2021 Wrapped

🚨 Forewarning: It is a wrap of 365 days so the post will be long 😉

The mood of chaos and charisma continues from 2020 but I must say 2021 is far more significant than 2020.

You can read how my last year's wrap here. You can read my current warp 👇

A little context:
2020 was super uncertain (I guess for all of us and especially for our family).

At home we have three elderly parents (84, 75 and 69) who have a ton of comorbidities like diabetes, hypertension, COPD, lung cancer - stage 4, sciatica along with aches n pains of an old age. Our entire effort in 2020 was all about handling fears, uncertainties, protecting our families, figuring out how to handle work, handling kids and their emotional roller-coasters, taking care of our fears, washing, cooking, dyson-ing a large home of 7 people and a lovely garden. Phew! That was tiring.

In all this I ran two intensive diplomas (digital product design and product management) for almost 10 months. My sleep was screwed (2-3 hours everyday). My nutrition went for a toss. Some days we lived on Maggi as we were scared to go out to buy vegetables and fruits.

We santized our home every day. Every grill was cleaned with sanitizer as we were not ready to let go of our parents in 2020. Our only motto for 2020 to our parents is "you can't die in 2020 in a hospital where we can't even see you".

Now in Dec 2021 I am happy to let you all know that, nothing happened to them. Thank god 🙏

In all this my team was going bonkers and my dear collegues were having issues i didn't even understand. Depression and anxiety was eating us alive and it wasn't a cough or cold to handle with some Tylenol. Damn! It was hard. Sane people going insane is hard on you. Somehow 2020 got over and we thanked all the three million Indian gods and goddesses.

2020 was all about handling environment and others. In this craziness, we forgot to take care of us (myself and my husband). I was so freaking tired and so was he.

Despite putting up a strong face, it was evident that we both needed some help and healing. We ended up in therapies. We both started wondering what the f**k are we doing to our lives? It felt like a tsunami wiped us out. So, we dedicated 2021 to take care of ourselves and decided to do everything self-care.

I stopped experimenting with my body finally (oh! you must read about all my weight loss experiments for the past 5 years and see all the crazy things I have done). By 2021, I reached the worst shape of my life. Thanks to the pandemic, it felt like a panda-mic for me (I became like one). Nothing was left to experiment with.

I ended up with a binge eating disorder. I touched 100.9 kgs overall. I have never seen a three digit number in my entire life 🙈 At one corner of my heart I was excited because this is the experiment I want to do for a long time. This time it was real and not just data. My hormone profile showed how haywire everything was.

It took me almost half of 2021 to even realise the effects of 2020.

I was forced to focus on myself though i didn't have any energy to do so. I didn't have a choice but to give a damn to many things. The fatigue was real. I realised my body is not a toy or a guage anymore. I stopped all my silly experiments (like #loseinpublic). I felt like I didn't have enough empathy for myself.

This is how half of 2021 slipped away. Post July I took up 💯 responsibility and made some amazing changes to my life.

