Saturday 11 January 2014

Domesticity

We went through a thoroughly stressful time in the building of this house - the large number of arguments between us bear testament to that. "Are you house proud?" someone asked me in an interview a few months ago. The honest answer is, I am not. I definitely could be. But somehow, I am not. I get pissed off at myself for it, periodically, try to get out of the stupor and Do Things, but given the freedom, I would just ignore the house and just..lounge.

I am not a lazy person by any means. I have no qualms about working hard - either physically or mentally. Over the past few years, the limits of my physical ability have also been tested fairly well (and often enough), thanks to my running. Sure, I am possible running in a very energy efficient and optimal manner now, but still, running a lot, all things considered.

If I could make one change in my current day-to-day life, it would be to give myself time to think and analyse things more deeply. Graduate school feels like a very painful time of life when you are going through it - even now, more than ten years out - I don't look back entirely with a sense of joy at some of the aspects of it. But one thing is for sure - the single-minded devotion to research, your research, that you can give, is awesome. I wish I could do that, now.

Anyway, back to the house. And domesticity. This is a year of changes, it's bound to be. My mind feels very 'resolute' about this - strange that word comes to mind. I am confident that I can do it. Them. Many of them. Changes across the board. One of those is towards the house. It's a challenging task. Chaos seems to be hovering just above the surface. Couple days of lack of focus and the sideboard is suddenly filled with all nature of crap - don't even know where they appeared from.

There is no shame in it, is there? I will embrace it, that slight aggression with which my mom puts away stray items that appear on various surfaces in her home. Yep. It's seems, finally, like the right thing to do. 

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