#one day i'll balance All The Social Media sites

[jaw-bones]

🌿🗡️✨

—ft. yves~

#fae #faerie #-yves #the hive* #-artworks #-queued #BIG...EMOJIS... my crops are watered this is what i want #hello im back again to fill up my queue with what i've been doing #one day i'll balance All The Social Media sites

[banquetwriter]

hellooo! can i request johnnie x reader, where his tweets are about a song but the fans think they broke up because y/n also had a suspicious tweet like him!! thank you i hope you have a wonderful day!

୨୧ Assumptions ୨୧

pairing: Johnnie Guilbert ♡︎ Reader

warnings: ୭̥⋆*｡ short (I'm sorry) fluff tbh

summary: ʚ the fans get the wrong idea when you and Johnnie tweet lyrics of his new song ɞ

Words: 1299

An: this is short but honestly it's so sweet and I loved doing this!!

You made sure to keep balance with the plate and cup in your hands as you approached your office room. You had finally convinced Johnnie to start editing in your office since he moved in. You both even set up a little recording spot for him complete with a spooky background.

You walked up to the door and knocked against it slightly using your foot. After a moment or two the door opened with a slightly worn-looking Johnnie. “Hey what's all this for?” he asked, opening the door for you. “Well you have been working so hard on your new song I thought I outta surprise you.”

You say with a big smile holding up his cup of tea and chips. “Eh, I'm really proud of this song. I just hope it, you know, does well,” he says with a short laugh at the end of his sentence. You smile while walking to the couch that is directly next to his editing chair.

The one you sat at and relaxed while he would stream. The whole world seemed so in love with you two dating. Everyone loved how well you two worked. And you loved it too. “I'm sure they will babe. I think you fucking killed it with this song,” you spoke moving your legs up to your chest and setting the food on the desk.

He smiles as you sit down in his chair and start to click around on his computer. You plucked a chip off of his plate scrolling around Twitter. “Hey, quit stealing my chips,” Johnnie said, staring at you accusingly.

You pause looking up at him, blinking slowly for a second. “When your dick gets bigger I will,” you said with a faux smile. He giggles at your comment, turning back to the computer, his fingers reaching for the coffee mug.

“Be careful, I think the tea is still pretty hot.” you half mumble the warning before putting the chip in your mouth. “I'll drink whatever the fuck I want bitch.” he says in a sassy, Timmy-esque voice. He takes a small sip of the tea before yanking the cup away from his mouth. “Fuck!” he shouts as the hot piqued burned his mouth.

You let out a loud laugh at his reaction, covering your mouth as you did so. “Aahh fuck you!” he yelps again searching for a drink of something colder. You snicker looking back down at your phone. Twitter was usually an awful place to be and it wasn't any different than this time.

You banned Johnnie from looking up his name on social media sites, and it wasn't good that you still did it but occasionally you liked to check in on fans and see what was popular amongst the fandom.

Most were hyping up the newest video you had posted this week and taking clips from it as reactions. Your fans were so funny, like genuinely. It blew you away that people found you so funny.

Of course, there were a select few that were not ideal. One about how You and Johnnie haven't posted in a while, and that you two must have broken up. They were not true by any means. With Johnnie's new song coming out soon it was easier for him to bulk-record videos so he had more time during the day to work on it.

Johnnie had finally calmed down from burning the shit out of his mouth. “How much of the new song have you teased?” you asked using your foot to spin his chair so he faced you. You continued to munch on a few chips, eating all the food you brought for your boyfriend.

“Honestly not much just that I have a new song coming out, not even a date or anything,” he said, grabbing a chip too. “Mmm we should start doing more to promote it, well sorry, you should do more this isn't my song,” you murmur using your ring finger to tap around your phone with your chip-dust-covered hands.

“Mmm, I feel like it's both of our songs in a way, I mean yeah I performed it and edited it but you helped me write it. You're also helping me by taking care of me.” he gestured to his tea as he took a sip.

