Week 29/2025
14th July to 20th July 2025 (Monday to Sunday)
I took off from the office Monday to Wednesday. It helped me a lot to stabilize myself and somewhat handle the situation while taking care of myself. I am very grateful to my team for being supportive.
Khojbeen Mandali Update:
I went to Nidhi’s learning center on Tuesday evening. We are still doing pre-tests with children. Hopefully, we will start the intervention from next week.
Mahendra sir was in town for two days. He called and we met for dinner on Wednesday. It was nice as usual—discussions about educational philosophy, teacher education, and life in general. He introduced us to a nice South Indian restaurant near Gujarat Vidyapith.
Thursday : We went to see ‘Metro in Dino…’. I liked the movie.
On Friday evening, office colleagues made a spontaneous plan and came home. We had chai, ghughra, and made a nice dinner—dal chawal, began sabji…
It was really nice to forget everything and be with friends, enjoying the moment.
Saturday was busy with a workshop/course I’m attending from the office on ‘Indian Aesthetics’. Slowly, I’m starting to get the hang of it. I’m able to make connections. I used to have these types of discussions with Mahendra sir. I want to deep dive into this and do something tangible with it in the classroom with children.
I haven’t been part of formal college education, so I’ve felt the need over the years to find learning opportunities beyond professional, outcome-driven roles. I long for a phase where I can simply be a student again. I wish to take a break from my full-time job for 2-3 months. During that time, I want to do something (facilitation/assisting someone in writing a research paper) around:
- Development of environmental aesthetic sense in children, especially from an Indic perspective
- Exploration of the affective domain, connecting it with Rasa theory
- Project-based and integrated learning approaches
- Something related to neuroscience, environment and aesthetics
Let me manifest it. If you are reading this and know someone related to this, please connect me.
On one side, I’m interested in working with older children/teenagers through projects, helping to develop self-directed learning spaces. On the other side, I like working with younger children on the topics mentioned above.
I need to think about the long term—what will be useful for making my career more sustainable. This is a very capitalistic thought… where I have fear about my career.
It’s difficult to choose paths without any fear when you’re married, in your 30s, when the world is moving at super-fast speed. I have an understanding partner; we’re ready to support each other, but still… I never thought this way when I was alone, but now it’s by default.
I just started earning some money after so many years, and suddenly I want to take a break to pursue a deeper learning journey. There should be some support system for these types of sabbaticals…
I just remembered that I never take intentional vacations or travel without any agenda since I’ve been working. From age 18, I’ve been constantly working—job after job, place after place—proving myself, working with children, teachers and organizations, learning new things, trying to establish myself in this fast-moving world.
I want to use the break to just be… without any agenda… heal myself… love myself more.
On Sunday, we went to Vadodara. I facilitated a creative writing workshop with Sakha fellows. It was a super hectic day. We started at 9:30 in the morning and came back around the same time at night. We spent almost 6 hours traveling for a 3-hour workshop. But we enjoyed spending time with young people, exploring poetry and other forms of writing with them. I will write a separate post about the same.
We need to find a way to stay back in Vadodara to rest and come back the next day.
This week I said no to one freelance project. It was related to developing modules around climate action mindset and career paths for middle school children. It was an interesting subject, but right now I don’t have the time or mental stability to sit and work on this project along with my full-time job. Nidhi is also busy with other projects. I am very grateful to the people for trusting and supporting me for this.
A friend and I are working on experiential learning / game-based workshops with corporate employees. It’s new for me. I’m learning how to facilitate Gen Z employees through games :)
What else? I’m trying to stabilize myself. Finding my grounding… I don’t want to travel anywhere this month. I want to be at home, go to the office regularly, focus on a few things.
I didn’t go to the therapist after the first session. I’m rethinking the same—should I go or not? I want to find alternative ways to heal myself.
Things will get better…
धीरे-धीरे रे मना, धीरे सब कुछ होय । माली सींचे सौ घड़ा, ऋतु आए फल होय ॥
I wanted to write this weekly note in Gujarati but I restricted myself, because many friends/readers are not from Gujarat. I don’t want to trust Google Translate for my Gujarati :) but I will definitely start writing other posts in Gujarati soon.
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