Tag: writing

I Poured My Heart Into That Post. And Crickets.

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Let me tell you what a Sunday afternoon looks like for me.

I have been rearranging the flatlay for forty minutes. The decorative pieces aren’t sitting right, the bookmark keeps slipping out of frame, and the light was perfect twenty minutes ago but now it has shifted and I have missed it. I start over. I find the light again. I take thirty photos to get the one. I edit it until it feels honest, not over-filtered, not flat. Then I sit with a blank caption box and stare at it because I have so much to say and none of the words are landing right. I write it. Delete it. Write it again. Add a line. Remove two. Finally something that sounds like me. Something real. I post it with that small flutter of nervous hope that never quite goes away no matter how long you have been doing this.

And then I wait.

And then I refresh.

And then… not much.

A few likes. The same beautiful, loyal handful who always show up and who I am genuinely grateful for. But the reach is flat. The new eyes aren’t there. The saves, the shares, the sense that something landed the way you hoped it would. Just silence where connection was supposed to be.

Here’s what nobody really talks about: it’s not even about the numbers, not really. It’s about what the numbers represent. Every post is a small act of vulnerability. You took something you loved and you tried to translate that feeling into something shareable. You tried to say, here, this mattered to me, maybe it’ll matter to you too.

And when the algorithm just… doesn’t show it to anyone? It doesn’t feel like a technical glitch. It feels personal. Even when you know it isn’t.

And here is the thing about that silence. It is not neutral. It does not just sit there quietly. It talks. It says things like, maybe you’re not as good as you thought. It says, maybe the books you love are not the right books, the aesthetic is not the right aesthetic, the way you write is not the way people want to read. It picks at everything you were proud of an hour ago and makes it feel small.

That is its own kind of loneliness. And I don’t think we talk about it enough.

Because bookstagram was supposed to be the place where you finally didn’t feel alone in how much you love this. You spent years being the person who read too much, who cried over fictional characters, who wanted to talk about a book long after everyone else had moved on. And then you found this corner of the internet and it felt like coming home. People who got it. People who understood why you needed to sit with a story for days before you could even talk about it. A whole community built around the exact thing that had always made you feel like a little bit of an outsider everywhere else.

So when that community feels suddenly far away, when your posts go quiet and the connection dries up, it does not just feel like a bad metrics week. It feels like losing something. Like the door to that warm room is still there but it is not opening the way it used to and you do not know why and nobody is telling you why and you are starting to wonder if it was ever really open for you at all.

And then on top of the loneliness, there is the burnout. Which is sneaky, because it doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t arrive all at once. It creeps in slowly, disguised as productivity. You start posting more to compensate for the dip. You try reels even though you are a photo person at heart because everyone says that’s what the algorithm wants right now. You study the “best time to post” guides and the “content pillars” advice and the “here’s why your engagement is down” threads until your head is full of strategy and there is barely any room left for the actual love of it. The thing that started all of this.

You pick up a book and for a split second you catch yourself thinking about whether it would make a good photo before you have even read the first page. And that thought stops you cold. Because that was never what this was supposed to be.

The burnout is not laziness. Please hear that. It is what happens when you have been giving and giving, creating and showing up and trying, and the return feels so disproportionate to the effort that your brain and your heart eventually start to protect themselves. It is exhaustion with a creative wound underneath it. And it is incredibly common in this space and almost never spoken about honestly.

I have had nights where I didn’t want to open the app at all. Not because I stopped loving books. Never that. But because the gap between how much I feel when I read and how little seems to translate when I post had gotten so wide it just felt pointless. And feeling pointless about something you love is one of the worst feelings there is.

I have scrolled past accounts with half the effort and twice the reach and felt something uncomfortable move through me that I am not proud of. Not quite jealousy, not quite resentment, something more tangled than both. A kind of confusion about what is actually being rewarded here and why it does not seem to be sincerity or depth or the kind of slow, careful love of literature that drew most of us to this in the first place.

I have posted something I was genuinely proud of and watched it get twelve likes, then posted something throwaway and watched it perform fine, and felt my own instincts start to waver. Start to wonder if I should just make the content that performs instead of the content that means something to me. That is a dangerous road. That is where you lose the plot entirely. That is where you stop being a reader who creates and start being a content machine who occasionally reads.

And I refuse to become that.

Even on the weeks when it would be so much easier to just give in to it.

So where does that leave us?

