I've been frustrated with myself recently, because I have ideas for a lot of blog posts and have yet to publish one. I'll wake up in the middle of the night, scribble something in my notebook, and the idea will live and die there.

Creating for the first time is like opening Pandora's box. I wrote, at first, to copy people I found inspiring. Immediately, I felt cleansed. Like Sethe releasing the memory of her slain daughter in Toni Morrison's Beloved, "I trembled like the baptized in its wash." I could take experiences I was excited, embarrassed, or ashamed about and understand them on the page. I grew more powerful. I experienced the release that comes from having an idea and giving it life. When I learned to listen to the Muse, I couldn't stop. The ideas kept coming, and my frustration only grew.

I was rereading a Daniel Bourke post earlier – the eternal pursuit of unhappiness – and I remembered. This frustration is natural and necessary. This frustration is why creating feels amazing. This frustration is the dissonance between what's in my head and what's in the real world. The resolution occurs when I give the idea life, momentary relief before the frustration builds at yet another unfinished project. Art is a gift to the creator – a respite from bad dreams – more so than it is for others. Today, I feel relieved. Tomorrow, I will continue, as troubled as I was the day before.

In his Netflix comedy special Equanimity, Dave Chappelle describes how he writes jokes backwards: "I will write a punchline with no particular setup in mind." He'll write the punchline on a slip of paper, drop it in a fishbowl he has filled with other punchlines, and occasionally pick one out and try to make it work.

Sometimes the Muse will whisper a phrase to me that's an absolute bar. I'll jump out of bed and write it down in my notebook. I'll run out of the shower and text it to myself.  I'll meditate on the phrase until I find a post that it belongs in.

This situation is perhaps the most exciting part of being a creative person; I know the bars are coming, and I know you won't expect them. It doesn't even matter if I tell you the bars beforehand; I know they'll still surprise you.

Here are some bars that you can expect in the future:

Summoned like a song and gifted like a dream

You can create magic by believing in it

Truth-telling is redemptive

Here are some bars from the past:

Accomplishment is only an illusion that makes us pant.

I wonder what comes first: a way with words or something beautiful to write about.

Sometimes "I love you" means "I forgive you." Sometimes "I love you" means "are you okay?" When Meghana looks up at me, and I see two moons twinkling in her eyes. Sometimes "I love you" means "you are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

I collect whispers, cobble together thoughts, and beg for a central thesis. There are times the combination reveals itself, a sequence of words that refutes my inadequacy. That's when I feel like I'm weaving magic. That's when I know I'm spitting bars.

In an episode of "Comedians in Cars getting Coffee," Dave Chappelle describes to Jerry Seinfeld how ideas abduct writers without warning.

The idea says "get in the car," and I'm like "where am I going?" The idea says "don't worry, I'm driving."

Dave Chappelle, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee

Sometimes, he says, "I'm in the passenger seat," and other times "I'm in the trunk." The idea leads. Oftentimes ideas for future posts come to me while I'm about to fall asleep, and I have to run out of bed to find my notebook. There is a violence to their arrival.

The word genius comes from Rome. The Romans believed everyone has a guiding inner spirit or genius that affords them unique talents. The moment the idea arrives is a moment of clarity. Something becomes apparent that wasn't before. Recently I recognized that Denver in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Pi Patel in Yann Martel's Life of Pi derive their hope from similar places. It didn't feel as if I thought of this idea so much as if it was told to me. It was my genius, begging for me to listen.

I can tell when my genius is healthy. I think the most beautiful ideas. Words flow smoother. I draw connections more easily. My genius is healthy when I feed it, when I sit in conversation with myself and let these ideas flow out of me. My genius is unhealthy when I starve it, when ideas come knocking and I never answer. Inspiration is perishable. I believe the foremost goal of any creator is to listen to their genius -- we do not drive the car. The idea snatches us from bed. The best artists are those who stumble after it.

Before I wrote this post, I kept thinking that after my parents pass away there will be no one who'll call me by my real name anymore. While I fear coming across as overbearing, I fear the erasure of my identity far more.

I have a confession to make. On the first day of high school, when I introduced myself as "Rajit," one girl said: "I'm going to call you Raj." After that I introduced myself to everyone as Raj. It was easier.

Now, when I hear people say "Raj" I have to remind myself they're talking to me. When I see my contact information in people's phones and they've saved it as "Raj," I feel as if they've castrated my name.

My name is Rajit. It means brilliance like the illumination of a star. I know people will take time to adjust, but at least now they'll know what it feels like to call me by my real name.

Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.

Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

The first time I saw her -- before she asked me to measure her hands against mine, before I caught her staring at me on the bus, and before I fixed my hair in my car's rearview mirror every morning -- I didn't say a word. I was "shadowing" at her elementary school, the Academy of Notre Dame. I followed Ryan, a blonde, Enrique Iglesias-singing fifth-grader, to all his classes. When we went into English, I saw those curls for the first time; those curls she's burned into my mind over the past seven years. Luckily, neither of us went to middle school there. I saw her on the first week of school at the Academy for Science and Design. Same curls. Same smile.

Meghana is so full of life. When she walks, she bounces from side to side. When she laughs, she doubles forwards every time. When she smiles, I feel like I'm looking at a co-conspirator. We're both children in spirit. I didn't realize any of these things until the eighth grade, when I started taking the bus with her.

My parents noticed before I did. They asked me why I was taking so long in the bathroom in the mornings. They asked me why I put a comb in a backpack. They were surprised by the panicked look on my face when I thought I would miss the bus. I always sat one seat away from her, because I didn't want to be too obvious. During homeroom, I would walk to the opposite side of school where she had homeroom and talk to my friends. We're both bad liars. Every day our friends told us to admit we liked each other.

