New year, new me :)

 What a year 2022 was!

It's been a year of new beginnings (what with my marriage and settling into a house and trying my best to make it into a home in a new city), recreating work identities, and most of all celebration pro max (aka weddings - me and some of my closest/bestest friends). I don't think I've ever gone into a year and come out of it so incredibly changed (and evolved if I may) and a large part of that credit goes to my family, my partner, and my therapist.

I'll eventually get back to this blog (and writing in general) a lot more because I do have many life updates to share in detail and recommendations to make for those few shining stars that still show up here. However, let today's post be all about what I intend for 2023 to look like so I (and all of you) may hold me accountable for the same:

1. Exercise - 10 minutes daily. No questions, no excuses. The research on this is indisputable and I do wish to scale a mountain someday so might as well get started.

2. Eat right - No ordering in. Four junk passes, preferably all in person but minimum two in person meals outside. I have been a slave to food all my life and would really like to be the one in control of it and not the other way round.

3. Skill enhancement- Dance and financial literacy. By the end of the year reach an intermediary level at least. My friend has really inspired me to start dancing again and I am tired of how gendered the financial literacy levels are in the world (not just in India) so I want to do my bit to make a dent in that stat.

4. Read- One book per month so 12 books this year is a must. Hopefully 1 book for leisure and 1 for psychology each month (would total to 24) but we will see if we get there. I used to read a book every week as a child and to go from that to 3 books last year (with a lot of effort)) is abysmal. It's time to get off the screen and on the page.

5. Mindfulness- Five minutes every single day. I know the benefits, the merits and the science. Now I have just got to sit down and do the damn thing. I'm not going to let app preferences/subscriptions (Headspace has really been toying with me!) get in the way of that either. The aim is to get ten percent happier and I know mindfulness is the sustainable way to get there.

There are some other habits that I have been doing (albeit unsuccessfully) off and on and would like to enhance and continue. However I don't want them to be in my top five else I become too ambitious and end up doing nothing! So here are five additional things I'd like to strengthen if I can push myself more on some days:

1. Continue daily gratitude work - Let's hit 365/365 this year!

2. Journal and write - five words, five sentences, five pages doesn't matter. Just show up to the page every day.

3. Scheduled house time - things pile up very quickly and I like my house to be a certain way (mom must be smiling) so I'd rather put in the work daily to ensure it doesn't leave me frazzled

4. Reduce average screen time to 2 hours per week - I'm already honouring my 15 minutes Insta-limit. It's time to further challenge myself and step away from screens as much as possible.

5. Grow my brand - all new plans for TST to be executed this year. Consistent curiosity, learning and growth, will be the mottos of this year.

What are your new year resolutions or plans? Do you wish to join me in building some of this together and keeping each other more accountable? Do you want to reflect on why resolutions or plans are beneficial or necessary? Or do you just want to hit snooze on this ultra ambitious rant and get some more sleep in this freezing winter?

Whatever you choose, I'll be there with you :)

xx

Standing out

 All my life I've wanted to fit in

Fit into a tiny little box 

A place where I'm liked  and popular and hot

Sometimes people can make you feel that way no?

Like you're their favourite song?

I want to be your only diary

the last page of all your notebooks

scribble all over me

doodle and draw across my skin

cover me in your ink

I want to be your muse 

I want to be your -

Actually I just want to be -

- yours

Italics

Personal pronoun 

But I'm not 

So I'll continue drawing attention

& lighting fires

and standing out 

a l o n e

Friday feels.

