November Braindump

This should be fun because I woke up feeling like my brain was all over the place. There isn't enough caffeine in my system despite the giant mug of coffee I just had, and I'm avoiding even the slightest glance in the direction of my bed, knowing that this day will end earliest by 11 p.m tonight when I finish interviewing a guest based in faraway Argentina. I'm also very excited to be able to speak to her because she's going to be the first non-desi guest on Desi Outsiders. So, keep your eyes peeled for that episode!

That said, there's nothing more I'm looking forward to than curling up in bed with the amazing book I'm reading right now (I'll be sure to list it in my December favs), and a nice warm cup of hot chocolate (which will also most definitely make it into the list), after a long shower under calming hot water at the end of this long-ass day.

My clock tells me that I'll get there in about thirteen hours and that gives me comfort. Does anyone else do that? Calculate the number of hours till something won't even be a problem anymore, I mean. Because that's my best coping mechanism. I was feeling really tensed the morning of our BBC interview in August and I remember telling myself that in exactly three hours, I'd be done, and wouldn't have cause for tension anymore. That really helped.

But going back to things I'm looking forward to, I'm sure that tomorrow (and most of this weekend, really) will be great. Tomorrow evening is when Shane and I have set aside time for celebrations because today is the day I will (hopefully) reach that milestone I set for myself for the month of November. I can see the finish line from where I'm standing right now and although we know there's still a long way to go before wrapping up the project with a neat little bow, we think that a bottle of wine still needs to be popped open for getting to the exact goal I set at the beginning of this month.

I remember this time last year. Everything was going well for me except, I couldn't see it. My temperament that made me easily irritable to insignificant things always tended to get in the way of my vision. If I had the same temperament this year, I would have made things so much more difficult for myself than they needed to be. So I can't help but be grateful for growing up a little bit in the past twelve months because I'm not sure if I'm the biggest fan of who I was back then.

The Bromance and I are usually the best of friends when it comes to sitting down with a glass of whine wine and complaining about housing prices, the cold, the incessant wind that makes the place colder, fancy things on Amazon that don't go on sale according to our whims, and the general direction of our lives, which, after a couple of glasses of wine seems to be going nowhere but straight down south. I love him for being that friend that I can just sit down and vent with from time to time and I doubt if he does it with anyone else either. Because neither of us can go up to Shane and try to vent about things that "don't matter" because he tells us to our faces that he simply does not care about our "imaginary" problems.

It was during one such venting session a couple of weeks ago that we made the mistake of actually turning to Shane, who wasn't even paying attention to our conversation by the way, and asking him if there was anything he would ask from a genie in a bottle that would make his life a lot better right now. I already knew that his answer was going to piss me the fuck off and even warned The Bromance that we might end up punching him in the face when he's done.

So, as expected, when he responded with a simple, "Nope" followed by a distracted shrug of his shoulders, we rolled our heads back to aid a full 360° roll of our eyes and groaned in unison. I then decided that I wasn't done questioning him.

"Don't you want to move out of this flat at some point? Don't you want a bigger kitchen maybe?", I asked.

"To be completely honest, I think I could just continue living in this flat for the rest of my life and I'd still be happy. It's...home", he said.

"What about your job?", asked The Bromance.

"Yeah, if you could have the most creatively and emotionally fulfilling career tomorrow, what would it be?", I pressed on.

"If I could continue doing what I'm doing right now for the rest of my life, I'd die a happy man", was his reply.

We asked him a couple more questions until finally, I had to control the urge to throw something at him for being so obscenely and obnoxiously contended with every aspect of his life. I mean, how dare he?

But I can't help but notice how having someone like him in our lives has an effect on us. It does start to rub off at some point, you know? Because today, Ankita from last year would have been whining and moaning in a corner. Instead, I've been catching myself thinking about all the amazing things to look forward to this weekend, this coming month, and in the whole of 2018.

Someday, I might even become as obnoxious as Shane, and I can't say I'm not looking forward to it.