dec '22

Dec 08, 2022

Apologies for not following up on a November newsletter. I was strictly observing NNN (No Newsletter November) and therefore couldn’t perform as per usual. But regardless, aside from my strict spiritual practice, November was quite the month. Lots of travel, excitement and fun, accompanied by a large amount of stress and gray hairs. Judging how these last few days after Thanksgiving have been, I expect December to keep up with this pace.

If you are anything like me, your mind might begin to see flaws and shortcomings with your performance in 2022. As we near the end of the year, you’ll think “Oh shit, I didn’t even get around to my 2022 goals!” You might begin to feel as if you’ve dropped the ball or fallen behind in this never-ending race to be better than your previous self. Chill out. It’s not like you owe anybody a better iteration of success. I bet, if you took a minute to think back, your progress report for the year is quite amazing. So here are my two cents, before you look forward to the next year and burden yourself with another long list of resolutions and goals:

Give yourself the next 31 days to revel in the successes and lessons you’ve gained throughout this year. Internalize how far you’ve come and how much you’ve grown; and pat yourself on the ass a hefty number of times. You deserve it.

…

Before we go on in this letter, I strongly advise you to open this in your browser and view it on my Substack site. We dive into some important shit and I’d rather you have a solid viewing/reading experience.

i’m feeling lucky

Nothing special here, just sharing more music with you. But just remember this… Spotify sends you a colorful love-letter only once a year - I make you a beautiful playlist every month. Just saying.

[Archive playlist can be found here, and in my spotify bio]

the human hard drive

In May of 2022, I saw the film Everything Everywhere All At Once. I was deeply moved by it and I even wrote about it in the May Letter. But since then, I haven’t really recalled any noteable moments from the film itself or the special effects or any meme-worthy lines. Rather, I remember the 2-hour long conversation my friends and I had outside of AMC Theatres that night. The conversation sparked a long-winded metaphor for the way we view life and how the information we consume determines the way we process that information and regurgitate it when needed. This is my attempt at sharing that metaphor in brevity.

In short… you are a storage system. When you are born, your storage is small, weak, and limited. To further the metaphor into a quantifiable measuring system, let’s say that when you are born, you have 1 KB. You can only fit a tiny bit of information inside and it takes a lot of time to retrieve and process that information. That storage space is precious when you’re a newborn! It needs to store only the essentials: recognizing who mom and dad are, when you’re cold/hot, when you need to pee/poop, etc. That’s all it takes to survive as a newborn because someone else cares for you constantly. You don’t need to process and apply information all that much.

visual representation of the Human Hard Drive as a toddler

But now let’s say you’re a toddler. Your storage space has been upgraded to 1 MB. You can somewhat speak now; you know how to eat; you can crawl around; you have a general idea of night/day. While you are learning things constantly, keep in mind that your information is coming from one source. Your parents/guardians. They provide you with whatever information they choose to. If they choose to speak Hindi at home, then your primary language becomes Hindi and that’s what is written onto the hard drive. If they eat with their hands, you eat with your hands. All they know and all they want to teach you, is all you know. There are little-to-no outside sources of information. This is good (for the time being) because it allows you to process and digest this information efficiently, while someone else controls what gets put onto your hard drive.

Fast forward a few more years, and now you have 1 GB. You’re going to school now, you’re making friends, maybe starting to play some sports/instruments, maybe even getting to travel! This is a very crucial time in your life. That 1 GB of space has never been more volatile. While you do have more storage, you’re inherently throwing out old information and replacing it with new in order to keep only what’s necessary. For example, you might not need to know how to crawl anymore but you do need to know how to run. Similarly, you’re potty trained so now you can poop without having to really think about it. (For those of you with ongoing problematic bowel movements, I am deeply sorry for calling you out like this. #sorrynotsorry) But my point is that the storage you have, is being re-evaluated constantly in order to address your needs best. You keep what you need, disregard the rest. However, the most important element to note in this phase, is that you are now given some control of your own storage space! You choose what is written and what’s discarded. And more importantly, you begin to see and take note of outside sources that influence your storage. Maybe your bestfriend plays with Barbies and you see a motivation towards dolls. Maybe your dad travels to Germany for work and brings you German model cars, opening up a whole new folder within your storage system. Maybe your neighbor has a Golden Retriever and you quickly grow fond of dogs. Each new interaction and experience opens up a new folder in your hard drive and forces you to make room for the things you admire. As children, we go through these things quickly - be it clothes, toys, or friends - but we start to master the concept of folder creation and deletion.

