A Little Bit of Everything — Finding Joy in the Things We Try
I’ve always been someone who gets interested in a lot of things.
One day I want to paint, another day I feel like trying a new recipe. Sometimes I pick up a book, get hooked on a series, or suddenly decide that I want to learn something new.
I get excited, give it a try, spend some time with it, and then… sometimes I lose interest and move on to the next thing.
I’ve often wondered if that’s a bad thing. Shouldn’t I be focusing on one thing? Shouldn’t I be getting really good at something instead of having so many interests and not being particularly great at any of them?
But then I thought, why does everything have to become an achievement?
We already spend so much of our lives chasing things. Good grades, a good job, a better position, financial stability, and a hundred other things that society and sometimes we ourselves expect from us. And of course, these things matter. We need them to build a life.But somewhere in between all this, I feel we forget to enjoy the little things.
Even the things we do for fun somehow become another thing we want to get better at. I don’t know when we started taking everything so seriously.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t have goals or ambitions. I have my own share of them, and honestly, I’m still figuring out what I want from life.
But lately, I’ve been trying to pay a little more attention to the things I enjoy, without worrying too much about where they lead.
Get Rishita Gupta’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
For instance, I recently came across a Japanese series called Midnight Diner.
It’s about a small restaurant in Tokyo that opens late at night. People come in after a long day, order food, and end up sharing bits and pieces of their lives with the owner and sometimes with each other.
Every episode has a different story. Some are funny, some are sad, and some are just ordinary everyday stories. But there’s something about the whole setting that I absolutely love. The owner makes whatever the customers ask for, provided he has the ingredients. And then there’s the intro music, Omoide. I don’t know how to explain it, but there’s something so calming about it.
I sometimes find myself enjoying the music, the food, the atmosphere and the little conversations just as much as the story itself. It’s funny how you can stumble upon something unexpectedly and end up loving the smallest details about it.
Maybe that’s what I want to do more often. Explore things, notice things and enjoy them for what they are. I don’t have some big philosophy about life, and I certainly haven’t figured out its purpose. I’m just someone trying to understand what makes me happy along the way.
So I thought, why not have a little space to share all of this?
Things I watch, books I read, food I try, places I visit, hobbies I pick up, things I like and even things I don’t. I might be terrible at some of them. I might abandon a few hobbies halfway through. And I might get completely obsessed with something for a week.
But that’s okay, isn’t it?
Not everything needs to turn into a skill, a career or an achievement.
Sometimes it’s just nice to try something, enjoy it, and have a story to tell.
So, this is going to be my little space for all those things. No expert opinions, no big lessons, just my experiences and thoughts.
And if you happen to find something interesting here, or feel the same way about something, that’s even better.
Welcome to A Little Bit of Everything.
