Fuzzy Crystal Ball

• btw guys, you remember I did GYLC when I was in Grade 12? So this girl I was with then, XXXX, she just spent her summer travelling on her own to Nepal, Pakistan and Jammu (in India) for a uni research project on theatre groups and how plays build communities; she was given a grant by her uni, and some other cool programs, and her blogpost is amazing. I feel like she's about todo some AMAZING things in her life, and I feel uselss
• 
  

  22:27

  Actuallly she has a wordpress

  and just wow

  like MashAllah

  she's so smart and so very lucky

  I mean why am I comparing myself and feeling meh

  I'm lucky that I even know what an internet is. It's so easy to look at other people and feel unsatisfied about life. She's pursuing a degree in Foreign Services, with a concentration on Human Rights and Culture apparently

  Why didn't *I* think like this when I was 18 and trying to decide what to do with my life tongue emoticon I guess part-time social justice issues-person is what I'd be doing.

  I've been thinking about my career you guys

  The more I think about it, the more I can see myself doing something on my own (as in business) as opposed to actually working someplace
• 
  

  22:35

  
  

  and even if I do work somewhere, what will I even do? I LOVE Finance as a thing to study and work on, but the kind of job I want is so far and few. I can focus on other stuff, I guess--but what? I don't even have a passion, I just have lots of interests, like drama, and languages, and charity/volunteerism, the FREAKING PODCAST tongue emoticon
• 
  

  22:35

  
  

  we should work on the stuff RIGHT NOW! Like RIGHT NOWWW~~

  FInalize names and get a Facebook page, and have a photoshoot as SOON as I get home wherein we can edit just our sillhoutes or something

  My biggest problem is, what if I start working and then I HATE it? D: Okay I REALLY hope the guy I'm marrying is a loot more stable and well-settled and wouldn't mind if I just indulged in these interests and took care of the kids and stuff

  like I can TOTALLY be a mom

  But I can't ASPIRE to be a mom!

  But I WANT to be an at home mom that does interesting stuff, as opposed to a working mom and that doesn't have enough flexibilty to take careof her kids

  I mean flexibility in terms of time

  I don't want nannies

  I want three kids ALL to myself, and I can take them on field trips after school based on whatever they're learning in class and just get them interested in EVERYTHING so they can also be smart and wonderful citizens of the world

  I feel like I know what I wantmy kids to be like more than what *I* want to be like

  ugh

Anxiety: Conversations with Besties Part 2

"Guys, I need to tell you both somehting

I've been having anxiety problems

Like even after uni was over and stuff, I've been having anxiety over small little things

I mean the smallest of things would push me over the edge

And it's happpening on a regular basis right now, and I just wanted you guys to know

Like I wake up with knots in my stomach for no reason. NOTHING AT ALL would trigger the same reaction as if I were about write an exam or something

I can't eat properly without feeling like puking

This has been there for a month now

In DXB itself all this was happening

I'd get nervous and I mean REALLYYY nervous and anxious over like, visiting the doctor, or checking Facebook (!!! FACEBOOK!!!!) and other stupid shit. I can't sleep peroperly at night

my heart hurts looool

I feel light-headed

Idk guys

I thought it was all in my head, like maybe I was making it up but then... come on

I talked to my aunt and she was like yep, you have anxiety issues (she's a psychologist and so now I feel a little bit more justified about all of this)

I didn't want to tell anyone because it seems so stupid and dumb but then I want to tell you guys

I get fidgety and I start rubbing my fingers or scratching some part of my body or some dumb thing like that

I wouldnt have told you guys if I was having this convo face-to-face

I dont even want to discuss this, I jjust want to tell you guys

Bc I dont knnow what im going to do to deal withit yet"

Conversations with Besties Part 1

• 
  

  "Okay so I've been watching the Before movies

  
  

  Before Sunrise, Sunset and now I'm going to watch Midnight
• 28/06/2015 20:41

  
  

  
  

  Its scary for me guys. You know how I've said that my greatest fear is waking up and not loving the person I'm married to? Like almost regretting the marriage,I mean? Well I KIND OF GOT OVER IT because tbh because of Rhett and Link and how they talk about their wives and stuff; they"re not romantic about it, just honest--like, they know they each habe faults and sometimes its hard but you never regret it. You could hate each other one second and still be in love, its just not the romantic love we think it'll be like. But my biggest fear is, what if I get over it? Or worse yet, wake up and realize I love someone else? What if I have all these what ifs that I come back to? I mean, thats worst case scenario but it can happen. I am LEGIT having a mini panic attack just thinking about it. Like my hands are sweaty and I feel anxious. Anyway, this movie has effed me over because I feel scared and sad again"
• 
  
• 28/06/2015 20:42
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  "And love is so weird, and human connections are so weird, and the whole what if thing... fml"
• 
  