Example of what my folder organization might have looked like as a child

A handful of years later and you’re now a teen. You have 1 TB of storage space and it’s never been more important. You can have proper intellectual conversations (or argumentative bitch-fights), debate over multiple love interests, express opinions on the dumbest of things, multi-task to some level of proficiency and maybe even drive. But here’s where things get tricky. So far, you’ve been a sponge of information. You’ve been storing and saving and creating new folders. But now, you begin to apply that information in a variety of ways. Maybe a school assignment needs you to make a project about cars; so you choose to write a paper on Audi because you love that brand and so you’ve learned a good bit over the years. OR maybe while at the mall with your friends, you choose to buy things from the clearance section because your parents have always seemed to do that; naturally, you follow suit. OR maybe while planning a family vacation during spring break, you choose to go to Cancun instead of Cartagena because you remember that one time your uncle said he went to Cartagena and got mobbed at gunpoint in 1995. Do you see what I’m alluding to? All these tidbits of information that you’ve gathered over the years and stored away within your 1 TB of storage, become sources of influence in the decisions you make and the opinions you have. The environment that you’ve surrounded yourself in for the past ~15 years has clearly influenced the type of information you’ve gathered and how/when/where you apply that information. Factors that have subliminally influenced your information might be:

the age and gender of your siblings (if you have any)
the racial diversity of your school district
the affluence of your neighbors and your neighborhood friends
the number of times you visited extended family each year
the type of video games you were allowed to play
the religion your family believes in
the holidays you celebrate
the type of lunch you generally ate on Sundays
the cost of your shoes

The list goes on and on; Ofcourse there are a million different examples but the point remains that these subtle scraps of information that we collect over the years, become a point of reference for our internal database of knowledge and opinion. Our hard drive, at this stage in life, evolves from solely a place of storage to a file transfer system that moves at the speed of light.

visual representation of the Human Hard Drive as a 20-something-year-old

Zoom ahead a little more and we enter the most important phase of all. Scientists haven’t landed on a number to confirm the amount of memory storage in a fully formed human brain, but let’s say that you now have 2 PB (Petabyte) of storage. You’re done with school and you’re figuring your life out. You’ve had your heart broken, traveled overseas, lost loved one(s), achieved personal success and/or experienced failure. And throughout all this, you’ve taken in ridiculous amounts of information while also expelling tons more. The question now is: Does the information you have, prepare you to see the world in a holistic way or does it force you into projecting preconceived notions and stereotypes far from the moral medians of society? Phew, that’s a big question. Read that multiple times.

Over the course of our lives, we are given so much information and none of us are taught how to process and decode that information. Cultures, trends, societies, traditions and technologies are rapidly evolving at a rate that renders our stored information as stale and outdated within a short period of time. In 1924, Freud asserted that biology was the key determinant of gender identity but here we are in 2022, vastly confused, displaced, and misconstrued from that construct. Is there even a moral median for such a concept? What about concepts like sexual freedom? What about social freedoms? Human rights? Abortion rights? Financial equity? What about simpler concepts like tattoos? Jewelry? Dietary choices? Do we have a universal agreement basis about these “informations”? Nope! We have only what we’ve gathered and stored in our hard drives. We may have gathered that information from our parents, friends, teachers or mentors, but nonetheless our ideals and opinions are so greatly influenced by where and who we got them from. And they dictate the way we see life and approach others. Almost everything we know in this world is subjective, and until we run into someone with an opposing point of view, we won’t even realize it’s subjectivity. And when we do run into that person that believes pineapple should go on pizza, are we capable of accepting and welcoming such a crass idea? Is it even possible to comprehend the opposing POV when you’ve sat on one side of the fence your whole life? Yes, I believe it is. It’s possible to rewrite over old files and entertain new information even when you’re 90 years old. Here’s how:

Refresh your storage.