You smiled at his words. It was nice when credit was given for things like this. This was Johnnie's song but you did help him with the lyrics. It was about the heartbreak of getting older, the lyrics sounding like you were talking to time.

The idea simmered down into a few words; it was like breaking up with time. The lyrics were akin to a breakup song. It was a cool idea and one you dealt with as you grew older. You even starred in the music video as the “time” character.

“What were we thinking of doing?” he murmured with his mouth full. “Maybe tweeting a few of your lyrics? Something you wouldn't normally rant about I guess,” you suggested dusting your fingers off.

“That could be cool, we should do it from the chorus or something,” he said, pulling his phone out of his back pocket. “Yeah for sure,” you mumbled absentmindedly, moving the chair with your foot still.

Over the next few days you both tweeted lyrics from the song. ‘I will forever mourn the loss of us’ and ‘You can't stay innocent to it forever’ got the most likes. Unfortunately, you two were now trending. “What the fuck are we going to do?” you asked looking at the #Johnnieandy/nbreakup tag.

“Just ignore them? The song comes out soon anyway,” he reassured you, his thumb rubbing the side of your thigh. Your legs rested on his lap as you cuddled up next to him.

You still didn't like the idea that everyone thought you two broke up. You can see how someone might think that from your guy’s tweets. And yes you shouldn't assume something about someone online but that just means your fans care about you. Doesn't it?

After a few days, you both released another video on each other's YouTube channels. The entire comments were filled with asking where the other person was. If you two had really broken up this would have been awful. Thank god you hadn't.

You both decided that you two should make at least one video addressing the rumors. On one of your tik toks someone had commented ‘Did you and Johnnie break up?’ so you replied to the comment with a video.

“Hey guys so a lot of people have been asking if me and my boyfriend Johnnie broke up, so today we are going to go ask him,” you said holding the phone up to your face as if introducing a vlog.

The next shot was of your feet walking up to Johnnie sitting on the couch. “Hey babe?” you asked, pointing the camera at him. “Yeah?” he answered back looking up at you. “Did we break up?” you ask as if it was a normal question.

“Umm last time I checked no,” he replied back trying to hold his smile back. “Oh ok, sweat just checking. Love you,” you said back moving the phone down as he broke his serious face and laughed with you.

You posted the tik tok captioned “addressing the rumors”

You cuddled up next to him and read the comments. Most of them were making fun of others for assuming things. The other half was just talking about how cute the two of you were together.

The following day the song and music video were posted and the feedback was worth it. You were so proud of Johnnie and all he had done but this song meant so much to both of you.

#jake and johnnie #johnnie guilbert #johnnie guilbert fluff #johnnie guilbert x reader #johnnie guilbert x you #johnnie x you

[finnlongman]

Couple of thoughts on the changing social media landscape etc...

This blog is, and always has been, a public/mostly professional space. The nature of Tumblr means I can have sideblogs for personal venting and off-topic posts, as many of them as I want, and this blog is fairly carefully curated to be a public-facing page. My mum looks at it sometimes, after all, so anything I post has to be something I'm willing for her to see.

(Note: I think sideblogs and stuff are very important. Everybody needs a space on the internet where they're not being observed by colleagues, supervisors, managers, readers, anyone to whom they owe professional responsibility. A place to be Weird and know that it's not going to impact on their job the next day. If you don't yet have those spaces and you're someone who uses the internet in a professional capacity, I recommend creating them; it's freeing. If you think you've found somebody else's sideblog and they haven't indicated that they want to share it with you, it's polite to pretend you don't know and let them have their Weird Place Space in peace.)

This is a LESS professional space than, say, my website, and I have different rules for myself than I did on other social media. My Twitter policy has long been not to swear on there, and to keep my account reasonably suitable to be read by teenage readers, current/future employers, and other authors alike. Here, I tend to keep my own swearing to a minimum but I'm more relaxed about sharing others' sweary content, and I'll reblog slightly more risqué things (usually relating to the vampire novel).

