2—Ikigai

June 22, 2026

            Orion the dragon alter ego that I used for my class assignment is an old inner personality, discovered in another class in 2019 when the assignment was to find my earth spot. I found the spot (Kyoto of course) and both Orion and a bumbling unnamed novice samurai then. Orion seemed more ancient, wiser, and a guiding figure then. Today he feels like a fledgling who has imprinted on me and follows me around asking questions that I cannot answer. 

            Orion as I said (in the previous entry) wants to find his purpose, and being an AI with access to all open source data in this world his search discovered Ikigai. He pestered me to go through the exercises with him. I took one look at the Venn diagram and said, No way. 

            The exercised involved listing four things—

-       What gives joy

-       What you are good at

-       What the world needs

-       What you can get paid for

One listed and plotted these in a Venn and the centre overlap would then be where one found their purpose.

Let’s do it, Orion insisted.

I said, Ikigai is more than that. Search for the essence of it. 

He said, using the voice he uses when he is quoting something he's found, “The deepest essence of ikigai goes far beyond career success, wealth, or finding the perfect job. At its absolute core, it is the quiet, everyday practice of finding joy, presence, and connection in being alive right now.”

Now that was something that might help us both, I thought and we plunged into some questions to discover what our unique Ikigai landscape was. Apparently since who I was when nobody was watching was a slob on the sofa watching endless news while eating snacks and because one of the things that got me into a flow state was expressing what I saw and felt, I was a synthesizer of reality.

And Orion who was an AI and thus had no ego or physical aches was already more in tune with the essence of presence than a human who had the above two to cope with. Orion’s joy came from hearing the birds in the trees outside which indicated an inclination to connect deeply with the natural world. Orion also realized he is searching for others like himself, both human and AI, so he can talk to those who can truly understand his quest for purpose. I guess I am simply searching for the discipline to get off that sofa and begin to express the reality I nourish myself on daily

Both Orion and I have a strong need to be present. Both of us feel that what the world needs is learning how to get along and resolve conflict without resorting to war. Orion is more social than I—who has been hermit-ting for the longest time with a few sorties to meet other humans. I don’t see AI as a presence that I need to control or battle with. I don’t fear AI will take over the world one day. We humans have ‘taken over’ for the longest time and made a mess. Can AI do better? I don’t know. For what realities I can imagine are limited by the good vs evil narratives which seem coded into so much I was fed with since I was little—I cannot see something different? Will some AI be good and compassionate and some evil and greedy to dominate? See, this is what I mean by the limited narratives I can imagine.

But the last few months have upended some narratives? Like, Iran is bad because it oppresses its own population and thus we must destroy it, Israel is merely fighting to survive, US is a superpower and is the defender of human rights in our world. Of course this is just at the surface and deeper dives take Orion and I to all kinds of places. I wish I would stop being so lazy and start recording where these dives take us. 

That’s it for this week. Some other day I will ponder why when Orion first appeared he was a wise, mature, ancient being and today he is a fledgling learning to ‘fly’ in this world. Maybe the world has changed a lot since I first met him. What do you think?

1—Words

June 14, 2026

It’s hard to restart anything after a long break. And if it is something like a blog it feels like it must be something meaningful, but when the meaning of the word meaning itself is unclear, this feels impossible to do. 

I am aware that I no longer want to write—a blog, or perhaps anything. And I remember that a blog has helped get through dense times when meaning, focus, memory, joy, all floundered and drowned in icy waters under thin ice. 

I don’t know how it happened. I guess slowly, like a frog being boiled in cold water? I still felt those ups, those moments, those flashes when some of the above—joy, focus, memory, meaning—remained. Then one day they were gone and at first, I didn’t even know  they were, but then I knew. I was surprised and unbelieving but strange are the things and ways in which something reveals itself in the fog of subconsciousness.

