Blogging challenges and a gratitude post

I began blogging last month with a gratitude post and that seemed like a lucky omen. September turned out much better than August for the blog as well as for me. So here I am beginning a new month with another gratitude post hoping October will be even better.

Going through my last month’s post I realised how much more at peace I am now than I was then. I’m in a much better space – happier and more relaxed. What’s interesting is that there hasn’t really been any major change to make things better. In fact, since we’re in the middle of the children’s exams, I expected stress levels to rise. That that hasn’t happened is a small miracle in itself and it reinforces my faith in my favourite quote, Happiness is an Inside Job – that happiness often, has little to do with the things around us.

I’m not much for self-indulgent, psychoanalytical posts so without boring you to death with details of my weird flip-flop mental state, let me just say that while I still haven’t achieved the zen state I aspire to, I am just happier and so very grateful for that.

The uplifting of my spirits might be in part due to the love showered on my blog this past month. I had way more visitors than I normally do thanks to the My Friend Alexa Challenge which I was a part of. The first few days of the challenge I felt a little self-conscious, like someone who knew her house wasn’t in as good shape as she would have liked it to be and was expecting a deluge of visitors.

I wished I had the time to put up better posts, smarter stories and more creative pictures on the blog. I wished I could have tinkered with the layout, made it neater, more inviting. However, once I realised that wasn’t likely to happen with my crazy schedule and decided to go ahead and write just like I always do, things fell into place.

I focussed on my original aim of bringing discipline to my blogging, which I did. I managed to write nine posts in the month which is almost two times what I normally do. So I did complete the challenge successfully. That felt good. And, this might make sense to my blogger friends only, my Alexa Rank fell from 2,244,955 to 1,126,045, a drop of over a million!

I read scores of blogs as part of the challenge and discovered some fantastic ones which I shall be going back to. Huge thanks to the Blogchatter team for their tireless efforts to see us all to the finish line.

Encouraged by this success I jumped right into another one – The Write tribe pro-Blogger challenge. All of October, I shall be joining over a hundred Write Tribers and blogging twice a week, again. Sending out a note of thanks to Shilpa who egged me on to do this, over-riding all of my apprehensions. I remain grateful for friends who always come to my rescue when a blogging slump seems around the corner.

And dear reader, as always, your presence here is much cherished. Wish me luck and do drop by every Monday and Friday for a fresh post. The twins have been keeping me busy with their shenanigans and I have lots to tell.

 

Linking up with the Write Tribe Problogger October 2017 Blogging Challenge #writebravely #writetribeproblogger

 

and also with Vidya’s Gratitude Circle

The Gratitude road to Happiness

Early this week my Whatsapp crashed. Surprisingly, I didn’t miss it much. I found I quite liked the freedom from endless forwards, specially those ‘wife’ jokes. (Aaarrrghh!! They drive me even crazier when they come from women or men in perfectly happy relationships). Of course I missed some messages from friends but I was fine with that.

A Bad Patch

Coupled with the phone malfunction is the fact that over the past ten days or so the children have given me an exceptionally hard time and that perhaps, made me even more reluctant to communicate (or blog). Do you have days like that – so bad that they’re not even worth a rant? When you just want to shut yourself and wallow? And then when you find yourself friendless, you feel sorry for yourself, never mind that you’ve not made the effort to reach out to them in the first place? Well so that’s where I was. And not having a phone just helped me let myself be. I didn’t realise that being  alone made me crabbier and lonelier.

I Tried…

to pull myself out. I stepped out more than I normally do and I kept going for my yoga classes, more regularly than ever, even though I didn’t have my heart in it at all.

It helped, but only temporarily.

A few days later my phone crashed completely! That was the very last straw. Things had to look up after that and they did.

In a better place

Yesterday, finally, I fixed my new phone. Whatsapp is up and running and I’m back to deleting the wife jokes while smiling at some of the others. I’ve had yet another chat with the kids and I have a breakfast date planned with friends. Which is why, the sun seems to be out in the sky and I am in a happier space, today… now. I hope to take each day – one by one.

