May 2024 | aboutSG

Untitled – 31 May 2024

I caught some fever last Friday.
Been a week since.
I think I have recovered now.
But here are some recollections from the time I was perpetually in my bed. And some from after I recovered. These are not recollections per se – rather pieces that I want to capture somewhere.

Let’s go…

1/ You lose weight to start with. I lost 3 KGs.

2/ In the delirium induced by fever, you remember things that you never knew you knew. Like I remembered this young girl – she used to be an intern at VISCOMM and now she’s a kick-ass, award-winning screenwriter.

I remembered a friend-ish person who passed away a few weeks ago.

I had vivid memories of spending time with my ex-girlfriend at her house.

I am working on an event in Phuket next week and I was thinking about it a lot. Update – I am no longer doing this 🙁

3/ For some reason the taste buds die. Coffee starts to taste different. The thing that typically tickles your taste buds the most (Pani Puri) fails to wake up any emotions. Even the inhaler smells different. I can empathise with people like AK who have long-COVID.

4/ Whoop showed me that my recovery was like 1%. Then it became 3%. Then it climbed up to some 40. And that’s as normal as things could get. Oh, day before, I hit 100% on sleep for the first time I think. I slept for more than 8 hours. I dont think I’ve ever needed this much sleep but since Whoop says so and I’ve now managed to hit a 100% mark, I need to rethink this.

5/ I finally downloaded Bumble. Not my ideal choice – the anxiety and sadness of not getting matches is real. But I dont know what else to do. I remain too much of an introvert to walk up to women that I find interesting. What else can I do?

6/ Had to take up some working capital loan. I am really not cool about this taking loan, getting paid, paying back loan situation. Also, see #15.

7/ Walked to the C4E Sunset Club Point yesterday after the sunset. Was better – heat was less. The water was up to the ramp. Sat on top of the rocks. Realised that the view is better from up there. While there is something in touching the sand letting the water lap up to you, the view and the winds and comfort to the backside is better on top.

8/ Decided today in the morning that I will start reading again.

Read about 20 pages of Courage To Be Disliked. I will continue to choose self-help or biographies. No more books with lessons and all that. No more fiction for sure.

9/ Thanks to Rachna, we managed to submit the screenplay to SWA Pitchfest. To me, this is a big one. This is the first time a completed screenplay has my name to it! Now to go and shop it around and see if we can get someone to want to make a film about Aakanksha.

10/ Realised that 2 months of 2024-25 are over and we at C4E haven’t moved our backside on our plans to dominate the world.

11/ Grateful that I dont have to step out in the sun this treacherous heat. I know tons of folks are out and about and are working and all that. I respect them. I really am inspired by their efforts. I wish I could be like them. But I am not. So that.

12/ Last two-three days I have started to buy a muskmelon when I go back home from Starbucks. I cut it the best I can and then I eat it. I dont know if it’s any good for me but I do like the idea of doing something with my hand. No, I cant become a cook. No, I dont want to do fancy salads. This much – tiny bit – knife through the melon is all that I want to do.

Thing is, I’ve never had any taste for fruits but I am trying to cut on fried, packaged food and the best solution is to lean onto fruits. So that.

13/ I feel like snacking today. Have had some sugary cookies already. And I am sipping onto fizzy, sugarly, synthetic ginger-ale and coffee. If only I could come to a Starbucks everyday, not order anything and sit here to work, ISTG, I could change the world!

Let’s see what I end up ordering.

14/ I paid all bills in one shot yesterday – electricity, internet, mobile phone, GAS, cabs etc etc. I felt like an adult. But wait. haven’t I been an adult for like 22 years now?

15/ I also paid all my people. Love that feeling. I dont think I will ever want a CA to do that. Even if a CA does it, I will want to press the button. The feeling of paying people is unparalleled. Also, see #6.

16/ Grammarly has screwed their free product in want of getting more people to pay. Way too many notifications and pop-ups while writing.

Ok, enough.

More over the next few days!

Untitled – May the 12th

An untitled braindump.

