Friday, February 13, 2015

It's gonna be rather adventurous!

In the beginning of the year, I had gotten back to this blog after a long break and happily wrote a post where I committed to be more regular at blogging. It's been more than a month since then and I am only writing now. So the regularity clearly isn't working. But that's because the other thing I wrote in the same post is working really well - i.e. not chilling out.

Yup, it's been a crazy month and a half so far! 

I have been insanely busy, sometimes not intently so, but it has all been exciting. 

Firstly, we finally managed to launch three episodes of my sitcom "Athazham"! And that too on my newly launched Facebook page Kathaah!  I am insansely excited about this!! Athazham was supposed to be pretty simple in its making, but somehow it turned out to be not so simple and involved quite a few backbreaking hours. There were the edits, music, sound design, food photography, recipe blog and what not. But thanks to my fantastic team, we finally did manage to launch them, that too to pretty overwhelmingly positive response. I am receiving several complimentary messages each day and am on cloud nine right now!

If you haven't watched Athazham yet, you can check it out here on this Youtube playlist. All three episodes are right there!

And I am also pretty relieved that there is finally a Facebook page for all our works to be in one place. It's been a long pending task that I had just managed to do. So that feels awesome too!

While you are at it, please also check out our Facebook page! (OK that's the last of my marketing/publicity for today, I promise). 

Secondly, I have begun work on the next project - a feature film! More details on that later but basically we have already started rehearsing and doing the pre-production work on it. It promises to be super duper exciting as well! 

Thirdly, a close cousin sister of mine is getting married in February and suddenly I find myself dancing away in preparation for the Sangeet night. I made "instructional" dance videos for our other cousins so that we can all prepare remotely and then hopefully put up a coordinated show during the Sangeet. That's also been great fun, albeit quite tiring! 

Other than these activities, I also had my mom and in laws visiting, so that was busy and fun as well. 

On top of this I have been regular with my workouts. I have sadly stopped my Bikram Yoga classes because they were taking up to 3 hours every time, including commute, which is a luxury I can't afford right now. I prefer to reduce the commute and work out at home instead, thereby maximizing the time I spend with the little one (who by the way is turning out to be a real hoot!). So I have been largely been doing Ashtanga Yoga home or following videos by FitnessBlender that I really love! 

I also managed to make a couple of sketches, so I feel awesome about that! 

Alright, so that's all that happened in the first month of the year. And now for what's going to happen. 

I am leaving Procter & Gamble after a decade of the most amazing time there! February 27th would be last day in this fantastic company and we are parting on the best of terms. So you might be wondering, if I love it so much, why am I leaving. 

Fair question and here's the answer. 

I had wanted to take a short time off and do a few things I have always wanted to - spend more time with the little one, make another feature film, go for a yoga retreat, travel around a bit, maybe a trek etc. etc. Sure, I had been able to squeeze all of this together with work in the past, but after a decade of juggling everything that I do, I really wanted to just step back, take a breather and do things in my own time. I didn't want to stretch myself top to toe every other day, which is what I had been doing but instead, give myself what I believe is a well deserved break. Also, after such a long time working in the same company, you begin to wonder what else is out there. I don't really know when and where I would work next but I am hoping the experience that would come my way would be new and refreshing!

So that's that. 
Which basically means that while one side of me is really going to miss P&G, I am really looking forward to new adventures coming my way - a sabbatical, a new feature film after a gap of 4 years, a new workplace after a few months and what not! I am so excited and maybe I will blog to capture these for posterity! 

But for now, I am going to enjoy the last few days at P&G, even as I plan my break! Can't wait!