Honestly, I don’t have a clean answer. I am still in it, same as you. Some weeks the connection comes back and someone leaves a comment that makes me feel seen in a way no like count ever could and I remember exactly why I do this. Some weeks the silence is just loud and I have to sit with it and not let it rewrite the story of why I started.

But I have been trying to hold onto something when I can see clearly: the work was never hollow. That caption I rewrote four times? It was real. That hour spent on the flatlay? It came from genuine love. The algorithm didn’t see it but I made it. And the two or three people who did find it, who commented something beyond an emoji, who sent a DM saying oh my god I felt the same way about that ending — those moments are so disproportionately full compared to the silence around them.

Two or three people is not nothing. Two or three people is someone’s commute becoming bearable because you told them what to read next. Someone picking up a book they would have walked past. Someone feeling less alone in what they are going through because you were honest about what a story did to you. That is not a consolation prize. That is actually the whole point.

Getting back to that truth is not easy and it is not instant. Some days I have to remind myself of it more than once. But I think the way through the burnout, the loneliness, the silence, is not to post more or try harder or crack some code. It is to read something this week just for yourself with zero intention of posting about it. To write a caption because you have something to say, not because the engagement window is open. To reach out to five accounts you genuinely love and just tell them so, with nothing to gain from it.

The community is still there. It is quieter than it used to be, more scattered, harder to find. But it is there. And so is the love that brought you here.

if you’re feeling the exhaustion, the quiet after the post, the creeping doubt — you’re not failing. You’re just human, making something real in a space that wasn’t built to reward that.

Keep going. Not because the numbers will definitely turn around, but because you are a person who loves books deeply and that is worth something that no dashboard can measure. You were that person before the account and you will be that person long after. Do not let a bad month make you forget that.

————

If this hit close to home, please share it with someone who needs to read it today. And if you are in the thick of this right now, I genuinely want to hear from you. Leave a comment. Send a DM. Let’s be in it together instead of suffering through it alone.

— Written at midnight with too many feelings and a book I haven’t posted about yet.

*****

From my mind to this page to your screen— thanks for being here.

~ Devika

If We Were Happy All The Time, We Wouldn’t Understand Happiness

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There is a specific kind of webinar attendee and I am embarrassed to tell you that I am exactly that kind. The kind who signs up with the best intentions, joins five minutes late, spends the first ten convincing themselves that having the window open is basically the same as listening, and then spends the rest of it existing somewhere between present and completely elsewhere. You know the one. You might be the one.

And yet. In the middle of one of those half-attended, half-forgotten afternoons, something found me anyway. Someone from the audience asked a question I don’t even remember, and the speaker replied with a single line that made me sit up straight and put down whatever I was doing and just stay with it for a moment.

“If we were happy all the time, we wouldn’t understand happiness.”

I opened my notes app immediately, the way you lunge for something before a wave carries it away, and typed it out. Then I closed the app. Then I opened it again just to make sure it was still there. It was. It is. It has been sitting there for months now, this little line, waiting for me to finally figure out what to do with it.

I think the reason it stopped me so completely is that it sounds simple but it isn’t. It sounds like something you’d find on a motivational poster next to a picture of a mountain, and yet the more you turn it over the more it reveals something almost uncomfortably true about the way we are built, about the way feeling anything at all actually works.

Happiness, real happiness, the kind that settles into your chest and stays there for a while, has always come to me after something. Not because the universe is dramatic and insists on a plot arc, though it does sometimes seem suspiciously fond of one, but because that is just the nature of feeling. Feeling is comparative. It is always measuring itself against what came before. Joy that arrives on an ordinary unremarkable day is gentle and sweet and easy to miss. But joy that arrives after a season of things being hard, after uncertainty, after loss, after the specific exhaustion of carrying something heavy for too long, that joy has edges to it. It has texture. You feel it in a way that is almost physical, like finally exhaling after holding your breath without realizing you were holding it.

I think about this and I think about night skies. You cannot see stars in the middle of the afternoon no matter how hard you look. They are there, they have always been there, burning away quietly in the middle of all that blue, but the light is too loud and the sky is too full and there is simply no room for them to show up. It takes darkness. It takes the absence of all that noise before they can finally come forward and be seen.

I wonder sometimes what we would be like if sadness were edited out of us entirely. If someone offered us a life with all the difficult parts removed, no grief, no longing, no 3am variety of thoughts that sit on your chest uninvited, would we take it? I think most of us would say yes without blinking. And I understand that. The hard parts are hard. They do not feel poetic when you are inside them. They feel like too much. But I think in saying yes, we would be agreeing to something else too, which is a life where happiness never quite lands. Where it hovers just above the surface of you, pleasant but weightless, never really sinking in. A life where you are fine, perpetually, boringly, unmemorably fine.

