2011: A report card

Well, 2011 has more or less rolled by, and it’s time to take stock:

• January: Was alone on my birthday for the first time in my life. It was horrible.
• February: Got over the January trauma and tootled off to Delhi for the customary two months.
• March: Helped SV find a house and move. Wise choice, since I’ll be spending a lot of time here. It’s on top of Mount Everest, though (i.e., fourth floor [fifth, if you’re American]). Writeside.net finally gets a new look after almost four years.
• April: Back in Bangalore and starting to think I’m getting sick of the constant motion. Also, N had his first Happy-To (figure it out yourself!).
• May: Satin is finally out. Parents’ annual Bangalore visit — pigged out on lots of great food.
• June: Off to Delhi yet again, with hopes of planning a Grand Trip to Europe in the near future. Started work at Geo. Writeside.net gets hacked, but is salvaged eventually.
• July: By now I am juggling two jobs, basically. There are good days and bad. The Grand Trip falling together bit by bit…
• August: Finally! Off to Denmark and Sweden, with a whiff of Finald. Fall in love with Denmark. Meet lots of lovely people — Mattias, Bjarne, Susanne.
• September: Meet Niklas for real. He’s funny! Make another interesting friend in Sweden — Atika. Jet-lagged and depressed after return. Dive right into work — with my only colleague on sabbatical, it turns out to be a bloody nightmare.
• October: Still standing, and suddenly aware that haven’t been “home” in almost five months! Having two jobs now stinks despite the happy bank balance.
• November: Finally get a chance to return to Bangalore and pack up my house and things. Heartbroken.
• December: Still has to sink in that I’m now back in Delhi lock, stock and barrell. Not a good month personally for various other reasons, but hey, the year is almost over.

Overall, a regular sort of mixed year — some good stuff, some not-so-good stuff. But still standing, with plans for 2012, so can’t complain. From a writing perspective, this was a crappy year, though. Must have written the sum total of 3 short stories and not finished a single book.

Let’s take a look on how I did with my 2011 “resolutions”:

• A fitness regime: Pass. More or less. Have been doing yoga off and on.
• Regular book reviews on books.writeside.net: Resounding fail.
• Web designing and WordPress-related stuff: Um… borderline. Did redo Writeside.net, and also some other design work this year.
• The Ms. Meany novel: Eep. Fail. But I have been working on another novel.
• Photography: Hmm… not as good as I’d have hoped.

So that’s that for 2011. Time to think up new resolutions for 2012!

~PD