Travel, Poetry, books and an award

For years, I chased after dreams;  For years I made resolutions every new year and then looked away from them as the days passed – too ashamed to even acknowledge that I had made those resolutions.  Then last year, inspired by a friend who went after one of her dreams and fulfilled them, I decided to work on my inhibitions and simply focus on those things that I had always wanted to do but was afraid to. The end result has been publications of my poems in three different publications, a short-story in the anthology ‘Ripples’ , a story in the Chicken Soup Series, a ghost-writing book assignment and of course publication of my travel and general features.  The work-wise happiest moment though was in August, winning the Andra Pradesh State Tourism Department award for Excellence in Writing , handed out by the Andhra Pradesh CM.

This year has shown me what having a little confidence in myself can do. In the end the only thing that stands between us and our desires is our own attitude. While I have tried hard to make positive thinking make things work in my life, this year what worked for me was being neutral. Being positive cannot realistically be a permanent state of mind and I often felt so conflicted that I ended up wallowing in my misery. But being neutral was possible and helped so very much. And so what I did was focus on one thing at a time, be brave, kick my doubts aside and have strutted on to be more of me.  What am I going to do in the year ahead? Ah, I am gonna shake my world some more.