Gathering thoughts…
A world of little thoughts.
I'm kind of tired seeing people sharing unsolicited advice about growth, productivity, finance - all of these things that supposedly make you successful. My definition of "success" is so different from those in my surroundings now, but... it feels so strange to leave so fast when this is all I've known, too. But I…
Someone grabs your jacket as you walk by and they won’t let go. Immediately, your senses are heightened. You think this person wants to fight, but you turn around to see a kind smile. Please don’t leave, they say, I see that you are a man of God and I need to know more. A humbling experience. What does it say about…
Mais um início de semana. Estou com algumas coisas para entregar, mas, no geral, está tranquilo. Queria entender melhor como melhorar meu trabalho. Não trabalhar mais, mas de forma mais eficiente. Assisti mais episódios da série new girl e comecei a ver a série documental, dirty money. Comecei pelo episódio do donald…
ahhh do we experience one emotion at a time? can you remember a singular moment of one emotion? i have bee trying to dig deep in my memories for a singular moment, so far no moment presents itself. in contradiction; the emotions we experience may all be defined as a excitement...
I have worked at a dozen companies and every company has its own culture. By the way you may wonder how does a company have it's own culture. Culture is all about how people treat one another i.e. how do peers interact, how do superiors interact with their subordinates and the list goes on. If you take a company which…
It hit me today. The realization didn't hit me like a ton of bricks. (Like some people would say.) But it did arrive to my conscious awareness. What am I talking about? Well, the fact that people don't do that of taking time and space out of their mundane routine. Like what I can write in the following paragraphs can…
AHHH... seeing a similar quote by more than one creator who i admire is like an epiphany. there is hidden meaning within their words that many do not see. "create because it needs to exist" everything else will be erased...
Have you thought of how bad you wanted this all to be? You went to the MRT and actually despise people who conforms Like you have to skip and wait for the next train Because the train is actually full Full of people you don’t want to be in Don’t want to mix and squeeze with them 80% of the fucking population Hated…
It sometimes baffles me just how much a walk or hike in nature can boost my mental capacities. Being at home or work surrounded by books, notes and brilliant people just never get the cogs turning like the sound of birds chirping, water flowing and life happening at it's own pace. So, there I was in my local forest…
to build a resilient & flexible system, you need iteration. it’s inevitable. a system can only prove its value when exposed to multiple different contexts. if it fails to adapt to a new context, it’s not a great system yet. as you iterate on multiple contexts, the system will progressively adapt to cover more edge…
Imagine if technology treated our attention as sacred rather than a resource to extract. Imagine if technology was accountable to those affected by it rather than to those who profit from it. Imagine if technology helped us make better choices rather than incubating helplessness in the face of catastrophe. Imagine…
The lucky ones among us get a chance to grow up with our families which in most likelihood have a parental figure or two to provide for our education, medical care and learning. The lucky ones, someone calls us the lucky ones and we don't believe it. How can we be the lucky ones? Everything is laid down for us - which…
One day, I picked up my grandson from school and had a conversation with him about his day. I asked if he enjoyed math and English. Then I asked whether he was good at handwriting and told him that mine was poor unless I took my time with it. My grandson's response to the handwriting question floored me a little. He…
I'm almost 51 and my body has taken this fifth decade to declare that it requires attention, consistent healthy habits and quite possibly some medication to prop up the system.