I remember overhearing her friend asking who she liked. I was twenty feet away and partially hidden behind a wall. "No one," she insisted. At times, I miss not knowing if she liked me. I made fun of her for talking to other guys when I wished she was talking to me. I wish Hamlet's treatment of Ophelia wasn't so accurate. I would spend all day turning over every smile, every twirl of her hair, and every glance in the hallway. On the bus, she would ask if she could measure her hand against mine even though I could swear she'd done it before. But then I would see her laugh at someone else's joke and it would ruin my day. She is that admixture of terror and excitement that Zadie Smith describes as joy.

The night before the last day of school I knew what I had to do next day. I decided I'd tell her I'd liked her on the bus. I don't remember anything that happened in school that day. As I walked down the bus for the last time, one of Meghana's friends tapped me on the arm. "You should sit next to Meghana today." If only you knew, I thought to myself. I sat down next to Meghana.

"I have something I need to tell you."

"What?"

"Can I type it into your phone?" She handed me her pink iPhone 5. As I typed the words into her Notes app, I could feel her peering over my shoulder. I covered the phone and looked at the words before I handed it back to her.

"I've liked you for the past nine months."

I turned to her and smiled because I expected her to smile, but when she looked into my eyes I saw tears. I moved closer to her. I didn't ask her until weeks later, but the moment she looked back at me was when we started dating. She spoke to me between sobs. "Why are you crying?" I asked. "Because I liked you too. And I wasn't going to say anything." I took her hand and whispered those words for the first time: "I love you."

"I love you too," she choked back. A crowd of heads had formed behind us. The bus reached her stop and she stood up. "You better text me," she smiled. I went home and sat in my room as if I couldn't still hear her saying "I love you." As if I wasn't wondering what it would be like to kiss her. I experienced for the first time what John Steinbeck described as a glory.

Meghana and I didn't talk for most of high school, but I could not give up my muse. In freshman year, I wrote a short story about a middle-school boy who types the words, "I've liked you for the past nine months," into a girl named Megan's phone. My friends were astonished. "This story is real," they told me. I denied it.

In sophomore year, I wrote a short story about a boy who, despite the protests of her parents, takes a girl to the dance. My teacher remarked at how vivid the scenes were – my description of the girl's face, her mannerisms, and the effect she had on the boy. Of course, I wasn't writing from my imagination.

In junior year, I wrote a poem called "Second First Kiss," with a line about reawakening love's connection. I wrote another poem about meeting her in secret at the pond beside our neighborhood. These experiences were meditations on a past life, reflections on the surface of the water.

In senior year, I wrote about a boy mustering every ounce of stupid courage he could gather telling the girl he liked her on the bus. Luckily for me, someone else in class had written a story about their middle school crush that was in fact real. No one asked me about the girl in my story, even though I was ready to tell them.

Meghana and I restarted dating in the fall of senior year. I didn't even admit to my parents, let alone my friends, that I had a girlfriend until the spring. My parents thought the reason I hadn't said anything was because I was embarrassed; Meghana was referred to only as "M" in our house for the few weeks afterwards. When I finally revealed the news to my friends, I felt disappointed, as if I'd hidden the best parts of myself. When I met new people in college I was unsure of how to tell other people about her. Now nothing could feel more natural.

Next Valentine's Day, she wrote me a letter saying if she had the way with words I did, she would write book about me. I wonder what comes first: a way with words or something beautiful to write about. The truth it is I don't know if I have a way with words; I fumble even now. I've spent the last seven years searching for the language to describe her. I feel more in control of the form than I ever have, and it's still feels inadequate. I'll gladly spend seventy more.

In my senior year of high school, we read an essay about how "I love you" has a new meaning every time it's said.  Sometimes "I love you" means "I forgive you." Sometimes "I love you" means "are you okay?" When Meghana looks up at me, and I see two moons twinkling in her eyes. Sometimes "I love you" means "you are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."

When my internship experience with BLISSWAY concluded in August, I wrote down a list of companies I would consider working for next summer. Coinbase because of Brian Armstrong. Shopify because of Alex Danco. Samsara because of Felipe. Stripe becasue of Hugo.

I interviewed Hugo Amsellem on my podcast last October. Hugo created a Kickstarter for musicians in Europe to let artists retain ownership of their projects and reject labels. He described how painful it was to create a way to accept payments online.

Stripe is such a valuable engine of the creator economy. The blogging platform I use, Ghost, integrates with Stripe to let writers receive 100 percent of the money users pay for their content. In 2017, Stripe acquired the world's largest community of individual contributors making money online, Indie Hackers. Gumroad, the world's largest online marketplace for digital entrepreneurs leverages Stripe to power their payments infrastructure.

When I was at BLISSWAY, I believed in our company's mission so strongly. I don't particularly care about highway tolling; BLISSWAY is a company that saves people time. In the future, people will book a trip on BLISSWAY's app and know they are saving minutes on the road for each dollar spent. The impact of my work is what's most important to me. I couldn't work somewhere I didn't think was making the world a better place. Stripe is not a payments platform; Stripe lets people take control of their financial destiny.

Paul Graham's praise is a powerful signal. After reading Luke Burgis' book Wanting, I know that he's a model for me – someone whose magnetic field my ideological compass follows strongly. Regardless, I believe this idea is not hyperbole: what Google did for search, Stripe will do for payments.

Stripe is still a startup. Earlier this year, Patrick Collison, the company's founder and CEO, issued an apology on Hacker News for an instance of fraud on the platform. The speed at which they launch products is remarkable. The Stripe API docs are the standard by which all others are measured.

I'm so excited to join as an intern in their Seattle offices next summer. There is so much work to do – Stripe launched a crypto team less than two months ago. I won't be on this team as an intern, but it's a vector to bring even more people into the internet economy. As the world moves more online, we can realize the vision of the world Hugo, Steph Smith, and Daniel Bourke showed me; a world of seven billion niches; a world of people scraping the inner lining of their souls to create something worth admiring; a world of creators committed to sharing this beauty with each other.

