Celebrating a Decade: And Thankyou!

Massive Poinsettia plant. Poinsettias are very common during Christmas time in the US (and several other countries\0. Their red and green makes perfect for the Christmas Colors. 

An open animal park, South Africa, 2012

South Africa, 2012

And just like that a decade has rolled around.  I have been writing this blog for a decade. 

It will be the 11th year starting in November of 2019.  

So for the next few months, I will repost some of the old blogs, and write some on the process of writing.

Last month I started another blog.  I cannot share it here because that one is bold with a picture of mine and my name.  I am training myself into dhyana (concentration), Yoga (both physical and at the mental level of self-control), and dharna ( generally means taking a vow, fixing your mind on one object, and pledging towards and outcome), and tapas (self-discipline, taking austerities).

I do not want to sound all self-righteous or pompous because I have failed several times before.  But this has been a long time coming. I did not come up with this strategy until a few months ago. In addition, at a certain stage in one's life, we need to be so together that we are automatically a role model for the young.  We inspire them to better their lives through self-discipline.

Coming back to this blog.  I have been journaling since I was 12. Rigorously since I was 16.   But when I moved to the US --technology took over and my writing became slow, inconsistent and then non-existent for a while.  But whenever I wrote by hand, as I did last week, it was therapeutic.

This blog allowed me to jot down my thoughts and experiences so that some of these can be shared with my friends and those who are interested in reading the journey of a slightly confused mind who, thankfully, has not stopped asking questions.

This blog became my saviour. I did question my profession of academic writing when this blog writing brought me so much joy.

But there is no way to make money through this, certainly not a living.  If it is, it is rare.

My commitment to this blog came since I saw traffic increase on this site.  Even when I was not writing. May be just because of the pictures I put, may be just the places I visited, but my words were at least seen, if not read.

Technically, I have a book or two here. I have over 350 entries as of now.  This writing is separate from my academic writing, which takes about 3 years to publish.  From finish to start the process can take 3 years or more.  Maybe in that context one can understand the satisfaction of this writing. One hit, published, a few shares with friends and  sense of contentment of having documented my life. 

I do not know how long this will continue, I hope for as long as I live.  I am working on three other websites, two of which are academic and one on my childhood.  

But I keep returning to this old, worn but dearly loved site, that gave me the first taste of 'getting random readers.'

Thank you all for reading all these years. I would love to hear from you, if you wish to share your comments. 

I will make this a series, titled Celebrating a Decade.  Following with experiences from around the world that make me believe in people and some of the most popular posts. 

Here, I share one of the first posts that was first published on November 25, 2009. It was so new that I had not even started putting pictures on every post yet.  Just this morning I changed the font to make it consistent, since I was still using Times Roman at the time. 

This post still warms my heart. I remember what the watchman looked like. 

This is also a way of THANKING Fiji, for what it gave me.

Many sunshines and some time pouring rain that allowed much love to grow in my heart!!

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NOTE: I reduced this post to one third its original length for a project on Washington Post. Life is short: Autobiography as Haiku Unfortunately I found about it after the project was no longer running. I hope that the readers will enjoy it and feel the warmth of simple human connections that we make everyday.

Only if we consider them such, and nurture them

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The guard greeted me with gentility common to people from Fiji, "I’ve something for you."

Returning a disposal plate from a week ago, in which I had served him dinner, he pointed at the bag of oranges sitting on the plate, “Here is your plate, with something from the market."

I did what my dad taught me. Whenever someone offers you food, accept it and then share it with them.

”But Ratu (Sir), you’ve to take one orange from here."

He did graciously “And Thank You”.

I slept warmly, even though it was a slightly cold night in the Pacific.