We found a room to live in
As far as I can recall, there have been very few times when I couldn’t wait for a year to come an end. There hasn’t been a single prominent reason but 2016 has been such a tiring year. The sum under the curve integrated so steeply that I was exhausted in fall already. The onslaught of a very cold winter worsened the wait.
If you believe in omens, you would have probably predicted this outcome mid-June. I was returning late from an off-site management workshop in downtown Detroit where we had to have a critically pointless meeting in a very busy and loud hotel lobby bar. That was also the week when my in-laws were visiting. On the way back, as I drove back dead-tired on the empty interstate, I was informed by my wife of a mammal intruder in our house, which was trapped in our kitchen. I didn’t have the energy or the capability to deal with a possibly dead rabid bat in our kitchen. So I came home, changed and went to bed, leaving me a five hour window before I was up again to get ready for work.
That day summed up the year for me. It was a year where I worked incredibly hard. I damaged some relationships. I managed to upset the wife consistently and dealt with a host of problems that also included a dead bat.
I dealt with most of the problems that by making decisions that lead to loss of time or money or both. I wish I could claim that there were lessons learnt but each problem was so unique and so dramatic that I was learning to make new mistakes almost every time. At work or at home, it was relentless. I was answering questions when none existed and ignoring the ones that stood plainly in front of me. These incessant answering of mixed bag of questions led to a graying of hair that equaled Obama’s transformation. I averaged over 12000 steps a day for the entire year but still ended up gaining a few significant pounds that add all the roundness. I kept explaining America to my wife only to find out that I never really understood her ignorant white majority in the first place. Our travel frequency, range and variation dropped to a typical American low. We rushed to and back from vacation, relishing our memories only on the plane ride back.
It was plain evident for both of us to see that our marriage, in only its second year, transitioned from honeymoon to a full-on partnership of cooking, dishes and trash removal. We had planned for big things but we couldn’t execute them fruitfully. If it weren’t for our trip out to the North West we would only have west Michigan to show for our adventures. And that is mediocre, no matter how you see it.
And yet, in a year so bleak, we still couldn’t convince ourselves of our own sadness. Growing up as a kid in the small Indian town of Nashik, Maharashtra (422013) I never saw me paying property taxes in the American small town of Plymouth, Michigan (48170)!
Buying a house with her to call it home was an event that felt far more right than significant. It came with plenty of financial and moving pains but as we unpacked, the whole affair made a certain amount of sense. In fact, in our newly coined study with our 55’ bamboo desks alongside each other, I couldn’t feel more at peace writing this post. I am acutely aware of the fact that we have still to get rid of the nasty harsh blues and pink wall colors, construct a mammoth wardrobe in tight space confines and fix a host of other niggling issues around the house. But that is a list that 2016 has me well prepared for.
In fact, 2016 really did feel like a prep year; a year where do-overs were acceptable and missed targets was par for the course. It threw the kitchen sink at us. It was relentless. It was rough. It was cold and strange. It went quick. It was weird and average at the same time. We couldn’t celebrate properly. We didn’t know how at most times. It was mostly forgettable excepting some parts that weren’t.
With all that under the belt, I am feeling strangely optimistic about 2017. There is so much clarity on what I want to achieve next year and feel strangely ready for everything that is about to unload on my adult self. I am not expecting it to be easy. But I am not going to make it more difficult that it needs to be. It took a while but I now understand the draining power of melodrama and self-pity. It makes for great writing but really bad Monday mornings and persistent belly fat.
And that definitely wouldn’t suit my new older age. Regardless of the year that marks it.
