Habit

“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”― Mahatma Gandhi

It was a rather short grocery list. Just the basics. Egg, milk, bread, fruits, Greek yogurt, cheese, avocado, Gatorade. Took me less than 10 minutes to pick up the items from the store shelves, pay at the self-checkout kiosk and come back to the parking lot. But where is my car? I have quite a strong visual memory. I totally remembered that I parked within the first few spots along the alley that is directly aligned with the main door of the grocery store. But absolutely no sign of any Tesla in those spots. Not even in the corresponding spots in the adjacent parallel alleys. I started to get a bit nervous within. Is my memory completely failing me to remember where I parked just 10 minutes ago? Then as the muffled sound of something playing in the car audio inside a locked car nearby wafted towards me, I suddenly realized that I was driving a rental car today, as my Tesla is getting some work done. I was lucky that s soon as I came close enough to the rental car, my phone was connected via Bluetooth to the rental car’s audio system and started playing the audiobook ("The Worlds I See" by Fei-Fei Li) that I was listening to while driving towards the grocery store. The familiar sound of the audiobook rescued me from the embarrassment of not being able to locate my car.

I was looking at the right spot, but looking for the “wrong” car.

This is a prime illustration of what habit does to you. Your brain takes a passive role and “automaticity” takes over. In my case, for the last five-plus years, the reflexive action is to look for my Tesla. I think we all have habits, many of which make us more efficient, amuse us, or at the very least, not harmful to us.

Take for example, my habit for the last one and a half years to start my day with solving multiple word puzzles. It started small during the COVID time with solving Wordle. I used to solve Wordle at a random time of the day whenever I had a down time and if I remembered about Wordle. Eventually solving wordle became part of my morning routine. And I added more and more word games to that routine, thanks to being part of a word-game-enthusiast friend community. At some point it has become a set of six (sometimes seven) word games that I would solve before even leaving the bed. Sometimes that would pose a problem, as it would interfere with the limited time I have to get ready in the morning to go to office, now that we are again working from office. So even though solving word games is not necessarily a bad habit,---in fact some would say it is good habit as it kickstarts my brain every morning--I consciously made a decision to break the habit of having to solve all of the word games at a stretch every morning. I just wanted to prove to myself that I am flexible enough to not be a “slave” to my own habit, irrespective of whether that is a good, a bad or a harmless neutral habit. The point is to break the cycle of dependency.

I am not that big into New Year’s resolution. Except 2018 when I decided to start playing tennis to reverse diabetes. Every other year I loosely tell myself that maybe this year I’d finally stop chewing my fingernails, but I don’t take that seriously at all, and inevitably I fail. But I think this year I silently took the resolution of “not playing all the word games at once” seriously enough. I am still playing my most favorite games almost every day—Connections, Wordle and Spelling Bee. And I play those first thing in the morning. But the others (i.e., Waffle, Squareword, Mini Crossword and Wordiply) I play at random times of the day whenever I can fit them in and if I remember to play.

Let me see how long this “resolution” lasts. A marketing study showed that the third Monday of January is the most depressing day of the year. It even has a name—“Blue Monday”. Apparently around this time “the major-lifestyle-modifying New Year’s resolutions almost always end in failure.” (Is ‘Blue Monday’ really the most depressing day of the year?). Well, I am writing this blog past the “Blue Monday” (which was January 15 this year), and my “resolution” is still going strong. Maybe the secret is to not make “major” lifestyle modifications, but trick yourself into achieving a major result eventually by starting with a “minor” habit change.

Renaissance

“Don’t mess with Texas.”

We spotted the road sign right after our car crossed the New Mexico border and entered Texas near El Paso. We still had nine-plus hours to drive through the unknown wilderness of West Texas to reach our final destination, Austin. But the clever anti-littering sign instantly put us at ease. Texas definitely has a sense of humor! (I later looked up and found that the slogan is a registered trademark owned by the Texas Department of Transportation.)

