mushroom cottage

Dear Diary

self love

life

choice

Fairies

A Summer Vacation

A Summer Vacation

The first thing I did when the vacation began was to make a list. I have this habit of making to do lists that tend to be useful at times. There is always a list at hand. Urgent tasks, pending work, small details that might slip away especially since the time I crossed thirty-five and seem to have acquired a talent for forgetting. It runs in the family. I remember my aunt who, in the pre-mobile era, carefully wrote down every important phone number in a notebook—only to forget where she had kept the notebook itself.

This vacation, I told myself, would be different. I thought of making healthy changes in my diet and starting to exercise. My body resisted, my mind wandered, but something in me wanted to persist. There were also reminders of limitations such as high blood pressure, thyroid issues, fatigue, the discomfort of summer heat, a lingering sense of mental unrest. I thought of becoming a fitter person by the end of this summer vacation.

Instead, I found myself immersed in four seasons of Never Have I Ever, caught up in the chaos of Devi Vishwakumar’s life. It may be a show meant for teenagers, but it stirred memories—how confusing those years had been, how uncertain I had felt. Some emotions do not age; they simply wait for the right story to awaken them. Around me,the TBR pile kept on accumlating: Young Forever, It’s Easy to Be Healthy, The 5 AM Club. I read about discipline, about transformation, about becoming a better version of oneself. The ideas were inspiring, but inspiration, I realised, is fleeting. Still, I tried.

Then my sleep cycles became disturbed with afternoon sleep. Sleep became erratic. The afternoons stretched long and drowsy, the nights restless. I thought about waking early, about the idea of brahmamuhurtham, that sacred quiet before dawn. I have always been an evening person, but I wondered if mornings might hold a different kind of clarity. One day, I managed it. I woke early, walked, read, and felt, briefly, a return of something I had once known—a sense of purpose, of alignment. It reminded me of another time, years ago, when I had first read The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Back then, life had seemed full of promise.

There were interruptions such as travel, hospital visits, health concerns, unfinished work waiting quietly in the background. There were days of complete inertia, when even getting out of bed felt like an effort. Days when the question arose, uninvited: What for? Sometimes it is just a dull heaviness, a lack of direction, a quiet erosion of meaning.

My sole refuge was journaling and I tried looking at the empty page with a new understanding. It  became a habit and refuge by being a new way to make sense of inner turbulence. A way to remind myself that my story, however small it may seem, belongs to a larger human pattern. The days had blurred into monotony—sleep, heat, small attempts at discipline, small failures. I walked a little, ate a little better, tried to bring order into my surroundings. I thought about writing a book—The Diary of a Female Quixote—a collection of reflections shaped into something meaningful.

The desire to write comes in bursts and there are moments when you feel that you want to record every passing moment and narrate stories about your existence. In those moments, I am certain that I will write something worth reading, something that will endure. By morning, the certainty fades, replaced by doubt, by routine, by the ordinary weight of life.

I am half way through my vacation and I walk occasionally and try to eat healthy. This vacation did not transform me in any dramatic way. I did not complete my lists. I did not become disciplined overnight. I did not solve the deeper questions that trouble me. But I have made an attempt to write a summer journal and tried in small ways to care for myself. I hope that I continue journaling though not daily but at least whenever the burst of creativity reaches me.

 

 

anger

feel

good things

Nature

reading

rich

Diary of a Female quixote

Morning Potion

Venting

feel

storytelling

Letters to the Self

Dear Self,

There was a time when you were very naïve, when you did not know how to say no or how to turn down things that were not good for you. You gave more than you should have, often at the cost of your own peace, believing endurance was strength and silence was kindness. However, this led to lessons of suffering and bitterness that you learnt with difficulty.  

Growth came slowly, disguised as discomfort. The lessons you carry today were not easily earned; they were shaped by moments that tested your patience, trust, and resilience. Through bitter experiences and quiet suffering, you began to understand yourself better. What once felt like pain slowly turned into clarity.

With time, you have come a long way. You learned to draw boundaries and discovered the quiet courage in saying no. You now know that protecting your peace is not selfish but necessary. Every “no” you speak has become a gentle “yes” to your own dignity, time, and inner calm.

Perhaps you could have saved your energy and avoided many detours had you learned this earlier. Yet there is a strange comfort in knowing that wisdom arrived when you were finally ready to receive it. Even if learned late, this art of choosing yourself is deeply yours now.

Be gentle with yourself. You are still learning though you have arrived quite late on the scene and you are still in the process of becoming the self that you have always wanted to be.

Love,

Self

 

best