I've been happy with that balance. It's a place people can follow me as an author, as an academic, and as a person, and get a reasonable mix of my research, my thoughts, and updates on my books, without being unduly formal and without me ever feeling like I couldn't be myself here. And it's a place where I both create my own material and share that of others, tending towards sharing things that are educational or that relate to my own work, but also just vibing.

I've always known, though, that this was not a space for publicity per se. While I do share links to my books here and I know that a few people have bought TBA, I've never been under any illusions about the possibility of Tumblr as a place to advertise myself. Nor do I WANT to do that. Honestly, I've come to resent the pressure to use Twitter as a "brand", as a "promotion" opportunity, when for years it was just a place I hung out as a person. But I'd rather do that there than here, partly because it actually worked there.

If this truly is the decline of Twitter, I don't mind my online socialising becoming more Tumblr-focused. I'm sad about the loss, because I think I'll lose a lot of academic community and opportunities to learn that I previously found on Tumblr, and it's going to be a lot harder to connect with other authors, but it won't be impossible; I have both academic and author friends here. But what I DON'T want is for Tumblr to have to become my Professional Space to the detriment of the fun, low-key vibe I've had going here for the last 11 years.

I'm worried that, if all of my professional contacts migrate here, I will have to start putting a mask on here as well, and I'll feel more pressure to self promote. It'll start to feel like the chore that other social media has become ever since I got published and have had to start using the internet As An Author and not just as a person who also writes books. I am very happy for more people to join this site, but I don't want the side effect of that to be that suddenly all my colleagues are here and I'm in Work Mode all the time.

One of the things I've found hardest about the internet in recent years is the switch from what it was in my teens (place to be weird and unique and unselfconscious) to what it is now (place where I'm expected to be professional and might be observed by my boss, academic colleagues, publisher, readers etc at any time). And Tumblr was for a long time the last bastion against that, even if my mum looks at it. I'll be sad if that goes, because all the sideblogs in the world won't help if actually being here starts to feel like something I do for work.

Crucially, I think the problem is that for career reasons, I need something that does for me what Twitter was doing, but also I was not enjoying that aspect of Twitter and it was not feeling like a fun place to do that, so what I REALLY need is for my career not to rely on me managing to virtually hand-sell my book to people on the internet while I'm just trying to live my life...

Anyway. Just something I'm thinking about as I face down the possibility of this being the main place where I as an author can communicate with potential readers. I don't really want it to be... that, but it might have to be that, and I'm going to be thinking hard about how I navigate that.

#social media #the downfall of twitter

[chaotic-archaeologist]

Hey Reid, I wonder if you'd mind giving your advice - not about careers, but about blogging yours! I specialise in African archaeology (based in southern Africa, born 'n' bred), and I have recently gotten a full scholarship to do my PhD at Cambridge! I am very excited about this, want to keep a visual journal and keep people in my life up-to-date with what I'm up to, and start to build a professional social media presence for myself.

As someone who has documented their studies online for years (big fan; been following a while!) what has your experience been like? How do you balance what to post and what not to? Obviously there is sensitive content you can't share (I'm thinking unpublished work and certain finds, etc.) but what about talks and conferences and digs and all the other cool stuff we do?

How much time does it take per week on average to curate your blog? How did you start out, vs. where you are now?

Are there any things you regret, or wish you'd known when you started blogging? I'd be so appreciative of any wisdom you'd be willing to share.

Okay, I'll try to scrape together all of my experience and condense it here.

My experience has been mainly positive. I've gotten a little hate here and there, but for the most part all of the interaction I get is very friendly. I'd like to think that's partly my doing, but a lot of it is a credit to the dirtlings as well. You get out what you put in though, and I think I've been able to avoid some of the nastier stuff because I try very hard to never post when I'm emotional.

Believe it or not, behind the chaos I've been very deliberate with establishing what I think of as my "brand" for this blog. Your quirky archaeologist internet brother who is here to answer your questions and encourage people to pursue archaeology.

One of the biggest things that I put effort into is maintaining a certain level of integrity. That means putting sources in my posts and admitting when I don't know something. If I get asks that are out of my expertise I'll do my best, but I also tag people who might know more than I do.

