My Encounter with 2020.
2020. A year that will stand as a rock-timeline in many lives. Indeed, many have lost opportunities, jobs, relationships, health and lives in this duration. The fight has been quite uphill for many and some are going really strong in it, as the dreadest of the situations give birth to the strongest of the warriors, and some going pale also. Not all have it in them, but i am no one to decide upon that. Everyone be respected!
I am going to unravel my story of 2020. My journey of different milestones. Think of it as a timeline of how different things happened in different spheres of my life. I will be as truthful as I can be, by which I mean 100%.
The year started quite normal. Obviously the memes were fresh and quite good, I must say. The trump card was playing really well in the middle East, hahaha. Anyway, as the year started, I was just going with my regular schedule, go to college-do classes-chill-come back to home. I started the year with some resolutions — Improve my physical health, my skillsets and find someone (keep away guys!) in my life.
So, I took up coding as a skill to learn, learnt up a bit of a new language and started a few courses on web development. I started it out having no previous knowledge, going with the flow and learning on the go! Learnt up quite a bit of skills. And, understood the need to chisel them and milk the same for some source of money. In the parallels, the lockdown started as well, in the initial days, I was staying up until 3 in the morning on my laptop coding one thing or learning about the other. This soon took a toll on my body and I could understand me weighing like 65kgs or more. Anyway, I carried on with this routine. Wake up like 8–9 in the morning, grab some breakfast, do a thing or two in my laptop, see a film in the afternoon, then study a bit or so and continue till late night. Meanwhile, we shifted our home too, so i got a new room. Newly found privacy. So yeah good for me.
I would take up some courses on Coursera from some foreign Unis, do some hackathons as well and often would listen to audiobooks (which I still do).
One fine night, I was done with my work by like, 12 or 1, it was in the May as far as I remember. I introspected myself for what i have done for the previous of the year. And, sooner I found out, I kinda went really bad on myself. Woke up the next morning, did a workout or two, fixed my routine, this continued for a few days and this newly found admission of my fallacies faded into thin air, just like that. I was again back to my old routine.
Amidst all of this, my recommendations on YouTube were popping up pretty good too (Yes! I consume really good content). Struck upon my old companion, Ted-Ed channel and felt good about the daily dose of newer knowledge. Started watching a bit of short films too. One fine minute, I found a video telling about stoicism. I was deeply moved by it, and i continued enquiring about the same on YouTube, learnt a bit or two about what it propheses, and got inspired from figures like Marcus Aurelius. Started watching older episodes of Chanakya on YouTube , and this was a brain-opener for me.
Coming back to my routine, my physical health was going just like a snail. However, on the other sides, I failed upon some big tech intern recruitments, but got some freelancing job so quite a good cash (not much though :p ).
Eventually, lockdown opened. And, as days went by, and seeing my belly growing up to three Michelin tyres, I realised, I do need to get out and start reducing those. I was a sprinter before and was quite into football. So, started long running ( as I was quite fearful of it) , first 1km and then gradually building upto 5kms and eventually what is now at 10kms.
My new semester was going up as well and everything was totally on-line. So, you see a guy who’d crave to get out of the class during normal boring classes, soon found his escapade. Started doing other things during those hours , a few productive and a lot unproductive. Not like my initial lockdown days, where I would tend to be a lot more productive during the entirety and somewhat which did bring out a kind of burn out in me. As for the burn out, I took a few days break, disconnected from Social media and just with myself and my family. But, you gotta get back to the jungle someday!
It was entirely not bad, I used to go running in the morning or football in the evening to keep myself a bit sane from the online noise. And would often catch upon lecture videos just to keep a track on where my class was.
In the end of 2020, Oh did I tell you the memes are still going great!
Yeah, I found out a newer outlook to life. An outlook which I desperately needed but never got in time. But nonetheless, it works for me now. I will tell you one line out of it, “Set it and Forget it”. Well, not diving way too deep into edges of it, and my personal life a bit too much.
2020 has not been that bad as for me. I know, it has been really bad for some people. Really bad! And, i am aware of it.
Learnt up new things. Met new people. Got newer contacts. Got a new outlook towards life. A zeal to remain fit and without tyres on my belly. Be a helping friend to people in need. And, remain motivated towards my goals and aspirations.
( I wrote , Be kind to myself above, then backspaced it. Well, I have never been that kind to myself. May my fate be kind upon me, because I never will. )
As for me, I survived this year because of my parents obviously, my close friends (believe me, I am the luckiest to have them), and my motivation.
And as for my resolutions,
Did improve my physical health, not to mention my current weight is 58. Extended my skillsets. Well, not sure about the “find someone”, I realised, you don't find the "right-one" , you just build up the right thing with that "someone". And, I believe, I still have to do something in this regard.