 // writing to somebody and nobody in particular

just to let the universe know that you're on my mind

and everybody else too

the friend i lost

and all the friends i am yet to lose

i think of my best friend and my body aches

because i haven't seem him in so long

i think of my half-twin-brother across the seas

unknowing if i'll get to hug him this year

i wonder about the sister in delhi

i reminisce about the one in singapore

i worry about the one in canada 

and also the one who's only 7 miles away

i miss how your laughter sounded in my ears

i miss the horrible puns and the badly timed jokes

i miss the energy and the fun

i miss the long drives to nowhere 

i carry so many people with me 

i constantly despair 

i'm desolate

i'm unprepared 

i wanted to always reach my dream

but now that i'm here 

i don't understand why i keep missing 

being there

with you //

2014-2020

1. I whine too much and I rarely smile like I mean it.
2. My words are heartfelt, the abuses and the mush too.
3. I don't earn most of what I've been blessed with.
4. I'm perpetually dissatisfied with the situation I'm currently in.
5. I dream of a perfect world, knowing it doesn't exist.
6. I believe in fairytales and superheroes.
7. I would like to think that there are things in this world worth dying for.
8. I know there are people in my life worth dying for.
9. I am in a relationship with my phone and my laptop is the only form of commitment I've truly known.
10. I listen to heavy metal when I'm pissed and emo bullshit when I'm happy.
11. I replay moments, episodes, entire days in my head to assure myself they did happen once.
12. I like making people smile even if just for a nanosecond.
13. I follow my gut, I trust too soon, and I don't give up.
14. I am a masochist.
15. I am also a human microscope who over thinks practically everything.
16. I have my weakness. It used to be my strength.
17. My memory and incredible love for detail shocks even me at times.
18. I. know. i. will. yearn. for. love. forever.

Now that we've gotten to know me, would you turn around and walk out the door? Or do you still care enough to stick around?

18. He doesn't drink alcohol and I think he would've been the perfect whiskey boy.
17. He worships rock.
16. He doesn't sing as far as I know, but I have a feeling when he does, it is beautiful.
15. He quotes writers without any help from me.
14. He remembers things in intricate detail, enough to fail even me.
13. He writes of murders and thrill.
12. He cracks jokes in every second sentence.
11. His favourite Tennis player is Federer, band is Floyd, and football club is Manchester United.
10. He hates Liverpool (almost) as much as I do.
9. He can do anything but go an entire day without sarcasm.
8. He also wrote a novel.
7. He reaches out randomly and makes me smile.
6. He doesn't call, ever.
5. His taste in books is still questionable.
4. He loves the city that I hate.
3. He helps me with basic tech stuff that makes me feel like a complete blonde.
2. He is oblivious to how much his friendship meant to me at a time when I was most alone.
1. He doesn't know that I'm writing this; and probably never will

Now that you've gotten to know him, you do know that we're unlikely friends and years from now I probably wouldn't even be able to place who I wrote this for. But today, I know. And today, from where I'm standing, I'm glad to have known him.
Don't make me regret this, you. 

Does somebody love you?

  - in the way i do -

when i'm left to my own devices for too long,

i don't know what i become

i may not be extremely special

but i sure am extremely talented at kidding myself about it

because i enjoy the territory it comes with

geniuses are allowed madness 

and how else would you explain this dark madness inside of me?

that neither food nor music can quench

that love only dampens but never extinguishes

allow me to be mad 

and alone

and dark

allow me to self-destruct

and yet, save me too

be mine

leave me 

to my own devices 

and watch me crumble and combust

as perfectly as only i can

as beautifully as only i do

Take it all away.

 What do I do to stop feeling so utterly and completely alone and hollow from within?

If my tears could speak, this page would be full, but they can't

So it's not.

If my heart could be cajoled, it wouldn't break so easy, but it can't

So it does.

If my mind could be tricked into believing and keeping faith, I would

But, it can't.

If there was a prayer for redemption of one's soul, I would start praying

But there isn't.

If there was a way to erase memories, I would erase them

all

But there isn't.

And I can't.

Here we are again, Ved.

What does it take to come alive? To breathe? To believe? In magic? In goodness? In yourself?

What does it take to stay alive? To march on? To keep trying? To not give up? On yourself.

What does it take to begin to thrive? To excel? To win? To succeed? At health? At life? At love? 

˜

Perhaps all it takes is you and me 

Separated by destiny

Go on, now.

