Sporadic Whispers: Musings of a Part-Time Writer

This is another one of those books I picked up because of my admiration/ facination with the author. Although most of my facination of Matthew comes from the interviews of him I have seen on the internet over the years and not from his movies (most of which I must admit, after reading the book, have not watched or even heard of).  I'm going to try and keep this one short as I am still trying to find it in myself to write consistently. I am happy to share that I have been able to write consistently even a few short lines daily for the last 3 months or so although I have not shared any of it anywhere since they were all journal entries. But the reason why I am sharing this here is because of Matthew. (I don't know why but calling him just Matthew and not by his full name feels weird. But also I am not going to type in his full name because that will be a handful). Anyways before I stray off too far, I heard from one of his interviews that he has been maintaining a journal/ dairy ...

 I have always been an attention seeker, I guess. Which is probably I was an angry kid back then. I was violently angry, especially at home and around people who were close to me. I wanted people to like me and give me attention so when ever things didn't go my way I'd throw a fit and be loud enough for people to notice. I am also a people pleaser which is also, now that I think about it, maybe a way for me to gain attention. And I think I've said this before; I want to be remembered long after I am gone. Back then, when social media was not as big as it is today, I thought one of the ways to be able to realize my attention seeking goal was to write a book or two and to achieve that I needed to start writing. So, I started "blogging". But that didn't have the effect I was expecting, I didn't become a good writer, I couldn't become a consistent writer and I didn't get the attention that I wanted. I got reactions, yes. There were a couple of people w...

I was dissapointed when I put down 'The Psychology of Money' by Morgan Housel after I finished reading it. It didn't have anything new for me. I didn't learn much from this highly recommended financial help book.  Now after my experience with the book, would I recommend this book to other people? Deninitely! with a little fine print, of course. Let me set the stage, the book was published in October 2020, and I read it mid 2025. Also I have always loved reading bits and pieces on financial literacy and listened to podcasts and watch both long form and short videos on similar topics (althought I must point it out that I have never been able to apply any of the ideas in real life). So for me when I finished reading this book the information in there was barely new to me. I had heard and read of the same ideas over the past few years.  I have nothing against the author or the content of this book in this book review of mine. I am not disagreeing with the author on anything...

  I was really looking forward to read it before and when I bought the book.  Getting an insight into the life of someone I've seen onscreen has always been fun for me. Plus from  what I have seen of Terry Crews, I always thought he was an interesting human being.  It's not that I didn't like the book.  I just couldn't finish it as soon as I would have liked to. I don't remember when I first started reading the book but it definitely feels like it took me around 6 months to finish the book. There are so many books I have been wanting to read but the thing is I am someone who needs to finish one before  I start reading another. This is the reason why I once didn't read a single book in over a year because I found the book I started reading to be so dull that I couldn't be bothered to finish it.  Which a...

Oh how I have always misunderstood what narcissist meant. And I always thought I wasn't one. There was no way I was one. But then I googled it's meaning today right before I started witing this. Why, you might ask.  I was frustrated at work today, totally lost my temper again. I had so many thoughts rushing through my head as I finished up work and drove back home. I actually wanted to justify my feelings at first. I wanted to do a social commentary on other people's morals and principles or at least of what I presumed they were. And compare it to my own morals. By the time I sat down to write this, I had some time to think and take a deep breath.  My wife has this thing she tells me to remember whenever I lose my temper, especially because of what others do; 'Who are you? Who are you to them? What gives you the right to be mad at others? How is you losing your temper going to change anything?' A "narcissist" refers to someone exhibiting traits of narcissi...

 I'll get straight to the point. I am thinking of putting up Youtube videos. At this point, I actually am posting videos of me drawing and saying random things on there but that is just for a personal challenge I set for myself. You see, I am trying to re(discover) my hobbies and drawing is one of them. Of course, I don't need to film myself and put it on Youtube to pick up drawing again but I felt like it would be a good self-checking method. I currently have 10 videos uploaded over the last month and a half. And to be honest, I kind of like the feeling I have after I put up a video on TikTok or Youtube. It feels a bit similar to the feeling I got when I used to post my thoughts on here through my writing when I was in college. This is also the reason why I started doing this again. I know most people don't read blog posts anymore and I really am not doing this for anyone else. I am writing again here for myself; for my peace of mind. Which is why I am sharing about my You...

 I always thought I was afraid of dying. It's obvious, death is inevitable and all of us have to face it sooner or later. I've always known it like everyone else. And still I have never been able to come to terms with it so to speak. I always thought that the reason behind was that I was simply afraid of dying like most people. The thought of death and what lies after it has kept me awake for countless hours since my high school days. The thought of death has haunted me on busy days and long weekends, on bus rides and long drives, in meeting halls and toilet stalls. But today at work, as I contemplated the idea of death and tried to understand why I have always been afraid of it, I realized that I was not afraid of the actual act of dying and what happens to my body and my soul after my death. I don't consider myself to be a religious person and I have never had a concrete opinion on wether life after death exists. At the same time I also never dismissed one or the other si...