It was ‘Day Four’ of our four-nights-five-days exclusive mother-son road trip from Cupertino, California to Austin, Texas. My son Jyotishko (I refer to him as J in this blog) is starting his college life at the University of Texas at Austin this Fall. Though the campus is close to downtown Austin and students can totally manage to live without a car, we thought it made no sense to keep his Mini Cooper sitting idle at Cupertino. Of course we could have shipped the car to Austin and fly ourselves there, but I always had this dream of super-long road trips when my son is old enough to drive. And what could have been a better opportunity than this! We had 1750 miles to cover! So with equal amounts of trepidation and hope of adventure in mind, we packed all the stuff that J was going to need in college in the car, and hit the road the day after he turned eighteen. We knew we would be crossing the deserts of Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas in the peak of summer in August, where temperature hovers steadily above 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the day. We knew the car has a small tank (11.6 gallon capacity) and we might not find gas stations for long stretches during our journey. So we packed 4 gallons of spare gas and plenty of water in the trunk. We downloaded offline maps and packed dry fruits and nuts for survival. The packing itself made me feel like Clint Eastwood! I could almost hear the famous soundtrack of “Good, Bad and Ugly” in my head, which was apparently the inspiration behind the background score of the timeless Bollywood Classic “Sholay.”

Our plan was to not drive too long each day to exhaust ourselves. After all the main purpose was to extend the farewell. After the first day of driving went smoothly and we landed at this iconic Wigwam Motel (the motivation behind the “Cozy Cone Motel” in the Disney classic movie “Cars”) along the historic Route 66 at San Bernardino, California, we realized that six-to-seven hours of driving was not too strenuous and we could add some detours to our itinerary. So on the second day, we added Joshua Tree National Park on our way to Phoenix, Arizona. Once we entered the park, J was so energized that he went rock climbing at high noon! “There could not have been a better transition to adulthood than this!” he exclaimed, dripping in sweat, but with the widest smile on his face! We could not believe when we saw 114 degrees Fahrenheit on our car dashboard at one point, and our little Mini was still giving us 32.5 miles per gallon with AC on full blast and carrying a full load of passengers and luggage. Cars are just amazing! They give you this little cocoon of safety with its own microclimate and musical immersion while still carrying you towards your destination.

By the second day, we became more ambitious. In addition to the detour plans, we added another daily goal—we decided to eat something for dinner each day that represents the local cuisine. J is a foodie and cooks well himself. So tasting local food (not necessarily fancy food) along the way was all but natural. At Phoenix, we tried “Fry Bread”, a Native Indian dish, and totally enjoyed it. Conveniently for us, right in front of the eatery, two brothers were selling Native Indian jewelry. I bought silver earrings with Hopi designs. J bought a seed bracelet with Navajo Indian designs---apparently a good luck charm. We knew it might be just a sales pitch, but when you travel, this willing suspension of rationality feels so liberating.

J decided to drive the whole time. I offered to share the driving, but first time I sat on the driver’s seat, we realized that we would have to adjust the seat position back and forth every time we switch driver. The car was so optimally packed that moving seat position would create imbalance and the packed stuff, some of them fragile (like J’s computer monitor), may be damaged. So we reached an agreement-- if J would feel too tired to concentrate on the road, only then we would switch driver. Turned out that eight-ish hours on the wheel was no big deal for an eighteen year old kid who loves driving. “You want the bragging rights to truthfully say that you drove all the way, right?” I said with a mind-reader’s confidence. “Yes,” he said with a sheepish grin. “Plus the driver gets to choose the music. Ha ha.” That was the mood the whole time. The more the road trip progressed, the more carefree we started feeling. It was not a parent-child equation anymore. We were just two buddies on a shared mission. Each time we were coming close to crossing a state line, I would be ready with my camera to take a picture of a big road sign, and J would move to the right lane and slow down as much as possible to make it easy for me to take the shot. Our album is full of pictures showing “Welcome to Arizona”, “Welcome to New Mexico,” “You are leaving New Mexico,” “Edge of Texas” etc. Since J was driving the whole time, I kept myself occupied by taking pictures of local vegetation and using Google Lens to identify them and sharing the knowledge with J. We became quite the experts on xerophytes---the desert plants that need little water.

The 1750 miles distance between Cupertino and Austin became 1900-plus miles with the addition Joshua Tree National Park in California on Day Two, Saguaro National Park in Arizona on Day Three, and White Sands National Park in New Mexico on Day Four. I never ever imagined hitting three national parks in three days, that too with impromptu planning. But it felt completely normal. Each national park was totally worth the visit—they were unique in their own ways. We tasted the ruby red prickly pear cactus fruits at Saguaro National Park. I hummed a song while J kept driving through the myriad varieties of cacti on both sides of the road, some as tall as an Oak tree. We deliberately did not follow the signs while hiking on the all-pervasive white sands at the eponymous national park, embracing the risk of getting lost in the desert, but confident in our heart that we wouldn’t get lost. J forgot his sunglasses in the car during the hike on the sand. I had mine on. So we kept time-sharing my sunglasses to save ourselves from being blinded by the glare from the white sands. It reminded me of the recent adventure on the glaciers at the Jasper National Park in Canada two months back. It was the exact same scenario. J forgot his sunglasses that time too. The whiteness of the glacier was blinding and mama had to share her sunglasses with the kiddo. As they say, you share when you care—from the glacier at the Canadian Rockies to the white sands in New Mexico.