The fated moment's here

All the sidestepping in the world couldn't keep it at bay

Now it's time for me to step back, dear

I used to believe I have the courage to stay

I don't.

In so far

Don't really know the shallow end from the deep

I left all my doors ajar

Hoping you'd get to my heart, and that you'd keep

You didn't.

Oceans could be crossed, mountains climbed

Even if that meant drowning or falling

But for this, I was forever primed 

And I guess I was just stalling

The inevitable.

So, go on now 

Don't look back

I'll leave you with a smile

And a promise that I'll be fine 

Someday.

With or Without you

There's a sandstorm at my doorstep,

I know there's torrential rain to follow,

I sit by the window, 

waiting.

I found some sand in my shoes today,

Reminiscent of all the beaches I've been to,

I held it in my hands, tight,

nostalgic.

My dreams are still made of happy endings,

Even though my brain runs far away

From their very thought,

disbelieving. 

Maybe it's all symbolic,

The sand, the rain, the storms,

A message from the universe, waiting to be 

deciphered.

Cinder and smoke,

Maybe I'll choke

On all this thought of

destiny.

150 days.

I wrote you a song in my head. And it played out with your eyes looking into mine. That slow, casual, strut you took towards me, it made up the background score for that. For when you came close(r) to me and slid down the pillow, and I turned into you, so close that I could count every crease of your forehead and shirt, only there were none of the former and I added lots to the latter. The lyrics were perfect for when you eased into me and leaned in, for when you pulled me so close that there was no space for air between us and met my lips, purely because you couldn't wait any longer. You'd waited seven years after all.

The first verse played over our first pegs of vodka and the bridge covered the dressing up. But it was a never ending chorus as we walked out for a night together, and never looked back. Every step since then has been a song, a melody that we built together, the lyrics of which I wrote on my way to you but they never panned out until your touch met mine, your breath muffled mine.

I love you, not like they do in books or movies or plays. Because they seem to know what they're talking about. I don't. I love you like the unknown, the one still left to unfold. I love you like I love the first red rose I preserved in the pages of my favourite novel years ago, in the hope that some day I could take it out and hand it to someone who'd know what it meant for me to keep it all this while. I love you like I love the baby book that my parents made for me and I'd read and reread just because it made me see myself as someone who could be loved when I saw myself from their eyes. I love you like the first cassette I ever bought, and the lyrics of every song which it had that I memorised because suddenly I'd found something that completed me and made this universe make sense. I love you like like I love the last page of all my notebooks because that is where I scribble what I never have the courage to write out and then trace those words some lazy afternoon afterwards, knowing precisely what I felt back then and unknowing why I could never say it out.

I love you for I don't know any other way, I love you for I don't know what I'd do without it, I love you for I can't stop myself. I love you because I do.

Hold your breath.

The chronology is crystal clear. The question is what sticks? The pattern or the hope? The self-destruction or the romantic optimism? Dare I dream? Dare I dream with you? I don't think I'm the one - for you, or for anyone. I may be beautiful, as you so often remind me. But these reminders will run out and all I'll remember is the hollowness and the void that your absence will leave in its wake. Why? Why am I so scared? I know what I feel and I know it is pure. What is this deep need for it to last and this unwavering doubt that it won't? 

People matter to me most and people screw me over the most - that much is certain. I allow for it is also evident. Is it because I don't believe I deserve love? Is it because I turn everything I touch to anti-gold? Is there no greater pattern and just a series of unfortunate coincidences? I'm terrified to find out the answer to this. Horrified out of my mind to actually come to know that I'm but an option, nothing extraordinary, nothing exclusive. Just an everyday mundane that makes those around her happy as per their convenience and then is easily forgotten.

Will you leave? Will you stay? Will I be forced to reevaluate myself through my life choices and my life experiences? Will the cynic win or the romantic? Is there any winning at all in a life and world as twisted as the one we currently live in? 

What am I doing here? I don't belong here. 

