Journal of My Journey

One of the new things that has been added to my life this year is Karate. I had always been interested in learning some kind of martial art, so finally starting to learn karate was like a dream-come-true to me. Recently I've been promoted to yellow belt from white (belt ranking starts from white and gradually climbes up to yellow, orange, green etc.). Today I'd like to share with you some thoughts regarding my karate journey. First, let me tell you about our karate dojo (where karate is taught). Honestly, I've never been to a place full of so much positive energy before. No negativity, only hard work and learning. I think it's wonderful that we willingly keep coming to the place which keeps giving us tough time every week. I doubt even 1% of this willingness is present when it comes to going to school. Another different thing about this place is– here age doesn't make you junior or senior, your skill does. Often we learn from someone who is much younger than us and ...

  I'm one of those people who often prioritize what may happen in the future more than what needs to be done in the present. That's a troublesome mindset I got there and fortunately I detected it not too late. Here I'm sharing one of the many experiences that made me realize this. Once I bought a sketchbook with special watercolour paper. I was supposed to practise using watercolor there since I was a noob but I was strangled with the anxiety that the papers were so special, if I painted even one careless stroke on them, it would be the end of the world. I was worried about all the 'future masterpieces' failing to earn a place in the sketchbook just because of some worthless scribbles. And who can ever practise painting with that kind of mentality? So, lack of practice resulted in no improvement and soon enough, I became frustrated with my mediocre artwork. Now that sketchbook lies in a corner with most of its 'precious pages' unused. That's a fairly s...

I've just watched a video that addresses a problem I had to fix not so long ago. Here's the video. I love to watch anime. And there are a few certain directors whose works I really like such as– Makoto Shinkai, Hayao Miyazaki, Mamoru Hosoda, Satoshi Kon. The problem was— I used to feel that I had to watch ALL of their movies or other contents and I set it as my goal. I didn't even care whether I was enjoying the movie or not, I just had to finish one and tick off the box. Thus I watched all of Makoto Shinkai's works in a go and burned myself out. I didn't do so with the other directors' works but surely suffered for the list of unwatched movies and not ticking the unchecked boxes. Later I realized the problem with such mindset and fixed it. Hobby is no such thing you have to stress yourself out for. Well, that's the reason it's hobby; silly meh. I used to go through the same problem with my watch-later movie or anime list and to-be-read books. I never kn...

  Growing up is all about having eye-opening realizations about different stuffs. Realization about ourselves, the world around us and our dynamics with people. Here are some of the realizations I had in the past few months after going through the trial for a much longer period of time. Most of them can't be generalized since they they are solely my point of view, so you are recommended to take them with a pinch of salt! Saying "I don't care anymore" when no one's asked you very much means you still do care I wonder if anyone has ever grown up without being emotionally hurt by people around him/her. At one point we start feeling stoic. We keep telling ourselves or whoever willing to hear that we no longer care if someone hurts us, betrays us or tramples us down. There's a hint of monastic coolness in this manner, probably that's why we never get tired of proving that we REALLY don't care. But come to think of it. If we really didn't care, we wouldn...

  Over the course of time, I've come to a conclusion that- you cannot label someone simply as good or bad. And what's the basis of my believing so? Well, let's imagine a scenario where there's a leader of a town. The leader has made tremendous development to the town. Proper housing, no hunger, good education, health care facilities for all - sounds great, right? We can put the leader in the 'good' category. However, there's a problem. No one is free from making mistakes nor is that leader. But if anyone from the town tries to point out his misktake, the leader does everything in his power to shut that person up. Would you still keep him in the 'good' category? It's understandable how we label someone as good or bad. If a person's majority of deeds are deemed as good, he becomes a good person. Same calculations goes for the person who we refer to as bad. From the moment we distinguish someone as 'good' or 'bad', we tend to th...

I've seen a lot of people (and been one myself) saving up all the things they wish to do for someday in future. Because they are busy to do all the things they need to do today. The question is- will they be able to fulfill their wish? Or more importantly, will they have the will left to fulfill those wish in the future? Our heart is like a 5 y/o kid. Sometimes it gets interested in something on a whimsical wish. It keeps telling you to give it what it wants. You can either choose to make it happy by appeasing its desire or you can simply ignore it. If you choose the latter one, well, its gonna cry for a while; but give it something else to be busy with, it will completely forget about whatever it wished for. There's another way- you can give it the hope that you will get that stuff for it later. What happens then? One day you buy that stuff or get it somehow- but you will find out that the once burning desire is replaced with something else.  This kind of explains why we find ...

My New Blog Block So it's only been a few weeks I've been excited about this blogging thing, created two posts, let only 3 people know about it up until now- being the overthinking introvert I am- and guess what? I'm already facing this 'blogger's block'. Not because I can't find something to write about but because I'm unnecessarily thinking too much about others' impression. "Let's write about this interesting historic event... oh no, the previous post was history-related. People are gonna think I'm the history-lover geek who only posts about historic stuff." "Then let's write the review of the book I've just finished.....no, that might not interest others." "Then what about the thought I had the other day about.....no, no, that won't do. It's too early to write about such sentimental stuff."  Yeah, this is going on. Annoyed, I decided to write about this very block that's been keeping me f...