.....Just keep swimming (With a little help from my friends!)

I like to call myself an optimist. And mostly succeed in justifying the title. 'Glass half full, better luck next time, everything happens for a reason, just listen to a great song, but it smells great!' and many, many more are phrases you'll hear coming from me very often. And I do, really, truly believe in all of it! People who know me not so closely will always know me as 'that girl who's always smiling' but the ones closer are those who've seen the dark side. It does exist, yes. 


I've recently discovered, in the past year or so, that with optimism comes a certain sense of impracticality and recklessness which I'd learnt to accept about myself over the years. I mean who can be a realist and love the rains? Especially if you live in Delhi, there's more to hate about the season than there is to love. Coming back to the point, (*goes back up the paragraph to remind forgetful self*) I've always been slightly impractical and stuck to the belief that there is something good hidden in everything that happens to you. But this past year has brought days and even weeks of me finding it tough to stick to my guns. Like I said, only the poor, really close friends and family get to experience the ugliness of the dark side and are bombarded with depressing e-mails and texts, are subjected to phones not being answered and mostly are forced to spend time with (if they wish to) a terribly mopey, glum person. And nothing anyone says could get me out of those days, obviously, cos I'm usually the person saying those very things. I'm a really fun person when I'm happy. I bake, bring good music and awesome technology to people's lives and am just, in general, chirpy. (humility is obviously not one of my best virtues) Which is why most people around me are in a total mud-puddle when I'm bummed.


The reason I'm writing all of this random gyaan about myself, is because I'm a) trying to cheer myself up b) attempting to rekindle my love for blogging c) just need to vent to nobody and d) THERE IS AN UPSIDE! So, what I realized, 5 minutes ago, is that within this entire process I've also been able to sift my awesome, super-close, must-hold-on-to-till-life-ends friends from the friends-till-I'm-chirpy category. And that is a major upside for a person whose everyday happiness depends mostly on the people around her. 


And so, this is a shout-out (I don't usually like saying that but it is what it is) to my friends who called frantically, bombarded me with weirdo smileys, created pep-talks that would get through my thick head, were the calming voice on the phone, asked me to listen to 'raindrops keep falling on my head', sent me inspiring links, humored my randomness and just plain stuck around. I promise to send each one of you awesome cupcakes as soon as things get better, which I'm sure they will. (If you received a link to this blog in any form, congratulations! You will be invited to my wedding and be part of all of the good lists in my life.)


As for the rest, I have lists. And I keep grudges. Just you wait :P

I have a dream

You know how when you really, really want something, it seems that the entire universe is sending you signals that it's gonna happen? I've always wanted a restaurant/cafe of my own and it was a dream that I'd postponed, even for consideration, to 10ish years from now. And then the universe (or the optimist inside me) worked its magic!

I graduated from college (PG, not grad), and had some time on my hands and everyone around me suddenly seemed to be talking about businesses all the time. One of my best friends is reading 'The Secret' and is sure that if you keep believing that your dream will come true and keep saying it out loud- the universe will hear your prayers. She sends me a quote from the book everyday and they totally make sense! It's like horoscopes in the papers, it feels like the quote is about me, about my issues and about what was bothering me on that day. The book also says “The law of attraction says like attracts like. ... The law of attraction is giving you what you are thinking about. It is working all the time. What we do is we attract into our lives the things we want, and that is based on what we’re thinking and feeling.” It's a really simple, sweet thought and easy to implement, too.

Then, another really close friend sent me this:

Again, it felt like this was ABOUT my dilemma.I had to do something about this. So, I started a facebook page and have only received words of encouragement, as of now.

Then, there were ads about SME loans on TV, success and not-so-success stories about cafes showing up randomly on my Google searches, and just a lot of 'signs' that I thought the universe was sending me.

So, now, I've decided to prepone my dream. I don't have a business plan, a place, a chef or a bank account filled with money but I do really want to do this. And even though I know that businesses shouldn't be started out of love, but I'm not going to stop wishin' and hopin'. I'm trying to work out the logistics, and will hopefully see them through. My best friend, who lives in Bombay, and has always been the force of practicality and logic in my life, has decided to take on the tough role of the 'skeptic' and honestly, it feels like we've got it all covered.

With dreams in my eyes, shiny-ness in my heart, lots and lots of fear in my mind and the will to work really hard on this, I've decided to give this a real shot. 

To everyone who's reading this, if there's any way you can help or if there are any suggestions that you have, please let me know.

:)