Nine Years of Scenario of Life: I Didn't Build It in Nine Years

I didn't build Scenario of Life in nine years. That's probably the first thing I want to say about this anniversary.

Some years I wrote constantly; others, I barely wrote at all. There were stretches when this little corner of the internet felt like one of the most exciting things I'd ever made, and stretches when life got louder than anything I wanted to put on a page. And yet, here we are — 29 August 2026, nine years since I pressed "Publish" for the very first time.

Back then I introduced myself to the internet as a "newbie" in the world of blogging — a beauty enthusiast, a writer, a nature lover, someone who wanted to see the world in her own way. I had no idea what I was starting. I just needed to start.

Before Scenario of Life, there were words

My father has always been a writer — newspaper articles, editing, a lifetime of working with words I grew up watching from the next room. As a teenager I assumed writing was something you either had or didn't. Then, somewhere in the middle of my 11th grade, he showed me his diary of ghazals, and something about those pages stayed with me. I wrote my first poem, in Hindi, not long after.

I kept writing poetry on and off for years, with no plan behind it. Then one day my father asked, "Why don't you give a blog a try?" My honest reaction was, "Blog... really?" I researched, reviewed a few sites, and eventually built one, Scenario of Life.

I am not here just to give it a go

One line from my very first post has stayed with me longer than almost anything else I've written: "I am not here just to give it a go, I am here to do something with it."

I was 2017 Preeti when I wrote that. I didn't know yet what "something" meant — that I'd end up learning SEO and photography and branding by trial and error, that strangers would read what I wrote and sometimes tell me it helped them, that the blog would win a few awards, that brands and other creators would start reaching out. I just knew I wanted one place to write about beauty, health, relationships, and whatever else was on my mind — the reason I named it Scenario of Life in the first place. A little bit of everything, because life is a little bit of everything.

One year in, I thought I understood the whole thing

My first-anniversary post was full of numbers — 40,000+ page views, the collaborations, the affiliate links, the awards. I was proud of that post, and I still am. But looking back now, I can see I was still only at the beginning. Numbers can tell you how many people visited. They can't tell you what the blog actually meant to you.

Somewhere along the way, life happened — the kind of thing that doesn't fit neatly into an anniversary timeline. Scenario of Life didn't grow in one continuous line for nine years. I stepped away from it. Not for a week or a slow month — for years. Priorities shifted, I changed, and the blog went quiet for long enough that I genuinely wondered if that chapter was over.

I think we tend to assume that when we stop doing something we love, we've also stopped being the person who loved it. But when I came back to Scenario of Life, the words were still there. So was the pull to write them. That part of me hadn't gone anywhere — it had just gone quiet. I understand something now I couldn't have understood in 2017: not everything that goes quiet is finished. Sometimes it's just waiting for you to come back to it.

I'm not the same person who started this blog, and I'm glad — if I were, I probably wouldn't have much of a story to tell. The girl who started it was curious, and wanted to be heard, and wanted something that was hers. I still want those things. I just understand them differently now. I no longer think a creative life is measured by how consistently you show up to it, or by page views and collaborations alone. There's something else that matters just as much: coming back to yourself, and to the things that make you feel like you. For me, that's always been writing.

So what is Scenario of Life today? Still evolving, like me. It's grown past the lifestyle blog I imagined behind a screen in 2017 into something closer to a running record — beauty and skincare, poetry, reflection, whatever I'm working through at the time. I've been a writer and a makeup artist. I hold a Mrs. Maharashtra Runner-Up title and a published book of poetry. None of that has stopped me from also being someone still figuring things out, most days. Maybe that was always the point of this blog — not one niche, not one version of me, just a space big enough to hold whichever one shows up.

To the girl who pressed "Publish" in 2017:

I wish I could sit next to you for five minutes. I'd tell you not to worry so much about who's reading — some posts will do well, most won't, and that has very little to do with whether the writing was worth doing. I'd tell you there will be a stretch, longer than you'd guess, where you stop writing here almost entirely, and that it won't mean what you'll be afraid it means.

But I'd also tell you this: you were right to press Publish. You weren't just starting a blog. You were giving yourself a place to come back to. Nine years later, I think you're still learning how to come back to yourself.

If you're finding your way back, too

Writing this post made me think about something I wrote a while back, about how easily you can lose touch with yourself when you're busy being everything to everyone else. I put together a free 7-day reflection workbook around that idea, called Come Back to You — seven days of gentle prompts to help you pause and ask yourself what you actually want.

If you're somewhere in the middle of your own coming back, you can📥download it here for free.

Nine years. Not perfect ones, not uninterrupted ones — just nine years of Scenario of Life existing in some form, and nine years of me finding my way back to whatever it was in me that wanted to build it in the first place.

So today I'm not only celebrating a blog. I'm celebrating the girl who started it, the woman who kept returning to it, and all the versions of me that existed between that first "Hello Everyone" and this one.

"Happy 9th birthday, Scenario of Life." Here's to everything you've been — and everything you're still becoming.

Stay Blessed, Be Happy..!! :-)

Preeti.

