Week 8: Traveling when not traveling

Lake Bled in Slovenia

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I did not start traveling either seriously or solo until I was in my late twenties. But once I did, it opened up a whole new world of learning for me. It boosted my confidence immensely and taught me how to pursue things independently, without waiting on people whose travel frequency does not match mine. In a span of six years, I had ended up traveling more than thirty countries, and many of them, alone.

However, I had to recently factor in the reality of my new position- being pre-tenure at a research university, which is not for the faint-hearted. It requires years of immersion in research, being very active and productive in terms of publishing and bringing in grant money. Therefore, I do not get to travel as much these days.

Scratch that. I do get to travel, but it is a different kind of travel. I travel mostly for work and conferences, and these are mostly to urban cities within the US. Baltimore. Atlanta. Boston. San Francisco. Such travel would have thrilled me many years ago, and I once used to spend my own money to visit these places during national holidays, but no more. After a point, all US cities look and feel the same. Sometimes, I do not even get to step out of the conference venue and explore the city.

When I think of my happy travel experiences, I think of hiking and driving around the Grand Canyon. I think of those beautiful sunsets and good food in Puerto Rico. I think of the blueness of the ocean in Hawaii. I think of the geysers of Yellowstone and the glaciers of Montana. I think of eating fried crickets in Mexico and Cambodia. I think of flying over Mount Everest in Nepal. I remember the flavorful stew in Dubrovnik (Croatia) and the church I hiked in Montenegro. I think of the cruise ship I took to Norway and the largest ice caves in the world I hiked in Werfen (Austria). I think of Mount Etna in Sicily (Italy) and the goosebumps I got visiting a concentration camp in Auschwitz (Poland). From the forts of Malta to the oceans of Portugal, from the mountains in Sikkim to the cobbled streets of Estonia, wonderful travel experiences have filled my life. Naturally, after visiting most US cities, the lure of Washington DC, Miami or San Diego is not much.

So how does one travel without traveling?

Once a week (during the weekend), I routinely spend a few hours watching travel documentaries on YouTube. I was amazed at the wealth of resources travel blogs and YouTube provide. It gives me a vicarious sense of travel pleasure. I randomly pick a country on the map and go find everything I can about the country. This is how I learnt about the Pamir Highway connecting Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan, the amazing bhortas and the biryanis one can eat while visiting Bangladesh, the mountains of the Himalayan range, some of the higher motorable roads in the world in Leh and Ladakh, the different seasons in a country as small as Sri Lanka, the fanciest trains in the world and what they offer, the history of Burkina Faso that was formerly called the Republic of Upper Volta, the monasteries of Bhutan, the island of Bali, and so much more. Although I would much rather visit these places in-person, this experience gives me a travel high and enriches my knowledge about the history and the geography of a place when I am cooped up working for months and do not even get to visit the downtown nearby. I find it to be a much better use of time than following the hyped shows and sitcoms.

If you want to see the beautiful, awe-inspiring, rugged mountains of Pakistan, watch the movie Dukhtar. And if you have fascinating travel experiences and itineraries to share, I would love to hear from you.

sunshine

Week 7: A clean sink and a made bed

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Waking up to a clean kitchen sink really makes me happy, and so does coming home to a clean, made bed. So I make sure I do both every day. 

Long back, I came across this talk about the value of making your bed and really liked it. It is the joy of accomplishing at least one task every day. I know that throughout the day, I will have many triggers, things that will stress me out but I cannot control. There will be multiple rejections coming my way- papers and proposals rejected, decisions that do not go in my favor. I do not have control over those things. However, I do have control over the little things that I can do for myself.

For example, waking up to a sink with dirty dishes puts me off. Cleaning dishes is not my most favorite activity, and that is not what I want to start my day with. So no matter how tired I am, I try to finish off the dishes before I go to sleep. For this, I have to portion out the cooked food into little containers and store them in the fridge. I have to pack my lunch for the next day. I have to clean the kitchen counter. Once I have done all that, I try to finish the dishes, leaving them to dry overnight. That way, the next morning, I can start my day finding a clean, dry cup waiting for me to make myself coffee of milk. It saves myself useful morning minutes too. 

