whatsyourrashi

Tag: writing

  • To me

    To Me,

    It’s been a while since you’ve heard from me.

    Been a decade since you crossed your knees.

    Been a little more time since Renee stopped calling,

    I wonder if she’s been lost and maybe just wandering.

    I came here to tell you: you’ve been doing good, all this while.

    You’ve lost a dozen of dimes, indeed some were good times.

    10, you were intoxicated with innocence.

    You knew less and that was surely better,

    that’s what Tame Impala says, something you’ll learn much later.

    15, hey! You’ve experienced what it’s like to fall in love.

    Till now you don’t understand the existence of rising in love.

    It comes with growing, needs a bit of wisdom and ageing.

    19, ah! you’re at your prime.

    Or that’s what you thought.

    You’ve fallen thrice and by thrice maybe a couple more times.

    Numbers and people began piling up,

    like weights on shoulders you hadn’t built in the gym.

    Math you never solved, faces you never needed

    all of them pressing down,

    all of them shaping you into someone undefeated.

    21, you’re a rebel child.

    The years that will turn your whole life around.

    You start to bloom in different ways,

    ways your 25-year version now looks behind.

    When it starts to rain, you sit in the balcony.

    You read books to mom to distract her

    from all the daily noise the pandemic brought.

    You tell dad to break a sweat,

    and he does. He loses 10 pounds,

    maybe more of his worry than his weight.

    23, that’s when the wisdom starts to kick in.

    Slowly, but the voices start speaking louder.

    They tell you: keep your eyes open and your mind wider.

    Keep your heart closer and keep dreaming wilder.

    I wish I could tell you that the voice was me from 2025.

    But no, it’s just the echo of a night,

    when dad asks you to resign.

    And you do. You resign, take a flight,

    and start your new life.

    Oceans across, there lies a bed you make,

    food you learn to cook,

    money you begin to earn,

    and new friends you slowly collect like seashells.

    You start to like UK vibes, but you’re so desi you make the whites fall behind.

    24, you learn shit and crib.

    You stumble, you curse, you laugh.

    By now it took you twice to fall in love to rise once.

    You start to realise the mess is also the masterpiece.

    And now, 25.

    you have wisdom, you own your craft.

    You don’t cry when people shout, you laugh.

    You cut ties, you don’t let toxicity intertwine.

    Now when it rains, you look out a little less,

    but you’re still mesmerised.

    You lift heavier, and you’ve come back to India,

    where you realise home isn’t a place,

    it’s the pulse in your chest when you finally feel aligned.

    After all, it’s the butterfly effect. Not so bad like you thought.

    So while I write to add one thing each year,

    This time I write

    Not to warn you or to guide.

    Just to tell you:

    you’ve been doing good, all this while.

    By me.

  • 10 QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF BEFORE STARTING A BLOG

    Okay. Am I ready? Like, I’ve already given quite a lot of thought.
    By a lot I mean a couple hundred and one shots of it.
    But now that I’m here, let’s just not make it a deal.
    Whoosh. I’m already nervous.

    I hope I’m not the only one who has taken every decision of their life thinking about it at least three times, and still wasn’t sure when the time came. Starting a blog feels exactly like that: exciting, terrifying, and weirdly anticlimactic at the same time.

    So instead of spiraling (which I’m great at), I made myself a checklist. Questions to ask before you hit publish. Questions I wish someone had asked me when I was staring at the blank screen pretending to be a writer.

    Here it goes,

    1. Why do I want to blog?
    Clout? Therapy? Oversharing? A secret hope that strangers on the internet will validate my brain? All of the above are valid. Just be honest with yourself.

    2. What do I actually care about?
    Because if you’re writing about productivity hacks when your real passion is baking cookies at midnight… you’ll burn out faster than your first batch.

    3. Who am I writing for?
    Your younger self? Random internet lurkers? Future employers? Your cat? (Honestly, your cat’s judgment-free eyes might be the best audience.)

    4. Can I be consistent?
    Not daily, not weekly. Just consistent. Even if that means once a month. Blogs die not because writers suck but because they ghost themselves.

    5. Do I want to write or do I just like the idea of writing?
    Painful, but worth asking. The idea of being a writer is sexy. The act of writing is messy, frustrating, and kind of lonely but that’s where the magic is.

    6. Am I okay with being cringe?
    Spoiler: your first posts will be. Probably your next ten too. And maybe that’s the point.

    7. What do I not want to write about?
    Setting boundaries is underrated. Just because everyone’s blogging about relationships, finance, or “morning routines” doesn’t mean you need to.

    8. Can I handle silence?
    There will be posts no one reads. Comments no one leaves. Traffic that looks like a deserted road at midnight. If that breaks you, fix that before you start.

    9. What does success look like for me?
    One loyal reader? A hundred? A career? Figure out your definition so you don’t chase someone else’s.

    10. Will I still write if no one is watching?
    That’s the big one. Because at the end of the day, blogs aren’t built on clicks, they’re built on the stubborn joy of stringing words together.

    So, yeah. Am I ready? Not sure. But I’m showing up anyway. And maybe that’s the whole point..

  • Fear : Face It

    You know what’s funny? When I was 12, I was absolutely terrified of stepping on stage. Not “nervous” terrified. I mean full-on existential crisis at age twelve terrified. Six months of practice down the drain because the idea of singing in front of strangers felt like I was about to perform open-heart surgery with a plastic spoon.

    So there I was. My name gets announced. People clap. And what do I do? I take a step back. Like, literally backwards. Imagine a magician calling your name and you just, reverse out of existence. That was me.

    But then the kid next to me pushed me forward. Probably out of spite, or maybe destiny disguised as peer pressure. Suddenly the spotlight hits me, and here’s the thing no one tells you: when you’re blinded by that one giant light, you can’t actually see the crowd. Poof. Gone. Just me, a mic, and my twelve-year-old panic attack.

    And honestly? That was a relief. Because if I couldn’t see them, maybe they couldn’t see me either. (Spoiler: that’s not how physics works.)

    So I open my mouth, clear my throat, and sing my first note. And it is…horrible. Like, so bad my ancestors probably covered their ears. But then something wild happened: the audience clapped. Maybe out of politeness, maybe out of pity, maybe just to speed up the torture but still, they clapped. And in that moment, I realized: I had survived. My worst nightmare had happened, and I didn’t die.

    That’s the thing about fear. It’s this scam artist living rent-free in your head. It convinces you not to try, not to step forward, not to sing your first bad note. But here’s the punchline: once you actually do the thing? Fear doesn’t vanish, it just gets embarrassed. It sulks in the corner while you stand there, a little shaky but still alive.

    For me, it was stage fright. Still is, honestly. Every time I step on stage, my brain screams, “We’re all gonna die!” But every time I ignore it, the scream gets quieter. And maybe that’s the real deal.

    So yeah, the performance was terrible. The claps were probably charity. But you know what? I’d rather bomb under the spotlight than never step into it at all.