Shiitake Mushroom

New Beginning.

The last month of 2023 got hectic with cyclone, floods, Design deadlines, Meetings, travel and shifting. Yes, I moved to a new home with my parents and learnt that I can live alone for maybe 10 days but I can't live without my people around me.

My past home is where all the transition happened from teen to adolescent to adult with all struggles and happiness. A new home is good. Time feels slow here.

New Year's eve.

Immediately after shifting, I had to travel for work and returned two days before the new year night. Those days went with work and deadlines. On New Year's Night, we were all sound asleep, no party, no all-night movies, nothing. We slept peacefully after all the struggles and traumas that we went through over the past few years. New Year's night was a relief and hope for a new beginning.

A ray of hope

I had been trying to learn pottery, but it was difficult to find classes according to my timings and work schedule. Not even a week into 2024, I got a message from a studio that conducts workshops in different fields of art. A pottery workshop happening between Jan and March, which covers the basics of pottery. Throwing on a wheel to glazing a foundation course. I had saved up some money, which helped me to enroll for the workshop. Every Sunday starting from 21st Jan for 2 hours until March. Nothing can be happier than this.

Will document the process and try to write them as a series of blogs in the upcoming days.

A guide to life

There was a cyclone in my city in the middle of Dec 2023. We were completely shut out from the whole world and could do nothing but read. I picked up Ikigai. It made me feel good as I was reading it. I happened to start the series "Blue Zones - Live up to 100" on Netflix once the cyclone passed. The book and the series go hand in hand as guidance to life. It's a good start when we have lost track of time in living and chasing dreams. This helped me to think more about what I want and where I'm going wrong.

If you haven't read or watched it, give it a try.

A world to escape

As I started reading Ikigai, I got two more books from my reading list as gifts for Christmas from the office. "Days at the Morisaki Bookshop" by Satoshi Yagisawa and "Before the Coffee gets Cold" By Toshikazu Kawaguchi.

I completed Ikigai around the first week of Jan and started reading "Days at the Morisaki Bookshop". This book made me feel alive again, The characters or the plot I don't know what it is but it's full of life. It is making me glow again. I'm happy as a child eating cotton candy for the first time.

"It takes a long time to figure out what you're truly searching for. Maybe you just spend your whole life just to figure out a small part of it"

From this, my reading journey started again. I ordered some design books and went to a book fair and grabbed some books.

And there it Goes...

My reading list for 2024

I'll update the list as the year goes for now this is what is in my mind. There are still some books on my shelf that I haven't touched will read them in future as the days comes.

Alaska laughing- “Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.” ― John Green, Looking for Alaska

Haha... See ya! Happy New Year Folks.