This post is first in the grateful series. Growth’18 is a reflective journey of my growth this year. I hope you have something to take back from my reflections.
This year had begun with uncertainty. Should I continue to do the shitty job? Or use the money saved to study further? All pros and cons thought through after which I finally enrolled in a course to study.
This kind of uncertainty is still there. Now that I am doing my masters, it keeps coming back to me that was it the right call? Is all this really going to work out? But, over the course of this year, I have calmed down. Learned to deal with such anxiety better.
Every time I am uncertain about something now, I sit down, clear my head about it completely. I jot down the pros and cons and every other layer in the middle. It doesn’t curb the anxiety of the future much but gives the confidence to deal with it better.
Middle of the year, I saw the moon reflect on the ice at the Rohtang Pass on my way back from Spiti Valley. I sang my heart out to it. All possible romantic songs I knew to express the beauty of that moment. It was mesmerizing.
I was short of words to express that feeling I was blessed with. The big pink ball grew white and reflected on the ice expressing love to me and I could only sit back and admire. I had to do something more, so I made a promise.
I promised to express more. I promised that when I am back home, I’ll meet people, tell the ones I care. I couldn’t express in words the joy of the moment, but I can surely go back and tell people how important they are to me.
I am a blabber kind, I’ll speak all kind of crap and have fun with you, but I’ll hardly speak or share. I came back and tried to express the joy of the moment again and when I couldn’t, I went back to any one of my dear ones and expressed what I felt for them.
I wrote about my entire journeys with them, accepted my flaws, and appreciated their patience. This helped me to accept myself better. And appreciate the presence of the dear ones in my life. It was a promise worth keeping.
This promise helped me get back a few people I had lost in my life. It helped me appreciate the presence of the ones I have and more importantly I learned to express. I realized that telling someone what I feel is worth the smile I see.
I still have a long way to go when it comes to expressing, meeting people, being there on group meets and talking to all in the group. I know I have distanced myself, for reasons unknown to me, but I am on this now. I’ll put more efforts in this hopefully.
One important promise to self at the end of last year was to let go and travel more. There were a lot of ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ that had made me miss out on many rainy and other travel opportunities. It sucked to have missed out on so much.
I have had the company of my cousin Sanish in every trek I have had. I discovered my love for travel, my need for it, how it heals me and everything that travel has ever given me because of him in many ways. I owe it to him.
This year, twice, I trekked without him. He couldn’t make it for unavoidable reasons. I had the time, I could go, I didn’t know if I should go without him. He said I should, I can and I did. Both the treks without him were different.
Every time I felt too happy, it occurred to me fuck, he missed it. It sucked for a second and then I would pray in the next few to the mountains, please show him a better picture when he can make it here.
Both the treks were full of this one cycle, crazy madness, one low moment followed by a little prayer to the mountains and back to the madness. I could never imagine being on a trek without his company, but now I have made peace with the crazy cycle.
There are a few more people apart from Sanish, their absence also gets me trapped in this weird emotional cycle. I know I have grown internally this year as I can make peace with my crazy cycle and come what may just let go and travel.
It might sound stupid but I have a confession to make. I have been the victim of the social media shit too. Watching the amaze sorted lives of the world has made me feel shit too. Yes, this year I was about to even shut down my blog for a minute!
I gave the stupid warning! But that’s how crazy social media has grown this year. I have seen people work, travel, write and do what not. The crap I saw on the internet made me question am I beautiful? Am I really a writer? Do I travel enough? What the hell is my life!
The minute I realized this is the day I was awake around 2am about to shut my blog completely because of one silly comment I received. I went back to my first post from where I began my journey and that post was a slap on my face.
‘Comparisons’ is the post where I have told myself to not compare, to be true to what I feel and keep doing what I know is right. I read it and felt how badly I had taken one critical feedback. That I need to be more open to criticism and not care what is out there.
I told myself that not all on the internet is true. No one is showing their struggles, their bad times. It is all about flaunting the amaze. And why not? I mean I hate to spread a low vibe, why should anyone waste time and energy on social media to express crap?
I don’t know if this is true, but now this is what I believe in. I believe that social media is a place to flaunt the good and hide the scars. This can perhaps be all false. But believing this has helped me survive the ‘I am crap’ attack I got.
I have carefully liked and followed pages that make me feel good. I see stories only of people I know who share the scars too. I haven’t un-followed but just made sure to not see the stories and updates of people who make me feel toxic.
I told myself that – this doesn’t mean you hate them or it would change the bond shared. But, this is important to keep you sane, to keep you away from the social media monster that could have ended what you love doing the most!
This major change in the way I use social media has made my take on life more positive. I haven’t grown enough to have the courage to see people do extremely well. But, I have grown enough to not be bothered by anyone’s life and focus on my own.
Grateful for People’18 and Travel’18 is next in the series.
@nisha_navgire on Insta to discuss any idea further.