Turning 26 🎂

Yesterday, I turned 26.

Last year’s birthday was a bigger shock. This one felt like just another day which came randomly out of nowhere and went just like that.

It’s 2:41 AM right now and I am writing this because I have gotten used to sleeping and waking up late. It feels like any normal day, but today I am 26. I am not 25 years old. I am not “mid 20s”, instead I am closer to my 30s, which feels outrageous.

Like, seriously? Near 30? Me? I was just 18 years old, like a few years ago which sometime feels like few days ago.

2 of the newsletter issues I really like sending every year (and I actually send them) are: The one on new year and the one on my birthday. Both of these are sort of updates and allow me to reflect back on the year. I often find it hard to look at the past and find good things that happened. I am always finding regrets, but things to be grateful about are rare.

These 2 issues help me reflect positively.

I read the piece I wrote last year on the same day and I couldn’t recognise that person. I have always been somewhat of an optimist but my 25th year on this planet has been a tough challenge.

Over the last 12 months, I have had enough reasons to not be optimistic about things. But at the same time, the position I was in forced me or required me to be one. So, now I am in some new place and my personality has split into 2 parts, both of them poles apart.

Sometimes it feels like a switch that I can turn on and off, but sometimes it feels so irreversible that I am scared that I have lost myself. Well, at least until the next breakdown, which sort of resets my brain and I am back after that.

Before you start to think that I am salty because I didn’t get any gifts 😂, let me clarify that I indeed did not get many gifts, but that is not the reason for this part. And I don’t feel like explaining. Well, it’s my newsletter, you can’t do anything.

1. The major highlight of the last year has been me leaving my job to work full time on Crework and trying to make a living out of my passion for teaching, building products and tbh, not being an employee.

2. I am not sure how much I have learnt but I have changed a lot in the way I make decisions. I now hire people and have to pay salaries so I feel responsible in taking decisions, thinking about the second order effect of them and basically how much ROI they would produce and how many months of salaries would we be able to pay because of one step.

   I am still learning though.

3. Yes, we are bootstrapping and no we are not raising funds. It’s not like we are against it, but we just don’t have the time, the energy and the market right now to go out and try to raise funds for something we know is not investable. But it’s a good business, once you figure a few things out.

   I am not sure if we have figured them out yet, but we are close.

4. Things don’t happen unless you do them. Obviously, but you don’t realise it. You always need to keep doing things, specially when you are the engine. As a part in the machinery, you take rest a few times thinking that everyone else will handle things. When you are the “everyone” that every other part is dependent on, you can’t stop.

5. Take therapy before your inability to process your emotions turns into your inability to act.

6. Friends are important, family is important, you are important. But at times, one of these is more important than the others. Decide wisely.

7. Health fucked hai, but still biryani is the best thing to exist in this world. So, fuck it.

And a lot more which either I am not remembering or don’t want to write about.

I spent my 26th birthday doing things I love.

I coded (if you can call it that if I use Claude to do everything), bought some books, did shopping, ate some nice food, watched one of my favourite movies and worked a little bit. A day like any other and yet a good one.

Also, thanks a lot for being part of this. For allowing me to send these random newsletter issues to you and for reading them when you don’t really have to.