Featured Photo by zero take on Unsplash
What a year! My god, I’m feeling like the year started just yesterday- and today I sit here by myself looing back at all the memories I made, all the lessons I learnt in this period of my life.
If you are a regular reader, you might have noticed me not writing about my every-day life here anymore- I have shifted my focus to talk about movies, food recipes and some rare travel stories. Not that anybody advised me to do so, it just felt right to talk about the things I am passionate about than some random thoughts and events.
Another year passed and I am glad to report that I still enjoy writing here, sharing my thoughts and journaling some highlights of my life.
Family Life
I was blessed by heaven to be able to spend the entire year with my family. I must admit that witnessing my parents to get older, feebler is heart-breaking. The people who used to be my strength and support system, more often look for support in me now.
Both my parents had some health issues through out the year and mostly I feel they need a break from the stressful life and daily responsilities.
In short my family life in 2022 felt like the calm before the storm… We all wanna live in the status quo, avoiding the inevitable storm for as long as we can, but deep down we know that it can’t be farther from the reality.
Career and Work
The career situation has been interesting for the year 2022. In the beginning of the year, I just freshly started with some new kind of work- something that I had never worked on before- plus I had a new team and new clients to work with. In the first quarter, there was crazy amount of work and a lot a challenges to maintain good health and work-life balance. However there were ample opportunities for learning.
In the second quarter the team was dissolved and everybody went in their own way. I found a new team with the same supervisor as before. The work lacked proper structure and a roadmap, it was more of research work than implementing solution of a well defined problem.
In the 3rd quarter I had the same team as before- but the work changed again. I had to find new people to take care of some unfinished work. The excitement, the learning opportunities seemed to be going away and it felt like- doing something just for the sake of doing.
The last quarter needed more patience and optimism than any time of the year. My team changed couple of times. Promising opportunities came and went-there was nothing I could do about it. I was interviewed for multiple teams (within the same organization), but kept on getting rejected -sometimes because of budget deficiency, other times for skill mismatch. For few weeks I would get train in one difficult technology- only to get informed later that I would no longer be required.
I felt helpless and despair- didn’t know whom to approach as everybody’s interest was conflicting with mine. They say rolling stone gathers no moss, but rolling or not rolling wasn’t in my control.
To improve my situation I did try to learn new stuff in my time, however it becomes increasingly difficult to be consistent and keep myself motivated since I didn’t know whether I’d ever get a chance to use those skills or not.
On a positive note, I was able to qualify a difficult certification test. Received award at work for my contribution to the team. It was a pleasant surprise to receive one more award from the university from where I took up a course last year. I wish I could attend the graduation ceremony too, which was held this year on campus.
There were some big buys this year, the taxes made me anxious as well- leading me to question my poor financial management. This is something which I would need to improve in the upcoming years.
Friends and Social Life
I would like to give myself some credit just for the bravery- to even have this section in my retrospection as we all know how many friends I have.
In the first half of the year, one of my best friends from college tied the knot with her boyfriend from the same class. That girl is a social butterfly and her wedding was more like a college reunion to me as I haven’t seen any of these people after graduation (more than 6 years)! Strangely enough, I was meeting the bride who was a very good friend to me after 6 years as well… I attended her engagement and wedding and met her friends from school and work. Since we didn’t have any common close friends, I saw a bunch of known faces but had nothing much to catch up on.
Met with another friend of mine after 2.5 years- it’s a pity that we could catch up only for an hour because of other commitments!
In the second half of the year, met a school friend after 4 years and another college friend after 5 years. Both of the experience were interesting to say the least. After long time of struggle my school friend got a job in a govt. bank, even after so many years I am glad to see her retaining the good parts of her personality.
On the contrary, my college friend seemed to get more matured and polite.
I did visit my friend few months after her marriage, I went to her house, we ordered in, shared gossips and what not… Life is changing so fast.
Sometimes I feel sorry that I can’t see my friends more often than I do right now.
