It might still be too soon to call it but 2015 was a great year, far better than the fiasco 2014 was. Ups and downs and all that, but what ups they were have been. I thought I’d list them out just to be able to put a finger on all that I’ve dealt with and been dealt with.
Ups
- Launched The Wire (only Siddharth and Vignesh know my struggle at 5 am on May 11 to get the domain mapped properly)
- Wrote a lot of articles, and probably the most in a year about the kind of stuff that really interests me (history of science, cosmology, cybersec)
- Got my reading habit back (somewhat)
- Found two awesome counselors and a psychologist, absolutely wonderful people
- … who helped me get a great handle on my depression and almost completely get rid of it
- Managed to hold on to a job for more than four months for the first time since early 2014 (one of the two companies that hired me in between is now shut, so not my fault?)
- Didn’t lose any of my friends – in fact, made six really good new ones!
- Didn’t have to put up with a fourth The Hobbit movie (I’m sure Tauriel’s lines would’ve had Tolkien doing spinarooneys in his grave)
and others.
Downs
- Acquired an addiction
- Didn’t have a Tolkien story releasing on the big screen 10 days before my birthday)
- Grandpa passed away (though I don’t wish he’d stayed on for longer either – he was in a lot of pain before he died) as did an uncle
- Chennai floods totalled my Macbook Pro (and partially damaged my passport)
- Stopped sending out the Curious Bends newsletter
- My vomit-free streak ended after eight years
- Still feel an impostor
- Didn’t discover any major fantasy series to read (which sucks because Steven Erikson publishes one book only every two years)
and others.
Lots to look forward to in 2016; five things come immediately to mind:
- Move to Delhi
- Continue contributing to The Wire
- Visit a world-renowned particle accelerator lab
- Await, purchase and devour Erikson’s new book (Fall of Light, book #2 of the Kharkhanas Trilogy)
- Await new Planck and LHC data (kind of a big deal when you’re able to move away from notions of nerdiness or academic specialisation and toward the idea that the data will provide you – a human – a better idea of the cosmos that surrounds you, that is you)