BENGALURU : Raise your hand if you grammed a smirky post asking if you should buy a 2021 planner or not? I didn’t bother asking anyone, I went right ahead and bought one for myself, even though my 2020 edition is currently in a box marked ‘Things that make me sad’, along with a pair of yoga pants I fit into in March, which somehow became two sizes too small for me in May.
This may or may not be connected to my part-time, unpaid job as a chocolate mug cake tasting consultant, a role I created for myself mid April. I think we all had that moment in 2020 when we kind of stopped caring. For me it was the Sad sack Sunday when I woke up, logged into Slack, and waited for my team for an hour before I realised no one else was there except HR chat bot Sunita. See, I thought it was Monday. And yet even after months of online school, working from home, socialising on Zoom and grocery shopping dressed like an extra from Contagion part 2, I am excited about the idea of 2021.
There is something wonderfully irresistible about the idea of a new year. Hope blooms. Possibilities seem boundless. I may possibly be a little hungover and confusing heartburn for hope. Who knows? So as we stand here on the cusp of 360-odd blank days to fill with achievements, plans and ideas, what should we do? My advice: nothing. From my social media feed it looks like you all have knocked the ball out of the park in 2020 in terms of personal projects and achievements.
From the number of the Duolingo report cards being shared y’all have learned Spanish, Japanese and French (which I learned watching Emily in Paris, just saying.) You’ve baked every possible kind of bread, fermented the shit out of everything that can possibly be fermented and made it into a Kombucha, you’ve upcycled your mother’s wedding reception sari into a chic winter bed for your cat (neither your mother or your cat appreciated the effort, but hey, you can’t please everyone right?), you listened to every podcast on Spotify, perfected unsupported headstands, attended every Zoom webinar conducted by a non-profit, tweet bombed in support of a number of worthy social media campaigns and finally learned how to solve time and distance problems from grade 7 ICSE syllabus.
You started an OTG. You finally learned what OTG stands for. You even mastered the art of giving yourselves haircuts. Well done. Buy your 2021 planner and look at all those empty days, weeks and months and leave them empty. Do nothing. Rest on your sourdough starter laurels. It’s okay. Really. Welcome to the blissful dark side. Qapla’ of a different kind awaits. (Qapla’ is Klingon for success by the way. I hear there’s a Duolingo course starting soon. I didn’t sign up. Really.) (The writer is a city-based author and communications professional)