Learning through experience and error

CategoryDecluttering My Life

Decluttering My Life #4: Project 333 Winter Edition

In Decluttering My Life, The Archive
November 27, 2017
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Let me start off by saying that I am not a minimalist… at least, not yet. However, I am trying to find a balance between what I need, want and the ideas of minimalism and decluttering. I managed to declutter my closet, workspace, and relationships in the last one year. At least, to some extent. I’m still working on them. It’s a constant and ongoing pursuit if you ask me. As...

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Decluttering My Life #2: My Attempt At Project 333

In Decluttering My Life, The Archive
July 23, 2017
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I went to H&M yesterday to get a T-shirt. Guess how many I got? One. Now, that may seem absurd. I needed one T-shirt, I got one. We’re all aware that this is not how store shopping works. You usually go to buy one thing and then see something really cool and then another thing catches your eye and you’re coming home with bags in your hands instead of just one small package. That...

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Decluttering My Life #1: The Cupboard and the Table

In Decluttering My Life, The Archive
April 26, 2017
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This post is in the series, Decluttering My Life. Look around yourself and try to find the things you haven’t touched in a long while. Be honest and you’ll see there are so many things you bought because they looked cool and then didn’t use them at all. Now, you have two choices. Start using them if you can or give them away. Giving could be donating or selling and both these...

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Learning through experience and error

About The Content

There are two kinds of blog posts here as of mid-2018 – The Journal and The Words.

The Journals are thoughts, lessons, events that unfold in my life word-for-word and as barebones as I can put them out there.

The Words are creative pieces, narratives, short-stories that take from my life but did not happen word-for-word.

You can read more about this change here.

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Deepansh Khurana

Blogger and writer from Dehradun, India. I'd say I love coffee but don't we all? I find stories, people and experiences. I blog about them.

