New ‘Ere

It’s technically not Jan 1, 2024 here in Columbia SC, yet. To be precise, it’s 7:33 PM, Dec 31, 2023 as I sit down to write this, after having taken a shower. In the course of aforementioned activity I also shaved the edges of my beard as an afterthought, and mulled for a while over whether or not to apply conditioner to the scarce tufts of hair on my scalp, while worriedly staring at the reflection of the bald spot that increasingly resembles a moon crater every passing week.

Why did I decide to type random words on my derelict blog after more than a year, one might ask. Certainly. One might also be asked to mind one’s business, if one may please. One would then roll one’s eyes in a surly fashion and grumble something about just being curious, no need to be so touchy about it.

But no, seriously, I might spout the usual tawdry dialogues which include but are not limited to “…I was too busy living,” or “…I was pursuing my creative potential elsewhere…” but the truth is I often just forgot, and was too lazy to be bothered when I did remember. I saw my sister writing a detailed listicle of books she read last year for her blog, and I thought to myself, “Hey, I’ve read books too! Maybe I should make a listicle that will contain a spiffing blend of quirky, poignant and mainstream books, which might then be read by an internet celebrity whom it happens to resonate with, and who casually reshares it, thereby making the post hugely successful and jump-starting my career of being a guy who writes funny book reviews, hobnobs over mimosas and samosas with the literati of south Bombay and south Delhi and gets magically paid for it!” Don’t lie, you’ve thought it too. We all have.

Anyway, I’m not going to list my top 10 books of the year over here in my dark corner of the net. I’d much rather do that on LinkedIn, where people feel obliged to share ‘inspirational’ one-liners that seem like they were made by Apple’s lazy marketing team, à la, “Work hard. It pays.” One would think that there are only so many ways to say that hard work is important, right? Wrong. You haven’t fully realised how important hard work is till you scroll through a series of cards that eliminate every other commonly used positive adjective.

I guess I wanted to put some quick thoughts down about my experience over the last 365 days before I get a chance to become a ruminating ruminant over it. And what’s the best way to put down quick thoughts, you might ask? Why, bullet points, of course. It’s how I write all my emails, ending them with a, “Best,” for good measure. I haven’t yet figured out what I’m besting them at, but it sounds like an apt superlative to conclude correspondence with. Anyway, here are the highlights, subject to recency effects, childhood trauma and implicit biases –

1. Running continued to remain an important part of life, albeit subdued and not subject to the same rigour as last year.
2. More than running itself, it’s the connections I’ve made through running that I find myself grateful for. P, T and S, to be precise. And S is now the longest stable relationship I’ve had in many many years, so there’s something.
3. Big strides, work-wise; got back into my coding groove and have somehow become an AI tinkerer with no idea what I’m doing, per the norm.
4. Big strides travel-wise as well – from London to Pondicherry, Coorg to Columbia, Mysore (thrice) to Madurai, and Jodhpur to Jaipur. The Coorg trip with D and M that had definite misty mountain vibes was long overdue, as was visiting my NRI fam.
5. Published a book of poetry of sorts, finally; I think I spent more time on the cover design and the illustrations inside than on shortlisting the actual poems. I wasn’t too pleased with the print quality and the shady shipment policy, but eh.
6. Lost touch with a few cool people, which I was sad about. I had honestly hoped to be better at maintaining friendships than I’ve been in the past.
7. I lost a dozen kgs last year and put back about half of it again this year, so I don’t know where my body image is going in the long run (that wasn’t initially intended as a pun). I do know I’m less angsty about it now that I’ve accepted that it’s a continuous journey and that one tiramisu isn’t going to make the difference between a beer belly and a six-pack. Having others around me to reign in my first-world anxiety helped immensely.
8. Deactivated Instagram a few months ago, which made no difference to my quality of life (and in fact led to a net improvement) so I decided to let it be that way. I uninstalled Netflix from my phone as well, a while later, in an attempt to stop watching The Office for the 16th time. But then I replaced my Xbox One with a Series X and now I’ve gone and bought an iPhone (woe is me, traitor to my principles, yes I know) so I honestly don’t know if I’m going to be less or more unproductive next year.
9. Yes, I did find time to read this year (again, mostly after leaving Instagram, so maybe there’s an inspirational quote in there somewhere) but a lot of my scant writing has been on Whatsapp and in scribblings in notepads. Let it suffice to say that I haven’t gotten more organised in my old age.

I guess 9 points is enough for deep reflection, introspection &c. is it not? Now, I know what you expect me to say next – my goals, hopes and dreams for the next year. To be quite honest, I’m an avaricious hedonist, so I have too many wants and desires to bother jotting down. If it helps, they can be categorised as follows –

1. Be immensely successful at work so that I can be even more of a covert narcissist
2. Be enormously empathetic and mightily grateful so that I can enjoy life more
3. Travel the living socks off of my bank balance, without the need for validation that I achieved something by going there
4. Write more, without filling my head up with excuses every Saturday for why I can’t. And get back into making music while I’m at it
5. Be fit as heck to reinforce point 1

Anywho, happy new year. Have a rollicking one!