Microstory 135 – New Journal
It was sometime in the later part of 2020 that I decided to have a new journal ( Front cover ” Grow from Inside) for 2021. I had bought it since it had quotes on each page for every day. On Jan 1st 2021, I had a look at the journal. When I was in my hometown last week, my mother-in-law asked me if I remember all the quotes that I use in my blog. That made me think. I do have some of my favourite quotes which I keep repeating in certain talks and videos and so I am able to retain. So the other technique that I decided to use is to use some of the quotes which I like in my journal daily. So here are 5 quotes I wrote on Jan 1st on my journal and which I will use in 2021:
- Always do what you are afraid to do – R.W..Emerson
2. Consistency and authenticity is the magic formulae to crack the content game – Ankur Warikoo
3. If you don’t like how things are, change it ! You’re not a tree – Jim Rohn
4. Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it, the tree is the real thing- Abraham Lincoln.
5. Success is liking yourself , the work you do and how you do it – Vala Afshar
Microstory 136 – Travel in the new normal
It was two years in a row that I am traveling on the 1st of January. This time it was with my entire family to our hometown, as we were looking forward to meeting our folks. A couple of days earlier, I had assigned a simple task to my younger daughter. It was to take out all the baggage stickers from the luggage bag. She found it very interesting in the beginning as the stickers were coming easily. Then the job got tougher. There were very old labels which I asked her to brush with water and remove as otherwise, it will leave an impression on the bag. The job was done well except at some places where the impression of labels was visible to the common eye. I told my wife that this would be the last time we would be doing such a thing as today everything is contactless and your baggage identification will be mailed over to you. We packed our bags with an eye on the baggage limits and we noticed that each one of us had our laptops and accompanying paraphernalia to carry as we had to set up the environment wherever we go. Books and laptops apart from clothes dominated our travel in this new normal.
Microstory 137 – Live it up
While we were in my hometown, I had the chance to meet and greet a few friends and relatives after the quarantine. After my visit to three relatives’ homes, it was striking that they all lost one member of their family in 2020. I had shared about my friend’s mother and my wife’s uncle apart from my uncle. I was overwhelmed to see how the bereaving families have moved ahead in life and lived it up.
This is the first time I could play some sports in my native home with family. It made me go and buy some sports goods that same night as I enjoyed playing with kids, mother in law, and wife.
I had the opportunity to meet our neighbours maintaining physical distancing. They are the ones who stay around my house and will be the first to help and support my mother and grandmother. After being with my friends and folks I learned how much people had endured in 2020. I was mentioning something to my mother and she said she knew it as she had read it in my blog. It was a living it up moment for me as well.
Microstory 138 – Black and white
I was inspired by an article by Santosh Desai “Photo album revisited”. In that article, he mentions, “Going back to familiar old photo albums is an exercise in both nostalgia and discovery. The photo album is a memorial site that gives us new rewards every time we visit it. It is the closest that we have to a movie about our lives as it lays out a chronological account of the trajectory of our lives as we grow older. We are always looking at the old with new eyes and finding aspects of our own lives which we had stopped acknowledging or owing”.
I had kept that in mind to show old albums to my younger daughter when we were in my home town. My mother brought the entire set of albums and we were going through them one by one. It was a throwback time. I was also sharing some old memories with my family after seeing the photos. My mother also reminisced about old memories and there were certain things I was not aware of about my father and paternal grandmother and we all had a good laugh. My younger daughter also started looking at my childhood pictures and was checking out if it was me or my sister. The best laugh we had was when she asked the question, ” Was the world black and white then ? We said, ‘ It was all black and white back then at that point in time”. But I later agreed with this one.
