Posts by Karina Varma

Friday has come to be a weird day for me.
Not just because it’s my day for Just One Thing.  
The weekend is nigh – Yay!
Immunosuppressant injectable time – Blerrrgh

So I don’t have Instagram.

Or Facebook.

I can barely bring myself to Linkedin.

I visit my places on Reddit ever so often.

What’s new?

Very little, I hope.

When my sister and I were growing up, our mum sewed all our clothes. Right up until we were 15 or so. We had party and church and everyday clothes. We shopped at stores for jeans and shorts and tees and chuddies. But everything else, pretty much everything we wore, was made with her trusty Singer sewing machine. Quirky, singular clothes that had that unmistakable homemade stamp on them. I had this hot Fuschia pink number that I loved with all my being and cried buckets over its eventual demise. When our party and church clothes became less sparkly or saintly or too small for us, they either became home wear or were lovingly refreshed and sent to someone else.

I’m one of those people who dislikes the hysteria around the new year. Or even birthdays. There’s something awfully stupid about celebrating your long march to the empty void. The frantic joviality and glee that often feels prescriptive. Like a toddler forced to smile for a photo. Terrible analogy but you know what I mean.

But at the same time, there’s also something wonderful about new beginnings. About looking back on a year gone by. Being grateful for what the year gave you.

Want something to do for the weekend IRL?

Do you own an oven?

Can you borrow someone else’s?

Someone I know has a unique YouTube fetish.

Let’s call it real estate porn.

Show and tell videos from real estate agents. Not the lives of the rich and famous or MTV Cr1bs, but a very specific genre – regular people’s houses. I don’t get it.

If you’ve been reading Just One Thing for any length of time, you know I have a thing for Vincent.

Because I love him so much, I’m always on the lookout for all things van Gogh. Or stan van Goghs. You know, the ones who acknowledge Vincent’s true genius wasn’t driven by severe mental illness but crippled by it. That he painted inspite of his illness. Kindred spirits.

I found this one quite by accident. I was looking for a specific book for a project I’m working on and this intriguing little search result with the magic words “weird old books” called out to me. Three of my favourite things in one sentence:

My first reaction as I read Proiti’s post about her struggles with journaling was “Hah”, followed by a really undignified snort. If we lived in the same city, I would have asked her out, bought her her favourite beverage in the largest size they had available, sat her down and whispered, “been there”.

Last weekend climate activists threw mashed potatoes at a Monet.

A couple of weeks before that it was a can of soup at van Gogh’s Sunflowers at London’s National Gallery. My immediate reaction to the tomato activism was why my poor, sweet Vincent, who only ever harmed himself?