  28/06/2015 20:48
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  "I told Alphin that I found Before Sunset sad and he"s like "What? How was that sad?" LIKE HELLO DID YOU EVEN WATCH THE MOVIE"

  
  

  
  
• 28/06/2015 20:56

  
  

  
  

  "And this XXXX also he's just like "yeah this happens, I guess when you're older its expected" like WHAT

  
  

  My heart is srsly breaking into a million pieces thinking this might be a real thing and this guy is like yeah sure whatever"
• "Okay so these Before movies are about this couple and what situation they're in 10 years apart. Like the first movie was in 1995, and thy were 20-something, they second movie was released in 2004 and they were 30 and now 2015, they're 40. It ends nicely, so that's at least a plus haha. As in, they are with each other and they love each other even though they fight and stuff. Which is good, and reassuring, and hopefull. Like, as long as you marry the right person, you're fine no matter what. BUT HOW DO I KNOW IF THIS IS THE RIGHT PERSON????? Like when I marry him, how do I know? I love him when I marry him, but then... 10 years later, then what? I would only know if I married the right guy when I'm 40 or 50, because THEN looking back, I know we went through shit and we stuck it out, see? But untill then how do I know? I have exactly only one thing planned for the future: CFA. That's all. I just want that. If I end up having a career, then great. If not, its still okay, but I want CFA. Thats all. And ofc to be married to the love of my life and have healthy, happy kids. Yeah what I meant by that line, was that as a girl I'm freaking out about how I may not marry the right one, but as a guy, XXX's like yeah whatever. GUYS are so non-committal sometimes. You know what I mean? Like ALL guys, XXX, XXXX also; when I tell them, "Why be in a relationship if you dont want to marry this girl?" They all have the same wtf! reaction. Like, okay? You love her, but you dont want to marry her? Then why do you love her at all? Why call it love? Just call it lust, right? This is the thing guys dont get, and they may never actually get it. It's probs very easy for guys to get over something like that; that being said, who's to say the guy I marry wont get over ME easily and just be like meh?"
• 
  

Watching Movies and Talking Commitment

"1. Awww XXXX!!! I miss talking to you IRL!! We need to meet ASAP. I want to say before July 3rd because I'm leaving to India then, but you're fasting, right? :s EDIT: OKAY REALLY? Dude I didnt know what religion you were, I assumed that you were Muslim because I remember seeing a picture of your sister in a headscarf! 😅🙈 2. Wes Anderson's movies don't have a plot as such; they just narrate a story Moonrise Kingdom was amazing, and was The Darjeeling Limited, but several fans agree that The Royal Tenenbaums is his best work. It's so wonderfully done! :') 3. I'm learning French on Duolingo! :P Comment ça va? Yeah we really don't find people who communicate using ASL, I have come across exactly 0 people actually tongue emoticon But I'm drawn to it, I don't know why! I need people to practise French with though! I know a few people in uni; do you know XXXX? :s (I don't mean you hahaha ) XXXX speaks French! As do XXXX and XXXX, so I have people to practice on when I get to uni 4. I haven't gotten into musicals yet!!! See, this is ANOTHER genre I want to get my teeth into!! Esp Rocky Horror, and Hairspray! I will get into after my Wes Anderson spree. 
5. Hahahaha XXXX I haven't been in a solid, proper relationship ever, but I have many thoughts and feelings too; I'm forced to think about these things because my parents are already talking about marriage and stuff. Relationships are hard enough without having parents push you toward someone. Please DO tell me what you think, because this is something I'm exploring right now. Rhett and Link, in their podcast with Philip DeFranco? Well, Link especially was talking about the first year of his marriage was hard and his wife and him both were second-guessing stuff but then they never left each other because they always came back to "We made a committment and we will stick to it." LIKE HOW SCARY IS THAT?? You're telling me??? That these two people who DECIDED TO MARRY EACH OTHER??? Were all UGHHH I HATE YOU in their first year?! WHAT! But I mean, they then had kids and they seem very happy in their marriage and stuff so I guess you love someone differently as the years go by. Like initially you love them like in the movies, and then after a while more than love it's companionship and comfort. You love them differently, I guess. I mean, you end up being a team when your kids are involved and I guess that changes the way you love your SO. I mean, I think that's true in any relationship, right? I certainly love my parents differently than I did before. I see them in a different light; like these two people have been sacrificing so much shit for me and my bro and they still do it everyday and they don't think of it much. They're not just parents, they're people too, and they are so flipping awesome. I've known them all my life! Like jeeezzz these people are the people that I've known the longest. They've cared for me and whatnot and they've made me who I am today. They've SHAPED people. That's so weird and strange and heroic. Being a parent sounds crazy, and when you're married you get to do that with someone.
Hahahaha I wouldn't say I'm passionate about film! I love watching movies and I love being a part of wonderful projects that I understand. We all want to feel things, right? xP as a book lover you know what I mean! More than being a critic, you want to be in it for the ride. And there are some people out there who're doing SO MANY cool things with the film medium!! I can't wait to watch Linklator's trilogy! And Boyhood too! He took 12 years to make Boyhood! He used the same actors for 12 whole years andthe movie follows the story of a family for 12 whole years. Can you imagine the amount of thought that would have gone into that? And the actor who got to play said character, he would have been able to connect to the story in such a different way because he grows up WITH the caharcter he plays and his experience in itself is something I would like to read about The story is going to be full of symbolism and there are going to be sooo many parts that I'll miss the first time I watch it, I'm 100% sure. Because if you have ANY director at all, working on a project for this long, rest assured he's overthought every aspect and has put effort into every detail, and I want to see and enjoy ALL OF THEM."

