Tag: Literature

Family, Myself

A Strange Year

Sanjay Sabarwal

frustration_relief2

It strikes me as crazy what I have gone through this year. From brain surgery to running a 10K to working a carnival for the underprivileged and donating goods on Skid row, I feel as if this has been the most complete year in my life. I also managed to submit a short story as well as am actively praying and meditating. As much as all of this sounds like bragging (or perhaps repetitive), what I am trying to really say that I can improve my willpower just by sheer repetition and a desire to be and do better. I couldn’t have predicted the surgery, but the main lesson I did learn was that if not now, then when?

My wife and family got quite a scare, and I know they have been very patient with my crazy ideas of running the 10K or going on skid row. Hell, they have even accepted me promoting again.  I now see that I am only stopped by what my reluctance to do things rather than anything else. I have nurtured some relationships, and others, well I have let wither because I know now that spending time on things and people who don’t help me grow in some way just is not worth it.

I also see that my recent posts have been about my aversion to staying still. There is so much I want to achieve, and if I don’t keep move, I will stagnated. There is a part of my brain that has become a bit spongy, but I am not going to let the rest of it go to shit. I refuse to. So yes 2013, you had your fun with me, but 2014, I am coming for you.  Watch out, bitch!

Myself, Preeti

Happiness and Thank You: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Lorsque paraît la beauté..
Image by ImAges ImprObables via Flickr

It’s easy to write when your sad, angry and full of hope, but harder for me to write when I am happy.  My high school teacher Marie Tollstrup used to say that if you look at most poetry and literature, it has traces of negative emotion with a happy ending merely to showcase the writer’s whimsy, yet today I feel obligated to note the love surrounding her and I, amongst our dear friends, family from abroad and in general.  Each day in the past week has been full of positive emotion, brimming with future possibility, and the reality that our time has finally come. This December will make it 5 years when I fell in love so deeply and truly with someone who I had known all my life that it still feels unreal that I am with someone so beautiful inside and out.  But I digress.  These past few days have made me realize how truly blessed and lucky I am to have the people I do in my life.  Looking at my past posts, I have spent an inordinate amount of time whining about the ones that truly do not matter, ignoring the ones that come around me at a drop of a hat, and I cannot help be thankful for being just good enough to have them in my life.  I do not know what I did to deserve them but dammit, I am going to make damn sure I keep them!

 

Thank you, thank you, and thank you.  I wish I was more eloquent but I cannot stop smiling, while soaking in these beautiful days and events with amazing friends and family.  THANK YOU!

Related articles
#30trust, #trust30, Writing

Number 1 Passion: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Image representing iPad as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase

Number 1 Passion by Eric Handler
What is your #1 passion in life?  Now, imagine what would happen if you incorporated that passion into your life daily.  Write down your passion and keep it close to you.  Remind yourself of it daily, just like brushing your teeth.

(Author: Eric Handler)

Reading has been my passion all my life and lately I have begun to incorporate it into my daily life by either going to bed reading or taking a day or two to make significant progress into a book.  I am still split on whether I prefer the Kindle or the Ipad by my ideal still is a real book.  Something quite satisfying about turning a page, feeling the heft of the book lighten as you make deep in-roads into its story and get stamped with new ideas and thoughts (can’t help remembering some of the passages from Freedom by Jonathan Frazen) and touched by the emotions and characteristics of novel protagonists.

Besides my literary passion, my other passion is trying new things and that has transformed very well at my work as I have managed to make mundane tasks more interesting or come at them differently.  However, I am constantly stalled by my own insecurity and need to please others and I swallow my ideas, ballooning up with regret, festering inside with an urgent need to vomit out all the negativity.  However, I am getting better and I see now that I do not have to react to every situation with emotion especially hurt and anger.  I have learned to quiet down my emotional turmoil and hear what the other person is saying and see it from their perspective.  Even if I do not agree, I see that people relax once they feel heard.  It is a great feeling to make things happen when there is calm in important parts of my life.

Related articles
Brownness

Image: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
Love of Beauty, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Image by Glenn Franco Simmons via Flickr

mage by Matthew Stillman
Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mess up your hair. If you are wearing makeup – smudge it. If you have a pair of pants that dont really fit you – put them on. Put on a top that doesn’t go with those pants. Go to your sock drawer. Pull out two socks that don’t match. Different lengths, materials, colors, elasticity.

Now two shoes. You know the drill.

Need to add more? Ties? Hair clips? Stick your gut out? I trust you to go further.

Take a picture.

Get ready to post it online.

