When I look at the 46 years, it has been more of luck and less of smart choices.
I rarely reflected on my birthday seriously till I was 40. I wrote about it when I turned:
- 41—I moved to 41-APAL
- 42—I applied for a license
- 44—when it was a turn-on
- 45—The trajectory is changing
In the morning today, I saw the wrinkles on my skin. The wrinkles are a new proposal for me that I need to start a regular run, need to travel a bit, and get more social after this massive hiatus because of the pandemic. I need to change how I respond to the RFPs.
Sometimes I feel myself as my own denture—a few cavities and missing pieces but still a structure that is good enough to allow me to eat anything. Or a city that is yet to discovered or rediscovered. Or a book that is borrowed but is too cultured to be returned to its owner. Or a building that is occupied by tenants.
Pretense
In the last few years, I have been gathering and making and experimenting with a lot of things—work, communities, learning, and finding the patterns and models in the work. And I was saying Yes and No to things more on conviction and less on merit.
Technically, 46 is the ideal age when you start giving up all your pretense. For showing up I care, I understand, or that I know what I do not know. Four years a good enough time to onboard myself towards the more clean 50th birthday milestone. The last two years had been intense though not draining.
- My conference—Outcome did not take off as well as I would have liked it to be.
- My program—Meaning is just taking off but I need wider and faster footprints.
- My younger self ran into the meaningless gaming habit on phone and I am so keen to get rid of his habit so that he could be just free to explore what life brings to 10–12 year olds, naturally.
My east
I am generally hopeful about the positives and I often look towards the East where the sun rises daily, for everyone on this planet. Some of my campaigns did not pay off well in the last couple of years and I am hoping for a turnaround in this year. I had a couple of validated ideas to work on—let’s see what the next year brings on.
My wallet
My tweets are my wallet. My wallet supports when I need it, anytime. This shows what we mean at work.
My standards
I stick to our standards for what we want to do, with whom, for how long, and for what goals. Tech is certainly growing and growing fast but the digital maturity of how to design for and around technology is not growing with the same pace. (My tweet shows some examples.)
I will try to be more patient with all the unforgiving work standards that we see around. My bookshelf looks good now.
The second wind
As I enter the 46th year, I am just getting into the second wind with my work—a mix of products, coaching, making, and raising my 10 years son. There is really so much work to do and it is not about more work or smart work—it is about work.
I made many new friends on Twitter and in professional communities—I got tremendous support (not the vanity metrics but the support itself) for how we see work and how we work.
PS: Where I am from
Sometimes I get a feeling that people are more curious to know first where I am from, rather than what I do or how I work. For a specific segment in the technology work, the work is not open to folks in India which is definitely their loss. For some other segment within India, the desirable options are from Bangalore or Pune, which is again their loss. My work lives on Twitter, in Miro, Notion, Slack, WordPress, Mac, and these are not Indians, nor are they in Chandigarh.
The digital interface are my ethnicity, my race, and my color—whether you see it in the light mode or in the dark mode shows your own judgment.
The plan
If 44 was a turn on, 46 is about the momentum.
I might be hanging out with my family today. For the momentum. For the summar.
And yes, most of the cookies are my favorite. When really clueless, all I need is Twitter, Cookies, and a toothpick—unforgiving standards as I said. Thank you for being around.