Here are 21 balsy things I did in 2021 to have a ball with the year 😉

1. I said no to all forms of self-abuse (beating myself up, overthinking, over-working, over-commiting, over-earning and I bowled over all things "over").
2. I listened to me more than ever. If I didn't feel like working I didn't work. If I felt like binge watching I did. If I felt like not moving I didn't. If I felt like junking I did. If I felt like reading and writing endlessly I did. Post this experience of just listening to my self, I realised all I wanted was to get my attention to me. The things (series, food, books etc) were just a carrot to get my attention. Once I had my attention I wasn't so much into junking or binging or sleeping or whatever. Fascinating!
3. I gave my 💯 trust to my team. I genuinely allowed them to make it or break it.
4. I didn't wink an eye to sell couple of properties and keep things moving without worrying about wealth deterioration. I also didn't wink an eye to not worry about creating wealth while I was healing. Damn! That was huge.
5. I took a 24 days break from work. It felt nice to be less busy. It felt nice to get things done that was pushed for a long time (that was selling a home and dealing with govt offices 🤷‍♀️). I love being with people. I also try to be formal in the name of not bugging them. This time I just stayed with friends like a family member. I stopped overthinking hotels and formalities. That was hell a lot of fun. I am glad I had these lovely people around me while my head was spinning 🤯 with bribery and corruption in government offices.
6. Hey! I had 420 beeda for the first time in my life. Oh man! that was disgusting. All night I was attached to a sink in the washroom. Despite all that it was fun. I finished my life's quotas of icecreams, beeda, parotta, margarita (drink & pizza) and briyani.
7. I read a lot this year. Must be atleast 100+ books. That was so much fun. I decided to take a reading-writing holiday every year. My mind was excited and buzzing. It felt nice.
8. I wrote a lot this year. The blog you are reading was made in 2021 and I guess this is the best thing I ever did. I have written almost every day for 200+ days.
9. Got the M1 Macbook Pro this year because all my machines broke. I was not so ready to invest so much but I must tell you, it is the best I did. More than a new powerful machine, it gave me an opportunity to start over.
10. I experimented a lot. I tried everything. YouTube videos, Xperian Blog, Heart Talks, Newsletters, Poetry, Posters, Visual thinking and more. It was fun to experiement and throw away the experiement when it didn't make sense to me.
11. We redesigned DPDI 2021. Typically, I am very critical of my work and I love that part about me. This time I loved what was created as DPDI. The Radical way of learning was mind-blowing. It is simple, effective and bloddy efficient.
12. We launched Maker's Guild in 2021. I rocked it till DPDI. Post that I realised I should have handed it over to someone to run it. It was a mistake to not plan every bit.
13. As the educator in me is slowly settling, I went to back to industry problem solving (consulting). Gosh! I love it ❤️
14. I stopped listening to everyone else outside me and started listening to me and be myself this year. I realised how much bullshit is fed into us.
15. I paid attention to my well-being for once. I work with one of the most brillinat minds in biochemistry to understand the body chemistry. We are re-engineering the microbiome now and I can see how my wellbeing is transformed. My husband is on the way to reverse his 6 years old diabetes. He dropped 3/4 medications already. I am losing 3% of weight every month and this is by far the most exciting journey of health for both of us.
16. We revived our relationship. I do not know how many couple have the priviledge to do what we did. Every marriage goes through stages and phases which enables us to evolve as beings. Starts steamy and settles as a lifetime companionship. I must say this is the most amazing part of a relationship. I can't believe two strong (and highly opinionated) individuals could discover the beauty of compassion and togetherness.
17. I stepped down as a CEO at Xperian. I see it as a great sign because we are able to walk the talk of decentralized teams. We are going project by project and take micro-ownership of every project we take up. We created this model at Xperian from scratch to align with the desires of a freedom freaks like us.
18. I started dipping my feet into the world of investments and markets this year consciously. Blown away by the underlying patterns that dictate a market. Indicators like price, volume, momentum etc makes me see the world of business so differently.
19. A lot of my 1BS decisions came true this year. From health, wealth, workplace, work style, relationships all the way to living the path of ultimate everyday.
20. We built our long term studio from scratch the way we wanted. It has all the facilities we ever craved for. Now we can eliminate work place and living places based thoughts from our heads for this lifetime.
21. Above everything else, I am starting to give shape and form to both my passions: Life Design and Learning. I can't wait to kickstart 2022 🥳

I slept a lot. I ate a lot. I wrote a lot. I experimented a lot. I placed a lot of bets. I learned a lot. I discarded a lot. I binged a lot. I faced reality a lot and I spoke a lot of truth. Thank you 2021 🔥

That is a piece dedicated to 2021 ❤️

On a hindsight, 2021 was a year of caring about self-care for me. One of those 1BS decisions slowly becoming true. This self-care stuff takes a lot of time, energy and effort folks! Don't take it lightly.

🥂 to next chapter!