Musings on going solo: the upside to loneliness

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This summer, my roommate Hannah spent a month in Nepal, leaving me and the cat the apartment to ourselves. While Moonie straight up has overly-attached-child syndrome (she yowls at the door, waits at the window, insists that I cuddle her all night when her mom isn't home, and suddenly develops picky eating habits...), I also find myself feeling a little anxious when it's just me and the cat for extended periods of time. My roomie & I do get along really well, and while we spend a lot time together (duh, we live in the same house), we aren't joined at the hip and lead very different lives, often going days without crossing paths.

When I got back from a long weekend earlier this summer, I was in the apartment without Hannah or Moonie for a few days, and oddly enough, that felt less uncomfortable than being here alone with Moonie. It got me thinking what is so bad about spending time alone? Though I'm an extrovert in every sense of the term, I tend to spend a lot of time on my own, doing homework, cooking, wasting my paycheck at Trader Joe's, and most importantly, relaxing. I LOVE spending time with my friends, sending letters and making skype calls, but it all really drains me. Talking out my feelings is how I decompress, but when I engage myself in some physical activity or another, I create a medium of happiness for myself, and I find I like doing these kinds of things on my own.

So how does a pining cat change my feelings about alone time into loneliness? Maybe it's the cat lady cliche that physically looks me in the eye when she demands to be fed. Or maybe Moonie reminds me that there should be someone else at home - that something is inherently "off" when Hannah isn't here. I don't know if I have the answer to that question, or if I ever will, but I've been slowly learning to embrace lonely times.

How? For starters, loneliness requires the absence of things that are good in your life - like your best friend, or that wonderful old Indian lady at the 7-11 who makes jokes about getting fat every time you buy ice cream from her. If I never have a chance to miss them, how could I see the impact they have on my life and happiness? Loneliness thus gives me a chance to practice and reflect on gratitude in my life, and see the good in people I may not recognize otherwise. When Vijaya from 7-11 works a different shift than when I usually come in, her absence during my midnight snack run lets me see the warmth she's shown me in her presence. I may never have realized how much Vijaya makes my evening if I never felt lonely buying my junk food without her commentary and laughter.

Loneliness also allows us to see our own strength. When I feel lonely, I don't feel confident, or see my worth. But getting through these bouts of loneliness requires great inner strength, and if I never felt lonely, when would I  get a chance to see how I am able to pull myself up?

I'm not a masochist - I don't enjoy being lonely or derive pleasure from being miserable, but loneliness in inevitable in the human experience, and learning to embrace positive pieces of it makes being lonely much more bearable.

How do you work through loneliness? What do you think about how the world we live in today shapes our experiences with loneliness? Are we more or less lonely as a society than our parents' generation? Let me know below - this is an idea I'd love to explore more in a further post.

On finding space for creativity

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A few weeks ago, I sat at my desk job, performing the mind numbing task of editing out Indian English from a slew of participant bios (which can make even someone who is pretty familiar with the language want to bang her head against a wall 70 times). I got up, grabbed a glass of water and my lunch box, chatted with some other interns for 10 minutes, and went back to my desk. I edited some more. When I was confused, I got up and consulted with a few other interns over another particularly tricky bio, and continued to plug away. At 5 pm, I packed up, checked in, and headed out into the glorious fall afternoon.

But as I muddled around in my work, I kept asking myself If this isn’t what I want, what is?

For an internship, my job is great, but possibilities for my post-intern life percolate in my imagination. I know I want to work to advance the world in an impactful way. I need to be doing something different every day, or at least I don’t want my Tuesday’s focus to be my Friday’s focus to be my Wednesday’s focus. Interaction and movement are a must, but more than anything, I NEED CREATIVITY IN MY LIFE.

As a student, my days are filled with school work and work-work, neither of which leave me time to pursue other endeavors. So where can I find the space to be creative? And if my future doesn't hold a creative career, how can find creativity outside of my 9-to-5?

Focusing on the now, here are my favorite three ways to find space for creativity in my life:

1.     Find beautiful places                        

As I write this post, I’m sitting on a set of concrete steps leading way from one of the apartment building on my street to a bike trail. Before me is a smattering of ivy-laden trees, thorny fairy tale bushes, and low lying bushes, and I already feel more at peace, with my mind gaining its sense of feeling back after the work day. This is a new place for me, and my head is already dreaming up angles to shoot photos from, color palettes possibilities, and I can feel lines of prose jump into my fingers. It’s important to change up your surroundings, not only visually, but tonally as well. What do I mean by that? I’m a coffee shop gal, and I know that’s where I get my most productive work done, creative and otherwise. But smells and sounds of the coffee shop can only inspire you as long as it’s a change from your norm; in order for me to continue to gain inspiration there, I also need to spend time in more isolated places, like this set of steps, where the only sound is the whisper of the breeze through the trees and the murmur of the distant highway.

