my 2023 wrapped

welcome to introspection ft. harsehaj! ⭐️ i’m harsehaj, an 18 y/o always up to something in social good x tech.

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onto today’s topic: my 2023 wrapped 🍾 

i didn’t just exist in 2023, i lived.

this year, i’ve grown such an immense appreciation for life. i am so fortunate to have collected countless beautiful memories filled with trials, tribulations, beautiful cities with more beautiful people scattered throughout, and everything in between. it feels like i’ve lived multiple lives just within this year, and i am endlessly grateful for the growth i have experienced as a result. 💗 

january me and december me are so different in our perspectives on life and the world, yet our desire to perpetually chase joy remains unwavering.

before i get into the actual 2023 introspection, let me recap what the last 12 months looked like for me. i’ve categorized them into my 4 arcs (not necessarily quarters, just the groupings that were most significant). i also posted my recap in photo dump format on instagram. 😋 

1) senior year crunch (jan-march) 🪩 
2nd semester of senior year is always an interesting time (fighting demons trying to not skip class). not to mention, all of my canadian university applications and ib coursework was due during this senior year crunch arc between january and march. these were my last few months of high school, and i’m glad i was able to make quite a few more memories imprinted within my high school’s hallways. 🏫 it was during this time when i got the news that i was a recipient of the morehead-cain scholarship, a full-ride to attend unc chapel hill. a whole bunch of other offers came rolling in, and it felt like i could made my pre-grade 11 self so proud. her biggest priority in life was getting into waterloo software engineering (LOL) — so glad i could fulfill that for her as well.

2) catching flights like crazy (april-july) 🛩️ 
i caught 16 flights this year, and 14 of them were solo. it was kind of crazy witnessing how accustomed i slowly became to navigating airports and planning trips on my own. at one point in april i was booking my next trip to la while sitting in my hotel room in dc. i want to give a quick note of gratitude for emergent ventures for funding a lot of the personal projects that required travel this year, it enriched my work and perspective to a great extent. in june, i finally graduated high school and i was immediately whisked away to europe for a month with my family. we had been dreaming of this trip for over a decade, and i’m so happy we were able to sail along the amalfi coast, mix up sparkling water and distilled water countless times, relish in the luzern rain and pick up chocolate croissants and a nearby bakery all together. 🥐 

3) big decisions for big changes (august)
(this is the month i started introspection ft. harsehaj!) okay travel is over buddy, it was time to actually decide what i wanted to do with my life for the next year. school, or take on the funded gap year option offered by morehead-cain? jk. more travel! i had the coolest opportunity to be part of the explore fellowship’s first cohort which took place for a week in nyc & kent, conneticut in august. by this time, it’s mid august and i was decided on taking a global gap year. the problem? i didn’t know what i was going to do. i had been applying to internships and stressing over the unknown endlessly all summer, and was feeling pretty hopeless. 😵‍💫 i went went through a lot mentally this month, which is why august alone gets its own arc.

somehow, everything ended up coming together and working out during the last week of august: i was accepted to join the residency’s founding cohort in san francisco, and also received an internship offer at a tech startup in nyc. i knew i wanted to be in sf for the first 3 months of my gap year, and the prospect of building alongside a like-minded community was so compelling. so, i booked my flight to san francisco, and that was one of the best decisions i’ve ever made.

4) joyful autonomy (sept-dec) ⭐️ 

i spent the last few months of 2023 in the bay area. i’ll keep this short, and sweet because i already wrote a reflection on this arc earlier. i learned a lot about myself and self-discipline now that i had full autonomy in every aspect of my life. it was challenging at times to stay focused, but i can honestly say i experienced more of what life offers in those three months than i have my entire life.

3 lessons from 2023 (i’ll spare you from 23):

1. let go of comparison, and then you’ll be free to reach endlessly high 🛸 
   i noticed a shift in my self-ambition as soon as i stopped focusing so much on catching up to others’ achievements. i’m running my own race and want to take other pitstops along the way. there’s no fun to my own life if i live it trying to replicate another. my life is my very own, and realizing that has helped me climb so ambitiously. i don’t feel restricted by expectation.

2. the only time to start is right now 📍 
   i spent the first half of the year succumbing to my over-planning tendencies. i wasted a lot of time preparing and planning, instead of doing and experimenting. there’s no use planning for a full product launch, if you haven’t even tested a proof of concept. taking “bias towards action” more seriously and living in the present has unlocked so many amazing memories for me in my professional, personal and social life.
   

3. having a multitude of specific goals for the year isn’t effective ✔️ 
   this time last year, i wrote “4.00 gpa in university” as a goal for 2023. clearly, things changed — i didn’t even end up going to university. looking back at my 2023 goals, i realized they were almost too specific and didn’t account for the inevitable way life changes and different opportunities arise. i’m taking a different approach this year rooted in my reflection for this year. my goals are more focused on general areas of self-improvement from this year, and doubling down on progress in my professional life. i’ll give myself one big quantitative metric to work towards in each bucket, but i won’t specify beyond that because the journey to reach my goals can end up being very different from how i’m envisioning it now. a year is a long time, a lot can change.

my areas for improvement from 2023 🌱 

generally speaking, my goal is to 10x these areas of my life for 2024. i’m still giving more thought for my quantitative buckets, will share those soon. (:

• 💭 seeing my projects to the end before moving on.

• 💭 being more openly vulnerable and having hard conversations.

• 💭 improving my consistency with diet and fitness. 🏋️ 

life really is great, i promise

trust me when i say life has been so much more positive and happy since i started believing it is. 💝 life is so amazing, and internalizing that has made this so much more real, because no matter what obstacles i may face i tell myself that i’m so lucky to be alive in this moment and to experience all the beautiful things life has to offer.

a positive outlook has left me always feeling hopeful, warm and happy about life. here’s to a happy 2024, and many more years to come. it’s going to be amazing, if you believe it.

happy new years. 🫂 

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