Words to live by.

‎"The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free." 
- Swami Vivekananda

Hello World.

If you have ever taken a programming class, you'll know that "Hello World." is one of the first things they teach you in C++. Why do I know that? I'm a nerd and that's about as far as I got in programming.

Like "Hello World.", this is another new beginning for me. I haven't written in a long time. What a shame! Now, I finally feel like I have something to say and share. After going through a lot in my 30th year and just celebrating my 31st birthday, I have come upon some new resolutions (as I do every year).

Life is not what I expected it to be, neither is marriage. I'm seeing that in every new step of life comes new trials and tribulations that you have to meet, deal with and overcome. I've met these foes many times throughout my life with school, family, work life and now with marriage. I'm not sure that there is a category to these things into; not good or bad, they just "are". From these experiences, I want to remain open to learning and growing as a person. In the past, I have often thought of getting a tattoo to symbolize my growth and change, but never knew what or where to get it. I've always been afraid that I would get sick of it or regret it.

In the past two weeks it became clear to me. I've toyed with the idea of the "Om" symbol in the past and where to put it, but it finally clicked. I am a Hindu by heart and heritage. I've embraced the idea of being Brahmin and have learned to appreciate my spiritual self. I didn't want the symbolization of the tattoo to be generic, so I have been looking at the Bengali script "Om" (see the difference below) to be specific to represent who I am.

Bengali Script Om

Popular Om

Om means many things, all of which I feel that I can use a reminder of now and then. Om is the divine vibration of the earth. Om symbolizes the manifestation of God, the reflection of absolute reality and divine energy. The three sounds A-U-M mean the beginning, middle and end (respectively). 

The next hurdle was deciding where. I am not getting any younger, so it would have to be 1) somewhere where I could see it and 2) somewhat indiscreet  I have decided that my wrist would be a perfect location to remind me to have peace within myself, to realize that I cannot change everything but to always put out positive energy. Although I'd like to think of myself as a very positive minded person, there are many trying moments when I have found myself losing peace inside myself. As I move into the next stage of my life, I am giving myself a little help by stamping a constant reminder of what the world is and who I am in it.

-Om-

Can you have a work life and write a best seller?

Working on a book. Any advice from writers? How do you manage to find time to write your book AND live your life with your day job?

Working on my best seller, book turned movie, but I feel like there's not enough time in a day. Advice? Suggestions?

Adventures in time management - It's 10 am already?

With work picking up, getting deeper into married life and (the latest update) my brother living with us, it doesn't seem to get much busier than this. I find myself waking up at 5:30 am working all day until about 6 -7 pm and heading home to get ready to start it all again. On good days, I will force myself to quit around 6 and go to the gym. The good part of all this is that I'm losing weight because I don't have time to eat AND I am forcing myself to workout. Go figure!

I've always known that I work much better under pressure, but the whole time management thing comes up again in my life. A friend and I have recently hired an Assistant Account Executive, which immediately lessened some of the smaller tasks at work, however, I struggle with not giving her 'assistant'-type tasks just to cross off things on my to-do list.

Slowly but surely I am learning how to reorganize my time and making sure that I am taking time for myself. I stay away from the computer as much as possible on the weekends, that doesn't actually seem too hard for me.

After all is said and done, I have to remember that I am a human and can't work like a machine....or can I?????? What do you do to take time out for yourself and enjoy life a little?

Is there such thing as the 4-month itch?

It's been four months since we got married and my how the time flies. Work has been crazy busy and my new husband talks about us as newlyweds, which I find both amusing and strange, since we have been living together for much longer than marriage. I think he really enjoys the idea and fact that we are married. I guess I need to take a moment to appreciate that about him, instead of finding that confusing.

With all that's going on right now, I'm starting to get that itch I feel when I'm in one place for too long. Even though I'm crazy busy with work, I just want to do something different, which is why I ventured off on my own to begin with. We have a few things coming up but I've just today decided, "we" are planning a trip to Italy. (Shhhh...don't tell hubs, he doesn't know this yet, but he'll be thrilled) This will be our international trip of 2012, although we did go to the Dominican Republic for our Honeymoon, I'm convinced that it doesn't really count.

