The walking life

Hello, after a break. I’ve been busy doing nothing.

I quit my full-time job in April last year, and have now reached a new equilibrium with my freelance life. I write for a few platforms regularly (you’ll know which ones if you are on my Facebook) and this pays my bills. Writing about entertainment is, well, entertaining, and it’s not such a bad way to make a living, don’t you think?

I’ve managed to keep my online writing workshops going too. Some batches are very, very enthusiastic. Others not so much. Some people write 6,000-word stories at the end of it. Others just can’t seem to find the time to write. Some people log in for the sessions before I do, and are waiting eagerly with questions. Others forget that they have a class and need to be reminded. As a writing guide and mentor, I let them find their own writing rhythm. Even if it is to discover that they don’t want one. Heh.

I wrote two picture books last year that have been accepted by publishers.

I’m happy about how things are going. I sometimes wonder if I should get a full-time job. But, as M keeps reminding me, that will involve meeting people regularly. I think I’m old enough to accept that being in a room full of people day after day is excruciating to me. They could be people I like, but it’s still exhausting to interact with all of them for such long hours. I’m most productive when I’m alone. My cat is all right for company though. I bask in his silent judgment.

I’ve been walking a lot more. More than a decade ago, I became a committed walker because we bought a weighing machine, and I was shocked at the number on the scale. I was the type of child who resented having to walk to the end of the street to catch an auto. If permitted, I would have demanded an auto to go to the auto stand. I never played any sport while growing up, and spent most of my PE classes dodging the gaze of the PE teacher and reading my Enid Blytons under the trees.

So, when I started walking, I did it because it was the cheapest form of exercise. I live on a beautiful campus full of trees, with little to no traffic. I didn’t need great persuasion to step outside. I got a spanking new pair of Puma shoes and marched down the road with great purpose. Back then, my legs used to hurt because I was so unused to wearing sports shoes. I found them heavy and kind of annoying (I also hated wearing socks). I would walk 2 km and believe I’d reached the summit of Mt Everest.

I did lose weight doing this, but gradually, the walk became less about the number on the scale and more about just the walk. The 2 km became 5-6 km and I became something of a legend in the colony for going for walks even in the middle of thunderstorms (I’m a lunatic, please don’t do this. Mutual fund investments are subject to market risk and so on).

I told you I don’t like seeing the same people again and again in a room. But I am happy to see the same people on my walk again and again. I have walking friends — we don’t know each other’s names, but we wave. I know their dogs. I wish them Happy New Year. They don’t know anything about me, and I don’t know anything about them. It’s peaceful.

From walking on campus, I graduated to walking on a road along a hill near my house. I became friends with more people who know nothing about me. When I went on holiday, I carried my walking shoes with me and tried to fit in an hour of walking whenever possible. I don’t enjoy walking on the treadmill as much because it feels too purposeful. Too much like work. Does the treadmill have a dog button when you want to stop and pet someone’s messy haired Poodle?

Walking helped me process a lot of things. My mind felt calm after hearing the sound of my own feet for an hour. Sometimes, things I had to write wrote themselves in my head when I walked. It was beautiful when that happened. The lines would fall into my head, and I would run home and start typing. I don’t know if my readers could tell, but there’s a spontaneity to those pieces that’s hard to replicate.

I have started on a new walking route this year. It involves climbing the hill, not just walking on the road along it. There is a steep incline and then the woods. So just as you think your lungs are going to give out, you reach the top and suddenly, there’s all this wild beauty. Yellowing grass and little birds. The open sky.

I like to imagine I’m Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs, running in the woods (I’m only walking but when we’re imagining things, we have to be extraaa). I’ve been on this route a few times, but it was hard to fit it into my regular schedule because walking up this hill takes much longer than walking on the road — the route is about 8.5 km. But I realised that I actually do have the time for it now. Everything else can wait.

There’s a new set of walking friends on the hill. The middle-aged man to whom I asked for directions on Day 1 because I thought I was hopelessly lost. The family of three where the mother and daughter look like sisters. The man with two Dalmatians that are so well-groomed, they ought to be movie stars. The man with an old Beagle named after an alcoholic drink. The white cat with ginger patches who sits in the sun. The self-conscious plump woman who keeps tugging at her top. I nod at them all. Hello, hello, hello. I don’t know you and you don’t know me but I do know you and you do know me.

I saw a peacock today on my walk. It was a good day.