For the last four months (almost), my focus and efforts have been concentrated upon being a good wife, daughter in law, sister in law, and a daughter who's now living away from her parents, and learning to juggle all these new hats. It IS a considerable effort, let me say. It is a slow, tedious process, of acquainting and adjusting to new people, environment, relations and expectations. Managing the house, ensuring that it's a comfortable home to all those living in it, including me.

The first phase required me to adjust to the new ways your new relations live, how they like to have things done. Heh, even things which were once as simple as making a mug of tea have now had to be undone and redone. The second phase started when a month after our marriage, the in laws, who were pretty much in charge of things so far, had to leave for a couple of months and go to their hometown to settle some pending work. That suddenly put me in the driver's seat. A little bit of drama and incline was added to the whole process when the maid went on leave for a month, and i was in charge of everything, from cleaning up to cooking to maintaining stocks to managing the finances and interacting with various persons who are usually on the periphery, associated with running of the house. This phase was obviously also full of some other interesting happenings, like the two of us getting to spend some lone time (of course, subject to my husband's availability from his work, which is his first love i feel!), and the freedom that comes with the responsibility of doing things on your own, and the empowerment it gives you, being the one who runs the show. The third phase kicked in after two months, when we got the news that in laws were coming back. Good as that news was, because we had all missed them, it also filled me with some concern and very justified apprehension.. after having been the primary decision maker for two out of three months of married life, just when i felt i had begun to get used to running things my way, i would have to re align and re adjust. And not just that, the other concern was, what if the in laws didn't like the way i had been running things, the little tiny subtle changes i had made in and around the house? Well, as luck would have it, they arrived, and saw the changes, but didn't have any objections to them. Nor have they really had any problem with my way of doing things, at least so far! We are back to how things were before they left, and hopefully things have settled down now, with a few differences here and there, a major one being my increased role in the way things are done around the house.

And now that all that has been done with, i think it's time for the fourth phase to kick in: focus on myself again. I need to start focusing on things that i want now, things that are important to me. Enough of idling around, of simply running around to have things in order and keep them that way. I now need to prioritize myself, and not because someone else might expect me to do it, but for my own sake. Because sooner than later, the usual restlessness at the monotony of things will kick in, and i won't have anyone to blame but myself for having missed opportunities that were willing to knock on my door had i allowed them to. And i don't wish for any more regrets in life than the ones i have already done. So yeah, phase four kicking in NOW.