Ashni's personal blog and sliver of the webhttps://ashnipatel.com/https://ashnipatel.com/posts/beginners-mind/https://ashnipatel.com/posts/beginners-mind/Somewhere between burnout and self-doubt, I stumbled upon the Japanese concept of shoshin, or the beginner’s mind. Mastery was never the point, the joy was in the voyage itself.Fri, 01 Oct 2021 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashnipatel.com/posts/blog-obsessed/https://ashnipatel.com/posts/blog-obsessed/I’ve spent years boasting about wanting to “read more and write better,” but a single question shattered that illusion: Am I a good reader? The answer stung. Only through the sharp lens of literary criticism did I realize what true reading and writing demand.Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashnipatel.com/posts/momentum/https://ashnipatel.com/posts/momentum/A meditation on momentum, unraveling how I have long misunderstood its very nature. Turns out, it isn’t about constant acceleration but about curating curiosity, stacking intentional moments, one challenge at a time. These are my field notes on staying in that sweet spot where motion isn’t forced but fluid—less pushing, more floating.Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashnipatel.com/posts/onehundredwords/https://ashnipatel.com/posts/onehundredwords/I used to write in silence, afraid to share. But in a waiting room filled with strangers, I chose courage. This is how I began overcoming my fear of publishing.Fri, 30 May 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashnipatel.com/posts/br-myorar-review/https://ashnipatel.com/posts/br-myorar-review/Rating this a rave, My Year of Rest and Relaxation captivates with its sharp prose and dark humor, following a protagonist’s quest for rebirth through a year of chemically induced sleep. It uncovers the raw, unsettling truths of identity, relationships, and societal decay.Wed, 26 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashnipatel.com/posts/br-difficult-women/https://ashnipatel.com/posts/br-difficult-women/Rating this a firm pan, Difficult Women is a book I picked up for Jean Rhys, only to find her brilliance reduced to fragments through an opportunistic gaze. It’s less a portrait than an intrusion, leaving the reader complicit in the detachment.Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMThttps://ashnipatel.com/posts/write-like-i-read/https://ashnipatel.com/posts/write-like-i-read/Writing online feels like shouting into the void, except the void is optimized for engagement. For every SEO-churned think piece, there’s an unruly, brilliant essay waiting to be found—if only by luck or miracle. Lately, I’ve stopped writing for an imagined audience and started treating it like reading: quiet, curfew-less, mine alone. The benefit was never external. It was always in the doing.Fri, 20 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT