Tag: Writing Coach

100621 – Morning Pages

Quick post on a lazy day about things at the top of my head. Lot of transactional stuff. You may skip reading this.

8:58. Woke up a few minutes ago. Slept at I think 1 or so but I did have an Americano at around 8 last night. Guess that’s why I had a fitful night. So on with today’s post. Like yesterday, I will try to not context switch. The music is set. I made a list of what I want to write about. I don’t have a lot of time – I know I am late today and I need to start the day and all that but I don’t have any pressing engagements today so I can take it easy. I may even go to a Starbucks. I did not enjoy, to be honest, that I worked from the home house last night.

Here we go. Will use bullets…

A. So, I restarted on an old project yesterday where I am helping a senior from the IT industry with his biography. It is very very interesting and exciting and I really enjoy the grind when I work on it. In fact, in life, if I can get more projects like that, I would be really happy. Of course, this means that the next few days weeks would be crazy but that’s ok. It’s the kind of craziness that I like 🙂

B. Saw this video yesterday where someone has summarised James Clear’s Atomic Habits. One of the things that stayed with me is Warren Buffett’s advice on the 5/25 rule. In one line, it says that you must make a list of 25 of your long-term goals and focus on the top 5 and put the other 20 in the do NOT do / focus list. I think I must make such a list soon! I also have a fairly limited number of years left and I am craving for some success and all that. Must think about this over the next few days. So that.

C. I plan to get back to life and the world from today on. I am of course out there and working and all that but I have kept a low profile. As low as someone like me possibly can. I mean I am off Twitter, Insta, and all that. I know that I need to be out there and working and all that and it’s important for both personal and professional growth. Most of my opportunities have come to me just because I was on these platforms constantly. And I know that the doors I open today get me opportunities after literally decades!

D. I am also recording a podcast after a few weeks today. Let’s see how it goes. I can’t say I am fully prepared but I enjoy talking to people and podcasts are an important step towards that.

E. LHV is finding it tough. More on this some other day.

F. Thanks to the rain and all that yesterday, the second meal of the day did not arrive at all. I could’ve not had food after that but all the coffee I had made me jittery and I had to order something to get over. Ordered myself a Peanut Butter Mousse. Dying with guilt. There’s no way I’ll lose weight or climb Mt. Everest. I clearly can’t work out. The arm is still shaky after the vaccine last Saturday, so no Yoga. I can’t control what I eat. Grrrr…

Ok, I plan to try and fast today. At least not order anything for as long as I can control. Let’s see how it goes.

G. I am lagging on Write Your First Novel. I plan to take it up today. I am late on Mare’s review. I started the post but I couldn’t find the inspiration, even though I really want to do it. I think I must clearly slot these into weekends or after work hours. As life gets busier, I need to find a way to get more strict with time. I mean I am as strict as they come but I need to go another step now. I must not not do a single thing that is not on my calendar and if I miss something, I miss it. I will not try to fit it in during the day.

So that’s about it for day. Kaafi transactional details but that’s what is on the top of my head.

Wait. While writing this, an epiphany happened. None of these talk about my work as a marketer. And that means a good thing and a bad thing. Good in the sense that work to me is a problem to be solved, a thing to be done, a transaction that I dont care about. Bad in the sense that if I dont write about it, people I work with dont know about it and thus I remain away from opportunities. I mean I know that what I do is not really a long-term thing that I want to do. I’d rather build something that scales and impacts the world but the path to that seems to be missing. I think I am not even sure if I will ever be on that path – I am way too old and the world is way too complex now. Ok, I am getting in the rant zone. Lemme stay away from that.

Here’s the streaks.

  • Morning Pages / Meditations – 179
  • #aPicADay – 0
  • 10K steps a day – 0
  • OMAD – 0
  • #noCoffee – 0
  • #noCoke – 91
  • 10 mins of meditation – 0
  • #book2 – 0
  • Killer Boogie – 0
  • Surya Namaskar – 0

040621 – Night / Morning Pages

Unedited, unfiltered, unreviewed, unstructured, unabashed, undercooked, under… thoughts from a night when I ODed on Coffee.

4:37 AM. I have not slept a blink since yesterday. Blame it on work. And too much coffee. And of course, I am drowsy. You know, age and all. I am writing this in that delirious state where you are not up, you are not asleep. You are like hungover. You are probably hallucinating. Guess this is what drugs must feel like. May be I am on drugs. I mean I’ve so much coffee and faux sugar that I probably am flying high like a kite. Faux sugar is the sugar they put in Keto desserts. Even though it tastes like shit (being honest), I want to like really really really lose weight and get them six-packs. Of course, towards an end – the Everest baby!

