These days it’s not rare to spot someone with a DSLR camera or an iPhone, snapping away their food, coffee, anything cute and trying to capture a day spent with friends/family or significant other. A few years back, people would have given you funny looks if you spent 5 whole minutes trying to get a picture instead of digging into your delicious meal but these days, it’s more accepted and more often than not people are too busy clicking their own food to notice.

Thanks to social media, it’s bringing out the photographer in everyone while without it a lot of people wouldn’t have even considered having it as a hobby. I like that though. I like that more and more people are getting artistic in their everyday lives and for others, it’s a way to remind them of a nice day. I am no stranger to this phenomenon and I do all of the above. However, I’ve been recently thinking about how much to capture and how much to soak up.

It’s a constant struggle trying to decide whether I want to document a memory that I can enjoy for the rest of my life or do I want to live in the moment and risk not having any pictures to share? I think the question I should be asking is which one of the two makes me happy? When you spend so much time trying to please others – whether it is friends, family or the social media algorithm, I feel like you forget to spend as much time on yourself. Capturing memories shouldn’t only have to be for others, but it can totally be something personal. I can’t help but wonder if I overshare which can take the joy out of it sometimes.

When we usually tell someone about a recent holiday, we immediately reach for our phones and show them pictures. They appreciate them and then move on to the next topic. How about you describe a place that you didn’t capture, share a little experience you had at that spot and leave the rest to their imagination? I feel it’s more engaging and a bit more personal. I want to have more conversations of that kind which inspires someone to travel to that exact place and see what unique experience it brings them. Conversations that leave people wondering about that place long after the catch-up.

Sometimes I just want to feel the breeze on my face, smell the ocean air, listen to the rustling of leaves, watch the sky go bright pink and not feel guilty about not having captured it. I want to wear a very pretty dress and remember how it made me feel instead of how many likes it got. I want to celebrate the little milestones without everyone’s approval because I am proud of myself and sometimes that is enough. I want to cherish these little things and not have anything else on my mind. I’m sure you’re thinking some people can absolutely do both – I have to agree but personally, I’m looking for a slower approach to life. I will still attempt to capture my life - the important and beautiful bits but also let myself be completely involved with experiences instead of thinking ahead all the time.

Here’s to enjoying more ice creams over letting them melt until I’ve got a perfect shot of them and to being spontaneous and recognizing moments that are meant to be just mine.

A gap year is quite common for someone who has just finished high school and has not started college however it’s  a taboo when it comes to mid college or post college gap years. Once you’re in the game, you’re expected to become a career focused person without much thought given to what you actually want.  In some societies, taking a gap year in the middle of college is considered a blunder, like you’re going to screw up the rest of your life if that gets on your academic records. I grew up in a society like that.

Taking a gap year in the middle of a course was unimaginable even when I felt overwhelmed or needed to rethink some parts of my life.  A part of me wanted to get over with it but a part of me also wanted to slow down. Although I am happy to have finally finished my undergraduate study this April, I think I’ll give the gap year a chance now.

After almost two months into a social media detox, I think I’ve finally reached a point where I can look back and report on how this thing’s been working out. If you didn’t know, I decided to take a little break from my blog + social media on the 3^rd of March, 2017. I won’t go into the reasons why I decided upon this but I will say I had a lot going on in my life at the time with very little free time to myself. In those hours of peace, I wanted to be by myself, do things that can help me wind down instead of taking up more pressure than I could handle.

I’m not the one to fake post about how great my life is when it isn’t and nor did I want to be that whiny person complaining everyday – so I thought this would be the best bet. It was a spontaneous decision and one that I will stand by because it has helped me gain some perspective on my blog and how I want to proceed with it.

I’m super close to the 2 year anniversary of my little space on the internet and I’ve never felt the need to write a post talking about what it all means to me until now. You may or may not have noticed my irregular appearances on this blog and this is not a post talking about excuses why I haven’t been churning up content but a heart to heart about what I’ve been feeling. I have always wanted to write ever since I was a child. I would spend hours even as a ten year old conjuring up make believe stories about bears, children, haunted houses and so on. It was my favourite thing to do and a part of who I was and have grown up to be.