Anecdotes and Realizations

 It's been eight months since I last wrote a blog. I've barely written anything this year, apart from schoolwork, helping friends with their write-ups or IP articles. This year has been full of laughter, life, dancing, singing, winning, trying new things, putting myself out there, getting confident, talking to new kinds of people and seeing incredible things. But when I see the year-end reels and the gratitude messages, I find it all a little misleading. This year was painful at times. There were a lot of anxious nights and moments of self-doubt. There were times I wondered what I was doing here and whether there was hope for tomorrow.  Everyone is writing resolutions for 2024. "In 2024, I'll be happy" "In 2024, I'll exercise" "In 2024 I'll find my soulmate" We assume that we have it in our hands to make the next year perfect. Last New Year's Eve I sat crying at 12 AM worrying about my boards and hoping 2023 would be better. 2023 ha...

 I've recently grown more interested in the area of screenplay writing and all the creative processes that go behind movie-making. I picked up a book, 'Save the Cat', at my aunt's house from my cousin's bookshelf. 'Save the Cat' by Blake Snyder is a crash course on screenwriting. It's short, extremely readable and doesn't waste your time. I pulled an all-nighter that night, reading it from 3 to 6 AM. In retrospect, I should probably re-read it. I'm not sure how much of it I've absorbed since I remember another decision I made at 6 AM was to wake my father up and alert him that the sun was rising and it was too beautiful to miss and waste sleeping. Yowza.  But, don't worry. My father hath forgiven me. In fact, he suggested we watch some 'classic' movies he had kept saved for a while. So we sat down to watch an Italian movie - Cinema Paradiso.  Cinema Paradiso is a heartwarming kind of story. It opens with our hero - Salvatore , get...

 I love quoting high philosophers like Nietzche, Camus and Kant on my blog. Today, I continue this trend as I remember the words of Sharpay Evans, the greatest character of the High School Musical trilogy.  "It's out with the old, and in with the new, Goodbye skies of grey, hello skies of blue" The past month has been a whirlwind of change. The boards ending, to a twenty day break, to new schools, to new seasons, to new music, to Akela getting into more fights, it's been a lot. Not to mention, the jackets have been stuffed in the back of the shelf and my dinosaur shorts from Camp are the new staples. But I digress.  What I really want to talk about is Daksha. As the end of our tenure approached, I saw people getting emotional and turning to cliches like 'It's the end of an era' or 'We're reaching the next level of life', but I shrugged it off. What is the big deal? We all knew this was coming. We knew it since we were in first grade. But people...