Tag: happy new year

Happy New Year 2023

Trajectory 2022
Happy New Year 2023

This blog post’s introduction has been one of the toughest ones I had to write. Over the past 7 days, I think I rewrote it at least 20 times to not make it sound very sad. Finally, I chose to go with this one. Simply put, 2022 has been tough, but I think I made it through just fine.

Having witnessed many lows in 2022, I can’t help but wonder how it would’ve been if things were even worse. I am a firm believer in never giving up. I believe things can and will get worse if you give up or blame your fate instead of working on improving things that are in your control.

Nobody wishes for such a year. You make New Year’s resolutions hoping to better yourself or improve something around you or at the very least, to not make your situation worse. I made resolutions that fit one or more of these categories. What I really experienced was something else. I did end up being resilient. I learned a lot and am grateful to all the individuals that have been there for me during my tough times.

Hence, I’m grateful for the year it was.

Rewind

I don’t have a monthly breakdown of what I did in 2022, like the ones from my previous Happy New Year blog posts, but I have a few stats that I wanted to share on my blog.

Health

I did put on a lot of weight this year and I aim to lose of all of the bulk in a slow, steady, and sustainable way. But, that’s for later. I did try something new this year, Tennis. I enjoy playing tennis.

Travel

I did some light traveling this year. In August, I traveled to Seattle, WA and a few places in Montana. I loved Montana. In October, I went leaf peeping in New Hampshire.

Side projects

I am in the middle of a project at the moment that I’m really excited to share with everyone in Q2 of 2023.

Closing Notes

I read a quote a few days ago that stuck in my mind ever since –

People who say it can’t be done should not interrupt those who are doing it

I always want to be the person doing it and this new year, I don’t plan on changing that. Here’s to hope, faith, optimism, and hard work — Cheers! 🍻

Have a fantastic new year! Happy New Year 2023!

Happy New Year 2022

Happy New Year 2022

Happy New Year 2022, everyone!

2021 had a lot of ups and downs for me. The first six months of the year were great. I was killing it in terms of my resolutions and suddenly, everything went south. Everything I started came to a halt. I tried my best again to restart my efforts ever since and so far, it has been okay-ish. I talked briefly about it here. I plan on fixing it. Here’s an overview of my 2021 –

Overview

Health

2021 has been a polarizing year in terms of health and fitness for me. I have been the fittest and also had to deal with health issues. In terms of fitness, I set many PRs in 2021.

Workout data ever since I started tracking it with my Watch

I was at the peak of fitness before I fell sick and had to slow down and eventually end up stopping. The good thing that came out of it is that I know when I need to slow down and what needs to be improved in my training.

Side Projects

2021 was a bit different for me in terms of side projects. I started a few and barely found time to finish them. I finished some, but most of them haven’t had any code commits in a while. I got busy with office work and so I had to delay working on them. I should manage my time better in 2022 and finish working on these projects. I’m very excited and looking forward to publish them.

Travel

I consider myself very lucky to have been able to travel a little in 2021. I traveled to Virginia in July to meet my friends from Master’s. It was a fun trip and was very happy to see my friends. I even got a chance to go on a vacation to Hawaii in December. It was a wonderful experience. I visited the Big Island and stayed at the Waikoloa Village. Learned a lot about Hawaiian culture, history, and how to pronounce the word Ukulele.

Waikoloa Village, Big Island, Hawaii

Hiking

In April, my sister’s family came to visit us and we did the Round Top, Volcanic and Skyline Trail Loop.

In May, for my birthday, my wife and I went on a 14.2 mile hike at the Coastal Trail, Palomarin Beach. It hike was tough but we both enjoyed it. It was beautiful.

Coastal Trail, Palomarin Beach

For the July 4th long weekend, we drove to Redding to visit Lassen Volcanic National Park. The hike had amazing views.

