On June 28, 2019, I turned 28 years of age, and The Pensive Reverie completed its online journey of three years with 83 posts, and a sum total of 105 followers. A lot has happened over the last three years, but first I would like to give a big shout-out to my followers and fellow bloggers who have been supportive to the blog’s growth. Thank you very much!
Looking back to the night of June 27, 2016 when I published my first post in “Introducing Me, and the Pensive Reverie!” I had made a humble goal to reach at least 100 followers on the blog. Three years have flown since then, and having achieved this goal, I’m now even more motivated to further expand and build this blog, not to mention update my personal profile and status! That first blog post began with the question, “Who am I?” Three years down the road, I can now confidently ask myself a different question (one that builds on its predecessor), “Who do I intend to become?”
My name is Ajay Peter Manuel. I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, my home. I hail from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India. As a teenager, I traveled around the world with my family. I would complete my elementary education at Cairo, Egypt, followed by my secondary studies at Khartoum, Sudan. I was around 19 years old when I first set foot in Edmonton to begin my higher studies at the University of Alberta. Following the completion of my undergraduate studies in Astrophysics, I would self-publish my autobiography, Our Last Summer: A Personal Memoir, in the summer of 2013. With the book’s publication I would acknowledge an annoyingly persistent identity crisis, and in the years that followed, with the help of my loved ones and friends, overcome the greatest obstacle in my life: myself.
This journey would culminate in the publication of a second book in A Little Bit of Everything, a treasure trove of memories involving the friends and family who had helped me along my journey, and most importantly my partner and soulmate. Back then, I wished to become an individual who “integrated his various passions in education, innovation, writing, art, music, science, critical thinking, accompanied with an endless appetite for life” and I continue to work hard on that front.
I’m happy to say that I have found my true-calling in becoming a writer and an artist. As I currently pursue a doctoral degree, I intend to further hone my skills on both these fronts, so that I may one day reach my penultimate goal of “sun-lighting” as a prominent science writer, and “moon-lighting” as a writer/comic book artist and animator. My dreams remain as far-fetched as they usually have been, but I can’t deny that as an individual my journey with The Pensive Reverie has motivated me to meet these challenges head-on, and with confidence.
Settling into the fourth year of this blog, I intend to stick to its original message in sharing my life’s adventures, hobbies, and interests. For all incoming and future visitors, I welcome you to read and engage with me on the posts I have written thus far, and hope that you enjoy them. For my current friends and followers, thank you very much once again for your support!
The Pensive Reverie 