It has been sometime and I wanted to get back to weekly blogging. My initial thought was to work out a theme for the next few weeks so that I can start jotting down and start preparing the drafts. I then decided to write about events, thoughts, insights and things which I have got exposed in the last one week. I was looking for a title and that is when I got it from an article which I was reading from India Today. I checked with my wife about the name and checked for the meaning.
pot·pour·ri ˌpō-pu̇-ˈrē 1. : a jar of flower petals and spices used for scent. 2. : a miscellaneous collection : medley.
So here it is, my weekly medley of things which I felt could make it to mind and hence captured part of my writing…
Travelling after a brief hiatus has been tough. I had to put three alarms and finally I ended up waking without an alarm and that too one hour before the scheduled time! After having one cup of coffee, I decided to check my mails. In a marked departure, where I will ask my wife to buy book online, I just bought a book at 2.30AM and then was wondering why It was not in my kindle before I left for airport. I dropped a mail to my wife to check that day. Book was titled “Thinking Clearly” which I believe was bought without much thinking I must say!
I am very much a fussy guy when it comes to eating sweets and desserts. But in that afternoon flight, I liked the way the air hostess seeing the way I was eating ” Almond Pastries” asked me if I wanted to have one more. I jumped at that request and had back to back pastries. Looking back I was wondering why I did what I did? I was watching Kungfu Panda 2 and the spark for dessert was the Dialogue ” Find your inner peace”.
My colleague mentioned that he tried journalling and he was not able to continue doing the same. So this Saturday when I was listening to Evan Carmichael’s video-Unlock Your Brain’s Potential with These Neuroplasticity Techniques by Dr Tara Swart’s ( Neuroscientist) segment where she mentioned about Journalling and Gratitude list. She shared how she changed from writing external things ( Events , Work, Family , Financial freedom) to internal things like Creativity , Vulnerability and Resilience. This video stuck with me as I was at a point in journalling where I was thinking of making some significant shifts to write. Today morning I picked this thread and was going through Ali Abdal’s video on Journalling and I understood that it is worth my time to pursue it. Other thing which you get from these videos are references and that led me immediately after seeing the video to search for the ” Storyworthy” book and get a lead for effective journalling using a concept “Homework for life”. This is how you can start capturing every day events as stories and start capturing on an excel sheet.
Every Sunday now I have two magazines landing on my table. I thought my family will give me company. Not yet. So I noted that in the last 3 months I have accumulated a bunch of them and it has started staring at me. I decided on Sunday morning to read the ones which I liked these days and that was on cricket. While I finished the cover article it took me back to the days when my mother and I used to watch world series matches very early in the morning. In that magazine I hit upon another interesting article which got me interested and made me take out my pen and underline those interesting phrases and aphorisms. Let me share few of them which I could relate :
The man who thinks he knows everything needs to marry a woman who actually does.
Every successful man has a woman behind him, telling him that he’s wrong.
The pessimist complains about the weather. The optimist declares it will change. The pragmatist goes out anyway with an umbrella.
I used to get up early morning in the late 80’s to watch one day cricket. Today when there is a one day match going on , I switch between channels multiple times and was enjoying some talks on YouTube and was looking forward to see the slog overs. I am learning that my attention to see the whole match has gone down and I was interested in bursts of slog overs and highlights as we are living in a world of reels and shorts.
If I have to summarise this week it will be around how I could push myself to get out of moments when I was feeling very awkward and using my playlists in Spotify and Youtube to shift my attention and energy. My best potpourri quote of this week has to be this one and let us wish India all the very best for the world cup…
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