Learning

I ventured into new areas of computer science and it turned out to be very interesting. I’ve read a lot of white papers, which I plan on writing about in the future. I have a few drafts around some of the interesting ones that I’ve read. I am planning on sharing my findings and thoughts around those soon.

I also spent time learning Swift and Swift UI while learning iOS development. The projects I mentioned earlier are written in Swift UI for iOS. One of the biggest advantages of Swift UI is that it removes a lot of the boilerplate code that you typically end up writing for common patterns while building UIs for iOS.

New practices

In 2021, I started practicing a few new thing such as mindfulness, daily journaling, etc. These have proved to be very powerful. They’ve had a significant impact on the way I think and behave in general. I feel grateful, thanks to these practices.

I will have a separate post talking about mindfulness and how it has had a positive impact on me.

Resolutions

In 2021, I couldn’t stick with all of my resolutions. I had to abandon a few, but I’m not disappointed by it. I’m happy with the outcome of the effort I put in.

In 2022, I think I might take it easy on my resolutions for a bit. I will wait a little before coming up with new resolutions.

And with that, here’s to a much better year ahead – 2022! Cheers!

Happy New Year 2021

2021

Last year, when I wrote the “Happy New Year 2020” post, COVID-19 had just begun its course. Very few people in the world were aware of the full glory of the havoc it was about to wreck on the world. Looking back at that post, I just smile at how oblivious I was to what was brewing in December 2019.

2020 was brutal. My heart goes out to all families that have lost family members due to COVID-19, directly or indirectly. There have been a lot of cases where people couldn’t even stay with their families to say final goodbyes to their loved ones. Just thinking about all of it, saddens me.

In 2020, I’ve learned a lot about many things in life such as passion, being grateful, the kind of person I am, etc. On March 11th, when WHO declared the COVID-19 outbreak as a global pandemic, most companies let their employees Work From Home (WFH). Very soon, I got frustrated being cooped up in the house all day.

One afternoon, around mid-May, I received a marketing phone call from my bank. The bank employee asked me how I was doing, to which, I answered – “Not so great”. I said so because I was just frustrated staying home all day. He asked me if I was sick. I said, “No”. He then asked me if I had lost my job. I said, “No”. That was it. Those two questions just changed my perspective of the whole situation. I realized how grateful I was.

2020 in review

  • January: Most of January, I was in India with my Dad. I had a great time in Hyderabad and I am grateful for the trip. Celebrated Sankranthi at home. Also, started growing my hair long
  • February: Watched Super Bowl with friends. Had a lovely Valentine’s day dinner with my wife. Attended Vir Das’s stand up with friends, in San Francisco
  • March: Started WFH
  • April: Washed my hands so much that my skin started peeling off. Learned to make Hakka Noodles
  • May, June: Sindhu made me a homemade cake for my birthday. It was awesome. Played a lot of board games. Sindhu even wrote a post about it here
  • July: Visited my cute little nieces. Decided to improve my health and stay fit. Started running and functional training
  • August, September, October: Comparing the health data from my previous years, these were the months that I had exercised the most. Also, experienced the worst wildfire impact in California. The orange pic below is an actual photo I took with no filter
  • November: Went hiking at Lands End. Moved to a new apartment. Celebrated Diwali
  • December: My sister and her family came to visit and I had a lovely time with my nieces. Celebrated my 5th wedding anniversary

Resolutions

Last year, I didn’t really have any resolutions. However, this year, I’m working on a few resolutions that I will share over the coming few months.

Hope

Everyone is hopeful that the world will be back to normal with the vaccines being out. From what I have read, it looks like the world might return to normalcy by summer. Hopefully, that’s the case.

To all the essential and healthcare workers – Thank you!!

Here’s to a new year filled with hope, good health, happiness, and positivity! Cheers! 🎉

Happy New Year 2020

Happy New Year 2020

Happy New Year 2020! 🎉

Holy cow! 2019 went by real quick. The theme I chose to go with for 2019 was Consistency. Whatever I did, I just wanted to do it consistently. Leading a disciplined life has always been something that I strived for, but, I never really put in my effort in the right direction. To lead a disciplined life, consistency is the key. Humility also adds a lot of weight to it.

