The Three Skills I Value Most

This Thursday the #ThankfulThursday prompt is to talk about the three skills that you value most.

Skills are valued everywhere. Hence it is important to hone and honor our skills.

Skills can be functional, personal or knowledge based. They might define us.
 They might be the fuel behind our earthly life or they might be the Zen that keeps us grounded.

The three skills that I have developed over the years are:

 Portraiture and Painting

Art came to me very early on in life. But I have maintained a hate-love relation with it over the various periods in my life. 

Either I was completely in love with it or I hated it. Then it came back in 2011 with a bang. I couldn’t stop painting. 

Most of my art are not for public consumption. I rarely do commission art even though I get many requests. But I have a hard time accepting such work. I can only draw when it is born out of passion. 

I am extremely grateful that I am an artist. It is my way of relaxing.

Here are some samples of my work.

You can also see my works HERE on my blog. You can follow my art page on Facebook or my Instagram art page.

 Writing

I fell in love with writing quite late in life.

 I was a reader most of my life. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined that one day I would have the author tag associated with me.

 But now, writing is my biggest passion. It is one skill that I spend the time to honor and hone daily. 

I invest time and money to hone my skills in this field. This is one gift that I am thankful for having.

You can find links to purchase my books right here on my blog. You can follow my Amazon Author page and Goodreads Author page for latest writing updates.

Editing

Editing is yet another skill I cherish and am thankful for. It helps me to edit my blog posts, my stories, and manuscripts. 

I take care to update myself about the various editing methods. Patience is a necessity when it comes to editing.

 I can go over the same page over and over again till it becomes error free. It earns me money as I work as a freelance editor.

 My only frustration is that it is very difficult to edit one’s own writing. 

Very difficult to kill one’s own darlings. But yes, I am working on it. I have two books published where I am proud to be one of the editors.

The Blank Space and A Little Chorus of Love

What are the three skills that you value most? Do tell me in the comments.

This post is written for #ThankfulThursdays hosted by Tina, Amrita, Mayuri and Deepa

Friendship, Blogging, Aliens and Hrithik

Image Courtesy: www.tinabasu.com

November is always a time for new beginnings. Being my birthday month and that of my baby, I always look forward to some quiet family time and travel. November is also the month of vigorous writing, being the month of Nanowrimo. Last year I had registered for it, but couldn’t write as we were mostly traveling. This time I decided to give it a miss for a multitude of reasons.

This #ThankfulThursday I wish to thank Tina for literally dragging me back to blogging. I had put Blogging on a back burner in the last few months as fiction writing had taken priority. I didn’t get much time to blog. If I did, they were just random outpourings from a tired mind.

I believe that people come into our lives for a reason. They might arrive with a lesson or for a season.I had met Tina during the Game of Blogs by Blogadda in 2014. We belonged to team ‘By Lines’ which went on to win the competition. This inspiring lady surprised us daily by being completely involved in the discussions, editing, posts and also the huge amount of research that we did. After all, we were writing Sci-Fi fiction. All this while working at a hectic day job at an MNC. Because we clicked as a team, four from the team came together and created the best-selling anthology ‘A Little Chorus of Love.’ Our chat group on Facebook still remains the place where I unravel my bundle of doubts, troubles and also finds inspiration and ideas. 

 Now she is a busy mom and yet she finds time to maintain two blogs, be a hands-on mommy, cook awesome dishes and yes, she is active on social media as well. She also stood by me during one of the darkest phases in my writing career. I am forever grateful for that.

Being Scorpios, and having birthdays adjacent to each other, we are almost twin souls.We share many common interests. We LOVE Hrithik Roshan and would kill for him. Any Hrithik hater will face our wrath. 😈 We can discuss him for hours and moon over him for days. And yes, we have seen UFOs in namma Bengaluru. Believe it or not! Perhaps our aliens (the very ones who helped us throughout the Game of Blogs with various twists and turns) had decided to visit us and thank us for spreading their message.

I know I will post at least two posts weekly because of her. And I also know I have a friend who will never fail to inspire me, someone who is just a click away. Touch Wood!

Thanks are also due to Amrita and Mayuri for the Thursday and Friday prompts respectively. My blog will be eternally grateful to you three.  

This post is written for #ThankfulThursdays being hosted by Tina Basu and Amrita Misra