Getting it together

Last Thursday was a big day for me. I'm sure you've all experienced that kind of excitement when you break big news to people you love. Like when you tell your best friend about the guy you've been seeing for a few months, like when you tell your parents that you came first in class, like when you tell a teacher about an amazing job you landed, and in some cases, even when you change your relationship status on Facebook, and quietly wait to see how people will react. The thing about most of these announcements and the excitement that comes with it is that you expect people to be happy for you. You expect people to congratulate you. You want them to do your happy dance with you. It's an all-consuming happy trance that envelopes you. And in my case, I couldn't have asked for better.

You guys were awesome about it. I got showered with good wishes and compliments from all of you and surprisingly enough, even people I hadn't heard from in ages reached out to drop in a nice word or two. Thank you for loving and supporting Desi Outsiders. You guys make both Meenal and I want to work harder on this project and trust me, we've been doing just that. I joke to her that I speak to her more often than I used to speak to The Husband while we were in a long distance relationship. I speak to Meenal more often than I speak to my mom on a daily basis, and some of you might remember that I speak to my mother at least twice a day. Meenal is the first person I text in the morning, the first person I Skype in the day, and the last person I talk to on the phone before going to bed at 2 a.m in Edinburgh and close to 4 a.m in Prague. We're on it guys and we hope to never disappoint you.

The "trance" that I mentioned earlier began to fade a little bit towards the end of Friday and we thought that it was probably time to get back to work. So while I was talking to Meenal on Skype in the living room, The Husband told us that he was going to set up the closet for our recording session. Wait a minute. I need to first address how liberating it feels to talk about our recording session. All these months of keeping it a secret and working backstage was slightly frustrating. Now I can finally come out and say it. RECORDING! We were recording in our closet on Friday. Man, it feels SO GOOD to finally come out of the closet ;)

So coming back to what happened on Friday, Meenal and I finished discussing the topic for this Thursday and I closed my laptop to get up and go to the closet. But I noticed that I had received a message from The Husband in the meantime. It said, "You know how some kids do naughty things because they crave attention?" and immediately, red flags popped up in my mind because I knew that he had done something that could potentially make me very mad. I walked into the closet to find him lying inside our sleeping bag. It's the same sleeping bag for two that we use on our camping trips and it's a bitch to fold up and pack into the cover it came in. And he'd taken it out of it's cover and laid it out in our already tiny closet. And because he was lying in there, we couldn't even close the door to the closet for recording. I remember repeating the words, "I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU, SHANE! I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU ACTUALLY DID THIS!".

But it was also the funniest thing at the same time. There he was, a full grown man, lying in a sleeping bag, and asking me to join him so that we could discuss building a fort later. So I finally gave in to laughter and to make him more comfortable I picked up a few pillows and tossed them at him. But the thing is, I was slightly tired after more than a few weeks of very little sleep and was clearly not thinking straight. He had his laptop on his chest and for some reason, red flags didn't pop up in my mind before I hurled pillows at him. The laptop hit him right on his chin and he kind-of-sort-of got a bruise at the part where his teeth and the laptop squished his lower lip. That wasn't fun at all. Mainly because I hate being wrong. I hate being the person who has to apologise profusely for something as silly and painful as this. And there's a reason why I hate it. It's because I NEVER HEAR THE END OF IT. Even last night before bed, he said, "Remember when you tried to kill me with those pillows?". And even when I know that he's doing it just to annoy me, it doesn't help that I truly feel guilty for hurting him so getting reminded of my mistake is NOT fun at all.

That said, after we were done recording, I joined him in the sleeping bag in our tiny closet and we talked and talked and talked till the pangs of hunger we'd been ignoring for a while actually began to hurt. I said that we should order takeaway but we had tiger prawns sitting in the fridge and the one among us (NOT ME!) who actually enjoys cooking, really badly wanted to cook the tiger prawns. So we got up and went to the kitchen. But by the time we got to the kitchen, he'd already whipped out his phone and found a recipe that he was adamant to try out. Unfortunately, we didn't have all the ingredients needed to make that recipe. So then, we had to go out to get those ingredients. FUCK MY LIFE! I know I shouldn't be complaining because he cooks for me, but sometimes I wish I were a bit taller just so that I could slap some sense into him. So at 10 pm, I wore a pair of jeans over my PJ's and accompanied him to shop for those magic ingredients. And on our way to the store, I ate him. The end.

Just kidding. The main reason I didn't complain much was that we bought two bottles of wine while we were at it. The other reason was that the thing he cooked was the best thing I'd ever tasted. EVER. He made prawn fried rice with coconut rice and now I'm hungry.

We relaxed that night with a few too many glasses of wine, animation films and of course the sleeping bag which we brought to the living room. We slept in the sleeping bag and we slept in. We slept like we hadn't in ages and we slept in like sleeping in should be done. We can officially take classes on sleeping in now. We woke up way past noon and The Husband actually dozed off a couple of times on my lap during the evening. I'd promised myself that I wouldn't check my emails during the weekend and while I kept that promise, I did cheat a little bit in terms of work. I did end up listening to pre-recorded episodes, marking all the edits. But you know what? It makes me happy. This work makes me so very happy that it truly doesn't feel like work at all. When I say that I sneaked in some work on my day off, I mean that I went back to it the way one goes back to a favourite hobby. I went back to it the way I pick up a book to read. And I can't think of even a single thing in my life that I've pursued so passionately. I never stayed up or woke up early for an exam. I never woke up feeling this excited for my previous job (which I loved by the way). I never felt this excited for my own wedding! And that's what makes it so easy to do all the late nights and the early mornings.

While things have been hectic here at the 22 Nelson Street HQ, things have never been better. We're still trying to fall into a routine while juggling two other jobs but we're getting there. We're getting it together. We're learning to compartmentalise. We're learning to let people in. We're learning to let things go sometimes. And most importantly, we're learning to balance everything out. And we couldn't be more happy to share our learning process with you :) Thank you for joining us!

On that note, have a happy Monday, everyone! May this week be productive and fulfilling for both you and me.


P.S. I'll try to make this the last post in which I smother you guys with thanks. It's just that I write about what I feel and what I've been feeling for a while is gratitude. Lots and lots of it. But I do get that you might be feeling a little suffocated with all the thanks. Someone sent me an e-mail saying that friends don't need to say thanks this often. And while I disagree (I believe that you should always express gratitude to everyone in your life no matter how often you might catch yourself taking them for granted), I also respect the fact that you might want to feel less obliged to like me :D