Tag: Whiplash

Wk 29-25 – Weekly Notes

Updates from Week 29 of 2025.

Jul 20, 2025.
Sunday.

I normally start writing this on a Friday evening. And by Saturday I have a vague draft in my head. And then by Sunday I polish it. Today, I am sitting on this at 7:15 PM on a Sunday. So, I will not be able to do reviews and edits. And thus, if you spot any errors or bugs, you know what / who to blame.

Also, this week has been the fastest since the beginning of time. Days blurred into each other and it came to a point where I lost track. I wanted to take a breather on the saturday (very unlike me) and I planned for it. But I couldnt. So, I havent had the time to reflect.

Without further ado, lets dive in.

Oh, am listening to this – Forever My Friend.

I discovered this at a Starbucks. Far cry from the world of Terence where says, and I quote…

Parker’s a young kid, pretty good on the sax, gets up to play at a cutting session, and he fucks it up. And Jones nearly decapitates him for it. And he’s laughed off stage. But the next morning, what does he do? He practices. And he practices, and he practices with one goal in mind: Never too be laughed at again. And a year later he goes back to the Reno and he steps up on that stage and he plays the best motherfucking solo the world has ever heard. So imagine if Jones just said “Well, that’s okay Charlie. That was alright. Good job.” Then Charlie thinks to himself “Well, shit. I did do a pretty good job.” End of story. No Bird. That, to me, is an absolute tragedy. But that’s just what the world wants now. People wonder why jazz is dying. I’ll tell you, man – and every Starbucks “jazz” album just proves my point, really – there are no two words in the English language more harmful than “good job”.

Anyhow.
I heard it.
And I love it.
And here it is for your viewing / listening pleasure.

💭 Highlights, reflections and notes from the past week

PS: As always, these are not in any order.

1/ The F1 Film
I am yet to watch this film. VG has told me to see this a 100 times and I havent been able to find time to do so.

Each person I talk to seems to be raving about it. And I havent had the time to see the film. Let’s see when.

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2/ The #TNKS film
Staying on films, its a well known secret that I want #tnks to be adapted into a film.

I’ve even written a script. I shopped it around a bit and I realised that no one is as interested in it as I thought they would be. Plus I didnt want to invest time, energy or effort into chasing and pushing. So, the project went on a backburner.

But lately, with AI, I think it may be possible!

Naman and Vishal have taken my bait to accept it as a challenge and work on it. They’ve even made a teaser. See the teaser here.

What do you think?

I’ve given them a 6 month window to see if we can make a film out of this. The best case scenario? We would have a film. The worst case? They would learn.

So that.

Ready. Fire. Aim. FTW!

3/ Walking has been a challenge.
I have said this multiple times and I say it again. Mumbai and India is not built for walking. I know people who do it despite the dust, heat, strays, traffic and all that. And no, I am not those people.

While in a different country, I can easily get 10-12K steps in. Here, despite all the concious effort, I cant get more than 6-7K.

I know folks in Bangalore and Pune and Goa and the hills find it easy. But again, I am not there and I dont see myself there either in the forseable future.

But then I want to be fit and till I snap out of my slumber to start lifting weights, I need to start walking. Any tips / ideas anyone?

4/ Figo Mag
Balram showed me a copy of this magazine (see it here – Figo Collective) that a couple of people put out. Love it.

Reminded me that I’ve wanted to create something tangible that people can touch and feel and play around with. Brought me to another point that I told C while walking around. People who chase one singular passion all their lives end up creating things that move you so much that you start questioning the meaning of your life and all that. Just that while you are in the questioning zone, you are comparing your life of a generalist who’s going wiht the flow with someone who’s chased things with a singular passion!

I have three images for this. Here.

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5/ AI experiments
I tried to learn n8n and I found myself struggling with it. And, its not a great feeling. to bes honest, I dont want to learn how to code but I want to be able to take advantage of things. Especially these tools that are now lot more accessbile to us. The things that enable us to do more!

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6/ Speed and Urgency
Life is anything but predictable. So, sooner you do things, better it is. And I am unable to rally people around me to run with a certain speed. Even when I push for things, I’ve seen that I am unable to bring about a change. I need to learn how to be more convincing.