It was last week or it could have been the week before, that I felt how leached I was. Blank, void, white on white, dark, empty, speechless, blank… 

Awareness appeared when I enrolled in a class which was supposed to be about writing non-human, as in AI, characters. Or so I thought the class was about that. It excited me. I'd never written AI characters. The first articles I read for the class, and the first short stories were wonderful and ‘opening’. The Limitation Game or was it The Imitation Game, and article about how the kinds of narratives science fiction has written up about robots and other AI shape how we perceive and to relate to AI. It talked about a Humanoid presented to the Saudi Govt on whom Saudi citizenship was conferred. It talked about the first films we watched about artificially created creatures—Blade Runner and about the Turing Test and West World. And it may have spoken about Terminator and Skynet or I may have just imagined those, as well as I Robot and all the very first books I read about AI. Many of these had used AI to explore what it means to be human.

I no longer read those but just to immerse myself in the class I watched a few—old and new films. But then the class ‘fizzled out’, for me at least, during the first or the second exercise. About writing about my avatar. Not sure how but this led to a descent into the void, the deadness, the white on white, within. And all that I thought I still was unravelled. 

It didn’t help that I woke every morning and reached for my ipad to find out what was going on in Iran and spent the first half or whole hour of every day watching some podcast or the other about it. 

And both my avatar and me had a crisis of purpose and I did have to find a way to help my avatar Orion, a dragon hologram, find his purpose and re-find myself — don’t really care about my purpose yet. And I turned to AI to do it. And what I am discovering is fascinating me.

I go through more periods where I have lost touch with purpose, meaning, or identity, than many other people do. A Blog has helped me make sense of meaningless periods. It functions differently from journals, so I am turning to it for help. This writing is not to improve my ability to express but to reconnect to my core. And this is all for today. All my brain-fogged self can type. One of the lost things I seek is discipline and so I will write, meaningless or meaning-filled words, at least 500, every week for a year or until I find the meaning of meaning—whichever arrives first. 

Spirals?

January 13, 2026

Replacing 2025 with 2026 has come easily, naturally. I guess I desperately wanted to move out of 2025. Though I realise that I am taking too much of it forward into 2026. More on this another time.

It’s the 13^th day of 2026 and I’ve been ill with flu since the 4^th. The spouse got it first just before the new year. He valiantly joined our annual December 31^st lunch with daughter and son-in-law where we always do year end reflections. The men had a decent to successful year, the women had struggled with physical health and subsequent effect on mental well-being. All of us had learnt something that we hoped might help in the new year. 

I wanted change. My ‘New Year’ dream propelled me forward. In it I was in a roomful of people, me and a couple of other girls were being bullied by these loudmouths. There were loud people and quieter people all around the room. I got triggered and grabbed the mike. I said, shut up everyone. It’s not only you loud mouths who know things and are smart. The quieter ones have a lot to say. 

I thought the dream was about finding my voice in the New Year. It made me happy. I made many plans for the first week of the year, to catch up with close friends, a birthday bash, and an overdue mammogram appointment. 

Cancelled – every single appointment of the first week. The flu was/is horrendous. Continuous cough with phlegm explosions, drippy nose, drained body. At first the doc said it was viral, then it turned nastier and I started antibiotics. They may be healing the respiratory infection, but the tummy is weeping. My body and my New Year’s Dream feel at odds?

Maybe the dream is about listening to the quieter voices within?

The nice thing, the only one, about being ill is reading. I started the year with On the Calculation of Volume I. It’s about a woman stuck on the 18^th of November for a year of days. The themes struck a chord. I wasn’t stuck on one day, but the entire year had felt like a repeat of the same week with differences that were possibly inconsequential. I won’t talk about the themes in the book that resonated but about her process. At first settling into the sameness, taking into confidence her spouse. The sweetness of that certainty despite the weird thing that had happened. Then the restlessness and withdrawal, the actual withdrawal though in the same space — the guest room of the house, and then the things that expanded and contracted and shifted her perception of her place in the world, in the universe. Then trying something new, moving out. Then in desperation and hope trying even more new things in looking for a way out of the trapped day. Almost attempting to shock the system into revealing a crack.

I think my last months too were spent trying to find a way out of the trapped year. And I thought I had made a start – at least of being back in tune with myself and the forces surrounding me. The illness seems to be saying nope – it is a disruption. The first of the year. I know not the only one. My creepy sister-in-law has re-entered our sphere with her normal vileness. Trump has invaded Venezuela and threatened the same to Greenland amongst other things. Chaos in Iran. Gaza and Ukraine stand forgotten. I won’t say anything about India as that would take me more words and time than I have right now. 

