#4. Workcation Break, November edition 2021
An insider view, Daylight savings, and NaNoWriMo
Hello!
The months after September often pass in a flurry- the days get shorter, the holiday season is upon us (both Indian and American) bringing its share of social gathering, gift exchanges, and associated joy.
Visiting friends and family who live across the globe gives you a chance to have experiences from a local’s perspective- you learn about restaurants’ specialties, about watering holes, an insider view into the lifestyle of a place, and of its local customs. I like learning about places in this way, stemming from a genuine curiosity about local favorites, grocery hauls, and cultural references- giving me an insider perspective and hence forming acquaintances to places where I have not lived.
Reading Corner
This month, my focus has been on managing a workcation, so I have been reading less frequently than I normally would. However, I do have an excellent travel book recommendation- Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.
A couple of years ago, I found this book at an airport bookstore while I was lounging in the waiting area, and against my normal practice decided to purchase the book. The story is a light-read and takes us through the life of Eleanor, a middle-aged woman living in the UK who works in an office. It would be incredibly boring if it wasn’t for the straightforward humor that Eleonor displays as she struggles with her social skills. There is a sub-plot of mental illness and I believe that it has been handled with the utmost care, without being judgmental or resorting to stereotypes.
Some of my favorite quotes are below :
Clothes, music, gadgets—although the designers like to think of themselves as free thinkers with unique ideas, they all adhere to a strict uniform.
There was a palpable sense of Friday joy, everyone colluding with the lie that somehow weekend would be amazing and that, next week, work would be different.
A philosophical question: if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? And if a woman who's wholly alone occasionally talks to a pot plant, is she certifiable? I think that it is perfectly normal to talk to oneself occasionally. It's not as though I'm expecting a reply. I'm fully aware that Polly is a houseplant.
I find lateness exceptionally rude; it’s so disrespectful, implying unambiguously that you consider yourself and your own time to be so much more valuable than the other person’s.
Greeting cards are preposterously expensive, given that they are fabricated from a small piece of printed cardboard. You get an envelope with it, I suppose, but still. You would have to work for almost half an hour in aminimum-wage occupation in order to earn enough to purchase a nice greeting card and a second-class stamp.
Have a book recommendation, write to me!
Writing Corner
I am on a writing break this month due to travel plans. However, all around the world, writers are participating in the contest NaNoWriMo i.e., National Novel Writing Month. While it may seem a tad ambitious to come up with a novel in a month, promoters of NaNoWriMo claim that it helps you build a writing discipline - writing 5000 words every day to help you get into a routine and helps you overcome procrastination. There is a whole lot of chatter happening in tumbler communities, Reddit threads, and on other online communities, from October, to form a run-up to the Novel writing Challenge in November. I hope to participate in one of them someday, just for fun sake, even if it weren’t to publish a novel explicitly.
Learning Corner
Some interesting things I came across on the internet :
Lounge Corner
Resharing this video of a fun-jam session that had gone viral a couple of months ago:
Thanks for reading!
See you in the next edition!
Pratiksha