Salam from my virtual corner, as December slowly winds down. This last month of the year is feeling like a mix of movement and looking ahead — travel, finishing a somewhat hard long read, packing lists forming in my head, and the typical reflective and familiar end-of-year thoughts that arrive whether we invite them or not. We all tend to take a stock of our blessings, achievements and challenges we faced during the year, how we can next year better!
San Francisco: Fog, Footsteps, and Familiar Wonder
A trip had to be planned to San Francisco – a city that I lived in for couple of years as a young mother with two little kids around 2002. After that long hiatus, I had the chance to visit the city twice in 2024 after and then a holiday party was arranged for second week of December this year. The festive feel of December was nostalgic…San Francisco to me has always been a city that always felt like a conversation between contrasts — fog and sunshine, quiet streets and sudden energy, old favorites and something new around every corner. This trip like the last ones, was full of lot of walking, having fun and also relaxing with some great friends. Sometimes it is a good idea not to try to capture the moments too tightly, especially when winding down the year, and this trip became that relaxing one…
The Culpability – A Somewhat Unsettling Read
I had started Culpability last month and finished listening to it on my flight enroute to San Francisco. It is a book that was harder than expected to start, drier than anticipated to read and stayed with me longer than I thought it would. On the surface, it touches on systems and technology, but at its core it’s really about people—ordinary, well-intentioned people—and how responsibility can blur when decisions are filtered through processes and data. The book explores harm that can happen without obvious villains, through silence, comfort, and the tendency to trust systems over our own unease. It doesn’t offer easy answers or dramatic conclusions, which somehow makes it feel even more relevant. It is one of the books that compelled me to take my laptop out and type the review right away – here are my thoughts on the book! I’m looking forward to discussing it more during our local book club when we meet next year.
New Read, Mid-Flight
On the flight back to Dallas, I started reading Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It by Kamal Ravikant, and it arrived at just the right moment. The ideas were simple yet grounding, and the mantra shared in the book offered a beautiful perspective on approaching the new year. I found that just practicing it quietly during the flight helped me relax — a reminder that sometimes, calm doesn’t come from big changes, but from small, intentional pauses.
New Year, Soft Intentions
As the year comes to a close, I am looking at my capabilities to what I should and can commit to, especially when it comes to promises made to my own and as I do that I find myself thinking less about rigid New Year’s resolutions and more about gentle intentions. Less pressure, more presence. Less fixing, more listening — to myself, to my energy, to what feels sustainable. If there’s a theme I’m carrying into the new year, it’s tending to wellbeing in quieter, more consistent ways. Raviaknt’s book definitely played a role in shifting the perspective. And this reminds me, I had started a post on healthy narcissism long time ago but never published it and is now on my to-do-list that I would love to share with my previous readers.
Looking Ahead to Spain
This year has brought so many travels on my calendar – we are heading to Spain for family vacation end of the year and come back first day of January. I haven’t started packing yet, but the anticipation is there — the kind that shows up as mental notes about streets I want to wander, meals I want to linger over, and the pleasure of being somewhere unfamiliar and above all, enjoying my family. Travel has a way of opening up space in the mind, and I’m looking forward to that pause as the year turns.
Until the next tea break…
