I finally felt like writing today and it turns out to be my blog’s thirteenth birthday.

So a long (and long overdue) post about a lot of things and nothing at all.

I had to mark this monumental occasion. I also had to finally return to where I belong.

But the backstory first.

Not since I’ve last written. There’s too much to unpack here and it’ll take longer than a post.

2020 was supposed to be my year. The year, I turned 39, one glorious year away from the big four-oh.

Armed with a very clear professional and personal goal list I made mental and physical health a priority (again).

And then, like the very apt saying goes, life happened as we were busy making our own plans.

Those plans were left behind with the world we once knew. In mid-march, we got out of those coffee shops, movie halls, schools, and in my case my workplace with next to none realization of when we’d be back again.

I stepped into the lockdown phase, with the sole objective of surviving it.

There were no health goals I was chasing, no learning records I wanted to break. I just wanted to get through it all as I juggled work, home, and everything in between and beyond.

I am not saying that there was no cooking kabaabs, baking cupcakes or fitness focus involved in the process. I even resorted to jigsaw puzzles and learning magic tricks online. But those were survival hacks. Just like meditation or mindless binging.

They were in no way to come out a better, wiser, fitter version of myself.

Quite early on – I read an article that compared what we were feeling during the pandemic with the six stages of grief. As the world around us changed irrevocably (and I refuse to call it #NewNormal – since there’s nothing normal about life as we speak), now that I look back that’s the only fact I can claim to have figured out about these uncertain times.

I crawled from denial to acceptance and finally found my feet to start moving towards – finding meaning.

Five months from today, an eventful decade would come to an end. I have caught myself talking about my twenties as the years when one made the most mistakes, the thirties as the years when one is done with putting out all those fires.

Yesterday during a visualization session with a personal coach organized by Leap Club – I could see what the next half a decade should be about.

I am not too sure what the rest of the year has in store. But what I do know is that I’ve seen myself five years from now and I need to stay true to this journey henceforth.

PS: that’s me, early this year – a day after my birthday. I blew out those candles perhaps wishing for an eventful year ahead. Little did we know right?