Happy New Year!

So, we have finally arrived at a year where we kick the Mayans’ butt big time, eh?

Wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year!

It is pretty shocking how our minds work, isn’t it? Every January 1^st, it’s almost as if there is a ‘refresh(F5)’ button in our head where we tend to forget all the sad moments of the previous year and look forward to the New Year with all the optimism, gutso, goals and resolutions (it’s just a change of date, created for our convenience, right?). Our brains are wired to look forward to a better future and with much reason – our future has always been better than the past – in terms of quality of living, in terms of technology, in terms of advancements in medicine and in almost everything that you look around you.

As always, on 1^st of January, we are caught in the dance between hindsight and probability – of what could have been in 2011 and what would be possible in 2012.

2011 – A pretty significant year for me. I got married to a fantastic girl (and I’d boil it down to my blind good luck than anything else actually) and she has been an awesome partner (considering all my quirks, I’d pretty much admit it to her almost infinite patience in not slapping me yet). In other news, my career has not gone as I expected in 2011 (except for the last 2 months where there have been some fantastic learnings). If I don’t change tack quickly, there is a great possibility that I get stuck in the average. In yet other news, one close friend C has had a bundle of joy enter her home, another close friend D got married, another shaks moved away due to vagaries of fate. And travel I did this year – I visited one of the most beautiful cities in the world, Sydney (Part 1, Part 2) in the early part of the year (easily one of the highlights of my life), honeymooned in the spectacularly beautiful Mauritius and the awe-inspiring Dubai (whose travel posts I promised about 6 months back but never got to) and roamed around all the heritage tours that Karnataka Holidays threw at us. All in all, it’s been a pretty splendid year, career aside.

2012 – I have had some deep conversations with my closest friends towards the close of the year about my dilemma. Here’s my dilemma – I have done pretty much what I wanted to do by the time I turned 28 – personal life, professional life, travel you name it. I say that not with a hint of pride, but with a lot of regret. I had set some goals at 21 for the next 5-7 years and I have gone on to achieve every one of them. Yet, I made the cardinal mistake of not refreshing/adding to the goals I made up at 21 and hence pretty much stuck now (very foolish, if you ask me). One close friend boiled it down to my innate strength which could also be my biggest weakness:  going by checklists. Yet another friend boiled it down to a mismatch between my ability and my ambitions. Another friend admired my creative ability but admonished me for operationalizing every creative bit, which restricted the range of my goals. It’s been a gut-wrenching exercise of listing down what I want to do for the next 5-7 years (and add on to the list every time one item is checked off) and I am not yet sure I have got a concrete list of to-do things. But I have an idea now. Some goals seem outrageously ambitious but the future looks bright, possible and achievable. So, 2012 is off to a good start.

Other broad goals, which I had already posted on my facebook page (which was in turn copied from my friend’s blog) include,

Walk less, Play more.
Watch less, Read more.
Tweet less, Write more.
Whine less, Do more.
Buy less, Eliminate more.
Plan less, Travel More.
Procrastinate less, Study more.
Indoors less, Outdoors more.
Heart less, Mind more.
Photograph less, Experience more.
Cynic less, Hopeful more.

And with that, I sign off with a favorite T.S.Eliot’s quote of mine,

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well.

P.S: For people who are interested in the theory behind the end of Mayan calendar, this link would help you decipher it. Favorite links on movies for 2011 and 2012 follows.

Link to 10 best bollywood films of 2011

Link to 15 worst bollywood films of 2011

Link to 35 most anticipated movies of 2012

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