I create something, I transform something. My witchcraft is strong as ever, stronger.

Madeline Miller, Circe

Note: this post imitates Steph Smith's Another Year Under the Sun.

This post is available for sale as an NFT on Mirror.

Prologue

2020 was a fantastic year for me. I learned more about myself than I could have hoped too. This post, supposed to come out nine months ago, should have been a triumph. Unfortunately, the first five months of 2021 were the hardest months of my life. I consistently fell into cycles of negative thinking. I couldn't escape from myself. The cerebral qualities that I developed in 2020 were the same ones that inflicted pain on me in 2021. If 2020 is my Year of Growth, then 2021 is my Year of Maturing. The fact that this post is available now for people to read is a triumph of sorts. I wrote most of this content in December; I just couldn't package it up. I know the ending now.

Year of Growth

2020 was a year where I thought about what I actually want, particularly in my relationships and my career. I'm excited about the things I set in motion and what's to come.

To gather my thoughts for the New Year, I found Steve Schalfman's Ultimate Annual Review invaluable. This post follows the guide exactly. I want to live openly because it creates a social contract, and the assumed peer pressure holds me accountable.

Moments & Milestones

• I spent time with Meghana for ten months.
• I joined the club soccer team.
• I became a teaching assistant for an introductory computing class.
• I interned at NASA and helped create an internet for the moon.
• I started this blog.
• I created my Twitter account to engage with my genzmafia friends.
• I began time-restricted eating and lost twenty pounds.
• I started my podcast.
• I joined BLISSWAY, a startup that helps people protect their time.

Reflections & Learnings

2020 fundamentally changed my relationship with myself. I grew as a friend, brother, son, boyfriend, writer, hacker, and marketer. I wanted to focus on the lessons I learned, so I can shape 2021 along these axes.

The Power of Writing

In August, I started writing here, after I saw Daniel Bourke's blog. I wrote as a means of investigation, following lingering questions to their natural conclusions. I uncovered why I have to be good at something to value myself,  why learning to live is just learning to die, and how the negative voice in the back of my head is my own. This process revealed a beautiful heuristic; I don't really know anything if I can't fully explain it to someone else. Crafting a cogent reply to a difficult question requires transmuting my experience into language.

The written word continues to amaze me; language is enduring, and this act of making something enduring is called art. Now I practice my art everyday. I still don't feel fully in control of the form, but I can see that the sentences come more naturally now than they did before. In 2020, I wrote and chose to share my writing publicly. I will never forget the response.

The idea that someone understood what I was trying to create touched my heart. I'm still overjoyed when I think about texts and direct messages my friends sent me. This website is a living document of me; I want to let people see how my thoughts and capacity to shape language evolve. This way people can see me and the questions I'm asking; this website catalogues my most authentic self, and I hope it outlives me.

Finding a Mentor

I first heard the term ubuntu when I saw Netflix's documentary series The Playbook and its episode featuring Doc Rivers. Ubuntu is a South African word that means "I am, because you are." The spirit of ubuntu captures the reality that I experienced ; I learn how to be a person from other people. Other people teach me what it means to live well. When I started this blog, I thought the desire to write, despite being a technical person, separated me from other engineers. I thought I would eventually have to choose between one or the other, because I could not be both. Now I recognize that writing is understanding, and the desire to understand is what connects me with all technologists.

This year I learned how to be a technologist from Paul Graham, Stepan Parunashvili, and Slava Akhmechet. Paul Graham's essays on wealth creation challenged my long-held beliefs about the agents of change in our society. Stepan Parunashvili showed me how exciting it is to visualize technical ideas and bring them into real life. Slava Akhmechet exemplifies what Justin Murphy calls an "edge" and taught me how to be an independent-thinker. The beautiful part is that I never interacted with any of them – they're writing is there for me to read and re-read. Stepan knows who I am, Slava might recognize my name, and PG will likely never know my it. That's okay. What they've shown me matters more than they could even realize.

When I joined genzmafia, I found a community of optimists. These people believed deeply in technology's power to make the world a better place. It was so refreshing to escape from the dystopian media portrayal of technology. I aligned myself with my internet friends. I spoke to Nathan Leung, Yash Godiwala, Samay Shamdasani, Sudarshan Sridharan, Wade Fletcher, Nikolas Huebecker, Andrew Roberts, Akshaya Dinesh, Eric Trimbs, Ciara London and Dival Banerjee. These people all explode outwards my conception of what it means our age and what it means to influence change. They are my greatest mentors.

The Theory of Anti-discipline

Daniel Bourke first introduced me to the theory of anti-discipline. He didn't call it anti-discipline (that was Alexander Cortes), but he said life improves with subtraction. It's a beautiful idea to consider because it reveals how much clutter I let into my life. It's easier to start from first principles; the ones I identified for myself are reading, writing, and exercise. Daniel Bourke simplifies them to movement and making.

Intentions for 2021

This list is terse for a reason. It contains the only thing that matters and an area of growth for every year of my life.

Love Better

During COVID, when I was trapped at home I thought often about what I wanted. I thought about the career I wanted; I thought about the body I wanted; I thought about the house I wanted. Love is counterintuitive for me, because I didn't know how to want something for someone else more than I wanted it for myself. To use Derek Sivers' language, I was too future-focused to be present with other people.

I want to be a better brother. When Ronit was a toddler he followed me everywhere. When I read Geronimo Stilton on the couch, even though he couldn't read, he opened a picture book and sat beside me. When I lied to him, he treated my word as gospel. Last year I realized he still hadn't stopped, although he was more covert about it. Ronit inherited the classes he takes, the sports he plays, and even the way he talks from me. I believe Ronit secretly wonders if he'll ever be as smart, athletic, or good-looking as me. I can only imagine his disappointment when he realizes he'd kept running the race so long after he'd won. I can only wonder what he'll do next.