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7/ Writing Cohort
As part of Meru, been running something for active seniors where am assisting them in writing their biographies. I have one person right now and its a brilliant place to be. Each interaction teaches me new things, makes me challenge my existing notions and at the same time enriches the repotoire of my awwareness.

One of the lessons from a session was to not hoard books. I was told that since there’s only little time, you will probably not re-read some of your favorites and thus its better to give those away and help people discover your favorites.

Today, I met Parth for lunch and gave him a couple of books.

Oh, fun fact, when I met him, I told him that I was once fascinated by Kurutoga pencils and I could see on the Amazon page that I bought one in 2018!

PS: In case any of you wants your elders to write their biographies, please let me know.

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8/ Health.
Multiple concerns.
More spots. More headspace.
Seem to be forgetting a lot. See this.
Unable to control what I eat. Wont talk more.

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9/ Personal Brand
I have to find a way to build my personal brand. I think in the times we are alive it has to be in shape of video. And may be text. For someone who’s hated his face all his life, this is a tough one.

With Adulting, I have started to release some of my words. I need to now accelerate it. I want to start doing things like MFM where they routinely get to talk to interesting people. I have the machinery and the meachnism and all that to manage the release. I just need to shoot!

Come on, Mr Garg!

Maybe I will ready fire aim at this and record some. The only times I have is towards the evening, post office hours. I want to cram in workout, reading, experiments and all that in it. I will have to find a way to record these too. Adding to my TDL for the week.

Let’s see when.

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10/ Three Cups of Tea
Datar told me about Three Cups of Tea.

I will save you the effort of clicking. From wikipedia…

The book’s title was inspired by a saying Haji Ali shared with Mortenson: “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family…”

The point is, recurring games with recurring people.

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📷 Some Photos from the week gone by

Here are some photos from week 29. The one I want to post on this blog is…

Source: Twitter

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🈺 The LARGE objective from the week gone by?

Book 2
ISTG I want to pick this again.
I dont know how.
I have way too many things happening to think about this.
May be I will drop this as well?

PS: Dropped 2025 Plan a few weeks ago.

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☑️ What did I get done last week?

This is a one-line report on progress I made on various things that are important to me. I will only talk about things that I got done. Shipped. Not WIP.

PS: I have skipped this for the last few weeks. I HAD to bring it back this week. So, things that I work on (in order) are…

  1. Health
  2. Meru
  3. C4E
  4. Brand SG
  5. People (Family, Friends, Strangers, etc)
  6. Book2
  7. Shauk (Music, Films, Poker etc)

Health. No action. And I’ve not had the best last few days. I will give myself a -1 on this.

Meru. Moved the needle a bit. However it is not enough. I need to do more. I will give myself a -1.

C4E. No action from my side. But things seem to be ok there. All credits to folks at C4E. So, a 0.

Brand SG. No action. HAVE TO PUT IN A LOT MORE EFFORT HERE. At this time, I will give myself a -1.

People. No action on this. I’d say 0.

Book 2. Lol! -1

Shauk. Nothing. So, a 0.

So the overall score is -4 for this week. Need to buckle up.

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📊 The tracker from the last week

I missed this last few weeks. This past week I have been deliberate in filling this in. Here we go…

The first couple of days were good. I slept well and had great recovery. And then life happened. And then work took over. And then it went downhill. I’ve also had many more days in the red / yellow zone compared over others!

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📖 Interesting Reads from the last week

Couple of reads.

1/ Seth Godin on Terms of Service.

2/ Naval on Arena. He says, “So the right way to learn is to actually go do something, and when you’re doing it, you figure something out about how it should be done.”

3/ From Sahil Bloom -A very useful list of things that you could immediately act upon, especially if you are young.

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🧠 Reminders from last week

This section captures things that I want to not forget. I will copy paste these week on week and track updates. I will also add these to SG’s Office.

Skipping this week as well. I will get back to this next week.

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🥡 So, one thing that defines the past week?

Blur.

This went past by too fast. There was a lot of work and very very long days at Meru. Need to find a way to streamline those.

