Hey people! Wassup?
Good to be here again! I’m glad we are still doing this. You know, me sending you stuff about myself, and you reading it.
So, if you have been with this newsletter for more than 1 year, you would know that I sent an issue with a similar name last year. Here’s the link if you want to revisit it and see what I was like 1 year ago - Click here
So, what happened this year that I have to replace the winner of “Best Worst Year” and give the title to 2022? Let’s find out.
Summary of 2022
So, here’s a short list of things that happened to me and I tried in 2022:
Became obsessed with Twitter and saw huge followers and engagement growth for the first few months of the year.
Met 30 new people in January, and 15 new people in February, mostly through video calls and meets. The motive was to meet new people, make friends and network.
Exhausted all my social energy doing this ☝️, and didn’t do any new 1:1 call for the entire year after that. 🤣
Planned and executed a 10 days Goa trip and spent my whole month’s salary on that. RIP my finances.
Finally shifted Crework’s focus from Machine Learning to Web Development. Successfully conducted 3 BWU batches and 1 Beginners Cohort with almost 100 students this year.
Crework generated revenue for the first time (finally!). Although the amount was pretty tiny, but we even got ourselves a little profit too.
Switched jobs for better work life balance and to learn new things. Went from Product Analyst at Jar → Associate Product Manager at Procedure.
Shifted to Bengaluru and finally started living the “independent” life. I don’t say it much, but I kinda like it here. Life in BLR is a bubble, and I love being a part of it.
Met many online friends for the first time. BLR really helps with that.
Turned 24 this year. Now I have even less time to appear in Forbes 30 Under 30. Fuck!
Reached 5000+ followers on Twitter and stopped giving a fuck about that number after that.
Took one of the hardest decision of my life - To shut down Crework batches. Yep, they are over. Crework right now is just a community, like we were last year. What next? We don’t know.
Spent 2 months at home, while going through anxiety because of all the life and career decisions that I had to take. Came back to BLR to find my sanity back.
Deleted all my tweets, idk why I did it though. 😂 Might have been a coping mechanism, a symbolism for things ending and new starts? Hmmmmm
Surprisingly, I clicked more photos this year than I really do. Some of them were good. Some of them were really good.
Went on a trip to Pondicherry for celebrating New Year 2023 and got scammed with 5000 other people in the name of a New Year Party. 😂
Short version of the story - Registered for a party on Paradise Island Beach, but couldn’t go there as there was no boats, and no organisers. So, no way to actually go to the Island. 😂 So many of us were just standing there, not knowing what to do. Didn’t expect it the year to end like this.
Learnings from everything
Just like will power, social energy is also a scarce resource. You can talk to N number of people in a stretch, but your energy to do so will keep depleting with each person you talk to. It will take a toll on your mental health too.
There is no real categorisation of humans like introvert or extrovert. Every person just has levels of comfort with other people, which can be seen as a function of how close they are and the social energy they have.
Comfort = Social Energy + (C)^(Closeness); where C = Closeness Factor
There is no science here, in case you were taking it that way 😂. This equation is my creation based on some non-scientific hypothesis.
People either pay for what they really want, or what everyone else wants. If you want to sell something, you need to create something that people really want, not something you like. OR, If you want to sell something, create something that a lot of people think they like, so that everyone else wants it (Basically, create FOMO)
Friendships should be effortless, but there should not be lack of efforts. It means that with friends, the efforts should not feel like efforts. If you just let it be, without sometimes going out of your comfort zone for people you call friends, you might not have them. It’s true for all the relationships btw.
To be a leader, you can’t be a people pleaser. If you want to lead, you should be ready to have disagreements and have the courage to face them. Sometimes, it would be easy, but mostly it would be hard. Really hard. In some scenarios, you would need to be either right or likeable, always choose to be right.
Get out of places that make you feel suffocated. Yes, it’s very scary to think about how the change would be, but trust me, it can’t get worse than this. Time has this thing, where it heals things automatically. So, change your trajectory whenever you feel the need to do so.
You would be wrong more than you want to accept. Taking a decision to rectify a mistake is never easy. To be very honest, it doesn’t even matter. You can choose any of the two options available to you and your life would turn out to be for the better, eventually. Time has this thing, it always becomes better.
Sometimes, being self aware is the biggest blocker in your mental health journey. When you know too much about yourself, you are like a glass filled with water, with no further space to get filled. You will not be open to new learnings, thinking that you know yourself. Maybe you do, or maybe you need to unlearn a few things.
Being happy is good. Being so comfortable with things that you don’t want change? Not so much. So, seekh happiness, but not absolute comfort.
Work life balance is good, you need a good life. But you also need some achievements to celebrate, some progress to see that you are becoming a better version of yourself. For that, you need to seek growth, and sometimes work harder than you really want to.
Summary
The year went by fast. Like, really fast. Specially after I shifted to Bangalore.
It was not the way I would have wanted it. It was good, I was happy for the most part of it. Happier than I have ever been. But, it could have ended on a better note.
In the end, I just want to wish you all a very happy and beautiful New Year. May this year be THE YEAR you have always waited for. The year that changes life. The year that brings you closer to love, life and happiness. The one which makes you happy. 🤗
And here is a photo of mine at a cafe in Pondicherry, making a weird face 😛
Peace out ✌️