An Ode to 2023!

Dear 2023,

You were kind, patient, experimental, fun and happy.! A few things that stood out to me over the course of this year were -

Books - I actively started reading a lot of books this year - all sorts of books - trashy romcoms to short stories to satires to self-help. One of the best things that happened this year was the book reading group that I joined in October. It has helped me read self-help books, and most importantly, pushed me to implement my learnings from the book. Looking forward to more disciplined reading and implementation in the years ahead. 

Swimming - Swimming has been on my new year resolution every single year for more than the past couple of years. It's not that I don't know swimming, but I have this acute fear of depth waters. I went on a trek last month where there were quite a lot of waterfalls that were pristine and beautiful, but deep. This is probably the fourth time that I'm going on a trek to this place, but every time I go to the waterfalls, I don't venture into the water, but rather settle in the banks. This time though, the presence of a triathlete (who's been in the rescue swimmer group for a long time), gave me a confidence like no other to break off my fear and get into the waters. I ventured into the pool calming my mind to trust my body and it worked - slowly going around in circles and doing multiple small laps from one end to another until I started getting quite comfortable in water. I even managed to do a couple of dives (I'm eerily scared of jumping into the water too!) That whole trek felt like an accomplishment - both in terms of overcoming the fear of water and covering the distance that we did without too much of a strain to my body. So glad and thankful to my body for enduring it - all those days at Cult definitely paid off.

Journaling - My friend and I started this practice of writing weekly gratitude notes a couple of years ago. We'd been each other's push to ensure we wrote every week without fail and caught up twice in a year to read through all that we wrote - the notes brought back happy memories, and I slowly started journaling a little more regularly last year. And this year, I went all out and got one of those fancy planners and became consistent with my daily journaling. I thoroughly enjoy doing it, and it feels quite good reading all that I write at a later point in time (This blog is also one such, though I'm not quite regular here).

Travel - Travel this year was in bits and pieces. There was one week-long relaxed vacation with the kiddo to Pune-Bombay, a 3-day trip to Varkala with the office gang (my first trip with a gang other than CTC, consisting of 15 people), a couple of frisbee tournament travels to Mumbai, Bangalore & Auroville. The Varkala trip is definitely close to the heart for I took the responsibility of bringing that trip to life with a few other folks from office - it made me truly appreciate how hard it is to plan and organise a trip, and making sure it is inclusive to all. There were joyous moments at the beach, kayaking and swimming in the backwaters, a tiring climb at noon to the Jatayu, a view worth the climb, and of course, lessons on how we can do these kinds of trips better the next time - it was definitely one experience!

Overall, it's been a great year, making me step out of my comfort zone and take some bold steps in quite a lot of things. 

A view I'll always love :)