Oh and in the previous weeks, the one-word reviews have been… Fast, Uncool, Disappeared, Experience, Grind, Busy for Nothing, Regular, Getting back to action, Slack, Busyness, Action, Survive, Looking Up, Survival, Taste, Community, Respect, Money, People.

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—
Phew!
Lemme know what you think.
See you around.

Oh, and this too shall pass!

PS: This series of posts is inspired by Thej and his weekly notes. The previous editions are here: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09 (missed), 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 (missed), 16, 17 (missed), 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 (missed), 23, 24 (missed), 25, 26, 27, 28

PPS: Please do point typos.
Grammarly is not working well and I don’t have energy to cut paste edit this in some other spell check thing.

PPPS: In case you see me being inconsistent in anything – work, writing, reviews etc, PLEASE do point out.

Wk 06-25 – Weekly Notes

Notes from Week 6 of 2025.

10:25 AM
Starbucks, Versova
Let’s see how long do I take on this. I’ve started a Forest timer. Let’s see.
Update: Made numerous calls in the middle. Publishing this at 14:06 PM

So, this is my favorite time of the week. Where I am by myself. And I sort of journal what’s happening in my head. I do a recap of the week. I dump all that I need to get out of my system. Call it flushing. Some things make it to the blog. Some dont (the ones that dont, get to my Roam). The thing that I am most careful of is that I dont delve in the past. and I dont want to worry about the future. I am present. Thinking. Cataloging. Actioning. Just the act of sitting at one place and writing and publishing is nice. In fact, I often think that if I could just write and pay my bills, I will do that. But then, that’s alternate reality. I need to act on whats up today!

Oh, I am listening to this as I write.

Here are sections (I want to change this but I will do so at some other day)…

What I was supposed to do in the week gone by. And my report on the same.

A/ 2025 plan.
This has been open for like 2 months now. I met Neha last night and she mentioned that she’s been seeing make these plans for 3 years and no action. I am still poor, fat and all that. Vivek says the same.

But…

I remain a thick skinned person. This is my yearly ritual and I will not trade this for anything. So, at some point, I will get to this. Parking as sgp1 and todo.

The tracker from the week that went by.

Here’s the tracker from the last week.

I ate a lot. I walked some. I spent a lot. More or less the emotions were in control. My streak of daily updates is good too (I’ve moved those to @altsg). I had a REALLY bad day couple of days when someone shat on C4E on a public platform. But now that I look at this chart, apart from that one red and yellow window, I was mostly ok.

This is surprising. There’s a disconnect. My daily twitter posts reflect otherwise. May be I need to write my posts better? Or maybe I need to capture things better. Will be more mindful in this week.

In fact, J said that for someone who claims to be a Stoic, I am moved a lot by my emotions. She’s not wrong. Must be more mindful.

If you see this, please tell me what you see that I am missing?

Photos from the week

Here are some photos from the week gone by.

Oh, btw, I tried to find a way to embed Google Photos into WordPress. I found a plugin as well. But I was too incompetent to get it to work for me. IF you know wordpress well, would you want to do this for me?

Interesting Reads

Adding this section from this week on. The intention is to capture what left an impact on it. And have my people read these and debate.

  1. Triangle of Talent by Shaan VP. FUCKING EYE OPENING.
  2. Derek Sivers on How to Spark a Movement. I see this often.
  3. Imperfection by Dharmesh Shah. Loved loved loved it.
  4. This presentation by Paras Chopra where he makes a case about why India needs to build our own AI Model. I have my disagreements but he is the man in the arena. Also, Paras is inviting people to work with him to build those models. Some of you may want to apply. Going by his reputation, he will ensure that it reaches fruition.
  5. This piece on Atoms and Bits.

There are more links and things that I read. I share those on this group. In case.

And this brings me to highlights, reflections and notes from the week.

I will lean onto my Roam and Daily updates for this.

In no order…

A/ C4E – a LOT happened at C4E in the last week.
And here’s a quick summary.

