2024, huh. What a year. We had the Olympics and a general election and a T20 World Cup and the attempted assassination of a U.S. President and South Korea declaring martial law - and we all just shrugged and carried on as if meh, we see this every year.
Seriously, what an insane year. More so on the personal front, for me. Ah, you wonder, typical overstatement by delusional creative type. How is she going to trump an actual attempted assassination (see what I did there, trump-Trump, no? Come on!)?
Welp, here we go. I ended my contract with the publisher of the next Avantika Pandit book because they were being a-holes. Couple of months later, I was fired from my job. For winning an award. Couple of months after that, I found a new, extremely demanding job. And a couple of months after that, my father passed away. Of oral cancer. And three months after that, my fourth book was published in the UK. And then, the Indian released was abruptly pushed to 2025. Oh, and I moved out of my home of 7 years into a new house somewhere in the middle of all this.
I know it's no assassination attempt, by hey, I think it's a LOT for one year.
I know I sound flippant, but I've had some time to come to terms with these things. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm over them, because that would indicate a level of resilience that I'm not sure I should pretend to have - you don't know what surreal forces could take that as a challenge and go oh yeah? Here, take more crap.
But the shock of losing my job and the grief over my dad have sucker-punched me and how. So much so, that I haven't done any kind of writing since September. I had started work on my next book, but after Baba passed away, I found that I just... couldn't. I stuck to my new job, which was demanding and sapping and probably saved me from overthinking myself into a health crisis (by raising my stress levels to inhuman standards, but that's a different issue). I even began and discarded multiple blog posts, because it was just seeming like an endless trauma dump and really, what have you done to deserve that, Reader?
What the hell is this post then, I hear you ask. It's... closure, I suppose. To this year and its relentless assault. A dear friend was visiting from out of town and we met yesterday. And she was talking about how the last time we met, six months ago, it seemed like everyone she met was going through hell. I'd just lost my job, another friend's mom was in a coma, a third friend was having a health emergency which called for a surgery, a fourth friend had been out of work for some six months... it was a dumpster fire for everyone.
I don't know what this year has been like for you. I pray it has been kinder. But if not, if your life too went to hell on a roller coaster in 2024, take heart. We have just 9 more days to go. There's no telling if 2025 will be a good year, an average year or even a terrible year. I mean, we thought 2016 was bad, but then 2020 came along. And we thought the three years of the pandemic were bad, but then 2024 came along and... oh my god, IS THIS A LEAP YEAR THING?!? DEAR GOD.
But that disturbing epiphany aside, I hope the new year brings you new reasons for joy. That is all we can do - hope. And live to fight another day. We live in an age of Rupi Kaur, but I find that there is such wisdom and strength to be found in the poetry of bygone eras. So I leave you as 2024 spools to its end, with 'Invictus' by William Ernest Henley:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.
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