Wes Anderson and Movie-Watching

• 
  

  "Hey XXXX Summer's going great! I'm watching a bunch of Wes Anderson movies, and trying to learn French and ASL tongue emoticon How're things with you?"
• 
  
• 22/06/2015 18:36
  

  
  
  

  
  

  
  

  "Ramadan slows down the entire middle east, I think tongue emoticon Sorry XXXX, you must be fasting too, right? :s Is it okay to talk about movies at this time? With you, I mean? French, I've ALWAYS wanted to learn, but never found the time to. ASL, I was on a plane (don"t remember which one) and you know the safety instructions? They had a person translate them to ASL on the corner and I realized, wait I should be able to talk to non-speakers too! Thus, ASL ASL is the easiest of the sign languages to find online classes on, I feel. I dont even know WHAT the other sign languages are! Sooo the Wes Anderson movies are because of the Oscars I've hardly found time to watch anything at all during the sem, so all I watched were trailers And if I had time to spare, I watched a few tv shows here and there and maaybbbee a movie or two. I realized I waa waaayyy out of the movie scene so I made a list of all the movies that I need/want to watch and out of all the Oscar-nomimated ones this year, the Grand Budapest Hotel really caught my eye. Funny thing is, I still haven't watched Grand Budapest I Googled Wes Anderson movies because his story-telling and visual direction seemed really cool; it reminded me of the story-telling concept that Pushing Daisies had. So I started off with Moonrise Kingdom instead because I had heard the best stuff about it, and it was AWESOME. 5 tweets later, XXXX, a fellow UOWD student (and friend) was all, "Wes Anderson is this real deal!" and we proceeded to talk about his other films and I realized that I what I REALLY wanted to do was watch all of his movies (which I was going to anyway, because I really liked Moonrise Kingdom, but now that there was someone else fuelling this show, I HAVE to watch )"
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  22/06/2015 18:41
  

  
  
  

  
  

  
  

  "I watched The Darjeeling Limited then, because it was set in India and that was sooo lovely too! I saw The Royal Tenenbaums today, and... well, you know how every movie experience is not just the movie itself, but what state of mind you're in, and how well you're able to connect to the film from your own life experiences? So I feel like I missed a lot of stuff in this movie even though I watched the whole thing in one sitting. I need to rewatch it."
• 22/06/2015 18:43
  

  
  
  

  
  

  
  

  "To Anderson's credit, this is the first ever time I have felt like I needed to rewatch something because I felt like I didn't get all the details in one sitting. Usually, I don't rewatch it, I just put aside and forget about it, but this... I feel like I will enjoy it more when I watch it a second time. Movies that make you feel diff things at diff times in your life are the BEST kind of movies."
• 
  
• 22/06/2015 18:4

  
  

  
  

  "Hahahaha sorry XXXX! I'm glad you're open to reading this long ramble!"
• 
  
• 22/06/2015 18:50
  

  
  
  

  
  

  
  

  "Juno was actually a movie that also made me feel diff things at a second viewing. The first time I saw it, I disliked Jennifer Garner's character a LOT. I cried (happy tears) for Juno and Michael Cera's character (as you can see, I remember names amazingly well). But the second time I watched, the star of the whole movie WAS Jennifer Garner for me. I was much more open to her, and I could perceive the cracks in her marriage to that guy she was with and I cried for HER. I was older and wiser And my priorities and fears as a person had gone from "finding love" to "keeping a marriage intact." My fear IS STILL long-term committment/making a marriage/relationship work because though I know it's possible to be married forever (no one I personally know is divorced) I also know it's easy to get bored of a person. I GET BORED OF PEOPLE EASILY, XXXX D: But theennn I realized wait hold on, if I'm married then we'd have kids and then the kids always pull a family together and now I have a much more optimistic view and I'm SO hungry for movies about the "after happily ever after". You know what I mean?"
• 
  

  22/06/2015 18:52
  

  
  
  

  
  

  
  

  "And like, XXXX, the same guy, told me about Linkalator(?) and this guy made these movies called Before Sunrise, Before Sunset and Before Midnight

  
  

  And they were released in 1993, 2003 and 2013, and they follow a couple's relationship with a 10-year gap

  
  

  LIKE HOW COOL IS THAT?