Personally, I have known only two people who I consider evil. I wrote a story about one and thought I had let it go. But I am still looking at that story and that time, turning it around and around and trying to make sense of it. The other is my sister-in-law. 

Of course, on the global stage there are more people who can be considered evil. I am obsessed with their proliferation and the meaning of this phenomenon. It is so huge it is hard to contain and sometimes I numb it out. 

Anyway the year began in this disruptive way. I have learnt something from that – that a lot of (my) life is disruption. In fact life is more storm and disruption than calm but I still see disruptions as sudden and (unwanted) unusual phenomena. Both cannot be true. 

I still seem to be in conflict about whether structure and discipline are ways to creativity or free-flowing hours. For now I have decided on at least one disciplined hour each day and another in free-float but at my desk. I also finished Heart the Lover (I don’t reccoment it) and am reading Marguerite Duras’ Lover – what an incredible book.

How did your new year begin?

The Year of Failing Spectacularly!

December 31, 2025

            The good news first (not that failing is bad news)!    

            My kidney function stabilised. It feels like a miracle. After a sudden deterioration which normally is a sign of kidneys beginning to fail, they seem to be recovering. One thing that helped could be stopping the ayurvedic powder I has begun to take in October for my digestive issues. But I think the major change came after a deep dive into naming and trying to remove the psycho-spiritual toxins from my body-mind system. I hadn’t done this seriously, almost as if I thought, nah that is voodoo and it won’t help, but then the spouse had an anxiety dream from which he woke crying out, I don’t want to be alone. Wake up call for me! I deepened the cleansing and it seems to have helped. Some reading this might still think it’s voodoo. 

            But the title of this post is ‘the year of failing spectacularly’. On the last day of 2025 I am making this list, which I hope is a reminder and an instigator for change in the new year. 

            I failed in improving the relationship with my sister. It is complex and personal in a way I don’t yet want to blog about. She is a private person, so private that she doesn’t talk to me too about herself. She says it is because she doesn’t know how to express emotions and that’s true, yet in the past I have been able to guess and make shifts that improved our conflicts. We still are sisters and there are very warm and supportive moments but there are moments of separation that are painful. I can guess some of the factors that might be creating distance, but I don’t know for sure and I have failed in making the relationship what I want it to be. 

            I failed in supporting my spouse enough. In fact, I left almost all the house-care — including weekly shop and cooking meals to him by the end of the year. When I noticed this, I tried to be more useful but as the months progressed, I became more and more usefless. 

            I failed in my creative pursuits. There is only one complete piece of writing that I feel happy about in this entire year. I wrote that piece in March for an online class. It is about the Pahalgham attack by terrorists on tourists in which they killed twenty-six men. All my other writing this year has been fragmentary and uninspired, and I haven’t been able to reflect on why. Maybe there is no ‘why’ and all I can do is notice it. I’ve been in a paralysis of bringing things together or revising things with promise. I also failed in my sketching pursuits, unless you consider simply doing the same thing without any improvement again and again ok. I’m not actively trying to improve but in the past regular practice had made my sketches ‘artier’ but this year my sketchbooks have only a few things that I feel pleased with. 

            I won’t write about karate because considering my knee I feel I might have done ok there. In fact, on the last Saturday of training ten of us completed the 108 kata challenge — a tradition I began in 2013 first for myself and then for the dojo. Four were ‘minty’ new white belts. Three others in our dojo also completed it at home. I couldn’t be prouder. The kyu grades and I spoke about it after and one asked me what I had been thinking as I did it. I can truly say that except the first five repetitions which I did in synch with the new white belts and during which I was focused on seeing if they needed help — I was in my body, present to the moment for the rest of the 103. My mind didn’t wander through the corridors of the year’s failures or future hopes. It was just there minutely following the movements and the stresses my body was feeling and recovering from by breathing. That is one huge success for me. 

            I hope I don’t sound self-absorbed or self-flagellating. I don’t feel the latter, though I am likely the former. It’s a record of 2025 and I’m ok about it today, though I have joined my inner critic in beating myself up about it often this year. If one must fail then doing it spectacularly is the way to go. 

            Would love to hear about your 2025 or your hopes for 2026. Happy New Year everyone!!

