Perfect! Well, this is the continuation to the piece I had written earlier: ‘Have you ever paused in life?’ So if you haven’t read it, it’s about taking a pause once in a month, taking a step back and thinking of what you are doing, if you are progressing towards your goals, if not – where you want to go, what you want to do and things you want to accomplish. In a nutshell, more than ‘why’ which I believe we all agree upon, it talks about the ‘how’ which I think is something which no one ever tells you and so I thought there has to be a method – a ritual I wanted to develop, to introspect effectively. Not just to introspect, but to take some time off your busy routine to spend time with yourself and your thoughts, whatever be it! Seriously, you can just have the most bizarre thoughts and it’s okay.

It’s your day, your thoughts and your actions!

Now I do as I preach or rather preach only what I really believe in. So I took a day out of my weekend, which normally constitutes cleaning, grocery shopping, cooking, Netflix and meeting friends. It bore me, this routine. I just don’t enjoy going in cycles day in and day out. I want to break free. Haha – seems like I am singing right now. Oh, yes! I am, Lyrics are the best source of inspiration. They sum up your thoughts and feelings in this lyrical composition that sticks so much better than any writer can ever connect with you. ‘I want to break free’. Anyway, so I stepped out and did what I always wanted to – write, read, listen, and just enjoy life my way. Here is what I did:

So Melbourne has this ‘Emerging writer’s festival’ every year around June wherein they have various events, conferences, workshops around story telling, writing professionally and publishing/editing – so I attended to one of these sessions and get some insights from some published writers. The topic was 5*5 rules of writing. Now I am no professional writer and don’t know if I want to take it up as a profession, however I want to hone some writing skills for my blogs and what better way than to learn it directly from some of finest published writers to kick-start my journey as a writer. I shall write a separate piece on all that I learnt from this session in another article. But in a nutshell that’s how I started my morning, with some inspiration!

“You don’t need to know everything in the beginning, you just need to start”

– Toni Jordan

After some food for thought it was time to fuel the belly, so I headed to this nearby cafe and can definitely vouch for their coffee. One thing I have learnt while choosing a cafe/restaurant is that choose a cafe with ratings of 4 and above for a satisfactory experience. You will cherish the food, service, and ambience of that place and shall set the ball rolling for the rest of your day. So that was the next 45 minutes of me time or rather tummy time.

Now , it was the time to find a place where I can peacefully write with no distractions and whilst I would have loved any outdoor setting – it was not possible in this cold dreary winter days when the temperature drops to a single digit. So I thought what better place than a library. 

So I come to this library, a masterpiece in architecture and find my hideout place. Meanwhile I was thinking, when you have access to such facilities, why not take full advantage of it? So, I got my setting that I had needed – a place full of books, young and bright minds, quiet environment (not that quiet actually with all the visitors, but still better than most public places) – now is the time to begin the work

I started with writing some of my unfinished articles, planned for the forthcoming weekends, thought through some bigger agendas and spent some time reading this book that I had picked up from my office library and had never opened it till then – remember my habit to procrastinate and how I am trying to break through that habit – will write a follow up on that as well in terms of how I have fared so far, some common pitfalls, techniques to overcome them, etc. Anyway, by now I had almost spent 5-6 hours on this. Trust me the focus that I had was unparalleled. I would never have been able to achieve so much in probably next 2-3 weekends because of all the distractions and inexplicable black holes of time.

Anyway now that I had done most of what I had set out to do, it was time to return home. Now I had not planned for this, but when I stepped out of the Library, I saw these bunch of Sudanese students protesting for democracy and I loved the energy they had, the cause for which they were protesting – close to my heart and the leader who gave the speech had a sense of confidence that gathered a large crowd that you can see in the below picture. It left me with a smile.

The rest of my away day was just usual, spent time with my husband watching something over dinner and discussing our day. But this to me was a perfect day – doing the only thing that matters the most to you.