Lost.

What activities do you lose yourself in?

Sometimes you need to lose yourself a few times before you can find yourself.

You can get lost in anything that you develop muscle memory for. The moment something becomes automatic, it can go on autopilot and you can get lost in it.

For instance, a few years ago, I got the license to drive after four attempts. Every attempt was followed by numerous classes to get me acclimatized to the driving rules and regulations. Lots of muscle memory on unfamiliar roads. Once I got the license, I decided to explore the city on my own, I had a car, the price of gas was cheap, and I had four hours to kill. I used to drive on random roads, take random exits, and see how best to find my way back. Unfortunately, Google Maps did not work in this location, however, the entire city is built on either side of the main road. Once you get to the main road there are only two directions to go – so really, not easy to get lost in. This is what I thought until I hit the ministries district. One random exit, a beautifully wide open road, well maintained, leading to eternity. There was no traffic. No patrol vehicles were driving by I could’ve signaled for aid. This is the only crazy design in the entire city. Big bungalows converted to house various ministries of the state, with automatic gates, manned by video cameras and guards sitting in AC cabins set well away from the street. Deserted streets! At 11 am, in the district that houses the various ministries. And no mobile signals on the street. Waze stopped. I stopped. I pulled to the side, to see why my map had stopped giving me directions. I was so dependent on the app, I had no clue where I was. And this was where I found myself one morning while exploring the city, on autopilot! On a 3-a-side wide street, with functioning signals. Without a decent 4G phone signal and hence no way to use the Waze app and a busy spouse, and no idea on who to call to figure out how to get out. So yes! You can get lost in anything that becomes automatic. I was lost on a joy ride!

Let’s go back a couple of decades, growing up, vacations were usually spent at the aunt’s house. When we were not going for gymnastics classes, we used to go to the aunt’s for a couple of weeks. There really was nothing to do there. My aunt had a VHS player (which was all the rage in those days) and 2 VHS tapes and we usually finished re-watching these tapes in the first couple of days and got bored out of our skull just sitting around. So she took pity on us and coordinated with a neighbour who was a famous artist/sculptor to tutor us. The first class was a lot of adjustment, he just gave us a sheet of paper and said, “do what you feel like, you have an hour, and here are the colors”. I remember just staring at that sheet, for the longest time. The younger sibling was off, like a racehorse at the gates, creating her scenery, with the house, chimney with a puff of smoke and clouds and a river and banks and coconut trees- I mean, it had everything a perfect scenery would have and I was lost in her art. I had no idea what to do. In all my previous art “classes” we were told to draw something, as in a topic used to be provided and we used to create our version of that theme. Here, I had just been given a blank canvas and told to create something, and that was overwhelming. After almost an hour, where the tutor had gone out to ‘read’ the paper and then took a nap, he returned to find my paper in almost the same condition as it was when he had given it to me. I had started, with lines, then liked the way the colors moved on the sheet (oil pastels slip and slide on paper, and it is the most fun art material to use). He liked the siblings art, and appreciated it. Then looked at mine and said, “Can you make sure there is no white on the page?” Now this, I was able to handle, I removed the colors once again and went at the paper, coloured it in various hues and shades and must’ve created the most colourful piece of paper ever, there was absolutely no white visible at any point on that page. It felt like a few minutes but it was almost an hour where he just sat behind and watched as I filled the page with colors and blended it. The sibling had moved on to another sheet to fill with colours and both of us were pouncing on the colors at the same time. As hilarious as the back-and-forth of fighting for colours was, this was the first time, I had lost account of the time I had spent on art. We enjoyed the classes so much, we requested to have a session for the duration of our stay there. I was lost in art!

Jumping ahead, when I’d been married for a bit, and the kids were around, I was invited to join the family on a trek to the Everest Base Camp. I’ve never trekked before. I’ve never seen the mountains. Walking was just a way to get from point A to point B. I’ve walked a lot while I grew up. But I knew the destination and had an idea of the route and hence the terrain. I had numerous landmarks that I used to look out at, while on these walks and have never found myself at a loss. I’ve often wondered what it means, ‘to lose yourself in’ something and I’ve never found a suitable answer. The gentle sway of her hips as she walked ahead of me, talking about nothing in particular and me responding to nothing in particular while I just focused on her steps. Not counting. Not thinking about it. Just focused on placing my foot where hers had last been, not once tripping her. Not once tripping the younger sibling who was walking in my wake. As I said, I’ve never walked without learning about the terrain or the destination because if I cannot visualize it, I can’t do it. And this is where I found myself on the fourth day of my trek, my mind just switched off and I was slowly unraveling. Until the older sibling instructed me to just follow. Not think. Just do. And that’s where I started to follow on auto-pilot. The inane conversation about yak poop looking like croissants and the gentle sway of hips were my only focus. The only motivation to complete that trek. I was lost. Lost on a trek to EBC with the family.  We were a group of almost a dozen individuals, but it seemed like it was just the three of us, the fourth sibling usually walked faster or slower depending on the mood. But for the most part, just the three, walking in a line. Focused. It was the same pace. Almost meditative in its symmetry. Now I understand what it means to ‘lose yourself in something’. I lost myself on a walk!

Today, I get lost in my tangles, the designs often creating themselves and my hand just a tool in this process. My mind is unconscious in the act of creating the design. I’ve often left designs incomplete because I lost focus on where I want the art to go. My art, seems like random doodles on a page, and that’s all it is, but, for some reason, it creates itself. I know that I often squint at the art from a distance to see how best to balance a design element or a color to make it more interesting. My aim in all my art is to remove the negative space like I had learned in that art session. I don’t know if I have ever thanked him enough for pushing us to understand what that white space on the paper was and the importance of how to use it in art. It’s one of those lessons, you understand better as you focus on the process of creation.

Zen Tangling, writing and design and looking at recipes online is the kind of stuff that opens up rabbit holes for me. I can get lost looking at and studying these designs and templates and focussing on how to adapt them to an idea that I can create. The pursuit of knowledge. That’s what I can get lost in. Recently I joined a company specialising in a domain I was unfamiliar with. I remember I spent the first couple of months down numerous rabbit holes just trying to grasp a toehold of the domain. Unfortunately, we parted ways, but, I learned a little more about a topic I had no clue about. Am I proficient in it now? Not at all. But, I got sucked in sufficiently to be able to follow a conversation and maybe look at the right spots for more information. And if I’m not careful, I can get lost in a quest to find the perfect response or answer to the information I seek.

As I have mentioned earlier, I focus on one activity at a time and don’t multi-task, and this is probably why I lose myself in the task. There are three things I schedule for myself to complete on any particular day. The first one is the blog. This is followed by some design work on Canva. And I finish off with the art I have slotted. Typically I get about an easy 8-9 hours, and I spend these divided in random order depending on a pre-set priority list. While the design and art may continue over a couple of days or weeks, the blogs are always completed in one sitting. And this is how I often pull myself back from the abyss of being sucked in too far! So I’m not lost in something, but I find myself while looking in!