A lot has happened in the last few days. And I mean a lot. From health scares to awareness of lack of money to getting stabbed in the back to taking the largest shot of my life to the decision to go to the mattresses. I wish I could write about all of it on a public forum. I know no one cares about it. I know that once am gone, all this is meaningless. I know all I can do is take lessons, give those to my folks and move on. So that.

Chalo, let’s write randomly about things that I am thinking about

1/ Ankita asked me if I could bring back LFW.

On a whim, I floated a form and I am gathering interest. Here. To be honest, I have mixed feelings about this. On one side, I get to write more. On the other, I am not sure if I have the energy or the time to do this.

In an ideal world, I would like to not worry about money and do all these things that enable others. But then we dont live in an ideal world.

2/ I am going to the mattresses.

If you know the meaning, great. If you don’t, well you dont. I am not explaining. But at this time, I am facing the biggest challenge that C4E has ever faced, after we became what we’ve become post COVID-19.

3/ Toto’s at Bandra

I went to Toto’s last night to meet some friends. It was a very very interesting meet. Multiple reasons

a/ I went there after like 15 years. The place is as buzzing, as expensive, as good as it was back then. I would love to meet the owners and learn about their story!

b/ While I was there, I realised that the best economic decision that you can make as a professional is to marry someone and bind your economic fortune with them. You may have an open marriage, you may not be lawfully wedded but once you start living AND EARNING AND SPENDING with someone else, you get to build an economic engine that in 20 years will give you immense wealth.

If you are in your 20s, find someone that is willing to “marry” you and you together build a life. The best-case scenario is when you can live together and limit your expenses.

c/ I realised I dont like traffic at all. I spent about an hour to go meet friends. I dont see the value in all that travel to meet folks. I know that I need to have deep relationships and community and all that. But I also know that all my energy gets sucked and drained in the commute. So that.

d/ All my friends there could only chat about LV bags, business class flights, Rolexes, sculpted bodies, curly hair and I dont know what all. I couldn’t relate to any of that chatter. A few days ago I stayed with a friend and his family and again the routine humdrum was about school, holidays in Europe and all that.

To be honest, there’s nothing wrong in that. This is what life is. May be I am a fool in chasing largeness – I dont even know what largenss could be. I mean all my friends have large lives – multiple houses, multiple sources of incomes, multiple holidays, multiple kids. And here I am, on the road again taking loans to make ends meet.

Lemme digress for a bit. I had decided that I would never take another paisa of loan. But in the last 10 days, I’ve had to take money twice. And the way things are I will have to take one more tranche towards the end of the month. Which is ok – this is a working capital loan, to be honest. But I need to be prudent enough to not lean on loans.

e/ I also realised yet again that I live a very unidimensional life. This is not new. And lately, I’ve been seeing signs of this all around me. Maybe I am seeking this only?

4/ Relationships

I’ve been thinking a lot about longevity and one of the tenets (apart from the usual suspects) is – healthy relationships. Of all kinds.

I suspect when you have great relationships, the stress hormones are not active enough to kill you. And if they are, the peace and harmony from these relationships would ensure that you dont die of stress.

So, I need to work on this.

In terms of relationships, in decreasing order of priority, I think we have the following kinds – romantic partners, parents, siblings, offsprings, friends, work colleagues, community, strangers and everyone else. Oh, and the most important is the relationship with self!

In my case, I think that the romantic partner one is the most fractured. I am ok with my parents (though they live away from me). I am ok with how I am with my sis, though I would like to be closer. The closest thing to my offspring is growing up fast and getting away from me. Sad but I can’t help it. And I dont want to inhibit her flight. Friends is something I need to work on. I have lately started to get more involved with friends from school and college (and I am struggling to be honest). I think I have a great relationship with my work colleagues. I am active in the community as well (work to honest, not locality etc). And I think I am ok with strangers – I operate from a place of empathy and trust. I assume everyone is good, unless they give me a reason to believe otherwise.

So, I need to fix these.

