A builder working on the ranna ghor (kitchen) at our village home. I set out at the beginning of November with the intention to prioritize myself over my worries, and the universe replied: “you sure about that?” A few weeks ago, I made a chart of what has been pulling at my attention. It takes […]
I’ve been working myself sick lately. Taking a step back from my commitments so that I can recommit to myself — a lesson that I am always in the process of re-learning, but that has especially come up since the month of Ramadan — has proved to be way more challenging than just canceling a […]
Eid Mubarak, all! This year has been a time of seeking intentional spirituality in my life. Ramadan has been really varied for me; there was no consistency that I could find in it, other than a renewed sense of wanting to move towards spiritual wellness. I fasted; I didn’t fast. I felt grounded; I snapped. […]
I’m no good at celebrations. Most of the time, I’m skipping forward to goal-setting for the next project – my to-do lists are all in future tense. When I wrote a post on rituals, it was really me creating a resource for myself to go back to whenever I feel like I’ve been speeding up […]
I found a title for my short story collection this week. It’s often hard for me to find titles — I’m more of a longform writer in the first place, so if short stories are hard, then you can imagine how a three-word title would send me into hours of contemplation. I’ve also been learning […]
It is harder to live. You experience too much or not enough. You struggle uphill without a clear plateau in sight. Your priorities shift and what you’ve been working towards is suddenly invalidated. You stumble. You lose. You become covered in dirt and must wash yourself clean. You listen to sad music when your spirits […]
Apropos of my Tuesday post on the college environment (and to kick off the start of this academic break), I wanted to talk about the extended break I took from creative endeavors for the past few weeks. You might be wondering: “Why talk about taking breaks? It’s cool, we all take them.” But for me, […]
A few weeks ago, I visited a friend I had not seen for quite some time. As she greeted me, one of the first things out of her mouth was: “You’ve gained weight, haven’t you? You didn’t have that chubby face last time.” As you no doubt have guessed from some of my previous posts, […]
(via ICanHasCheezburger) I am really good at not taking breaks. These past few weeks, I have been going through meteoric stress levels, intense weather changes that prompted severe illness, and general hopelessness towards completing personal goals. I tell myself that I need to take breaks and make it about me for a while, but […]