The way I arrived at this decision was completely unexpected and accidental. In January 2019, I decided to come up with a resolution for the rest of the year. In order to do this, I made a big list of things I wanted to do. Then, I prioritized the list of things to figure out which one meant the most to me. I jotted down all the pros and cons of picking up a particular resolution from the list. I put in a lot of thought into this, since, picking up a resolution meant that I had to follow it through for the rest of the year. After a point, all the things I prioritized bubbled up the fact that I needed to be more disciplined about whatever I did.

I mean, by definition, a New Year’s Resolution means

A firm decision made on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day to do or refrain from doing something over the course of the coming year

Thus, I ended up discarding all my specific resolutions and sticking with a high-level resolution of being disciplined.

After carefully assessing my year, I feel like I did a decent job at maintaining consistency. I could’ve done better, but, I’m getting there. I’ve at least got the basics down. So, I can use this experience and knowledge to get better in 2020.

Highlights of 2019

→ Started at Adobe.

→ Went on a 3 day 32 mile backpacking hike/camping trip to Havasupai. Hiked to Havasu falls, Mooney falls & Beaver falls. It was an amazing experience. Highly recommend the hike.

Havasu Hike
Me, after finishing the Havasu Hike

→ Built a few fun open source projects.

→ Achieved my personal best at writing the most number of blog posts in a calendar year.

→ Built a sustenance plan in order to stay fit.

That’s about it. Hope you all have a Wonderful and Happy New Year/Decade.

Happy New Year 2019

Happy New Year! 🎉

2018 has been a great year for me. Both, professionally and personally. I’ve managed to be very productive in 2018 and it has been a very humbling experience.

2017 was a particularly tough year for me. I was really sad, went through a lot and I wanted to pull myself back together. It was a tough phase of my life. I realized that and I wanted to get a hold of myself. I knew that I needed a ton of discipline in order to do that.

I wanted to set some resolutions for myself. Unlike previous years, this time I was serious. I wanted to make sure I stuck to them and so, I came up with a few challenges for myself for 2018. Some are personal to me and I can’t share them. However, the others that I can share publicly are below.

Blogging ✍️

I tend to procrastinate a lot when it comes to blogging. I, typically, start of a blog by gathering my thoughts and then organizing them into something that makes sense. This process of organizing is not really complicated. But I make it complicated. I keep trying to achieve perfection around tiny details and I never really end up finish my posts. So, in 2018, I wanted to stop doing that and write 12 blog posts.

I’ve successfully managed to write 9. I don’t see it as me failing to write the remaining 3 posts. Instead, I’m happy knowing the fact that I came up with a framework to stop procrastinating and writing more posts. It is now, a much more streamlined process, allowing me to just focus on the content of the post.

Travel 📍

I travelled a decent amount in 2018. I visited the following places:

  • Virginia
  • Las Vegas
  • Salt Lake City
  • Antelope Canyon
  • Denver
  • Los Angeles
  • Newark
  • New York City
  • Boston

Weight Loss 🏋️‍♂️

After almost a decade of being overweight, I finally chose to prioritize my health. I’ve always had trouble staying disciplined and being consistent with my diet and exercise. I wanted to change that.

I put in a lot of effort and successfully lost weight. I’ve lost 20+ lbs. I’m no longer overweight. My clothes are all now a size smaller. Even though I’ve lost a decent amount of weight, what gives me more happiness is knowing that I’m capable of staying disciplined.

Learning ✨

I learned to swim. I suck at it, but, it counts for something. Also, I learned a new programming language, Go.

Books 📚

I didn’t read many books last year. Here’s my Goodreads for 2018.