  1. Reputation. I dont care about mine. I may live or die. But C4E is a village and I will not have ANYONE call us a scam or a fraud. I am ok to not meet your expectations or whatever. But I am not a scam. I will work harder than anyone else you may find. You know, more chappal than anyone else. But I am NOT a scam. The sad part was that apart from me, I dont see anyone else at C4E care for the reputation! I wrote more on my daily update here.
  2. Premium Pricing. I will restructure C4E to only charge a premium pricing. I may die hungry but I will not work for anything that I am not comfortable with.
  3. People Ops. I will ensure that we treat people better. We are mostly good but I want to take it up a notch. We HAVE to be the best when it comes to people.


B/ Health
I am at that age now there I am seeing multiple health issues. I have something wrong with my heart and I need to see more docs for that. Skin seems to be breaking out. My back hurts perpetually. I really need to fix my hernia. I need spects. I can go on and on.

I need to work on this. And I will. Starting today, I am changing my identity to that of a healthy man. I will do each thing that you expect a healthy person to do. Including working out.

And this will be more important as I go along with the startup that I am working on!

C/ Farheen 
Spoke to this lady. She’s all of 23 and WOW. My gut says that she will do a lot in life and go far. But let’s see. She offers social media marketing, SEO and allied services. If you are on a lookout, you may consider chatting wiht her

D/ Dubey Ji at Marine Drive
Just yesterday, I was at Marine Drive and I did what I do each time I am there. Get a massage. And of course got talking to the masseuse. And he told me about this person – Dubey Ji. Apparanty, he’s the guru of most of the masseuses on the Marine Drive. The important part is that Dubey Ji is now retired and each of his shagirds give him a tiny sum each day! I would love to be that where all my kids are doing well and I am merely living vicariously thru them!

E/ I got a new phone.
And I dont feel any emotions towards it. It was important to capture. As a young person, each time I got a new phone, I made an event out of it. I realised that it was no longer the case.

F/ AKs website is up after a month!
So cool! The world needs more of her. Here’s the link – akforthevibe.com

G/ C and Krishna
If I were to make a list of people who believe in SG, Krishna and C will probably top the list. And I have been unkind to both of them over this week. And I need to fix it.

But…

I don’t know how. I know both of them will read this post and both of them will say, “its ok”.

H/ Took a loan
I had decided that I will not take a loan again. But this month I had to. And by the looks of it, I will need to take another one. I dont know when this cycle will end. Let’s see.

I/ The AI Fomo
I talked about it last week too. And its getting all the more real. TBH, since last week, I have made some progress. I am more aware. I have read more. But I still dont have enough to give me comfort. I need to find that.

J/ Worth Living For
Prof Kavi Arya mentioned this in a conversation. He said something on these lines… “Most people tend to think about things that they want to die for but this approach was refreshing – what are you willing to live for?”

This opened by eyes like nothing else had!
I am willing to live for a lot of things. And no, these things don’t mean leisure or pleasure.

K/ Other things that I want to capture but I may not spill too many words on those.

  1. Updated my Work With Me Page. After I got the inspiration from Hardik Pandya’s page.
  2. Gokul NA. Each time I speak with him, I am inspired to do more with my life. I REALLY wish I could drop everything and work FOR him. He’s a rare person that I want to work FOR. And not WITH.
  3. May get to work as a marketer on a project at IIT Bombay. I am not getting paid a lot but I would like to get the experience of being at IIT often. Maybe know more students and all? Oh, on my previous visit to IIT, I bumped into Mayank Pareek! Talk of serendipity!
  4. Films business. I HAVE to do something about it. I will have to restart from scratch now that I am out of TRS but I will do it.
  5. I have a crush on a 51-year-old!
  6. I’ve been missing Steve Jobs.
  7. Made some tough calls that I was avoiding for a while. Some more tough calls need to be made. Will do those in the coming week.
  8. Met Arun Kedia for a coffee. One of the best meetings in a long long time. More notes in my Roam.

Ok that.
Phew

One large takeaway from the week?

In one word?
Money.

Last week, it was People.
This week, its money.
I don’t want to write more here (context is on my Roam). In case someone wants to know more, you know where to find me.

PS: Reminds of KWAN – love, respect, community AND the dollars too!

PPS: Now that I am on films and trailers, I saw this and it brought a lump to my throat. Happens each time. And then I saw this.