Our last two stops en route to Austin were cities that we have never heard of before--Las Cruces at New Mexico and Ozona at Texas. Both are in the middle of nowhere and provided excellent opportunities for stargazing, as there was very little light pollution when we drove just a few miles outside of the city limits (guided by an app that shows the geographical light map for stargazers) around 10 pm after dinner. I do not have the power of words to be able to express how it felt to witness millions of stars and the contours of the faraway galaxies in the pitch-black ambience with the chorus of nocturnal creatures—owls, insects and frogs—as the background music. It’s a cliché, but looking at the stars makes you realize what a minuscule part you are in this vast universe, and how meaningless it is to be bogged down by your mundane existential crises. J said, in the tone of an epiphany, that whatever little worry he had about the upcoming changes in his life, completely vanished in those powerful peaceful moments of stargazing.

By mid-day on Day Five we reached Austin. Once we were close enough to Austin, we thought there was no point in carrying the spare gas anymore. So we stopped at a random spot by the roadside and J was emptying the gas cans into the tank. From a distance it did look like our car had stalled. Within 10 minutes, two good Samaritans, one after another, came by with their pickup trucks and offered to help. I thanked them and assured them that we were totally fine. Our hearts were filled with gratitude at the large-heartedness of the Texans. We couldn’t have felt more welcome. Once at Austin, the first thing we did was to give the Mini Cooper a premium carwash to celebrate the feat of the “little engine that could”--sustaining a 1900 mile journey with aplomb! The rest was all streamlined. Unloading, moving into J’s new apartment, setting up his room, meeting his roommate and his family, going to Target to buy the essentials that we did not pack in the car---everything got done like clockwork. Glitch-free. We celebrated J and his roommate’s joint birthdays at a fancy Indian restaurant that evening.

This was the longest road trip of my life! Definitely a “bucket list” item. I never imagined checking off three bucket list items in two months---trip to Peru to visit Machu Picchu in early July, the longest road trip of my life in mid-August and attending a Beyonce concert on August 30. At this rate, I need to augment and expand my bucket list. 

I think this summer I am reborn. I kept thinking about what to name this blog. Who knew that Texas girl Beyonce’s “Renaissance” world tour would provide the perfect title for my first blog of 2023. Here’s to “empty-nesting” in style!

Half Century amidst Centuries Old

Another year is coming to an end. With it, another decade of my life is coming to an end. My fiftieth birthday is just a few days away. I am not a planner. I did not quite chalk out what are the milestones I need to hit by the time I become fifty. But I think everyone has an inner sense of whether they are more or less hitting the mark or falling far behind. I must say I am pleasantly surprised to discover that even after spending five decades on earth, even after knowing up close and personal what loss is, even after having a brush with serious threat to health, I can look forward to the upcoming chapter as a yet-unknown adventure, which might be even better than what I have experienced thus far.

In 2022, the world has largely come out of its shell after two years of COVID closure. It was a struggle initially to re-embrace the post-pandemic "normalcy". The unexpected perks of pandemic--if you survived it--were precious. During the pandemic, you had the license to bathe in nostalgia. You had to learn how to look inwards rather than looking for stimulus outside. You felt good about reaching out without hesitation. You had the urge to share and the world had the time to listen. I remember I wrote so much in 2020! It slowed down in 2021, and quite unbelievably it almost stopped in 2022. This is only my second blog this year. I guess as everyone learnt to adjust to the pandemic, even objectively blog-worthy topics remained unchronicled. So here's my last-ditch attempt to capture "a moment of high" before 2022 fleets by.

Yesterday when I was scaling the steps of the Ranakpur Jain temple near Udaipur in the Western State of Rajasthan in India, a sudden jolt of emotion hit me. I am not that religious, but I silently shed tears of joy to be able to witness and soak in the intricacy and splendor of fifteenth century marble sculpting that showcases ancient India. 

