What happened in 2021

Its 2022 already. A year gone by in the blink of an eye. This is what stood out to me from last year.

Reading

My reading fell this year because I had my hands full with a new project – building an Art curriculum. 14 hour work days left me with little reading time. I also switched entirely to reading fiction, welcome bookends to days packed with facts and figures. In all I read 57 books last year – all fantasy fiction. Michael Sullivan, David Gemmel and Joe Abercrombie stand out in my memories.

Drawing

I barely drew last year, which is ironic considering I spent all my time working on art pedagogy. Most of my drawings were of co-workers, drawn during meetings. At other times, I drew quick scribbles to communicate a certain artistic direction. Besides these paltry attempts, I barely drew last year – something I hope to correct in 2022.

Technology

After years of clueless wondering at insider jokes, I finally joined the Emacs club, and I must say – it is as advertised. A 40 year old editor has taken over my personal computing needs in ways I could not imagine. I use emacs for file management, email, document-Creation, task management, and a myriad of other little things. This deserves a post all its own, so I’ll leave this here for now.

Daily Bread

So, I got a job. I joined BYJUs to help build a new category for teaching the Visual Arts. After close to 20 years of working independently, with small teams, working in a large organization was both physically and emotionally challenging. In terms of entrepreneurial learning alone, I feel like the experience has left me vastly more enriched than if I had gone down the other routes that were available to me back then.

Writing

The one thing I missed the most in 2021 was writing. My writing mostly consisted of business, marketing or technical documentation, and the occasionally long form article which may never see the light of day. To scratch the itch, I wrote silly limericks about work and a couple of design-fiction pieces for our curriculum – but that was basically that.

So 2022, how ’bout you?

I’m not the type to set yearly resolutions and goals. I vastly prefer dealing with life’s twists and turns as they appear. Having said that, I’d like to spend 2022 doing something I’ve never done before. A complete refactor of my daily life as it were, if such a thing were possible.