Me!

Appreciating the little joys of life

As you may read at the top of your screen, the title of my Substack is, ‘Architecture, Feminism and Me.’ If you are a constant reader of my blogs, you may know that I have already written about both Architecture and Feminism, but today let me share with you a little bit of me.

This month I turned 26 and my sister was extremely excited about my birthday, and unlike most of my birthdays, I was not too excited. I think this was because in my mind I was leaving the fun and carefree years of adulthood and am moving into the more serious, focused years of life. I am moving towards the sombre 30’s where often people are making enough money, are getting married and have most things sorted out. But for me this is not the case. Even though I am following my passion of Architecture, somewhere in my heart, I know that I am not where I envisioned myself to be. But during this whole process of feeling like I have not achieved enough to turn 26, I was listening to a conversation between Nikhil Taneja and Amit Varma, on The Seen and The Unseen podcast, where the two were discussing happiness, success and gratitude. Nikhil mentions that in our life we are constantly seeking success, and when we achieve some success, we are again looking for more, and this is where we lose out on happiness. Nikhil suggests, instead we try to be in the present and be thankful for what we have in every moment. Nikhil gives an example of him appreciating the sunrise he sees from his window every morning and the walks he gets to go on. His gratitude for these little moments made me realise that I too have a lot to be thanful for, and today, I will be sharing a few things that I am thankful for this year.

Let me begin with my birthday. This year, I got to celebrate my birthday in two different countries, but more than that, I got to celebrate my birthday with both my parents after almost a decade. I celebrated my birthday with my dad in Dubai and then I flew down home to celebrate my birthday with my mother. For me, turning 26 felt like turning 6, where I got all the love from my parents and got to be the little pampered girl I once was.

My birthday also marks the beginning of the end to a calender year, and almost every year, post my birthday, I begin to replay my year in my mind and try to list down my achievements throughout the year to figure out if my year was good or bad. This year was no different. While I began to list down my achievements this year, I realised that professionally this was not my favourite year. But then again, my mind recalled Nikhil’s words and I realised that I can not base the quality of my years through my professional achievements. Instead, I need to think of my year more holistically and celebrate all my achievements, no matter how small they are in my mind, no matter how personal they are and no matter where they fit in the timeline I mentally illustrated for myself. So this week I decided to celebrate myself and the year that 2022 has been. Since I am a visual person, I made a little postcard for myself to celebrate myself slightly more flamboyantly. Below is this cute poster that I made to celebrate Prarthna Misra in 2022.

A little celebration of 2022 for me!

I hope you see this poster and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. I also hope that this post is a reminder for you to celebrate yourself, every day, every week, and every year. I hope that you can recognise that 2022 has been a great year for you even if you saw failures and losses and I wish that you can recognise the  moments that make you happy and that you are grateful for these moments. We are all chasing success, but I hope that you AND I, both, can appreciate ourselves with or without our achievements and we can seek happiness and gratitude instead.