I want to be a better friend. I stopped talking to all of my friends during quarantine. In the beginning, we called every weekend, but during the summer I spoke to almost no one. When I returned to school last semester, I thought I needed to make it up to my friends. They just wanted to see my face and hear my voice again. The realization almost brought me to tears.

I want to be a better son. Writing about my parents is difficult because I still can't comprehend what they've given me. What I do know is making my parents happy means fully realizing the person I can become. I want to be the person people can rely on during troubling times. I want to be the person who gives others hope. I want to be the person who makes others feel strong.

I would write about being a better boyfriend, but there's a whole chapter about Meghana in my book. I'll only say that spending time with Meghana makes me so happy I come home singing and scare my dog.

My 2021 Goals

Derek Sivers reminded me that goals only matter if they spur me into action in the present moment. I can think of plenty of things that I'd love to do, but many of these ideas are like shooting stars, wonderful to admire but irrevocably distant. When I think of what I can't not do, I realize I can't not write the book I've been talking about for over a year now.

People ask me all the time what my book is about. The book answers questions I have for myself. It's a sacred weapon that acts on me. This book is my way of explaining myself to me first and then to others. The book will be a non-fungible token (NFT) on Mirror. It will also be available for free on my website, and I will print a limited number of copies for my friends. I'm planning to release the book serially, starting next week.

Reading

After middle school, I stopped being a voracious reader. It wasn't just me – when I went to Houston, Edward and Faiz said the same things about themselves. I want to love reading again. I don't want to sleep because I can't stop reading. I want to go to bed anticipating what will happen next in the story. I want to walk around the family room in a trance because I'm imagining myself as a character in the book.

Reading List

• Hell Yeah or No, Derek Sivers
• How to Live, Derek Sivers
• Wanting, Luke Burgis
• Skin in the Game, Nassim Taleb
• Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

Re-reading List

• The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore
• Letters from a Stoic, Seneca
• Hackers & Painters, Paul Graham
• The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking

Fin

Growth is non-linear. Last year, I felt I took ten steps forward, and at the beginning of this year I thought I'd taken ten steps back. Now I feel like I'm growing into the person I want to be again. The best knowledge from the past year and a half is the self-knowledge I've developed. I know how to move forwards if I'm feeling sad. I know how to dissect my thoughts and I know how to get out of my head. I know what areas of my life matter most to me and which ones I can't waste my finite energy on.

In 2020, I started to describe myself as an artist because I knew I could change the way people saw themselves. It was easier than I thought. In fact, I could do it by telling them how I saw myself. I learned I could weave magic. I enter my workshop and pick up my tools. I alchemize experience into language with my keyboard. I'm dedicating the rest of 2021 to weave this power more strongly than ever before.

I originally meant for this post to come out on my birthday, May 13. Given today's date is August 24, the actual number is now 21,797 days.

There's 21,900 days between my 20th birthday and my 80th. In 21,900 days I'll release my borrowed stardust and renew the Earth. Life feels continuous, but it's not. Its days and breaths can be counted. But its memories ring out across spacetime forever. When Death comes what will I remember?

Derek Sivers has a folder on his computer that contains every possible future he's ever imagined for himself. When he finishes a project, he opens this folder in part to laugh at his naivete and in part to choose a new dream to pursue. I too think it would be boring if I spent 21,900 days in pursuit of a singular dream. Here's six dreams that I have for my remaining days.

I become Dave Chappelle's NFT artist. Dave Chappelle has created the most legendary moments I have ever seen. Whether it's his summertime concerts where he brings in Kanye and John Legend, his comedic genius now documented in his Netflix Specials, or the skits he created and stole back from Comedy Central, these moments deserve to be preserved on the blockchain. I can't imagine what allowed shared ownership of these moments would mean for his fanbase or for comedy. I dream that after I become Dave Chappelle's NFT artist, one night he lets me open for him, and I give the audience of perspective of the Indian-American experience they've never heard before, blossoming into a star in my own right.

I build my own house. My family and I live in a courtyard style house on an enormous plot of land. The courtyard at the center is a lush, grassy area where the kids play. The four outer corners where the courtyard meets the house are supported by Doric columns. In our backyard is a tree with a treehouse I built with my son. When he gets older, he'll beg me to give me his privacy there, but for now we climb in together.

I live in the English countryside with my family. This is a shared dream with my parents and younger brother; ideally we would live in a fishing town like Portwenn from Doc Martin. We live as locals. There's a mid-level football team there whom we cheer for in the fall and spring. In the summer, we spend time on the water and catch fish.

I open a pastry shop in France. When we lived in Paris, we stayed in my father's friends apartment away from typical tourist traps (although we did go to those places too). Every morning we went to the pastry shop below our apartment for breakfast. It turned out the man who owned the shop was actually Greek, and the day before we left he gave us baklava. I would love to take Meghana to Paris and give her this same experience.

I become a halwai or sweet-maker. I learn how to make Indian sweets or mittai. I open a store in Boston and sell the classics: jalebi, gulab jamun, and laddoo. Our special is named after my mother's father, whom we called Daddy-Papa, and it's hot jalebi with milk.

I pioneer realtime consumer-based holography. I help create a world where people can turn themselves into holographs at home and watch their holograph move in realtime. People watch sports in 3D; LeBron James (at that time more likely Bronny James) dunks in your living room. Business people call into meetings via hologram.

The stories we tell ourselves matter, because, as Alex Danco reminded me, we become the stories we tell ourselves. This truth is comforting to me because nothing compounds better than a powerful imagination; I know I have the power to dream up a good story.

Start and don't stop.

