Random Appreciation Day

While I’m thinking how to start this piece of random blog today, let’s start with whatever is showing at the bottom right corner of my laptop screen. It’s 7.27 AM on 1st March and if the weather guys got this right and my Wi-Fi is pulling out the right data, it’s 22 degree Fahrenheit and mostly sunny out there. Today is “Graduate Student Appreciation Day” at my school which essentially means we will probably have some “not so good, not bad either” kind of breakfast and lunch with our friends together at campus. In light of this event though, I would like to appreciate whatever tiny little sun rays blessed me during the first two months of 2023 so let’s stop my morning blabbering and get to the point, shall we?

I’m one of those people (and I’m not proud of our kind honestly) for whom unfortunately landmark-time-scales matter a lot. What I’m implying is if I want to start something new and significant, I would rather do it on a Monday, or 1st January, or my birthday and so on and so forth. The problems with that approach are manifold and I don’t want to start a rant again but will just mention one: a lot of my “Yay! Let’s do this” resolution craps involve my body and that sad guy doesn’t understand 1st January, Mondays or weekends. So by the time that sudden outburst of motivation eventually runs out of the system, I've already overdone whatever my poor soul could endure and more. And if somehow this doesn’t happen in God's good grace or for my mom’s prayer, two other ill-fate-sorry-ass monsters come into play: one is the monster in my head who plans random sudden trips and the other is the monster of flu, Covid and all those other such illnesses. And when I come back from either of those after possibly a week of pain and ruin, for a guy like me, who as much as loves routine and system but didn’t nurture those throughout his entire life, there goes my hope of salvation.

Much to my awe and disbelief, this year so far has been different. Yeah, please stop that judgmental cloud right there in your mind before it pours: “Oh poor dear Rashef! It’s just been two months, don’t get over excited please.” Yeah, stop it. I know how the calendar works and this is neither excitement nor a certificate of accomplishment. It’s a mere appreciation post and I would like to appreciate a few things today.

Today marks the two straight months of hitting the gym and six weeks of dieting seriously and I’m thankful of how it has gone so far (minus the tiny piece of lower back pain that comes and goes and leaves me worried often if I’m gonna make it any worse someday). During these two months, I have gone from a not-that-structured full body workout to a pretty systematic upper, lower and cardio split. I have increased the frequency from 3 days/week to 5 days/week and very recently started playing badminton too a couple of days/week; though way-to-go to call it a habit or routine. Most importantly, now I know (mostly) what I’m gonna eat over the week and don’t just pick and cook things at the whim of my instant desire. As we all know (if you don’t, go read!) it takes months to see any significant changes in your body but I guess weight scale (well a good one) doesn’t lie.

I started listening to Audiobooks with a very skeptical mind; honestly the idea of it didn’t excite me at all at the beginning. I probably read somewhat around 400 books in my life but there are two worrying facts in that data: almost all of those were read in my teenage when social media wasn’t big enough (at least in Bangladesh) to corrupt your soul to the bone and secondly, those 400 books were written by just 4-5 writers. So when I started my own writing, thinking of noble ideas was not an issue for me because I didn’t read or see enough to be influenced by others. But what I now understand, in terms of writing style, I hardly knew there are so many different ways of portraying your thoughts, outlining your ideas, shaping and progressing your stories. Going back to the audiobook, I started listening to those for the second time this year (last year was a failure) and I can’t be enough grateful about it! I had a miserly goal of reading 12 books in 2023 as I was not confident at all if I would be able to get back to reading ever again. Well how wrong I was! It fills my heart with joy, literally, that I have already finished my reading challenge this year by completing 12 books and now pushed the challenge to 20. During this span of two months, I have read incredible books like Flowers for Algernon, Adarsha Hindu Hotel, Aranyak, some parts of the famous Little House series and so many more. Some other day, some other time, I would like to write more elaborately about all those books.

There are fellow PhD folks around me who publish papers every day it snows in January (well I do the same but they maintain the frequency of the east coast whereas I go more with Florida and Texas). And then there are PhD folks who have spent enough years to not-know what’s going on with their research but they are there anyway. My point is, it’s pointless to compare because PhD is more like a journey and everyone's journey, everyone's struggle is different. It’s not like all other degrees that we have piled up to reach here where at the end, they rate you with a number: 4.0, 3.8, 3.5 and blah blah. So I would like to appreciate that I’ve finally finished the long-due draft of our 3rd paper (1 published, 1 under review) last month. Though knowing my professor, I totally understand it will now go through a series of washing and drying before finally I get to wear it but that’s alright (I guess?).

I would like to appreciate that I picked up working on one of my most favorite novel plots that I developed probably back in 2012. This is the third novel I’m working on right now which is on a little shy of 8000 words now. The second novel that I’m working on is on 21000 words, I think it will need a good 10 to 15 thousand words more to be completed. I’ve already finished the first draft of my first complete novella last year and hopefully will start working on its second draft soon. For a little more than two weeks, I’ve been trying to put roughly 4000 words on paper on a weekly basis which is going fine so far but again in one of those states where I can’t say with confidence if it’s sustainable or not.

Financially, I’m at a rougher patch than I have ever been in my life and it’s almost at the stage where I can’t pat in my back and say silently “It’s alright dude”. And while being already right on a hot pan, I decided to jump on the fire and started paying one of my closest juniors to be my assistant in almost all of my creative endeavors. As our creative juice, more or less, flows in the same direction, he gladly resigned from his job which was obviously more rewarding in terms of financial aspect but just the opposite for his soul. Together, we started a YouTube channel, solely for a money-making prospect, which we hope will be somewhat fruitful at some point next year. We are also working together in some music and short films production but all those are in a very immature state to even be mentioned.

There might be some other things I've been chasing recently but whatever, they are not on top of my head right now. This year is crucial for me as I’m trying to graduate at some point, probably in the last part; also searching for a job; also trying to get a permanent residency in the US. So there are a lot of things on my plate and if you believe in prayers and tend to pray, do pray for me maybe?

Lastly I would like to appreciate all the small things going on around me. Very happy about my sister’s visit to Bangladesh and the fact that my parents finally got to see Meherish. Equally happy that Ilham came back from Bangladesh and I get to play with her almost every week. So happy about my friend Christy and her cute little baby Vivi; her snaps warm my day. Happy about Farhad bhai getting a job of his liking without any struggle and also about it being within a driving distance (at least as long as I’m here) away. Happy about my friend Rakin and his wife Trona taking all the trouble to make me their travel companion from time to time. Happy about a great reunion at DC that we had last month. Happy about random winter walks with Shoron, lazy phone arguments with Sajib, creative brainstorming with Anim, weekend hangouts with my Indian folks, evening library sessions with Ibrahim bhai. I know anything can change in any single moment and things can abruptly go south all of a sudden. But for now, for today, I would like to be grateful and to appreciate where I am, with all of you around me.