Rome wasn't built in a day
...and other stupid year-end observations
2024 was a funny year.
I travelled a lot, and still felt like I had to travel a lot more. I worked a lot, still I felt like there was so much more that needed to be done. I got a lot of things right, but my mind still lingers around the mistakes I made, big and small.
That’s innate human nature, isn’t it? Don’t you gravitate towards ranting about things that didn’t work and how you tried doing everything right and still you didn’t make it through?
Well, even if you disagree, I’m sure you must’ve done something similar in the past. This phenomenon even has a name for it.
Psychologists/UX Researchers and Gen-Zs have something in common. Just like there’s now a label for every dating scene that has ever occurred in the history of humankind (relationships, situationships, benching, zombieing and what not!), there’s a special term for what I mentioned above.
It’s called negativity bias and it’s perhaps the primary reason why news exists and so do we. I’ll talk more about media and Gen-Z dating in the posts to follow, but for now I want to take the conversation back to 2024.
Well, the year is now gone. In 24 hours it feels that it was an ancient relic, and in a good way. I had bouts of success but felt like I didn’t do a very good job at things which compound. Be it working out, checking in with old friends or learning something entirely new. And also, this newsletter ofc.
So, here I am to announce that I’m wrapping it up just getting started here. I’m getting started for the last 5 years or so but now for real1
In the process of starting and restarting, I compound. I find that to be very beautiful. Compounding is nothing but mindless repetition of things which are challenging, and as I write this, I suddenly realize that the newsletter is not dead anymore. I’m writing something instead of overthinking about what if my post turns out to be absolute garbage (which it’s eventually gonna be anyway).
I looked back at my personal blog, and in the process I realized that I added a shit ton of posts in the process of starting, restarting, quitting and apologizing. There have been blips of madness — posts which have gotten a 1000+ views and DMs on how some of these posts resonated deeply with close friends and strangers alike. As someone who writes, that’s the best gift you can ask for — people discussing your shit with you or even better, among their own circles.
Which is what I also implore you to do. If you’re failing at something, try it slightly differently and fail again. Better still, try something entirely new and be prepared to fail at it. You’ll compound slowly, but only when you try and try again.
As for this newsletter, it’s hard for me to promise a certain frequency of posting. But it’s gonna get better because my approach towards publishing here would not be to cherry pick topics and research very deeply and write detailed essays about them. In fact, I’ll try to do quite the opposite — simply yap about things I care about. I don’t care whether what I post is your favourite topic or not, it certainly will be one of my favourite topics. I’m not a journalist and I want to enjoy writing as I always have. The self-inflicted pressure to be “accurate” and “well put-together” didn’t really serve me well in the last year.
So, please be easy on me and be open-minded about the things you see here. I might not be writing about your secret interests, but maybe you’ll like it more than anything else after you read about it; who knows?
Well, this was my moment of reflection, and I meant to post this a couple of days back while I was still in 2024. But better late than never, they said.
Notice that the first verb in this post is “travel”, which is also I plan to do a lot of more of this year. Right now I’m chilling in the chilly Delhi winters, and typing this wrapped like a burrito at my home with family.
But merely 10 days back, I was boasting about taking out my laptop in my hostel reception at Krabi at 30°C and having the ability to work from there.2
My next few posts are going to be about exactly this — remote work. How did it come to existence, how is it going these days and what’s there to come in the next few years?
Till then, I hope you have your New Year resolutions sorted3 and also try out things that compound. But most importantly, I hope you get enough time to relax and have fun!
On a parting note, here’s the acoustic version of a song my flatmate and I are vibing to for several months at this point.
Wish you a beautiful 2025!
For very real this time! ._.
You saw what I did there, didn’t you?