2022 an Opportunity

I consider 2022 is an opportunity. The new year is always an opportunity--an era or a season ends for a new one. To choose and shuffle and enchanted by the expectations. The dawn of 2022 is remarkable, marking a transformation in the Covid time. 

It's an era of celebration of progress--science has stood the challenges to effect with noteworthy progress. With a lot of hesitation and resistance, we as humans also progressed. We learned to cover our faces.  

Now, hardly see any person without wearing a mask. The face is an integral part of one's personality. We style delicately to present before others to get the first impression about us, to make a statement before others--straightforward or convoluted. Now all that we see is a cover in that place. The sacrifice is a revolutionary habit change to accept we value life and that of others.    

How do we plan this windfallen opportunity is an important question.

Everybody is busy making plans. Whether we follow them strictly or not is not an issue. If we can't execute the plans we make is not a failure. That is a vital lesson nature taught us. So many who planned to get married, pass the courses registered in the university, earn jobs, and many more are not with us. 

I do not make plans to compete with myself but to guide myself. For that reason, I don't use the term, resolutions, which is heavy--I have only goals or intentions. Except in keeping the official deadlines, I generally take note of the deadlines after the date has passed.  

My 2022 goals.

1. Complete the last part of the first draft of the thriller  Polish and publish it after how many revisions and drafts, I have no idea.  

2. Redo and polish the short stories sleeping somewhere in my laptop to throw it to the open. 

3. I must read as many books as possible. I am even scared to look at the books others have targeted for 2022. The numbers intimidate me to shift my interest to other things like cooking or sleeping, but I cannot fail myself. I should select a number I don't want to show here out of shame. 

It doesn't mean I don't read what I do daily, but the problem is the number.

4. I should market my eBook to reach the world--just copying what others say, having no idea how it works. What marketing brings to my mind is a shop and shelves stacked with commodities, a vendor sitting behind a wooden table with drawers in the place of the current teller machine and a helper to do the measuring and packing. Now, it is all online, using a computer or mobile and technology-- not easy for me.

5. Another goal is to resume my travel schedule to Kerala--fortunately, everybody I had bid farewell to in 2019 is waiting there to welcome me- all have survived the pandemic. When I boarded the Emirates flight from Kochin international on 4 October that year, I had no inkling I wouldn't be able to continue with my annual visits without any hindrance.  

6. The most important, I put last to celebrate the festive company of our children with cooking, setting up the feast, discuss the world that discontinued in 2020 with the advent of the pandemic. I terribly miss their entire company, the small talks, the movie watching.