i've started many projects over the last two years. but guess how many i've completed? zero. that got me thinking, why is it tough to stick to things that i like? what is stopping me from having fun? why am i expecting something in return, when i just wanna build cool shit? i guess part of the reason is, i need…
I'm a big fan of Yes Theory and their open, serendipitous approach to life. And I try to take them as an example, to seek more discomfort myself, to say yes, to approach strangers, and to face new situations openly and curiously. That's easier said than done, and it's still not easy for me. Too often, my comfort zone…
One of the biggest news right now is the deepest image of the universe pictured by NASA through the newly developed James Webb Space Telescope. The picture shows hundreds of galaxies which could not earlier be captured by Hubble, NASA’s old telescope which has been replaced by the Webb. NASA’s website says that…
When hunter-gatherers discovered fire, they would have felt it was magic. But now, when we look at fire, we just see it as a normal thing. In recent times, there are a lot of AI tools popping up. When looking at tools like ChatGPT, it feels like magic, but in another five years, it will become a normal thing, like…
In 2020, I had this grand plan and it was unorthodox, but effective. I traded in my Android smart phone for a feature phone. I stopped reading the news religiously. I started to write more. And by hand. I would take notes on pen and paper writing in cursive to maximize my recall and memory. It all worked. I started…
Here's an idea. Record player Pomodoro timer. I'm sure you've heard of the Pomodoro productivity technique where you do deep work for 25 minutes, then take a 5 minute break, then back to 25 minutes of deep work. You repeat this rhythm for your allotted time, until you get the project done, etc. It allows for a good…
Time feels right to get my will paperwork in order. Did up my list of "who gets how much". Still have to mull end of life issues, and won't put it off forever, but nothing pressing right yet. Felt good last night being part of a family of choice. Wondering why I'm still hesitant about taking the big trip in September.…
Louco isso né? A gente se propõe a fazer algo e vai deixando, deixando. O tempo passa e você percebe que mais uma vez deixou de cumprir um objetivo. É frustrante para caralho. Lembrei com dor no coração que não terminei o curso dificílimo de robótica que comecei a fazer com o meu irmão menor. Sei que dei um péssimo…
comecei a ouvir leonard cohen. que voz visceral, profunda, né? profound. eu entendo poucas palavras soltas. leio enquanto ouço, então é mais sensorial do que inteligível para mim. the last time I saw you, you look someone older. poxa. hoje tive uma conversa com uma colega de trabalho sobre luto. tudo começou porque um…
It's a toxic question. We like to press ourselves with it all the time. We use it to police each other. Diagnose the problem. Administer medication. It's how we like to handle problems. The question points our attention inwards and focuses on the mess we're swirling in. A better question is: What matters to you? This…
Recently, I've noticed an uptick in conversations around 'content.' Too many creators want to decide what should be called content and what shouldn't. Most comparisons stem from a sense of self-superiority on "the process" one has, before one publishes or creates. The complaint is usually one or the other variations…
Ahhh the moment as a cup falls to spill out water lets us predict the near future. the same can be applied to any idea strong enough to take action. the puddle may result in something special...
Eu tô tomando duloxetina pra dor crônica. E, sim. É um antidepressivo. Não vou mentir aqui dizendo que não tenho resistência a remédios psiquiátricos. Quando o médico falou eu já virei a cara e perguntei se não tinha outra opção. Levei uma bronca seguida de um sermão da enfermeira desbocada que tava no quarto. "Eu…
Never hearing that you are loved, but having the fridge full of food —the Asian way. Never receiving an apology when they are wrong, but instead being asked if you are hungry or want some fruit —the Asian way. Being pushed to follow their dream life instead of yours, but receiving financial support —the Asian way.…
There are some writers on the internet who are like a pair of tinted spectacles – they help you see the world more clearly while adding a tint of their choice. Alex Danco is one of those writers. His work spans a range of topics – from Tech to Culture, History, Philosophy, and Sociology. The tint uses across all of…
I am far from a frequent flier. However over the last decade or so, I've taken more than my fair share of flights from Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore airports. Hyderabad, Goa and Delhi have figured a close second and in third place have been a smattering of flights including to cities like Lucknow, Leh, Indore,…
I just read Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future, recommended with great enthusiasm by my friend Rahul. In taking his recommendation, I was following my own recent advice https://nicheless.blog/post/135. Unusual for me was that this was a book of science fiction. Nothing against the genre - I just hadn't…