Ok!
This is it!
Lemme know what you think.
Gotta go.
See you around.

Oh, here are the previous editions: Wk 01, Wk 02, Wk 03, 04, 05

PS: This series of posts is inspired by Thej and his weekly notes.

030821 – Morning Pages

A longish post on the darkness in my head and the light shown by the story of Richard Williams.

5:41. Woke up a few minutes ago.
Saw Whatsapp first thing in the morning.
Saw a video by Vijay Yadav. This one.

Then I saw Nobody’s trailer on AnSr’s recommendation. Here…

Almost cummed in my shorts. I mean the team from John Wick + Saul (aka Bob) + Music + Visual Delight. Wow.

Also, this is the second film since yesterday that I have been tripping over. The first one is King Richard sent by VG.

This film is based on the life of Richard Williams (better known as Venus and Serena’s father). King Richard touched me like no other film has, in the recent past. I mean it talks about an ambitious man that wants to see success through the success of his daughters. Will come back to this film in a bit. Lemme park it here. Point A.

So, I feel human after two days.

Human as in, physically, there are no lingering pains anywhere in the body. I feel refreshed, energized, and all that. It was probably aided by the fact that I have been resting last two days. I had slept at 10:30. So good 7 hours of sleep. Or maybe because I did not eat crap yesterday. Whatever worked yesterday, I hope it works today as well.

In contrast to this feeling of greatness in the morning, yesterday was bad. So bad that it was probably the darkest of the last few days. It may sound like hyperbole but I could only survive because of two things – 1, Naval. 2, my ambition. Will come back to this in a bit. Parked point B.

So, for some reason (money situation primarily), I spent all of yesterday questioning my life choices. I mean where I am is an outcome of the choices I’ve made and the way I’ve acted on those choices. Clearly, I did not do a good job at either (choices and actions). If things were bad just at work / career front, I would still be ok. But things have been pathetic at other ends also. Lemme share a chart that I maintain on my vision board. I don’t think I’ve ever made this public. But here it is. As of today morning.

A screengrab from my Vision Board

I don’t know where I found this chart from but I think it’s a great way to evaluate and measure where life is. And you can then reflect on what needs fixing. On my chart, I can see that I am failing at all 8 important things in life. The only saving grace is my family (and even on that, I choose to live away from my parents).

Of course, like any other thinking, feeling, evaluating individual, I want to fix these. And these dark days are occurring frequently and like Steve would say, if things arent good for a few days on the trot, maybe it’s the time to change those. Let’s see what I change. And how. And when.

Lemme talk about King Richard.

Coming to Parked Thing A, King Richard.

Here. See this. In case you haven’t.

I could relate so much to King Richard. I had tears flowing when I saw the trailer. I bet the film will win all the awards there are! I wager that it would get at least 10 Oscars.

It is after all a story of one man’s fight against odds, the chase of impossible, trust, faith, patience, hard work, grit and more. Oh, and of ambition.

For all the use of the word ambition in my head, thoughts, and actions, I am as big a failure as they come. To a point that it hurts. And it’s suffocating.

The days when I am not busy with the general humdrum of life, you know, the days when you can take a pause and think? Those days I spiral so bad into the literal abyss that I take literally a week to get out of. I must admit that the days I go AWOL on friends and family, I am not physically unwell. Rather I am suffering from dark thoughts about where I want to in life and how far away from that I am. In terms of money wealth, impact, reach, work, fame, notoriety, even fitness. And the worse is that from where I stand, I don’t see things improving at all.

As I age, these bouts of dark days are happening with more frequency (I know I’ve said this already) and it takes longer to get out of those. The escape mechanism I had of taking a car and hitting the road is no longer a viable option. The other escaping method was to eat like a mad man, switch off the phone, and sleep. Even that doesn’t help anymore.

This is where I lean on what I learned from Naval. Will come to it in a bit. I want to stay with King Richard right now.

