Thanks to a sleep tracker, I realise that I probably need to fix my relationship status. Read on.
I recently got myself a Whoop. It has been telling me that I sleep about 5 hours and thus I need more. Last night I decided that the world be damned, I will sleep at 10. And I woke up at 6ish. So a solid 8 hours. As per it, I slept for 7 hours and 39 minutes (compared to about an average of 5-6 hours).
See this chart…
Now, logic says I should’ve woke up fresh, ready to take on the world and conquer it all.
But no, I feel the same like I do on most days. Groggy. Slowly. I can feel various parts of the body start cranking and come to life. I can feel various parts of the body complain about various kinds of pain and moan with various kinds of discomfort.
I want to justify that my body has been scarred in various battles over the years but clearly, that is not the case. It’s at best scarred with all the food I’ve gobbled over the years while shaping the couches and beds around houses that I’ve lived at.
I dont feel any more refreshed, any more rested, any more changed that I do on other days. In fact, something different happened. I woke up with the feeling that I should’ve woken* up next to someone.
And I need to address this feeling. For numerous reasons.
One, I haven’t felt like this in a while.
My last stable, serious, relationship was a couple of months before COVID put us in a lockdown. 4 years ago**. And over the last four years, I’ve got used to having the entire bed by myself. I can’t recall when was the last time in the last four years when I felt like waking up next to someone. So this is new.
Two, I had always imagined that I am the kind that would be a lone nut. My eccentricity and life choices would make me an unsuitable man for anyone sane. The odds of finding someone who’ll accept my shenanigans is like zero. And all my life I have trained myself to operate as a one-person army. I mean I neither feel the need for having someone around me and if I do feel that on rare days (like today), I quickly remind myself that all modern relationships are built on the bedrock of convenience and comfort and capital and these things are often easy to screw up. In my case, I saw one of my serious relationships go south because I didn’t have money. So, when I feel the need to wake up next to someone, this means that I am not fully trained and I need to do more work in my head.
Three, lately, I’ve been flirting rather seriously with a friend. The kinds where am actually thinking about what to text her and how to make her smile. The kinds where I anticipate her replies and make decision trees in my head on how the conversation would flow. And no, I haven’t done that in a while. Thus, maybe all those conversations and thoughts about being with someone have switched on those neurons and receptors that signal affection. And this need to have someone on the right side of the bed could be an outcome of that.
This third one is easy to solve, to be honest. I know that these conversations are temporary and the road leads to a dead end. I am way too invested in her life and I know that my eccentricity (see point 2) would lead to jeopardy.
Four, I am used to living a certain way and doing things in a certain manner. These things may count as eccentric (again point 2) but these could also be dismissed as negotiable behaviours. For example, I dont want a kitchen in my home. I want AC at 22. I want music playing all the time in the house. While a potential occupant of the right side of the bed may dismiss these as “cute” behaviour, over time, these start to become points of contention and then a pillow magically appears between the line of control on the bed. And then it’s all downhill from thereon.
So that.
I am sure there are more reasons. But I do have this feeling and I need to find a solution. And I dont know how to solve it.
I will see if the feeling persists and lingers on. If it does, I will find a way to solve it. If it doesn’t, I can continue to use the right side of the bed to store my laptop, iPad, phone, book and all that.
Time shall tell.
With this, over and out. Thanks for reading my bedtime and bedside stories.
*Repeat. Woken up next to. Not slept with. ** I have had a few conversations where I thought they would evolve into relationships but they did not.
A simple conversation over whatsapp helped me think about how much money I want to make. Read to find out.
Here’s an unfiltered, unedited chat between AA and me. The conversation is about money – a topic that we often shirk around.
PS: When you read this, please excuse typos 🙂
So, out of the blues, AA asked me,
“Hi, respond whenever you want but respond definitely.
Why do you want to keep earning more money? What drives you?
Context: I am figuring out my relationship with money, which has so far been extremely traumatic and I have tried my best to deal with it.
And… Last night, a reason occurred to me that gave me a satisfactory answer. I want to deep dive into it and build a better relationship with money.”
I said, “i want to make money to be able to live a better life and give better life to the ones around me”
I then quoted Kabir and said that I am inspired by that intention of making enough for self and for others. And then I pointed her to this post about C4E Village.
She followed up with,
How do you describe ‘better’?
I said, afford things that I cant today. i dont have a car. prak doesnt have a publishing company. chandni doesnt have a house. upgrades in life.
She asked,
Do you keep a range in mind, ki itna to earn karna hi hai for these to upgrades to be actualised?
I said, “nope. there is no end to upgrades. it’s mindless chase. from 10 i want 100. from 100, 1000. from 1000, 10000. zeros keep adding. i look at the next goal. like my next goal is to have 2 years of salary in bank. right now I have -2 months of salary in account. for my team I mean. and then after that goal is to get a car for myself”
She asked further,
Ah, understood. We can’t achieve everything at once. Set goals, and jump to the next when one is complete. Makes a lot of sense.
