No more New Year Resolutions for me!!

Every year end everyone I meet starts asking me about my New Year Resolutions!!! What the hell are new year resolutions? Why do I need them at the end of a year I just wasted trying to stick to last year's resolutions? In the past, every new year as instructed by the media and world, I would promise myself huge changes in my life, a new career, a new slim body to go with it, a new attitude towards everyone with no more trying to be Miss Nice incarnate! Resolve to conquer every fear and just go for whatever I want to do in life, not care what others think, not allow anyone to dissuade me from my goals. I would Nike style 'Just Do It'!

Well after all those crazy resolutions, I am still not into a career I love actually I am not into any career at all, I am still just there to take care of my family with not much gratefulness or appreciation, I am still putting my needs at the bottom of every 'to do' list and still never get to them in the end, I am still trying to go back to my pre-kids slim tight body and am far from it. I am still taking shit from my family and burying it and moving on not matter how they are weighing me down.... Basically I have achieved nothing with these flimsy dreamy wishful resolutions!!!!

Why I didn't succeed?
Firstly, I put so much thought into it only made me aware of all the roadblocks I'd have to overcome to get to my goal, of all the issues that might come up with changing dynamic at home and of all the difficulties that might pop up in my kids daily routine when I wouldn't be there 24/7 ensuring their smooth sailing. All those 'what ifs' and 'Hows' just stopped me in my tracks.
On rare occasions I did overcome those fears, but then I made another fatal mistake. I got excited and all psyched to the point of announcing it to my mom and siblings and sometimes a friend or two. Now  talking about it has never borne any fruit for me, the pressure that comes with expectations of the informed individuals just leads me to freeze. I couldn't do anything without wondering what would they say or think of it, I would worry if my idea of achievement was worth something to them? I would obsess over whether they'd be disappointed behind my back because I fell short of their hopes for me. And on and on and on...... All these questions that grow in my head only take away any fun or joy in doing it. Hence I don't do it and give up!

In fact, the only times I have done anything concrete over the past decade it is when I didn't plan it long and hard, I just did it!

So this December when a friend suggested making new year resolutions together, I just plain refused. No more resolutions for me, I just am not going to add another disappointment to my list of 'Not Done Yet'(NDY) and my list of 'Will Never Get Done'(WNGD). No I am not going to make up resolutions just to stick with the crowd, I am going to live life , one day at a time, just go with the flow. Do whatever inspires me whenever it inspires me. I will do it quietly and persevere because that is the only way I can actually get anything done. And no more announcing my big idea, they will find out when they will find out, no need to expedite it.

So Happy New Year to you all, but don't you dare ask me what I'll be doing this year, I am not saying! :)

We must break free from Black Friday!!

So every year millions of Americans celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. Although the roots of Thanksgiving can be traced to religious and cultural traditions, in the United States it has taken the form of a secular celebration of family, friends, abundance of food, health and good fortune. Most people travel across the country to get together with family and friends and get a chance to create rich memories together. They enjoy a nice long weekend together and cherish the opportunity to leave their daily rut behind and just relax together with loved ones. It is a chance to stop and smell the roses and be grateful for all that is good in life.

But slowly yet surely corporate America has hijacked this beautiful and graceful holiday and converted it into a weekend of shopping frenzy and madness. The media bombards the public with promises of unearthly deals never to be seen again,  unbelievable prizes to early shoppers, the more you spend the more you save and so on.... The pressure of shopping on Black Friday is so intense that even children have started to believe that shopping on Friday is part and parcel of the Thanksgiving Holiday. Thus like zombies with no thought process of their own, majority of Americans rush through their Thanksgiving feast and head out to line up outside stores of choice. They forget that eating together as a big family and enjoying the food and real family time was the initial purpose of Thanksgiving! That purpose has been lost, now the purpose as dictated by corporate America's supercharged marketing and advertising is shopping for things you don't really need and spending money you don't really have!

It is a sad state of affairs, considering the fact that millions of Americans are still reeling from the recent economic depression, many have no jobs yet, many are in debt up to their necks yet they will go to the mall and spend and spend and spend, all the while thinking they are saving!! But saving what? If you spend $30 and save $10 on it, you still paid the $20 which you didn't really need to. It is scary to see how bad most Americans are at seeing the real truth. We do not have to buy something just so we can say we have it, we should buy what we really are in need of to sustain a healthy and safe life, everything else is luxury.

But I guess children born in the once land of plenty wouldn't know that , would they? Unfortunately no one has told them and nor have they realized it for themselves that the US is no longer the land of plenty in the real sense. It is time to educate the American public to make money wise decision and not allow big corporations  and designer labels tell them what they need to buy or own, instead it is time for them to make their own decision and take control of their financial mess.