And fine is not what we are here for.

There is a version of happiness I have felt only a handful of times in my life and it is the one I am most grateful for. It is the kind that sneaks up on you in the most ordinary moments, sitting somewhere unremarkable, doing nothing especially significant, and you look up and realize quietly, almost shyly, that you are okay. That things are okay. Not perfect, not fixed, not resolved, but okay in a way that feels like enough, like more than enough actually, like something worth noticing. And when I trace that feeling back, really trace it, it always has roots in something difficult. It is always standing on the ground that the hard times made.

So here is what I think the speaker meant, or at least what I have decided they meant, which is essentially the same thing at this point. Happiness is not a destination you arrive at and stay. It is not a setting you reach and lock in. It is something that keeps revealing itself to you in the spaces between other things, something that needs the contrast to have any meaning at all. To be felt at all. The dark is not the enemy of the light. It is the thing that makes the light visible.

That speaker probably does not remember saying it. It was one answer among many, just a sentence they let go of and moved on from. They will never know that someone on the other side of a screen was only half there and then suddenly, unexpectedly, all the way there.

But that is the thing about truth. It does not wait for you to be ready. It does not schedule itself for a convenient moment when you are paying full attention and sitting up straight and prepared to receive something significant. It finds you in the in-between. In the half-attended afternoons and the idle scrolling and the moments when your guard is down and your notes app is two taps away.

It finds you exactly when it needs to, and it stays, quiet and patient, until you are finally ready to sit down and write about it.

*****

From my mind to this page to your screen— thanks for being here.

~ Devika

Loving A Creative Dream Even When It’s Hard

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There is a specific kind of dream that doesn’t always look big from the outside, but it takes up a lot of space inside you.

The kind that keeps returning to you no matter how busy life gets. The kind that sits somewhere in the background of your mind while you’re doing ordinary things. Sometimes it is writing. Sometimes it is painting, dancing, singing, photographing, designing, building something from nothing. It can look different for everyone, but the feeling behind it is often the same.

You just love it.

That love is the reason you keep showing up for it, even when it’s hard to explain to people why it matters so much.

For me, a big part of that dream has lived inside the world of books and creativity online. Bookstagram became one of the places where I started sharing that side of myself. What began as simply talking about books slowly grew into something that felt more personal, more creative, and more meaningful than I expected.

But when you start building something creative, you also start seeing a different side of things.

There have been people who genuinely believed this space was not worth staying in. People who told me that it drains your time, your energy, your effort, and gives almost nothing back in return. They said it like a practical truth, like they were simply pointing out reality.

And sometimes those words stay with you longer than you want them to.

Because when you care deeply about something creative, you are already putting a vulnerable part of yourself out into the world. You are sharing your taste, your voice, your thoughts, your effort. So when someone questions it or doubts it, it doesn’t just feel like criticism of an activity. It feels personal.

There have been moments when people doubted what I was doing. Moments where it felt like others were measuring the value of it and deciding it didn’t really amount to much. There were times when the effort I put in felt invisible, like I was pouring hours of thought and care into something that most people would scroll past in seconds.

That kind of thing can slowly wear on you if you let it.

But at the same time, there have also been people who did the opposite. People who supported me in ways that felt genuine and warm. People who cheered for me, encouraged me, believed in what I was creating. Sometimes it was just a thoughtful message or someone telling me they enjoyed my posts, but those moments had a way of lighting up the journey again.

Support like that reminds you that your work is reaching someone.

Still, the most important shift happened when I stopped waiting for the outside world to decide whether my dream was worth continuing.

I started learning how to stand beside myself.

Because when you are building something creative, you cannot depend only on applause to keep going. Applause comes and goes. People’s attention moves quickly. But your relationship with your dream stays with you every single day.

So I learned how to trust my own reasons for being here.

To remind myself that I started this because I love books, creativity, and the feeling of sharing something meaningful. I stayed on days when the motivation felt thin. I kept showing up even when things felt slow or uncertain.

And slowly I realized something very simple but very powerful.

If you want a creative dream to survive, you have to be the person who stands up for it.

You have to believe in it even when others don’t fully understand it. You have to keep nurturing it even when the results are quiet. You have to remind yourself why it matters to you in the first place.

Because creative dreams are fragile in the beginning. They grow slowly, often in ways that are invisible to everyone else.

