Jan 2025: Full Month vs Full Heart
To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy’s quote from Anna Karenina, “all empty months for an artist are alike; each full month for an artist is full in its own way.”
Jan 2025 was an incredibly busy month for me, and the crazy thing is that I had no idea it would this busy even a week before it began. I’ll break it down here so you can see just how varied it can be.
Travel + Family: I spent the first week of the New Year holidaying in Chiang Mai with my wife — a most excellent trip. In the third week of Jan, I was in Bengaluru to see my parents and extended family visiting from abroad.
Acting: I landed a leading role in an immersive performative installation about an unknown Indo-Korean story. Called ‘Limits of Change’ and backed by the InKo Centre, it plays at Lalit Kala Academy from Feb 8 to 20, three shows daily. I rehearsed every afternoon in Jan from 2–5pm for this show.
Reading: I volunteer as an Associate Fiction Editor for The Bombay Literary Magazine (TBLM), which publishes online every four months. Submissions opened on Jan 1 for the next issue, and I started reading through my share of the stories that came in. I also read the opening five chapters of a friend’s sci-fi novel manuscript to give feedback. And (non-work) I listened to two audiobooks from The Dispatcher series and the first three episodes of the Empire podcast.
Writing: I worked with the director of ‘Limits of Change’ to edit and rewrite the script. And on Jan 26, on the occasion of Republic Day, I spoke about my nonfiction book “The Origin Story of India’s States” to a small invested crowd of kids and adults at the Bangalore International Centre.
New Opportunities: I discussed new business and creative ventures with friends — hosting a fiction podcast, opening a bookstore cafe, consulting on a friend’s startup.
Showing Up: We spent time with friends and showed up for their many offerings. A friend’s mother ran her first ever art stall at a flea market. We met friends to play pickleball. We went to watch plays. We attended two wedding receptions, two thread ceremonies and one friend’s father’s seventieth birthday function.
It’s possible to have a full month even as an independent artist, scheduling meetings and rehearsals and working on projects. It’s joyful to have a full heart, loving everyone I’m working with, going above and beyond for others, sleeping well and looking forward to every day. I had full months when I worked in a corporate job, but never a full heart. In Jan 2025, I had both.
