A Hundred Days of This - Day 1

It is 7 am here and I can see the sky slowly brightening and the snow glistening. It has been almost 4 months since I moved out of India and unlocked a new level of adventure - figuring things out from the scratch in your 30s. Skrämmande men intressant! 

Today marks the first day of the Telugu month - Maargasiram, according to our lunar calendar, and it is one of my favourite times of the year. Back at home my mother would cook the kattu pongali with a proportion of ghee, cashews and black pepper that warms up the soul instantly. She would also croon, probably itti mudduladi baaludedavaadu, randomly throughout the day and that song eventually becomes an earworm with me catching myself humming it along with her. She would also play the Bapu and Ramana's version of Thiruppavai on YouTube. My father would go to the Mahalakshmi temple in West Marredpally early in the morning and return with another delicious version of the pongali. Maybe it is not much but these are the things I remember very fondly, especially when I'm miles away from home. I miss that all.

It is my first winter in the Nordics and let us just say that it is not that exciting. But watching the Blue Tits perch on my balcony railing definitely puts a smile on my face. 

It is a bit challenging to find your ground here and keep up the sanity. It is cold, dark and sometimes feels like you are the only person living on the planet. What really helped me was telling my anxiety and fears straight up in the face that we can do hard things. And the first step in that process - survival. Moving the body, cooking and eating healthy and yum meals, petting the dogs and cats, and getting 8 hours of sleep. That is all it takes to standardize before we optimize. 

In an attempt to reclaim myself in a land and culture that I'm a stranger to, I told myself that we ought to slowly incorporate my hobbies and interests into the boring daily routines. I picked up a new book on Kindle that will feed my brain - Algorithms To Live By, Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths, and started exploring digital art and journals. Started romanticizing my walks to get through the step goals with some help from Ilaiyaraaja and ARR. 

Another addition to my dopamine menu, that will hopefully get me off the doomscrolling, is writing. It has been a really long time since I wrote a blog post and I asked, what if I push myself to write a post every single day? And then came this idea of taking up a challenge, an experiment to see how better I can express my thoughts and feelings. Since it is my husband's birthday today, I took a resolution to stop being sporadic and move a teeny tiny inch outside of my comfort zone. I'm not sure of what to write everyday but hey, surprise yourself, Soumya! It could be about the FF three factor model or a recipe of the baked shakkarpara or the frozen lake behind my apartment or puppies on the street or the new comic book or the 90s Bollywood movie I'm rewatching. Who knows what the future has in store for us.

Repetavuno thelaalante nee uniki undaaligaa...

And that's Day 1 for you.