Never in the past decades have I felt time running away so fast! The older I am getting, I more I realize that time is slipping faster than ever from between my fingers. Seeing parents getting older, and siblings welcoming their own grey hair days with a mixture of emotions, I can only recall the horror on my own face when I saw my very own first grey hair strand this year! (I mercilessly plucked it out and the horrified incident stopped any more of them from popping up). This year has also been a very dynamic one, in terms of career, relationships, and decision making!
As promised myself, I have finished reading 12 books, one for each month. Reviewed 11 of them, and wrote an extra few words here and there in the name of blogging. Partly disappointed in myself for obviously not being able to write as much as I would have liked to.
A relatively big gap of fifteen months in my flying, because of covid restrictions, I was able to invest some good time in my relationships. Initially started with having more and more time for my husband, who always complained of my frequent layover flights ( I complained about them too). We spent days in pursuing our interests, mine in fiction writing and his in investments. I napped so much that I finally caught up with all the pending sleep and the jet lags I have had for years perhaps! Evenings were mostly ‘home date nights’ with beers, pizza and movie marathons. I missed putting make up on my face so much that every now and then I would just dress up for no reason and would make my husband click photos of me while I posed in my classic mediocre poses! Not once did we complain about being locked down in the lock down. Our introvert asses loved every minute of it!
Later during the following months, we both spent some time with our families. Mine in Siliguri and his in Trivandrum. It was blissful spending adulthood with parents. We have had our differences because of the obvious‘generation gap’, but we also had so many heart to heart chats, dinners together and finally after a decade or so I spent Durga puja, kali puja and Christmas with them! The rush to attain, distracted me from all these meaningful pleasures for years, and it was nice to finally take a back seat and just enjoy being with parents. Mom usually made breakfast, with dad occasionally taking over with his own specialties. Dinners used to be usually an amalgamation of my mediocre cooking in less oil and my parents’s extravagant Bengali dishes! After ten long years, the four of us including my younger sister who lives in a different state altogether, spent ten whole days together! I felt grateful.
I resumed flying during the mid 2022, and all my free time was taken away by sleep. The travel industry resumed its operations with such a bang on, that I barely had time for anything else other than flying and sleeping. I missed my bounty of free time but also understood that every single thing in life came with its own price! Staying away from loved ones to make a few bucks was one of them. As much as I am grateful for being able to grind myself into making a living and living the dream, a teeny tiny part of me still kind of secretly wishes if things could partly go back to the way they were. The free times, chats with families, lots of reading and lots of writing, allowing no inhibitions when it came to imagination and its blending in with creativity, no jet lags, no feet pain, no accumulation of underlying stress, the lack of distance, etc, etc. But here I am! Greedy human!
In a nutshell 2022 was like roller coaster ride, much like the 2020 I would say! For 2023, I have promised myself to pursue a relatively meaningful goal, where I chase the money less, and the fulfillment of creating something from scratch, more! I will still continue to fly as a flight attendant for obvious reasons (like paying the bills!). I plan specifically to read a little less than this year and ration my time into writing more. I have also started a side gig as an aviation educator, where I share my experience of being a flying attendant for almost 11 years with aviation aspirants!
For those of you who have given me the honor our of their time and followed my work in social media, a grateful thank you to every single one of you for being a cheer leader of an amateur entrepreneur.
To everyone of you who made it till this paragraph, thank you for reading this monologue with your valuable time. See you next year, bookworms!!