I Watched 15 Seasons of Grey's Anatomy: My Favorite Characters

I can't believe that I went there. After so many years of seeing Grey's Anatomy on my Netflix feed and my television, I finally began to watch all 15 seasons of the show. I've known about Grey's since forever (who hasn't?) and I have seen episodes here and there. I knew pretty much all of the big things that happened on the show but I just hadn't watched all of the episodes. Last year, I began the process of watching the show but half way through season 3 I got bored and put the show aside. But 2020 was a new year and I decided to challenge myself. As of January 2020, I finished the last episode of season 15. This post ended up being incredibly long so I've decided to break it down into 3 parts: my favorite characters (this post!), my favorite couples, and random thoughts/predictions about the show!

Read More

I Love Living in Big Cities

I have been living in Shanghai, China since early September 2019 and having to come back and stay in my small(ish) South Carolina town for a little over a month, I have come to a conclusion that isn't all that surprising: I love big* cities. In all seriousness, I really, really love big cities.

This might sound like the most ridiculous statement to declare. It's probably worse that I'm using an entire blog post to talk about this fact but I've come to realize how important cities are to me. I was born in a big city (Kolkata**!) and have grown up in various cities in India and when I first moved to the US, we came to Atlanta**. It was my first experience with a big city in the US and I loved every moment of it.

After eight wonderful years in Atlanta, my family moved to a small town in South Carolina and it was not the same experience. I missed being in a city so much. My first visit to New York City, however, led me to understand that I'm meant to be in a big city. The freedom and the possibilities that come from being in a place that never sleeps was everything to me. I don't really know how to not move constantly and a big city works well for my nature.

At the end of the day, I think this is just a long winded way for me to admit that I miss being in Shanghai. No matter how many days I have in the city that really leave me feeling down, I love being able to leave my room, get on the metro and go just about anywhere in the city. While I do drive, I have driving anxiety and not having to worry about that really helps me.

Anyways, I'm going to sign off now from this random little post. Do you all like cities or do you prefer a small town life?

*Big is obviously a relative term.

**Obviously, Atlanta isn't as big as New York City or Shanghai but compared to the my small town, they are huge. My town has a little over 18,000 people, Atlanta has almost 500,000 New York City has over 8 million, and Shanghai has over 24 million! I have also been to other large cities such as London (9 million), Beijing (over 21 million), and Paris (over 2 million) among others.

Read More

My Social Media Break

Beginning in May I decided to take a long break from social media. It had taken a toll on my anxiety and depression. I would spend hours and hours mindlessly scrolling Instagram and Facebook without a care in the world. I would compare myself to people on Twitter even if I didn't mean to. What were they doing to get so many followers? How did they have so much engagement? There were too many moments where I was spiraling into this comparison game and it wasn't good for me. After an incredibly horrible night, I decided that I needed to step away. I logged out of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I'm going to talk about three reasons why I thought it was important to take time away from social media.

Read More

The Writing Diaries (3): On Writing a Re-Telling

This is something that I have been thinking about for a long time. There is something about re-tellings that really intrigue me. Taking a story that has existed for a very long time and re-working it in my own sounds like an interesting way to challenge myself. I re-watched North & South, the BBC mini series with Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage, I began to wonder if I could re-write this story. Could I bring this story to life now? And if so, what could I change to make it more new? On top of that, as I began to seriously consider re-telling this story, I began to wonder what I needed to do in order to tell this story right.

Read More

A New Girl in the City: The Great Wall of China

I am still in shock that I have now climbed The Great Wall of China. I have wanted to visit this landmark for as long as I can remember. Getting to China and getting to the Wall wasn't ever going to be an easy feat but I was determined to cross this off my bucket list. As soon as I got the job in China, the planning began. So I'm excited to finally share my experience climbing the Great Wall in November!

Read More

The Writing Diaries (2): Sticking to One Story

I have come to realize that the biggest struggle I've been dealing with in terms of writing is sticking to one story. I have found that it's been incredibly hard for me to truly fall in love with one story and write it from the beginning to the end. I can't exactly place why I can't stick to one story but it's beyond frustrating to not be able to finish anything.

Read More

Review Round Up (5): Recent DNFs

The start of a new year always leaves me wanting to start the year on a good note. I always want to start on my GoodReads reading challenge which I set at 100 again this year. I was able to get a good number of books read but I found that I had a got of books that I put aside. If there's one thing that I have gotten really good at over the years is when to put a book away or mark them as Did Not Finish (DNF). So, here is the list of all of the books I marked as DNF and why.

Read More

On My Screen Lately (2)

I'm officially back to posting on the blog and what better way to do that than with a post about shows I've been watching lately. As you'll see with the last show on this list, I have basically been watching a few shows on and off. It's been a very long process but I have been trying to detox from so much screen time.

Read More