Writing is hard. It's hard because it requires some level of advanced thought. That doesn't mean you need to be a genius. But instead, you need to roughly conceptualize what you'll write before it lands on the page. This post is about a bit of writers block. I'm experiencing it not due to a lack of writing topics. I'm…
Otra vez me alcanzó la madrugada, 2:26 para ser exactos. Gracias por leerme. En este mini blog, como creo que eso es este formato de 300 palabras. Decidí que voy a estar escribiendo ideas e historias más personales. Hoy en internet uno debe vender o venderse, por lo que a veces las ideas e historias personales ya no…
Esses dias participei do meu primeiro clube do livro. Antes de falar mais sobre ele, quero explicar o "esses dias". Eu tava num dia péssimo. Péssimo mesmo. Depois de ficar internada, passar por um procedimento com anestesia, voltar pra casa com um monte de remédios que me custaram uma fortuna, tive minha primeira…
Separate the time out for everything. Don’t go beyond the time. Look at Bryan - comes early. Go home on time, but it was effective. He didn’t do anything wrong. That’s the most effective thing to do. Going past your time just because you fucked up some certain thing is your weakness Embrace it and improve Your Alevels…
Rambling is what I do more than talking only to realise that talking is no more than censoring your rambling and picking out the best variation of a collection of words. The more you talk the better you get at picking out the best words and that is considered normal. The art of filtering your ramble is talking. All of…
"What's your name?" One encounters this question in an ever declining frequency. As you add years, the frequency of the question reduces. Recollect the moment you answered with pride with your chest bloated Pronouncing your name. As one ages, one takes increasing offense if asked "What's your name?" So courtesy comes…
While still in the early pages of reading the book- Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, something deeply poignant came through. Time as a unit of measure, is a relatively new phenomena. Watches and clocks arrived to help us become more productive and achieve more in a 24 hour time frame. Several authors have…
I’m sad for what I won’t experience. I can imagine walking out the front door, leaving the shade of the porch and feeling the powerful sun immerse me in its warm, like i’m getting into a hot tub without the wet feeling. Maybe all these things i will miss are things i already miss from the idealized summers in south…
Phone service, internet, electricity, hot water and all these things that are used to, that we use everyday, the change of not having them from one day to another is drastic. Yesterday, a huge storm approached and I hasn’t stopped since then, it took all of those things away from my house, it was 1 am and in my mind I…
i like volcanoes the same way i like indie movies and indie books: volcanoes are different from "normal" landmasses but they're also different from each other i've been on two volcanoes: Kīlauea on Hawai'i and Mt. Etna on Sicily my favorite is Mt. Etna i am curious about this one volcano in Indonesia which has "blue…
In one of the online communities I'm part of, I once saw on a guy's bio that he wrote: "Passionate about not making a mistake twice. Only new mistakes." I thought it was funny at first. It was like "yeah, that sounds cool". But then my mind thought it was interesting enough to save that memory long-term. And it's…
You want a journaling habit, but journaling requires thinking. Thinking is hard work. You are wrong if you think creating a journaling habit requires deep thinking. Don't overthink what you write when you journal. You journal for yourself. No one else will read what you write. Journaling is getting your thoughts on…
For a writer, vocabulary is akin to a color palette for an artist. You can use pedestrian words like 'good' or 'bad' but there's only so much you can create if that's all you have in your repertoire. I think of these commonly used words like the primary colors – important but perhaps a bit uninspired. Let's add a bit…
When we think of the word "slavery," defined as a system of relations in which individuals are compelled to perform labor, it is reasonable to define the inverse as the absence of compulsion. The word most associated with such a situation is "freedom." Closely related but with a more political connotation is the word…
A few days into this exercise of writing daily, I've had a few learnings - I feel most of my decisions that switched things around have been spontaneous. It was the case with taking up this daily writing challenge too. I didn't have topics in mind. I refrain from writing about the things I come across online…
Today I had a goodbye dinner with my parents at a nice restaurant, before leaving for San Francisco tomorrow. It was the same restaurant where we have been for a goodbye dinner nearly exactly two years ago, before I left for my exchange semester to Taiwan. It felt melancholic to have a similar moment again. And it…
The best mentors are the ones who don't charge for their time. Hear me out. I'm not talking about the ones who make mentoring their main source of income. I'm talking about industry veterans who are passionate about what they do and want to pass on all that they've learned over the years. They've already "made it" and…
