🌱 cherrypicked thoughts from a summer harvest
here are some selected thoughts, chat excerpts, and tweets from a summer's worth of introspection. based on what's relevant to me; not much nuance.
1. giving up?
sometimes i walk up to a boulder in the gym.
i don't know if i'm capable of sending it.
i try and fall. over. and over. and over.
sometimes i triumph.
other days, the gym takes down the problem to make way for another one.
other days, i stare and tell myself, "nope, not today." and then i walk away.
i'd like to say i gave it my all. but i don't always do that.
is that ok? does that say something bad about me? but i guess it's just some plastic on a wall.
2. ranchoddas pt. 1
context:
kabil hone ke liye padho. success ke piche mat bhago. excellence, excellence ka picha karo. success tumhare jhak maar ke peeche aayegi.
"study for the sake of becoming more capable. don't run after success. excellence, excellence is what you should chase. success will easily come after you."
- ranchoddas chanchad, 3 idiots (clip)
i need to remind myself of this scene more; maybe i should make a poster of it.
i chose to do my phd.
i was 24 years old and unhappy.
i did my phd at kyoto university.
always dreamed of working at big tech.
couldn't get in.
i was 28 and unhappy.
settled for my current work place with mediocre salary.
no one expected anything from me and let me do whatever i wanted.
experienced explosive growth.
extremely happy.
lesson: forget big titles and salaries and contentment will follow.
funnily enough, i got multiple promotions leading to a decent salary.
it's like ranchordas said: excellence and not success. do what you love.
3. ranchoddas pt. 2
i got into tech because i love it; beyond a certain point, fulfillment/happiness becomes a higher priority than money. i'm lucky that the field i love (mostly) pays enough for me to live comfortably, so i (should) have the freedom to pick whatever job i want.
but i sometimes have a (sort of irrational) worry that i won't be able to find a job.
i sent this one in a group chat a few days ago:
today i was talking to a coworker who came from burma in the early 2000s
and he was just like
"yeah dont worry about the money, the money will come if u go after ur skills"
"also worst case scenario u can just live with your parents"
"i didn't have that option."
"if i didn't get a job i couldn't just go back to burma. i'd be homeless"
he's so right
4. quit bad everything
quit bad everything — bad food, bad books, bad jobs, bad people — otherwise they become bad habits and suddenly you’re living a bad life
5. pendulum
inspiration/source - Tim Dessaint
work-life balance is not a scale, it's a pendulum. we can swing back and forth between periods of heavy emphasis on work, and heavy emphasis on life. don't underestimate the power of intensity. but it has to be something you enjoy.
(kind of like a barbell strategy)