For my own sanity I've developed a consistent tagging system (he speaks, he answers, academic advice, etc.) so that I can find relevant answers to questions that come in. I've also put together an advice master list and a faq page so that it's easy for me to direct people to posts without having to hunt them down.

As for what I do and don't post, I always clear artifact and site photos with a supervisor first. Additionally, I try to abide by medical privacy rules. For me, that means not posting anything that someone could stumble upon and recognize. No funny emails or class material, nothing that would put me in an awkward position if someone from real life found out about it. Conference research is a little different because it's being presented in public, but I would want the person's permission and to make sure the work is attributed.

I'm honestly not sure how much time I spend because it's all in fits and starts, but it's probably a pretty good chunk. I try to get back to asks promptly, and I check the notes of posts to see if there's anything I want to respond to. I also try to keep a list of drafts that I can publish (often just reblogs from other people) to make sure there's still content on a slow day.

If I have any regrets, it's that my internet hygiene hasn't been as good as it should be. As the blog got more popular I tried to get better, but at this point it wouldn't take much sleuthing to find out who I really am. Again, this is why I'm so careful with the content that I do post, because it's entirely possible that my schools and bosses could find out.

-Reid

#he speaks #he answers #about the blog #blog advice

[postwarlevi]

Hi hi hi! Just swooping in with some random questions to get to know you :P do you have any pets? If not, what’s your dream pet? What is your favorite aesthetic? Do you have a favorite hobby? And finally, what was your motivation to start this blog? Have a wonderful day, hope you’re doing well!

Hi anon! Hope your day is well :) Thank you so much for sending me some fun stuff!

I do have pets! 4 cats! They're all in this post. Jazz is my good boy, Jinx is my bad kitty, Sidney still acts like a kitten even though he's grown, Jackson dislikes me because be associates me with Jinx who is a brat LOL

So, IDK about dream pet, but one day when I have less cats, if I'm in a good place to provide the care, I would like to take on a CH cat. Cerebellar Hypoplasia is also known as wobbly cat syndrome (although other animals can get it too) and it affects the portion of their brain that gives them balance and motor skills. There's different severities of the condition but really these cats can live a long, happy life!

Alternatively I lost two cats to FeLV, leukemia, and if I'm cat-less would like to open my home to some positive FeLV cats since it can be spread by close contact and there's no way to completely prevent spreading it. So yeah, more cats :)

Favorite aesthetic? Hmm, I don't know if I have an answer since I feel like I don't know a lot of them, at all haha. But my first answer would be the well know cottagecore. Simple, country style, gardening, baking, loose fitting flowy dresses. It's safe to say that's my favorite.

I'm not very exciting with hobbies. I like reading, baking, and watching old movies! I'm terrible at multitasking so I can't do all the things in one day, so some days I bake all day, some times I'll watch 3 or 4 movies. If I'm in a mood, I stick with it, and the others suffer for a little while. Oops.

My motivation was really trying to find somewhere to connect with other Attack on Titan fans. I don't do much with any social media platform so this was a big jump but it looked like the right one. I looked around a lot before posting and started following people and posting on their stuff, then sharing, and eventually was encouraged to share my own writing, which I really wanted to do! Waaay back when I started writing fanfic and AOT got me back into it! I'm thankful for this site and the people I've connected with :)

#eliza interacts #anons welcome #thanks anon! #I've always had cats and can't picture myself without them #i'm very behind on reading oops #i love old movies from the 1930s through 1950s especially #send me old movies asks I love those!

[rensesjoers]

#CaneCorso #CockerSpaniel #dogs #fujifilm #fujifilmxh2 #fujixt3 #Puppies #ShiftyNLphotgraphy

[levi-supreme]

Hi, I read your post and I have a lot to say, but I am going to make it short and this is probably going to carry out onto Wednesday haha

First, I get what you mean about feeling like you can't produce content. I feel the same way for an opposite reason. I LOVE writing chaptered fics and no one wants to commit the time to reading them. I say this with the most love I possibly can, people want easily digestible smut. It is what it is. I don't mean it in a negative way at all! Everyone has their preferences and unfortunately we are working on a platform that doesn't carry the audience of the things we like to produce. That's just the way it is.

