Reviewing 2013 - 1st half

It is the last day of June today, making it the completion of the first half of 2013 as well. Half a year, and how much have I progressed from the point I was while cheering up with my besties at the Chicago Navy Pier at midnight with loud music, warm hugs, glittery fireworks and freezing chill from the lake?

• I have successfully lived for another 6 months - yay! just like everyone else reading this post - but still it's an achievement. Life is the best achievement and greatest reward for me. Let me acknowledge that first!
• To begin with, I got my PhD defended - the biggest "for-the-record" achievement of mine so far. That means I have managed to pull up a decent 180 page dissertation and successfully convinced a bunch of well-established geeks that I am worth being counted as the newest new-bee to their elite circle. Not bad as a start? This includes publication of a conference paper that ensembles my, and only my contribution. I have also pulled my 2-year-long-pending, please-get-this-outta-my-table journal through as well - well, almost..
• I have visited home after two and a half years, and that too for over a month. Yes, for a struggling grad student from a God-forsaken place like I'm in, this is an achievement.
• I have managed to gift my near and dear ones well enough to my satisfaction in spite of my not-so-flourishing finances and ever-declining bank balance. More importantly, I am talking to my family everyday in spite of all sort of time crunches, specially for my cutest little baby niece and nephews.
• I have become more confident at driving and now I think I can drive alone in the busy traffic of a city using GPS. Not bad!
• I have done decent amount of blogging, some amount of writing and little bit sketching. I have watched movies alone, read reviews, books, blogs, explored new music - somewhat good enough for my lazy me. 
• I am sleeping and getting up earlier than before.
• I HAVE LOST WEIGHT. Believe me when I say I did. and yes, in spite of being a avid preacher of "curves-rock-diets-suck" philosophy, I can assure myself that I look better than how I did last year around the same time.
• I traveled to my friends alone and with my friends.
• I lived literally without phone and once-in-two-days internet for 5 weeks (in India).
• LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST - I have identified and realized so so many things about myself. It is like seeing myself deep into the eyes in the mirror, and still not getting enough of it. I can internally see this realization leveraging confidence in me, and I am becoming more independent than before. Does that mean I am really a complete individual person with perfectly controlled mind and reserved expressions? No... I am still warm, immature, passionate, crazy and intense - just as I am cold, silly, lazy, cranky and calculative - and I still prefer crying alone. But it is just the process that is seeping in me naturally - the process of becoming more complete than before, more independent than ever, more open and self-conscious and understanding. It still hurts, and pains, and wriggles. But I am learning to unwind too - I am cultivating my self. In the process, I am successfully training myself to think and act, resolve and act, ignore-your-emotions and act. I always want to be able to the master of mind, but I realized that on the way, I lost track so badly at times. Trying to restore my self back with some amount of success.

But does all this even mean anything? Are they actually something I really did, or something that happened to happen. Keeping aside the dissatisfaction inculcating from my ever-rising expectations and never-acting self, the fact still remains that - 

My PhD is a result of my efforts in past 4.5 years,I was long due an India trip, I should have been a pro driver by now, I wasted more time than I put use to, I am still working very hard on yet very far off from my "the year 2013 resolution of being emotionally independent" (can you believe I am still on a so called  new year resolution when it's almost July?), I am still consistently depressed, I should and could have traveled more, I should have written more and read better stuff, I am again back to spending too much time on internet and phone, I have not worked on my health and fitness regime as promised to myself and my parents (and to the doctor), My backache is worsening - so is my health, I don't have a full-time yet and I should try harder, I could have been far more productive in research, I lost some friends and made no new ones, I still can't get up before 7.30 and keep my house messy..... blah blah blah....

Sigh!

But there is a silver lining to every cloud.

My next post will be on my bucket-list for the second half of the year. Yes, it will be! Earlier I never knew what I am going to do next, but in 2013 so far, I have realized the lack of discipline in my life, followed by the benefit of some basic discipline and trained myself to some so far. These bucket list and review yourself blogs are part of that training.