Do you despair? Do thoughts of not being able to get these done occur to you? If yes, how do you keep up and show up?
I said, “a lot. and that keeps me going. i dont want to die a poor man”
She asked,
Interesting. But when upgrades are endless, where do you draw the line of being poor?
I said (and this is the most interesting part), “i have some benchmarks. i want to be able to afford unlimited starbucks coffee. i dont want to take a train ever. i want to be able to buy a birkenstock chappal whenever I want. i want to be able to buy a mac. i dont want to take a loan for a medical emergency. i dont want to take a bus / train / metro for intra-city commute. and not jsut me – all my people. and this is the base level. wait rent. i dont want to worry about my rent for the next 24 months rolling (i dont want to buy)”
I said, “i dont think thats optimal use of money at this stage”
Thankfully she did not push me more. If she did, I would not know what to respond with. So that.
After this, we moved on to other things. But while talking, I realised that when someone asks me seriously how much I want to make, I dont really have a tangible answer. I mean I want to make a billion dollars at some point in time and I will. But most people laugh at it. And even when I respond with all the earnestness, people dont take me seriously. Why would they. At 41, my net worth is negative!
To best honest, I don’t know where I picked this billion as a number but it has become my yardstick. Maybe cos it’s a significantly large number that puts you in the top 0.1%ile of the population (or whatever %ile). I checked. There are 3194 billionaires in the world as of Jan 2024. And I am not even counting the ones that are not reported.
Anyhow. That’s not the point. The point was, what is my immediate money goal?
And this conversation helped me answer that. Thank you, AA.
So yeah.
The immediate goal thus is to make…
11 lakhs (debt that I need to pay back)
288 lakhs (at this time, I pay about 12 lakhs to my people each month. I want to have 24 months runway in the bank)
about 12% more for each year (inflation)
Thus, the number is 375 lakhs. Or 3.75 crores. In cash. In bank. At the current team size. Once I add more people, the number will go up.
Once I get to this number, I will start adding upgrades – first to people’s lives (remember air travel, Mac, Birken etc etc.), then to myself. And then hopefully become patron to some young folks and pass on the baton!
So that.
Time’s short. Need to make 3.75 crores. Time to get going. Lessgo…
A long rant. Please ignore if you get triggered easily.
Feel like talking to someone. Have no one. And thus this blog. I started writing this last night at Starbucks. And then I got interrupted. And then I slept. And then I feel in that weird loosie thingy. I hate to be unwell. Anyhow. Let’s dive in.
1/ No Pity Party
After you read this (whoever you are), please do not reach out and text me. I will talk about a few things that may seem to be like a call for help. This is not one.
2/ Music
I was at the beach today (on the 4th). I dont know why but I somehow remembered these lines, “aise bhole ban kar hai baithe, jaise koi baat nahi“.
I tried my best to hum these like a human being must. But I was unable to. I sounded like a cat screeching a steel plate. That to be honest is not important. Important is that I realised that I love this song. And since I’ve been listening to this track on a loop.
Here. Listen in.
The other day I told someone that if there’s one thing I’d like to change about myself, it would be my inability to sing well. I would love to learn. Not sure if I have the time. So that.
3/ Friends turning into strangers
Lately, yet another very very very close friend has turned into a stranger. This one hurts a lot cos with this one I had imagined that I would be with till my time comes and I walk into the jungle. It clearly wasn’t meant to be.
Like all other times, I’ve taken my lessons and moved on. The biggest one of those is to not get attached. And lean on Epictetus and Aurelius at these times.
To be honest, I don’t know why I am unable to keep my friendships for long. I do all that you need to do to nurture friendships – often giving in more than I must. And yet at the end of the day, I find myself by myself. I can never forget COVID-19. Not one friend stood by me. If not for the steadfast support of my parents and the kindness of strangers, I wouldn’t know what I would do. I probably wouldn’t be here.
Each time a friend walks away, I console myself that the world has about 8 billion strangers and if I’ve survived for so long, I would stay afloat for a few more years. And all I need is a few more. I am old.
Plus each time I start feeling bad about not having enough friends, I start to look around for folks that I could be a stranger and a shoulder to. The satisfaction that I get out of helping others who are often left with no other option is unparalleled. I think that’s what my raison d etre is – offer a shoulder.
No, I am not depressed. Or even sad. I am merely recording my emotions. And in public. I would not add a judgment to the emotion. Guruji taught us that. I must go for another 10-day session. Maybe in September. Let’s see.
4/ Work
A lot is up at work. Like a LOT. In caps and bold. I can’t even begin to list it here. Ok, lemme try. I mean why would I bring it up if I dont want to talk about it. Here’s a list.
