The Year Thats Gone By...some musings on 31st..

Every year on 31st, i come up with a long list of resolutions for the next one and right at that point of time even when i am jotting them down, i smile inwardly knowing very well that i wont stick to any of them!
but like so many other things in life we do in the name of tradition, this is one of them and i stick to at least writing them down ;)
one more thing i always do on 31st is to visit the memory lanes that were lost somewhere in the hustle bustle of the highways and flyovers that go grand and grander with every passing week. With every new shiny object, new label, acquired skill i tend to forget something old but equally precious so this day is when i open my trunk and get out with all that would now be old - something that happened 'last year'. :)

This year the highlight of the year was that i managed to strike out two 'to-do' things from my bucket of 'Things to do before you die'.

- Stayed alone in an apartment
- Traveled alone in a foreign land

my mom always called me a loner. Never quite liked the company of humans so naturally for me, someone who is very well shielded by her family, all her life, someone whom people challenged that she would never be able to live independently, i always wanted to stay away from my parents and alone. This year, Devi's marriage gave me the opportunity and on the first night alone in a 750 Sq Ft apartment, i cursed all my dim stars for wanting to be this way. She did go away with tears in our eyes but i chose not to have a roomie. some people and some things in life are never replaceable :) Few nights passed with me sleeping upright in my bed, my eyes flying open with every single crack and hoot from outside and all horror movies i dragged people with me to watch flashed in front of my eyes but i survived and now i love it to the core. Sometimes i do feel the need to have someone by my side when i am not well or am depressed about something that happened in the office but otherwise i am just fine and doing spectacularly well with a satisfying feeling at the back of my mind that my best friends are just a phone call away and that i may not have garnered anything else in the past year but surely have 4 am friends that i can call and vent!

Traveling alone was a conscious decision. Not that i did not enjoy my previous trips to other lands. i did but being a loner (read: Psycho ;)) i always wanted to do things differently on a tour. I always wanted to take my own time to sink in the new place, its feeling, its history in me instead of rushing from one landmark to other. It has its own charm to just sit at a street side cafe with a book, no camera, no cell phone, no maps. just sit there and watch people around you. people who dont know who you are and you arent bothered about them either. people who are forgiving towards you cause they dont know what mistakes you have made, what blunders you have committed. a stranger can smile at you and you hesitate at first but smile back and the moment is gone and still written on your slate forever. So i went to Boston for my Thanksgiving vacation and fell in love with the city. If ever, i had any doubt about me being a city gal, its all gone now. Give me the cities! any day! Visited places where i always always wanted to go. walked miles and miles and came back to hotel tired but happy. Of course there is fun when you can share it with people you love but then i love myself too. :) this meant no photos of mine but i could, on a whim, hire a cab to find out the exact place that i wanted to visit at the night time to catch nighttime skyline of Boston in my camera. cost me $60. its crazy but its essentially something i could do only when i was alone. Cant work out your whims when you are with a gang. you have to behave when you are social. you necessarily dont have to when your actions dont put others in a spot :) i returned to Dallas, my heart heavy with memories, with a want to go back to the lovely city and wallet a lot lighter but hey...i could very well be packing my bags next month to go back to India and never return to this fascinating land. Why rely on future when you cant see it for sure :)

apart from these two, a lot of small things happened. Some broke my heart beyond repair and made me take stock on how naive and immature i still am, 26 years after birth. How my silence or tongue held at the right moment could have saved a little damage but i dont repent for anything. at that point of time, i did everything cause it felt right, for me it was the right thing to do so i did it. No going back on one's words or actions. I would have said sorry if i had felt it. i didnt so i couldnt :)

made lot of good friends that would stick with me through thick and thin or so i hope. Who would call me names, tease hell out of me, comment on my profession with an authority that pisses me off completely but i know one thing. if the day comes, god forbid, when i faint in my apartment, my dead body wont be eaten by a stray dog or cat.
They may not call me every other day but they do keep me in their thoughts and that i figure somewhere as a  tiny spec in the bigger scheme of things in their lives. That they help me realize in their own way of how much growing up i still have to do. People who accept me with open arms with all my psycho ways of thinking, my fears, my obstinacy, my poor jokes, my rigidness and my helplessness with letting things and hurt go.  I have always always thanked God for people around me and this year he did not disappoint me from adding some more to the list.

I want to thank each and every person that taught me a thing or two last year. I surely am a little different person this year than i was the last and the lion's share goes to you.

Resolutions for new year:

- Reduce weight (not going to happen since i will soon sink my teeth in something sinful and something that will take days to come off my hips)
- Read more (this does not include online reading. i mean real books and nook!)
- Write more (try not to hide the lazy bum under the pretext of writer's block)
- Travel more (alone and with groups)
- Spend less (hrmph)
- Call old friends
- Be happy with what you have and forget about what couldnt come to you. (the most difficult one)
- Get a promotion (shouldnt really be on my list. should be on my Manager's list as a to do ;))
- Find love (not through the weird matrimonial sites)
- Think of more resolutions for the next year


1 comment:

  1. Hehehe...precisely why I decided not to keep any resolutions this year! I never keep them! Good luck to you with yours! Yayy...more stories! ;)

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