Missing.

*

I waited.

You came, eventually.

It seemed like forever passed us in between.

Do you know me now?

Do I dare to care?

Are we to pick up where we left off?

I'm here aren't I?

Maybe we should just try to tell ourselves a good lie,

You didn't mean to make me cry?

-

"I see my future in your eyes"

There's way too much pain and I'm drowning. Where's my lifejacket? I think I found floaters but they're running out of air and I'm grabbing on to lifeboats that were pirate ships to begin with. I have to do this on my own, I say to myself. But I don't. I constantly need someone to hold my hand through things and I hate that about myself. I think I'm scared of the alternative - not because of how much it will suck but because of how comfortable I will eventually get at being alone, enough to never let anyone in, even slightly, again. I could finally find out what it's like - fighting to stay alive - maybe it's time - sink or swim baby. 

Mr. Brightside.

I haven't really ever understood why I write. No I get how it's cathartic or therapeutic but why does furious punching in of the keys calm me down? Like nothing else does? Even if it is just me completely blowing things out of proportion.

Do you think there are some people that are basically dark? One of my clients asks me if she attracts negativity. If that could be true for anyone, that would be true for me. I pride myself in being the anti-midas, in how I either attract the worst or facilitate the best's transformation into the worst. I mean, that's clearly what I'm doing with myself, my body, yuck,

It's pathetic really - my ability to run so fast and fall so deep within the darkness. I think some of us just enshrine it within us - and I have been building it within for too long for it to just disappear. I think I keep visiting the haunted parts of my brain to ensure they still exist. Therapy teaches you that you can't take away someone's defence mechanisms without replacing them with something healthier first. For me that was going to be love, an unconditional, everlasting love.

After binge watching a stalker series on Netflix for ten hours straight, I do kind of worry (more than the usual) that such love doesn't exist - and if it does - it isn't healthy. I also think that I am ordinary in the most boring way - fear of loneliness does creep its way into my bones even though I am so fucking good at hiding out alone. I could be with you for years and you won't really know me - I keep a part of me always hidden and as soon as you begin to see the hidden bits, I create more and more walls, barriers, obstacles to always keep me protected.

I said, it feels like there's oceans between me and you - but I create these oceans. And now I speak directly to you. Do you even know who you are? I don't. You're an amalgamation of all my pain and pleasure - all my lovers - ex and present - all my friends - if there ever were any to begin with - my family - my conscience (was I born with one?) - you, this voice in my head, I don't know you who are.

A shapeshifter.

This year is ending, thank god. I can't take any more of this voice in my head. It keeps telling me everything I have ever done wrong. I can't shake the feeling of being a horrible person. Ugly, fat, incompetent, and just plain horrible. I build it up to burn it down. Always. 

Pushing Back.

If you've been following my life closely, this past month has been really out of character for me. I have been playing the role of a reckless teenager as compared to an accountable adult. When you have been an adult for such a short period of time and are still trying to wrap your head around the concept of 'adult-ing' it makes even lesser sense, right?

Wrong.

I have been playing the adult for a long long time. I was always an empathetic child who knew what could possibly hurt someone else and would never do it - even if that meant suffering myself. I could take pain, grief, anything, everything, as long as I thought I was protecting my loved ones from these gruesome emotions. I would solve fights between friends, family and parents. I would study on my own when nobody was looking or checking. As a teenager I snapped and was incredibly difficult.

But then again came young adulthood and I learnt once more to swallow pain, misery and circumstances. I learnt to live absolutely alone in a country oceans away, without letting on how horrible it was for me. I kept my head down and worked hard till I just couldn't anymore. I kept at it for as long as it just didn't kill me. I thought, I can't be a quitter.

When the transition was made of me doing something I love, the adult-ing came easy. There was a zeal to prove myself. There was a yearning to grow, belong, love and be loved. I would never skip a class, would work way ahead of deadlines, basically I worked on every tiny flaw I had had as a school student in order to be the best possible Masters student.