And this is not just about bookstagram or content creation.

This is about the person who stays up late practicing dance steps because they love how movement feels in their body. The person who sings in their room and dreams about one day sharing their voice with the world. The artist who keeps sketching even when their work doesn’t get noticed yet. The writer who fills pages because stories refuse to stay inside their head.

All of these dreams live in that same space inside a person.

If you have one of those dreams, you probably know how complicated the journey can feel. Some days you feel full of excitement and possibility. Other days you wonder if you are asking too much from yourself by holding onto it.

But here is the truth I keep returning to.

The world will always have opinions about what is worth pursuing and what isn’t. People will always try to place value on things based on how quickly they succeed or how visible they are.

Your dream cannot survive if you let those opinions decide its fate.

It survives because you keep choosing it.

You keep returning to it even when it feels uncertain. You keep working on it even when progress feels slow. You keep believing in it long enough for it to grow into something stronger.

And if you are someone who carries a creative dream inside your heart, I want you to know something very clearly.

I see you.

I see the effort you pour into things that others may overlook. I see the dedication it takes to keep practicing, creating, improving, and dreaming at the same time. I see the courage it takes to believe in something that doesn’t always come with immediate rewards.

That kind of commitment deserves respect.

Creative dreams are rarely easy paths. They ask for patience, resilience, and a lot of self belief. They ask you to stay when leaving would be simpler.

But they also give you something deeply beautiful in return.

They give you a sense that you are living honestly with the part of yourself that loves to create.

So if your dream feels small right now, if the road ahead feels uncertain, if you are wondering whether it is worth holding onto, I hope you give it another chance.

Stay with it.

Keep learning. Keep growing. Keep showing up for it.

Because sometimes the person who makes a dream real is simply the one who refused to walk away from it.

*****

From my mind to this page to your screen— thanks for being here.

~ Devika

I Tried My Best Today

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Today has carried a weight that I woke up with before my eyes were even open. It sat on my chest the way certain dates do even when you pretend they do not matter anymore. There are days when the world feels loud and sharp and full of movement. Then there are days like this one. Days that feel stitched together with silence. Days that make you feel like you are moving through water that remembers something you are trying not to look at.

I tried to keep busy. I tried to act like it was any other morning. I brushed my teeth. I played music. I opened my phone and scrolled until the screen felt blurry. I told myself all the things I always tell myself. That I am fine. That I have things to do. That I have grown. That time has its own strange way of softening things. But nothing softened. Not really. There was a tightness under everything. A tug at the back of my mind that kept reminding me that today was not meant to feel normal.

It is strange how the body remembers what the mind tries to forget. There is a pull in the throat. A heaviness near the ribs. A familiar kind of tiredness that has nothing to do with sleep. All of it keeps rising even when I do not name it. I move slower. I breathe differently. I feel like I am carrying a version of myself that only exists on this date. A version that is younger and more fragile and still learning how to stand without trembling.

I think the hardest part is how quietly grief returns. It does not knock. It does not announce itself. It sits beside you while you work. It follows you to the mirror. It whispers at the edges of conversations. And you realise you are not reacting to anything happening in the present. You are responding to a memory you cannot rewrite. A memory that stays untouched no matter how much you grow around it.

There is a loneliness to days like this that is difficult to explain. You can be surrounded by people and still feel like the air around you is slightly colder. You can laugh and still feel the shadow of something sitting at the back of the sound. You can be perfectly functional while carrying an ache that does not show on your face. And no one would know unless they knew this date the way you do.

I tried writing earlier but the words felt stiff and distant. I kept trying to hold myself together instead of letting myself be honest. But honesty is the only thing that feels real today. This is not a pretty kind of sadness. It is not poetic. It is a raw space inside me that opens once a year without permission. It reminds me of the parts of life that do not follow logic or order. It reminds me that some losses shape you quietly over time. They become part of how you breathe. Part of how you love. Part of how you move through the world even when you pretend otherwise.

And maybe this is why today feels so heavy. Because there is a version of me that still stands in the moment everything changed. A version that still waits for something that will never return. A version that still reaches for a voice that will not answer. I do not visit that version often. But today, she returns. And I let her sit with me. I let her feel everything she has been carrying alone.

There is no resolution in this. Healing does not always look like progress. Sometimes healing is just the ability to sit with the ache without running from it. Sometimes it is the gentle acceptance that certain dates will always feel different. They will always echo.

But even in that heaviness there is something quietly alive. A small, steady truth that keeps me moving. A reminder that love does not disappear just because the person is gone. Love stays in the shape it left inside you. And even on the hardest days it is still something you carry forward.

