what is lost, was it even yours?
i almost skipped writing this one.
last year’s blog came easy, this year july 26th passed and i kept telling myself i’ll write it tomorrow. a week went by like that. then i realised the hesitation itself was the story, so here i am. long, a bit uncensored, and 100% honest like last time.
the losses
this year i lost:
my job
my airpods
my first driving license attempt lol
one more wisdom tooth
six stitches worth of chin
the belief that i’ll have it all figured out by 25
some of these are funny, some are not, the year didnt separate them so neither will i.
the chin one deserves a story. i was driving, completely zoned out thinking about god knows what, and that same evening i was supposed to host a meetup of 100 people. instead i spent my evening getting six stitches. i still dont remember what i was thinking about while driving, and honestly thats the scary part.
figure out your thing
if this year had a background score, it would be this sentence on loop.
this whole year was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of hope. i didnt know what i wanna do, the question of figuring out your thing just kept on pressing, and i still am figuring out.
i came back from bangalore thinking the city would do some magic. nothing happened, and i lost my job. last birthday, i kid you not, i spent half the day alone in a temple. i had people around me but very few knew what was going on in my head. i wasnt asking god for a job that day, i just wanted some quiet.
i wont say that day fixed anything, but something shifted. believe in something. not blindly, but have faith. thats all i took from there. faith that things move even when you cant see them moving.
one year later i still dont have my thing figured out. i used to think admitting this makes me look weak, now i think pretending otherwise does.
what stayed
losing stuff shows you what doesnt leave.
the gym stayed. i became really good at consistency for the first time in my life, and nobody tells you what physical health does to your mental health. i went in to change my body and came out a more secure person.
the travel stayed. nagpur, kodaikanal, varanasi, nashik, goa, bhopal, bangalore, jaipur, delhi. some trips for work, some to escape, some for no reason at all. every city taught me the same thing differently, you carry yourself everywhere, fix that first.
and the work stayed, even without a job title. this year me and rahul ran a distribution experiment for mat, his ios app. no ad spend, just a narrow audience that actually cares about design. two reels crossed 300k impressions, creators with 600k combined followers recreated our content on their own, one reel alone brought 300 users. we crossed 500k impressions and 3000 followers along the way.
the lesson from all of it: build the audience first, the launch takes care of itself.
losing the job hurt, but watching this experiment work reminded me the skill was never in the job, it was in me.
where the energy goes
biggest relearning of the year.
i am sometimes too harsh, sometimes too soft, and i take things to heart which aren’t even useful. this year i really learnt how to spend and what to spend my energy on. not every message needs a reply, not every opinion needs my reaction, not every loss needs a mourning period.
i spent 24 years overpaying with my energy. trying to fix the exchange rate at 25.
so, what is lost, was it even yours?
here’s where i land.
the job left, the airpods left, the teeth came out, the chin split open. everything that left this year was either rented, replaceable, or growing back.
what stayed, i paid for. in reps at the gym, in train tickets, in stitches, in sitting alone in a mandir on my own birthday.
thats the filter 25 gave me. if losing it doesnt change who you are, it was never yours. if it stays through your worst year, you built it.
like last year, this blog is mostly for me to come back and re-read. but if youre also 25ish and still figuring out your thing, i hope one line here told you what i needed to hear all year: youre not late, youre just honest about still looking.
happy 25th to me. lets see what stays this year :)
