travel diary: a summer in australia 🌸

maya rajesh28 Comments

And for a fortnight there, we were forever

These last two weeks, I had the privilege of touring the island country-continent of Australia (side note: only two continents left for me now—South America + Antarctica!) It feels longer somehow because it’s too huge a country to “finish” in two weeks. Or months. Or years, maybe.

I only hope I get the opportunity to see the rest of that beautiful place. We went to 4 main areas: Sydney, Melbourne, The Great Ocean Drive, and Port Douglas. Sydney was probably my favourite because of how metropolitan yet calm it seemed. It’s somewhere I’d like to live in the future.

Australia has everything you could want—great food, good views, ample wildlife—and I finally get to document whatever little I saw. This trip included experiences I’d never had before and for that, I’m so grateful. We actually went during Australia’s fall so the title isn’t entirely accurate! Anyway, without further ado: Australia, through my eyes.

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summer diaries #1: the weakest shade of blue🌀

maya rajesh23 Comments

I hate this feeling.

This terrible, gnawing feeling inside of me. It’s bittersweet and nostalgic, and I cannot, for the life of me, put my finger on it. But I know I hate it.

The closest thing I could find to describing this inexplicable feeling was the Pernice Brothers’ The Weakest Shade of Blue. It strikes a chord in me; it pulls a string I didn’t know could be strung.

It’s the feeling of an ending. Yet, the start of something new. It’s how you feel when you’re seeing someone for presumably the last time. Or you think of what could have been. When you graduate. When you’re on the fence, and you decide to leap.

And I’m leaping.

Because while things are ending, the weakest shade of blue means
the start
of something new.

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2023: some killer queen you are 💌

maya rajesh22 Comments

Hey December,
guess I’m feeling unmoored.

Look who finally got a post out of her drafts after forever! “Unmoored.” Pretty much sums up everything the end of a year brings forth for me. Not to mention the stress of finals and the impending doom of all the change 2024 holds for me.

This year, not unlike every other year before it, was a whirlwind. It wouldn’t let me breathe for even a minute and for that, I’m actually thankful.

It was filled to the brim with love and light, music and dancing, friends—old and new,—and I couldn’t have asked for a better end to this chapter in my life.

I just hope I remember all of it.

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3 years of Pretty Little Scribbles 🍀

maya rajesh35 Comments

Today, Pretty Little Scribbles turns 3!!

Did I expect myself to still be writing in 3 years when I started out here?
Probably not.

It’s so incredibly weird to go back on how this little project of mine started: back in the peak of the COVID lockdown when I was bored out of my mind. It was supposed to be just another phase, but unlike the haikus, the Morse Code and the Rubik’s cube phases, this one stuck.

And it stuck for three years. 10. 10. 20. to 23. Maintaining this is still, to date, one of the best things I’ve ever done. It’s been through the worst of the lockdown with me, all of freshman year and now, the tenth grade, too. It’s really special to me.

Anyway, we hit 20k views recently, 350 followers on the blog alone, and over 2k on all platforms associated with me. Crazy that even one person cares what I have to say and that one little girl in a tiny corner of the world can have her words heard.

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brighter days, lighter souls 🍂 hello, september

maya rajesh12 Comments

This morning, I was overwhelmed with deja vu, and not the nice, warm kind. Staring at my screen instead of being at school again—sound familiar? Not that I’m complaining, though; every so often I’m desperately in need of one of these take-it-easy kind of days and this one came right on time. When I’m standing on the precipice, one push away from the dominoes tumbling down.

When I need to take a breath. Process everything that’s happening all too soon.

And then August slipped away again, marking that period of change—the transition from the first half to the second half of the year. It’s just a countdown now. Term exams and trekking, studying some more and then pre-boards, and a couple months later we’re done with school. Do we just let everything pass us by? I sure hope not.

I sure hope we haven’t stopped finding beauty in the mundane.

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