While writting, I had 2023 playing in my ears.”
I’m writing this recovering from food poisoning, which is honestly becoming a thing now. Every time I sit down to write something real, my body is already somewhere in a reset. No food, no energy, just me and whatever’s left in my head after a few slow days. I love eating in bed — that’s just who I am. So when even that goes away, something feels off. It’s a small thing but you notice it, the way you notice anything that was always just quietly there.
And man, this baarish. I genuinely don’t understand how people love the monsoon. Everything slows down, the city smells different, prices are up on everything for no reason anyone explains, and I just started playing futbol again but now I can’t even step out without a runny nose. My whole rhythm got flipped. I had a pace going — gym, football, moving, doing — and now the season is just asking me to stop. At first that felt like losing momentum. But then I keep coming back to the other side of it. No distractions. No going out. No social pull. Just me, the work, and a lot of quiet that I don’t usually sit in. If I actually use this, something good can come from it. The restart is real, I just have to treat it like one.
These slow days gave me something else too. A lot of time to sit with myself, which I don’t always do willingly. I think I got a better understanding of my emotions through all of this. I’m still confused about who I am sometimes, still figuring out what I want versus what I think I want, but I’ll get there. I always do. One thing I did differently this time was step back before I moved forward. When I’m happy I get affectionate — I open up, I become more expressive, I do things I wouldn’t normally do. That’s just how I’m built, and I’ve always known that about myself. But this time I caught the pattern before it ran ahead of me. I noticed what was happening and I held it instead of following it. Held it and waited. Small thing, but it mattered more than I expected it to.
In between all of this I read a letter by Scott Adams and I’m not going to explain it here, I’ll just leave it below — just read it.
It’s the kind of thing you screenshot and keep coming back to. Something in it just settled in me. I know I’ll be reading this for years, pulling it out whenever I need to remember something true.
It also connected to something I keep thinking about with looking back. I’m not usually someone who does that — looking back feels like stopping. But there’s a version of it that’s different from being stuck. Being grateful for where you started, letting that push you forward, using it as fuel and then moving on — that’s not the same as dwelling. The rule I keep reminding myself of: don’t let your achievements carry you. You carry them. The moment you flip that, you stop growing.
I watched A Bronx Tale this week — Robert De Niro film, really good — and one scene just stayed with me long after the movie ended. A kid is completely heartbroken because his favourite player lost a match. Genuinely devastated, the way only a kid can be about something they have zero control over. And Chazz just looks at him and says it plain — your player doesn’t care. He’s going home to a sponsorship deal and another hundred thousand dollars. While you sit here sad, what are you going home to make?
That hit different, man. It’s not really about sports at all. It’s about where your mental space actually goes, who’s living rent free in your head, and whether they even know your name. After that scene I started thinking about all the things I give mental energy to — situations, people, outcomes I can’t touch — and how much of my own time that has quietly cost me. It’s not even about bitterness. It’s just accounting. What am I spending, and on what, and is it building anything?
Because I also finished my movie this week. And I’m not happy about it. Got bored somewhere in the process and never really came back to it the way I needed to. I don’t fully know what to do with that flat feeling — the strange emptiness that comes after finishing something you worked on for a long time but grew away from in the middle of it. But I’m publishing it. That decision is made and I’m not second-guessing it. Sitting on it won’t change how I feel, and waiting for the feeling to improve before I ship it means it never goes out. The emotion I have to move forward with right now is simple — it’s done, let it go, build the next one better. That’s it.
Right now time feels very subtle. A lot is happening in my head, not much is visible from the outside yet. I think that’s just what becoming something looks like before it becomes visible. I’m still 23 with a lot more to figure out than I sometimes want to admit, and I think that’s okay. I think that might actually be the right place to be.
Neymar retired this week. My guy. My absolute for a long time. And I sat with it expecting to feel heavy and it just wasn’t quite there. What was there was quieter — a real appreciation for the whole run, for everything he gave, and then that same question from the movie coming back around: he’s going home to make another million. What am I making? Not even 100 dollars right now. So I can appreciate the era, feel the end of it genuinely, and still know there’s real work in front of me that I haven’t done yet.
It was a good run. Moving on from things — even things you loved, even things you didn’t choose to end — is just growing up. I think I’m slowly getting there.
-Mumbai, Office, 8th July
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