I think that is what I am holding onto tonight. Not the hurt. Not the weight. But the fact that something once mattered so deeply that its absence can still reshape an entire day. There is a strange kind of grace in that. A quiet proof that what was lost was real.

And maybe that is enough.

Maybe on days like this, that is all I can offer myself.

The permission to feel it.

The strength to survive it.

And the soft, steady promise that I will wake up tomorrow carrying a little more light than I did today.

It is a hard day. It will always be a hard day. But you know what I’m holding onto? The small flicker of warmth that reminds me I am shaped by what I lost but not destroyed by it.

*****

From my mind to this page to your screen— thanks for being here.

~ Devika

One Year of #SoulfulSundaysWithDevika

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(a note to anyone who’s ever tried to keep a promise to themselves)

I started #SoulfulSundaysWithDevika on a random Sunday, yes but I had a feeling it would stay.

I didn’t know what it would look like,
or what I would talk about every week,
but I knew one thing: I needed something that would make me show up for myself.

And Sunday became that anchor.

For 52 weeks straight, no matter where I was or how I felt, I showed up.
I’ve been sick, exhausted, travelling, overwhelmed — all of it.
There were days my body said no, but my heart said, “You promised yourself.”
So I kept that promise.

That’s the part I’m proudest of.
Not the aesthetics or the words or the reels, just the simple act of showing up.

Every week.

Some Sundays, the words came easily.
Other Sundays, it felt like squeezing meaning out of a tired mind.
But I did it.
Every single time.

I didn’t create Soulful Sundays to impress anyone.
I created it because I needed one constant. One moment every week where I checked in with myself, sat still, felt things, and let them breathe.

Somewhere along the way,
other people joined in.
Quietly.
Softly.
Reading.
Responding.
Sharing little pieces of their own life back with me.

That part… was unexpected.
And really beautiful.

It reminded me that tenderness doesn’t need an audience; it just needs honesty.
A small circle is still a circle.
A few hearts are still a blessing.

Soulful Sundays taught me that you don’t need a loud life to have a meaningful one.
You just need something that grounds you.

It taught me that discipline can be gentle.
That showing up for yourself every week is an act of love, not pressure.

It taught me that consistency isn’t about perfection. It’s about honouring yourself enough to keep going, even when you’re tired or uninspired.

It taught me that community doesn’t need to be big; it just needs to be real.
That creativity can be simple.
That feelings don’t have to be explained to be understood.
That people will show up when you show up as you are.

The girl who began this didn’t think she could be consistent.
Didn’t think she could create something meaningful.
Didn’t think anyone was listening.

But someone was.
Even if that someone was just me.

And maybe that’s the magic.

As I sit here writing this, I’m not thinking of numbers or reach or “should’ve done more.”
I’m thinking of the quiet Sundays that saved me.
The warmth of familiar names.
The way my heart felt every time someone said, “I needed this.”

I think I needed this too.
More than I ever realised.

So here’s to one year.
Here’s to promises kept.
To starting even when you’re unsure.
To showing up even when your hands are empty.
To the small rituals that hold us together when the world feels too big.

And here’s to you for being here.
Whether you’ve been around since the beginning or just arrived yesterday.
Thank you for witnessing me.
For sharing pieces of yourself.
For letting this space matter.

Lastly, here’s to every Sunday that taught me how to listen.
And here’s to the Sundays still waiting for me.

I don’t know what the next year looks like.
I just know I’ll keep showing up.

That’s more than enough.

*****

From my mind to this page to your screen— thanks for being here.

~ Devika

Live While You Still Can

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I came across a post recently that said, “You’re going to be 24 for 365 days. And you could die at 25.” It hit me in a way few things do. We live as if time is infinite, like the people we love will always be there, like our youth will last forever. But the truth is, nothing lasts forever. Not your parents’ voices calling you for dinner, not the same old jokes that once made you roll your eyes, not even the friends who keep asking you to hang out. Everything fades, slowly, quietly, until one day, you realize it’s gone.

We’re always rushing somewhere. Rushing to grow up, to succeed, to have our lives perfectly planned out. But what if the goal isn’t to have everything figured out? What if the goal is simply to feel everything while we can? To laugh even when it feels silly, to hug people tighter, to say yes when your mom asks if you want to sleep beside her, to look up from your phone and notice that your dad’s hair has more grey than before.

