Covaxin Archives

8:34 AM. Woke up a few minutes ago.

After two-three days of non-activity, I am back. To a point that I am rearing to write. Like you know, put my keyboard on fire! Lol!

So without any ado, let’s go!

In terms of updates, here are the things that are at the top of my head.

1. I got the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine yesterday. Yeah, it’s Covaxin and that means I may not be able to travel a lot. And yeah, I did have some side effects. I mean the arm is still sore and literally slept through the day even though I had a good night’s sleep the night before. I feel ok as I write this (apart from the soreness).

2. They are most probably opening Starbucks outlets from tomorrow (till about. 4 PM), I cant wait to get back out there and work! The two flipside are that a, I will have to get back to coffee (which I am again trying to stay off) and b, I will not be able to use Starbucks for calls. Starbucks has a lot of ambient noise. I will have to come back. But then, for a bit, I will have a place to go to that is NOT my freaking house. The other thing that may work in my favor is that I will probably stay away from eating till about 4:30 and thus can try and attempt for OMAD! So all in all, a great sign! The world is healing!

3. Thanks to the break imposed by the vaccine yesterday, I am at the last episode of Mare of Easttown. I will hopefully spend a large part of the evening today reviewing it. Let’s see how it goes.

4. I discovered the joys of writing with Hemingway Editor. I stumbled on it by chance. I was cleaning my bookmarks and spotted it. Logged in and was blown by what I saw! Loved the immediate feedback. Grammarly does that as well but for some reason, Hemingway felt more intuitive. Lemme share a screenshot of this text (unedited and in its raw form).

This is a screengrab from Hemingway Editor about the text that I’ve written. The menu on the right tells me that a second grader can read this as well. Not sure though 🙂

But, you see that point #2 about Starbucks needs rewriting. I mean, I refuse to re-write it, but you get the drift. So if you are the kinds that require a lot of writing to be done, you must must consider Hemingway. Of course, the problem is that it’s an expensive piece of software (some 30 dollars). The free version, on the web, does not save documents. So unless you copy-paste, you lose data. For my use case – where most writing happens on a WordPress or a Google Doc and I can easily copy-paste things, the free version suffices.

5. Staying on writing and storytelling, I stumbled onto this course at Khan Academy where Pixar is teaching The Art of Storytelling.

Wait. What?
Pixar?
Free?
Storytelling?
Wow! What else can you ask for? Divided into 6 lessons, this could be the most definitive 101 that you need to be able to write for films. Someone like me needs this FOR sure. On it. Along with the course on writing the first novel.

6. Lemme rant about work for a bit. One of the things I do makes me talk to designers – specifically, the ones that layout ebooks, whitepapers and other such things. Of course I can’t pay a lot of money and I am thus unable to dictate terms. I have to live with whatever designer I can find. And the ones I work with, I kid you not, just dont want to work. They assume that I am doing them a favour by giving them feedback or asking for iterations. They forget that they could be polite. They dont understand that its free market and there are many more options available. I wish people understood that you typically work with people and little politeness, goodness and kindness goes a long long way!

Ok rant over. I mean I try to not rant but people are way to inflexible and set in their ways. I dont know why they dont understand that if they dont change, things wont move for them. Anyhow. Deep breaths, Mr. Garg.

If any of you is reading this and knows any go-getter designer, please connect me. It would be awesome.

7. Next. I dont know what next. I dont know what else to write. There are things on my head that need resolution and movement – SoG Book (the goal for June), moving out of this house, moving out of India, The Aram Nagar Documentary, making money, making an impact beyond just making money, life goals, and all that.

Guess this is it. I didn’t really put the keyboard on fire. But good to have got some words out of the system. Time to get going and get on with work. Meanwhile, here’s the streaks.

Morning Pages / Meditations – 175
#aPicADay – 0
10K steps a day – 0
OMAD – 0
#noCoffee – 0
#noCoke – 87. 13 more days to go before I go swim in that pool of coke ;P
10 mins of meditation – 0
#book2 – 0
Killer Boogie – 0
Surya Namaskar – 0

8:00
Just woke up. Must have slept some 14 hours yesterday. To a point that I am having a hard time opening my eyes. I mean my eyes are anyway getting fucked, thanks to all this sitting in front of a screen all day long. The left eye is especially bad. I think I need to add a distance to the screen. Or may be the distance is adding on the strain? Will check with Kunal and figure out.

So in some good news, I got the first shot of the COVID vaccine. I got Covaxin, not that I had a choice. I took it around lunch yesterday. Here is the Twitter thread that I wrote about the process etc. I am told that I may show some symptoms of the disease but so far I feel ok, except for some soreness in the arm I got the vaccine in. Guess that would go in a few days. I am hoping the second shot (due in about a month) would be as comfortable.

The getting of the vaccination slot for this COVID vaccine has been such a harrowing experience. To a point that I had almost given up. But then like other things, it’s a matter of luck and doggedness. Of course, the celebs seem to be getting these slots east and have spotless sofas to park their asses on when they get the vaccine.

To be honest, I actually did not want to take the medicine – I mean, the vaccine is super new and no one knows of the long-term effect on the human body. One of my friends that understand medical science told me that this could be a foolish thing to do – you know, inoculate the entire world with something that we have no experience with. What if that ends the human race? But then more and more evidence starting pouring in about the benefits and advantages. Plus, to be honest, I had the FOMO about not taking it when others I know took it. Plus, if this vaccine allows me to travel around freely (if not outside, even in India), why not? I can’t be at one place, you know.

So that. Let’s see how today goes. Depends on how my body copes up with the vaccine.

Oh, I am starting with a Keto subscription from next week. Even if it’s expensive and I cant afford it. I want to give a part of the coming week to not starve my body. And I have firmed up in my head that I need to move on from this house. I will start the search. The tenets of the places I want to live at remain the same – spacious, higher-floor, newer-building, close to a Starbucks, unfurnished (apart from ACs and Wardrobes). I am ok with Thane or Borivali etc. The days I need to be in the middle of civilization, I will shack up with friends. I have a few bachelor friends that are sprinkled around Mumbai where I can go shack up on days when I need to be in a city. These are at Andheri, Ghatkopar and Worli. The Ghatkopar one lives in a chimney, so I may not live with him.

But the point is, I will lean more on friends. And if nothing else, I have a friend that runs a chain of youth hostels. I can always use that. I can request him to give the room to me for cheap.

Guess this is finally a step in the direction of becoming a nomad. If only I had the money, I would probably live in a hotel for life! Sigh!

Oh, I will take the search easy. I will not make a hasty decision.

So that’s about it for the day. For most of the day yesterday and the day before, it did not irk me that I have lost that the data that is literally my life’s work and all that. Guess what’s gone is gone and subconsciously, I have accepted it. I am hoping that in the long run, I don’t regret that I needed something and that is not longer available. Time shall tell.

With that, it’s over and out. See you guys tomorrow. Here’s streaks…

Morning Pages / Meditations – 147
#aPicADay – 0
10K steps a day – 0
OMAD – 0
#noCoffee – 0
#noCoke – 60
10 mins of meditation – 0
#book2 – 0
Killer Boogie – 0
Original Work (limited time only) – 0
Surya Namaskar – 0

Tag: Covaxin

060621 – Morning Pages

090521 – Meditations