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Looking back (An annual review – 2017)

February 15, 2018 No Comments

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From past four years, I’m doing an annual review of my life. It’s the time when every year I take a pause and reflect back on my successes and failures in the past year. I publish it here in this Blog which keeps me publicly accountable for the goals for the coming year. Here is it for this year –

Photo by Tim Bogdanov on Unsplash

This is my fifth annual review, you can access my previous reviews for 2016, 2015 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), 2014 and 2013. This year also I’ll answer three questions, same as past 3 years:

What went well this year?
What didn’t go so well year?
What’s am I working toward?

Hope it will be insightful and interesting for some of you. Lets cut to the chase.

Looking back (An annual review – 2017)

habit, regular, routine, writing

New year resolutions – 2018

January 1, 2018 No Comments

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Making new year resolutions has now become a habit, which I want to keep on cultivating because it helps me move in the right direction throughout the year. I tend to go back each month to this resolution list and see my progress. It is an interesting and forward-moving process.

2017 is over and a new year (2018) is here. For this year’s new year resolutions list, I’m putting in a few fresh resolutions and keeping a few from the last year. Why carry on with the old ones you say? It is because now I’ve started to know myself better than before and what keeps me happy and content.

For some people, new year resolutions are some things from which they want to break out, like a bad habit. For some, it is something new which they want to learn or do. For me it has all three, break out of something which I don’t actually like, learn something new and do something which I’m carrying forward from last year’s resolution list and haven’t yet completed.

Here you go.

New year resolutions – 2018

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Looking back (An annual review – 2016)

June 30, 2017 No Comments

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From past three years, I’m doing an annual review of my life. Cause I want to pause and reflect back on my successes and failures of the previous year and publishing it here in this Blog keeps me accountable for the next year.

Looking back (An annual review - 2016)

This is my fourth annual review, you can access my previous reviews for 2015 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), 2014 and 2013. This year also I’ll answer three questions, same as past 3 years:

What went well this year?
What didn’t go so well year?
What’s am I working toward?

So this is gonna sound cliché but I’m the man of making resolutions and working on them, every year. So this year also I created a list of new year resolutions like last year. Coincidently I’m posting this annual review almost at the end of second quarter of the year like last year.

I think I’m liking this schedule as it gives me some more visibility on the new year’s resolutions and I can add some more context to the happenings of the year. If that doesn’t make sense, just read it as I was feeling lazy!

Just kidding.

After the successful year of 2015, last year was not that successful overall but it was no less satisfying. I also experienced various sort of serendipities.

serendipity
sɛr(ə)nˈdɪpɪti

noun
the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Ok! That was not an editorial mistake I knowingly put that word definition above. Why? Because I’ve fallen in love with this word “Serendipity”.

Serendipity in my own definition is a state when we fall in love with the universe and start accepting and loving the present moment, then the universe starts loving you back in the strangest of ways.

There happened many serendipitous events in the year of 2016. Through which I felt strange new feelings derived from wandering, wondering and affection.

I’m keeping this post as a single post, unlike last year’s 3 part post which took so much time and complexity to get published. Hope it will be insightful and interesting for some of you.

Lets cut to the chase.

Looking back (An annual review – 2016)

Saturday-Pentacle

Saturday-Pentacle – Week 1 – 2017

January 7, 2017 No Comments

It’s 2017 already and this is the first weekly Saturday Pentacle post of 2017.

I’m excited. Let’s get to it.

“Saturday-Pentacle”

Pentacle

Saturday-Pentacle – Week 1 – 2017

Greetings my internet friends,

Here are some popular links, thoughts, and articles for today’s “Saturday-Pentacle” e-mail newsletter. This is a free newsletter and goes out every Saturday only for my subscribed readers.

Enjoy!

Post of the week – New year resolutions – 2017 – 2016 was a great year and 2017’s gonna be better. If only we keep putting the hard work and consciousness into our actions. Check out my this year’s New year resolution list, consisting of a report on last year’s New year resolutions. Hope it is of some inspiration to you as well.

My most popular Instagram post recently — Quintessence of life – I captured this photograph while walking in the streets of Bandra. This photo amazes me, how karma is isolated from religion.

Article I’m enjoying (and pondering) — The Associated Press style guide will no longer capitalize ‘internet’ – I was surprised to learn that ‘Internet’ can no longer be written that way legitimately. It is now ‘internet’ without the capital ‘I’.