We keep saying “next time.” Next time I’ll go out. Next time I’ll visit them. Next time I’ll take a break. But one day there will be no next time. There will just be a moment that quietly slips into never again.

We’re taught to chase success, but rarely to appreciate simplicity. Nobody reminds us that these are the days we’ll look back on. The ones that feel ordinary now. The night you stayed up laughing with your best friend. The morning you woke up to your favorite song. The small moments that don’t seem special until they’re gone.

We hide behind the idea of being too busy or too tired, convincing ourselves that isolation is strength. We call it independence, but often it’s just fear. Fear of needing someone. Fear of being hurt. Fear of being known too deeply. But the truth is, human connection is what keeps us alive. You’ll never be able to love someone at 35 the same way you do at 19. The innocence, the recklessness, the depth of feeling, it’s something that belongs only to this time of your life.

One day, your body won’t keep up like it used to. Your circle will shrink. The messages will slow down. You’ll realize that the version of you who stayed up too late, laughed too loud, and cried too easily was someone you’d give anything to meet again.

So stop waiting for the perfect time. Stop saving your favorite clothes for special occasions. Stop thinking you have to earn rest, joy, or love. You’re alive right now and that’s reason enough.

Life will never pause for you to catch up. The people you love will grow old, the things you take for granted will change, and your own heart will one day long for what it has now. So while your bones are strong, your laughter is loud, and your heart still races for no reason at all — LIVE.

Not just exist. Not just survive. But live.
Say yes more often. Forgive faster. Take the picture. Write the message. Go for that walk. Tell people you love them.

You won’t always be young, but you can always be alive. And that’s a choice.

Because one day, all you’ll want is one more chance to do it all again.

So do it now.
With every part of you.
While you still can.

*****

From my mind to this page to your screen— thanks for being here.

~ Devika

Confessions of a Serial Book Abandoner

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There was a time I used to force myself through every single book I started.
No matter how slow, how confusing, how painfully dull it felt, I kept going.

It didn’t matter if it took me weeks, if I kept sighing through chapters, or if I was internally begging for the plot to pick up. I just couldn’t bring myself to not finish something I had already started. That felt like failure. Like quitting.

But somewhere between trying to keep up with trending releases and forcing myself through books I wasn’t vibing with, I hit a wall. A full-on brick one. Reading felt like homework. My TBR turned into a to-do list. And I started dreading the very thing I loved most.

That’s when I did the unthinkable.
I DNFed.
And then I did it again.
And again.

At first, I felt weird about it. I’d get this slight guilt like I owed the book more. Like I was supposed to give it a fair shot, or that maybe it gets better after page 200. Spoiler alert: most books don’t magically transform on page 200.

But once I let go of the guilt? It was freeing.
Suddenly, reading felt lighter again.
I wasn’t dragging myself through stories that didn’t spark anything.
I wasn’t forcing chemistry with books I clearly wasn’t meant to fall in love with.
And the truth is, not every book is meant for every reader. That’s not a flaw, it’s just human.

Here’s what I’ve learned about DNFing:
Sometimes, a book is just not for you.
Sometimes, it’s not the book’s fault, you’re just not in the headspace for it.
And sometimes, you don’t even need a reason. You can just stop. That’s it.

I’ve DNFed books everyone swore were life-changing.
I’ve walked away from stories that were beautifully written but left me feeling nothing.
And I’ve put down books I might return to someday, but don’t owe anything to right now.

DNFing doesn’t make me less of a reader.
It means I’m respecting my time, my mood, and my love for books that actually make me feel something.

I still try to give books a fair shot. I don’t abandon them the second they’re slow or strange. But I’ve stopped suffering through them just because I started. Because I’d rather spend that time falling in love with something new than forcing something that isn’t meant to be.

Because life’s too short and my TBR is too long to keep reading books that don’t make me feel something.

And honestly? The best stories find you when you’re not busy forcing the wrong ones.

*****

From my mind to this page to your screen— thanks for being here.

~ Devika

Finding Home in the Windy City

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I kept the last book closed for days. It sat on my nightstand like a small, trembling truth I was not ready to meet. I told myself I was saving it, that I would stretch it out and savor the last pages. The truth was simpler and uglier. I was scared. Scared that when I read it, the house would go quiet. Scared that the voices that had lived under my skin for months would stop being there every day. I wanted to keep knocking on a door I could pretend would always open.

There are five of them that built this place inside me: Mile High, The Right Move, Caught Up, Play Along, and Rewind It Back. Those titles are not a list to me. They are rooms. Each book added a window, a chair, an argument, a joke, a new person who somehow fit themselves between the cushions like they had always been there.