Are you feeling dread? Excitement? Is this not the image you have of yourself? Write about the fear or the thrill that this raises in you? Who do you need to look good for and what story does it tell about you? Or why don’t you care?

(Author: Matthew Stillman)

So the last prompt is here and its about your image and although it focused on the visual, I realize my dread is more for the lack of future prompts.  The image in my head for myself is ugly in terms of lack of focus and the emptiness of desire for being better.  Physically. I have finally come to terms that while I used to nerd in High school, I have grown up and not the dark, skinny ugly kid anymore.  A particular images comes to mind when I write this.  I was in Junior high and 2 kids were mocking each other and then suddenly one of them says atleast your not him! (point to me).  That moment was one of the only times where I truly felt ugly but the reason was more than physical, it was the realization that the first time anyone in that class had even acknowledged me even thought we had been together for year!  Wow, it took my ugliness to be mocked for me to get any attention, a life lesson that stayed with me a while and made me think I could never get with anyone remotely good looking.  That is the power of bad words, to inflict pain well after the mocking is done.  That’s what my image has come down to, being in that room being repeatedly made aware of how ugly I am.

 

Today, that image has faded away not because it’s not true, but because I no longer give it the power it had on me before.  The image is now that of someone committed, someone who knows what he wants, and someone who will achieve more than what those idiots were going on about in that small room.

Related articles
#30trust, Myself, Writing

10 Year Text/Tweet: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal

10 Year Text by Tia Singh
Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Imagine your future self, ie, you 10 years from now. If he/she were to send you a tweet or text message, 1) what would it say and 2) how would that transform your life or change something you’re doing, thinking, believing or saying today?

 

This was an interesting and as the next to last prompt for this writing challenge, a very interesting one at that. I had to actually close my eyes and see myself 10 years from now  (not fat, hair graying but not balding), and for a moment nothing because I was too involved in the now.  I wanted to respond right away without thinking (getting the prompt over and done with) and then it hit me, really hit me, that this challenge was more than just finishing a task, it was to learn, grow and be the person I have always wanted to be.   Instead, some of the prompts became little writing games rather than me finally admitting to myself that the only way I can move on in life is ACT rather than THINK

so the future will simply be? “Write Much?”

 

Overcoming Uncertainty by Sean Ogle
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Write down a major life goal you have yet to achieve or even begin to take action on. For each goal, write down three uncertainties (read: fears) you have relating to each goal. Break it down further, and write down three reasons for each uncertainty. When you have three reasons for your fear, you’ll be able to start processing the change because you know where the fear stems from. Now you’ll be able to make a smaller changes that push you towards your larger goal. So begins the process of “trusting yourself.”

Due to the writing challenge as well as things finally settling down for me emotionally and mentally, I can say that I am operating on all cylinders in all the areas I wish to improve on.  I would say that I need to keep it going, no matter how minute the progress.

Related articles
#30trust

Personal Recipe to Being Alive: A Blog Post

Sanjay Sabarwal
For everything you have missed you have gained...
Image by Chapendra via Flickr

Personal Recipe by Harley Schreiber
I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Think about the type of person you’d NEVER want to be 5 years from now. Write out your own personal recipe to prevent this from happening and commit to following it. “Thought is the seed of action.”

(Author: Harley Schreiber)

I NEVER want to be in the same position of wanting and desiring that I was in last year (stroke, cancer, loss of creativity(.  I do not want to stuck in a rut, and worse I do not want to be making the same mistakes and excuses of today.  I see now that whenever I open myself to new challenges (running nowadays), something comes alive in me and I see control in my life.  It’s when I let life happen to me that I stagnate, lost and wondering what happened to the old me.  I see now that I have to keep moving, learning, growing, traveling meeting, and donating (more than just money, but my vision and ideas for music, culture and charity).

Alive-est by Sam Davidson
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. If we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

When did you feel most alive recently? Where were you? What did you smell? What sights and sounds did you experience? Capture that moment on paper and recall that feeling. Then, when it’s time to create something, read your own words to reclaim a sense of being to motivate you to complete a task at hand.

(Author: Sam Davidson)

Last week, I did something I never thought possible: I ran 3 miles without stopping and under 40 minutes.  Not athletic by any means but I saw concrete results by doing the Insanity work out and although I did not complete it, I got results I never thought possible and now it has turned me on to working out harder and longer and considered doing a mini marathon.  I felt alive, in control, amazed I was doing something I had not done since being in the junior high track team (I was terrible, managed to come last in every long distance race).  I now see that if I break down each day, task, idea, thought, desire to just that one thing, I can get it done.

Related articles