I am home alone for 10 hours. My husband leaves for office at 9 and comes by 7. Well…I am not completely useless; I look after the house, ruminate about a lot of things, and do a bit of writing. My “hippish” lifestyle grants me the freedom and power to do anything and everything. However, this very privilege and most importantly, lack of structure in my life perplexes and makes me wonder, “So, what do I do with my day?”
Folks, welcome to my life.
I always knew I was not utilizing my time properly. Deep inside, I always felt that I could be more productive. So after a lot of thinking (and whiling away my time), I offered myself two choices. The first and the easiest was to enjoy what I had. Watch movies, browse the internet, have beauty sleeps, do online shopping, chat with people, click selfies, and laze around in luxury. The difficult choice was to ignore everything and turn these 10 hours into the most productive hours of my life.
I chose the latter and started giving it a serious thought. This also made me see things from a different perspective. I realized that apart from the power of choice, I also had a wonderful opportunity to do something constructive and make my life more meaningful.
So, here’s what I have been doing in the past few months.
1 THE WRITE SEED
I have been wanting to start my own business for a long time. Something where I could decide the work hours, call the shots, and use my love of writing. I used to give writing lessons to a girl, but never gave this job a serious thought. Last summer, I decided to focus on this tutoring business and see how it goes, and to my surprise, the response was quite good. In just two months, I managed to get eight students, apart from a couple of other interesting business propositions. My classes are in the evening, so in the morning I keep busy creating lesson plans, checking homework assignments, scheduling, and planning.
2 SOUP FOR THE SOUL
I have a strange relationship with food; I like to eat but do not like to cook. So my husband and I keep venturing around town scavenging for food. But now after seven years of marriage, we have run out of good and mostly, healthy options. Moreover, I think eating out so much is not a viable deal for life. So, out of sheer necessity and crisis, I started taking interest in cooking and trying different kinds of culinary. The experiment was a success. From eating out five times a week, I’ve progressed into cooking five times a week! Also, in the process, I fell in love with leafy greens and vegetables!
3 BACK TO SCHOOL
From time immemorial, I have wished to join a writing course, but each time there was a barrage of excuses to defend its rescheduling or shelving the idea altogether. I needed this course to learn the nuances and to refine my writing skills. Finally, I took the plunge and went deep. Not only did I complete three courses on essay, academic, and business writing, but also enrolled in two more. Besides the joy of learning something I’m passionate about, it also gives me pleasure knowing I am able to implement the lessons in my tutoring classes.
4 PEACE OUT
My husband and I created a “creative” room; it is also the most pious corner of our home. First, this is the puja room, which has various deities and idols blessing us. Second, this is where Saraswati Maa – the Goddess of books and knowledge – is stacked up and shoved on shelves and baskets. This area also has my oil paintings and travel photographs (courtesy, my husband) hooked on the walls. When we were designing this room, I told myself that I would maintain the sanctity of this room and will do something worthwhile whenever I am here. So what do I do here? Well…I read books, scribble down ideas for blog posts, play word games, pen poems, or just wear a beauty mask and meditate.
Many more things are in the pipeline. Hopefully, next time when I write a part-2 of this blog post, I would have accomplished a few of those tasks.
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