My last blog was posted on Dec 1st, 2023. So today, on 14th Jan 2024, I decided to write a blog after a gap of 45 days. I must admit that weeks of travel and being under the weather made me skip several attempts to sit down and pour my thoughts. Even though I was recording my ideas on my blog drafts, I did not muster the courage to sit down and apply my butt to the chair. It was only yesterday that it stuck with me that post-Diwali, there was Christmas, New Year, and now literally Makar Sankranti was at the doorsteps. It was time for me to find out how to get back to my blogging way.
I was listening to an Adam Grant podcast. In that, he mentions an anecdote from his teenage days. Adam who had a fear of heights went for diving lessons. He would hesitate to dive from a higher pedestal and used to make excuses and delay to go. One day his coach asked him, ” When are you going to dive from a higher platform ?”. Adam responded, ” One day”. His coach asked him immediately, ” What are you waiting for?” In my case, I wanted to improve my writing and take it to the next level. After having completed 263 blogs I wanted to see what are some of the new ways I can share my blogs with the world. I watched the movie “12th Fail” on Jan 1st, 2024…
The movie gave me a lot of goosebumps particularly when you continue to have the itch to scratch and yet not been able to ship a blog for the last 45 days. Yes, I indeed had a cough for a month, relentless travel, and of course good time with family on weekends.
I took the opportunity to emcee for a Toastmasters meeting so that I could restart things that I had been missing which were speaking and writing. There were a couple of things that were going on in full swing such as reading and my daily journaling which kept the ideas flowing and I had the opportunity to capture them as well. In the run-up to the preparation for that meeting, I came across a powerful phrase from Shane Parrish which made me get back to the writing routine, ” Writing reveals what thinking conceals“. So I understood that if putting a blog I had a process which was “Consumption, Introspection and Connection“. Equally important is to understand how to get back to that routine which is what I discovered over this long hiatus in this blogging journey. As Ali Abdal mentions procrastination is not so much about the activity it’s about how you start the activity. It’s about unblocking to get back to your ways. It’s about the environment which I figured out in this case. I put on my favorite playlist ( some other blog) on YouTube and when my fingers started dancing on the keyboard I was able to come this far and that too on a Sunday afternoon after a heavy meal.
Finally, along with the unblocking, I must also thank some of the books I have started reading. The effect of the movie, “12th Fail” made me get back and decide to launch my first blog of 2024. I will do my best to share my minutiae of life in some different ways this time around in 2024. So I asked my younger daughter who had seen the movie with us to tell me what she liked about the movie and she said, “Restart“. Every time the protagonist fails to clear the exam the teacher roars ” Restart” at the top of his voice and that is when he picks himself up and gets back to work. It is commendable how he overcame the obstacles three times and cleared the prized exam of UPSC 4th time which was his last chance. So when you are stuck, it is best to remember this one simple word: #restart
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