Similarly, at the end of a long day, it feels calming to come back to a made bed. It makes me feel grateful for having a home and being able to stay warm and comfortable. After a long day at work, I'd want to be nowhere else but home. So every morning before I leave home, I make sure to leave it in a condition that I would long to come back to it.

As a kid, I used to do other chores every night to prep for school the next day. I used to clean and polish my black leather shoes. And I used to organize my school bag. I especially miss polishing my shoes every night. 

When the bigger things are going wrong, I find comfort in these little things going right. Waking up to find the dishes clean and dry, coming home to a clean bed, and packing my lunch with me every day instead of eating outside. 

sunshine

Week 6: Visible-eaty

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I was craving ruti for lunch that day. So I opened the fridge, stooped, and retrieved the open but sealed packet of uncooked phulkas that Gundamma had packed me the last time I visited her. I had already cooked 5 or 6 out of that packet a while ago.

As I opened the sealed, plastic bag of phulkas and carefully took out an uncooked one, my heart sank when I saw a patch of green growing on the surface of the first one. Carefully, I peeled each phulka to see the patch of green on every single piece but the last, the patch increasingly getting smaller. I knew I could do nothing to salvage this, the green was a patch of mold growing on the uncooked phulka. With a heavy heart, I tossed all of them in the trash.

I felt horrible that day. Wasting food makes me feel like I have attained a new low in life. I had spent money on those, and since I am not familiar with the desi stores here, I got them all the way from Seattle. Since I had already consumed more than half the packet, I wondered what made me leave the rest uneaten. I knew that I was traveling, and before that, I was off solids for a while after my dental surgery. But I knew the main reason why I did not finish all of them.

The reason was because I had stored the packet inside the vegetable tray in the fridge, a spot that was out of my line of sight. Hence I had conveniently forgotten about it.

An empty vegetable tray 

So now, I try to store all my food in the fridge in my line of sight. I try not to store anything in the vegetable tray (see picture).

I try to do this with dry food too. Instead of storing them in some obscure nook in the pantry, I keep them all at eye level so that I do not forget about them. It often happens that I go to the desi store and cannot remember if I already have something. As a result, I have often bought multiple jars of pickle or ghee, multiple packs of spices or flattened rice or chaatu, and then they sit there and go stale. I am still learning to get better at letting things sit and go waste. When you do not see something regularly or do not have ready access to it (where you have to bend or struggle to find something), you tend to forget about it.

This is not only for food in the fridge or spices in the kitchen. I have often forgotten about clothes and accessories, the pair of jeans, a pair of gloves, and bought the same thing twice because things were tucked in an obscure corner of the wardrobe. Now, I try to put everything I have in front of me so that it is easier to remember how much I already have.

sunshine

Week 2: Subscribe

Other than unsubscribing from a bunch of websites no longer useful to me (Week 1), I have actively subscribed to a number of websites and emails that are either useful or entertaining. The word "active" is the key here. I get daily or weekly updates from them and make sure that I read or watch the content regularly rather than pile them up and hoard them for future binge reading/watching. These are the resources that in Marie Kondo's language, "spark joy." Unlike the stuff I unsubscribed from, these are not deals or advertisements nudging me to buy things.

Professional Development: The National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity has a lot of good videos that train you to manage your time, resources and skills as a faculty. My institution pays for a membership, making it free for me. Every week, I try to watch at least one video and use the worksheets they provide. Academic Coaching & Writing is another website that is useful for me as a scholar.

Health: I have subscribed to daily emails from Livestrong that offers tips for a healthier life. I don’t take everything I read at face value, but they have nice, small articles, sometimes written as lists (for example, 10 daily habits to increase your productivity). I am a big fan of Rujuta Diwekar’s YouTube channel too, not because she has celebrity clients (although that is how I know of her), but because she offers simple, sustainable health solutions focusing on our cultural background rather than asking to drink juice for a detox diet or do a hundred burpees everyday. I especially love her "Fitness Project 2018" where she posts one health video per week.