5/ The Village

All I do, all I am building, is this thing called the C4E Village. Right now it’s not a physical space but someday it would be. While that happens, I want to ensure that it does well. And I need to find a way to sustain it. And I need to protect it despite all odds. That’s it. Just writing this here.

Oh, the track of the day is this.

Over and out. See you folks next time!

Untitled – May the 4th be with you

Unfiltered stream of thoughts from a morning on a weekend (and some more days beyond the weekend)

I mostly start my posts with, “I dont know what to write.”

And then I dump my thoughts. And then something catches my fancy. And then I take that thread from the spool and start to work on it. Right now as I write this (I dont know when I’d publish this), I am sitting on the 47th floor of a high-rise in Manila, staring down to a mostly flat country, some high-rises in the distance, a bay beyond and then the ocean. It’s making me feel a lot of things.

Some are…

1/ I would like to live in luxury.
Right now I live in a tiny 1BHK that I find great by Mumbai standards. When I step out to friends’ houses and other places where my travels take me, I realise that there’s so much more about life that I dont know about. There’s so much more that I could experience. And I want to chase that – abundance, experiences, the novelty of the unknown, the thrill of access, the joy of community, the pleasure of enabling others and more.

2/ I like my mornings.
It’s 8 AM and I am listening to music and being busy with nothing specific (I checked email, read news et al). I could rather shut this and journal. Or meditate. To be honest, this post am writing is like a journal only. Just that this is a tad filtered compared to what I would write on my Roam. May be I will get back to a pen-paper journal? I dont know if I can do that well cos I know I dont like the idea of carrying a notepad. I dont know if my handwriting anymore. Let’s see.

I am writing another part of this at 7 AM, on the 8th May. Again, loving this feeling of being by myself and writing whatever is clouding my head. This blog has really come to become my echochamber and closest confidante.

3/ Am restless.
I dont know what to do with my life. For a change am ok with money. I just need to figure out cash flow management but apart from that am ok. I am rising up Maslow’s pyramid and I am finding it tough to navigate that. I’ve been working with a coach and even that is not enough.

There’s this tussle between the want and the need.

Want of a better life. Need to maintain what I have.

Want of growing 100X. Need of paying the bills.

Want of providing better for everyone. Need of ensuring they are paid on time.

On one side, am inspired to quit it all and go back to the safe havens of a job. On the other when I see my people do what they did yesterday (on the 3rd May), I am inspired to keep the village going. It’s through adding meaning to their lives that I find meaning in mine!

Part of this and the part beyond this is being written on the 5th May. But I like the cliched title a lot and I dont want to change it 🙂

4/ I was talking to VG about things in general and he asked me 5 people that I ?talk to outside of work. I realised I had none. Each connection, each relationship, each minute of mine is spent with (or thinking about) people from work.

Overshare but each of my deep relationships has been with someone around my work. So that. Now, I dont know if this is a good thing or bad. I know already that my life is fairly unidimensional where all I think about is work and nothing else. I’ve tried to find distractions in the past, including getting addicted to cheap dopamine – TV, Cricket, Films etc but for some reason, I feel very very guilty when I am merely vegetating. I am guilty of even getting into the MAFA (Mistaking Activity For Action) trap where sitting on a computer becomes “action” for me and I justify that.

So that.

Oh, in terms of people beyond work, I try hard to meet new people at each opportunity I get. I like the idea of being well-connected. I try and build as many loose connections as I can. On my last trip to Bangalore (some days ago), even though I was there for a day, I tried to meet new folks. And I did meet some. Of course, most of those folks won’t remember me after that night but I’d like to believe that at least one of those would stay in touch and at some point be of use to the village. I use the word use with mindfulness. I dont see people as objects. Just that I want to invest each morsel of energy in building the village. The two events from the night of the 3rd May (P3 and DD) and the messages from my people and stories of strangers have reaffirmed my belief in what I am working on. Just that at this time I am neither unable to explain that to people, nor I am able to find a revenue model for that. But then I think it will come to me with time.