  
  

  He"s the guy behind Boyhood! Another Oscar movie of the year

  
  

  So yeah "
• 
  "The one thing I hate about myself with stuff is that *I* want to do stuff. And I say that is a bad thing because often I want to be the performer and not just be performed at. I want to PUT UP events in uni, and not just attend them. I want to SING and PARTICIPATE, but not when it comes to films like these. These, I just want to see and enjoy, and see them again and enjoy them again, but differently."
• 
  

I Know What To Do With This

I'm going to make this blog all about the conversations I have with my friends/people because what better way to capture myself in this moment in time better than copy-pasting actual Facebook conversations I have with them?
They're all honest and I promise not to change anything in it (not even spelling errors).
I doesn't even have to make sense or be about anything in particular. They're just going to be small excerpts of the conversations and messages I exchange over the internet.
What an awesome art-sy project this is. I bet this would be in an actual art exhibition one day. It capture everything my 21 year old self is.
Lovely.

I just want to say that this idea struck me when I was talking about my movie-watching experience with a friend, and I've been toying with it ever since because I've found that I have really weird/interesting exchanges with people that I may actually forget about soon. I want to remember every single thing, though. Every thought, every fear, every feeling.

So yes.
'Exchanges' has now been born.

Things I Believe In

Things I value, and what to be more aware of, in no particular order:

1. Feminism.
2. Human rights.
3. EDUCATION.
4. Animal conservation.
5. Books that make you think.
6. ANYone doing great things who's of Indian origin because #IndiaProud.
7. Hinduism and exploring spirituality.

I thought this list was needed to make me kind of assess what kind of person I am, and what kind of person I want to be.
This list is going to be constantly changing, of course, but at this point of time, these are things that I like reading about.

Finding My Place in The World

You know what, forget about the whole story-line story idea. YES I WILL DO IT ONE DAY, this summer in fact! But I want to just vent a little bit about how I'm 21 now and I'm having an early-onset of a quarter-life crisis because I feel like I'm at the edge of doing really cool stuff and all I can think about besides Finance and CFA and work is YouTube and vlogging and podcasts, and just being involved in local theater programs and just... I need a creative outlet, I really do, and I have no idea why my heart/head is steering in this direction NOW, but can you imagine just coming up with funny scripts with your friends and making silly YT videos for the fun of it? Because I can! And I want to! I feel like I've always wanted to do this, but I never realized that this is what I wanted to do.
I have all these plans and ideas, but by God, how am I going to make these come to fruition if all of this depends on other people? Because more than wanting to do this myself, I need others who would want to do it just as much as me!
This blog is DEFINITELY just a product of my quarter-life crisis, and I CANNOT guarantee that this will last but maybe it will, okay >.>

Okay JUST to be clear, I want to do this for FUN and as a creative outlet, but I DO want to take this seriously. I guess the word I'm looking for is... hobby.

--Vanu

P.S. And you know what, knowing hat I'd be married in the next 5 years or so is NOT helping this crisis because it's like, "WHAT HAVE I ACHIEVED??? I'M NOT READY FOR MARRIAGE!!! I HAVE MY WHOLE LIFE AHEAD OF ME!!! I CAN'T BE ROOMMATES FOR LIFE WITH SOMEONE YET!!!"
And since marriage usually equates to little kids, the follow up thoughts are always, "I CAN'T BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANOTHER HUMAN!!!! I CAN'T EVEN COOK YET!! I CAN'T BE A PARENT!!!! I CAN'T EVEN CLEAN UP AFTER MYSELF!!!!????"

Inroduction

I haven't really decided what direction I want to take with this blog yet, but I'm sure of one thing: I want it to be a summer writing project. I'm not sure if these are going to be one-shots or f it's going to be a series of chapters chronicling the same story line yet, but you know what?
I have a folder on my laptop that says 'Writing Ideas' and it has all these story-lines that I've penned down and they have not plot or anything, but I want to change that. I want to make these one-page summaries that I wrote down once upon a time into short-stories AT LEAST.

So mayybbee this will be better updated than the other projects/blogs that I took up?

--Vanu

P.S. I just want to get it out there that I had/still have a whole new blog entitled 'Vanu Watches Doctor Who' which has no new posts as of now because I ALWAYS watch the show after the finale has been aired. That's not a decision I made out of choice; I just don't have the time to watch a lot of shows these days! Ah uni, I still love you though.