Stop Explaining Yourself to People Who Have Already Decided Who You Are

There's a specific moment you'll recognise if it's happened to you. You're mid-explanation, again, for maybe the fourth time, and something in you goes quiet and asks a very uncomfortable question: "Is this person actually trying to understand me, or are they just waiting for me to finish so they can go back to what they already believed?"

That question, once you ask honestly, changes everything.

             

Think about the moment you told someone you were leaving a stable job to do something without a fixed salary, a fixed title, a fixed anything. "So what's the plan now?" they ask, except it doesn't sound like a question. It sounds like a verdict waiting for you to argue your way out of it. You start explaining the numbers, the backup plan, the reasons, as if enough logic will finally earn you their approval. It won't. They didn't ask because they wanted the plan. They asked because they'd already decided you didn't have one.

Or think about the quieter version of this. Someone hurts you, and instead of a scene, you just go quiet. No dramatic exit, just distance. And somehow that becomes the story people tell — that you're "being dramatic," that you're "giving attitude" — when all you did was stop pretending you were fine. You get punished for a boundary they've relabeled as a mood.

We do this constantly, in a dozen smaller versions. We explain why we said no. Why we left. Why we stopped calling as often. Why we're not who we used to be at family functions. We keep adding detail and context, and we expect this time they'll finally see it the way we do.

Sometimes they will. Often they won't. And it has almost nothing to do with how well you explained it.

Not everyone is listening to understand you

There's a real difference between "I don't get why you did that, can you help me understand?" and "I already know why you did that — you're just selfish." The first one leaves a door open. The second one was shut before you walked in, and no explanation opens a door someone has decided to keep closed.

You could hand them every detail. Every emotion, every reason, every piece of context. They might still pick the one line that confirms what they walked in believing.

At some point, the useful question is not "how do I make them understand me"; it's "why am I working this hard for someone who has no plan to understand me?" Those are different questions, and only one of them is worth your energy.

You don't have to defend every version of yourself

People will have opinions. Someone thinks you're too quiet, someone else thinks you talk too much. Someone says you've changed. Someone else insists you haven't changed at all, which somehow is also a complaint. Someone calls you arrogant for not asking their permission anymore. Someone calls you cold for setting a boundary they used to be able to walk through freely.

You cannot build a life around correcting every reading of you. Try, and your life turns into a courtroom where you are permanently the one on trial, you konw - explaining, proving, defending, hoping the jury finally believes you are not who they think you are.

You don't have to attend every trial you are invited to. Walking away is not an admission of guilt. Sometimes it's just the realization that your peace is worth more than winning an argument about your own character.

But what about the people who knew the old you?

This is the harder part, honestly, because it's not always strangers doing this. Sometimes it's someone who's known you for fifteen years and genuinely can't square who you used to be with who you are now. You used to say yes to everything; now you don't. You used to explain every decision before making it; now you just make it. To someone who benefited from the old version of you, growth can look like an attitude problem. A boundary can look like distance.

Maybe you have changed. That's allowed. Growth is not betrayal, even if it feels like betrayal to the people standing on the other side of it.

That said, don't let "I don't owe anyone an explanation" quietly turn into "I never have to hear feedback again." Sometimes the person questioning you is not trying to control you. They are pointing at something real that you genuinely can't see from where you are standing. Before deciding someone is being toxic or jealous, it's worth actually checking: are they trying to understand me, or control me? Is this feedback, or is this just judgment wearing feedback's clothes? That distinction is the whole game. Maturity was never about explaining yourself to no one — it's about learning who's actually earned the explanation.

You don't owe anyone the full story

You can say "that didn't work for me" without a supporting essay. You can say "I need some space" without proving you're hurting enough to deserve it. "This doesn't work for me" is a complete sentence on its own; it doesn't need three paragraphs of backup to be valid.

We're taught that a boundary becomes more legitimate the longer we explain it. It doesn't. A boundary is not an invitation to a debate, and treating it like one is how you end up negotiating your own limits down to nothing.

Let someone be wrong about you, sometimes

We are conditioned to correct every misreading. Someone says something inaccurate about us and the instinct is immediate: fix it, respond, set the record straight. But there's a quieter option most people never try; you can just let someone be wrong about you.

That doesn't mean you agree with them. It doesn't mean it doesn't sting. It means you've decided that managing their perception of you is no longer a job you signed up for. Some people who misunderstand you today will understand you eventually. Some never will. Both outcomes are survivable, and neither one requires your permission.

The right people won't put you on trial

There are people who ask because they actually want to know. People who can say "I don't see it your way, but I get why you feel that way" without needing you to convert them. Keep those people close — they're rarer than they should be.

You can be wrong sometimes and still be loved. You can disagree with someone and still be respected by them. You can say no and still belong in the room. That's what emotional safety actually feels like, and it's not something you have to perform your way into.

So what do you actually do next time?

Before you send the long paragraph, before the third follow-up message trying to make someone finally get it, ask yourself one honest question: if I explain this perfectly, will this person actually change their mind? If the answer is no, you already know what to do.

