Year-End Rumination and Reflection: 2023
It was disorienting in the best and worst way possible!
I am Type A to a fault! I am quite the stickler for my plans. However, as we approach the end of the year, as of today, I have only used up 91 pages out of the 240 pages in my planner. Among these 91 pages, there are more notes than checklists, more bits and bobs than things to do. Interestingly, there are even months missing from my planner—it jumps from February directly to June!
At the beginning of the year, on the first page of my planner, I wrote down, “Stray away from your checklist,” and indeed, stray away I did! I also wrote, “Let everything happen to you, beauty and terror. Keep going; no feeling is final.” As I opened my planner today while sitting down to write this, it is precisely what I needed to hear!
This year was the year I feel like I am slowly, but surely, kind of, inching closer to the person I want to be. It has been a year of big joys, small joys, big sads, and small sads. It has been a year where I have been drawn to my own company, judged myself a little less, and dove headfirst into things I wanted! It was also the year of grief, a year of running away from happiness. The two, turns out, can coexist within you and with you. But you know I have a few notes! Notes on things I have heard, things I have not fully learned, things I have absorbed but haven’t assimilated, things that I think I want to remember, things that are worth looking at time and again! So here’s a list, a list not because 2023 is over. But a list because 2023 happened!
Thoughts are not facts!
Don’t run away from happiness!
As you grow older, you accumulate documents. Documents and more documents! Paperwork is daunting and tedious and boring! So be organised, keep your documents organised. Have a glue stick and stapler handy. Keep photo copies of important documents. Have a regular photo studio where you can go get your passport size photos taken. Keep your passwords organised. Adulting is hard, and sometimes you can forget a password but if you forget an important document to the visa office, it can be a hassle and half!
Do it again and again! The only way to get better at doing anything is only by doing it. Do it in a way that you enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it, you will not do it! Do the work, show up every day! To the gym, to your practice, for your friends. Show up, in pyajamas, in shararas, in sarees, with messy hair, no hair, day-old makeup, three new piercings or violet hair! Show up though!
Everybody is figuring it out, really! I don't think anybody knows what they are doing! Your brain will convince you otherwise, I am sure of it. Hence, it is important to acknowledge that someone else’s competence doesn’t indicate your incompetence!
You know when you see something really exciting that you want to apply for, but then you think you are not really good enough for it yet and talk yourself into applying later, but then the deadline has actually passed, and now you haven’t applied? Yeah, don’t do that! Apply! The best-case scenario is that you get accepted, the worst-case scenario is that you can apply again!
Be unlikeable! Not everyone must harbour affinity for you! Universal adoration is not something you should be seeking. It's unnatural. Be kind though!
There are things you can control, things you can influence, and things that are beyond your control. So use your vernier callipers or whatever it is that you want to evaluate what these things are, it will go a long way!
Write more? This year, I picked up writing as a way to, you know, express my feelings. I have found a lot of joy. Everyone's a writer, I believe it. And not writing is worse!
“To be human is to live with a certain level of foolishness and folly. A good friend helps you laugh at it”. Lovers, they come in dime and dozen. The good ones and the not so good ones. Let them not become the fulcrum of your universe. This year was the year I experienced the spectrum of friendships that have gotten me through. I am thankful for the friend I meet twice a year only. I am thankful for the friends who have stuck with me since my unibrow. I am thankful for the friend who writes me emails. I am thankful for the friend who religiously likes my Goodreads updates. I am thankful for the friend who indulges in little word games with me. I am thankful for the friends who get breakfast with me. I am thankful for the friends who trek with me.I am thankful for the friend who sees past my ping pong skills. I am thankful for the friend who continues to be the biggest supporter of everything I do! I am thankful for the friends I have made, and thankful for the friends I am going to make!
Sometimes, your cat will leave you for greener pastures, more tuna, freedom, or a newfound love. You will think about that cat every single day. There will not be a day when you will not think about your cat. But there is some solace in knowing that a cat gone is not a cat gone forever!
Grief doesn’t come with a calendar invite. Grief doesn’t give you a heads up. Grief never leaves. That’s all. There is something about relearning how to grieve as you grow up, and I don’t have big realisations about how to be sad, except that when you are sad, lean in! The tears will come and go, and you will learn to coexist with it!
If you don't direct your anger where it is intended, you will direct it inwards, and that's not ideal. It is, in fact, less than ideal!
Scroll less, stroll more, loiter more, frolic more! Post less, host more! Notice all the things when you stroll and host! Pay attention. Mary Didi did say, 'Attention is the beginning of devotion.’!
It is always good to spot all the flower shops on your route. You never know when you want to buy flowers, and it is always good to know where to buy them for when you have to. On that note, buy flowers! For everyone! And when you are gifted flowers, take one out and gently give it back to them. I am an expert on flowers; I make these rules, just follow them!
When you are in autos, or cars, or on the road, look outside. Pause the playlist for a second, pause that podcast for a second because the route sometimes has a heart signal that can really make your day!
Encounters with strangers have upheld my sanity, and how! In those chance encounters with strangers, we discover fragments of a shared narrative! I don't know their names, but they have offered me comfort and warmth. Talk to strangers more?
Hot girls have stomach issues. So ensure that you are taking care of your gut! Keep your enemies close, but your electrolytes and probiotics closer! Always carry a pack of instant poha from Adukale when you're traveling. After 3 days, you will want something familiar, something that will warm your tummy and heart!
Be peacefully selfish! Lean in to your company! Get a table for one. That carrot marzipan cake might be a bit too much for one person, but it will be worth it!
Plan abundantly. Craft numerous plans! Yet, avoid becoming too attached to them. Life isn't designed to be foreseen; it's meant to be lived!
Be a little silly and dilly dally!
This year, I have returned to this quote multiple times from "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara: “Things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realise that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully!”
As we approach 2024, my hope is not just for everything to be okay, but that I will continue to believe that even if things break, bend, crack, shatter, or crash, they will rearrange wonderfully!
I also hope you will stick around! Perhaps, leave your scarf here for now and come back for it later? I draw here, I leave crumpled notes here.
Lovely list, Shriya 🙌