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What Do You Need To Figure Out For Next Year?

What do you intend to accomplish in 2017?

arathi menon column 37  what do you need to figure out

 

An old year is packing its worn and weary bags getting ready to leave forever. The new year is almost at our door, waiting impatiently to barge in with opportunities and the hope that things will be different this time.

 

Even the most pessimistic grinch can’t help feeling a little joy at the prospect of having an entire set of 365 days laid out, a brand-new clean slate where anything could happen.

 

For me, there were a lot of little bits about life I figured out this year right from the fact that pumpkin can be cooked with skin to understanding love and hate can coexist in a single point in the same time frame.

 

However, there is so much more to still figure out in this world of adulthood. I hope next year, among other things, I will understand the difference between being taken for a ride and helping out.

 

Next year will be the year I will conquer baking and figure exactly what recipe books mean when they say salt to taste or choice of seasoning.

 

Perhaps 2017, will be the moment when I finally come up with a theory on why I should believe human beings have the good sense not to destroy themselves.

 

This may be the year when I understand how to forgive myself for the things I shouldn’t have done and the things I should have.

 

It could be the time, when concepts like moderation, balance, restraint makes sense and are followed without being bored to death by them.

 

Sometimes all these things I need to figure out seems like a lofty mountain, which can never be climbed in one lifetime. To give myself a feeling that I am moving towards my version of a ‘better me’ I have a tradition of writing out what I intend to do for the year that will be. The list is divided into four parts - Personal / Professional/ Skills / Corrections.

 

While personal and professional goals are as the name suggest, skills refer to something new I intend to learn that year. Corrections are those habits I deplore in me and would like to rectify.

 

A day before I write my plans for the New Year, I grade myself on what I have accomplished in the year that has passed by. I sit with the list I wrote at the end of 2015 and I am amazed at how much some things have changed and how others are exactly the same. I still haven’t learnt French but I have gotten over a debilitating fear.

 

I give myself marks and feel pleased to see that I have scored  6/20. Last year it was 4. The problem I think is an overtly ambitious mind, which at the beginning of the year believes that everything is conquerable and no challenge is too big.

 

However, these dismal marks don’t disappoint me. The way I look at it, a 6 on twenty is better than a zero. That’s six aspects, which have been ironed out into what I want it to be.

 

You should try it. This year, when you make all those New Year resolutions, save the list and grade yourself on December 31st, 2017 (It feels so far away, doesn’t it?).

 

You may surprise yourself for this is one exam where even if you fail you pass with flying colours. For no matter what the score you will still have a brand New Year. Happy 2017!

 

arathi menon column 37  what do you need to figure out

 

‘Still Figuring It Out’ a funny, sad, questioning take on adulthood will appear every Saturday on Asianet Newsable. Arathi Menon is the author of Leaving Home With Half a Fridge, a memoir published by Pan Macmillan. She tweets at here. The views expressed here are her own.