Not with another explanation. With consistency. Let your actions do the talking your words couldn't. Let time do some of the work. And let yourself off the hook for managing an opinion that was never really about you in the first place — it was about the story someone had already written before you opened your mouth.

You're allowed to be misunderstood by people who never intended to understand you. You're allowed to disappoint someone who benefited from the smaller, more accommodating version of you. You're allowed to outgrow a relationship that only worked when you stayed the same.

Not every accusation needs a defence. Not every version of you deserves an audience. Some of the peace you're looking for is just on the other side of a conversation you stop having.

Stay Blessed, Be Happy..!! 😊

With love,

Preeti

When Your Heart Wants One Thing, but Life Demands Another

Sometimes the hardest decisions in life aren't between right and wrong. They're between two things that both matter.

There comes a point in life when your heart quietly whispers a dream. Maybe it's a career you've always wanted to pursue, or a hobby you once loved. Maybe it's simply the desire to write, to rest, to have a little more time for yourself.

And then life asks something else of you. Family. Bills. Responsibilities. People who need you. Before you know it, your days fill up with what has to be done, while the things your heart longs for wait patiently in the background — not because you've stopped caring, but because life happened.

I know that pull well.

There was a time when I dreamed of building my career as a professional dietitian. I had even secured an internship at a hospital, where I was supposed to work for three months without a stipend. Around that time, my family went through an unexpected financial setback when my father lost his job after choosing to stand by his principles. Overnight, everything changed, and our priorities changed with it.

Continuing an unpaid internship while spending money on travel no longer felt like the right choice. So, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I gave up my internship and started working to support my family. It wasn't the path I had planned, but it was the path my family needed me to take.

That decision changed the direction of my career, though not who I was. I'd already earned my diploma before the internship even began. I never went into hospital work after that, but the diploma and the training stayed with me — today I still work with clients, helping them achieve their weight management and health goals.

Another chapter began when my blogging career started flourishing. Within the first year of my blogging journey, I received 18 awards for my blog, collaborated with brands and bloggers from around the world (London, Germany, Pakistan, you name it), and was featured on websites in the United States, the Philippines, and Italy. Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction.

Then I got married.

Marriage brought beautiful moments, but as someone entering a traditional household after a love marriage, I also found myself navigating responsibilities and expectations I hadn't anticipated. Like many women entering a traditional household, I found myself learning a completely new way of life. Somewhere along the way, I began prioritizing everyone else's needs before my own. I didn't yet have the confidence to speak up for my dreams, so I quietly placed many of my own ambitions on hold.

Just fifteen days after my wedding, our family welcomed my sister-in-law as she prepared for the birth of her baby. For the next several months our home was full, and naturally, much of my time went into caring for my family while I adjusted to my new role. Soon after came my pregnancy, motherhood, and then my second child.

I thought I was taking a short break from blogging. A week turned into a month, a month into a year, and before I realized it, five years had passed.

But although my blog was quiet, my creativity never was. I kept writing every chance I got — I performed at open mics, shared poems and stories on Instagram and Facebook, wrote scripts for two films, and became a published co-author through anthology books. Writing had never left me. It had simply found different places to live.

Along the way, I also became a certified makeup artist, stepped onto fashion runways, and participated in beauty pageants, discovering a kind of confidence I hadn't known I had. Eventually, I found my way back to blogging with a stronger voice, richer experience, and a story worth telling.

Looking back, I no longer see those five years as a pause. They were an education no classroom could have given me. They taught me how to ask for my own time back — something I hadn't known how to do before and along the way, a fair share of patience and empathy too.

One thing I've slowly realized is this: just because a dream is delayed doesn't mean it's gone. Sometimes life isn't saying "no." It's saying "not yet." And although waiting is painful, it also teaches things instant success never could.

We often compare our timelines with others. Someone is buying a house. Someone is travelling the world, celebrating milestones we secretly wished were ours — meanwhile, we're busy taking care of responsibilities no one else sees. It's easy to feel like we're falling behind. But maybe we're not behind. Maybe we're just walking a different path.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned is that responsibilities and dreams don't always have to compete. Sometimes they simply take turns. There may be seasons when life asks more from us than we ever imagined, and seasons when our dreams finally get the space they've been waiting for. Both seasons shape us.

If your heart has been asking for something lately, don't silence it. Listen to it. Write it down. Protect it — even if you can't chase it today. Dreams don't always disappear because we pause them. Sometimes, they quietly wait for us.

If your heart wants one thing while life demands another, know that you're not alone. You're not failing because your journey looks different — you are simply living a chapter that asks for courage in a different way.

I didn't come back to blogging as the same woman who had left. I came back as someone who had already stood at open mics with her own words in hand, co-authored anthology books, written scripts for two films, and walked a runway in heels she once thought she'd never wear. The blog wasn't waiting for me to become someone. I'd already become her — I just hadn't opened the laptop yet.

Keep carrying your responsibilities with grace. But don't stop carrying your dreams too.

Stay Blessed, Be Happy..!! :-)

Preeti.