Would I Believe Him?

[I wanted to start this blog with something like “The end of a year – and of a decade in your life – is always a good time for reflection on how you’ve grown” and I could not believe how old I sounded. Urgh. But I turned 30 on Monday and have generally been taking stock of where I am in life and I realized that I managed to accomplish some pretty cool things through the belligerent hellfire that was 2020 AD. I’m sure you did too. I’m writing this for myself – each of the things below could/probably should be blogs of their own – and so if you do end up reading, thank you and sorry for being self-indulgent. I will have some real writing for you soon, I promise. But you’re welcome to stick around. It’s a happy piece!]

I remember at the end of 2019 I met my best friend at her office gym to exercise together after work. It was 6pm and the view of the city at dusk from the Blue-chip Tech Company building’s penthouse was stunning. It’s the kind of view people move to New York for. I remember looking at her and the people around us and feeling like they had something I wanted. She seemed so secure in her career, making the money she wanted to be making, living in the apartment she wanted to be living in, satisfied with how she lived her life, happy with how she chose her friends and generally excited for the future. If our mid-20s had been about understanding what we wanted, her late 20s had seen her go and get those things. She had a base from which to grow; she had arrived into adulthood in the most beautiful, convincing way. I said to myself, I would also get to that place in 2020.

And so I did. I actually did it. I feel like I am there now. It is something I am going to give myself credit for. To be sure, I was already in a pretty good place – in an incredibly privileged place – and there is lots I did not do in 2020. I did not finally get a US driver’s license, I did not get speech therapy for my stammer, I did not marry Mary Hatch, I did not solidify my long-term immigration plans – or reconcile my disillusionment with India, for that matter. But here are five things I did do – five things I managed in the midst of a global pandemic. Five things I am happy about and proud of myself for. Five things that make me feel like I’m worthy of my 30s. If 2020 Shravan went back in time to that meet 2019 me at the gym that day and told me where I would be in life, would I believe him? I don’t know. It was possible but not probable. So here are my Christmas presents to myself:

1.     1. I got my dream job

I knew it was time to leave journalism at the end of 2019. I had a great boss and a wonderful team, but I was not growing professionally, learning any new skills or making anything close to what I deserved. Then, when the daily rigors of old job – my last as a reporter – suddenly became too stressful relative to my pay slip, I began a lockdown job hunt amid a crumbling economy. I knew I had to step into my long-term career. I knew I wanted to go from writing about climate issues to actively influencing them. I applied to my current job – leading marketing at a climate finance NGO – in March. After rounds and rounds of Zoom interviews, I accepted a generous offer in May. After months and months of visa application stress, I finally began work in late September.

I can say with my hand on my heart that I love this job. I love this organization – it’s a caring organization, a healing organization. I love my boss, my boss’s boss, my team, the people who work in HR, the people who work in IT… everyone. The work is interesting and challenging and so I learn new things every day and I see a path for me to grow. This is my dream job because I can basically be my authentic self at work and so work doesn’t feel like work. This job change was… huge. I cannot even begin to describe how important it was in my life. It was so difficult but it made me have to strive and be the best version of myself. My relationship with my parents, who helped me in the interview process, reached a new level of closeness and mutual respect. I can’t believe I get paid to do this work. I’m in love.

2.      2. I found an amazing therapist  

‘Therapist dating’ can be harder than actual dating. You have to find someone who accepts your health insurance, who has time slots that match yours and most importantly, who you feel comfortable opening up to. It’s hard to differentiate therapists from their homogenous profiles online. Sometimes you’ll spend a week looking for someone, then you’ll spend your co-pay on an intro meeting and find them awful and then you’ll question if you really need therapy at all and then you’ll stop looking for help for months and months till life stress boils over again. This happened to me a lot. Then a friend shared a therapist hunting technique that I’m going to share with you: set up three appointments with three promising therapists back-to-back or all on the same weekend and just see who you best vibe with. You’ll be able to compare them easily and you can just commit to three sessions with the one you like the most. ‘Therapist speed-dating’, if you will, served me well.

I found my dude in March and went to his office exactly once before Covid lockdown moved us to nine months of Zoom sessions. I had a lot of unspoken, unarticulated feelings and internal conflicts writhing around inside me and Craig helps me untangle them every week by asking me the right questions. He never tells me what to do. He listens – really listens – and takes notes and then helps me find the answers that are inside me by reflecting my statements back to me. He notes down my ramblings every week and so Craig's list has become my Saturday morning ticket to understanding myself. Therapy is by far the best $50 I spend a week. Sometimes I’ll go into a session thinking “I’m happy! Life is good! Do I really need this?” and then within 20 mins I am verbalizing an anxiety or painful memory that I have never uttered aloud or shared with another soul! I stuck at it and now I'm reaping the benefits. For instance, he has helped me identify that I was living a profound mind-body disconnect, where I lived only in my head and saw my body as another person, another being separate from me. And speaking of my body…

3.     3. I lost 15 lbs.

