voracious reader + full-time optimist
It was April 2017 when I visited New York for the first time; I was traveling with my family over the Easter break and I had taken a few days off work to accommodate for a nice full week in the city that never sleeps. [We did sleep, though. This is what walking for hours each day does to you.]
When I was setting my resolutions for 2020 (little had I known!), I was seeking mainly for things that would add value to my everyday life and spark joy. Yes, it sounds awfully Marie Kondo but it essentially true. As a result, one of the resolutions I settled one was “to read more non-fiction”.
I first got into podcasts when I started training for a half marathon last summer. Despite loving all the energy I’d get from my music playlists, running long distances could get quite… lonely. And you can only listen to the same Lizzo album on repeat for so long.
Netflix move over, it’s reading time. If you’re self-isolating (or social distancing, as the cool kids call it these days), reading is a great way to escape, switch off, take a break from the constant stream of updates and – often misinformed – social posts, and disappear into another world for a bit.
This year, instead of writing down resolutions, I decided on a few words and expressions that I would like to carry with me throughout the next twelve months. Besides having specific, more tangible goals, sometimes we need a quote, some sort of mental guidance to see us through our days, both good and bad ones.
This is no ordinary love story.
The running app on my phone – I’m using the Nike Run Club one and loving it – may suggest that it all started back in April 2018.
Yet this is not the full story. Like a TV series romance that you watch slowly unravel for an agonizing period of weeks until it manifests itself, my running affair began on Tuesday, 13th February of the same year.
It has been a challenging fall, a challenging year. Some ups, some downs and a handful of detours. Nevertheless, 2018 was full of new opportunities and learnings as well, the most important of which I’d like to share with you here:
“Yesterday I had dinner with my best friend and his crazy girlfriend”, he says nonchalantly when I ask him what he’s been up to during the weekend.
2018 was one of the few years to find me without an endless resolution list. As shared on the blog earlier this year, the only tangible goal I set for myself was to read 35 books. Twelve months later, I’m more than happy to announce that I not only met my goal, I went above and beyond – I read 40 books during 2018, not counting three or four that are still lying half-read around the house.