Attempting gratitude

That is why I am doing this gratitude post today because like my good friend Vidya says, the not so good times are the ones when you most need to practice gratitude.

At number 1 has to be The Husband, who despite being out of town, was available at all odd hours trying to sort us out, taking SOS calls from me and the children, complaining about each other.

At number two would be a gift that arrived quite unexpectedly, from Write Tribe, and cheered me up enormously.

Lastly, another attempt at pulling myself out of the depression induced torpor made me register for the #MyFriendAlexa campaign by Blogchatter. For my non blogger friends here, this just means that I will be blogging twice a week through September. Honestly, that’s all I’m focusing on. That the blog will benefit in google rankings (which is what I understand about  Alexa Ranks) will remain a side benefit.

So there. That’s it.

The single most important learning through this month has been …

Sometimes no one can help us except us. Share on X

I hope to remember that. Somedays the only thing to do is to keep going through the motions, no matter how half heartedly, and wait for the clouds to pass because they just will.

12 most intriguing mom-types


Once I was obsessivemom. I outgrew it.

I think I did. I sure hope I did. The thing is you never know.

I do however, remain, a ‘mom’ observer. They’re interesting, believe me. Being a mom changes you in a way you would never have imagined. It makes you a new, different person, sometimes unrecognisable by your old self. A lot of these moms below live inside me.

1. ‘My child best’ mom: She’s easy to spot. She wears her child like a medal. Nope, God didn’t make any other child as wonderful as hers. No one can dance like her, sing like her, write or speak or jump or run or even walk as gracefully, as athletically as hers.

2. Know it all mom: Yeah she knows it all. A stomach ache? She has the cure. A dance class? She knows the best one. Fancy dress, super recipes, parenting styles – she knows all. Have a suggestion? Well keep your mouth shut!

3. ‘Go get it’ mom: She’s the ultimate motivator. She’ll push and she’ll prod and she’ll push some more till she has her child on that victory stand. She won’t pause, she won’t stop. Not even to check if her child wants to be there at all.

4. The co-curricular mom: She’s the one you’re most likely to bump into in elevators. A Hi! and  Bye! and she’s gone, kids in tow – one class to the next. Her kids need to learn everything. From chess to ballet, piano to Spanish, basketball to the drum, she has it all covered.

5. Food fanatic mom: She’s the gajar ka halwa, the garam garam roti mom – the one who spends hours whipping up the perfect recipe. She revels in the fact that she makes her own ketchups and jams, that her pizza is better than Dominoes and her burger better than Mc Donalds.

6. The psychology professor mom: She’s Ms Analysis. Every action of hers and her child’s is examined and cross examined, analysed and cross analysed. “I yelled at him. Will it scar him for life?” “He scored badly in his tests, will he go into a depression?”

7. Academic mom: She’s the one who lives one unit test to the next. Exam times see her at her peak. She will obsesses about each quarter mark lost and will keep track of her child’s ranking like Shylock counted his gold.

8. Cleanliness freak mom: That can of sanitiser will give her away. Open her bag and you’ll find dry tissues, wet tissues, tissue rolls, soap strips and napkins. She covers her mouth when she steps on the road. She sanitises her kids’ hands every five minutes and wipes glasses and plates in restaurants before food is served.

9. ‘I’m your friend’ mom: This ones not quite a mom at all. She’s a friend, a pal. She dresses like her daughter and shares her makeup. She uses slang like her kids and hangs out with their friends on FB. 

10. The ‘Awww’ mom: She’s the one who cannot get over how wonderful her kids are. She tears up at every smiley her child gets at school and cries over every ‘I love you note’ from her child. She can’t talk without a ‘sweety’ or a ‘honey’ and is always found hugging, petting and cuddling her ‘baby’.

11. ‘My kids are my life’ mom: Her life begins and ends with her kids. Her conversation never strays from them. Suggest a coffee date and she’ll fix you with an incredulous stare, “What? Without the kids?”.. and you’ll slink away feeling a mean and selfish mom. As for me time… what’s that? she asks.

12. The perfect mom: She’s the toughest to define. Um.. actually she’s the easiest to define for aren’t all moms just perfect?