I never walked Chicago’s streets, but I have a map of its noises in my head now. Cold wind that reminds you you are alive. Stadium lights that make small lives feel enormous for a few hours. Too-bright bars that smell of grease and laughter. The city in these pages is not pretty as a postcard would be. It is weather and noise and heat under a neon sign. It gave the people room to be loud and to hurt and to heal. Somehow that made the whole thing feel true, like a place I could have lived in another life.

Stevie was my first entrance. Her mouth said sharp things because she needed it to keep out a world that often demanded she be smaller. Watching her let someone in slowly, painfully, stubbornly, taught me that protection is not always hardness. Sometimes it is the last fragile line before undoing. Zanders played the role of the man who refuses to be small about anything, and then shows up in the ways you cannot script. Their pull into each other was not fireworks for me. It was the uneven, honest kind of trust that feels like someone finally learning your language and deciding to stay.

Ryan and Indy were the two people who made me believe steady things exist. He is the kind of person who braces a space and keeps it steady, in the honest, daily way that means you can come home and not have to perform. She is the chaos and color who shows him how to live in the middle of a life and not just guard its edges. Their arc reminded me that safety can be a slow gift, given day after ordinary day.

Kai and Miller gutted me open. Kai with a baby in his arms and a schedule that never lets him breathe, proud and panicked and terrified of not being enough. Miller who is asked to step into a job that is not hers and slowly makes the job human, who does not fix him but who teaches him that asking for help is not defeat. Seeing them stumble toward family was watching someone learn to breathe with other people again. That book taught me that care can be practical, clumsy, relentless, and that sometimes the most heroic thing is showing up and making dinner when everything else is falling apart.

Kennedy and Isaiah showed me grief in a way that unsettled me. Their story is not a tidy lesson about recovery. It is a messy, stubborn pulling back to the people who keep choosing you when you are brittle. They taught me that being held does not erase pain, but it keeps you from drowning in it alone. The way their circle rallies around them is how I started to imagine what care should actually look like.

And Hallie and Rio felt like the oldest part of the house. Memory lives there. Old hurt and small kindness stacked like furniture no one bought but inherited. That book made me understand the weight of history between two people and how forgiving does not mean forgetting. It is slower and heavier and somehow purer than the quick fix narratives, and it stayed with me like the ache that follows a song you loved in high school.

They are not perfect. They say stupid, ugly things. They hide and then try to fix it. Sometimes they forgive too fast and sometimes they hold on too long. It felt real because it felt human. Watching them try, mess up, own it, and try again is the kind of thing that did not teach me winning. It taught me the practice of being with someone through the small betrayals and the daily upkeep of love. That is a rarer lesson than it sounds.

I kept thinking about small rituals after I closed the last page. The way someone always has a coffee waiting. The text messages that say I am outside at midnight and mean exactly what they say. The way a couch somehow holds eight people even though it is only built for three. Those small things are what built the house, not speeches or big declarations. They are why the series feels like home and not just a story.

I put off the last as long as I could because endings hit like grief. When I finally read it, I cried in a way that surprised me. A small, ridiculous sound in the dark that felt like the loss of daily company. But grief and gratitude sat together in that moment. Gratitude because those pages taught me to be the kind of person who answers a knock at midnight. Grief because I would miss the constant hum of that family being alive in my head every day.

The truth is the lessons are microscopic. Make the extra plate. Pick up the phone. Say sorry without calculating. Sit with someone when they do not have words. These books gave me practice in doing the tiny, tender things that are how you keep a family. I left the last book with a quiet promise to myself to act like someone who has been chosen and to choose in return.

If you read these and put off the final book too, I see you. That hesitation is proof of a real thing. It means the voices were not just entertainment. They were company when you needed company. They were a map when you did not know how to get home. That is why finishing felt like leaving a house where someone would still be in the kitchen, stirring something, if only I could turn back and sit down again.

I do not want to be tidy about the end. I want to be honest that I miss them like friends, like the people who always know the bad joke you are about to make and laugh at it anyway. I miss the noisy dinners, the unsent tears held up by someone who showed up without being asked, the small humiliations turned into comfort. I miss the city that is cold to the bones but lit up on the inside by the people who will not let you go.

So here is what I carry. I will be the one to text first. I will keep a light on. I will leave a chair pulled out at the table. I will answer the knock that comes at midnight. I will pile too many people onto the couch even when it threatens to break. I will do these little things because those are the things that kept them alive in my life. They rewired me toward showing up instead of checking out. That is the gift these books gave me.

