#YearInReview: 2016 - The Year of Marriage, Re-branding, Travel and Books!

Dear 2016,

In a few hours, you will be History. Strange are the ways of Nature, that the Future and the Past lie on either side of that tiny fickle Present. One would think that if the concept of Time was so critical, Mother Nature would let us breathe a little and embrace a moment, before moving on to the next one!

Alas, that's not quite Her way.

But you, dear 2016, still managed to get a whole extra day in your name. It's no mean feat to get a phenomenon, that happens once in over 2 million moments! Kudos, to you mate!

Please, pardon my myopia, but I can look at your greatness only through your impact on my life. This is a limitation of "being a human" where we tend to gauge the greatness of time by its consequences on our meager selves. 

On me, you had 4 major consequences:

1. Getting Married

No matter how you get judged by historians, you would remain a memorable year for me - the one that got hitched to my destiny!

The single greatest highlight that you gave me, my dear 2016, is this lovely lady - how did you pull that off! Seriously, how! 💓

Marriage has been a blessing and feels like a gift that would keep on giving! I had many moments this year when the simplest of things left me awed, just because of the person next to me. The wedding itself was an unforgettable extravaganza, not just for us, but for everyone who attended it. It was a dream of our parents that was very beautifully and meticulously executed. It was also captured with equal diligence by the lens. I compiled that experience in my most famous piece this year - here!

2. Rebranding of Blog

Well, 2016, while you brought me within dangerous reach of the big 3-Oh!, my 7+ year blog reset its counter to 1 ! It was time for "Me and My Darkside" to make way for "Writefully Yours" ! The name and look change seemed inevitable to encompass the wider range of topics that I wanted to write on.

And I did!

2016, you saw my first #photoblog, my first #vlog, 3 posts on #DonaldTrump and a few #Instablogger posts specific for #microfiction.

The blog also got some cool widgets, share tools and finally, a subscription option.

Not bad for a part-timer, eh!

3. Travel

As a newly wed couple, we got really lucky to have got many opportunities to travel in one year.

You, my dear 2016, did something that your past 7 predecessors couldn't! You got my parents to the United States!

With them being here for a limited time, coupled with our wanderlust, we covered 7 states and over 10 destinations, in about 3 months. That's almost one destination every weekend! Now, that's an American Summer!

In My Favorite City of Chicago, IL !

4. Books

Of all the accomplishments, this is the one I am most proud of! I developed a reading routine during my office lunch hour and was therefore, able to read almost every working day. My schedule and routine, coupled with a new marriage and a few other hobbies, do not leave me enough time for reading at home. Hence, this worked perfectly. I read everyday for 20-40 minutes and found it incredibly relaxing and satisfactory.

I cannot recommend enough to read Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. My abilities as a writer are not enough to describe the experience that was reading this magnificent book. For politics buffs like I, The Wilderness by McCay Coppins is a good read too.

I finished the classic Jonathan Livingston Seagull on my last working day of 2016, hence bringing a perfect closure to a good habit. I already have books lined up for 2017!

Thank You, 2016

It's always fun to sit down in December and recount 12 months of a year. Barring some irreparable loss or a family tragedy, everything, quite funnily, seems in control, in these days. There is something in our attitude, as humans, that makes us stronger with every passing year and for that reason, come every January, the World seems more hospitable and within reach.

For renewing my belief in myself, yet again, Thank You, 2016. How 2017 would go, would depend a lot on the lessons that you have taught and the tests that you put us through.

To Faith and Belief, Cheers!

A Dream Lost

(1)

I recently lost a dream. It's strange to lose something that's psychical in origin,  evanescent in existence and meta-physical in interpretation. I was taught that having, preserving and relishing a dream is the way to success. So I dreamt, big. I was made to believe that dreams don't come true without working hard, so I did. They said patience is the key. So I persevered.

My dream to me was the liberation of the spirit from the natural pressures; A buoyant force that freed my soul from the shackles of the matter.

And then, I lost it.

(2)

I lost something that had occupied me for as long as I could remember. It had governed my actions and conduct. It was the string that tied all the otherwise inexplicable fragments of my life. My dream was my subconscious giving all that around me, a meaning.

With my dream, I lost my subconscious and it took along the people, the places and the relationships, it once defined and gave meaning to.

Karma, my religion taught me, is the greatest and the fairest justice of all.

My dream was my Karma.

 (3)

"Living a dream" is misinterpreted. You can have a dream in your future and your past, but you don't ever have it in your present. As they say-"Dreams are but sea-foam".  If it were to become your present, or you "realize" a dream, it simply becomes worldly, losing the enigmatic self that elevated it to the levels of being mythical.  It becomes your story; your Life.

In many ways, I lost my reality.

(4)

A dream is lost when you lose the Desire to sleep at night as that will mark the end of another day you wished didn't happen. And a dream is lost when after every such night you still want to wake up in the past. To live such an illusion, you wish that there was no morning, no sunlight and not another new date in this forced chapter of your life.

A dream is lost when it takes with it the very Faith that drove you to have that dream in the first place. It's more than losing confidence as confidence is merely the reaffirmation of one's own abilities while Faith is the spiritual stamp of approval to trust and back yourself . When the spiritual is lost, the physical has no meaning.

A dream is lost when you steer without Direction. A man can handle setbacks and adversities as long as there is a perceived path ahead. The road ahead might be rough or smooth, bright or dark, easy or difficult, but it's still a path nevertheless. And a dream is lost when you can't distinguish between facing a wall or a crossroad.

A dream is lost when the Realization sinks in that no matter what the future holds, better or worse, you can still never go back to the status quo you once cherished. And you know that this change is irreversible and what's lost can't be replaced or regained. For that matter, you also know that calling it a "change" is undermining the havoc of this apocalypse.

(5)

When the dust settled, the passersby came to help me gather the pieces. They simply asked me to look ahead and start afresh.

Till there is breath in me, there would always be a future, and people would point towards that telling me to aim for a new and better tomorrow. Life, they say, always finds a way. I find that flawed. What I have lost, and what I might gain, cannot be equated. 

Balance, is irrelevant to me.

Losses redefine the parameters. It's then the mind accepts dreams as a useless and morbid exercise keeping us afloat for no reason. We start aiming for the low hanging fruits, consoling ourselves consciously, by instancing the past failures. This new definition of success is impudent to your lost dream, but we ignore it, in the name of life.

A dream is lost when the only Motivation in life remains to connect every dot to get the same pattern that defined your dream once. Time will pass and people will move on but I would find myself living in the same matrix trying to relive the manifestation of the dream that once was.