All about 2022: New Job, Tournament, & Anxiety
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Reflection who?
Reflection 2022.
Oh, it’s that time of the year already.
The time when I see the year as a whole, the highs & the lows, things that went well, and things that didn’t go so well.
So, let’s dive in with a quick summary of how my year has been.
“In terms of my career, the second half of this year has been rewarding. I learned a lot, pushed myself outside of my comfort zone, and experienced a new atmosphere. There have been turbulences from the perspective of the general mental condition, but gradually, everything seem to be falling into place, slowly but surely.”
Overall a mixed year.
Just in case if you are interested in reading the previous year in reviews, here are those: 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021
Major Wins
Documentary feature
The udaan team made the decision to commission a documentary for design @ udaan at the beginning of this year. I also had the opportunity to appear in that. It has always been a goal of mine to appear in such documentary and that is ticked now.
2. A new job
Having spent close to 3 years in my previous job, this year was the time when I felt the need to make a move, and with a gruesome process of looking for what I wanted, and finding a perfect match, I was finally able to get to a comfortable place.
I have written about my job-hunting experience here. It made me learn a lot about myself.
How do I perform under pressure? How to balance things out? Dealing with imposter syndrome and everything in between.
Also, I am extremely grateful for the fact that I did not get affected by any recessions/layoffs in these tough times.
Vipassana
Vipassana meditation course.
Always wanted to try this out and got a chance to do a 10 days course. Quite an experience. However, since it was so rigorous, the downside of which is that I don’t do it often now.
Maybe felt like an overdose of it. But in all, a really good experience, and got answers to quite a lot of questions.
The main learning was to look within and maintain a state of equanimity.
I have written more about my experiences here.
Back to badminton + Body vitals
This year I had a goal to get my cholesterol and other off track vitals to be on track and I was fairly successful in doing so.
Still a long way to go but made significant progress.
As I look into my booking history, I booked ~124 sessions on Fitso which means 124 hours of badminton which is logged. I played badmintion apart from that as well. So, in all it would be around, 150+ hours.
And do you know I played my first badminton tournament (Doubles) as well. Reached semifinals. Quite a good start.
DesignUp volunteer
I remember the first time I went to the DesignUp conference, I wondered how one could volunteer for this?
Fast forward to 2022, I volunteered at this humongous design event, and boy what an experience it was.
I have written more about it here.
Back to code
Always wanted to tick this off my list.
Coded an extension which brings out all the bookmarks in a persistent new tab. Now, I organise all my day 2 day work links as folders.
Haven’t unlocked its full potential yet but great to see something that you have built and use on a daily basis.
New rented place
Since the onset of pandemic, we (me and my friend) were living off a place that we outgrew sooner but the BLR rental market is as such that you can’t get things right. But this year, we shifted to a new place and a lot of basic things got sorted. Can’t be more grateful for this.
Improvement areas
Weight loss
I was at 68, came down to 65, and then end of the year, I am back at 67.
Took a lot of courses but couldn’t finish all of them.
Guessing need a better strategy for it.
Managing anxiety
This year I dealt with a lot of anxiety. I could have gone to a therapist sooner.
Social media, blogs, and projects
UXSprout
Visitors: 1,641 | Pageviews: 4,701 | Articles published: 1
All Design Events
Visitors: 1,050 | Pageviews: 1,902 | Events curated: 175
Medium
Followers:199 | Articles published: 1
Twitter
Followers: 389
Imagif
Installs: 12,040
Grateful to these people for being in my life
Family and extended family, Abhishek, Mridul, D, Shubham S. and Akshat.
Books I read
There aren’t a lot of books I read this year but the following:
- Almanack of Naval Ravikant
- Die with Zero (Currently reading)
Biggest realizations of this year:
- You suffer more in imagination than reality.
- Good sleep fixes 90% of the issues.
- Look for internal validation, not external.
- The only way to bridge the taste vs skill gap is to practice the inputs which are enhancing your taste then and there.
- You cannot go wrong with sports.
- Don’t play status games, ever.
What I consumed:
Vlogs: Saurav Joshi, Negi and Family, Flying beast, Pawan Pahadi, Himanchal wala.
One thing that I realized late is that the vlogs are not contributing to anything in my life. One of the goals for next year is to minimize the consumption of these.
Entertainment: Tanmay Bhat, Modern Family
What next?
Building products | Working on craft | Focusing on health | Working on Anxiety.
See you on the other side of 2023. Manifesting a great year ahead for you all.
Cheers.
