An end of year review - and what is in store in the year to come :)

I started writing this on a mobile phone which I'd just now regained access to, freshly out of an ICU, less than 24 hours after I momentarily stopped breathing. I turned 25 yesterday, 8th of September and was scheduled to travel across Europe and see the Northern Lights to ring in my 25th. Life had other plans.

2022 started on an extremely optimistic note. I had just secured a promotion at Twitter, PPI ( Public Policy India ) was really picking up pace, my whole work around mentorship was starting to show impact, I had shed some 65 kgs in the past 4 years and was entering a phase where I did not battle daily bodily dysmorphia anymore, my shift back to New Delhi after 2 years of the pandemic was in full swing, I had finally moved on from a forced separation from the only person I've ever dated and so on. Emotional, Physical, Financial, Career -?it was all adding up, aligning and starting to make better sense and shape. (oh god there are so many aspects that go into making us, us!)

Honestly, first half of 2022 was better than I even expected for it to turn out to be! I was learning so much at work, especially being the youngest in the room. Was travelling to a new city almost every month, meeting tons of new people, trying my hand at a 100 different things, putting in place plans for the next thing I wanted to build etc. and then came the 11th of July.?

Landed back from Mumbai that evening, reached home from the airport, and collapsed. It marked the beginning of 3 months of hospitalisation, across 4 cities and 6 different hospitals, all of which essentially gave up on me until the 6th one. 2 things I wish to add -

1. Insurance - This was a complete shocker to me. I spent more in three months than what I made at a well-paying job at big tech in a year. Thankfully, insurance covered 95% of it. Please don't skimp on health insurance, neither for yourself and nor your parents/siblings/spouses. Not the shock you wish to deal with when you're sick already.
2. Workplace - Use your leaves well, save some of them up if you can, document your work to the extent possible so someone can set up in your absence, communicate your constraints clearly. I'll forever remain grateful to Payal Kamat for how she stood by me like a complete rock and pillar of support through everything I was putting up with. I'm very certain a vast majority of us can only dream of having managers like Payal, and a supportive workplace and manager has since then become a far bigger priority for me when making work decisions over a lot else, given the sheer value it holds.?

I'll spare you the details of the entire autoimmune disease discovery journey, but turns out 3 months of being completely incapacitated can give you (alongside all the pain and trauma) - a lot of time to reflect. Just 4 thoughts I wish to leave you with -?

• Health - "A?healthy man wants?a thousand?things, a?sick man only wants one". I've always thought of all the planning I do, ambitions as very definitive, almost as if my body is this one machine which'd respond to everything I throw at it and churn out results for me as if there's no tomorrow. Turns out there is a tomorrow, one you might have to face with all the planning going haywire given health conditions, and that will be the end of it. Full stop. If you don't prioritise this out of choice, you'll be forced to do so out of compulsion.
• Finances - Unless you come from the top 1% and/or you detest the idea of counting on anyone (including parents) for the slightest hue of financial support - build up an egg's nest the very moment you start earning, no matter how small the amount. It's difficult to even fathom the amount of mental peace, choices and freedom does having decent money saved up in an account of your own enable and unlock for an individual. No matter what life throws your way, you'll survive it just fine as long as you've this base to build back upon.
• People - I've gotten far closer to my parents in these past three months of them being right by my side through everything, then I had been in the past 7 years of living far away from them. Mom and Dad gave up on office/business completely for 3 full months to be by my bedside every single day no matter the bed of whichever hospital in whichever city I was being treated in. When no one else will stand by you, the parents will. When time comes and the commitment demanded is of the most strenuous kind, they will show up and show through. Respect them, love them, care for them, not for what they'll do for you but just for who they are and all they've been through for you already. It's a fact I forgot all too quickly when I left home (Calcutta) for Pune (where I went to college) in the years following 2016, all too glad to be reminded of it again. Equally important - the 5 people in my life that I consider to be my world, each one of them showed up in their own ways to keep, my hopes alive just when I needed it the most. Maxed out my luck here!
• Career - Remain in a job only if you're either learning, and/or you're earning super well which allows you to furnish resources towards learning outside of the job. You're more than the work you do and the job title you hold. But equally, make sure the work you get to do is meaningful and adds to your broader sense of purpose. If it does not do so, but pays the bills just fine, that's alright. You can do something else (on the side to begin with) which does the same for you. Exactly what I did with PPI. Something for the soup (to keep the lights on), and something for the soul :)

A new year beckons. In terms of work, I've given up on job offers only to delve into policy entrepreneurship full time. Certainly the riskier choice, but one I'd have regretted not taking all my life. Let's see how this pans out, and I'll have a lot more to share shortly!

On the personal front - Definitely calmer than before, more cognisant of what is and what isn't good for me and my physical/emotional wellbeing, a bit more mature but hopefully - the same old driven person always excited by learnings of all kind, driven by the brute force of optimism, brimming with ideas, and some never ending source of energy? A work-in-progress for sure, rest is all a conjecture and/or a failed exercise in self-awareness maybe.

Hoping to get to do meaningful work in the year to come, meet many more individuals and learn from their journeys, build out PPI and Proficy, contribute to the development and growth of the broader policy space in India, travel a lot, stay healthy, meet my parents more often, run a marathon, and finally get to see the Northern goddamn Lights, a childhood dream (still have the cutout from class 4th geography textbook when I saw them for the 1st time)! Oh, and also find someone to share my Ice cream with, walk around endlessly and flood with new playlists everyday ??

Love and Light, always

Yash