2.     Block time out for inspiration and creation.

This is goal I have a hard time with making good on, but I aspire to it nonetheless – carving time out of every week, ideally every day, to find inspiration and to actually produce my own work. For me, this often takes the form of targeted Pinterest breaks during slow days at work, and having a project I like to make weekly progress on. While in a perfect world, I wouldn’t want to regiment time to create, as it seems to defeat the purpose of “finding creativity,” it’s better than nothing at all. If you’re someone with the luxury of having more time at your disposal, you could try blocking out “creative time” but alternatively not set an agenda for it, letting things come when and if they do.

3.     Write often on what whatever nonsense fills your head.

Or paint, draw, strum, sing whatever it is that comes to you. It may not be brilliant, but that never stops it from being good, either for the practice or for the work of another day. The journal I write in currently has bits of creative and memoir writing, alongside classic teenage angst filled diary entries, with the creative work dating as far back as a decade ago (I’m old!). Most of this stuff was probably terrible to my eyes right after writing it, but I’m so thankful it’s there now. There are many torn out pages that I regret, but the overly sentimental poems and chapter babies that fill the pages that remain, all carry inspiration for the (hopefully better) writing of tomorrow.  This is also difficult for me personally, because I have a very loud, stubborn inner critic, but just letting go and writing garbage can be very freeing, especially if you’ve been used to writing/creating for school or anyone else.

What ways do you like to find creative space? How important is having a creative life to you? Let me know in the comments below!

Dreaming in Arabic

أهلا و سهلا  !

...or for those of you who don't read Arabic, welcome! My life has been taken over by the language for the last few weeks (as you can see above, I even carry it with when grabbing a burger), and Arabic will continue to permeate my thoughts as I spend my summer taking Arabic 101 & 102 at Georgetown. When a classmate & I were studying together a few weekends ago, we found out that both of us have been dreaming in Arabic, as learning the language is a whole mind-body-soul kind of experience. Sometimes it feels like Arabic is seeping out of my pores, I spend so much of my energy thinking and talking in and about it.

The unfortunate victim of constant Arabicing is my roommate's cat Mooney (yes, she really is that cute). القطة القمرية  or "the moonie cat" has been the protagonist in the stories and sentences I craft in order to learn my vocabulary words, and in my Arabic dreams she is constantly followed by the floating word جميلة,"beautiful". Actually, now that I do the math, I spend a quarter of my waking day in Arabic class, so I suppose it's not totally crazy that it's all that I think about.

But other than Arabic, what have I been up to?

Mostly, my time is spent working as an intern at the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) with their Pakistani journalist exchange program. The program brings mid level journalists from Pakistan to the US for one month fellowship placements in different American newsrooms, so that they can learn about local American media, but also to facilitate a cultural exchange between the two countries. My daily work entails updating database information, finding fellowship placements in the US, preparing American cultural information for the fellows, following up on missing invoices, and filling out reimbursement requests, but it not all logistical work. Before the Pakistanis leave for their placements, and again before they fly back home, ICFJ takes them around DC and to meet with different speakers, and I get to help my supervisors with "chaperoning"  the Pakistanis on these field trips.

Last week, we had an outgoing group of 19 broadcast journalists, and we took them around to National Cathedral, the Capitol building, the State Department (the main funder of the program), and the Pakistani Embassy. While I didn't get  to join them at the State Department this time around (I'm still in disbelief that I got to accompany the last group there), this was my first time visiting an embassy, and getting to meet the Deputy Chief of Mission from Pakistan was the icing on the cake. (Not to mention, that the artwork inside the embassy is beautiful as well.)

Though honestly, getting to converse with the Pakistanis is probably my favorite part of my job. Putting aside that I love talking with almost anyone, I find that this is where the true cultural exchange in the program happens for me, for as an Indian-American, I have two cultures to offer for an "exchange". Some of the Pakistanis see me as an Indian, and I get to learn about how our countries differ, but more than not, how alike our families and values are. Other Pakistanis see me as a representative for the South Asian American immigrant community, and am interested to see how I live biculturally in the States. And then there are the few, the ones I usually get to know best, get a chance to see me as I see myself, an American with Indian roots, and with whom I get a chance to debate foreign policy, education reform, the balance between living up to expectations set by your family and those you set for yourself, and the weird quirks of both American and South Asian cultures.