I lost 15 lbs. in two months and now I know how to lose 1 lb. a week in a sustainable, fun way. (I can’t believe I’ve become American enough to use lb. instead of kg but the secret reason is that weight-loss numbers sound more impressive in lbs., so I lose weight in lbs. and gain it in kg.) Since I became conscious that my body was unacceptably imperfect – when I was bullied at age 11 – I’ve seen losing weight as simultaneously essential and impossible. Learning to love, accept and mold my body seemed like an insurmountable challenge. Then, this summer, all that changed when I got a hand-me-down bike from my uncle, primarily to help me get around town sans Ubers and the subway.

I never learned to ride a bike as a kid so I taught myself at age 29 at Sternberg Park in Brooklyn. It was scary but I said to myself “dumber people than you can do this” and in three rides I got the hang of it. Then I wanted to figure out how much exercise a bike ride actually gives you, so I bought myself a Fitbit. Then I said I wanted to measure these results, so I got a weighing scale. I was 189 lbs. and it came as a jarring surprise. I began doing either a 5k run (500 calories) or a 20-mile bike ride (1,200 calories) every day, six days a week, and using Sunday afternoons to meal prep. My daily diet is oats & almond milk for breakfast, a spinach, bean and meat stew for lunch, and pan-seared chicken & baked veggies for dinner – all punctuated by fruit and green/black tea. I allow myself 3 cheat meals a week. This is my life now and it's delicious.

I lost 10 lbs. in the first month and 5 lbs. thereafter and this regimen feels natural and energizing and has even led me to sleep better. Maybe the boys from middle school were right and I’ll never lose my hand-me-down love-handles but when I look in the mirror I like what I see and love how I feel.  

4.     4. I figured out what I want from a relationship

One of the more terrifying moments of 2020 – obviously aside from actual terrifying things like Covid cases in my family and Arsenal paying Willian £220,000/week – was realizing that my whole approach to relationships was wrong. I had only been thinking about what I wanted my partner to be, rather than how I wanted the relationship to feel. This is another revelation that Craig helped me both diagnose and remedy. I used to say – get ready to cringe – that I was looking for someone who was highly educated, “successful”, ambitious, purpose-driven, globally-minded, etc. I thought I knew my “type”. Then, this summer, I dated someone who was absolutely not my type and she made me feel more comfortable, valued and exhilarated than anyone had done in years. We realized I had to do a lot of work on myself so we ended things cordially. And so, I got to work. Big, scary, life work where you have to put yourself under a microscope and come face to face with your flaws and deficiencies.

I realized that my criteria were not wrong per se, but that they were merely proxies for how I wanted to relate to someone, to feel around them. For example, I wanted someone highly educated because I wanted to feel secure: I linked education with intelligence, intelligence with financial stability and financial stability with a comfortable life. I have a better idea now of what I’m looking for in a relationship, including things like being able to be my authentic self by connecting both at an ‘adult’ level (through physical intimacy) and at a ‘child’ level (through humour). I realized I need both. And I’m OK to wait until I find the person that makes me feel the way(s) I want. 

This has lifted the fog of dating desperation that long clouded my judgement. I just can’t wait for Covid to be gone so we can actually storm dancefloors, visit galleries, warm houses, survey museums, catalogue Taco trucks, christen AirBnbs, and perform all the other dating pageantry that helps you learn about a new relationship. Being patient will be hard. But I think it’ll be worth it.

5.     5. I stayed sober

This was my third year of being sober – my third year of being the best version of myself. All the accomplishments above were only possible because I quit drinking in January 2018 and used that year to figure out how to live a full, fun life without alcohol. To be honest, I rarely even think about alcohol any more and certainly never feel any pangs to return to it. Life is good; life has never been better.

With the life I’ve worked to build for myself, every year of sobriety gets easier and more fun. That’s why I need to keep reminding myself that I’ve achieved something worth celebrating – especially in a difficult pandemic year and a time of so much other change in my life. I defeated my demon every single day through 2020. I used to turn to alcohol to escape my reality, to escape difficulty, to escape loss. The gift of sobriety is that every day you do not drink, is something to celebrate. There is nothing to escape. You get addicted to winning. My life now has reached a sweet moment, where every day is a victory.

So there you have it. Maybe next year is a disaster and we look back at this blog and laugh. But for now, I thank you for reading this far. I would love to hear your favourite accomplishments this year, because I know there are many. I hope you take time to reflect on your own strength and success and you find comfort in sharing the happiness in the lives of your favourite people. Merry Christmas!