Almost at the end of the year I attended another wedding – my dad’s friend’s son’s marriage with my classmate from school. They are mere acquaintances to me but saw some familiar faces from school after nearly a decade in that wedding.
That would sum up my in-person interaction with friends and acquaintances… 2 of my friends from work got married as well – with a week in between. I so wanted to meet them in person and all the other friends but didn’t have the time or money to travel across the country for a wedding. Same happened for my sister’s friends marriage- both me and my sister were invited but couldn’t go.
I wished to meet more people in person, but some people would rather stay at home than hang out with old friends. This year I made it a point to talk to more people, whenever I could… This was so much better than last 2 years for sure.
Health
Thanks to heaven, this year wasn’t so difficult with respect to my physical health situation. I did catch cold a couple of times, but that’s very normal for me. Backpain and joint pain had been issues sometimes when there were long working hours.
However I have constantly worried for both of my parents’ health.
Now coming to my mental health- not gonna lie, this year was quite challenging. There were few instances where I felt that I was about fall apart in thousand pieces but somehow managed to get through the time. I felt the dire need of close friends who could listen to me at the time of a crisis. I tried my best to keep myself from sinking into the bottomless ocean of despair. The things that helped me to get through- uninterrupted break from social media (facebook and instagram), physical exercise (things as basic as taking a walk outdoors or few squats), taking care of my physical body, reading story books, spending time in hobbies, journaling on regular basis, occasionally listening to self-help/therapeutic content…
Not an expert but you learn a thing or two to help yourself when you can’t look up to others to improve your mental health…
I cannot stress enough on the benefit of protecting one’s own energy, setting healthy boundaries and distancing from negative companies.
Love and Relationship
Yes, I managed to stay single for one more year, successfully. Even though the odds of being called as unmarried than single increases exponentially when you are in your late 20’s and from a moderately conservative background.
Events of my life this year changed my views about love and relationship. I always believed in existence of soulmate, now I laugh at myself. Not everyone is lucky to find epic love in one’s life.
In addition to that, I probably made more efforts in this year than any other year in this matter. Meeting new people, making new connections and opening my heart to possibilities – things I never thought about explicitly- became the norm of this year.
End Note
Considering everything, the year 2022 wasn’t so bad after all. It was mostly smooth sailing if you ignore the few hiccups here and there. There was a certain sense of comfort and also undeniable amount of anxiety around it- since comfort is the peril of growth. Life needs to be good balance between letting go off control and taking control of your life based on the situation- even though 2 are contradictory to each other, in a good balance can lead to happy life.
You need an urge for change, bettering yourself – to grow personally, professionally, spiritually- but you still need to feel some contentment in your current possessions. Otherwise you might grow a lot but never get a chance to appreciate the fruits of your hard work. In the opposite situation, where you are way too contented in the status quo, you will never challenge yourself to do better. I faced a mental tug of war particularly in this regard. Career-wise I couldn’t reach my short-term goals and it was making me uncomfortable… but the situation wasn’t in my control. Again I was afraid to get comfortable- as I would stop working towards improving myself then.
There were days I cried to myself, feeling left behind, trapped, or insufficient- now that those days have passed I realize that when I was going through a tough time in life- even the smallest loss or inconvenience appeared more severe- almost like the end of world to me.
At the end of the day, patience and trusting in god’s plan helped me to stay afloat.
Special Mentions
This year my mom tried some amazing recipes, folks who follow me on food journal on instagram have seen the pics! Well, I have been inactive on my personal account, where I used to follow my friends and acquaintances, this account on the contrary has only food pics and I follow a bunch of digital artists and chefs here- which don’t negatively impact me. I too whipped up some quick and easy recipes for the lazy people like me. I wish to document the recipe next year in this space.
I watched some good shows in 2022 like, House of the Dragons, Parks and Recreation, The Good Doctor, Business Proposal, The Vampire Diaries… Yeah, I know I can go overboard with binge-watching shows sometimes – another thing I need to work on!
I read few books as well- I will reveal the names once I’m done with the franchise.
So that’s all about the year 2022, hope you all had a wonderful year too. See you all in 2023!
