Review of the year 2022

This year I thought to write the review of the year. What I did, what I learnt, what I achieved and where I failed. This year has been a great year in various way in terms achievements, learning and failure. I learnt a lot and I failed even more.  I can broadly categorize my year in few of these segments below. The major thing happened to me is learning and life lessons.

1. Life lessons
2. Career
3. Finance/Wealth
4. Family
5. Others

Life lessons

Beginning this year, I started reading books regularly almost. I started with Atomic Habits by James Clear and that was a game changer for me. All my learning of this year can be majorly attributed to this book and few influencers, such as, Ankur Warikoo, Ali Abdaal. I made a habit of reading book before I go to bed. I use to read 20-30 minutes maximum. With this habit, I finished 7 books in this year. These are, 1. Atomic Habits, 2. The Psychology of Money, 3. Deep work, 4. Rework, 5. The courage to be disliked 6. The subtle art of not giving a f*ck 7. The Alamnack of Naval Ravikant. Right now I am reading The 4-hour work week by Tim Ferris, another great book so far.  That’s a great achievement for me. All these are philosophical books or more about habit, better life. I realized that I love this genre. They taught me so many things. These books made me more calm and thoughtful. I will continue reading these types of books in next year.

Career

I got the news of another one year extension in my postdoc at ULB sometime in February which started from July 2022. This one year extension was highly needed to complete the modelling work I/we are doing. With this one year, we have a somewhat good model. Without this extension, it would be difficult, I believe. Although, I do not know how good we will end up in our work, but the progress was faster and better than previous years.

My biggest failures for career is that I didn’t have any first author paper this year. I had two co-authored paper published. I have two immediate papers in the pipeline, that I hope to submit next year. There are two other papers from my previous work which will probably take time, as it is difficult now to take time out for those work. In terms of publications, I am clearly a failure this year and also the year before.

What else did I do this year! I got some collaborations for my ongoing work – a good thing where I hope to deliver well. I wrote two proposals, one I submitted where I am waiting for the results, fingers crossed. Another is more of a modification of previous proposal of mine, that I used for applications to different places. I applied in various institutes this year, it is bit time consuming- fingers crossed here too. These are something urgent that I needed to do, and I did.

I did some work on Hydrology side apart from coupled modelling, where I got some interesting results, but I need to give some time there. Another thing in the pipeline. I read a lot of hydrology paper and reviewed three papers this year. Good thing is that I got a good grasp on GlaDS, and now I generate ideas when I read a paper.

A realization from it , maybe I am not good at managing time in doing multiple tasks! I need to figure this out.

Finance/ wealth

I started thinking about finance from 2021. It is very important thing as most of us are more or less working for it, at least at some point in our life. It is often neglected. I got into it as a side interest and I learned a lot in past two years through ups and downs of stock market and my investment. Thanks to few specific people whom I follow, such as Parimal Ade. Now I have better understanding about the investment. To be clear, I do not or never did any trading. I do not believe in it and would refrain from it. I believe in long-term investment.

However, in last two years I made few mistakes, but being in the game, I learned a lot. What I learnt through my experience is that investment is less about money and more about discipline and patience. I strongly I have a lot to learn as I go forward and spend more time here.

Family

Family is very important which we often neglect. I got to spend little time with Tanaya and parents as I stayed most of my time in Brussels. Tanaya visited Belgium for three months and then I came to India after four moths she left Belgium. So, we did not see each other for 4 months. That is a long time. A month or two is okay, but anything more than that feels too long, at least now. I need to think and work toward it and it should be my priority now. Got to meet parents after 9 months. They are getting older and I think I should spend more time with them. It is not easy to balance career and life, but we must optimize it. I am very career oriented person. Till now, I have given higher priority to my career and less to relationship. In the hindsight, I feel I didn’t do it right. I could have been more considerate about relationship. Even if I didn’t do it right then, I must not do that mistake again.

The prospect of growth, challenge keep me happy. I want that very much but also I want to be with family. The challenge is to keep the balance and that is what I am going to thrive for in the next year.

Others

What comes in others category is first sports for me. I played a lot of tennis this year in Brussels. I got better at it. This is all about practice and loving the game. Another lesson about the benefit of practice and perseverance. I started playing tennis in 2021, but I started practicing regularly (twice a week) from June 2022. In 4-5 months, I got into intermediate+ level. It makes me happy of course. But above all, it shows the power of practice and perseverance. Although in last 1.5 months, after coming back to India, I didn’t get to play. Yet, I believe, if I don’t get injured, I’ll get back to my form after few sessions of practice. I feel more excited seeing the benefit of practice and perseverance. I want to keep this in mind when I face failure in things that I love.  

I played cricket with Brussels Greens Cricket Club (BGCC) in the fourth division of Belgium cricket league. I did good in bowling-  took 1-2 wickets in all matches, took few catches, but didn’t do well in bat. Overall, we did good as a team but there were sectors we could have done better.

That’s mostly it about this year. I am sure I have missed few important things. Nonetheless, I wanted to point out the long-term lesson.