And then you left.
Randomly and all at once.

I tried to be mature about it - I really did. For the first two months I cried and wailed - wrote to you - about you - travelled to you - in real and in my head - gave up - held on - anything to make sense of the fact that you're gone. You're not coming back. But the one sad thing is I couldn't hate you - not at all - so I ended up directing all that anger at myself. And then began my inner struggle, the longing to run away from every reminder of you - the need to run away from myself.

My house, my staircase, my mother's smile, my favourite hangouts, everything reeks of you. I can't even enter my room without saying your name under my breath. How do I run from someone who became a part of me?

But this is like a personal challenge and quest because amidst all this I promised myself that our memory deserves that I look at it only with happiness. So I promised myself, I will get over you with a smile on my face and a drink in my hand. I will search for ways to find laughter in a world that seems meaningless. I will try to move forward in a universe that I couldn't care less about now. I will prosper in a city that I always hated. I will do whatever it takes to be happy and selfish because you can't be the only thing that made me my happiest. No, I refuse to give you that sort of power over my entire life.

I will be happy. At least for this month, that brought me my life, I will be unapologizing-ly selfishly happy. And at the dawn of the next month, it will be time to be an adult again.

For now, just let me run wild for a while.
It's been a long time since I did.

Ishita, Krishna, Blogs

I am back here after a month and I promise this will be (hopefully) be the first of (many) posts that isn't about a boy, or a man, any man. 

I came here today and after years I read some other blogs and I realised why I used to come here and what this blog did for me. It took me reading some really sad and moving things to realise the absolute obvious - I'm not alone. No matter how horrible my emotional state, no matter how much I'm dreading my birthday, no matter how broken I feel from within - I'm not alone. 

Nobody is ever alone. I just need to keep reminding myself. I need to keep reading and writing like I used to - not caring who does or does not read it; not caring if it makes sense; not caring if it's good or worth it. Writing for the sole pleasure of writing is of the main reasons why I never took it up professionally. But I had promised myself that I wouldn't stop writing. That was the condition. How could I forget?

Also, I want to do this gratitude activity starting today. Here's wishing me luck and thanking all you beautiful bloggers for restoring my sanity, even if briefly. 

PS: Sappy post about BFF leaving town is incoming. Prepare yourselves. 

Newness.

I used to come here, when nothing else made sense.
I would come here when everything began to make too much sense.

I have a problem, I breathe in every movie, every song, every novel and make it about me. I can't function without the arts and I inhale them to the point that the boundaries get really blurred. A TV show doesn't just stay that - it takes on a life of its own, inside of me. I am therefore constantly living so many lives, I am so many people, all in one. I don't know who exactly I am because I find parts of me in everything I read, watch or listen to. They inspire me and I feel like I inspired them in some warped way. I know not every story is about me but I sure know how to find me in every single one. Every story that means anything to me, becomes me.

I stopped coming here because it gets too much. It gets too much to live and breathe and be inside my head all at once. It gets too much to write about you, or him or him. But it gets too much to not. It never makes sense like it does in this fleeting moment, and before I know it, in the blink of an eye, it's gone.

I can pick up the phone and try to explain it to you but you wouldn't get it. Because I don't get it. How could I? How could you? How could anyone ever understand the tiny self-destruct button that I have inside of me and that only I have access to, and that only I know the triggers to. And yet, with this knowledge, I trigger it because that's what keeps me alive.

I'm a complex person, really complex and yet sometimes my needs are simple. I guess it's the simplicity of these needs that I'm trying to outrun. I can't be just ordinary, I want the different, the spectacular. But maybe the ordinary is the spectacular.

It's funny because sometimes I know I'm over-complicating it all. At others, I'm not so sure. I'm just stuck in a limbo with no escape because the limbo is my own head. I think pain is so very important to my existence that I don't know how to live without it. It's a part of me.

So I keep creating more. There's been so much pain that a life without it seems incomplete. I know how ridiculous this seems but pain is more familiar than happiness. And so I go on finding new ways to ensure there's always room for more.