That moment made me realize that personally the happiest achievement for me in 2022 is to get a handle on my health. After the rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis in May 2021, I was shaken to my core and struggled to envision a future full of physical freedom. Thanks to the relentless believers in my support system, some quiet and some vocal, now I find myself playing tennis and traveling continents. Inside the Ranakpur temple, yesterday I found my mind dreaming of scaling Machu Picchu to see the Inca citadel in Peru sometime in near future. I have harbored that dream since my childhood since I read about it in the Adventures of Tintin comic books. But I am a realist and since the scare last year, I couldn't give myself permission to dream of big travels until I could prove it to myself that my body is ready for the rigor. And I think I am ready.

India does this to my soul every time I visit. I feel proud to have been born here. I feel overjoyed when my son also feels the vibes of India. Yes it is dusty and overcrowded, but it is also authentic, pragmatic and gives one a huge sense on continuity---from the ancient grandeur to the modern ambition. I am fortunate to be able to step into a new chapter of my life while visiting India with family.

The name of this blog is "Detritus." The word itself evokes the image of ruins and in my mind it signifies emergence from the ruins too. While visiting the centuries old ruins of the Chittorgarh fort, two hours from Udaipur, I kept thinking how apt the lyrics of that famous song from the movie "Guide" (1965) are--"Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Tamanna Hai" (thematically translates to "My soul has awakened again.") The song was picturized at Chittorgarh. Art imitates life and life imitates art in the detritus of Rajasthan!!

Spring Cleaning

Sometimes spring cleaning starts at 6 pm on a Friday afternoon when you realize that you have met your monthly client-billable goal (I am a patent lawyer) and work will not have to spill into your weekend. Sometimes you feel so light after throwing away all the garbage that were covering the floor of your home office for the last two years, that you feel like writing a blog---the first one of this year.

 

For some reason, today I am in a nostalgic mood. The nostalgia triggered when I took a bite into the perfectly ripened loquats plucked from the neighborhood tree while walking the dog. This year’s spring has been delayed. I can tell because the loquats were ripened much earlier in Spring 2020 when we were first learning to work from home. Between me, my husband and our son, the poor dog used to have to walk miles during the day, because none of us is a smoker, but we needed the proverbial “smoking break” to de-stress, and dog walking was our excuse to get some fresh air in the middle of the day.

 

The transition to work from home was not easy for me. I was the type who would drive to work five days a week even when others were uncomfortable going to office with the COVID news spreading gradually in February-March 2020 time frame. My excuses were varied-- “I get to listen to my audiobooks if I drive to work,” “I need hard copies to effectively read a reference and the office printer is so much faster than my home printer!” “I can close the door of the office room and protect myself from the spread of virus,” “If it were that bad, then the Government would mandate office closure.” Well, eventually the Government did, and in a fit of panic, I carried a lot of work materials, mostly stacks of printed references for my various patent cases, to home, thinking I would not be able to print that many pages at home. They took up a good part of the floor in my home office. Luckily I was the first one to occupy the room set up as home office, so my husband reluctantly but graciously set up his home office in the guest room across the corridor. His “office” always looked cleaner than mine. He was already mostly paperless. But I guess I am different. It takes a pandemic to finally transform me into a true paperless person. Always loved the trees. Now I get to walk the walk.

 

Still, not adding new printed material is not the same as having the “courage” to decide to throw the existing printed materials away. My attitude was that if I had decided to print them at some point, they must have been important, and how can I throw away important stuff? What if I need them again in future? So let them sit on my floor. And sit they did for two years. Mostly untouched. Radiating the intangible perceived gravitas of “important enough not to throw away.”

 

It must be the perfection of the loquat that instantly took me back to the dog walk days of March 2020 and epiphany struck—now that we are required to go to office three or more days a week, am I going to carry all those materials back to office again to repopulate the shelves? The answer was clear as daylight. And by the end of the day I can again see the hardwood floor of my home office. Cleaner office. Lighter soul. And a blog after six months. Triple crown to start the weekend on the right note. What can be better!