Dave Chappelle

My favorite essay is from the seventh grade; I wrote about my resurgence as a soccer player. I described joining my new team in the fall of 2013 and feeling out of place; everyone was faster and more skillful than I was used to. We lost almost all of our games that season and I blamed myself. After a few months of weekly practice with my coach, I came back in the spring season and my first game everything felt slower. I leaped to catch crosses, parried shots around the goal, and noticed how my teammates all seemed more at ease. I was still unsure whether I was this new person or the player from the fall, but I felt relieved, as if I'd just saved someone from a burning building.

I feel that same way now. When I think back to that essay, I feel so dramatic. The most formative moment of my youth was going from a mediocre soccer player to a good soccer player. But it was triumphant. Like Aeneas, I had my katabasis when my coach benched me, and, like Aeneas, my journey changed me; I was not the same person in the spring as I was in the fall. I want to summon some of that same confidence now. Perhaps I'll regard this essay as dramatic in a few years.

The last time I wrote publicly was five months ago. It feels so good to say something again. I wanted to write something so many times and in fact I came close -- I still have to publish my 2020 "Year in Review," halfway into 2021. I stopped writing my book during those months, partly because I underestimated the all-consuming nature of a four-person startup and because I lived at school around people I hadn't seen for a full year. People thought I was joking when they asked me how the book was going and I replied "terrible," but it was the honest truth. I'll have to push the release date back, at least until December. But that's another post.

The power of my own thoughts frightened me. It felt like trying to empty the ocean with a fire hose. Last year I started writing publicly and it was the best experience of my life. I felt a deep connection with myself and through my podcast I felt a deep connection with other people. I thought I'd identified what happiness meant to me. I thought I knew exactly why God put me on this Earth. When I started working in January, I stopped doing all of that. I stopped writing. The last episode of my podcast was in December. I stopped exercising. I stopped seeing Meghana.

There is a magic to writing the same way there is a magic to soccer. When I write, I can't explain the connections I make or the thoughts that come into my brain. There's a voice in my head telling me what to say. On the soccer field, my favorite save is the breakaway save -- when it's only the goalkeeper and the striker. I can't explain the combination of stupidity and bravery that tells me to leap at the striker's feet and stop the ball. It's as if there's someone there with me. When I stopped writing, I felt the same way I did when I stopped playing soccer well. It was as if God had deserted me.

I couldn't understand how my life had gone so awry; I wanted everything to go back to the way it was. I would call my parents and Meghana multiple times a day, because my mind associated them with the happiness I felt last summer. Meghana didn't understand why I was so clingy, and my parents couldn't understand why their twenty-year-old son was so sad. Like Vardaman boring two holes into his dead mothers' face, my desperation lead to disfigurement.

The epigraph from Dave Chappelle is his advice to a teenager asking him how to become a comic. I broke perhaps the only rule of being an artist; I stopped for five months. It's clear that in times when I feel I have all the answers and when I realize I have none of them, it's the dedication to the craft that gives me life. So I'm starting again. Or, rather, not stopping.

Thank you to Brent, Faiz, Andrew, Edward, Land, Michael, Meghana, Mom, Dad, Ronit, and Rosie -- you keep me afloat.

There are no bargains between lions and men. I will kill you and eat you raw.

Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

I know in my last post I claimed I wouldn't be writing on here for a while, but Dave Chappelle's artistry was enough for me to awaken from my self-imposed stupor. Chappelle's Show is the reason I titled my podcast Rajit's Show. I believed that if someone so true to the spirit of the craft could name his show after himself, then it would not be vain for me to do so as well. Watching Chappelle is like watching a magic trick. He weaves stories together with such precision that it's not until the punchline that I recognize the tapestry he's created.

The fact that man could scrape the inner lining of his soul to produce so much joy for the world and be denied the fruits of his labor breaks my heart. It was a theft: "if you are streaming that show, you are fencing stolen goods." I choose this word in full knowledge of the fact that Chappelle himself recognizes the legality of Viacom's position. The question he demands we ask ourselves forces us to consider the people we want to be: "but is that right?"

What Happened

The shot heard around the world:

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Before its first episode aired in January of 2003, Dave Chappelle signed a contract with Comedy Central to produce his comedy sketch series Chappelle's Show. He compared the meeting with Comedy Central executives to finalize the deal to incident at the age of 18 when he was duped in a game of three-card Monty. "What if they were all friends and I didn't know it?" After two spectacularly successful seasons of the show, Chappelle choose to walk away before the premiere of the third season in 2005. Because of Chappelle's decision to leave the show, Comedy Central weren't liable to pay him.

In a comedy special released on Instagram, Chappelle describes the language of his contract which granted Comedy Central the right to use his likeness "in perpetuity throughout the universe." Perhaps it's because the nature of this legalese is so sweeping that it sounds so ridiculous. I doubt his story is even possible in this post-permission world. Imagine a Chappelle's Show hosted on Youtube. As Chappelle recognizes, such a framework would leave him at the mercy of us, his "real boss." Netflix stopped streaming Chappelle's Show at his request and now HBO Max has too. These actions fall short of rectifying the plunder; Viacom has the opportunity to give Chappelle back what is his. The alternative, which Chappelle delivers before tossing his mic on the floor, is that Dave Chappelle can do what any man would do when someone obstructs his livelihood: he can just take it.

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Supplement this post with writing celebrating the joy of creation, how art immortalizes us, and the importance of being earnest.

I went amid the books and sucked in the air; it was like oxygen after the stench of the brothel.

Aravind Adiga, White Tiger

Writing in public is strange. My mind constructs an artificial audience and thinks about them often, like "what will my legion of fans say if I write X." In reality, it's my eighteen subscribers of friends and family (whom I love), but once I release these posts onto the internet anyone can read my writing. It's this possibility that holds me accountable for transmuting my curiosity into art.

