2020 Highlights

I love doing these year in review stat things every year. It really helps me to reflect on all that happened during a year and cherish that. 2020 was personally a good year for me. It was tough yes, but when I'm comparing it with the hell that was 2019, it feels a lot better. Here are some things that are noteworthy that I did during the year. 

As always, teaching is second nature to me and the one reason I can never let go of being an academic eventho I should have chosen a career and stuck with it years ago but I still continue juggling multiple jobs because I really do love love teaching but going into it full time is scary so I keep dipping my foot in, ahaha. It was a tough teaching year because majority of my classes were online and that's a whole different kind of teaching. I'm still getting used to it but man, when it first started and no one was ready, it was such a learning experience for us all. I also had some very tough moments at the beginning of the year and perhaps last year tested my patience a lot as a lecturer. 

TV shows are my biggest escapism and last year I dived deeper into my love for kdramas and watched a whole lot of them. Out of all the 45 shows I watched, 31 are kdramas so you can imagine just how obsessed I was, and the funny thing is I only started multiple ongoing kdramas only as late as September. I'll have to do more kdrama blog posts, a couple I've already drafted so that's exciting. 

DND was another thing keeping me sane throughout the year. I love playing my princess bard Jannat who went through a bit of character growth last year as she fought dragons, lost some people she adventured with, had her childhood horse stolen by someone she trusted, and almost died a couple times. It's also really nice to see more roleplay as we go on our merry adventuring way!

I didn't watch as many movies last year mostly because I was watching TV shows ahaha. From the few movies I watched, I did enjoy Knives Out the most and Al and I had the best time watching it on zoom! 

Watching movies on zoom are a whole fun thing that 2020 brought for us, for which I am grateful. 

Reading wise, last year was possibly a bad one, for I had the longest reading slump that I remember. From April until September, I was not able to read a single book. Every time I picked one up, I just didn't have the motivation to continue and perhaps this was also why I veered into TV shows too much to make up for it. Slowly but surely, I went into reading again and getting back into the magic of being lost in a book.  Last year was also a breakthrough in my foray into fan fiction. I remember reading a few fan fiction during the days of fanfiction.net and all the Harry Potter drama but it took a back seat so finding myself on ao3 and getting back into fan fiction was fun! 

I had a lot of plans for my blog (as usual) but life just got in the way. I have so so many unfinished drafts that I really should finish and post. I am very motivated to blog more this year and just get back into recording my life online, mostly my blog is for myself because I have a very bad memory so this is a way for me to tell myself "hey Shaha, you're living, you're doing things, look at this" so that I can look back on who I was! 

Blame Ms Rona for the lack of foodventures last year. With not a lot of new businesses popping up, I was surprised I managed to try 7 new food places, my favourite of which is probably Burger Republic. I'm not even a big burger person but they have converted me! We stayed in most of the year, like the rest of the world tho having to return early to work meant I was able to try lots of home delivery places, but mostly live my bento box life. 

Our book club grew by one new member last year, which I am very excited about. We started the year off with lots of new plans but again, we couldn't do much so for a large part of the year, it was us not reading a lot and just existing, ahaha. We also had two virtual book club meetings but kicked off into proper gear back in September. I'm excited to see where the book club is going and for more reading adventures. 

After much pondering, I started a new podcast. I've wanted to do it for about 4-5 years but I was too scared of the "log kya kahenge" (what would people say, in Hindi) so even after I recorded an episode, I kept second guessing myself but I finally got it published. It's definitely been a big moment for me eventho it's something I started for me and my friends only. 

Miss Taylor Swift did what? I was NOT READY. I don't think anyone was. When she announced folklore, my entire life went ??? and it was all I could talk about. I really love that album so much and then she did it again?? Evermore is currently unranked while I listen to the songs in depth and make a decision but I haven't found a song I didn't like yet and I'm almost halfway through. Taylor effectively made us all feel extremely unproductive by releasing two chart topping albums within 5 months??? Is there anything she cannot do? She constantly surprises us and I love this new, more mature, more indie Tay so very much. 

What an year. I really learnt a lot last year and mostly looked inward and made my circle of friends even smaller. The biggest lessons were about self discovery and learning to be comfortable with who I was becoming and being proud of her. She may not be what a younger me wanted to be, but she's definitely someone a younger me would be proud of and that itself is a victory for me. 

I hope that no matter how last year was for you, that this year brings in joy in abundance and keep you grounded and content.