From Patent to Diet--My Wonderful Journey with WANDA

 

Almost exactly three years back, in a windy Fall afternoon much like today (minus the work-from-home component of course), my boss Marina Portnova asked me if I was interested to take up a pro bono project. She was approached by Jeanne Curtis, the inaugural Director of the Cardozo/GooglePatent Diversity Project at the Cardozo Law School. I was fairly new to the firm at that point after a long stint at my previous firm, and pondered if I should do more client-billable work to establish myself as a profitable associate at my new workplace, or take up the pro bono work, which historically almost always proved to be more soul-satisfying. The debate was short-lived once I saw the profile of the potential pro bono client, Tambra Raye Stevenson. Working with more female inventors has been my life-long mission in an effort to leveling the playing field in my professional world involving patents, where only 12% of the inventors were female according to 2018 data. Well, Tambra not only fit that bill, but added more flavor to that, because her invention was not one of the high-tech devices and algorithms that I deal with day in and day out with my silicon valley clients. She invented a talking doll to inspire people to eat better! I realized this will be a unique experience for me, and told my boss that I was in!

Little did I know at that time that during the course of working with Tambra I will embark on my own nutritional journey, and terms like “anti-inflammatory diet”, “dietetics” etc. would be part of my own vocabulary. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me roll back to October-November 2018 timeframe. 

I had my first Skype meeting (Zoom was still not ubiquitous then) with Tambra in early November, 2018. She was based in Washington DC. Naturally my ice-breaker conversation involved mentioning the fact that my American journey began in the greater Washington DC metropolitan area when I joined University of Maryland as a graduate student, and then later started my career in patent law at a law firm in Washington DC. I had to explain to Tambra that we need to file a “design patent” to secure the intellectual property rights on the “looks” of the doll, rather than securing rights to the “utility” of the doll. The social “utility” of acting as a recognizable mascot to spread a positive message about better eating is not good enough from a patent law perspective. So over the next few meetings, Tambra and I collaborated to procure drawings that convey how the doll was going to look like. The doll already had a name—little WANDA, a very clever play on the acronym “Women (and girls) Advancing Nutrition, Dietetics and Agriculture.” Tambra did a great job explaining that Wanda was like “Dora the Explorer” who focuses on reminding children of African American descent to count on the treasure trove of ancestral knowledge about what nutrition is anthropologically optimal for them based on the genetic makeup of the diaspora. Tambra’s own daughter Ruby was the inspiration behind Wanda’s look—the twinkle in her eye, the way she dressed and the way she wore her hair.

Being an immigrant myself, who comes from India, a country that offers its own rich culture and deep ancestral knowledge about food, Tambra’s nutrition activism really resonated with me. And I was thrilled that finally my professional qualification as a patent attorney was giving me the chance to work with a very atypical client with a unique social vision. My then-secretary Gloria also joined in the enthusiasm. We finalized the drawings and the description and filed the patent application in March on 2019. As normal in any patent application, you submit the application and wait for the patent office to get back to you with either a rejection or an acceptance in one or more years.

With Tambra’s application, the first “rejection” from the patent office came in summer 2020. By that time the world had changed due to COVID. Everyone was dealing with stress and immunity-boosting nutrition became paramount. We had every motivation to respond to the “rejection.” We co-opted our trusted draftsman Darryl to tweak the drawings of the doll to overcome the patent Examiner’s rejections. But in a few months, the application got rejected again for the second time. This time I called up the patent Examiner, and she very patiently guided me through the additional modifications that I needed to introduce to the drawings.

While Tambra’s patent application was going through its back-and-forth with the patent office, my own story was changing significantly. In early May 2021, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that causes joint inflammation and excruciating pain if not managed properly. Before the formal diagnosis, I had been suffering with body aches and pain since late summer 2020. I just didn’t know what was causing it. Once diagnosed, on top of medication and physiotherapy, I was advised to take a closer look at my diet, because it is known that certain types of food cause inflammation. At that point, an angel of a friend, Vinita Madhani, connected me with Dr. Avinash Saoji, an India-based doctor of Naturopathy, who conducts nutritional boot-camps to reverse diabetes and other so-called “lifestyle based” diseases that to a large extent are caused by the type of food that we consume, including too much reliance on processed foods. With a lot of skepticism, I joined the program. Dr. Saoji told me at the beginning that though the program was designed for diabetes reversal, it has been proven to benefit arthritis patients as well. For ten weeks, I had to give up on a lot—no dairy, no tea/coffee, no white rice, no regular wheat-based bakery items, no non-vegetarian food, no sugar, no processed food, and no oil!! My first question was, then what is left to eat? But Dr. Saoji and his team at his non-profit organization Prayas, gave us enough ideas and recipes to survive within the stringent constraints of the diet. And lo and behold, around the sixth week, my diabetes, for which I have been taking medication for the last five years, was miraculously reversed! And my arthritic pain was also perceptibly reduced!