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All my life I've heard platitudes about doors. Push them open, knock them down, and even make your own, if you're so unfortunate to never come across one. True happiness, they said, lies beyond the figurative door. Yet, on a random day when I wasn't feeling particularly peachy, I found my hand on the knob of a not-so-special door. For some reason, I stopped. Just then, I had an epiphany. I realised it was never about which side of the door I felt awry on rather, it was about the fact that something was amiss in the first place. I've never opened a door to escape how I felt ever since that day. #doors #writersofinstagram #bloggersofinstagram #blogging #writing #amwriting #shotbypixel #teampixel #pixelperfect #landour #mussoorie #dehradun #valley #life #feelings #escape #anecdotes #random #vintage
I was always scared of roller-coasters and rides that went too far up into the sky. I was scared of a lot of things, and yet I did them eventually. I'm still scared of a lot of things but I'm sure if I want to, I'll manage to do them. I've learnt one thing over the years. It's a really simple but convoluted lesson—lie to yourself. Your brain has spent years developing the mould you're stuck in. It was to protect you, and it worked. It served its purpose. Now, you're stuck and you want to break out of the mould but you can't because of the same narrative. It is the same loop of the same things you've always told yourself. This is where you lie. You lie to yourself and tell yourself that you've never been scared of the thing you think scares you. It takes a little bit of convincing, a bit of a nudge and a leap of faith but it works, more or less. We're always in flux and always growing, but only if we allow ourselves to grow. Sometimes, the stories we tell us about ourselves are our biggest obstacles, really. How do you lie to yourself though? A friend's comment comes to mind, "Close your eyes, if you're dead scared, but you have to try that coaster once. You'll want to get on it again. Trust me."
For a long while I can’t put a strict number on, I embraced grey. You could find grey in all I did and all I had. The colour, or the logical lack of it, dominated everything that went on in my life. There was grey on the clothes I wore, and the shoes I kicked, and the bag I put my stuff in and yet, it did not stop there. For you know, grey was in my decisions and my experiences. I made choices—ambiguous ones. I did things that did not fit well on either side. That was the worse kind of grey for someone who views life in binary, but I was stuck. You see, I was walking a fine line. In everything I did, I walked the line. A misstep here and I’d get splashed in overwhelming colour; a slip there and I’d be covered in the nothingness of black. The line, however, was always coloured grey. The line started to feel like home. On a random evening some weeks ago, I pulled open my closet door, and I ignored the stack of grey t-shirts sitting in the corner waiting for me to pick one of them up. Without thinking, I wore the most colourful of all my clothes that day; I wore maroon. I met you that evening, and since then, grey doesn’t feel so attractive anymore, and since then, colour doesn't feel so overwhelming anymore. #life #love #grey #random #colours #metaphor #writersofinstagram #writing #amwriting #words #sky #shotbypixel #teampixel #pixelperfect
One morning, I woke up. I woke up only to look out the window at the sky which had not felt bright in a long while. I woke up to a kiss—an honest one. I opened my eyes but I decided to not get up immediately. Not out of laziness, no. On the contrary, I wanted to savour how peachy I felt, how inspired I was, and how happy I knew I could be now that I had felt it so clearly. One morning, I woke up to a sky that felt brighter and bluer than any I had seen before in my life. One morning, I woke up happy. #writing #life #writersofinstagram #bloggersofinstagram #blogging #keepspinning #shotbypixel #teampixel #pixelperfect #random #thoughts #musings #prose #morning #blue #monologue #happy #happiness
Perhaps, I dream too little or maybe, I know too much about how the world works but when I'm asked about the kind of writing that I want to pursue or do, the first answer that comes to my head is—an utterly selfish one. I don't do things for others. I don't write for others. My head is far too heavy to think about anyone else's life. Any change someone ever attributed my words to have brought in their life, I strongly believe, would've occurred anyway. If not for the nudge of my words, then by someone else's, and if not for that, then eventually, of their own accord. The clay's virtue is to take form irrespective of whose hand is on the wheel as long as the wheel keeps spinning. #writing #life #writersofinstagram #bloggersofinstagram #blogging #soul #clay #keepspinning #shotbypixel #teampixel #pixelperfect #random #thoughts #musings #hills #mountains #landscape #rest
As exciting as eventfulness is, and as much of learning experience the last few years have been, I found myself emotionally exhausted, and always en garde. If you've ever walked in a bustling city, you know how you're always looking over your shoulder. That is how the last few years felt. Even today, I read older journal entries and can't help but wonder how much was happening all the time. Maybe, it was all in my head. It is unimportant where the storm brewed. The important thing is that there was a storm, or at least, the uneasiness it brings. Perhaps, I'm too hopeful and this is exactly what the calm before the storm means but I like the calm. I like flowing freely through the day without a care about what will happen next. There are small ups and downs that keep coming but no existential war is waged and no larger chaos is handled. Even if this is a phase, I like it. I like knowing I'll not be sitting on the floor on a random evening because everything seems too heavy and overwhelming. It's just a mellow sort of feeling; you know, the way streamers flow wherever the breeze makes them go? That's how I feel right now—not in control, not wanting to be in control—just flowing, calmly. #writersofinstagram #bloggersofinstagram #amwriting #monologue #journal #life #random #shotbypixel #teampixel #pixelperfect #streamers #freeflow #routine #calm
You'll do good, kid. You'll grow up just fine. I know going up to people and saying a simple Hi seems like the end of the world but you'll make friends. You'll make friends who stick by your side for years. I know you act all high and mighty as if you're somehow better than them but you secretly wish they invited you just once. They will. You'll go out and have fun and travel and go places and do things. You'll do everything. Don't be overwhelmed. Just keep doing what you're doing. The idea is to be blatantly yourself. You'll learn. You'll be better. Then, better is all you'll seek. Even if you don't change at all, the bottom line is, you'll do good. Everything that feels like the end of the world will eventually be a little stumble out of your comfort zone. Maybe you'll fall, but you'll get up. The world won't end. One day, in what will feel like a hundred years from now, I hope you sit and look back on how difficult you thought it all was, and I hope at that moment you tell yourself what you should've said all those years ago, "You'll do good, kid. You'll grow up just fine."
...and sometimes you never find closure. You can ask for it, demand for it or even beg for it. You can throw the largest tantrum in the history of tantrums only wishing to come full circle but it won't be that way. Do you know what you will find though? You'll find friends and a table filled with beer. You'll find yourself meeting people you thought you'll never meet from places you may never see. You'll start to spend nights under the stars more often than you ever thought you would. You'll find a good place to go to every day. You'll find a life you never thought you could create, and you'll find yourself lifting yourself up to maintain it now that it's there. You'll find a lot of things if only you take a good look at them. If you do that, you'll have an epiphany. Sometimes you don't need closure; sometimes, you need a great breakfast to start a better day among a series of extraordinary ones, and that is enough. One day, finally, as you listen to a song on your morning commute, you'll realise—closure wasn't something you asked for; closure was something you gave yourself. Song mentioned: AJR's 100 Bad Days. #writersofinstagram #writing #life #closure #bloggersofinstagram #blogging #bachelorslife #breakfast #thoughts #epiphany #health #shotbypixel #teampixel #pixelperfect #amwriting #words #foodporn
Yesterday, I watched Into The Wild again. If you haven't watched that movie, you should. It's about the adventures of Chris McCandless. It's funny how I watched it back when I was in ninth or tenth grade, and after watching it again last night in what could be the most appropriate setting to enjoy such a movie with some great company, I realised how much of the movie I had missed out on as a kid. There are ideas in there that I eventually applied to my life but I never realised that I was feeding myself those ideas since way back then. I think it's only in hindsight that you acknowledge how every little thing that has ever happened, every minute detail of your life, every mundane event you let go as if it was nothing, created you. Even now as things happen and as days go by and as little things keep happening to you, there is a you being created waiting to acknowledge that it was these little things that created it. I think it is an amazing thought that every decision we make, no matter how little, creates us, and it is only in hindsight that we can really connect the dots. #movies #writing #writersofinstagram #sccrepublic #pune #life #intothewild #amwriting #bloggersofinstagram #blogging #thoughts #epiphany #shotbypixel #teampixel #pixelperfect

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