My last life blog type post here was in Jan 2020 and before that in May 2019. A lot has happened in my life in the middle. Got married, honeymooned in Turkey, got the biggest vacation of my adult life, moved to Hyderabad (again), got a prestigious but challenging new job role, struggled but mostly got by, long-distanced my marriage decently well, went on trips to Japan and the USA (Seattle this time), celebrated a family-filled Christmas across two families in Hyderabad and Bombay, finished a 10K after ages, went to visit my friends in Bangalore for a couple of weeks, was planning a visit to Goa, then? Guess what bitch, Coronavirus .  I spent one week working from my apartment.  Then a lockdown happened and I moved to my in-laws on March 22nd. Getting here involved a 4 AM dash across the city as a nationwide lockdown involving a near complete restriction of human movement was enforced by occasional police violence. Since then the sleep schedule gone a bit topsy turvy, I’ve ended up sleeping at 4 AM and 5 AM a few times, but the norm for me now is 2 AM - 10 AM.  Work has been semi-productive. Entire days when I’m ekeing out work out of myself occur right in the middle of the week. Luckily, I can work late night or evenings and weekends and make up for it . Knowledge work is good that way, as long my work is done within a timeband it doesn’t matter if it happens in the middle of the night or on the weekend.

I’ve been on twitter a bit too much. TikTok too a bit too much too, though I uninstalled it recently and have forgotten about it. Twitter is .. much more sticky sadly. I read a decent amount during this period . Lots of newsletter reading happened. Initially a lot of book reading happened too. I tried to read the tome of a book that is Rationality: From AI to Zombies and got about halfway through - the book is collection of forum posts, it has good insights but also needs a good editor . I finished Atomic Habits by James Clear and loved it. Almost done with The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler.

I’ve been writing pretty consistently. The threat of the virus triggered a “fuck the world is ending, better do the good things I always neglected” thought in me . And the thing that popped front of center in my mind was my desire to blog. I’ve neglected it for years literally. It’s been on my list of annual goals since 2014 . Yet life, excuses, whatever came in the way. But the moment the lockdown was on and panic was eating the world, I resolved to make order out of chaos and write daily . I’ve been pretty successful, writing daily for 1-1.5 hours and publishing about once a week. I’m not flexible about the input goal but I am yielding on the output goal of 1 post/week (posts can be complex, things get in the way, whatever) . So that’s been good bloody great.

My new setup at my in-laws place is an 80s throwback. I only do work stuff here, free flowing creative writing happens on the kitchen table (not in picture).  Adios for now!