In a spectacular coincidence, in another few weeks, Tambra’s patent application was allowed by the Examiner---our latest tweaks in the drawings did the trick! Our lives, mine and my client’s, got connected forever! I became a proud warrior who beat diabetes (and managed arthritis to a large extent) through better eating, and Tambra became a proud owner of her very first patent on a doll that talks about better eating! The patent officially issued as US Patent D931,387 right around her birthday! I could not have given her a better birthday gift!

This journey has been one of the major highlights of my sixteen-year-long career as a patent practitioner. Thank you Tambra for being an integral part of my story when my professional life tangled, in the most welcome way, with my personal life. Wish you all the success with WANDA’s mission, and I am glad to be a little part of your journey.

500 days! Delta Variant and the Delta Variation in Lifestyle

I have blogged to commemorate the completion of 100, 200, 300, and 400 days from the official start of shelter-in-place in California in March, 2020. So it is only fitting that I complete the series with a blog post on the 500th day too, which is just round the corner--July 29 to be precise. But that is a weekday and I am in the mood to write now. Just me and my laptop enjoying the sun in the late-ish part of Sunday--with the dog taking a siesta next to me--before another work week starts.

A lot has happened since my last blog in late May. At that point I was barely coming out of the worst health scare of my life, being diagnosed with autoimmune disease (rheumatoid arthritis). The rheumatologist got me started on Methotrexate, a low dose chemo treatment, commonly used as an immunosuppressant. He told me that it would take 4-5 weeks before the medicine starts showing its effect, and that proved to be true. I have been feeling much better since the beginning of July. In fact, though there were some trepidations, I felt like I was fit enough to take a long-ish family road trip to Santa Barbara to enjoy the July 4th fireworks on the beach! And it was totally worth it! It became the slightly-belated but perfect celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary.

The improvement in health can be attributed to a combination of factors. Of course the medicine has a huge role. But I have also incorporated some variations in lifestyle, including cutting down on tennis significantly and introducing yoga to my regimen. But the most significant lifestyle change is enrolling in a 10-week-long nutritional bootcamp and switching to an anti-inflammatory diet. There are lots and lots of restrictions in the diet, but nothing motivates me like results. Though the bootcamp is targeted to reversing diabetes, I was told it would help me with my arthritis too, and that is exactly what has happened. I am half-way done with the program and have been off of the diabetes medication for a whole week now. The joint pain is much less, to the extent that I can now sleep through the night without getting up in the middle of the night because of leg cramps, play tennis (doubles) for 2 hours in the weekend, and spend regular hours at work without crashing down in the middle of the day due to fatigue.

Speaking of work, I have to say I feel for the management. Our firm management put so much effort to encourage the employees to come back to work under a hybrid model, where you are "encouraged" work from the office two or more days each week if you are vaccinated and not otherwise "immuno-compromised". Though I am now technically an immuno-compromised employee, I am doing well enough to go to office two days a week. There was gourmet catered food, that could be customized to suit your food restrictions. For the first time in my life, I became a "fancy" eater and selected gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan entrees, and they were still delicious! It was really nice to spend time in person with our summer mentees. But then with the emergence of the delta variant of the coronavirus, the management had to backtrack a little, and had to grant the employees the option to work fully remotely all five days a week. So from tomorrow onwards, I will work fully remotely again, at least most of the weeks until the policy changes.

One of the perks of working from home is to be able to watch how your son spends his time throughout the day. It has been thrilling to observe a responsible young man emerging out of my little boy, who is going to turn sixteen in a few weeks. He has utilized the flexibility of summer to get done with the prerequisites of getting a driver's license. Now I am enjoying being chauffeured around, as he fulfills his 50-hours of supervised driving requirement. He is also vaccinated now, and has been hanging out with other vaccinated friends in the local playground. I don't have to worry about his social isolation any longer.

All in all, I have to say--and my family totally agrees--that I seem to have mostly got my mojo back. I badly needed that, because I was not sure what to do with the person that I was two and a half months back, who was not only physically suffering, but was also scared to the core thinking that the life that she knew before the autoimmune diagnosis would never come back. Well, I can say it has not come back 100%, but I am OK with that. I still think this was the universe's conspiracy to make me take a closer look at myself and re-prioritize things, including being more careful about what I eat. The journey of self-discovery continues.

