DECEMBER 2025

Its been a MADD year and it's still going! I'm editing this from the airport tonight as I have to keep myself awake another few hours. And sitting here after what has been a long week, after the already long year, I am almost in disbelief at my own brain, that it managed to do a lot on an empty tank.

I picked up on a lot of new details I haven't wrapped my head around, but, I cannot shake the feeling it will all make sense, with time. I consider the universe to be far too magical and witty to assume any less of it.

I've noticed biggest of all, the speed at which i have needed to intake all the happenings around in my life, has increased manifold this last 11 months. And I didn't always prioritize taking moments to properly exhale all the non-essential things i gathered in the process. And kept taking critical decisions regardless.

At my core, I'm naturally wired to make NO moves when the water is muddy if i can help it (fates have been kind, most often I could help it) But I'm learning this year, that as a grown up in this specific civilisation, you don't always have this luxury. And taking decisions in the murky water, while needed currently, is in itself enough to make me feel a bit disconnected to myself.

Now, I don't subscribe to oversimplifying 'cause' and 'effect' relationships, but I do sense some of this internal disconnect, a lack of exhalation, an overloaded decision-making muscle, has reached my sketch hour. Not necessarily in the images themselves, but more in the process and my experience of being at the desk.

So today I'm going to take this space to exhale a little, write out a recent experience with some intentional disengagement, and put a bow on this rollercoaster of a year!

You're at a play, midway - the script so far has been wonderful. The stage is ready, these beautiful purple and blue spot lights comes on, the musicians begin to play the entry score, the actor enters with perfect timing, walks to the right mark with such ease it doesn't even feel like he's acting from a script, and then when its time for him to say the big impactful lines - NOTHING HAPPENS!

You just sit there..all day, waiting for him to say the lines!

I had an experience much like what this actor would feel , but only, at my desk, and luckily, with no audience. So - if i really wanted to look on the bright side - yes, this could be worse, i could be on stage ;)

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 One bright saturday, i had all the time, tasks checked off, finally a weekend where there weren't 'adulting' chores and self created plans eating it up. I make a fantastic cup of coffee, put on Bowie, come to the sketchbook ready for a very specific project - aimed at end of January next year - good timeline too, and a clear idea of the concept and the pieces that i wanted to kickstart that day. And yet - i hold the pencil - AND NOTHING! yours truly stood there, hand refusing to draw anything, for HOURSSSS this way.

I would take a walk around the house, come back, sip my coffee - no change. I step out, get some sunlight. Come back - no change. I'd go swim, try to break away from this. Come back to the desk, NOTHING!

All my usual go-to tricks were failing me. miserably. It didn't help that it also made me feel ridiculously guilty, because it wasn't some 'bad circumstance' or 'uninspired / unclear ideas'! I had it all! and yet - the hand wouldnt draw. pretty sure at one point i heard it say 'nope not gonna do it'. :|

I kept thinking its just a weird moment, i'll have done something by evening - and yes i did do something - laundry, cleaned the house for longer than needed, took a walk outside, did groceries, covered the LEAST important things, painted my nails...twice, cooked food, played hide and seek with the kittens, but drawing - no siree bob. Now, if it was just this day, I wouldn't do the next thing, but i realise that this was coming for weeks now. I had noticed a little detatchment from drawing in the earlier month too. .

Angry & confused I phone a friend, an artist himself, and drawing for longer than I have. 'i have a question, and i need to know if a. you've experienced this?, and b. what did you do? and c. what if its real, what if im done, what do i do with my life now?! so i have 3 really'. What a relief to even have a creative who's THE expert at dealing with me when I go in with 'get to the point fast, im at war here' conversations. he validated a lot of what i expereinced that day in that over the years, he's experienced these lulls too. Where the body just does not feel interested in drawing anymore.

He also got me to think of maybe trying something totally different, even if i dont like the idea of it. Or trying a different style only to laugh at how much i don't like it, but might help come back to the book. Soon, he was brainstorming a lot, but mostly, he was pointing to the fact that I have been drawing and thinking a certain way for a while now, and that maybe i've reached a natural saturation. indulging in some other way, would help me understand if i want to stay put, or move.

