A New Beginning

Somethings about New Years is fresh, anticipating, hopeful and exciting. It is like getting promoted to a higher grade. It is like the excitement my siblings and I had on the first day of school. We would talk about the location of the class room, the view from the generous windows, our teachers and our bench mates. We would be excited about what we have on our plates and speculate about how the new Math teacher would be - strict and grumpy or friendly and easy to get along with! We would make plans to utilise our time well and resolve to top the class, brush our grammar and math and give it our best shot - strangely similar to how we look forward to live a New year and how we find ourselves a little nostalgic about the past year and how we grow up and mature in the process of living another year of our lives.

I look back to get a recap of the year that was. I think I'd evolved more in 2008 than in any other year in the recent past. I took that extra step to go and pursue a project in Advertising - something that I'd dreamed of doing all my life. I was there in the midst of a terrorist attack in Mumbai and saw what it can mean first hand and wondered what the world was going to!

My family had lost a member - my uncle Murali Krishna Mocherla (who also happens to be my dad's cousin and best friend in growing years). It stuck me how our time here is transient and how we should just live our lives and love all we can while we are here:-)

So the year itself was a mixed bag. I learnt that we are the only people that come between ourselves and our dreams and we do not do something only because we don't want to do it.

Aarti grew up - turned a year older and lost that baby fat and is blabbering a lot of sense. She is ready to be a pre-schooler and has emerged a personality of her own. I am thankful that I finally see traces of me in my baby. She seems to be a bigger bathroom singer than her mom and is very very artistically inclined. I just hope that I can get her to write as well..but that has to wait for some more years:-)0

For the year coming, I should probably and ideally say that I'll be more productive, lose all that weight I wanted to lose, keep my home "better homes and gardens" perfect, write and read every day, keep in touch with all my friends and family, vacuum my house twice a week, spend more time with Aarti, not crib about Sarat's late hours , to write the book I always wanted to write (not sure if it would fiction or non- fiction. LOL) to learn a foreign language, to travel to Europe, to take a terrific roller coaster ride and to properly learn a fine art.

But practically I just want to make the right choices. The choice of spending time praying instead of Internet browsing, the choice of eating right, living healthy, talking only things that are fair, making people around me happy and living a life that is meaningful. I resolve not to be the best person around, but to just be my personal best!

I resolve to age well and gracefully as in accepting my stray greys and piling up birthdays, I resolve to be a child at heart and a grown up in my thinking. I resolve to smile more, to crib less and to compliment others often. I also resolve to take time for myself, to go on a walk and actually stop to listen to the birds and to get a clear connection with my Heavenly father. I resolve to be more open minded, less judgemental and genuinely interested in people around me. I resolve to listen more, talk less and make people around me happy for choosing to be around me:-) I resolve to give more and make a difference in a stranger's life. To spread my love beyond my family and give a piece of my heart to people who need it.

I probably will blog more, read all the New Yorkers that are piled up in hope of being read one day and spend my time wisely.

New Years are new hopes, new avenues to explore our true potential, new chapters, new anticipations. Here's hoping 2009 will make all your dreams and resolutions come true.

God Bless you all!