Overachiever

When three different people, who are not related to each other, independently use the same word--"Overachiever"--in a span of five days, then you know the water broke, and you are going to give birth to a blog. The name of the blog baby was already chosen for you. You just have to write it out.

Last Friday we were joking about who has the most number of tennis injuries in our tennis circle. And turns out that my three--right knee, right wrist and left knee--might be at the top, earning me the dubious title of "overachiever" from my funny buddy Mallika. Then on Monday, my chiropractor Kimmy, who has become more of a friend than a physical therapist, used the exact same term when I told her that I have developed a new injury--the wrist--since my last visit in March. Well, two persons saying the same thing can be a coincidence. But three? On Tuesday, my eye doctor, Dr. Rodgin also chose to use the same term when I told him that now he has to do not only the diabetic eye exam, but also has to check for possible signs of inflammation in the eye. 

Yes, seems like the term "overachiever" is trending in my life, and for apt reason too--as my immunity system is apparently on a campaign for overachievement, making excess antibodies. I have very recently been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a form of autoimmune disease that results in joint inflammation caused by an overactive immune system. Nobody knows what triggers it. It can hit people as young as in their 20s or 30s. It is a medical mystery that whoever solves is guaranteed to get a Nobel prize---according to my rheumatologist, Dr. Fischer. There are treatments and I am about to start my medication regime. That certainly is making me feel way more hopeful than when I first received the diagnosis that I have RA, and have to live with it for the rest of my life, as it is a chronic condition.

The journey leading to the diagnosis and post-diagnosis has been "uneven"--to put it lightly. You never know when it hits you.  Going back in time, I now know that I had symptoms since last August. Random pain and niggles moved around in my hands and legs, shoulder and back. I had frequent leg cramps and swelling. I attributed all of it to playing tennis too intensely to counter pandemic-related stress, and of course to the frailty of my middle-aged body. And I have been diligently going through treatment for what we thought was osteoarthritis (the more common type arthritis related to age) under the supervision of my illustrious sports medicine doctor, Dr. Lewis, who was a ranked tennis player herself. With a competent team of orthopedic doctor, physiotherapist and chiropractor (and a few visits to an acupuncturist too), I was confident that I would get better. But it just did not happen. I felt temporary relief periodically, but the knee injuries kept coming back, forcing me to stop playing tennis for a whole month. And then instead of improving, my condition became worse, as acute pain rippled through my whole body. I could barely walk with a badly swollen leg. Started losing clumps of hair.  Sleeping through the night became impossible. Working a full 9-10 hour day became super challenging, as I had to frequently take a break because of fatigue. And the lowest blow was when I could not get up from bed one morning and my hands became almost immobile. I called my primary care physician, Dr. Ademola, and told her that she needed to see me at once. That morning was really something! I had to ask for help from my husband to get up and to dress myself to go to the doctor.

Long story short, X-rays, MRIs and innumerable blood tests conclusively proved that I have rheumatoid arthritis--a disease that not only threatens my most beloved hobby--tennis, but also my livelihood, as I am an intellectual property attorney who has to write a lot every day. Not to mention my love for blogging and being active on the social media, which also involve a lot of typing. Thank God I have at least one hobby---singing---that does not depend on joint health.

Well, there is not much one can do but to accept the reality. I am learning to be kinder to myself, because at one point I was getting angry with my own body for "betraying me". The irony is that we have been taking immunity-boosting supplements to guard against COVID, and now I have to suppress my overactive immunity system by taking medicines!

As always, writing this blog is cathartic for me, and a step forward in the right direction to manage life with RA. I am truly blessed to have the most supportive family, a totally understanding workplace, amazing clients who are motivating me to get better soon because they need my service, and an unbelievable circle of friends and well-wishers, constantly keeping my soul nourished. I found out that ace tennis player Caroline Wozniacki was diagnosed with RA when she was at the top of her game. Reading her blog post about how this "invisible" disease affected her life, but how she has managed to take back control of her life, has truly inspired me. Though she retired from professional tennis, she is aspiring to be a sports commentator to remain attached with tennis.

I think vulnerability and imperfection give the overachievers a chance to reinvent themselves. I am certainly looking forward to reinventing myself. At the very least, RA has given me a perfect "ice breaker" topic of conversation. :-) I am sure there are more yet-undiscovered facets of RA that I will come across--like a treasure hunt. #GamifyRA!