No Time To Write

Entrepreneurship took a full hold of me this year; from a solo-operator with limited offerings, we have now grown in size (12 people), expanded our services (3 distinct verticals) and set-up entities in multiple geographies (3 countries). While the journey and experiences are rewarding and immensely gratifying, the flip-side of keeping-up with this growth is the limited time I get to focus on my hobbies. Especially blogging, for it needs proper time and space to articulate properly, and they are two commodities very scarce in my life right now! Dare I promise myself to spend more time blogging next year at least ?

One thing I do not mind (in fact, enjoy a lot) is the constant travel. Though I did reach a point of saturation and got fed-up living out of suitcase during one very long stint in September, mostly it was great to go around, meet varied people and see the world recover from the pandemic. It was good to have multiple destinations and multiple interrelated purposes, and a chance to meet some old friends and make a lot new ones. 

2022 - a year spent living out of suitcase

Two key takeaways from this year: opportunities and people.

The world is full of opportunities with a lot of potential that one could tap and grow it into something. The most important hurdle stopping us today is not the lack of resources or information, but not knowing where to spend our time and energy. More often, this lack of clarity ends up eating away into our productive effort and wears us down, till we're left with little to no energy to explore those avenues that might be fruitful.  

One skill I've learnt (and practicing) this year is to say 'No' after prudent thinking. Choosing to focus only on what is immediate and sorting out priorities means letting go of some opportunities; sometimes planning them for a distant future and sometimes just wishfully think that the opportunity would come back someday. I've found it to be one of the hardest things to do. But then, like everything else, practice makes it easier with every passing day! :) 

"Asgard is not a place, it's the people." is a famous line from the third Thor movie (ah, the good times of MCU, sigh). In our lives too, the people we surround ourselves with play a vital part on who we end up being and what we amount to. Our interactions with others on a daily basis greatly shape our personality. Be it professional or personal life, spending quality time with someone is the only way to create a longstanding bond and cement the relationship. Given how limited time can be, it once again comes down to prioritizing and some hard planning. 

I started watching The Orville recently, and found this one particular scene very moving. This is the premise: the Prime Minister of a planet society has to stay with some of her people and sacrifice themselves, to give a fighting chance to her husband and some others to survive, and escape to a different planet. This is their final goodbye:

It is truly one of the most heartbreaking and beautiful on-screen goodbye scenes. It got me thinking about whether we properly cherish the good people in our lives, and the associated memories that helped us go through hard times, or gave the much needed companionship to celebrate good times. While it is too easy to lose touch with people in the everyday hustle-bustle (overloaded with distractions), sometimes a little reaching out for a real human connection goes a long way. It might surprise you to find the kind of impact you've had on someone's life. :)