2022 Year-In Review

It's that time of the year again and according to tradition here's all about how 2022 was. 2022 was a crazy ride with so many adventures, new beginnings, and of course, some very bad times. Here's three highs and three lows from my reflections on everything that happened in 2022.

The highs :-)

• Travel, travel and more travel

  After moving to Stockholm in November of 2021, like most of people who move to Europe do, I went on quite some trips exploring the wonderful and vast continent. Visited Norway, Belgium, France, Denmark, Germany and Poland. Of course, explored beautiful Sweden as well - visited close to 25 parks/nature reserves and visited 4 cities. Met friends I made while traveling in Asia after ages, who knew I would meet them while traveling in Europe! All in all, had the most solo trips and learnt a lot during the past year. Looking forward to a lot more travel in 2023 :P

• Peak self exploration

  When you live alone in a new city after almost 25 years, you have a lot of, like literally a ton of time to reflect on your thoughts and this is a great opportunity to explore what you love to do and what you don't like. Its not easy to deal with all the time, but definitely makes you realize how you have been spending your time and push for optimizing it to do the things you love. I fortunately got a lot of time for self reflection in 2022 and wish to make 2023 a lot better from all the learnings.

• Gratitude

  Starting life in a new city, being able to visit family and attend marriages of friends, catching up with a lot of friends and making a lot of new, learning a lot of new technologies, getting promoted at work, visiting so many countries, learning how to cook and manage a home, learning tiny bits of Svenska, trying out new sports and experiences, working on my photography hobby a lot more - Huge gratitude for all of it that happened in 2022 and thanks to everyone who made all of this possible!

The lows :-(

• Going through a lot

  As much as I enjoyed all the travel and new experiences, went through a lot of dark times as well, from panic attacks to anxiety issues and lot more medical problems. Sometimes, no matter how strong you think you are, you hit rock bottom and dark thoughts hit you like a storm. Thankfully, I was able to cope with most of it and got lot of help to deal with them (Trust me, asking for help is the best thing to do!). Life is not all fun and joy and hope to overcome these a lot better in the coming years.

• Away from family

  You only realize the value of something when you don't have it anymore. This is so true and I experienced it IRL this year. Family time is golden and I so wish I could visit and spend time with my family a lot more. But, you can't have it all and its something I will have to sacrifice for a bit longer to tick some more boxes in my list of dreams and I hope I get the strength to go through with it.

• Clarity - Or the lack of

  I spent most of 2022 without ever having a plan of what I should be doing and lacking clarity in any of the goals I thought I had. My priorities changed a lot and lot of the things I thought is what I should achieve in my life suddenly started feeling meaningless. Entering 2023, I'm still not clear with what to do next and I hope to find an answer to my questions about life...

Hoping for a lot more happiness around, life-changing experiences and travel in 2023!