It's turned cold in England again. After a long semi-autumn that stretched all the way into the middle of January, walking out of doors now feels like making your way through a fridge. As usual, people seem taken by surprise, unwilling to just accept that it's February, in the northern latitudes, and therefore is likely to be very cold.

I'm more disappointed than surprised. I was busy breaking out the spring colors that I was moving towards already. A hopeless slave to Vogue, I've fallen straight into line with their directives for spring: Peach! Apricot! Gold! Mango! I'm fascinated by how something I never considered before can suddenly seem right and fresh and exciting, not just to me, but seemingly to everyone else. Did this happen because Vogue told me what to love? Or does Vogue have its finger right on the pulse? Or is it a bit of both?

Either way, I'm enchanted.

Now it seems I'll have to wait a while before breaking out the sunrise colours I've been hoarding and keep my grey woolly hat, my grey woolly sweater and my grey winter coat all firmly on.

On happiness

I came across this article in the Independent yesterday. It intrigued me. Partly because I was having a miserable evening, and in the middle of something like that, I'll pick up and try anything that presents itself, claiming an answer.

The title is a bit odd: 'How to be happy: Gretchen Rubin's guide to everyday contentment'.

Are they the same thing? Some of the happiest times in my life (like now) have been the least comfortable, and I certainly have not been 'content'. I've been walking, climbing, scratching at walls, clambering under thorny thickets (like now).

So I view her lists as guides to comfort rather than 'happiness' (the way I define the term), and when I see it like that, I can bring myself to try.

It made a difference. In the middle of an uncomfortable time, to follow her 'one hour' list:

1. Go for a short walk, or pace: Pacing makes me nervous. So I wrapped up and went for a walk in the sun to get some curry from the curryman at the Saturday market (sold out. Grrr.)

2. Reach out to friends: Check. I sent emails and skype messages and asked my mum to ring.

3. Rid yourself of a nagging task: I am the queen of nagging task drama. It's absurd. I am shortly to send off a scanned ticket to someone who's been expecting it for 2 months. I haven't sent it yet because although the ticket is lying on top of my scanner which is lying 1 foot away from my hands, there's a pile on papers on top of the scanner. Yep. That's all that stopped me.

4. Clear your desk - As soon as I finish this post. So that I can clear away the papers on top of the scanner...

5. Lay the groundwork for future fun: Done. I'm going to a garden some way outside town tomorrow - I checked opening hours and bus routes and planned my boots.

6. Act happy: I remember being told this by a favourite aunt when I was 10 and miserable. I still have not managed to take this advice. But yes - if you can't help the big thing that is eating you, and there's plenty else to grin about, fine, I'll grin.

:)

Outside: January night and a beautiful sky. Once in a while, I see people walk quickly by down the dimly lit street, head down, hoods up. Take away the 21st century crotch-hugging jeans and I imagine it's exactly like people walking around hundreds of years ago. Hooded Robin Hoods or cut-throats.

Inside, I've put my back out sitting at my laptop all weekend. Deadlines. One week into the new year and the work week has finally dragged me out of my harmonious New Year weekend and straight into a panicky tailspin of deadlines, research proposals, research projects and a sickening sense that I could work all day and all night and not make so much as a dent in the load.

This is something that I need to get my head around, and soon. During the thesis, I was entirely comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable sitting in a chair until my back hurt, feeling stressed about deadlines and living on toast. Is one meant to graduate from this when one graduates into full-fledged academia?

For now, it's probably enough that when I sit down to work all my cells and all my senses magically snap into place and I entirely fall into its arms willingly, peacefully and happily. As long as that keeps happening, I guess I have breathing space in which to craft a happy way to be.

25th December, 2011

Christmas day, 2011.

My father upped and said he wanted turkey, and commanded my mother to get dressed. They had a five-star turkey in five star restaurant with five star company (well - my sister is on good form in five star restaurants as a rule).

The Man and I, on the other side of the planet, are having turkey too -

500 grams for a fiver, so we'll have to work on making it five star.

2011 is rolling to an end.

I got so thrown, so quickly, into such a deep end, it's taken a while to be able to say that I'm getting just about coming up for air. I find myself talking about it in the past tense. That's how I know.

Soon, we'll be at New Years Eve.

I'm celebrating with the Man and a dear friend, come visiting from Belgium, a long silk skirt and a bottle of champagne.

Whatever you're doing, I hope it's magical.

Should this jump-start my typewriter?

I write like
David Foster Wallace

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

32 days post-PhD.
Haven't started looking for full time work yet.
Don't know what is happening with the British post-study work visas.
Don't know if my contract will be extended (such is the life of a contract researcher in Britain).
Don't know if I will be able to do any grant writing or publishing whilst things are so uncertain.
Don't know if I will find a job in India that:
- Allows me to be close to my parents
- Is in a city that I can stomach (Mumbai, for instance, is out out out)
- Allows me to live with the Boy (*insert 100 related questions here...)
Don't know if I can stomach the thought of living in India (politics, pretence, about 1/6th of the current part time paycheck and difficult access to up to date research required in order to conduct more up to date research...) or staying in the UK (politics, pretence, difficulty accessing research sites in India and distance from my Dad).

Thud, thud, thud, THUD.

1460...

... days, not counting whatever adjustments need to be made for Sex and the City, H&M, general lethargy, sheer boredom, my one month extension, my paper on Wild Foods, my book review, whole weeks lost to angst, frustration, confusion or chasing deadends, days spent doing Other Things, days lost or gained through whatever funny thing leap years do to such a calculation and days - sometimes weeks - of lying in bed with colds, flus and in one case, a broken bone...

... is the number of days that it took to hand in just under 80,000 words of Thesis.

I won't miss some of those days. Some others I'm starting to miss now that the Red Bull and coffees have stopped grating away at my nerves and I've stopped feeling like I'm in a fast tailspin, dropping too quickly into the huge question mark that is today, tomorrow, next week, next year...
But the days I missed right from the second they were over, more and more all the time, are the days I spent in Chincholi, and the long hot afternoons when I sat in the shade of the neem trees outside their pink temple, listening to the drone of the crickets and the gurgle of the doves and feeling truly happy, peaceful and blessed.