So, the other thing that I picked from King Richard is the reinforcement of the belief that I will probably not be a massive success as an individual. Rather I may be cut for being that person in the shadows, the one that works with these superstars and shapes them. You know, someone that sees their success come to life via others. In Richard’s case, it was his daughters. In my case, I am not sure. I mean I do have a few young ones that I am investing into. But I am still far from seeing them reach anywhere. I just hope that I don’t end up like Vikramaditya in Sur. Anyhow. Who cares.

I like the idea of enabling others. I just hope I am able to contribute to their lives and make superstars and massive successes off them.

The other thing that I want to talk about, from King Richard, is this entire thing about giving a hard time to the ones that are working for you. Remember Whiplash? I mean the entire premise is this hard-love for talented apprentices. Of course, I remain conflicted about what I take away from that. On one side, I like the idea of hard work, determination, sacrifice to achieve what you potentially can. And on the other, I know that mental health issues are real, especially with the dopamine-laced brains of kids around us. After I saw King Richard, I think I am leaning towards being a tough mentor. But then, to be one, do I have what a Richard had? Or Fletcher?

I dont know. Time shall tell.

Parked Thing B. Lessons from Naval Ravikant.

Lemme talk about Naval and Ambition.

So I read this tweet from Naval that said something like this – you can’t control your thoughts but you can observe them and choose to react to those.

Yesterday was one such day. When I was mindfucked. Probably because I was unwell and there were other things playing on my head. So I went walking. I walked real slow. I did like 5K steps in 2 hours. And while I walked I did not have a companion with me. You know, things like phone calls, music, videos, chess and more. I did not even pause to take photos that I’ve been trying to last few days. I merely watched my thoughts. And I tried not to react to the non-stop dark thoughts about my inability to do things. Or my inability to hold onto friends / relationships etc. I merely observed the thoughts as they came and went. It was tough considering I had to observe traffic in / around Lokhandwala as well. Lol. Bad timing.

So I while I was observing my thoughts, my head kept swirling back to the definition of success that I want to live my life with. You know, the outcome of ambition. It dawned on me that I believe success is the long-forgotten Kabir Das ka doha. It goes…

Saain itna dijiye, jaame kutumb samaay, main bhookha naa rahoon, sadhu na bhookha jaaye

Kabir the poet

Further, here are the things that I thought would look like success.

Mastery over time. When I can be the master of my time with 100% certainty. Right now, I am at about 5% in terms of how I plan my life and time. Long way to go.

Financial Freedom. When I no longer work for money. And I can choose to work on things that I want to, even if I am not rewarded for those things. Right now, I am in debt. So far far away from financial freedom.

Plus, I do not have those ambitions where I want to reduce consumption, etc. I really want a lavish life with all comforts and all that. I want to be able to buy anything from anywhere without thinking about the cost / price.

Giant with a shoulder. When I can support others around me with whatever they need / want. And then I want to help others in whatever way I can!

That’s it. Three things.
Wow, that simple!

Funnily, as I think and write about this, family (my family, not my parents) doesn’t feature in this. Maybe I will change with time. And my personal goals of Everest, Marathon, etc do not fit in here as well. Hmm. Funny.

So yeah.

This is about it from the walk yesterday. A lot of this was probably triggered by King Richard. And by the general failure that I’ve been. Films do have power like no other. Must must must fastrack the non-existent films career. Come on, Universe!

I guess this is about it for the day. Realized, I’ve been writing for almost 2 hours now! Oh, and here’s streaks…

  • OMAD – 1
  • #book2 – 0
  • #noCoke – 145
  • #noCoffee – 0. Had two.
  • #aPicADay – 0
  • Money spent – 30 + 232. Adding this from today on.
  • Killer Boogie – 0
  • 10K steps a day – 2
  • Surya Namaskar – 0
  • 10 mins of meditation – 0
  • Minimaslism Counter – -2
  • Morning Pages / Meditations – 235

260521. Good Job!

I talk about how negative motivation is a thing and how I get affected by all the emotional and yet rational things that people throw at me.

7:56.
Woke up a few minutes ago. Slept at around 11. Was tired af. No, I did not walk. I did not do Surya Namaskar. Nothing. And yet I was tired. In the head. Plus I worked from where I live. I still refuse to call it home. This is one of those houses that I really hate. Can’t wait to get out of here. Coming back. I even slept during the day, even though I had a venti Americano. I don’t know what to do about this sleepiness during the day. None of my friends that I seek medical advice from seems to have an answer. Sigh.

