Darn New Year Resolutions!!

"Happy New Year." "Happy 2019."

It’s the start of yet another new year and the time for that darned question once again: “So, what is your New Year’s resolution?” Now, of course it’s not mandatory to make resolutions, but there is so much social pressure around this question that you kind of feel obliged to have one. Sure, I could have said, “Nah, don’t have one this year,” giving the impression that I usually do - which would be a big fat lie. Or I could make up some easy-bland one like “I’ve decided to give up smoking” or “I’ve decided to eat healthy,” which would be even fatter lies because I don’t smoke and my favorite cuisine is junk food.

On a whim, I decided to make some real New Year’s resolutions for 2019. Over the next few days I thought of all the flaws that I wanted to work on.

This was the moment of truth.

We moved into our present building at my urging specifically because it has a state-of-the-art gym. In the past, I must have gone to the gym as many times as the number of years I’ve been living here, i.e. seven.

I could come up with a long list of reasons I didn’t have time to go to the gym, but my body doesn’t care. It simply continues to become podgier and softer as muscle mass explores oblivion. So, before my muscles go from forgotten to extinct, I have to do something. I need to find that charming gym instructor or any other motivating factor to work on my once-hot-body-not-so-cute-now NOW itself!! Resolution No. 1: Check.

I have always felt a tad wary of the pace of technological advancement and got my first smartphone only a year and a bit ago. As soon i was home from the Apple store, I began to familiarise myself with the gazillion Apps on my iPhone. Thinking I had finally arrived in Techland, I discovered soon enough that the world is already starting to move on.

One fine morning, while my motivation for work in the week was still somewhere at the medium to high level, a conversation at lunch with colleagues steered from the comfort zone of financial markets to technology. Specifically to chatbots. "Uuuhhh, which freaking animal in heaven is that?" , I cried internally! Chatbots, I was told, are meant to replace all of our apps, giving conversational answers to our queries on weather, movies, travel and more. No apps. No search box. And here I was barely starting to understand how normal apps functioned. I understood from that conversation that there was no point in fearing technology. It's constantly evolving. it’s the future. I’ll just have to keep pace with it at the risk of being outdated myself. Resolution No. 2: Check.

Being finally armed with New Year’s resolutions, feels like a big step.

I’ll worry about the execution part some other time 😉😉 .