Writing here is deeply necessary for me. Before I heard of Courtland Allen's idea of forcing functions, I decided to start a blog to force myself to write plainly. In the past, it let me say what I struggle with, what I'm hopeful about, and what I find beautiful in the world. Hugo Amsellem rightly called it exercise. It's oxygen after the stench of our social media brothel.

My last post on here is dated more than a month ago. Every week I play with a new idea but don't bring it to completion. The list of unfinished posts haunts me; as if every spark I light won't burn as a flame. The constant putting off is a surface cause; the larger issue requires that I simplify my life. As a result, I won't be writing on this blog until March.

As many of you know, I'm writing a book about the ideas I investigate on my podcast. The book-writing process demands that I write multiple times a week, and it's unfair to the people I interview, myself, and everyone supporting me if I don't give this book my full attention. The book will release in August, and I will give all of my subscribers a copy if they want one. The podcast will continue, and I will stay active on Twitter.

In the meantime, I want to support other creators who will hopefully continue writing publicly in my absence. Supplement this blog with Shreyas' incisive insights on politics and culture, Jodi Sy's beautiful juxtaposition of art and science, and Nathan Leung's surreal ability to communicate what we're all feeling.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Pablo Neruda, "Keeping Quiet"

I once read about a wolf who was born disfigured and cast out from his pack. Every wolf, save his mother, hoped that he would die. Gifted sanctuary from a grizzly bear and her cubs, this wolf miraculously staved off death. When he matured he found a new clan in the Arctic tundra. Upon his arrival, he discovered there was a name for wolves like him: malcadh. This rank described other deformed wolves the clan had exiled to protect its bloodline. The clan designated malcadhs who returned as gnaw wolves, the lowest position in the pack. Gnaw wolves ate last and suffered abuse from fellow wolves.

However, malcadhs were skilled in the art of gnawing designs on their bones, and this wolf was a true artisan. His creations communicated his pain, his sorrow, and his resilience in blazing detail. The stories he depicted evinced truths other wolves didn't have the vocabulary to express or the moral courage to acknowledge. This wolf's art earned him the respect of his clan and others, and he transcended the depravity of his birth.

When I was young, I wished I had been born a prodigy. Math whiz who meets Ellen. Chess genius who baffles competitors. Soulful pianist who leaves listeners teary-eyed. Without any obvious answer, I struggled with the question of who I was. I feared my response would be this misty vapor forever. People who could say what they were passionate about without all of the subjunctive clauses my answer required seemed so well put-together. I barely practiced guitar for my weekly music lessons so I would need to look outside music. I couldn't run faster than most of the kids on my soccer team so the plan to play professional athletics stumbled too. I began searching for something I could call my own.

How long does it take to become great at something? 10, 000 hours? Burdened with the desire to become something I could proudly tell other people, I thrashed wildly in high school and in college. Viewing time as an obstacle as opposed to an opportunity, I reached for a perverse alchemy: the ability to compress five years into a single second. I believed my sole mistake was that I wasn't moving fast enough. Now, if I could speak to the tenth grade me, I would tell him to do fewer things.

Active lazing is a phrase I stole from my junior-year English teacher (who himself attributed it to Billy Collins, although I have never found anything to confirm this fact). He practiced active lazing during his summers at Cuttyhunk Island when he rowed in a paddle boat. The cover image of this blog is an acknowledgement of his desire to watch the ebb of the current, to displace this thrashing with something everlasting. Last week, Shreyas asked me what I believe the meaning of life is. "42," I replied stupidly. I know I'm destined to speed out on a motorboat if this is the question I pose. What is the meaning of life is unanswerable.

If I ask myself what is the meaning of my life, then I can structure my days in a way that respects the cyclic nature of time. I can discover my one action "which will fructify in the lives of others" (T.S. Eliot, Dry Salvages, Four Quartets). This advice is the greatest salve for missing out on life that I have ever learned. If I organize my life as I could die at any moment – and as Eliot reminds us, "the time of death is every moment," then I know I will have no regrets when the death comes. It is this self-knowledge that separates every human being from each other. The ability to suture our circumstances to our experiences to explain fundamental truths – time, death, love – to ourselves.

At nineteen, I recognized that accomplishment is an illusion that only makes us pant. In high school I stopped speaking to my girlfriend for two years because I was "too busy." In college I refused to go out with my friends on the weekends because my work was more important. It's only now because of a novel coronavirus that I can appreciate how my girlfriend's smile puts the sun to shame. Now I can see each day latent with a thousand hidden joys waiting for me to turn them over like sea-smoothed pebbles.

The most puzzling part of Harry Potter is when Voldemort kills Harry, his final Horcrux. Struck to the ground, Harry dreams he is in Kings Cross Station with Dumbledore, who grants him a final wisdom: "Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living" (J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows). When my paternal grandfather died, I wept uncontrollably. My father, who delivered the news to me, smiled as he said, "दादा lived a long life, पुत्तर." The idea that the living are worthy of pity suggests the gift of life endows the recipient with an enormous responsibility. To be alive is to feel this burden.

In the continuum of the five billion years our sun has shone and in the five billion years it will continue to shine, I am a blip, although perhaps that is overstating my importance. Out of this vastness, we are suspended into existence to strut and fret our hour upon the stage. How do I gather my hour into what the legendary poet William Butler Yeats calls "artifice of eternity?" God fastened my soul to a dying animal. I started dying the second I was born, my vital life force spilling out in a triumphant wail, golden energy proclaiming "Whát I dó is me: for that I came" (Gerard Manley Hopkins, "As Kingfishers Catch Fire"). What's permanent isn't my flesh and bone; I don't matter.

The epigraph by Pablo Neruda is about being still. As he reminds us, stillness is not to be confused with inaction – "I'm not talking about inaction, I'm talking about life." He's talking about life lived deeply; a life of moments that warp Minkowski spacetime to our will, leaving the imprint of our hour. He's talking about the redeeming power of art, and its ability to transmute the finite into the infinite. He's talking about creation and telling the world things we only tell ourselves, like a wolf who gnaws on bones and man who writes online.