P.S: I wrote this post after reading news about the violence seen this Black Friday and also reading an article on BBC World "The Dark Side of Black Friday". Here are links to both;

Black Friday shopping in US marred by violence
The dark side of Black Friday

The lines are blurred in far too many ways!!

Wondering what I am talking about, it's sleazy Robin Thicke's summer hit " Blurred Lines". Yes, that supposedly upbeat party song, which was blasted by almost all radio stations all summer long. Everyone seemed to love it, but how many of you actually listened to what was being said in the song? If you did, believe me you probably wouldn't want your sons and daughters listening and singing along to this clearly obscene song. I am saying that because I actually read the lyrics to the whole song.
The reason I did that is I learned to pay attention to lyrics when I became a mom to three boys. I like listening to all kinds of music when driving, I love jamming my favs on the radio when going on long drives. Honestly speaking, I didn't really pay attention to the lyrics of the songs, if they had a fun beat, nice rhythm I'd put it on, without a thought. Then one day I heard my preschooler trying to sing along with Lil Jon's song " Get low", I was mortified!! That was not the kind of song a preschooler should be singing! I started paying attention to the words of the songs , there were far too many channels playing songs with sexually charged lyrics, the more I became conscious of the content of songs the more I was shocked. Hence I decided to listen to NPR or my own selection of music CDs mostly, and only sometimes to songs ( I knew lyrics to) on other radio channels.

So when this summer " Blurred lines" was playing in every possible place, I was very worried to notice that few seemed to even realize how obscene and disturbingly graphic the lyrics were and had lyrics insinuating that aggression and violence go along with consensual sex and relationships. I started asking myself, is our society so immune to such blatant social degradation?

Then today I saw The Guardian news headline "Blurred Lines: the most controversial song of the decade" and as I read on, the news piece was about the song being banned by University College London student union thus joining some 20 other such student bodies in the UK. It also mentions outcry by several US organizations such as Slutwalk about the explicit and violent nature of the song's lyrics. It was a relief to know that others besides myself had issues with this song, others were also worried to see the immunity of the public to songs. There are still people and organizations out there fighting to uphold certain levels of decency, morality and civility. There is hope!

The full article in The Guardian

Blurred Lines: the most controversial song of the decade

Paper books are still my favorites!

I am sure you have guessed by now that I am an avid reader. I think I have never not been reading a book. As an early reader read all the Enid Blyton series ( Noddy, The Famous Five, Malory Towers, The Secret Seven etc.) As a teenager delved into Classic English literature with Daphne Du Maurier, Bronte Sisters, E. M Forster, Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, George Eliot and endless others. Read plenty of P.G Wodehouse, Agatha Christie, Robert Ludlum, Jeffrey Archer on the side.

Then in my twenties ventured into more heavier stuff such as  Thomas Hardy, John Steinbeck, Margaret Atwood and also started reading translated works of well known authors like Ben Okri, Paulo Coehlo, Jose Saramago. So as you can see my reading choices changed and evolved as I was maturing and evolving too.

Most of the authors I liked I bought the books of, and so I still have many with me. When I see those books I don't only remember the storyline but I also remember the time when I read it, who gave it to me or where I bought it, how it was a companion in those days.

I still have the book all my classmates from 6th grade autographed and gifted me when we moved to a different city. I also still possess Hemingway's "True at first light", the first book my husband bought me and wrote a sweet love note on the first page. That was when we visited the Ernest Hemingway house in Key West, Florida.

Then about a year back, I was going through a bad patch when I saw 'Game of Thrones' by R.R.Martin at the bookstore, I had obviously heard the name and decided to buy it. I started reading it rather skeptical of it's fame but this book pulled me in, R.R.Martin's story writing just transported me into this phantasmal world of deception, scheming, swords, magic and dragons. It allowed me to escape from my blues long enough to heal and move on. I read the whole series up to the latest work 'Dance with Dragons' within a month or so. But now I have this special association with those five books, they were there for me when I was down and needed a boost.

I am sure that I am not the only with a story like this one. My books are just like old friends to me, they are always there for me to go to when I need them. This is why I will always buy paper books, keep them and  treat them with the love and respect they deserve.

Postscript: 

I decided to write this piece when I saw this headline on BBC World this morning;

Amazon e-book offer riles independent bookshop owners

Bookshop owners have hit back at an initiative by Amazon to sell its Kindle e-book reader in independent shops. The Amazon Source programme, launching first in the US, would let bookshops sell the devices and receive a small cut of e-book sales thereafter. ( Read Whole article)

The gist of it being that Amazon is working hard to discourage people from buying books, that is real books, you know the one actually printed on paper and bound. The ones we can hold, open instantly at two different places, the ones that we sometime dedicate or gift to someone, the one we get authors to autograph, the ones that have passed down to us through the generations, yes those real precious and valuable books.