Boredom Doodling

It was a bright sunny Wednesday afternoon, when the office was overcrowded with frustrated colleagues (mostly middle-aged men) breaking their heads trying to reach deadlines, there was an idle intern(Me !) on the other hand happily daydreaming without a care in the world while trying to study. This happened a few weeks ago when I was going through a tough time making decisions about my career and I couldn’t focus much on work. During this time, I remembered the book I read, “Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath. This is a semi-autobiographical novel, which tells us about the struggle Sylvia went through while making a career in the big city. It also talks about in general how women are told to prioritize marriage and children than career. In the end, she is presented with a lot of options/choices in life, but she fails to decide and go with one. These are one of my favorite lines from the book,

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

I wouldnt call myself totally indecisive, but I have trouble taking decisions and end up seeking validation from various sources. I make comprehensive lists of pros and cons for important decisions.  While pondering on whether “To do or not to do” I end up daydreaming most of the times and this one time on a sunny Wednesday, I did something which I haven’t done in ages: Doodling.  Following is the image of the doodle I had done using a ballpoint blue pen. After finishing it, I couldn’t resist sharing with my folks and got a lot of adoration for the Groot sketch. I did a couple of drawings later and I had realized that I found a new past time.

Literally Literary Pay

I am writing after a long time as I was caught up in the rat race of the corporate world. But now I have earned a little vacation time (less than a week) after toiling hard for past six months. Last six months were memorable for me both professionally and personally. I had numerous noteworthy experiences and would definitely want to draft them and now that I can’t take go back to the past (Though noteworthy, trust me, I wouldn’t want to revisit some of the things that happened to me over these six months) I will write more about the momentous months of my life in my later posts.

Enough about the past, let’s get to the present. (Singing: Past is the past, let it go let it go).
I along with my partner in crime, Mycroft had written a technical article for a famous tech magazine. This is my first article to get published. I was proud to see my name in the author’s column and we were supposed to receive a small amount of money as a token of appreciation. Our article was published in the April’s Edition of the magazine and we patiently waited for the whole month and kept staring at our bank statements now and then for the sight of “credit” transfer from the magazine. April passed, and nothing happened. Then we didn’t lose hope but got busy with our work and college.

Today, I just remembered about our prize money and then we planned on mailing the editor regarding the same. Just to be sure, we checked our bank statements and there it was – our first literally literary pay, a decent amount for first-timers. Just under this credit transaction, there was another credit transaction from the company I was working, and both the credit amounts had an enormous difference in money. But the money received from writing gave me more satisfaction.

I tried hard to find a synonym to the word “Pay” that starts with the letter “L” but I failed. If anyone reading my post find it, please leave a comment. Thanks!

Fin.