My father stirred the mattar paneer around the large steel pot that stretched from the floor to his sternum. He gathered the yellow curry in the ladle and emptied it into a smaller bowl. I grasped the handles of this bowl with one hand and brought it out into the langar hall, a community kitchen in a Sikh place of worship. I walked up and down the hall, offering paneer to the columns of people seated on the red carpet. My younger brother and cousin did the same; one of them carried a basket of roti and the other a jug of water. Over the next three hours, my younger brother, my cousin, and I would take turns serving roti, fruit custard, and salad. When my parents called, I would run back into the kitchen; I washed tomatoes for my mother to chop, rolled out hundreds of rotis for my aunt to heat on the stove, and cut blocks of paneer into innumerable small cubes for my father’s gravy. In total, we served over 300 people. We kids all had our small parts to play, and we played them with great fervor — after all, this was a service to honor my grandfather’s memory.

As my aunt ran around the kitchen in search of more paneer, as my mother helped us kids scoop ice cream for the fruit custard, and as my uncle celebrated each roti my younger brother buttered, I smiled. I felt bundled in a blanket of my family’s love and support. I knew that when it came time to roll up those red mats, to sweep the bits of food off the floor, and to lug the trash bags outside, I would not do so alone.

My family was my first team, but I have joined others — soccer, debate, and math teams, to name a few. My love for working with like-minded people has driven me towards entrepreneurship. The tiled floor of the langar hall was where I realized I wanted to start a business and lead a group of people. This passion arose out of the desire to recreate a childhood experience and later flourished into something much greater. In middle school, I downloaded all the lectures from a Stanford course on startups onto my iPad. In the wee hours of my Saturday mornings, I lay on my bed and watched as a professor explained that the ideal number of co-founders was three, pointed at a Venn diagram with insanity in one bubble and practicality in the other and claimed good ideas lay at the intersection, and told us to hound our employees for the names of every smart person they knew. Watching these videos was like uncovering a new world, and I pictured the late nights shared with a college roommate, doggedly sketching the prototype for an idea.

In the fall of my junior year of high school, I decided to start a company. We would have a personal relations department, research and development staff, and finance managers. One Monday evening, I presented my idea to my friends in a crowded dorm room and felt that familiar rush as their applause thrust me back into the langar hall. I envisioned a sleek company logo, an organized chain of command, and the same strength of shared purpose that had driven me to rinse dishes and wash cutlery, even after three hours of preparing food. We invited twenty-five people to join and asked them to divide themselves up into the departments. To my dismay, I couldn’t imbue our other members with the same zeal for the pursuit of a communal goal that I’d experienced with my family; by the winter term, only five remained. I consider this endeavor my first failed business. As I learned one Saturday morning however, many venture capitalists do not even consider entrepreneurs with fewer than three. I am well on my way.

I am she: I am he / whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes

Adrienne Rich, "Diving Into the Wreck"

Sometimes I hear voices in my head. I know – it's strange. Oftentimes, it's as if they are standing there with me, leaning over my shoulder as I write these posts. These voices are critical and biting. They disarm me with unnerving incisiveness.

In my junior year of high school, we read Hamlet. In the beginning, a ghost speaks to Hamlet, and the voice of his slain father him convinces him to go crazy – to 'put an antic disposition on' (Act 1, Scene 5, Line 173). He is wrought by the unfairness of his uncle's ascension to the throne and the spectacle of his mother and uncle's hasty marriage. Hamlet feels as if the world is against him, declaring it an 'unweeded garden' (Act 1, Scene 2, Line 135).

I remember when, in the first grade, a kid at the bus stop suggested I was fat. I recall lifting up my shirt to look in the mirror every time I went to the bathroom. I remember when in Calculus class my desk mate wondered aloud if I was too boring. I recall repeating this same thought to my friends. I remember when someone asked me if I was the scrub of the soccer team. I recall thinking he might be right.

Hamlet assumes the responsibility of avenging his father's death, and this charge weighs on him. He struggles to reconcile the dissonance between his internal strife and his inaction: 'Who calls me villian? Breaks my pate across?' (Act 2, Scene 2, Line 556). As he bashes himself, Hamlet questions the source of his anguish. Is it Claudius, his murderous uncle? Gertrude, his disloyal mother?

Who is the chief antagonist of my life? That's the question our English teacher asked each of us to answer on the last page of the play. For a long time, I believed these dogged voices constituted my greatest villain. I needed to convince other people that I was not who they said I was. When I now consider how much time I spend thinking about the lives of other people, I realize that no one, bar my parents, directs as much of their time towards thinking about me as I give them credit for. When I consider what these voices are, I recognize why the story of Hamlet is a tragedy.

In feigning madness, he kills Polonius and drives Ophelia to an early grave. These actions incite Laertes to challenge him to a duel that kills them both. In the end, Hamlet is the source of his own demise. For whom? His father's ghost? After Hamlet kills Polonius and berates his mother, the ghost arrives, admonishing Hamlet in language that eerily mirrors Hamlet's own criticisms of himself. But his father's ghost – the cause of Hamlet's 'antic disposition' and the voice spurring him towards revenge – is invisible to Gertrude. Therein lies the resolution of Hamlet's struggle, as his mother characterizes his condition with incisive clarity: 'it is the very coinage of your brain' (Act 3, Scene 4, Line 137).

I am astounded at the brain's ability to wound itself. These voices I refer to don't come from other people at all; they too are the 'coinage' of my brain. There is a freedom to recognizing the person whose lash I feel most keenly is myself. I am the person who admonishes myself for my 'blunted purpose' (Act 3, Scene 4, Line 111). I scapegoated other people for the doubts I held about myself. I worry that I'm too boring. I harshly analyze the amount of body fat around my midsection. I wince at the suggestion that I'm not good enough.

