpless person who tries to keep things running for him.

Health issues are not new to us. We know that the life of a type 1 diabetic can be as close to normal as possible with ideal control, but it could never be fully normal. Despite what the doctors tell you, when you have to finger-prick at least 5 times a day and get insulin shots a minimum of 3 times a day, you know that you are different and you need a different attitude about life. That’s on a good day. Bad days are like going on a roller coaster ride without nothing to hang on to.

What hits more than the disease itself is a number of factors that include psycho-social acceptance, family support, healthcare costs. Unfortunately for us, the T1D awareness in India is not great and tools that enable a type 1 diabetic to get closer to ideal control are either insanely pricey or unavailable. Families are still not sure how to handle this condition and end up ignoring it and just praying for the best, instead of getting hands on and helping the person to wade through the struggle. We do not need sympathy but actually need empathy and support which we hardly get.

Fortunately though, Adit has me and thanks to our stars, affordability for the health care that is required. Being a primary caregiver for Adit, I learnt what life as a type 1 diabetic entails. I learnt acceptance in the fact that it is not something he chose or could have avoided. It was forced on him and there is no other way than to deal with it. I learnt to help him with his blood sugar readings, plan for better targets, and cook food that suited him even if it has to be bland. I still struggle in some aspects when I am ill or totally exhausted from all the work. At such times, Adit understands. When he does not, I do.

With a toddler who does not know what her father deals with, the problems her working mother faces to keep things going without a proper support system, the struggle is real. We have got no choice but to face it head on.

Inching towards a better me

October 20, 2019 /

As the clock slowly inches towards 12 AM, I am stepping towards being another year older and another year wiser. Every year when I think of having done with another year in the calendar, I wonder if I have really gotten wiser. Change doesn’t come that easy to me.

However, this year is a bit different. I realize that I have started accepting myself for who I am, albeit very slowly. For starters, I see that I am more comfortable in my skin. I have started enjoying myself and the choices I make with lesser doubts. I have accepted that I don’t have to like cooking to cook healthy and tasty food for my family and more importantly I have accepted that it is okay to not like cooking. And parenting. When I became a mother, I expected selflessness and sacrifice to come easily. It did not. And there are not many people who feel the same way or are willing to share out even if they feel so. Being non typical fed to my guilt and overthinking. However, I have come to accept that feeling so is just fine.

Being a working mom with a toddler has pushed me in improving myself as a person. I am running so much that I hardly have time for myself. My schedule is like clockwork and depends on a lot of people/things being perfect, say, my babysitter, my maid, my husband, my work, my colleagues, the delivery guys etc. Trying to run a life that demands this level of a perfection with so many factors is terribly exhausting and I just get by. So the sheer frustration of being the primary caretaker for everyone else but me drove me to take steps that I was refusing to.

I have now started dressing how I really want to rather than based on what I want others to think about me. I step out of my comfort zone and experiment and I gotta say, the results are good. My self confidence is increasing with every extra thing I manage and every previously unimaginable thing I accomplish. I am becoming increasingly confident in the fact that I do not need to be protected and that I can be a role model, if need be, to my kid. The number of guilt trips I take have reduced. The number of times I question myself or my decisions have reduced. I am capable of letting go of some things that would otherwise drive me crazy. I have learnt to agree to disagree. I have learnt that my choices may not be acceptable or likeable for others. Today, I truly believe that I can stand and deal the challenges that life gives me. Of course, I will cry, crib and worry, there is still a lot of work in progress, but I believe that I can pick myself up.

Sometimes, I wonder if I am pushing myself too much and there is a bigger cost to all this but right now I feel like it is worth the life I am living today. Being a full time working mother who manages both work and household without a typical support system is not something I ever thought I would be able to do. But here I am! Doing it, living it and having it all. I am not bragging here but I am merely astonished at the fact. It has not been a easy journey, with a type 1 diabetic spouse who needs additional help in managing his health and lifestyle that are otherwise a given for most people, a toddler who is as adamant as her parents put together, if not more, and almost zero support system.

10 years back, I wouldn’t have believed that I’d feel like this ever. But today I am proud of who I am and the life that Adit and I have built. So here’s to a better year that helps me progress and gives me the strength to handle life even better.

Until later 🙂

Why am I not bored?

November 23, 2018 /

Having been in an incredibly long relationship and married to my childhood sweetheart, the first question many ask me is – “Are you not bored?”.  When I say no, people ask, “How can you not be?”.

I cannot understand how anyone can be bored with another person just because they have been together for a long time. For me, boredom comes with personality mismatch, not with the length of a relationship. Do you get bored with your parents just because you have known them all your life? Or do you get bored with your siblings? No. You get frustrated, annoyed. angry when conflicts arise but you don’t get bored.

Also, people change incredibly fast. I am not the same person I was last year. So no matter how many number of years you put in a relationship, you have something to work on. In fact, a long relationship means that real hard work has gone in settling the chaos so that it stays afloat. What others see might be a fairy tale but there will be skeletons laid to rest (not buried, for I believe trust is the core of a relationship) before the fairy tale was built.

So pardon me if you can’t see it, but I don’t see myself getting bored with my husband just because I have known him almost all my life. And after so much time together, if I find some personality trait of his boring, I trust myself to be able to tell it to his face and I trust him enough to do something about it. 🙂

 

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