So good luck to you if you're reading this. You're stuck with this me - and I'm a true masochist. 

But she fell in love with an English man.

Hello there.
I'm in a nice mood today so I thought I would write to you. Music is the only thing that sometimes puts me in a mood to write to you. I don't know why but it seems like a song you would have smiled to even though the singer isn't your type. You might have dedicated it to me and I have this feeling in my gut that for some time to come I would have been your Galway Girl.

Just the way Sheeran says "Pretty little Galway Girl" has a ring to it that reminds me of you. I thought my brain and the music industry had finally run out of such things. Nuances I tell will be the end of me :)

I have such a nostalgic smile as I type this. Today I'm not angry. Today I'm not sad. Today I'm me and I'm glad we met. I get so much flak for this that I don't allow myself to feel this way often. Your hatred/ambivalence/indifference makes that really easy too. But as I said, today I'm giving myself a no-guilt pass. Maybe it's my latest defense against you or the part of me that will forever believe that she and she alone knew the real you. Actually I'm more scared of the latter - this twisted part of me - has the capacity to derail all that I've worked for. Such is the power of my darker side but then I guess we all feel that way about our wild alteregos.

I was always one to believe that crazy is my normal state so it only makes sense that every once in a while I seek it out. And if I didn't know any better I would still be seeking you, my go-to link for crazy. You're a symbol of losing control, of not caring, of being a badass bitch. So it's not you so much that I miss but this reckless, carefree version of me that didn't need to adult all the time. She didn't need to be patient or empathetic to the needs of others. She lived in the moment for hedonistic pleasures. She wasn't expected to be mature or caring. She only did what suited and pleased her.

She's the Galway Girl.

So as I listen to the song on loop today at 5 am in the morning, it's an ode not to you but to my youth that allowed me one year of reckless happiness. The stories from that era are just that - unbelievable stories that leave me hungry for me. But that's the thing about addictive adrenaline high experiences like the ones we had together - they eventually drain you out. However for today, I focus not on the downer but the high.

She played the fiddle in an Irish band,
But she fell in love with an English man, 
Kissed her on the neck and then I took her by the hand,
Said 'Baby I just wanna dance...
My pretty little Galway Girl.'

So thank you my Englishman. I'll be in your city soon and thanking you for that dance and for letting me be the Galway Girl. It was always going to end, but you made the ride so bloody addictive and imprudent that I can't help but smile. The time we spent together was really time that I stole from the world for myself. It was like one big, bad score before quitting the game altogether. There's just so much that I need to continuously care about now that I just want to thank you for giving me a world in which I didn't need to care about anything except being your Galway Girl. 

Father's Laptop, Mother's Clothes.

Existential crisis.

I am about to turn 24 in less than fifteen days. Twenty-fucking-four. Usually this is when the countdown begins in my head (actually it begins on about 8th of May and I acknowledge it in my head around 8th of June and publicly around 10-15 days before 8th of July, depending on how busy the lives of people around me are at the moment). Twenty four is no mean number. I stopped keeping count post 21, and so all forms filled by me were invariably aged 21 or 22. And now, holy shit, here I am, about to hit my own personal quarter of a century. And what do I have to show for it? Nothing. Zilch. Nada.

I have all these outlandish dreams where I travel and write and work but quite honestly what am I really doing? Eating, sleeping and shopping. Then you will also find me whining about how I don't eat what I wanted to, or I don't get enough sleep or don't have quite enough of Zara heels or Armani perfumes. I write two sentences a day and call myself a writer. I work out for ten minutes and grow tired. I roam about the city in an air-conditioned car, the fuel of which is paid for by my parents, and take pride in the fact that I'm independent.

It's disgusting.

It's appalling that this doesn't seem to trouble people around me - people who have joined their family business and take Europe/World-tours on their parents' money without the zeal to work for themselves. We as a generation don't earn our breaks or vacations, we are born into them - some more than others; and thanks to social media even the few of us left who can boast of a spine end up feeling underprivileged in comparison.

