Last year @InfiniteLowe introduced me to word of the year. The concept is about choosing a word and living that word in everything we do in the year that follows.
Loved the concept and wanted to give that a try.

My word for 2020 was 'Devote'. Be it personal or professional life, my intention was to devote some time for everything in short, but intense bursts.

Started off pretty well to be honest.. Wrote some LinkedIn articles, started investing on non fiction books, cooked new recipes, shifted to a new home, planned for our first foreign vacation to Cambodia... Underline planned.

Then pandemic broke out. Work from home happened. In a way, both choked and gave breathing difficulties to people across the globe in varying magnitudes.

Ended up devoting about 12-15 hours a day to work. Good that working days don't follow the rules of subtraction. Else, they might have borrowed some hours from the next day and would have made me work on credit.

Being an introvert, managing work took a toll on my mind. Continuous meetings from 8AM, sometimes not even with bio breaks in between.. Pudingifying aanis across briefings, clarifications, demos, pitches, coachings, status updates - all culminating in Tandoori level burnouts.

The energy drain due to empathy was ruthless. Listening to struggling colleagues, coaching overwhelmed team members, brainstorming virtually, managing family issues, navigating a toxic work culture and petty politics.. all while tracking pandemic numbers, extracted a heavy toll.

Extroverts had a hard time too. Lack of socializing took a toll on them. Unfortunately, a few of them were in my team and I ended up being their space, extending my work time even further.
Einstein said that space and time are interwoven together. The pandemic just reiterated it.

On top of these, worrying about parents' safety required a separate folder in our brain's empathy quadrant. I have parents who wear superhero costumes made of Kabasura kudineer, turmeric, pepper, sukku and Omam and believe they can fight Corona and kill it to pieces.

Anyway, my 2020 word, Devote, got almost entirely devoted towards work, but I guess I stayed true to the word as much as I can.

Thanks to @DimpledJalebi, I have now taken a couple of weeks off and have switched off Outlook and Teams notifications from phone. (What a peace this has given me!)

Guess the last couple of weeks in 2020 is my mukthi phase following a year of rigorous devotion.

My 2020 word came from a place of ambition and excellence.

Wanted to do this AND do that.
Create this AND ALSO create that.
Prove this AND that.

This mad run for nothing has only given me stress and a couple of grey hairs.

2020 was like a river to me.
Not the river that quenches the thirst of lifeforms nor the one that poets wrote in lengths about its serenity..

But the one that tames a strong, hard stone, with its mighty, continuous force, into a smooth pebble.

I am that stone.

2021 is a year for me to slow down. Be patient...Wait... Watch the replay of things unfolding before me in a slow motion and reflect.
Nurture a voice inside that says it is ok to not check all the boxes in my to-do list.

Not all deadlines needs to be met.
Not every mail that says URGENT with 3 exclamation marks next to it is really that urgent.
Not every unscheduled meeting calls need to be responded to.
There is no need to check mail at 1AM and lose sleep over it.

2021 for me is all about being that pebble.

Mature, calm, pacifying, smooth, and hopefully not that round.

It's ok if people around me can't understand boundaries. It's ok if they cannot respect other people's time. It's ok if they can't be empathetic. They are who they are. But I can choose to be me.

All I have to do this year is...

Breathe. Long ones.
Breathe. Often.

My word for 2021 is 'BREATHE'.

What's yours?