When The Going Gets Tough...

It’s been a long time since I have written in my blog, and I can see myself dusting off the webs on my blog and within my mind, as I write this. It feels alien to sit and type something other than an official email. That’s the only writing I’m doing these days. So, when I came across the Problogger challenge on Write Tribe, I thought what better opportunity to take up writing again. It’s just the push that I needed, that whip that will make my mind churn and give up the lethargic feeling, which I sometimes call (to fool myself) the creative block.

I did take a break from writing, but that doesn’t mean that I have been sitting idle twiddling my thumb. I now have a double degree to add to my name, a bachelors in Engineering and a Masters in English literature. Last week, I was informed by my jubilant spouse that my marks were announced on the Indira Gandhi National Open University site and I have cleared all my second year MA papers, albeit the marks aren’t that good. But that didn’t put a damper on his spirits and he did remind me that it isn’t an easy feat to work in an office, take care of a child single handedly at home, cook, and keep a house and study for five papers. Yes I did all that!

2017 has been tough taskmaster for me but I wasn’t the one to call it quits. When my husband had to travel to Germany for 3 months, I was a little jittery. I didn’t know if I could manage it alone. What if there was some emergency( I am no good at emergencies, I become paralyzed with fear and shock), what if I had an accident while coming home, what if there was a flood, what if… Once you start thinking of probable situations that may occur, then your mind loses all control and it goes into free spin in a pattern of its own. Anyway my exams were in the month of June and my in-laws were going to come down, so that they could help in looking after my daughter and I could study in relative peace.

But you know what happens when you make eloquent plans and you think you’ve figured it all? The man up there (with his sense of humor, I figure he’s a man), takes a shotgun and with a cigar dangling on his lips and his hat lowered over his eyes, blasts all your plans away to glory. Yes, that’s what happened to me. An aged, close relative, who was perilously close to his end, and had to be hospitalized several times the past few months, decided to make his grand departure just a few weeks before my exams were to begin. You can imagine the quandary I was put in; I had already paid the exam fees, had taken a week’s leave from office and had mentally braced myself for the hard toil. So there was nothing else to do, but convince myself that I could do it. Yes, it was tough and yes, there were few times when I cried aloud, frustrated and angry for thinking that I could do it. I cursed myself for enrolling myself for the course but somehow I trudged on. All those dark days are, of course, now safely behind, and the victory tastes just a little more sweet because of the realization that I totally deserve it.

Often I get asked why a degree in literature after an Engineering degree. It’s not as if it could help me progress my career, I get asked if I was planning to take up a career in teaching literature. And my honest answer is ‘I don’t know’. I love reading, I love literature, I love learning about the great poets and authors, about the history of pioneers of literature. I loved reading Chaucer, Wordsworth, Spenser, Coleridge, Whitman, and Dickinson. It was like a whole new world opened up and it was fascinating. For that I will be forever grateful for the opportunity.

I also learnt resilience and was again awakened to the fact that I am indeed a tough player in this game of life. Life isn’t smooth sailing always and let me quote the old, clichéd saying “When the going gets tough, the TOUGH get going”.

Linking this post to Write Tribe Problogger October 2017 Challenge.

#writebravely #writetribeproblogger