What I’m reading/watching/listening to — Narcos – I’m binge watching this Netflix series on the biggest drug lord, Pablo Escobar. I was disgusted by learning what power and money, when comes unearned, do to you. So I went on to learn more about his life and how he became what is history now and how he was killed by the Search Bloc.

A Quote I’m pondering on lately –

“The good in life does not depend on life’s length, but upon the use we make of it. It is possible, or rather usual, for a man who has lived long, lived too little.”

– Seneca the Younger

Until Next Saturday!

Thanks for reading.

– Himanshu

P.S.: If you are interested, here are the Top 10 posts from 2016.

Something exciting coming up in next post. A story of a recent expedition. Here is a photograph from that day, to get you more excited.

Would you like to get a very short pentacle (5 items) e-mail from me every Saturday with the five coolest things I’ve found that week?

It might include books, music, articles, new hacks/tricks, photographs and last but not the least people.

These “Saturday-Pentacle” emails are only available if you subscribe to my e-mail newsletter. They will not be on the blog or anywhere else. This post is just a teaser to entice you to sign up.

Try it out for a week! Unsubscribing is easy, and there’s great stuff coming next Saturday.

Just submit your email address in the below form or right here – and you’re set.

No spam, ever. Only great stuff.

Quick endnote – as a few of you guys have told me that emails are not delivering in the Gmail primary inbox and going to promotions tab in your Gmail. I suggest below two pro tips to get my email in your Primary inbox from next time.

Add my From email address ([email protected]) to your Google Contacts list.
Emails from your Google Contacts always go to their Primary inbox. So go ahead and add me to your contact list.
Move your emails to the Primary tab.
You can teach Gmail where to deliver your messages. When you move one of my emails from Promotions tab to the Primary tab, Gmail asks whether it should always deliver my emails in your primary inbox. So please do that. You can also read more about these Gmail Help instructions.

good habit, habit, life, regular, routine, writing

New year resolutions – 2017

January 2, 2017 4 Comments

Last year I first published a list of my top 10 new year resolutions for the year of 2016. So I’m continuing the tradition, cause it helped me move in the right direction in the last year throughout. I would go back each month to this resolution list and see my progress. It was a fun and productive process.

It’s the new year day today. New hopes, New resolutions and a report of last year’s resolutions. Here you go.

New year resolutions – 2017

regular

New year resolutions – 2016

June 6, 2016 No Comments

New Year Resolutions

Even though I should have published this new year resolutions post in January, first week. Many things kept me from doing it. But it’s better late than sorry, right?

So following are my top 10 new year resolutions for this year – 2016.

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Looking back (An annual review – 2015)

January 11, 2016 1 Comment

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From past two years I’m doing an annual review of my life. Cause I want to pause and reflect back on my successes and failures of previous year and publishing it here in this Blog keeps me accountable for the next year.

Looking back (An annual review - 2015)

This is my third annual review, you can access my previous reviews here (2014) and here (2013). This year also I’ll answer three questions, same as last 2 years:

What went well this year?
What didn’t go so well year?
What’s am I working toward?

Keeping yourself accountable is a great thing I’ve learned from several people in the last year’s timespan. Many famous Bloggers/Vloggers and authors have mentioned it, they’ve mentioned one more thing which is – “In-order to make yourself accountable, you have to let someone else be the judge”. I couldn’t do that as of yet, but it’s in my resolution list for year 2016. [I’ve compiled a new year’s resolution list as well, will be tagging that here shortly] This year I want to remove a few not so good habits from lifestyle as well. So making myself accountable for the actions i take will be a good start, so I’m gonna let some of my close friends who can be as ruthless as this task will require to punish me if I don’t do well in this task. So that’s gonna be interesting, only time will tell.

2015 has been the greatest year of my life till yet. After the last 2 Annual Reviews, this year when I kept record my doings and held myself accountable for things I was doing for myself I felt more control over my life, far far better than in any other year of my life. It was like in some way I knew where i was heading. From the learnings of the last year 2015, I’m finding acquainted with more knowledge about areas of life which were untouched earlier which eventually led me to be in a self aware mode. I was completely in the zone of doing things in the last whole year.

I’m keeping this post in 3 parts to avoid it becoming a really really long post (longer than my target of 3000 words per post). First part will be – ‘What went well this year?’ I’ll just keep the next two parts as to be continued. In-fact i just don’t want this post to read like desperately moving towards closure but want to make it really in-depth and insightful.

Lets cut to the chase. I hope you find it interesting.