New Year Resolutions

I have a few New Year resolutions to make. I make them every year I guess, but don’t remember them beyond February. I have a feeling posting them here will make me probably a bit more conscious; at least I can look them up next year and decide how I fared! :)

1. I want to be a nicer person. Extra stress on the “-er” because I feel I am already quite nice. People are always telling me so too, so that adds to my confidence. But coming to the point, I would like to work on a few of things:

· Cultivate what they call in Hindi ‘thaerav’—I think it may be loosely translated to “inner calmness” or “being at peace with oneself”. I tend to be very passionate about things close to my heart, which is a good thing, but I think I need to balance the passion with a little bit of calmness, little bit of patience, little mix of tolerance. There is so much of bad stuff going on around you, and it makes your blood boil, but is shooting everyone the answer? I think I need to school myself to control my passions, mainly anger, to deal with situations in a manner that would do more credit to my dignity.

· Be less sensitive about myself and more sensitive to others—I guess the former is something I have harped on enough already but I just seem to be made that way. I tend to over dramatise people’s words in my mind and jump to the worst possible conclusion. On the other hand, I can be pretty blunt and caustic and sarcastic when it comes to expressing my views on something that I don’t approve of. I want to take things less personally when they are directed at me—as they say, if you know what you are, others’ opinions don’t matter—and want to become more sensitive to others—because one should do to others what one wants to be done to oneself.

· Be slow to criticise—I have a knack for critical thinking. While it holds me in good stead in every sphere of life, I would like to make less use of it where people are concerned. Because people are not perfect and are not meant to be. Even if I have to be critical—I always feel its better to know one’s faults and act on them rather than be blind and keep falling—I’d like to do it more sensitively.

· Be less demanding—I have a hankering for perfection which is not a bad thing in itself, but can certainly drive me and other people up the wall. I wouldn’t want to be someone with lesser standards, but I would like to try and go a little easy if the standards do not always meet with perfection :)

· Be less proud—Pride is good when it does not border on conceit and when it does not mean looking down on others. It is easy to get blinded or so carried away with pride that you don’t realise when you have crossed into the not-so-nice territory. I’d like to temper my pride with a little humility and modesty which I always thought I did, but of late I feel I need to keep checking.

2. I read somewhere that just because people don’t love you the way you’d like them to doesn’t mean that they don’t love you with all they have. I would like to, instead of feeling hurt or sad about it, acknowledge and love those who love me and are dear to me, even if they aren’t always there when I need them or don’t always express their feelings in a way that would make me most happy.

3. I would like to get more savvy with cooking. I tried a few recipes during Christmas and some of them came out fine. I just felt I needed a little more practice. I am thinking of starting a new routine like cooking a meal every weekend or maybe a weekday or something like that.

4. I have been absolutely chalta hai about my diet and exercise for the past few months. Firstly, because it is slightly cold nowadays and I can’t get myself to the gym in the mornings. Next because there is a lot of the sweet stuff around what with Swiss chocos and Christmas goodies. I don’t think I’ll be able to manage the gym till the temperatures are a little more normal, but I would like to start right from tomorrow with a diet. Soup and veg salad for lunch. Good for a start.

5. Professionally, I would like to become more ‘live wire’—more challenge-oriented, more solution-oriented, more active in making the change we want to see happen, more positive and self-directed—in short, more deserving of all the credit and good faith that is placed in me by my peers, and my very sweet boss who is just like the land of ‘mishti doi’ where he comes from!

6. When I look at some of the greatest names in the world, I ask myself what is it that must have motivated them to do what they did, to give what they did, to push themselves as they did…? I don’t have an answer but at times I feel this overpowering desire to find a meaning to my existence that is beyond the wake up-eat-work-sleep cycle of daily living. It is a matter for a separate blog as to what can give “meaning to one’s existence”. I don’t have a clear answer but I feel that doing something that touches a lot of lives in any way possible could be called that, doing something that leaves a mark behind you even after you’re gone could be called that… I would like to give some serious thought to the ‘meaning of my existence’ this year and come up with some answers.

I seem to have made enough resolutions to last five years and not just one! One last that is slightly quirky:

7. I plan to put titles to my blog posts from now on. I used to place titles when I started out but I think my distaste for thinking of titles got the better of me at some point and it must have also struck me that I was not answerable to anyone on my own blog! Now, for some reason, I am feeling like titling my posts: I am not any fonder of titles than I was so guess it’s just a whim …or maybe a way to command discipline from myself! (I hope I am not getting too affected by those psychology books I read.)

On a different note, there’s some more news related to my blog layout. I have been using the comments feature from YACCS these seven years. When I started the blog, there was no commenting facility at Blogger and YACCS was the easiest solution. I think most people must have switched to the Blogger comments when it started offering the same, but me being me, didn’t see a reason for change. Now, YACCS is discontinuing the service and I have no choice but to switch. I have managed to get a downloadable of all the comments on the blog from 2001 onwards (thanks to the YACCS administrator!) so I don’t feel that bad about it; unfortunately, porting those comments to blogger seems to be nothing less than a trick up a tech magician’s sleeve (neither YACCS nor blogger offer an easy alternative).

I have enabled the Blogger comments feature – new beginnings for the New Year! :) (P.S: I thought I would click a button and enable it but there's some issue; the Blogger comments link doesn't appear. I also tried removing the YACCS link. If anyone has any ideas on what may be going wrong, please email me!)

Update: Problem solved, thanks to my good friend Shyam, who goes by the sobriquet Codelust and with good reason! :)