One other thing that came up as I spoke to him - that im afraid of how important this has become to me. That i didn't know how much of my weeks' glimmers are sitting in this very act of coming to the sketchbook. And the natural fear followed - what if i don't want to do this anymore? Even the thought of this horrified me that day. I couldn't imagine why I'd even go on if i didnt create, in whatever personal capacity I do. This isn't something I take lightly, and am sure there's something not in the right space now here.

As i spoke to him, his voice started slowly dropping to the background, and i did remember a course i had eyed from Samantha Cotterill about '3D art' and i open that page again, quite insincerely.

I was certain this was not going to be so easy, to come back to drawing by just switching up some medium?! He makes it sound so easy! I was sure he was underestimating my condition here. I also saw that the enrollment for her workshop was full by then. But - I was so mesmerised by the visuals i saw on her page. Unemotional tears flowing down my face, i decide to do a casual browsing of her work anyway. I look at it all, and it's beautiful! beautiful enough to keep me looking through her art another half hour that night, and beautiful enough that i had forgotten the pain i was feeling all day for that little while. I sleep that day, not knowing if I'll ever draw again, and unclear why to even go on if i don't, and also painfully aware this attachment was borderline unhealthy.

Sunday goes by, and towards afternoon, I decide I'm going to put together a workshop for myself anyway - and act like i was in her session - so i gather some basic cutting tools, and begin the begin. At first, it was natural to take to scenes from my notebooks, which i had already drawn but never painted. But as i got to cutting them up and popping them up i was almost amazed at how alive i felt again with the result. This was a surprising process - because what looked like a boring ordinary drawing to me on flat paper, the moment i arranged the cutout on the stage - it looked different somehow, and i couldn't predict this! I'd draw so many, thinking I know roughly how it'll look - but once on stage, it looked soooo much different, better even! And this became the precise point that pulled me back in -

i wasn't able to predict anymore what the result was going to be!

And i hadn't felt this in a long time. <at my sketchbooks only! in my real life I'd give anything to be able to have some predictability if not a lot :P>

I did this for one week straight, and noticed a little fire light up in me again. I was once again, so excited to come to the desk at 6 in the morning. I also started to remember some things from my childhood, now that i was doing craft with my art, and just rode that wave, what did i have to lose!

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As a kid i'd spend most afternoons in our sunlit terrace sitting in a little 'tent' (yup, i'd camp out in my own house exactly like kipper the dog, good times!). My mum would be home from school and checking notebooks, i'd be home from school and would not worry of homework till 3 pm. Tea time was the time I'd commit to focusing again and play free till then. And the world really was quieter back then, literally. I'd only hear the rustle of leaves and the occasional crows and sparrows and cats, squirrels as i sat and daydreaming and making craft projects in the little tent. It was a magical time, I just didn't know it yet.

In my recent moment of taking to paper cut outs and coming to craft day after day, this memory resurfaced and I noticed whatever crafts I'd make in the tent, were just coming from a place of joy, and wanting to amuse myself. It didn't even need to make sense to anybody else, because I'd rarely talk about it or share it.

And felt so silly, that even now, most of my art is personal, documenting my life, my thoughts, ideas. And i guess somewhere in the mix of wanting to share it, and wanting to keep myself accountable to continue drawing, I forgot my sense of agency toward it. Making this little journal was like coming back to the afternoon playtime. And disengaging from the pressure of if im 'driving my art ahead'.

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I took to embroidery far before I hit the feary teary moment i mentioned above. I think this too, came from a sense of wanting to switch things up a little, and some memories of summers with my grandmother teaching us crochet and knitting and embroidery.