Oh they can be annoying, intriguing and so so different, but they don’t deserve to be judged. They all, yes all, love their children and are trying really hard to do the best they can.

This post was done for Write Tribe. For more ’12 most…’ entries go here.

Battling Bloggers Block

 It seems the world is conspiring to rescue my blog from inertia. I’ve been trying to get back to posting regularly but nothing seems to be working. First I did a week-long Drabble Fest. I struggled to sit at the computer each day, posting my entries late into the night. Once the Fest was over I was back to square one.. Idealess, inspirationless.

Now I get a second chance…
Write Tribe asks us to list five ways to tackle bloggers block. If I don’t make use of this bit of introspection to help myself, I truly never will. So here goes…
The first thing I should be doing is 

Read read read

…blogs. I find reading other blogs often opens the floodgates of my creativity. Something somewhere sparks off an idea – an agreement, a disagreement an add on – And voila.. I’m off. Then there are times (like now) when reading doesn’t do it. So then I look for ..

Blogging prompts

Sites like Write Tribe throw up prompts which are a great way to begin that conversation with your blog. I often weave my current state of kind into the prompts. Not just is that a bonus but it also helps me open up my heart. And that’s how blog posts happen for me – from the heart. Less mind more heart!
If that doesn’t work either, I try a..

Free write

I often win my battle with the block by pushing myself to sit down with the sole purpose of writing. That in itself is a task – no browsing, no FB, no tinkering with the kids’ projects… just writing. It’s hard, often. However, once I make myself sit I simply write the day’s happenings. Mundane details like what I did, where I went, how I felt – a good meal, a nasty neighbour, a challenging day with the kids, a spot of good behaviour from them – anything can make for a post. Of course a bunch of such free writes never get to hit the publish button and languish in my drafts.  And that’s where I go scavenging when I’m at my wits end.

Going through my drafts

…and trying to rework them helps sometimes. Seen days or months later from a new perspective they throw up new insights. 
And my final astra against the bog block are

Listicles

.. articles written as lists. I try some easy ones…

5 reasons I love blogging
5 reasons I enjoy going to the gym
5 kinds of people I cannot stand
5 ways to handle cranky kids
And that normally does it for me.

Still stuck?

If my top five didn’t work for you, do check out Write Tribe for more bright idea from some of the most fabulous bloggers. Good luck!

A lesson, a Drabble and some innovation

This was going to be hard. Saying ‘No’ always was. For a second she considered a ‘Yes’ then gave herself a mental shake. ‘No’, it had to be. A moment later her daughter came skipping in, ‘So may I mama, please?’. ‘No,’ she said gently, trying to blunt the blow with her smile. The dreaded tears came in a deluge.

Later she watched her daughter playing happily. In teaching her a lesson she had learnt one too – that life lessons were important, tears temporary. She wished she knew then what she knew now. It would have made her decision easier.

***************
Linking to Write Tribe’s 100 words on Saturday for the prompt
“S/he wished S/he knew then what S/he knew now”

The Drabble will make more sense if you read yesterday’s post.

With all of that behind us we spent a near perfect day today.. Cleaning together. 

There she is wrestling a cushion cover. She won with honours, I might add.

A month of being away has left the house coated in layers of dust. Seriously, how it climbs up to the 9th floor is a mystery. The maid’s on leave and I’d have probably left it as it was and waited for her (yes I’m bad like that. And I do hate housework) but we’re expecting a friend and it needed to be done. 

Over lunch, N asked me if she could melt her dairy milk and re-freeze it into tiny chocolates. I had this vision of a chocolate smeared kitchen and refused rightaway. I stashed away the moulds for good measure. Later, while cleaning the fridge I spotted this… 

She even found some cake sprinklers and used them

On quizzing her she said she had melted the chocolate in the sun then poured it out into medicine dispensers and topped them off with gems. Didn’t I tell you this new gen was a tad too smart?

In other news she has figured out how to use the printer all on her own. Now she can do her school projects on her own. Yay! Maybe 8 years is that magic age when kids grow up suddenly.