Eat, Pray, Love

Now there is a movie that I know for sure I will watch when it comes out. And read the book too. The past one year has been pretty dramatic for me, in every sense of the word. And now I feel sick and tired of the theatrics and just want a normal, uneventful life. Everything that I have learnt from all the ups and downs of the past year can be summed up into these three words for me to follow for the coming year.

Eat

I have spent the past one year trying to take care of way too many things, getting tensed all the time and just refusing to settle. It took me a lot of stress to decide on a lab, find an affordable car, learn the ways of taxes and finance, find friends and basically, get into a groove that suits me best. In all the tension, I forgot to take care of myself. To the extent that I cannot recognize the girl staring back at me from the mirror. My first lesson for the year is to learn to give myself the first and biggest priority, to take good care of myself and keep myself happy and satisfied. Because unless I am happy, there is no way in hell people are going to want to hang out with me. This coming year (I think in terms of academic years, not calendar years!) is completely dedicated to me. I know it sounds selfish, but in this fast paced world of grad school, unless I start looking out for myself and looking after myself, I am going to get trampled on pretty soon.

Pray

I am confident that my lab work will keep me busy for as long as I want it to. There is always stuff to be done. I could work here for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and still have stuff to do. What I am not sure about is whether I will stop to give myself some time to relax, unwind and connect with myself, recharge for the coming day. Over the past one year, I have robbed myself of my peace of mind, and always found somebody other than me to blame it on. The truth is, nobody but me is to blame for every second I spent feeling miserable. This coming year, I will find time for myself, for doing the things I love best, for living life outside of work the way that makes me the happiest. Nobody can make me feel low unless I let what they say affect me. I will devote time to gather my thoughts, stay collected and will definitely learn to grow up as and when needed :) I don't want to find myself behaving like a 80 year old any more than I want to find myself behaving like an 8 year old :P

Love

I am not quite sure what to say about this. Except for I have learnt a hard lesson that trust is not something I will invest in anybody unless they have truly earned it. And to earn my trust (thereby my affection) is going to be a hard task for all those who will subsequently enter my life (and perhaps for some of those who are already a part of my life). This doesn't mean that I am going to be distant or aloof from the world. I will still be a girl with a good sense of humour, a healthy sense of sarcasm and lots of people to hang out with, its just not necessary that I will feel a sense of attachment to them. Everybody who knows me in this world laughs when I say this, but its going to be different this time. Yes, there will be plenty of love in my life, but only for those who have earned it  :)

I don't need to spend thousands of dollars to spend time in Italy, India and Indonesia to learn what Elizabeth Gilbert learnt. I just need the next one year and my routine life in grad school :)

Then I will use those thousands of dollars that I saved to buy me a new car :P :P :P just kidding! :)