I recently read something that truly spoke to me.
We spend too much time creating content online while all we sometimes need to do is document our life and experiences.
Over the last three years, there have been moments that I would have loved to write about. But I let them pass as it seemed like too much effort or I couldn’t find the right words to package all those ideas or thoughts in to make them appealing.
But as I am at the brink of another year (2021) and another decade (I am turning 40 in less than three months!). So for the sake of the 50-year-old me looking back at these eventful years, here goes.
- Still trying to ‘get back in shape’
Chasing my fitness goals has been the longest-running new year resolution (if you get the pun, we are in the same boat). I am not too sure how many times I’ve blogged about it. But if my journal is anything to go by, enough pep-talks, food-l
ogs, and habit trackers have been dedicated to this life-long project of mine.
Interestingly – sometime in 2018, on a glorious August morning, I was the lowest I weighed since December 2012 (here’s proof!)
I’ve stayed for months without sugar or tea and coffee. Taken up Zumba and walking in a big way, left it and turned back to them. Took up mindful eating and healthier life choices. Signed up for cult in a life-defining moment.
Am I there yet? Not at all. Has the journey become more fun. You bet.
2020 has been a significant year and merits a dedicated post (mental note#1).
- Figured out my relationship with social media
I’ve tried a bunch of apps and social media platforms in my time. Threw myself into that whole madness. Found my game and lost it. Only to realize that I wasn’t up for playing games in the first place. I have finally found the repertoire of apps that I swear by. Every once in a while I try out a new one. Give it a spin around the block. But then there are those trusted ones that take up that ever precious space on my iPhone.
All said and done – from casual to complicated to now committed – am I relationship goals or what.
A post on the apps 40-year-old me has come to love should be linked here sooner or later (mental note#2).
- Still seeking meaningful connections
If there’s one regret I’ll openly admit to then this one it is. Not actively reaching out to make more friends than I did. Not keeping in touch with the ones I did manage to discover along the way. These have been some of the (many) mistakes I made in the last two decades. If only I could tell my younger self who was too busy giving it all to work, home, family, and just generally surviving life – all those people she left behind, those bridges she burnt, those chances she never took, and the effort she didn’t make to keep her social circle alive was just not worth it.
Quality triumphs quantity in my book and what’s meant to be is meant to be. But then again, finding oneself pretty much friend-less when I finally have the time, is not a look I was aiming for.
Anyway, 2020 has helped me make some amends. Let’s see where that journey takes us.
- Figuring out my way through the maze of meaning, purpose, happiness
But then asking the right questions is the key to getting the right answers. How work, family, health form the tiny little pieces of this giant puzzle. Over the last three years since I wrote this passionate post about reinvention at the brink of a life-altering decision I made, I’ve gone round and round in circles. Clearly, I’ve been missing the signs.
A little bit of emotional detachment, a whole lot of reflection, and quite literally KonMari-ing my life has lead me to a conclusion. Success and happiness is not a moving target or an ambiguous distant milestone. It’s very much now, today, this moment. And that’s fine too.
The last three odd years have been as much of a roller coaster as any of the years in my eventful 20 odd years of adult life. And it’s interesting how I keep revisiting the idea of questions like – why we blog.
The Grammarly pop-up just warned me that my tone sounds ‘worried’. The fact that I can type that and all the 700 odd words before this statement of fact – is the kind of non-judgemental space this blog has always been for me.