So let’s see what all I want to probably talk about. Lemme try and sober up a bit. You know, by having some water.

Life Purpose.

LOL. The most cliched thing ever. Lemme spill some ink bits on this. So, I was talking to a friend that I am helping with some writing. While talking to her, I realized that I love it when I give feedback to people and I see a bulb light up in their head and the twinkle sort of dawns into their eyes and it eventually come to rest in that tiny quiver of their lips that is parting to either spew some work of amazement. Or yelp in surprise! That!

Ok, I digressed. The point was, I love helping other people. Specifically when they’ve written something and I give them input and that input helps them tweak what they’ve written and it becomes better and all that. Wow, that sentence was so long and so bad and so convoluted that it should be a crime to use such a sentence in a post about how I want to be a writing coach.

That. That’s what I want to be. A writing coach.

I know I dont have a great command over the language. I know I cant write flowery things. I can’t rhyme to save my life. I mean I don’t know even know the word that can sound like life. Maybe wife, strife, trife. The similes and metaphors dont come easy to me. They are as hard as the hardship faced by Arjuna when he was forced to slay his brothers and uncles and teachers and all that. What I write cant move a mole, leave alone a mountain. I still think in Hindi and then convert that to English and then I write. I still rely on Grammarly (free edition) to ensure that my emails don’t have stupid mistakes. None of my stories has sold any significant number of copies. The publisher apparently pulped copies of what I had written. I will not be in the history books. My work is not worth preserving. And yet, I dare to proclaim that I want to be a writer. I dare to say that I want to work with people that want to write and help them realize their dreams of becoming writers.

Yet another thing that I want to do in life that I don’t know has how many days left! I think whenever I die, I will die an unhappy man with more things on my #toDo list than I would actually end up doing.

Brings me to the next thing that I want to write about, as I wait for the day to break and some food to get delivered and all that. FOMO.

FOMO.

I have to admit that each passing day I get the feeling that life is passing by me and I am missing out on good things that life has to offer. Truth be told, I’ve had a very very interesting life. I have traveled the world, lived pretty much on my terms, and mostly work on things I like and run my life the way I want to. Agreed that I am mostly reacting to things – got bored of and took another one; got kicked out of a relationship, picked another one; drifted from day to day, month to month, and from year to year. But if I look back, there is no one but me who’s to either blamed or praised for how I have fared.

On one side, I can be glad that I am still surviving, even if I had to take on debt. On the other, I can kick myself in the backside that people that I started my career with have completed their Monopoly runs with what a friend (Mansi) calls the ultimate sign of having lived well – two houses, two cars, two kids, two maids and two vacations a year. The ones that dont have these twos have chosen to not get these. Unlike me. Who’s wanted to have many houses, scores of cars, no kids, an army of helps, and a life that’s more vacation than it has vocations. For the 38 years I have spent here, I have a negative balance that runs in high seven figures and some 2000 pieces of blogposts rants that I have been gathering since 2004.

I really really wish that I was a tad more lucky and I was delivering impact at scale with my work. I love scale. I just love it. I want to bring out a fucking tsunami and not just cause ripples in tiny puddles. I want to move the mountain and not just toss them pebbles around. The shrieks in my head are deafening. The silence in my voice is blinding. The ambition I have in my heart is parched.

The worse part? I dont know what to do about it. And I dont know who to go to. To cry about it and rant about it and all that. No one sees the obsidian that keeps gnawing at my heart all the time.

So yeah. That. It’s 5:47. I wish there was some 24-hour coffee shop or something that I could go and work chill out of at, at this hour. I mean right now there’s a lockdown and nothing is open. I haven’t stepped out of the house for 3 days, I think. But even when things were open, the only option was the expensive and unconducive-to-work lobbies at 5-stars. Money is ok. I am happy to spend on such things but the damn places look down on you, the moment you flip out a laptop.

Anyhow. Enough for the rant. The deliriousness that I talked about in the beginning has begun to wear off and I will try and catch some sleep before waking up to I am sure escalations and urgent matters needing my attention.

Till tomorrow, so long!

Here’s streaks.

  • Morning Pages / Meditations – 173
  • #aPicADay – 0
  • 10K steps a day – 0. Been like three days since I’ve stepped out!
  • OMAD – 0
  • #noCoffee – 0. Have been having a lot of coffee lately. Had two venti Americanos in the last 24 hours. I think I will need to order one more to survive the day. And from Saturday, I will try and quit again. Even if I am sleepy and all that after that. Let’s see if I am able to.
  • #noCoke – 85
  • 10 mins of meditation – 0
  • #book2 – 0
  • Killer Boogie – 0
  • Surya Namaskar – 0