When I wanted to still be in the illustration realm over october, but wasn't up to drawing some mornings - Enter, needle and thread, and a grocery bag my friends forgot they lent to me! So, now I'm practising embroidery all over it, and plan to give it back without needing to explain or apologize, but more as a gift :P

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Its so wonderful to see what the brain can do, when I just let it play how it wants to. Not push it for a result, or always think in a rubric. In my 'back to school' nostalgic mode from the craft weeks, I also picked up a set of 10 wax crayons, and painted like i would in school. Again- just unlocked so much of my memories - in school, my art teacher would typically put up my drawing on the board, and I had no emotion in it really. It has become a pretty standard routine for my art classes without ever wanting it. I guess, at the time, I also thought of it as this 'unimportant' thing im good at.

I definitely don't think that now -

now i think its a very important thing I really want to get good at!

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Now this last part, wasn't totally spontaneous, or very seemingly connceted, but maybe was a long time coming. I had noticed over the last 4 months i had heard my brain going 'look into art history' from time to time. a curiosity probably reignited by this article I read of S.D.Fadnis' body of work. I felt this hit of nostalgia because I recognized so many cartoons of his from the time I was growing up, and realised once again, how little i know of the history of illustration.

I can actually trace this feeling of pull toward art history all the way back to when I first watched Midnight in Paris, or Mona Lisa Smile.

But I hadn't engaged into any reading despite this.

But after the dreadful saturday, this was another idea the brain just dove into. It was almost like it was taking this decision to find some books, without me involved. And I have started my art history journey with maybe THE 'sketchbook' artist - Mr Leonardo Da Vinci.

Now, I went to design school, so it'll be really wrong to say that I hadn't found anything anyone said about him interesting, or fascinating, or like there was anything there for me, but it'll be the truth still. So i went into this reading as a blank slate. I was not already in awe of him, and I like to read about someone this way.

But now I've started reading his life and how he drew, why he drew, i'm learning so much, of him and of me! :

a. i didn't know of him at all, from the details that make the rounds

b. his original sketchbooks are scattered all over the world at this point, and I suddenly want to go see them, in all their imperfection and hand-of-the-artist ness, i find everything he's done is a little mysterious and I want to be able to see up close whats going on

c. Mona Lisa was made over a period of 16 years!!

d. He was a MAJOR LISTMAKER - and i loved reading into his notes.

It also felt to me like a major wink to continue researching a topic I've aimed at next year ;)

d. the brain is a seriously interesting creature, it seems to know what to put before me when.

Ah, if only i learnt to trust it a little more!

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While im scattered in all these directions right now, I do notice, a certain desperation to come back to the craft, is back :) I am flying out of bed in the morning, not able to WAIT to come back to what im doing next. and really - i understand now, this is what its got to be like at least from time to time. I may not know how to do something exactly, but that i need to feel the sheer excitement to find out!

And so - i've made a new item to my perpetually growing list - "experiment with totally different style / creative methodology once every 6 months' It's not that this is new to many, but to me at the desk, yes, its something im learning to 'prioritize' equally with the ongoing projects / ideas. Often times, dedicating one weekend to something totally irrelevant to my creative projects, can feel like a waste of time - like i'd much rather be moving something along instead. But i found out the rude way this time - that its not a 'nice to have' its a must this divergence.

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I realise this year, the two things i've written of, both speak of a certain struggle with keeping the creation going. I am very aware inspiration, time, health...has all come to me in pieces, fragments, not whole, not always in a flow, needed a lot of manual intervention sometimes. Even the lull I described up here today, didn't arrive in one single shot and didn't get fixed in one shot either. I had to keep patiently diverging into these different crafts, and approach it all with 'i want to understand where i am, navigationally' than to drive it intentionally. It was listening time.

So I'm reminded boldly and repeatedly this year - to dilligently disengage - not in the sense that i be absent or withdrawn, but in a sense that i have to loosen my grip on rhythms or outcomes i have come to expect from my personal art, reassess my attachment to it at a cadence treat it carefully if its increased. Pull back to play mode if i've started to take myself too seriously, because its ALL FOR FUN afterall! Disengagement has ironically, let me listen to my natural inclinations more, understand more authentically where i am right now, & what ideas I want to pick up now - so I'm comfortable in zeroing in on this as one lesson to take ahead from 2025 ✨

That's all for today. Hope you have a cozy winter ahead, get some time to exhale a little yourself, and i will see you on the other side :)