It is only his posthumous request to Horatio – 'tell my story' (Act 5, Scene 2, Line 334) – that allows Hamlet to transcend his situation. His final action of summing up reveals to us who Hamlet's true antagonist is – himself. His 'story' tells the truth to us, the readers, even if he couldn't tell it to himself. I suspect when we all wrote our antagonists on the last page of the play, we summoned an honesty Hamlet never arrived at. The fall of Denmark to Fortinbras from Norway is not the work of an external antagonist. Denmark is leveled from within.

At 10, I started playing soccer, because all of my friends were too. I unceremoniously dumped baseball and joined the local travel team. Practice was a five-minute bike ride from home, and my parents had a handful of carpool options. I should mention that I love food. I love the texture of food; crunchy potato chips, soft crumbly cookies, and creamy delicious ice cream. My parents instilled this love in me, and my father’s chicken tikka masala was the Sunday sermon, and my mother’s cold cut sandwiches the evening prayer.

Anyways, I was a little overweight. This fact tends to matter for soccer, because, as my father reminded me, I needed to “run fast.” His brow furrowed while he watched from the sideline as I, convinced I was pumping my arms and legs as hard as I could, fell behind the opposing striker in a race to the ball. My first season the team had too many players on the roster, so I watched my friends play the first few games of the season in a practice jersey and baseball cleats on the sideline. My early growth spurt made me taller than most other kids, but it also gave me a body that at times felt alien to me. As a result, I typically played defense.

In the waning minutes of a rare blowout win however, I played goalkeeper. The opposing striker blundered into our center back, and, out of the resulting foray, he meekly pushed the ball across the goal. Out of sheer instinct, I dove and parried the ball with my hands away from the goal. At the end of the game when our parents walked across the field, my coach remarked to my family, “he made a good save.” I can recall the bright flush of feeling like I did something commendable. In my mind, I juxtaposed my coach’s praise with his visible frustration when I kicked the ball out-of-bounds or inadvertently passed it to the opposing team.

While we were all in elementary school, everyone played goalkeeper. On Saturday mornings there goalkeeper-specific practices. I often returned home with grass-stained elbows and knees, dirt smeared against the sides of my shorts, and the thrilling sense of accomplishment. Every season, fewer people came. Everyone wanted to be a striker. Our coach lamented his lack of defensive options, but I understood my teammates’ desire. Soccer can be a cruel game. The final scoreline doesn’t measure the accuracy of the midfielder’s passes, the strength of a defender’s tackles, or the spectacular nature of a goalkeeper’s saves. It measures goals.

Suddenly I was the only goalkeeper on our team. Other people still split halves with me or came on at the conclusion of our victories, but there was always an assumption that I would play in the goal. Playing goalkeeper is tremendous pressure. There is the glory of the big save, and the titanic disappointment of a goal I must take ownership for. Sometimes I even asked others to take my place or acted more injured than I truly was.

My mother asked me what my favorite part of playing soccer is, and her question immediately submerged me in that magical moment. My favorite part of playing soccer is the moment after I make a save, and I look up and I hear the parents clapping and my teammates congratulate me. It is a revealing statement that after thousands of hours of club soccer, one-on-one coaching, and scrimmages with my friends that my favorite moment on a soccer field is one I have no control over.

In eighth grade, I joined the school MathCounts team. The first day the teachers administered a test to group kids by ability – beginner, intermediate, and advanced. My father volunteered to administer the test, and he also arrived the next week when program lead told me my test score placed me in the intermediate group. As we left, my father told me in Hindi, 'you cut my nose off.' His statement doesn't translate cleanly into English, but I recall avoiding looking my father in the eyes for the next few weeks.

I asked my mother to buy me a textbook I heard the children in the advanced group studied from and took it with me everywhere. I flipped through the pages while we were on the plane to Key West, Florida. I lay on the ground in my cousin's house in New Jersey and solved problems in margins of the book, while my younger brother played Call of Duty. I held the book over my head before I went to bed and flipped through the chapters. I wondered how much of this process I needed to repeat before I would be good.

Math and soccer were the Gods Brahma and Vishnu, responsible for the creation and stability of my world. Proficiency in math formed the foundation of my existence; it suggested strong problem-solving and deductive reasoning skills which indicated my future success and science and technology. Soccer drew out the walls and placed the furniture in the rooms that housed my adolescent conception of the world. It suggested health and long-lasting wellness. My family and my peers became the God Shiva who destroyed this world whenever they doubted the integrity of my foundation or the aesthetic of its upper stories. I remember looking at my younger brother and feeling the need to warn him; he needed to adopt this religion and immerse himself in it. If only I had done so earlier.

In elementary school, I was always in the ninety-ninth height percentile for my age group. Noticing how I was taller than all the other kids, other parents lapped me with praise. 'Oh Rajit's so tall,' they pointed out. Every week, my teachers gave me a different spelling list than the rest of my classmates, because I displayed a remarkable memory in the first grade. Every week for five years. I felt unique and gifted. I thought I was unique because I was gifted. I thought being gifted made me worthy of praise.

My worldview has changed since I was thirteen. I know the internal satisfaction of goodness dwarfs the fickle appreciation of greatness. I know it's my experiences that make me unique – it's one of the reasons I write this blog. Lastly, I know that I needed to be good at something to value myself, even though I was worthy of praise for being good at nothing at all.

In the fall of 2018, the referee sounded three whistles, and my high school soccer career ended. The other seniors and I cried, and I buried my face into my father's jacket to hide my crying. My fall season had ended three times before but this time I didn't have a next season to train for. I didn't even know where I would be going to school next fall. My mind flitted to the thought of what to do next. The autumn air was rich with opportunity. I exhaled my frosty breath upon the snowy treetops of the world.