Hey hey hey!
A pet, one book, a few key note speeches, 2 long winters, one solo trip and many months later, here I am with my new post to stir up an itch in you on a random weekday at a random hour. Ah, I missed the clickety-clackety of my keyboard and the process of getting the words out from my brain and vomiting them on the screen.
They say that most of the times, you are your worst enemy. That, my friends, is absolutely true in my case, especially with writing. Anyways, before I begin my rant, I wanted to thank those few people who asked me to get back to writing random sh*t on my blog, so, I decided to be an opinionated a*sh*le again which means, this post is going to be a long one. 🙂
Based on my experiences and actions from the past year, there’s a lot that I have been wanting to write about, but I’ll stick to just a few thoughts because some of you here have the attention span of a goldfish. 😉 Sorry, not sorry.
Ok, welcome to the weird part of my brain. If you’ve lived with me or have visited my place of dwelling often, you would have noticed that I tend to change a lot of sh*t around just for the sake of change. I embrace change. Interesting, because I’m still married to a person who hates changes(emphasis on ‘still’). I call this weird phenomenon – ‘The Itch‘ or a better term (*ehem* I’m embracing my Indian roots this year *ehem*) would be ‘The Keeda‘ like the Hyderabadis call it. (If my grandma was alive, she’d say “Ab kya keeda ghus gaya ki”).
The itch has been responsible for a lot of weird a*s crap I have done in the past. For instance, I woke up one day and decided to paint a part of the wall orange-ish (or like the white people call it “terracotta”) in my home-office. I would get the itch to drive an hour and a half to Toronto after midnight just to have a cup of Irani chai..which isn’t even tthhaattt great tbh. Heck! not even the Christmas tree is spared by the itch. Poor tree has to move every 2 weeks in the tiny living room before it is packed up on 3rd of Jan every year.
The itch also makes me want to broadcast my opinions at a larger scale from time to time. For example, why can’t people stop generalizing or judging others? Why is it so difficult for some to cut toxic people out of their lives and no, I’m not going to cook everyday just because I’m a woman or yeah, it is 2023, there are reminders and technology so the least you could do is take out 5 seconds from your super-busy schedule to send a happy birthday text to people who matter to you.
(Note to husband: If you are reading the birthday thing, then yeah, it was intentionally directed at YOU 😉 ).
I saw this tiktok video that I loved and shared on my story and I only got 2 responses. I think the others felt attacked but sorry gals, the itch made me do it. This woman is interviewing and she talks about the toxic trait of how, during a house party or a get-together, the host(who is usually a woman) will walk to the kitchen and start cleaning and the other women will follow her to the kitchen while all the men keep doing whatever it is they do, completely unbothered. She goes on to say it is 2023, can we stop this?
I have been in this situation and I’ll tell you what, I’m lucky that Simon(my husband who also has the right amount of male ego) cleans up at our house AND at other’s house too. (He is very sweet that way.) And for some reason many can’t digest the fact or the scene where he cleans and I wait for him to finish. The aunties, especially, in India go, “Omg! Why are YOU doing it Simon, leave it, we will take care of it.” (‘We’ as in the women of the household). (*insert straight-face-pissed-off-emoji here) -_-
I discussed this with a really good friend of mine who also happens to be an amazing, talented and accomplished woman (Yes, Pavani, I’m talking about you) and she said this: “Women have always complained about how men don’t help as much but when they do help, women don’t let them, which is blatantly stupid.” You should talk to her and you’ll be impressed too. I agree with her on this. It should be a joint effort. I mean if the guy was living alone, he would have cleaned and cooked any which ways, unless he was rich af or unhygienic af.
Anyways, the itch has also made me do good things too. Like moving to a new country in the middle of a pandemic, publishing a book, giving a keynote speech at 3am (because it was being held in Germany), jumping off of a bridge, going on a solo trip, talking to a wonderful and energetic 80 year old at a bar in the middle of Arizona that claimed to know Warren Buffet, cheering for the talented dancers at an all-inclusive resort in Jamaica when they did the epic dance move from Dirty Dancing, talking to random people from random places and getting to know them and many more such things.
What I’m trying to say is that we all need to find the right type of itch. The type that makes you want to want more..(sshhh..it is not always about s*x, but it kinda is ;))
On a serious note, I’m talking about the itch that makes you want to go from rags to riches.
Or like Jack Harlow says,
(What’s Poppin)
“Got a career and I’m very invested
Some people call it a scary obsession
I like to call it a passion”
Or take for instance Adrian, another good friend of mine from Omaha. He is the first person who came to my mind when writing about the itch. Dude is super smart, talented, funny, has a degree in Physics and is a computer genius. He has this drive that makes you want to learn from him. It is super obvious when you talk to him about airplanes, space and Frank Herbert’s “Dune” to name a few. It is the itch that makes him try all new things and learn new things everyday.
I work at a company which is 100% remote and during a company event, I met co-workers from Nebraska who knew Adrian from many moons ago and considered him their “role model”. (I laughed hard at first but then I thought, what are the odds?!) I blame his itch.
Btw, Pavani taught me the basics of DB and Adrian taught me ETL. I will shave my head if they both have a decent conversation without mentioning DATA. Both of them are addicted to it and obsessed with it. 😉
So, my point is simple: FIND YOUR ITCH. The right one and do something about it. Don’t sit with it until it is too late. Jump off that cliff, run a marathon, build that gate, cook that dish, try that yoga pose, climb that mountain, go river rafting even if you can’t swim, paint that wall, kiss that certain someone or make that video. You could be the next someone or the first YOU.
Find that itch, listen to it and do whatever it says. You will either end up with great memories or good lessons.
As always, stay real. Stay you and keep doing things that make YOU happy.
Cheers!
Your writer friend,
Sheekha.