The Best Weekends

As I go through life, I’m trying to figure out what my best weekends look like.  I think last weekend in Delhi was an awesome, have a ton of fun, meet a lot of new and interesting people weekend.  But this weekend, I needed to recharge, and recover from a tough week.  Running a startup is hard (as are other professions I am sure) and sometimes what you need is a weekend to recover.

What I’ve learned is that when I’m tired, I actually like to be a recluse.  I like to use the weekend to read/watch a lot of things I don’t get to during the week, usually to get my creative juices flowing.  These weekends include watching a lot of TED Talks/YouTube Videos from people that I find really interesting. And stopping in between to think about how that either relates to my life, or work.  This weekend was a lot of Brene Brown and how vulnerability actually fuels strength and creativity.  (I am still processing/blown away by this concept).

Another thing that I’ve developed since I’ve come to India is this weird social anxiety, especially when I am emotionally drained.  People who know me may not believe it but yes, not a huge fan of social situations if I’m not up to it.  So I tried something really experimental this weekend.  There’s a ton of great comedy in Bangalore which I never get to go to, and yesterday, I decided to just go- by myself.  (Plug here for Sanjay Manaktala, Shunky Chugani, Kritharth Srinivasan, and Praveen Kumar- great show last night)  And honestly, it was one of the most liberating experiences of my life.  I didn’t know anyone, and I didn’t try to meet anyone.  For once, I could just be a face in the crowd, with no expectations and no need to show up.  I could just…be.  It was absolutely fantastic.

And afterwards, I just walked over to my friend’s bar (again, plug here for The Black Rabbit- one of my favorite spots in Bangalore, especially if you love hip hop).  It’s like Cheers, where everyone knows your name.  There’s always someone you know there, and yesterday it happened to randomly be my friend’s brother in law’s birthday celebration.  So I joined in.

I had a 3 hour lunch with my cousin and her husband (great people, great food), and cooked food with my roommate (which we ate and watched trashy TV/talked about life).  I drank a LOT of tea this weekend.  I pet our dog a LOT.  And went to yoga and the gym.

Turns out, this amalgamation of random activities are the ingredients for my perfect recharge weekend.