As I ponder about what lies ahead in the new year 2025 that has just been ushered in, I can’t help but look back regretfully at this blog which remained dormant for the last eight months.

2024 was a momentous year for me personally.

Why?

My daughter got married!!

Yes, it still feels like a dream, an action-packed, emotionally loaded and physically demanding dream that took up most of attention and energy in the last twelve months. But now I am on the other side, rejoicing at the successful completion of a mega project and wondering how to reclaim my old life back.

Things that fell by the wayside

Like any major life event that edges out the smaller unrelated bits, a lot of my everyday life got rearranged. My exercise routine, my travel plans and also my ability to focus on ordinary things like streaming shows with multiple seasons or plot lines. Having never undertaken such a big project, it seemed my creative juices were totally deployed to the task of putting together a big, fat, Indian wedding. Writing just wasn’t on top of my list.

As much as I enjoy writing this blog, it felt like too much to add the pressure of producing regular blog posts to my already pages-long to-do lists that keep growing each month as we neared the wedding date in December. So I gave myself permission to let it slide.

But there were other things that I held on to. Like reading books – mostly audiobooks, but still fiction and non-fiction books that helped me stay sane. I also wrote a monthly column for India Currents, a magazine to which I have been contribution for several years – I hated to give up on a long term commitment, plus it forced me to write at least 1000 words once a month, to keep my writing side alive.

In retrospect, it seems like our minds, like our bodies, choose which activities to prioritise – just as the body does during fight or flight response, the major organs get full support while the minor ones are expected to fend for themselves. For me, mentally, I needed to still feed my reading appetite and do there minimum with my writing, in order to get on with whatever else that needed my full attention.

Things that got tweaked

I modified my exercise routine as well – switching to a no-brainer 24 suryanamaskar practise instead of trying new sequences from various teachers on Youtube. Just felt easier to not make any more decision, given the decision fatigue that took a toll on me as the wedding day got closer.

What we do everyday matters. It helps us build stamina for the tough days that await us, sometimes with adequate warning and at other times without any notice.

This was a lesson that was reiterated to me this year. No matter now busy and chaotic the days got, I tried to find some semblance of normalcy in those activities that I take for granted on ordinary days. A walk in nature, reading (or listening to audiobooks), working on a crochet project – these were tiny but life affirming activities that helped ground me.

As I embark on a new year, I hesitate to make big plans. I feel the need to just linger in limbo, in the in between space after the completion of a big project and before starting a new one.

I guess I’m rambling now. Just glad to be back and writing my blog.

Happy New Year! And welcome, again to another year of sharing my thoughts.