Semi-Writer’s Block

My college has taken over my life. It is literally running my life these days. I can’t believe that I have so much stuff to deal with and that too within such a short time span. Two big lessons that I am learning from this episode are:

• Procrastination is bad.
• Time Management is awesome.

Otherwise too, I sometimes suffer from not being able to think about anything to write about, so here are some things that might help someone else, if he is unable to think about stuff to write about. The difference between an amateur and a professional is that a professional will deliver even when he doesn’t feel like it. (note: I am not claiming to be a professional writer.) Or he’s good at making himself feel like it. Someday I’m going to figure out how to be a professional writer. Till then, use some of the following techniques and see if you come up with something creative:

Here are the five things I’m going to try to break this writer’s block:

1. Write for five minutes about anything. Sometimes it’s just a matter of getting the words flowing from my mind to the computer.
2. Mindmap to see if the problem is that I don’t know what I’m talking about. If so, then this calls for some more research and playing around with text editors.
3. Tell myself that I only need to write for about five minutes. Just like in conversation, I tend to get carried away—but I have to start somewhere.
4. Take care of my other tasks so that I’m not thinking about them.
5. Deliberately not write until it drives me mad and I just _have_ to write.

See, that doesn’t seem too hard…

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He will be an Engineer

As a kid, I often got asked, ‘<insert nickname here>, what do you want to be when you grow up?’ Well as kids are, I never really paid too much heed to these questions and just rambled about the latest fads that I was obsessed with; and that I want to do something related to that. I, however, remember that at some point I had the answer to this question well prepared and I totally sounded confident as to what I wanted to be. This was my somewhat prepared answer, “I want to be a pilot when I grow up.” Well it sounded pretty interesting and it was obviously darn ambitious for a young kid to say that. I figured that it did impress everyone, but looking back at that time, I often wonder why did I chose to say, that I want to be a pilot, when I obviously could say stuff like, “I want to be a …..doctor, engineer, lawyer, teacher, and a million different things”.

I don’t quite have the answer, and I guess I never will, however I’d like to share my insights to what I thought of airplanes before I had never been on one: I used to think that to travel in a plane you had to be shrunk, and was really freaked out by the idea of someone shrinking me. And when I finally traveled on a plane from Bombay to Mangalore (My first trip, I still was pretty young), I remember demanding that I get to sit near the window, only to get scared midway (thinking I might fall off) and then demanding that I be shifted to the aisle seat. When I think back to stuff like this, I really appreciate all the people in my life, especially my family for making me have such awesome memories from childhood. And finally, I am currently studying to be an engineer and came across this hilarious video, so I thought I’d share it with you.

What did you want to be as a kid?