2023 - A lookback
2023 was a crazy year. If 2022 was a year of weariness for me, 2023 was a year full of craziness. I moved cities again, left behind dear old friends and a job, and started life relatively anew in a (so-far) very strange city. I hope I am able to warm up to this place.
One of the joys of writing a post like this is that each year you think you grew up, and you sit down to write a new post and you realize oh boy were we wrong the last year. Of course, one isn’t wrong strictly, just that each year brings more challenges, more highs, more dhakkas, and that much more room to grow. Progress from strength, strength from struggle. As Camus put it so beautifully in The Myth of Sisyphus, ‘The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’
As always, my opinion that life is a gift has solidified even more - every year and day is a blessing to experience, to reflect. Pain, loneliness, joy, victory - its a privilege to live through it. Yes, these are pithy statements made a million times before, but there are only a handful of truths, and one internalizes them through lived experiences. The only aim for 2024 then, is to experience more, feel more, do more and be in a cocoon less.
However, this is a 2023 lookback post, so let me get back to my annual tradition of listing my best-of stuff:
The Best Books I read this year:
I must have read about 5-6 books this year, there were very different priorities. The only book I loved this year was Richard Osman’s The Last Devil to Die .
Best TV Shows of the year:
- The Bear Season 2 - Shoutout to Forks being the #1 TV episode of the year
- Blue Eye Samurai
- Succession Season 4
Best Movies of the Year:
- Past Lives
- Spiderman: Across the Spider-Verse
- Mission Impossible 7
- John Wick 4
- Jailer
- Polite Society
- Guardians of the Galaxy 3
Other highlights of the year:
- Meeting old friends and some fantastic weddings
- Actually bringing serious focus to health
- Listening to some fantastic podcast episodes, like LVMH by Acquired, and Morgan Housel on the Tim Ferriss Show.
- Running a couple of 10Ks
Look forward to 2024.