A. Hiring – I need to get some many folks at C4E. And I can’t find them. Here are the reasons – there are in order…
my inability to pay a lot of money (fuck you, startups) – I can only pay so much and everyone wants to be paid the moon and a Mercedes. I wish I had the ability to pay.
my ability to “teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea”. The work we do may sound small on a day-to-day basis but how we do it and where we want to be is a large large thing. And I am unable to communicate and thus I am unable to rally people to be around me.
lack of culture fit – we are big on culture and it is really tough to find people that fit into our scheme of things and we fit into their scheme of things. Unless we fit like hand and glove, we don’t want. I’ve made hiring mistakes in the past. And I dont want to make those again. So I often go slow on this.
work ethics mismatch – most people in this day and age do not want to work hard anymore. Most. Hard. And I respect their choice. Just that I dont think I can do what I want to do around people that are not willing to work hard. I know that I am average. And that means I need to work hard. And if I have people that dont work harder than me, I will have some discord with them at some point. And that means I need to find people who are willing to work hard. If not harder than me, then as much. And such people are rare. At least they are rare in my network.
ambiguity – we are very non-conventional. And that means that whoever wants to be around us needs to live in the ambiguous structure that we are. And this is something that not a lot of people are comfortable with. So that.
There are more reasons. But I hope you get the drift.
B. Growth – I am of firm belief that stasis is death. And that means we need to grow. And we need to grow like I want us to grow – in a sustainable manner, in a controlled manner (not like cancer), in a manner that allows each of us to thrive, go beyond our abilities, learn, get better etc etc. And I am finding that expecting such a growth is tough. So that.
Tough because we are construed as slow. We are construed as non-aggresive. We are constured as easy going. Perception. Sigh.
This also means that I need to amplify my efforts with BD. And I suck at that. I simply do not know how to get new business. I dont call people on the phone.
C. Services – Right now we offer social media marketing, content, brand strategy and other allied services. All these are services. And that means there’s no objective metric to evaluate what we’ve done. And this means that my people are often thinking about work even after work hours. And I dont like this. And I want to change this. And I dont know how to.
D. Higher value work – I want to move to a place like Singapore or Dubai where am able to charge more per hour. And I dont know how to do that.
So yeah, these. There are more things that I worry a lot about. Let’s see where I find a solution.
5/ Challenge of Consistency
I’ve known this for a while that I am designed for a life where I work on short, high-intesity projects that require short bursts of work. Short could be up to 3 months. Anything longer, I know I am not the right person. Thankfully at work, we now have people who thrive on doing the same thing over and over again and we are ok. If not for them, I would have been a ruin by now.
Even on other things like health, I can get started but I lose track often. Funnily am very disciplined and I would have bet a lot of money that a disciplined person is consistent. But I am not. I can say no to alcohol, cigarettes and other such sinful temptations. But I dont know why I give up when it comes to health. Wait. Health is the next bullet point. Lemme talk about consistency in general. I started yoga and I stopped after a few days. I started writing everyday but I stopped. I quit coke and then I got back to it. I did not touch coffee for a while and then I got back to it. I even fold my bedsheets and make my bed each day as soon as I wake up!
Thing is, I tell the world and all my kids that to get to something, you need to lose something. If I want to get fitter, I need to lose this inconsistency. If I want to be a published author, I need to lose the procrastination habit.
Naval says that you need to judge a fitness trainer by their own physique. If I want to be an inspirational business person, I have to be more effective and I have to be better. I even know my why — live till 120 at least, help others around me, go further — and yet I am unable to get consistent. I dont know what to do about. Get a coach?
At work, thankfully I have a team that works on day to day things. And I am eliminating things that need me everyday. So that should be ok, I hope!
6/ Health
The last few weeks have been tough. They continue to be. When I thought I was ok (last evening), I got an upset stomach yet again. The ankle has been acting up lately, to a point that I cant even walk properly. The lower back is fucked – this I know can get fixed if I fix my posture. The hernia has flared up. NAFLD is visible all of my neck, elbows, ankles, waist and all that. The finger remains broken. Anyhow.
The point is to not describe my car-wreck of a body. The point is, I am probably at a point in life where I am staring at a one-way door to ruin. If I dont start acting now, I will not be able to live thrive for long.
And I know that for health, all I need to do is eat right, do some workout and sleep well. I sleep well to be honest. If I can find a solution to food, I will be ok. Just that with all the travel I am unable to. All my life I have avoided getting a cook (cos the mess that food makes) but I am now willing to hire one. I have started to ask around for that. Let’s see when I find a solution.
I think this is it.
Oh, one more thing…
Like I said in the beginning, if you read this, I dont want any sympathy or whatever. I am over most of the things listed here in. I had to let out of my system and I am ok now that I have written here.
