Ruchira's Ramblings

Lately, I have been trying to confuse my Spotify algorithm. Yeah, I know. We usually try not mess up our feeds, as I sternly told my friend who sent me a reel from a film that I absolutely do not want in my algorithm. But well. When I started Spotify, I picked on songs that I liked and played them on loop. Soon enough, they caught on and sent me a playlist. And for two years, I shuffled that same playlist, playing songs that got me into an adventurous head-space, beats, rhythm and voice. I wasn't listening anymore. I was zoning out. This isn't probably so much Spotify's fault as it was mine. I was using music to escape instead of paying attention.  And then I got bored. I shuffled and changed and came back and shuffled and it seemed that there wasn't a song left that I liked without engaging in mental cosplay. Again, not the songs' fault, but mine. And so I have been trying to remember how I used to listen to music before Spotify. Before we had our music on our phon...

Sorry, it has been a while. Things just pile up on one another, you know. But here’s the main news. The thing I’ve been waiting for since last December finally happened. Last month, on the 16 th , I got my TARDIS driving license. Which is to say, I successfully defended my PhD thesis. What? I’ve been waiting to make ‘Doctor’ themed jokes for a while now. But you know the strangest thing? Happy as I was (and still am) about the whole thing, the immediate aftermath of it felt a bit deflating. Like, what am I supposed to do with myself now? I mean, I have enough on my plate, don’t get me wrong- classes to teach, scripts to evaluate (how is about 80% of my life consumed by examinations and grading? I seem to remember these being a lot less frequent when I was a student myself!), data to collect and enter into endless excel sheets (did not sign up for this, smh) and then order and reorder, supervising student drama rehearsals, organizing intra-college poster contests and so on and so forth....

  I’ve been looking for things to say.   I have been afraid of staring at blank pages. What if someday I have nothing to say anymore? What if nothing I say interests anyone anymore? What if no one hears me? What if they hear me and laugh at my naiveté? So what am I going to write about? Like most of my recent posts, this too has been weeks and months in the making. I’ve been running away from saying the things I want to say. What if I say too much? Share too much? What if they laugh and roll their eyes, muttering about my presumptions? What if no one says a damn thing and I fall through the rabbit-hole of silence once again? On some days, I listen to one song on loop, willing it to weave a story in my head that transports me from my present. On other days, I run through my playlists, discarding old favourites like a moody teenager picking at food, too distracted to allow for the distraction of music and rhythm. Somebody perhaps I’ll sit down and write songs again, feel the...