Well, well, well.
It's been two years since I've managed to string together anything coherently resembling a life reflection. ツ
My excuse here is that last December (2023), some of my most important arcs were left hanging untethered and unresolved. Fast forward a year, most of those arcs have landed and I find myself starting up on some new and exciting ones! More to come on that front soon (but not quite yet).
This is a 2024 piece so here’s what you get — If 2023 were an album, the song titles would read as follows:
John Muir Era
Solo in Japan
The Breakup
Roommate from Hell (Stress Dents in My Nails)
The Indefinite Hiatus
AI, AI Everywhere
Dating App
Sunrise Alarm Clock
My Phone is at the Bottom of the Pacific Ocean
Air Mattress Season
Adult Friendships
India
More Than Friends?
Now, onto 2024.
As I reread my old recaps, 2024 was a weirdly parallel year to 2021.
But 2022 was an amazing year so if this cycle continues, I’m ready for 2025.
Oh, 2024. Never again.
In 2024, I saw myself turning a little more into my parents every day, decided the day-after-drinking tiredness is never worth it, started to prefer art that is lowkey ugly but different over anything that is obviously pretty but same same, drank more coffee than ever before, lost more sleep than ever before, almost never woke up early, picked up meditation, forgot how to relax, saw my first few friends get engaged and married, cocooned in my hometown, finally started wearing my glasses, and took up an interest in audiobooks.
Alongside these minor software updates, there were two major ones.
I.
As the prophecy hath foretold, my frontal lobe evolved. With this newly enlightened formation, it sunk in that this one life is the one I have, specifically with relation to my career.
Why am I burning unhappy hours building someone else’s dream?
For many years, I’ve had a miniature and mighty tiger mom sitting at the helm of my consciousness preaching salvation after just a little more delayed gratification.
The years of pushing upstream have propelled me to the fortunate shores of financial stability, optionality, and a job I’ve always dreamed of, but at age 25, this tiger mom’s singular focus on delayed gratification is beginning to lead me astray.
This year, I’ve reached an inflection point where downstream, flowing with my natural instincts while reconnecting with my inner child, is where I want to go.
Growing up is the solidifying of both intelligent and unintelligent patterns into our being. In many ways, I knew more at age 7, driven by instinct, than I do at age 25, driven by logic. While structure offers the comfort of certainty, rigid frameworks can only exist with serious holes in a reality that’s infinitely complex.
I’ve come to believe that the most truthful and helpful frameworks stem from trusting your gut, maintaining simplicity, and allowing a healthy room for uncertainty rooted in the humility that we are only human—there’s no way to really truly know.
In action, this looks like taking a deep breath, and giving back some control to 7-year old me. She knew what she was doing.
(Side note: At some point in 2023, Eliot surfaced the earth-shatteringly brilliant term “goofy master.” It has served as an amazing classifier for the kind of person I aspire to grow into by striking a joyful alliance with my inner child — namely, Uncle Iroh.)
To tackle this constant uncertainty I feel about my career path forward, I’m relying on the mantra, “What you do will lead to more of the same.” While the next step might not be perfect, small steps in a direction that feels right should do the trick.
II.
Apart from a career/life pivot, 2024 handed me another gift: proper solitude. Not the gentle kind that comes with friends down the street, but the echoing kind that comes with far away friends and living alone.
When September rolled around and I moved out of my apartment, trading one quiet space for another in my hometown, I had logged enough solo hours to notice something curious: isolation helped me carve new internet habits and new paths in my brain.
(Disclaimer: While this isolation was helpful in some ways, I was definitely not living as God had intended and January will mark my re-emergence into society.)
Through solitude and some careful curation, the internet transformed from a desolate wasteland of cheap dopamine and envy into my vibrant and inspiring window to the world of people.
Born into a gray world of B2B SaaS workplace productivity software, I dug myself into corners of the internet where soft and creative engineers built playful technology that’s meant to help you feel more human and alive in a digital-first world.
My internet feeds quickly became dotted with delightful creators broadcasting who they are and what they stand for. By planting their flags in the digital soil, they served as curators for little pockets of the internet where like-minded communities gathered.
I grew a deep, deep, deep appreciation for how the internet, when wielded intentionally and carefully, can be a powerful way to find or build a community specific to who you are.
Understanding this positive use case for the internet re-sparked a dormant desire that I’ve held for many years: to share more of my work online. As anyone who has held an inkling of this notion knows, the immediate follow up thoughts are overwhelming and terrifying. “What would people think if I put myself up for judgement on the internet?”
This is where the prolonged solitude comes in.
Through the slow weaning off of relying on other human beings for any needs (which is by no means an optimal way to live, do not recommend), the anxiety began to lose its footing as, “What would people think?” became “What people?”
I’ve become far more comfortable with what feels like totally embarrassing myself on the internet, as long as it’s good and honest. I know what feels a shout into the void could actually be a message in a bottle sent out algorithmically to people who might resonate and find their way back to me. My hope is that together, we can build out a pocket of reality that feels more like home.
This year has left me a little weary but wiser. I’m stepping into 2025 with a ton of optimism and excitement for what’s ahead. As a friend recently pointed out, I tend to swing between life extremes — a useful way to gather data but an absolutely terrible way to exist as a human being. So for 2025, no grand plans — just a simple intention to find balance, reconnect with my inner child, put myself out there a bunch, and take small, small, baby steps towards the Shubha of my dreams.