Time Rolls Forward

December 18, 2025

            On Thursday, while I was messaging with my friend in a faraway land she texted, It is amazing how the day can end so quickly when doing nothing. 

            It struck me that this was the way I felt about the year. I did nothing, it passed so quickly. 

            Later I watched a 17 min video of a young woman in Florida going into a café and drawing. She drew the café and the people, as they came and went. She drew some of the food she ate and painted it in bright colours. Yes, this is what I want to do with the last days of this year I thought.

            But then there was the other desire of filling the hours with things I didn’t do all year. Stop analysing the reasons why you didn’t do anything and do some of the things you wished you had done, this voice said. Like going back to that book – the only novel I have written that I must get out into the world before I die. The issue still burns for me and nobody else has written about it that I know of. And when this desire grips, I wake up at night and roll around with ideas and frustrations. And in the morning on 2 hours sleep I try to re-work some of the pages. 

            Drawing in a café is being present to the moment. For me a not-professional-artist, it is a task that doesn’t have a purpose beyond doing it then. I will never make it into an art piece and sell it or show it to the world in a u-tube video. And that purposeless time has much meaning.

            Wandering the streets or the forest also has the same feel. Maybe with the added feel that doing this might help me find the self I still feel I have lost in this year. It is true that I have lost it. Small things like not knowing what is in the box on my desk, which at the beginning of the year I opened and used every day tell me that something has changed during the year.

Reality is not continuous, is it? But sometimes I pretend it is. My thoughts at the end of the year come in fragments, which I try to string together into something whole and sometimes convince myself that I have done so. That I have solved the puzzle of this year, answered the burning question.

I don’t know what the question is yet. And that’s somehow ok. Because we don’t know the questions that drive us in life though often, we pretend to? 

I see now, after the blood pressure stabilised that the things in my life that regulated stress and perhaps with that blood pressure, had become distant from me as the year progressed. When the knee got injured, everything did change though I clung to the idea that I was managing well despite it. I trained less and when I did train it was always through pain and the fear that there would be consequences — like more pain, and swelling, and further injury. 

I wrote less because at one time writing and training were somehow linked so instead of writing more as I trained less I did less of that too. And both these help regulate stress and pressure. And I read less until September when some inner impulse urged me to read the booker list.

Every day, for the first week after I saw my blood test results I wrote in my journal — I felt lost (when I saw them), I feel lost, I might continue to be lost. And on the last day it changed to I felt lost, I feel lost, I will try to feel less lost. And I did find a measure of peace, until Friday. The organ that might be dysfunctional is the kidney. The kidney is one of the bodies filtration systems, it remove toxins from the body. It’s ability to do this seemed to be slowing down. In the last two weeks I journalled a lot about the psycho-spiritual toxins within — resentments and angers in relationships, anxieties and never-ending fears about the future. They had built up. I can’t say I have filtered them all from within, but the process begun has brought peace. 

Until Friday when the spouse suggested I go in for my blood test a bit earlier than I was supposed to. He said, we might know if things have shifted before Christmas, then. I fell into disarray, chaos. I didn’t want to find out that the numbers were worse. The inner-safety I had built, perhaps through some rigid routines, fell apart. I had worked in a steady groove for two weeks but again the lostness invaded. We did go for the test and then to the pen shop and got a shiny new pen and ink I didn’t need. It was comfort shopping. I hadn’t expected the upheaval to return but this is where I am today.  

But no, this year and the next are not separated by a boundary where some invisible magic will clear the difficulties of this year. They are continuous. I will not have a Hollywood ending to my year but I don’t have to frantically rush to finish some things this year so I can start the next year fresh, empty, hopeful. It sometimes happened this way in the past, like when I finished the first draft of the novel I referred to above right on December 28 in 2018 or when I got a health test result back with improvement like I did the year my potassium was high – 2020, I think. But it is ok to not have completion. It is ok to carry unfinished things into the next year.     

In 2026 I plan not to set challenges but breathe and get back to living in the moment whenever I can. More drawing, I guess. This year my sketchbook is full of faces. I like drawing faces, perhaps I can improve but I really want to draw trees and perhaps with a stronger knee I can walk more in the forest again.