I'm turning twenty-four and I don't even have twenty-four friends to call my own. As I left Philippines, I laughed in its face because I was going home - to my city, to my people. In less than two months I was told and retold just how wrong that notion was but I'm stubborn you see. I was relentless in my love for my people, even as they slowly but surely stabbed me in the back. I tried to tell myself it was situation-specific and removed myself from those situations, and yet, here I am, no situation, same dagger. It doesn't hurt as much ofcourse, because of all the already present holes in my body but I find myself furious that it hurts at all.

I'm furious that it hurts me when people behave in a manner contrary to how I believed they would. I'm turning twenty-four and I am still as naive and whiney as I was earlier. What is changing except the year on the calendar, tell me oh lord? I'm still a dependent, demanding, student for crying out loud!

For the first time ever, I don't want the dates to change, I need more time, I'm not prepared. I haven't accomplished anything and I need more time before I hit this milestone. I need more time before over-concerned aunties and uncles start bugging me about getting married and my ever-empty uterus. I need more time!

As an afterthought, maybe all I need is a cold glass of wine, life does seem better with a wine glass in my hand. But oh wait, I'm a girl. I'm not "allowed" even that privilege. For you see, log kya kahenge?

Mashhoor hai, fir bhi badnaam woh.

Another year has left us behind and I'm still grappling to get hold of my days and dates and calendar in general. So much has happened in 2014 and so much remains to be done. The upcoming year is going to be bloody important is understating the obvious. Somethings however have remained unchanged over the course of the past twelve months and whether good, bad or ugly - are worthy of a mention.

Many a friends have been done away with. Friendship for the sake of friendship has been forsaken. The silver lining to this is the fact that bonds withstanding are now stronger than ever, more valued and well genuine. However some losses did hurt more than others and I wish learning gets easier as we grow older.

Family is the ultimate respite from this messy world. There's been unconditional love and unprecedented fights but there has been growth. Marriages have taught me about growing up, more than anything else did this year. The real face of many people came forward and the garb of innocence or oblivion was shed. We've welcomed new family members into the fold and some old bonds have been refurbished like ancient buildings we adored but had allowed cobwebs to settle on due to changing circumstances.

Love has managed to conquer all, atleast metaphorically. It has improved performances, dedication and inspired perfection. It has given a reason to keep moving forward, never looking back and achieving all along this journey that we've found ourselves on.

But the one thing that has been almost unique to this year is that the number of times my heart was broken has hit an all time low. I've been the heartbreaker and not the breakee. Phew, what a relief that is. There is an upside to emotionally shutting yourself off afterall. Hallelujah! Refusing to care is a sureshot way to safeguard yourself against a world of pain. The lesser people you 'connect' with, the less exposed you are. And after a lifetime of vulnerability, I think I quite like it this way. My way or the high way misters.

I've learnt that reinventing yourself isn't so hard. You'll find supporters in the places you least expected and the babble of critics can always be drowned with a song or ten playing at full blast in your head. Better still, their nonsense can be used as a driving force to prove them wrong. But nothing works better than wanting to make your parents proud. And nothing short of being the best will ever be enough to do that. That's the thing about perfection.. Once you get addicted to it, its a drug much like the others.

The goals for this year are set clearly in front of me. Now I just need to slowly yet surely find a way to make sure they are achieved. Easier said than done especially for a procrastinator like me but well. What is life if not fighting odds - the greatest one being myself.

Also, to all those who have been around.. Mumma&Papa, Doll, Chuttaks, Shu, Ad-mad, Adi, Aditya, Rastogster, Little J.. stay the year ? I promise you nothing but heaploads of drama and excitement. All of the rest will flow.

So here's my twisted version of a happy new year greeting. To myself and the world. Let's make 2015 count. It does add up to eight afterall - the perfect infinitic loop of perfection.