I wouldn't say you should stop writing Levi stories if you like it. If you genuinely like making headcanons over fics, do it. If you don't, don't do it. Your followers will evolve just like your blog does. That's okay. I plan to continue writing what I like, but I also want to move to other places where people might enjoy what I make more because we can write for ourselves all day, but there is no feedback like the feedback from other people.

With that, I am pretty good at giving feedback haha I give it in three varieties:

The first, sugar coating one where I will tell you the stuff I liked about it. I think this is what people like the most. Everyone wants to know what they are doing well.

The second, balanced, where I can tell you good and bad things, but I will still be more on the good parts of it.

The third, brutally honest. I'm never going to be mean, but I can tell you everything that makes no sense and the parts that are all lacking. I will still mention the good parts, but I personally feel the most growth when I correct the parts that need it.

Now that I'm done advertising myself haha

The thing is, you have to know what you want to do. If you want to write for people on Tumblr, you have to produce what the people want (see above haha), but if you want to write what YOU want to write, you might want to consider also moving to another platform or honestly, there are so many freaking people on this site. There's BOUND to be a group looking for EXACTLY what you produce. They just need time to find it :)

JOEY!!!!! I mean... it's already Wednesday and you know what, I don't care 😂

I guess you probably know what I'm going to say HAHAHAH but yes, it's kind of sad that tumblr doesn't really function like other social media sites like Twitter, and it's harder to reach out to your target audience. I love reading chaptered fics but I always have no time to sit down and finish them in one go XD

And getting to your second point!! I am definitely going to always write for Levi and Levi only haha. I mean, I have so many thoughts and ideas that I really want to pen down into words and share it with everyone. And I feel like I enjoy writing headcanons more because of the response I get, like I love how you always tell me that my answers for my ask games are always spot-on, it really encourages me that "hey, looks like I am good at grasping these characters, and I can think from their pov". And when I see others commenting saying stuff like how my answers are relatable makes be proud that my talents lie here hAHHA.

But!!! I have so many plot and story ideas for Levi that I don't want to give up on. For now, I just feel like my progress is really slow, but I'm definitely working on it haha. Slowly but surely I'll have more fics for Levi haha. I even have like, ideas for multi-chaptered fics for him HAHA. And please, I know what feedback you always give me <3 I love you so much for all these things you've done! You're so honest with me and I appreciate it so much.

Touching on your last point! I think I'll just... continue what I'm doing haha. I made this side blog to write and show my love for Levi, and I won't stop doing it. Maybe I shouldn't be so harped up on WHAT kind of content I'm writing for Levi, but more of HOW I can write him in the best way possible, so that more people will like what I'm writing. I don't think I'll go write on another platform thought... I know a lot of people cross post their stuff on AO3 and I seriously considered that too, but haha. I am lazy, lol.

Sometimes I think too much about what others think and feel that I forget to think of myself first haha. Not sure if it's a good thing? XD But yes!! I love this so much Joey, you've obviously put in a lot of thought to type this hehe.

#axoxtxhxh.asks #rei.answers #i wanted to tag this as anonymous tuesday but this ain't on anon hahahahah xD #cw: long post

[ishaneesblog-blog]

Chapter 1:

I have never been a touristy kind of a person by heart. I like travelling to places but then I don’t always enjoy visiting all the “tourist destinations” or “site-seeing spots” in that place. What I have always liked and wished for is to arrive at an unknown place and just feel its vibes. Of course I’d like to see the things that make the place popular but not like carry a checklist and go ticking off the places as I go around seeing them. Even while I am here in Kolkata, born and brought up, many people I meet at work place who have come from places outside Kolkata and ask me what are the places to see here. Needless to say, I am almost always at a fix because to me Kolkata is a feeling. One needs to roam around its dingy roads of the North, see the old dilapidated mansions that still stand tall to tell their myriad stories, sit by the mighty Ganges and hear its heavily silted water ripple to the pull of the oar of the “majhi”, walk down Lake area and see how love still plays around in nature amidst all the rush of our fast paced work lives.