If you read these books, you will understand the sound of a group chat buzzing at two in the morning. You will get why the couch that never fits everyone makes sense. You will know why I left the last book sitting on my nightstand like a dare. You will know why I opened it finally and cried into my pillow and then smiled, because inside those pages is a family that taught me how to be better at being human with other humans.

And that is why, if you knock on my door at some ridiculous hour, do not be surprised to find a couch that somehow fits us all, coffee on, and a plate waiting for you.

*****

From my mind to this page to your screen— thanks for being here.

~ Devika

When Time Keeps Slipping

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I don’t know when it started feeling like this. This sense that I am always running out of time. That the hours are rushing past me even as I try to hold them in my hands. I wake up, I go through the motions, and suddenly another day is gone. And I keep asking myself, where did it go? Did I even live it, or did I just watch it disappear?

Lately I’ve been thinking about how much I miss the feeling of endless time. The way afternoons used to stretch forever when I was younger. How I could spend hours doing nothing and it never felt wasted. Now everything feels like it’s slipping through some crack I can’t seal. Even when I pause, even when I tell myself to breathe and be here, the moment is already half gone.

There’s this ache inside me, one I don’t even know how to explain properly. It’s part nostalgia, part fear, part longing. I look back on memories and I want so badly to crawl back into them. Just to sit there again. To feel safe in their simplicity. To not carry this constant weight of time sprinting forward without me.

I try to keep up. I plan, I make lists, I tell myself I’ll use my time better. But even then, it feels like I’m falling behind. Like no matter how much I do, it will never be enough. There will never be enough hours, enough days, enough years. And that thought just makes the nostalgia sharper, because it reminds me that what’s gone is gone, and what’s coming will slip just as quickly.

Sometimes I wonder if everyone feels this or if it’s just me. If other people manage to move through their days without this constant awareness of the clock ticking. Without the guilt of not living fully enough, not holding onto things tightly enough, not being enough for the time they’re given.

I don’t have a neat conclusion to this. I don’t know how to wrap it up. I just know that I feel time slipping away from me. I feel it in my bones. And no matter how much I try to clutch at it, I can’t seem to make it stay.

*****

From my mind to this page to your screen— thanks for being here.

~ Devika

The Group Chat Isn’t Home Anymore

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It used to feel like a safe place.

Every inside joke. Every 2AM meme. Every photo that didn’t make it to Instagram but made us laugh anyway. The group chat was more than just texts, it was a rhythm. A habit. A shared pulse.

Now, it’s just noise.

I still read the messages. I still react sometimes. But I don’t feel like I live there anymore.

And nothing happened. That’s the weird part. There was no big fight, no falling out. Just… slow spacing. The kind that creeps up in quiet ways. People stopped replying fast. Or at all. Plans were made without asking. Or I stopped showing up. Maybe both.

Sometimes I stare at the screen and wonder if they notice I’ve gone quiet.
Other times, I reply like nothing’s changed because pretending is easier than explaining a feeling I can’t even name.

I scroll through the chat and catch myself smiling at old messages. But it’s not the warm kind of nostalgia. It’s the kind that makes your chest tighten. Because I can remember exactly what it felt like to be part of it, and I know I don’t feel that anymore.

And it’s no one’s fault. That’s the part that stings more.

We’re all growing. Shifting. Moving into different versions of ourselves. I can feel it in the jokes I don’t find funny anymore. In the things I don’t want to talk about. In the energy I don’t have to perform. I don’t blame them. And I don’t even think they’d blame me. But that doesn’t make it less sad.

You don’t realize how many of your days revolved around a group chat until it doesn’t hit the same. Until you check it out of habit, not excitement. Until you realize you could leave for a week and nothing would feel different when you come back.

It’s not about being left out. It’s about not feeling in it anymore.

I used to think these were the people who’d be there for everything. That this would be the group I’d grow up with. That we’d be messy and real and chaotic forever. But some bonds don’t break, they just blur. They stay in your life like a faint echo. Familiar, but distant.

And maybe that’s okay.
Maybe we were everything we needed to be to each other then.
Maybe we were the right people at the right time.
And maybe now, we’re just… somewhere else.

But that doesn’t make the memories less real.
Or the love less true.
Or the loss any easier.

The group chat isn’t home anymore.
But for a while, it was.
And I’ll always be grateful for that.

*****

From my mind to this page to your screen— thanks for being here.

~ Devika