Priyanka's Scrapbook

This Covid-19 virus has turned the entire world upside down. It has broken a lot of older habits and set a lot of new normals. Towards the early days of this lockdown, I had written a blog - An Extrovert in Isolation . The early lockdown days were extremely difficult for me. That was the phase of breaking old habits. An extrovert by nature, couldn't accept the sudden change of being locked alone inside my house. I am writing this blog again after being locked at home for more than 100 days now. Most of the older habits are broken by now. A few new habits have become a part of my new normal. What seemed to have been painful 100 days back has now turned to be blissful. Here, I am sharing my story of how quarantining alone has ended up being the greatest opportunity and a huge transformation in my life.  I have been struggling for years to fix my sleep patterns. Going to bed late and waking up late had been a habit for a really long time. My struggles to change this habit had

Being locked inside the house...all alone...for more than fifteen days now...often brings rollercoaster rides of several emotions and thoughts. A lot of extra time to ponder over my own life...my own life's choices and decisions. Sitting at home and trying to pick up a new hobby or lifestyle, a few days back I started focusing on the art of minimalism. If you are new to the concept, the minimalist lifestyle is about living with only the things you need. Minimalists are free from the desire to buy and accumulate more. Instead, they find happiness in relationships and experiences. There is an amazing blog around this -  https://www.becomingminimalist.com/5-years-of-better/ . After reading about it, watching a few youtube videos and documentaries, I started looking through everything I own at present and making a list of everything that I don't really need. I started pulling out clothes that I have not worn in months, pulling out shoes that I have not worn in years, books tha

Today is the tenth day of my social isolation. The city I am in, I have been living here for the last eleven years and never before this have I spent ten continuous days, locked up at home alone. What's the big deal you say? I am an extrovert. In case you don't know what I am talking about, you can take this test for yourself -  https://www.psychologies.co.uk/self/are-you-an-introvert-or-an-extrovert.html . I am not used to staying indoor...staying alone...staying without being able to connect with other people. For me, it is important to meet my friends, it is important to go out for movies or dinners together. My work style is going up to people's desks, sipping coffee together and discuss business or strategies. So, when we were instructed to go into isolation to keep ourselves safe from Covid-19, for me it wasn't just changing a few things in my routine...it was changing my whole lifestyle! Changing one's lifestyle is not always easy. Every #jantacurfew stor

Movies...books...fantasies...we all want that perfect love story that we have always seen on screen, read about or have imagined. The perfect guy, the perfect girl, the perfect romance, the perfect wedding…a life full of beautiful sunrises, music, and roses.  There is nothing wrong with romanticizing about all of these. If you have them in your life, you are extremely lucky. What I feel is wrong here is that we want all of these...but we don’t want to put in any effort in building the perfect stories. We want the perfect guy in our life, but we don’t want to put the effort into improving ourselves. The perfect guy is required and expected to accept and appreciate all of our imperfections! Is that fair to expect? We live in an instant world! We seem to fall in love too soon and fall out of it even sooner.  Where are those eternal love stories? The love of Radha and Krishna that fought with the society, broke all rules...just to be in love with each other. Or for that matter, is th

Dear thirteen year old me, This is you...from fifteen years in the future. I am writing to help you prepare for the things that you will need to face in the next fifteen years of your life. In the coming years, you will realize life is not going to be exactly the way you had read in your storybooks. Over the next years, you will need to make some important life decisions, regarding your future education, your career choices, etc. Not all of them are going to make your family always happy. Some of them will rather bring a lot of disappointment to the people you really care about. But don't worry...find your courage to fight for those dreams. Over the next coming years, you will lose some very important people in your life. People without whom you had never imagined your life. Those won't be easy times. But you will need to get through those phases too. You will need to take care of yourself as well as your loved ones. Be prepared! You will also be losing on most of thos

After crossing the frozen river last year, my big plan for this year was to climb till the base of Everest. I started on that dream on the 6th of May 2019. We had reached Kathmandu 2 days back and we toured the city a little before starting our Everest journey. Kathmandu never felt like a foreign land. The food there is very similar to Indian food, the roads and buildings look similar, the language is pretty understandable and even the music seems familiar. A jam-packed, crowded small city...with a lot of beautiful monasteries, palaces, and temples worth visiting. On 6th May, we started our ride from Kathmandu to Manthali airport at around 2am. The ride was 3 hours long. Manthali was the weirdest airport I had ever witnessed. It was a very tiny airport whose check-in counter looked more like an old warehouse. Well, due to unstable weather condition, our flight to Lukla was delayed by a couple of hours. With no proper sitting arrangements, the passengers were literally sitting on the