Good luck 🍀

I haven’t come up with any resolutions for 2019, yet. I’ll probably post about them if I come up with any.

With that being said, I hope you all have a fantastic 2019. All the best with your resolutions and I wish you all a wonderful and prosperous New Year. Cheers! 🍻

Happy New Year 2017

""

Last year, I, royally screwed up the timing of my year in review post by posting it in July.

I know, July is not really the best time to wish someone a Happy New Year, but, unfortunately, that was when I snapped out of my laziness to write a blog post. I didn’t want to miss my year in review blog and so I did it anyway…in July.

This year, I don’t want to be lazy and so, here it is, on the 2nd of January (I had friends come over on the 1st and so, I couldn’t find time to blog).

I had a fun 2016. It basically included traveling, adventures, reading, a lot of video gaming and tiny traces of fitness.

Here are the highlights —

January

  • Visited Birla Mandir in Hyderabad
  • Returned back to the United States from my India trip
  • Moved out of Fremont, CA

February

  • Visited Monterey Bay Aquarium
  • Took part in the Canvas & Cabernet event and ended up painting
  • Visited Safari West in Santa Rosa

March

  • Started reading a couple of books

April

  • Went hiking at Half Moon Bay
  • Went hiking at Purisima Creek
  • Visited my Sister and Brother-in-law in Los Angeles

May

  • Ran my first ever non-stop 5k. It was on a treadmill though. I ended up running 42 miles in 2016, 16 of which were in May.
  • Went hiking at Sequoia National Park
  • Visited Grizzly falls and Three Rivers (CA)

June

  • Went hiking at Mt. Diablo

July

  • Flew down to Seattle for my friends’ bachelor party (1 party for 2 guys)

August

  • Almost all of my friends here have their birthdays in July and August (incl. my wife) and so I ended up being busy organizing/attending these “surprise” parties

September

  • Became a member of Top Golf
  • Went Indoor Sky Diving. It was fun

October

  • Celebrated Diwali
  • Successfully completed my first year at my current company

November

  • Went on a road trip to Las Vegas and made a profit playing Black Jack

December

  • Visited my Sister and Brother-in-law during my flight’s layover in Los Angeles
  • Celebrated my 1st Wedding Anniversary by visiting Costa Rica. It was a fantastic & adventurous trip. Our activities included Canyoneering, Zip lining, Hiking the majestic Arenal Volcano in the rainforest and hiking around the hanging bridges
  • My buddy, Sravan, visited CA and we ended up driving down to Mt. Diablo and Napa valley
  • Had a nice NYE in San Francisco. Watched the fireworks

A few years ago, I gave up on the concept of New Year’s Resolutions, since, I never ended up keeping them. This has always been the case with me and now I want to change that. I want to challenge myself. I want to become a better version of me. I have a couple of ideas that would help me achieve my goals. I will share them soon in a separate blog post.

And with that, I’ll wrap up my post.

I wish you all a fun-filled, wonderful & prosperous New Year.

Happy New Year 2016

I haven’t yet wished you guys a Happy New Year since this is the first time I’m blogging this year. This is awkward. I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway –

Happy New Year 2016 🎉

""

Here’s a quick recap of what I did in 2015:

January, February

  • (Nothing interesting happened)

March

  • I feel like I coded a lot in March, last year.
  • Had a fun St. Paddy’s day at Work (I sprayed my hair Green)

April

  • Celebrated Holi at Stanford University with my buddies
  • Caught up with my friends in Vegas for my buddy’s bachelor party

May

June, July

  • (Nothing interesting happened)

August

  • Went hiking a couple of times

September

  • (Nothing interesting happened)

October

  • Attended a fun halloween party. I dressed up as Walter White from Breaking Bad
  • Quit my job ❤️

November

  • Started working at a new Startup 🎉
  • Had a fun bachelor party with my buddies at Lake Tahoe

December

  • Flew back to India after 2 years ❤️
  • Got hitched 💍 😀

Overall, it was a great year. Hope you guys had a great year too and hope you have a fun filled rest of the year!

