Happy New Year 2021
Hey there,
The second chapter of the decade starts and I’m here to wish you a very Happy New Year 2021.
This 2020 was a year filled with bad news and a ton of lessons. To me that’s good in many ways, this year opened my eyes to numerous sides of what’s happening around. For starters, a year ago, I didn’t even know newsletters is something individuals do for hobby/bread-butter, but here I am. In a space that was unknown to me a year ago.
This newsletter Knowledge•Day is over 6 months old. And at the time of writing, goes out to 57 people. Including you.
This is not a regular Knowledge•Day issue, just going through the other newsletters I’ve subscribed to gave me this idea of discussing how the year was to me. This email covers exactly that.
If you’re not interested, that’s understandable, you can press back and get back to your life.
If you are stickin’ here, awesome! I’ll try to keep this short.
2020: The year that changed the comfort zone for everyone
No seriously, even the introverts who claimed to be unaffected with lockdown as this changes nothing in their lifestyle are scratching their heads after all these months.
The beginning
I was supposed to start this year unconscious, on one of the beaches of Goa (also claimed to be Las Vegas of India. Not quite.)
But what happened? Why didn’t I? Because it’s Goa! That’s the rule: Goa trip plans are never executed.
My own story is one of the many excuses that cancel up the Goa trips. In my case, I applied for two government exams that were supposed to be executed in the first weeks of Jan and Feb., And in the last days before the planned Goa trip, I started panicking about being unprepared. Also, the only friend that agreed to go along started panicking for his own reasons.
All in all, Yash celebrated new years at the Gateway of India. Not bad, but could’ve been better.
“Next time”, I said to myself. Let’s see when it comes.
The early days were just me preparing for the exams. In case you wanna know the results: Negative. I should’ve enjoyed the days instead.
Wasn’t all dry though. I managed to visit Ctrl-Alt-Delete in Mumbai, an awesome crowd-funded music festival. Mostly indie artists, but they were awesome.
Here’s a little glimpse of what it is:
Click here to watch on Instagram.
Lockdown phase
That above was February and now the Covid virus was starting to get serious. At least in China and some European countries.
A month later India had to put up lockdown as well.
For the next few months what followed up was the kitchen exploration mode. Wasn’t any different for me? I learned quite a bit of cooking while I was away from home. Thanks to my fantastic flatmates who knew cooking and helped.
So I love every bit I spent there during the lockdown.
Except for the part where I had to break up. Somewhere around in April. Was a complicated relationship for a while and it was the time I didn’t feel like continuing it.
As a part of the recovery process, I felt like I could do more/explore more. And this is when the idea of starting this newsletter struck me. And so Knowledge•Day’s first issue was sent on the 17th of May.
It started as a bi-weekly newsletter because of my enthusiasm at the starting. But eventually slowed down to variable times a month now. My bad ‘;-)
I’ve been doing terrible at marketing all this while and now it’s time I change that. To be frank, I’ve been complaining about my day job eating all my time to myself, but that’s all excuses. Because…
There are no busy people. Only people who suck at prioritization.
Source: Unknown
Anyway, back to the story…
The Homecoming
This one is gonna be short.
Lockdown eased in June and the flights started. I grabbed one home.
This is where it started getting repetitive. For starters, because I’m home now, I’ve stopped cooking or cleaning or doing dishes or anything along that line. Saves me time… I’ve now narrowed the amount things I can whine about. Not literally.
But that’s not all. Because of knowlegde•Day, I’ve explored tons of spaces. Lots of exploration around outer space/money/frivolous/health/what not; Besides that, I explored the tech space around newsletters and blogging. Wrote about the KD tech journey in issues[10], [19], and [31]; Increased my Twitter usage. Nothing to boast in there, but the community that you surround yourself with, changes your perspective in indefinite ways.
And I’m damn sure 2021 is gonna be much better. Provided something unexpected doesn’t hamper progress.
2020 was an amazing year. Definitely not in a good sense for everyone, but that’s the beauty of it. It hampered the damn Comfort zones of everyone and everything.
We humans have been too comfortable with our lives for centuries.
There it goes, leaving a mark in everyone’s heads. No single year in the 2000s has universally accepted pictures in everyone’s heads. This will be remembered.
For now, Let’s bid adieu to the bad boy. And here, I wish you a…
