All those nice things...

ALL THOSE NICE THINGS…

When I see those beautiful travel pics on Instagram and a perfect Sunday with coffee and books and the like of such nice things, like most people, I yearn to emulate all that too. In my perfect world, I am sipping coffee and reading things I like to read (mostly fiction and not decipher econometric models) and I am travelling, while on the train I am enjoying the reading again, enjoying the beautiful roads, then I am at a nice hotel again leisurely spending my time.

But truth be told, I think I like the routine of my life. I like the restless me. Though I really do enjoy travels, I do not like taking the responsibility of planning the travel, it annoys me and makes me procrastinate. Probably because all the travels I have done were led by my dad and then friends took over when I grew older. Recently we went on a family road trip (I insisted on the road trip because I had seen all these fancy nice things people do on road trips), it was a great time, no doubt. Nonetheless, I craved to reach our destinations as soon as possible, not that it was suffocating me or anything, but I just felt that way. Oh! Also it was my sister’s (Sara) and my idea of driving for 500 km though we both hate driving, how very convenient of us. And a few days into any trip, I see myself longing to be back at my hostel room or apartment or home (the only place I still call home is that house back in the Mallu land). There is a restlessness in me to reach back to normalcy and unpack and clean up and go back to my routine.

I see people post pics of a perfect Sunday with coffee and reads, I so nicely try to place myself there because it seems so calming and relaxing. The funny thing is, I brew my coffee and sit legs up on my couch and then while I start sipping my coffee I know it is going to go cold soon, so I concentrate on finishing the coffee and then to go back to my book. Once the coffee is over, I start with the book and then I realize I could make it nicer by color coding something in the book or probably make a beautiful bookmark and I start on that. Fifteen minutes into it, I realize my book is still untouched, so I come back to the book and then the mess I left, of trying to beautify stuff, irritates me and I have to clean up. Then I start realizing how messy my room has been and I have to try and clean, meanwhile there is hunger pangs and so now I have to look into cooking. While cooking, I do not like the dirty utensils in the sink and now I have got to clean them, once soap suds are on the tiles of the kitchen there is the urge to clean up the kitchen slabs. I polish and clean up the kitchen slabs. The cooking done, I get to the eating part while watching the same movie for the thousandth time (like manichitrathazhu or kilukkam) and sometimes it is the millionth rerun of Friends. Anyway, after the eating and watching, I am tired and have to take an afternoon nap which becomes a siesta. I wake up in the evening feeling agitated, trying to figure what in heaven’s sakes happened to my beautiful Sunday. I end up not achieving any nice things on Sunday.

I am supposing all my roommates know this part about me, though I had never noticed it. I always thought I used to have nice holidays like everyone’s pictures on Instagram until recently I started noticing my frantic endeavor to have a perfect Sunday. In the hope of having a nicer picture-perfect holiday I have even asked my boyfriend to get a nice rocking chair at his place, so that eventually when we get to spend time probably I can at the least have a nice holiday picture off it.

So now with a lot of agitation, the economist in me (because trust me we can extrapolate really well) decided to accept the fate. Probably my nice things and best holidays are my routine and my ‘stationery and office supplies.’ I love waking up in the morning at the same time, going to my office and wasting my time there instead of an off day at home and then comeback home, tired. It gives me a good feeling that I used my office supplies and all my colorful stationery. I get a kick out of getting bed at the same time every day and forcing myself to office and acting all important. I make time in my ‘acting busy’ schedule to talk to all the people who love me and then end my day by trying to read again with wine (I still try hard) but nodding off to sleep with my spectacles on.

I have come to accept it, these are the ‘nice’ things I do to detoxicate myself. Cheers to all the people who think I am not crazy.