So this the rhythm that my life is bouncing to right now - what does your rhythm sound like?

A Buena Vista Social Club State of Mind

Note: This post was written in November 2013, when this journey of mine began.

For the last week I have been living out of my old dorm room, the lofty island of Tower Court East 420, swapping my old bed for my roommate’s old bottom bunk. I hadn’t really made it public that I was back at Wellesley, so I have been occasionally running into old friends and acquaintances in the dining hall, and trying to explain the place I’m in my life right now. The one theme that seems to reoccur in each of these conversations is bravery. Specifically, the idea that I am brave for making the choice I did to take time off from school.

I don’t know if I feel brave right now. I wouldn’t say I feel scared or anxious (well, any more than I do usually), but more that this is a confusing time in my life. For the first time in my life, I have absolutely no idea what next week is going to look like, or next month, or even next year. 
 

We live in a society where we are programmed with 5 year and 10 year plans, where many of us hit a conveyor belt at the age of five that carries us through elementary school all the way to twenty years later, where we are dropped off into a workforce, educated and certified as having the potential for lifelong success. Along each section of the belt, each of the choices we make has the potential to land us at a different drop off point, but ultimately, we know roughly what stretch of this conveyor belt we are going to be traveling on in the next week, month or year.

For the first time, I’ve stepped off the belt, and let my peers and friends continue their journeys to the promised land of the drop-off point, while I watch them from the side, and start to explore the world beyond the belt. A land of craigslist listings, rent, and resumes, where budgets and public transportation take on a new mood, and everyone’s story follows a different, new rhythm.

This week, I’ve been interviewing for jobs and canvassing for an environmental group in the meantime. While I’ve done street canvassing before (when you see the gals on the sidewalk in bright t-shirt waving you down to support some non-profit cause or the other), this job has involved door-to-door canvassing which has been a different kind of experience. Door-to-door is exactly what it sounds like – going door to door to garner support and contributions for the organization that employs me. 

My fellow canvassers have been so warm and friendly, and I’ve loved slowly picking up their life stories from them.
My manager is a guy from Maine who moved to Boston after high school to live with his girlfriend, a preschool teacher, and has been canvassing for the last 1 ½ years, and is one of the top canvassers in the office, if not the country.

The girl who trained me is a student at Lesley who came to school to become a high school teacher, and now is a Poli Sci major with law school aspirations, who has worked with Aids Action, and started canvassing as a way to fulfill a school internship requirement while making rent, and works on a food truck on the days she doesn’t canvass.

One woman has joined us for the week from Maine to train as a director, and next week she will be moving on to the Washington DC office to be directing there. She has stories from bike canvassing Peak’s Island in Maine this summer, avoiding attack dogs on canvass routes, and advice for the best condiments on vegetarian sandwiches.

I don’t know how much longer I plan on canvassing, (probably not long), but it has certainly been an interesting introduction to this adventure. I know I’m not the greatest of canvassers, to put it lightly, but it’s a job, and that’s enough for right now.

Where are you in your journey right now?

P.S. If you are wondering about the title, check out the album I've had on repeat here

Welcome to the new Clementine Facade!

Hi everyone!

With my decision to take time off of school, I've decided to come back to blogging, and pour some love into this piece of the internet that belongs to me.

What will I be writing about?

The things I love. The things that drive me bonkers. Whatever ignites my passion for life and inspires me.

Colors. Style. Friends. Food. Photos. Crafty expeditions. Ruminations on life. Normal "me" things.

(source unknown)

So stay tuned for good stuff! You can follow me on bloglovin, facebook, pinterest, or rss feed using the buttons on the right or you can also follow my blog with Bloglovin here. 

Cheers!

Around the Internet in 180 minutes

Hey y'all!

Love this color scheme!! (credit)

 During my spare moments here in Mumbai, I've been wading thorugh the blogsphere (as I do when I'm anywhere), finding these gems of posts. I see blogging as a community, and one of the ways I want to give back to it, and share my love for it, is through guiding my readers to the posts/blogs I love in the hope that this act of sharing each other's work helps my fellow bloggers out, and that someday, once my blog grows into something beautiful, that I will also be repaid with similar blog love.

I'd first like to take a moment to higlight my blog list on the right - it's not just there because it comes standard with a blog template, but rather I urge you to take a peek at the sites of these fabulous women who make my day quite regularly. 


To start, Elizabeth of Delightfully Tacky has become one of my recent favorite bloggers, and I love everything about her outfit here.