Coming back. I dont have anyone that I talk to out of work. This may be a bad thing. This may be a good thing. But this is how it is. Do you have a way out?

5/ Health has been a recurring theme in my conversations.
And my inability to act on that front. And I know that I can’t be consistent with anything ever. I call this my inability to run a marathon. I know I need to not hide behind this excuse and do more but I am unable to.

Once I am back in Bom (which is Tuesday), I plan to drop everything and make health my priority. I’ve made such promises in the past. To myself. And to others. And to people that I dont want to disappoint. And yet I haven’t been able to act on it. I even have a “why” to be fit – live as long and do more – and yet I am not acting on it.

As I write this, it’s Wednesday the 8th. I slept at 10ish last night and I got 7 hours. Whoop tells me that my HRV is alarmingly low. I need to find a solution for that. I need to add some workouts to my life – I will do that. On the flight back home, I made an entire list of things and changes that I would make. No, this is not the first time I’ve made such lists. But this time I hope am able to implement this. The biggest thing I would do is get a coach to help me out – if nothing else I will get into some sort of routine. I need to figure money though, to pay for one. Know any “cheap” coaches that will come home?

6/ Attention deficit is a problem.
I was trying to read a book while I was on the break and I realised that I couldn’t focus on it beyond 2 minutes. And I’ve been a voracious reader all my life. To a point that I would read 100-odd pages a day. And I would read it all – fiction, non-fiction, anything. Now, I can’t do even 100 seconds. I am so used to multitasking, solving problems, and enjoying easy dopamine hits that I am losing my ability to focus. I need to solve for this.

Also, I was telling a friend the other day that I take 2 hours to get in the flow.

I need to work on it. I can’t take that long. Since I got the Whoop, I am realising that my sleep is not optimal at all. I remember that during lockdown I tried Naval’s 60X60 challenges (60 minutes of meditation first 60 minutes of the day) and I did manage a lot of days. I think I will get back to meditation. Luckily I still journal a lot – in public and in private – and that helps. This is a journal.

So, along with health, I will fix this bit too. Attention deficit I mean. I will make this the second priority. Health being the first one. I need to design my life around it. Right now, my life is optimised for work. So that.

7/ My mornings are sacred.
I do all sorts of things in the morning – work, emails, chatter from the previous night and all that. Even the thought of using my mornings for anything that is not work, I cringe. If I get on the workout bandwagon in the mornings, all my work would suffer. I need to maybe wake up earlier than ever? If I can be up at 430, I can wrap all my work by 7ish and then I can hit the gym or whatever? But then that means I will need to sleep by 9 PM. I think I can manage 9 if I can be disciplined. But then work, socialising, et al? Ok, this is a problem that needs to be solved. I will put my head to it and do it.

8/ Coming to the end of line in life.
In electronics retail, they have this concept of End of Line where once a product hits the peak, they stop working on it. The last few pieces are sold at rock-bottom prices and crazy discounts.

I think I have reached EOL in life. This means that my age, I can only take one more shot at greatness. In the next 5 years, life as I know it would change – at a personal level, on the health front – and others. So I can only do things over the next 2. So, things need to be done today and now. And I need to run faster. And I need to push more. I sat with AK and CM yesterday and gave them this spiel – that the two of them are my best shot at greatness. I would live a grand life vicariously – through theirs. I may never become a Sachin but with these two kids, I can become Ramakant for sure. And that probably would be the highest I would reach. This is a far cry from how I’ve lived all my life. I mean I’ve known since I was a kid that am a gift and I would be the richest man in the world. Today I realise that I probably would not even be the richest in the rundown building that I have rent a tiny house. And to be honest, this acceptance of a failed life is not a good thing. But…

But we persist. We continue to dream. Against all odds. Against age. Hoping that someday we would have enough. We would have abundance. And then we would hopefully make it to at least the top 1%, if not THE top.

So that.

Ok this is it. I shall publish this or else this would become an infinitely long blogpost with no end.

More later!