So that.

Yesterday was one of those days that began and ended in a jiffy. I don’t even know where it went. Plus the aftereffects are so severe that I don’t know what to write. I am so blank. So nonfunctional. And this when I slept well for almost 8 hours. More than 8 actually. So, not sure what’s wrong.

Anyhow.

So lemme try and talk out loud about things that affect me.

Let me talk about the emotional blackmail that friends and family pile on you. Often inadvertently. They are well-meaning people and are acting from a good place. However, the thing is, people tend to act from the lens of their experience and their background. A thing that has worked for them in the past may or may not work for you. And this is where things do south.

Let me talk about one of my bosses that I admire and can’t seem to stop thanking for all that he’s done for me. Let’s call him A. So A ran a fairly busy business and was on the road a lot. That meant that he had very little f2f time with his team and most interactions were on emails and phones. Now, this is way before the time when even kids know what to do with Zoom and how to behave appropriately on these non-personal mediums. Thus when talking on the phone, the context would often get lost. Often things would get construed differently. To a point that people would find it tough to cope and all that. Plus what made things worse is that A couldn’t use anything but the ‘negative motivation’ to inspire you. Negative motivation is where you when you get 98% marks, you are reminded that you could have done better to not let that other 2 getaway. Mind you that the parents goading you for this missing 2% are proud of your achievement and they are happy for you. It’s just that they are designed to talk like that. As a child, you may find it tough to understand this behavior. But if you dig a tad deeper, you’d realize why they spoke to you as they spoke to you.

See this clip from Whiplash for context.

So, every time we would do a great project, A would point out tiny flaws in the team, rather than praising us for delivering the impossible. Back then, I used to loathe him. And I would hate him.

But then I realised, he is doing it for two reasons and two reasons only.

  • A. He has been trained like that. He sees that as an acceptable kind of praise.
  • B. He probably saw potential in us. To do more. To excel at what we were doing. And thus, push us.

Could’ve been more. But these two.

Now, in the team, people reacted different to his responses. Some would get disheartened and get drunk. Some would feel the pressure and quit. I would hate it to be honest and would just take the longer route back home. But there were a couple of us who would take inspiration. See the point he was making. And improve on the next project. Just like Whiplash scene about Charlie Parker.

Oh, A? Well, for a large part he never understood that his motivation was killing people in his team! That!

The point of this story?

Two.

  1. People often act based on their experiences. When they do, they may or may not realise that they are putting others in harms way. Most people need to learn this and start reflecting on how they behave.
  2. I want to put on record (and I will send this to people :D) that everytime they pile emo trips on me, I tend to balk at that. I resist. Even if those trips are rational and. common-sensical and obvious. While in their experience, these emo trips work and all that, but someone like me actually runs in the opposite direction when someone throws these emotional guilt trips at me. In fact, I become this stubborn child that does exactly the opposite of what is expected from me!

So that.

Phew.

The other thing I realised while writing this is that when I know what I want to write (like this emo-trip thingy), I am filled with this insane energy and words flow. I mean I am not even listening to music as I write this and yet I seem to have written some 400 words in like 4 minutes. The fingers are moving so fast on the keyboard that there are sparks flying!

May be, for #book2, I need to plot things and then write? You know, when I sit and think about Raunak, Mrs. Gomes, Ankit, Siddh, Rujuta and others, I do enjoy thinking about them as real people but I often dont know what to write to move story forward. Maybe each day I need to just write write write and see where I reach?

Let’s see.

Guess this is it for the day. Need to get moving. It’s almost 9.

Here’s streaks…

  • Morning Pages / Meditations – 164
  • #aPicADay – 0
  • 10K steps a day – 0
  • OMAD – 0
  • #noCoffee – 0
  • #noCoke – 76
  • 10 mins of meditation – 2
  • #book2 – 0
  • Killer Boogie – 0
  • Surya Namaskar – 0

The good work I did the day before, I undid all of that by not doing yesterday. 🙁