A simple story revolving around the life of a simple yet relatable character. This is what I thought of the book titled 'Yangchen' by Tshering Wangchuk, the author of 'A thousand footprints' which is on my reading list and currently sitting on my bookshelf. This book takes us along the life of Yangchen, the protagonist as she goes through all that life has to offer to her. It all seems to be going well for her for most part of the story but towards the final quarter of the book, things start looking gloomy for our protagonist.  This is as far as I can talk about the story without revealing any plot lines. The following paragraphs may reveal a bit about the plot so I do recommend that you read the book first if you do not want to find out anything about the story. The book is written in a simple language which makes it an easy to read and an easy to understand story. The reader need not try and read between the lines to understand what is happening as the story goes alon...

Although I have read only a couple of Rimpochoe's books, I think it's safe for me to say that this book is different from the style of writing I have come to associate with Rimpochoe. But that is of course to be expected as it says "How to prepare for Death, Dying and Beyond" right on the book cover. We can make out that this is sort of an instructional/ guide book. It took me 9 weeks to complete first and foremost because it is about death, dying and beyond and how to prepare for all this.  I have always struggled with the thought of death, especially about what will happen to us after we die. It's not like I have not accepted the fact that we will all die eventually, it's just the thought of not knowing what will happen to us after we die that scares me the most. And with as many believes, if not more, as there are religions it gets all the more confusing and scary.  This was one of the main reasons I couldn't finish this book as quickly as I would have ...

This is more of an after thought on the book and the author than a proper book review. As the author puts it himself, 'Post-mortem' is a collection of essays on loving, loathing and limping so I am not going to go into detail about what one will find inside this gem of a book. First of all I must say that the book is aptly named. The author truly dissects events of his life as they unfold and presents them to the reader in this unique style of writing that, I am sure most will agree to, is mostly associated with Mr. Jurmi Chhowing in Bhutan or even the whole world as a matter of fact. I have read quite a number of books and have come to love and enjoy a few authors but in all honesty it’s mostly because of the stories they tell. I know there are a lot of wonderful authors to discover but so far there have only been two people who have wowed me with their style of writing: Haruki Murakami and Jurmi Chhowing. This of course is my personal opinion and I am yet to read and disco...

 It's a new day, a new year, a new blog and a new me...... ha! who am I kidding with this crap, right? It might take us all some time to get used to writing 2022 instead of 2021, but I am still the same old guy who wants to write, or so he thinks. I still have the same old excuses and the same old fears of failure and regret. But enough is enough! I tell myself. No more running away from my thoughts, no more hiding behind fat shield of excuses. Speaking of which, here is a list of around 30 plus excuses that I usually have at the tip of my tongue and fingers and that apply not only to writing but also for all the other things I have always wanted to do: Mulled over these back in August when I was in quarantine with plenty of time to think about plenty of excuses. Going through the list today I found out that most of them were silly, some repetitive, and most of them didn't have any strong standing to hold me off from whatever I wanted to do. But there are a few t...

I started out this year with one clear goal on my mind: Read at least one book every month. Meaning that I wanted to complete at least 12 books by the end of this year which is something I was never able to do in the past. I have always loved reading books, reading stories actually, from a young age. I read a lot of Tinkle and Archie comics as a child and I remember reading all those short stories in our English text books as soon as we got our textbooks at the beginning of the new school year. But until the seventh grade I never read a whole book/ novel. I don't remember the title of the book but it was a crossover of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew that I got as a prize in the previous year. My on and off love story with novels started that year and I remember reading quite a number of Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew novels during those days. My reading habit picked up a bit in high school but with school books to study I did not read a lot. I completed the Harry Potter novels by the tim...

Maybe it's because I haven't read most of the books out there written by our own Bhutanese writers, but Pema Euden's "Lomba" came as a pleasant surprise for me as a reader. Having been trying to read as many books by Bhutanese authors in the last couple of years (mainly fictions), I have come across some good reads. Most stories talked about things that the readers could relate to in settings we were familiar with and a few of them made us look at things differently and touched our hearts. But like I said, maybe it's because of the small number of books I have read, I never thought someone would actually push the envelope and create a whole world of it's own in a Bhutanese book.  Since all I know about Lomba, the festival, is only as much as is written in the book, I don't know if there is any mention of the lu world in the stories told in this part of the country and if there are any, how much of it is actually described. Having finished the book just...

Oh! the lies I tell myself The cloth I tie over my eyes And the songs I put on To drown out the voices in my head The promises I made myself To move on, to let go and to change I am waiting by myself in this crowd Thinking, wishing and praying To be freed from these self-made shackles That bind me to my past And keep me from reaching forward And finally breathe in the colors of life And so I write For that's the one thing That brings me the closest To the freedom I so desperately seek And pour out concoctions of feelings And thoughts that run deep in my heart

Over the years I have always told myself, and even others, that I love writing and that I will one day write and publish my own book(s). But at the same time there were many instances where I had to ask myself if I really loved writing because I rarely write and sometimes even when I muster up the will to write something it is mostly complaints to myself for not having written for a long time. And as of late I have been asking this very question to myself more frequently and really trying to understand why I ever set out to become a "writer" in the first place. Language has always amazed me since I was a child. I loved seeing how people could communicate in all these various languages and also how some people knew so many different languages. I loved how it could be used to communicate ideas and tell stories about anyone, anywhere, anything and everything. But being fascinated by language for me didn't make we want to learn all these languages. My thought was the ability ...