My genius idea: In October (low season), fly from LA to Rome and drive up to Florence to Venice. Fly out of Venice and come home eight days later. Easy right? Flights and hotel rates are much lower in that season and I used TripAdvisor to find a handful of really reasonable B+B's (my reasonable means between 50-110 euros/day) in each city we stay at and we'll rent a teeny tiny European car to drive in, woo!

So our travel itinerary for 2012:

January - Dominican Republic (The honeymoon)

April - New Orleans for Jazz Fest

August - Hawaii for the birth of our dear friend's baby and some relax time

October - Italy, from Rome ->Florence -> Venice

NYE - spend our anniversary at home (in LA) with Chaka and plan for 2013

That's a successful year if I ever saw one! Let's go! This itch is gettin' crazy.

I've let my fans down....

Ok, I probably don't really have any fans, but I've definitely let myself down. For the past year I have been struggling with (and depressed about) my weight...starting and stopping diets and just not really getting back to the way I need to feel and look to be happy. I use excuses like stress (which is a really big one), lack of time, my wedding (which is a really bad one), being tired and others to avoid really focusing on any particular plan. Yesterday, I decided NO MORE!

I know, I know.."we've heard this before, Ronjini, you always fall off"..Not this time my friends. yesterday I took the bold step of stepping on the scale, something I have feared to do for months now. Anyway...I can't tell you the embarrassment that is my current weight, but I can tell you have 22 pounds to lose..Can you believe it??? 22.

I don't want to, but I had to face facts. So, I got home, took a shower and went to the post-its. I got out my big fat Sharpie and wrote my weight largely on three post-its. I posted one on the refrigerator, one on the bathroom mirror and one right here next to my keypad on my Macbook. Now, I can't get away from it. Every week from now until minus 22 pounds, I will update my weight (hopefully it will get smaller), to keep my motivation fresh.

I'm cutting out carbs, excess sugar (but not sugar completely), sodas (but not fizzy water) and pretty much anything artificial. I will make healthy salads, eat tons of boiled eggs, tuna, stuff like I did the last time I had a huge weight goal (unfortunately that was only a 10 pound goal). And of course promising to work out everyday, twice if Tennis is one of the workouts (to me, Tennis doesn't count for some reason). Lately, I've been struggling on runs and I now think its because I weigh too much. Oh well, I'll check in soon and you'll see...don't worry... you'll see.

Settling into married life.

Blog friends,

So here we are, nearly a month of being married and it's definitely different. I feel like it shouldn't be since we lived together prior-to, but it is. It's sweeter, we're married. I can see that we are definitely in a "Honeymoon phase", or perhaps its just the fact that the stress of the wedding isn't impairing our judgement and pestering us anymore. We are relaxed, happy and things feel light again. I'm beginning to feel closer to normal, but the new pressures of marriage and my own personal goals for 2012 are definitely keeping me on my toes.

The gorgeous weather in SoCal is helping our transition into married life and giving us our daily dose of Vitamin D, but my mind is pondering the thoughts of moving away some place new for another great adventure. The Hard Rock Hotel & Resort, Punta Cana was a beautiful honeymoon destination, but we could have used a couple more days there to fully de-stress and enjoy the island, but a fantastic getaway nonetheless and our first time in the Caribbean.

Well...now we're back on our feet and preparing for the next big thing. I'm not quite sure what that is yet. We still need to situate little things like monthly chores, who's responsible for what, stuff like that. I hate organizational conversations, they feel like a business meeting, but are necessary for US to maintain a sort of balance. We've become pretty good at that already, so its not too taxing to figure out. More soon, I'm sure he'll do something very husbandly that I'll need to talk about.

Cheers,

Mrs. Ronjini Joshua