Now, having said that, its but obvious that I like my own company, and sometimes even more than that of anyone else, to see and feel the places around. Instagram and other social media references have churned that need in me a little more and this time I decided to be a solo traveller, for the first time. Not only was I quite intrigued by this concept which is apparently new and also fast taking on among Indians, I needed a change. I needed to introspect. I needed to indulge myself totally without the prejudices of tastes and preferences of a travel partner.

Pondicherry has been just the kind of place I always wished to travel to, solo. So this time, without much thought, I got my tickets booked and here I was, a woman in her early thirties, ticking off the first from her bucket list, “My solo travel to Pondicherry”.

Chapter 2:

Planning for the trip was more hectic than any other trips i had gone to till date. Primarily because this time i needed to convince my parents , because c’mon...a married Bengali woman going on a solo trip!! Who does that unless you are not on good terms with your husband or plain psychotic. There is nothing that can be in between. And here, its not a child’s game of balancing on the edges of the railway tracks but rather, between them. Nonetheless, this war was won. And they finally realised all’s good between me and the husband and me and my brain (or, may be not!).

The day had arrived. And i realised super excitement about the trip made me book early morning flight. This essentially meant i had to leave at around 2 in the morning! Given the sloth bear that i am, that means SOMETHING! Anyway, what’s done is done and can’t be undone. I had my connecting flight from Hyderabad. On reaching Hyderabad, the Spice Jet staff at the check-in counter greeted me with a broad smile and morning pleasantries and then told me flight to Pondicherry might get delayed, if not cancelled. Now that was like an atom bomb dropped unto my dreams of my solo trip! (That’s being a little too dramatic...but who cares...i was really kind of shattered by the news. It was like the whole universe was conspiring with my parents against my travel!!) Cyclone gaja had hit the Tamil Nadu coast and effects were there in Pondicherry as well. But that was a week ago. And i was expecting it to clear away during my travel time. So with bated breath i waited for flight announcements for a good two hours. And lo and behold, my flight was not cancelled or delayed. And right at the moment i remembered “kehte hain agar kisi cheez ko dil se chaho, toh puri kainat use tumse milane ki koshish mein lag jati hai”. Clichéd , yes, i know, right?

Flight to Pondicherry was by a Bombardier Q400 aircraft, another of my firsts apart from my first solo trip. From the outside, it kind of gave me the feeling of my private Jet. Though not true too its entirety, i did have one private corner in the craft though. The seat next to me was vacant.

After the journey of one and a half hour, i was greeted by a brightly sunlit Pondicherry and i was pretty surprised at the thought that even a couple of hours ago my flight was about to get cancelled due to bad weather. Of course, i am not complaining but yes, surprises need to be penned.

My hotel was just a few minutes’ walk away from the famed Promenade, the Rock Beach of Pondicherry. So i just dropped my baggage in there and hopped out to see the beach. Yes, here you really can’t hit the beach as it’s all rocky. Since, beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, you just need to walk along the promenade or sit on one of the rocks along the beach to behold the beauty. Or maybe relax with a cup of warm or cold coffee with the sea breeze playing with your hair in the beach side cafe Le Cafe. I decided to do all of this now. I walked up to Le Cafe. Ordered my favourite Iced Latte and sat there savouring every bit of the “beach-mode” that i had switched on for myself.

It was late afternoon and still had not had my lunch. But all my senses seemed to be saying they will be satiated only by seeing the city as i have always wanted to. So with the sun still bright in the sky and a skip of joy in my toes i started walking down the roads. I kept walking through almost every alley of the White Town. It’s the place that i had always wanted to be, and realised it more strongly when i was actually roaming round the streets. It was like alcohol to my mind, which wished i lost my way it its world of Technicolor. Every corner round the streets had something pretty to show. Pretty walls, beautiful doors, flower laden roads and a beautiful city beach.... hello my first day in Pondicherry!!

