Yes, I know, it’s a little too late to be writing a “New Year Post”. But there was just no way this one could have been written earlier. I have to confess, the title of the post is something I have borrowed from my mentor, who refuses to be named. She is working with a group of us and came up with this idea of creating a group working together to hone our skills which she called “2016, Year of awesomeness!”
I was so struck with the idea of devoting a year to becoming awesome, that I decided to make it my personal theme for the year as well. And since planning awesome things is so intrinsically linked with actually doing awesome things, there was no way I could have written about this year before the awesome things started happening.
Has the year been awesome? You bet it has! Right from day one! What better way to spend the first day of the year than with friends old and new; laughing your guts out and dancing like crazy? A trip to Hyderabad to spend New Year with my daughters ended up as a gourmet’s fantasy. Biryani, Khabsa, Mandi, even Rajma Chawla took on a different flavour!
The evening was crazy with Debashish’s cooking and Sneha beating us hands down at dancing with her fabulous steps. Not that any of us were far behind! We even had a stand up or rather a sit down comedian. Anurag had us in splits at the way he narrated the most mundane anecdotes and got us howling with laughter. Yes. It was a lovely beginning to the year!
The first Tuesday of the month saw me at the Poetry Tuesday as usual. This is one of the places I absolutely love to be, meeting other poets and writers, listening to what they have written, having them listen to what I have written! Oh it is heady stuff! I never cease to thank Anish Vyavahare for coming up with the idea of having this in Thane. It really adds that awesomeness to my year every month. If you are a poet or a writer or would just like to hear some good stuff that is being written come over and join us.
Another dream came true this year. I had been in touch with Ramya Pandyan, or the Idea-smithy for sometime now and had been trying to make it to Alphabet Sambar.(See my post on writers who inspire me.) And then out of the blue, Anish announces that Alphabet Sambar is happening in Thane and I am like “What? Where? When? OMG?” and just like that on the 9th of January, I attended a session at Café Verve. It was awesome listening to a whole new genre of writing and being critiqued on my writing as well. You can find out more about Alphabet Sambar here.
Since I had decided that this would be my year of learning and interaction, I attended two workshops organised by ITC, International Trainer’s Conclave. The first was on building your Vision Board . It was conducted by Ami Sheth and what I liked that she emphasized the fact that we had to draw it ourselves, no cutting out and sticking pictures.
She encouraged us to dip our fingers into the paint and splash it on the page. It was really liberating. We felt like kids, with no inhibitions and let our hearts speak.
The second workshop was on e-learning conducted by Mr. Milind Mangle. It was something I thought of attending as I am contemplating shifting some of the courses I conduct to the virtual platform and it is always nice to learn something new. Though the session was a good enough introduction to e-learning, what amazed me was how many friends I made and how many people were really interested in learning how to write.
I realised that I really do something that not a lot of people do; I write! And I am good at it! And not only am I good at writing! I am good at helping others write as well!
And if that isn’t what makes for a truly awesome 2016, what does?
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