30 things I've learnt by 30

 So because I think feeling sorry for myself is an Olympic level sport that I excel greatly at, I was reading past posts on this blog and reminiscing the good old days.. aka my 20s. I came across the post "10 Reasons I can't get married" and Number 4 read I'm 24. This promptly tilted me down an I'm 30 spiral. Picture Rachel from Friends.

Source

So instead of feeling sorry for myself, I decided to write a post about 30 things I've learnt, realized, and been made to realize, sometimes rather rudely, by my body/life over the last few years, now that I've turned ancient 30.

1. Hindi is a pretty kick-ass language

Being one of those annoying 90s kids from India who grew up almost exclusively reading and speaking in English, I had the audacity to look down on Hindi as being too archaic and unnecessarily complex. As happens with most NRIs who haven't been living in India for a few years you develop a new-found respect and love for our मातृ भाषा (mother tongue). (Did I have to type that into google translate to get not only the Devanagari text but also the correct spelling? Yes, but Rome wasn't built in a day now was it??)

2. Grey hair is a part of life 

Source

The more you stress about them the more you seem to get.

3. Don't underestimate the power of a romance novel. 

It can restore your faith in humanity! 

Source

4. Learn to forgive yourself

You'll always do things you are not happy with or forget to call your sister on her birthday, because you're basically ancient, and can no longer remember anything, but the most important thing is to learn to forgive yourself.  There are enough judgy people out there who think you're not doing anything right *cough* every Indian aunty. If you start holding yourself up to these absurd standards, you'll be in a constant state of self-loathing.

5. Hindi soaps are the best cure for homesickness

And I don't mean that ironically! Where else will you spend 22 minutes laughing, crying, rolling your eyes and just generally huffing at the cheesy/mind-numbing stories, pray tell? It's like speed therapy, where you go into it feeling all sad and shit and coming out realizing you are so much better off than you thought. At least you're not stuck in an endless loop of we love each other, we hate each other, we separate, we meet again in a few years and realize we still love each other and... repeat. I mean my life has drama but at least I'm not an indecisive psycho disguised as an all-around good bahu. So..... silver linings!

6. Don't be a judgy fish! 

Image by【中文ID】愚木混株 【Instagram】cdd20

Einstein said, "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life thinking it's stupid". I'm a happy fish. I've learnt to swim in the water, and I don't need anyone telling me it would be better if I did something in engineering so that I can get paid more. I'm happy where I am #thanksnothanks mom!

7. Try. Fail. Try again. Fail again.. Fail better. 

Count the number of times you've heard that failure is a part of life. Go ahead count. I'll wait. Yup the phrase is said so often that it's almost lost all meaning. So instead, here's what I have learnt: Learn to fail gracefully. One of the most important things I've learnt in the last 30 years is how to fail gracefully (no you haven't you were stress eating a tub of ice-cream last week when something happened at work!) umm.. it's more of a work in progress kind of thing.

Would it have been better if I could have learnt to succeed instead? maybe but that's not half as fun to read about is it?

8. Fitbit - Stressbit

For the love of god don't buy a fitness watch. It body shames you into moving every hour or so. If I wanted to be fat-shamed I'd call up my mother. So thanks no thanks you spawn of Satan!

9. Learn to Listen

I'm one of those people who talk incessantly.. it's kind of the same as I write... a lot, on a variety of topics with a lot of side tangents. So, I've learnt to use my two ears to listen twice as much as I speak. For instance, do you know what I heard the other day because I was listening not talking?? O_O

10. While writing this post I've learnt that 30 things are way too long for a single blog post especially when you're the kind of person who goes off on long and sometimes unnecessary tangents. So instead we'll end this at 10 and I'll consider writing two more parts to complete the list if this post does well I mean if I have more to share!