Chapter 3:

Pondicherry is not just about prettiness though. It's about finding peace within and without yourself. It's let's hold yourself back from the race against time that we all run in our otherwise busy lives. It is sometimes necessary to let time just pass by you while you sit there watching the wonderful things that exist around you, or maybe delve a little inside yourself and bring out the long lost person that you are. So I did,  that is, when I reached the Aurobindo Ashram. It's simplicity and the quietude does that to you. You don't need to be a believer in God. I am not. But this place will make you feel your spirits,  make you one with your soul. It makes you believe in spirituality.

Chapter 4:

I have never been an early morning person. So I have never done what most people do while vacationing at a beach... Watch sunrise.  No matter how much I philosophise seeing the sun at dusky beach, I will just not be friends with the rising sun. This time was no different. I slept till 8 in the morning. Got up and got dressed to go for breakfast at Cafe des Arts, not because they serve lip smacking food, but I was really fascinated by the pictures of its wall that I had been seeing on my Instagram wall. But fate had written a different story for me today. The moment I stepped out of my hotel I saw a an auto, hopped into it to take me to Auroville, the experimental township founded by The Mother, Mirra Alfassa. My auto started with a vroom and auto-wala bhaiya understood I am tourist. So he started asking me what are the places I have already visited and what are the ones I would like to visit. Serenity Beach was on my mind and also along the way (that is what he told me). So, when this was supposed to be a laid back day at some French cafe, it actually turned out to be a trip to Auroville first, and then a trip to Auroville via Serenity Beach. Talk about detours in life or unplanned life!

Serenity Beach serves true to its name. It's unlike the Rock Beach and one can swim here. But since I was actually out for breakfast today and not for swimming, I was a total misfit here, strolling around in my long skirt, I chose to spend around half an hour and then headed towards Auroville, an experimental township that believes in ecofriendly living. The main attraction of Auroville is the Matri Mandir, which is at the focal point of the vast span of the dry evergreen forest that the Auroville preserves. While the walk upto the Matri Mandir was tiresome, once I reached there I realised probably this is why we need to walk upto it... There it was, the magnificent golden dome to remind us no matter how big our troubles are, they are all but fleeting foes we have. What stays is peace, stability and tranquility. To me, the Matri Mandir was symbolic of these three basics of life.

Chapter 5:

Today I decide to do what I had left on the way yesterday... Breakfast! But I changed the venue today. I take a long walk to Artika's Cafe. A cafe with an old schoolish decor where even the menu card was a handwritten on an old handmade paper. I found this very interesting and it got me hooked onto this place while I sat under an old tree in the courtyard with my book and Artika's Coco (a coconut drink punched with ginger, mint and honey) to accompany me. Breakfast time elapsed and now I decided to walk back to my hotel, freshen up and then.... Oh wait! I'll decide later... For the time being I need my afternoon siesta coz when in the French Town (of India) do as the neighbours of France do! 😁

Chapter 6:

My remaining time in Pondicherry was spent walking upto Goubert Avenue and then along the Rock Beach, or maybe lazing off with a cup of coffee, or just walking around the city trying to learn the French names of the roads I pass through, or may be lunch on the Pondi-famed firewood pizzas, and then maybe sip into one of the best lemon teas I've ever had, from a road side shack... In simpler terms, I was soaking in as much of Pondicherry as I could before I came back to Kolkata and life starts getting squeezed out,  so that when it does I get some flavours of Pondicherry to recharge me and get me going.

Pondicherry has given me what I had come looking for. I needed to feel its vibes and hear the roaring waves to set the calm in me. So here's signing off but not putting a full stop to what I take back from here, coz while not all experiences can be put down in black and white, my Pondicherry memories will stay with me for a time period that's called forever.......

#solo girl #pondicherry #solo trip #travel