Tag: Learning

Family, Food For Thought, Inpsiration, Journal

Unfinished Marathon

Sanjay Sabarwal
Uncertainty: Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash

There is a constant nagging thought inside me to do more, to be more, to explore more, more, more, more, and yet there are days I do the same things over and over.  A guilt inside me reverberates through my soul, pushing me to try new things, to explore, to question, to not sit still. Each day feels like an unfinished marathon.  I look at the goals from the past, current goals, and then my to do list, and it hits me that it will never be enough. I will never get everything done, and you know what, that’s all right.

It can be easy to look at all that I am not achieving, or maybe, just maybe it might be good to see what I finished the days before. Not to sit on my laurels but to give myself assurance that I am not sitting still, not stagnating, not spinning my wheels. A reset so to speak because it can be easy to look at all the lists and convince myself I did nothing. And I take the moment to review, and celebrate. The thoughts that I tried something new and failed. Those memories are the best ones not because of the failure but because I tried.

It is easy to count failures and ignore them as opportunities, the time I took to step off the ledge of comfort and uncertainty and took a leap of faith. It was never to succeed, but to grow, learn and ignite a new fire to keep trying. I admit there are days it can feel hopeless to fail at so many new things, those are the days when it feels like a marathon of failure.  And then I take a breath, and I let out all the failure and breathe in the opportunity.

A new day.

Myself, Writing

Energy: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

I remember writing few months back where all my energy, ideas and focus melded into one need to get the story done.  I was smiling and truly enjoying the process, just living the dream of being a writer, knowing that what was being laid down was pretty good and I could do this.  I want that moment back, those blissful hours when it seemed becoming a writer full time was not a fantasy, that I was good enough dammit!  Yet lately, I seem to have found people who either don’t think much of my writing or dismiss it.  Worse, still I have others who manage to always feel bad about blogging or posting on Facebook even when I am supremely careful of not blogging names and keeping my status updates to a minimum.  I feel stifled and trapped into being a certain type of personality on social media as if I have to apologize for being open about my thoughts and feelings.  Sure, I have said too much sometimes and called out others when it was not my business to, and to that I can only apologize and call it a learning process, yet I feel trapped with the label of someone who talks too much.  It’s soul and creativity killing to know that my words are scrutinized to be either dismissed or confirm my status as a big mouth.

I want my words to have the energy they did when I wrote freely and got them out of being in my body, bottled up for so long.  That’s where I want to get to.  Let’s hope that the ones who are judging me know that they are killing me softly.

Related articles
Myself

Alone

Sanjay Sabarwal
Cover of "Conversational Spanish (Living ...
Cover via Amazon

Today, I hit 204 pounds, only 14 pounds away from my idea goal.  I am also on Lesson 4 of Pimsleur’s guide to Spanish. almost halfway through beginning conversational Spanish.  Today was also the last day for my online UCLA class of Bringing Characters to Life. To top of all this, we have finally begun discussion on wedding dates. I should feel satisfied but I am not as it hit me that a lot of what I am doing is being done alone.  I have failed to share my passions and victories with the ones I love but worst of all, it does not appear that it matters to them.  I am lonely but motivated.  Sad but looking forward to life ahead.  Angry because I am suffocating with frustrations and old hurts

I know I probably exaggerating but I can’t seem to let go of that feeling, and thus I am still blowing up over absolutely trivial things. I also know that there are some I should avoid, some I should handle gingerly, some with love but most of all some with caution as whatever comes out of my mind, seems to end up on their plate.  I have no privacy or at least it feels like it but more than anything else I just cannot believe how I have treated some who are dear to me especially her.  I owe her more than an apology, I owe her my life.

Related Articles
Myself, Writing

The Rules: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Cover of "These Are the Rules"
Cover of These Are the Rules

I admit, I am a bit hurt (aren’t I aways?) at the near total silence about my last post.  Maybe I did come off as a complete wacko to the blog readers but it was a sincere letter sent to friends and family that perhaps a majority of them either didn’t read or didn’t care.  Then it hits me that yet again I have made it about me, so I breathe out slowly, get into the present and have been reading voraciously. Acknowledge, breath, let go.  🙂

Been away for a few days now and felt the tug of the words in my brain as of they were already imprinted.  Finished reading if “Life is a game, these are the rules”  by Cherie Carter-Scott, PhD. basically 10 truths we all know or should know because we forgot at birth.  I won’t bore you with the details (I probably will)but , in a nutshell the 10 rules are :1) You will receive a body (love it or leave it) 2) You will be presented with lessons (repeatedly and constantly) 3)There are no mistakes only lessons (really liked this one since it involves Compassion, forgiveness, ethics and honor 4) A lesson is repeated until learned (you are doomed to repeat your “lessons” until you pass the test) 5) Learning does not end 6) There is no better than here (again be present, gee where have I heard the before) I am constantly being reminded of this lesson in pretty much every way as if the universe is conspiring to beat down this lesson down my throat  But it’s hard as hell to be present.  It really is hard to just approach, appreciate, take in what’s around me without thinking of what it meant before, what I should do about it or in general not even notice what’s in front of me.  Oh wait, I am way off track (see?) 7) Others are only mirrors of you(fascinating idea that what you like or dislike about others is what you like or dislike about yourself.  8) What you make of life is up to you (pretty self-explanatory 9) All the answers lie inside of you (this one I found hard to believe until I realized It consisted of listening, trust and inspiration, the 3 things that are helping me write and cope with her cancer) and finally 10) You will forget all of this at birth (just have faith that it’s there). When I looked at the rules like this, it hit me that the author purposely may have written the book backward so he could impart the life lessons to us as we are now, assuming that we need those first.

So done with another gift from Santoshi and now off to finally crack open my Ipad and read The Art of Choosing by a blind sikh girl (whose name for the life of me I can’t remember. Wish me luck.

 

Related Articles
My Past, Myself

I Remember

Sanjay Sabarwal
A mathematics lecture, apparently about linear...
Image via Wikipedia

I remember knowing that I would be a success one day. I remember that success coming from writing and also from reading. I remember the confidence I had that the words coming out of my made absolute sense and were contributing to the welfare of society The sense that what I wrote mattered, that I would a writer of consequence. Instead of small burst of letters and barely thought of words, I would produce stories of vivid imagination and longing.

I remember my first computer, and being the first among many junior high schoolers to get one, and promising them I would make them a spanish book for $20 a piece and getting $200 from 10 of the honor students and then realizing that I wouldn’t have the time to make or print out individual copies, I went to Kinkos and made 9 copies then submitted the folders.

Mrs. Cano liked what she saw. Neatly printed out, well put together and everything in Spanish, this was what she expected from her best students A great template for others and so the first folder received an A. She then moved onto the next one, and marked it down for missing pages and lack of imagination, then after several others she saw something familiar, almost like a template and it struck her that this was the same folder as the first. Perhaps, it was a reprint by the same student. A quick look confirmed that the notebook had different names, so she pulled it out of the stack and put it aside to deal with later. But then the next folder was the same, and Mrs Cano knew this couldn’t be a coincidence, and did a quick scan through and found 7 more identical folders, but the surprising part was the fact all the names belonged to honor students. What was going on?

I couldn’t decide what to do with the $200 that was cradled under my mattress, It was the most money I had ever earned, and although I was proud of my accomplishment, I knew I couldn’t tell anyone. I couldn’t believe how easy it had been but I had small flutter in my conscience that I would get caught but I ignored that small voice, convincing myself that nothing would go wrong.