I'm also anxiously awating an oppurtunity when I get home to make her creamsicle milkshake recipe. Isn't it so pretty looking?

Elsie kind of just has the most perfect blog ... and life. Take a peek at her uber colorful and crafty wedding here.

Yes, yes, and yes. Everything about this post is just ... beautiful.

Elycia's nails - I've tried this with scotch tape, with varying success before, but never quite as perfect as this.

I could go on forever about the loviliness of the internet, but I think I'll leave you blog gazing here. Come back soon for an India update!

Besos!
XOXO Janavi

Holi-day

Hey y'all!

It's Holi (pronounced like the word "holy") here in Mumbai, which is the festival of colors, marking the begining of Spring (though it's actually more like Summer).

The apartment complex I'm staying in, had two of their apartment buildings (each has it's own council of sorts) organize a "rain dance" and banquet for the residents of their building. My aunt's building didn't happen to sponsor one of these, but I went down and took photos of her neighbors going INSANE in the water.

A rain dance is essentially a chuppah with shower heads attached to the top. One guy even tried to take a shower underneath one...but accidentally ended up shampooing his hair with purple dye someone had thrown on him mid-lather.

While these sprinklers are on, they have a DJ spinning dance music, with 7 foot tall, LOUD speakers covered in tarps for protection from the H2O. It's mostly Bollywood tunes, with a Kollywood (Tamil, my mother tongue) tune thrown in for the heavily South Indian population of the suburb my aunt lives in. There was also an appearance made by the Black Eyed Peas, and the crowd later went CRAZY for Daddy Yankee's Gasolina. No, I don't think the fact that it is in Spanish bothers them at all.

After I snapped some shots, I brought my towel covered Nikon back up to the apartment, and was dragged along back to the celebrations by my aunt's 12 year old neighbor Rishietaa (she's hilarious. And adorable. But sadly, way into Hannah Montana).

As you can see, I fell victim to those crazy kids with their dye powders and makeshift water balloons. My shirt is dyed for life, but in anticipation of such an ending, I dressed appropriately.


So what do you think  - Holi as a Parker spirit day? I think it would probably be best if we waited until there wasn't snow on the ground...=)


Lots o' love
XOXO Janavi

Travel Tuesday: The Tunes

Hey y'all!

I love blogs that have regular features, so I thought to myself: "Hey, why not have regular features on my own blog?"

So every Tuesday on here on out shall be, drumroll please..... 

TRAVEL TUESDAY! 

Which means pack your bags, and get ready to set sail, because every week I shall bring you exotic locales, traveling ideas/hints, and anything else that inspires wanderlust.

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 So for today, I'd love to schpiel (is that how you spell it? I never know...)  on travel music.

Whaddya mean "travel music"?

 One of the biggest parts  any trip, for me, is the journey, and my iPod is a BIG part of that. Being part of a family that has taken many road trips and plane rides over the years, I've learned that my trips go more smoothly when I have a new playlist to listen to. That's why I'm a firm believer in....

Tip #1: Make yourself a soundtrack to your trip. It doesn't have to be long, usually 3 songs or so can constitute a beautiful minimum, where as a whole album/playlist (~15 songs) can cap this off at the other end. No matter where you are going, or for how long, definitely pick up something new and shiny. That way when you look back on your trip to Winnipeg/Minnesota/The Vineyard, you always associate it with the songs you were listening to while you were there.

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The soundtack doesn't have to be brand new, and usually it works best if it isn't. For example, for this trip, one of the songs I picked up was Teenage Dream. I've always known this song, but I didn't listen to it enough to constitute iTunesing it. But I knew I wanted something catchy, and something that fit....

Tip #2: Bring songs that remind you of home. Teenage Dream is my crazy lunch group shouting the chorus at the top of their lungs  to the annoyance of the Parker community. It's Ainsley dancing her butt off in Physics...or in the halls...or anywhere where music is to be found. 

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 It was also is one of the things that everyone was dancing around to at my Chocoluck. If I was to find myself homesick, or frustrated by my work here, having a song that reminds me of those I love and goof around with is a bowl of happy!

But for the record, I'd also like to give a shout out to bring along some TOTALLY new tunes as well, especially with longer trips. I fell in love with The Crane Wife, one of my all time favorite albums, on a college road trip, where I had ample time to discover an entire album of favorites. For this trip, the darling Hallie made a wonderful mix, which included a new favorite Let's Get Out of This Country - Camera Obscura. (I'm also just in love with the album artwork...)

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So what are your music suggestions when it comes to traveling? 

Anything that you fell in love with over a road trip? 

Let me know in the comments below!

XOXO Janavi