Cheers!

Happy New Year 2015

March, not really the time of the year to wish someone a Happy New Year. I know, I usually have this post ready within the first two weeks of January (with an exception of last year). I have been
extremely busy with work and my side projects over the past few months and I could not really find time to blog. I hope I don’t write next year’s HNY blog post in April 😉

Without further ado, let me jump into last year’s highlights.

Highlights

  • Started going to the gym in January, for reals. (I’ve been a paying member for over 2 years though :P). Lost 22 lbs by the end of May
  • Pretty much utilized all of the 3-day weekends for fun stuff in 2014
    • My friends and I, flew down to West Virginia for the 4th of July weekend. We went mountain biking and white water rafting
    • My family was in San Francisco in September and it was fun
    • In November, my friends flew in to SF for the Thanksgiving weekend and that was fun too. We went snorkeling and drove down to Napa Valley
      and tasted some wines.
  • I started this thing where I create a new playlist for each month on Spotify (starting from March 2014).
  • Took a lot of photos on my Camera
  • Worked on a few side projects

Resolutions

#StayHealthy #StayPositive

Happy New Year 2014

Hello everyone! I know it’s February already but I never got to wish you guys a Happy New Year.

So, here you go:

""

Here’s a quick recap of what I did in 2013:

January

  • Created an open source component called “Hi5”.

February, March, April

  • (Nothing interesting happened)

May

  • Had a great vacation in Vegas with my childhood friends. Lost a lot of money at the casinos though.
Continue reading “Happy New Year 2014” →

Happy New Year 2013

I know I am super late but I am going to go ahead and do it anyway,
Happy New Year 2013 everyone!

""

2012

Hope you all had a wonderful 2012. I myself had a few eye-opening experiences (personally and professionally) and was in a miserable situation for the most part of 2012 but I have no regrets. I’ve learnt a lot last year and I’m proud of it. Let me share my experiences in 2012 with you all:

January

  • I got very sick and was bed ridden for 2 weeks. It was a depressing month.
Continue reading “Happy New Year 2013” →

Happy New Year 2012

Bill Gates (B): Okay. So, shall we begin?

Me (MT): Yeah. Sure.

B: So, what’s the reason behind this sudden blog post?

MT: Sudden? pfft…It’s New Year. So, this is my customary post. Of course, since nobody visits my blog, it’s not a surprise that you don’t know about it. Anyhow, moving on…

B: Then why don’t you blog more frequently?

MT: There are two reasons for that:

Continue reading “Happy New Year 2012” →

Happy New Year 2011

Happy New Year!? Observe the above line carefully. Did you? Good.
I was just trying to play with your attention 😀

Anyways, guys how was your 2010? I hope it was great. Mine was good. Not great. Good. I have learnt practically many things in life in 2010. I am thankful to 2010 for that. I learned that I should not depend on anyone for anything. Do my work myself. And most importantly, not to plan stuff. Planning stuff ruins everything. (In my case) But on an honest note, **FUCK YOU **2010. You literally messed my life up. Absolutely zero productivity, one messed-up head and two B’s to my GPA.

Continue reading “Happy New Year 2011” →

Happy New Year 2010

Time seems to be in a hurry. Last year seems like yesterday to me. ‘Tis January 10th, 2010 already. Anyways, Happy New Year everybody.

It feels good to get back to you all after a long time. Time has been the major reason for my absence all the while. It didn’t let me write a post. To be frank I didn’t find anything worth blogging. Finally when I had the time, patience, content and the will to write a post, I got bedridden for almost a week. This post was intended to be posted on the 1st of January. I wasn’t well and hence, the delay. I always wish that life had the options to rewind and fast-forward. If I rewind myself a year back, and then just play the highlights, this would be the result.

Continue reading “Happy New Year 2010” →