Hobbies and Entertainment: I am subscribed to Bookbub’s daily update emails for Kindle books on sale, not because I buy them, but because I use the daily lists to get something that looks interesting from my library. Being a traveler and photographer, I often gawk at the amazing travel pictures hosted at Exposure. And my latest addiction is Grandpa Kitchen, a YouTube channel with millions of viewers and 1.35 million subscribers currently. I love that grandpa cooks and feeds others, cooking in the open where you could hear the birds chirping and cows walking around in the fields. I love his accent, and how sometimes, he will take a break when the food is cooking and start singing. And while you are at eat, check out grandma’s cooking too.

Other cool stuff I read include something called “Stat Newsletters.” They publish some thought-provoking articles on science and medicine. I also often check out the cool homes available for buying on Zillow, although that is a relatively newer and more time-consuming addiction. The rest of the resources take defined amounts of time to read or watch. Zillow is where I sometimes lose track of time and end up spending hours because it is so addictive. 

Between professional development videos and book deals, grandpa's cooking and Rujuta's health tips, I have managed to sign up for and only read/view content that speaks to me. It is like coming home to something waiting for you.

Do share any of your absolute favorite resources.

sunshine

Also read: 52 small changes.

Small changes make big differences

I recently came across an ordinary book with an extraordinary message. In the book, 52 Small Changes: One Year to a Happier, Healthier You, author Brett Blumenthal talks about one small but mindful change we can incorporate into our lives every week. The list provided was nothing extraordinary, drink water, sleep more, set time aside as alone-time, eat your vegetables, and so on. Theoretically, we know most of these things, whether we practice it or not is a different story. However, I loved the underlying concept in the book. The reason most of us are not able to hold on to our new year resolutions beyond the first two weeks of January and, for example, end up gaining more weight and losing more confidence, is because the changes we make are erratic, and unsustainable. Extremism rarely works and one big change is a result of many smaller changes.

I want to do a “52 small changes” project (I will not call it a challenge) and incorporate changes based on what I want out of my life. And I will make my own list as I go along. I will also try to write about it once a week. Accountability to others (and self) make a difference, and I will love it if you participate too, make your own list of changes you incorporate every week, and tag me (or write a comment or email or use the “contact form” on the upper right hand side of the blog page) to let me know what you are doing. I will not hold a gun to my forehead or beat myself up if, for any reason, I am not able to follow my plans during a particular week (and I hope you do the same). Treating myself with kindness is the precursor to anything I do in life. Sounds like a plan?

What are my big five goals for the next five years? Gaining health (physical, mental, and spiritual). Obtaining tenure. Investing in a home. Obtaining permanent residence. I see that I have four, and not five long-term goals at the moment, which is even better. However, none of these can be achieved overnight. For gaining health, I have to watch what I eat and drink, how much I move myself, what I do with my time and how much drama I allow myself to engage in. For obtaining tenure, I have to publish papers, obtain grants, and at an even smaller level, understand academic writing and money management. For permanent residence, I have to publish as well, so the smaller steps for obtaining permanent residence and obtaining tenure have overlaps. For a house, I have to research about what is available, what do I want, and how can I save better. I can already see that the four bigger goals have provided me with a list of more than twenty medium-sized goals that will easily culminate into more than 52 smaller changes over the next year. So looks like I am all set. I already practice some of the smaller changes that matter to me, but I will share them on a weekly basis nevertheless. And my biggest commitment for this initiative would be to make at least one blog entry every week, talking about what small change I adopted and how I have been doing. I know that there are weeks when I will be traveling or working on deadlines, and I will not be hard on myself if I am not able to keep up. But I will try.

I wonder if the wheels in your brain are rolling too, and what small, sustainable changes you think you can incorporate in your life. I would love it if you participated and shared your list as well as experiences. Please feel free to share your thoughts and ideas. 

sunshine