Once you reach your human capacity of storage, you’ll need to keep refreshing your hard drive and discard old, outdated information. You might ask: “What part of my hard drive is outdated?” Well, that’s up to you. But the point is, unless you keep rewriting that information and doing some "spring cleaning”, you won’t keep up with the times. Much like the good ole Floppy disks and Walkmans, you also will rot in a tech junkyard or in the basement of a junk-collector. And for a lot of people, those old trinkets and toys were a source of nostalgia! We are a species of hoarders! We love to reminisce and keep things around for the sake of comfort and sanity. But those are not excuses for keeping old outdated ideals, beliefs and perogatives.

Many of my concepts are best illustrated in case studies, so here are a few:

If you grew up in a traditionally religious household that believed there is only one god and you must go to a prayer service every Sunday or else you’ll go to hell… refresh your storage. There might be other gods. Prayer service might be on Tuesdays. Hell might not exist. Religion might be a fallacy. The possibilities are endless, but the ultimate truth is up for interpretation.
If you grew up with a mom doing all the chores, cooking and cleaning in the house… refresh your storage. Think about who set these standards. Are they valid? Don’t carry silly gender normative ideals into another generation.
If you grew up believing that you must not cry even if your dog dies, you get your period, you crash your car, or your wife yells at you… refresh your storage. Emotions were never meant to be caged. Neither were they meant to be projected; but shit happens. Talk about it, sing about it - rewrite the way you’ve known to control your emotional signals.
If nobody ever taught you how to cook a proper meal and so you end up eating scrambled eggs, cereal and toast for the rest of your life… refresh your storage. Take it upon yourself to seek new information and create storage space for a new interest that may have never existed.
If your job is paying you well but you’re an anxious wreck at the end of everyday and feel like you see no happiness at the end of your weeks… refresh your storage. Everyone has different thresholds for endurance, tolerance and pain. Know yours, and be comfortable with what you can handle. Don’t let someone else’s threshold be a standard for yourself.
If your parents told you to wear a certain type of clothing or certain styles because they accentuate your figure or fit you into a visual mold… refresh your storage. Dress however the fuck you want, and be content in your own skin. Define yourself by the way you present yourself, and don’t let that definition come from anywhere else but within.
If the company that surrounds you doesn’t make you feel wanted, loved, cared for, and supported… refresh your storage. You are in complete control of your environment; design it to near-perfection.

While these are only a handful of examples, I’m sure you all could send me a thousand more. It’s our duty to constantly refresh our own storage and keep empty space at all times. That empty space allows us room to process and digest new information. Different people present us with new information and opinions almost everyday, yet we should be willing to let that new stuff into our system. We should be willing to challenge the existing data and advocate to both sides of an argument. We should be willing to listen to the male friend who wants to paint his nails and pierce his nose, the Muslim neighbor who has really loud sex, the Pastor that you saw crying in their car, the sister who says she doesn’t want to be an engineer, and the best friend who says you neglect their feelings. Listen to their stories and re-evaluate the information in your hard drive. And who’s to say we shouldn’t share some of our own data? Tell people what’s stored in that wonderful hard drive of yours. Tell the world about the new shoes you’ve got your eye on, the comfort you felt seeing your own skin color on TV, the tattoo you hope to never regret, or the embarrassing stories you’d never thought of sharing. Give the world all you have to offer and be willing to accept, respect, and embrace what it gives back.

We all have beautiful hard drives within us, filled with all kinds of information. Some new, lots old. Make sure that old information gets audited periodically. Choose how to digest the new information and which folders to store it in. Don’t be afraid to save over old files and update file names. Ensure that the sweetest bits are cherished and password-protected. But most importantly, leave room for what’s to come.

…

through my eyes

Introducing a new segment here! I intend on sharing one or a couple photos from the month that I really felt I was proud of or want to specifically highlight. I want to do this partly for visual break-up of this massive word vomit but also to hold myself to a standard of love for my own photos. Often my work gets lost in my catalogs or on a social media feed but I think this might help me actually pick favorites and really appreciate my work month-over-month. We’ll see. Here’s this month’s photo - taken on a foggy/rainy night in the suburbs of Austin. I took this photo while driving into the Home Depot parking lot and just happened to catch this perfect moment.

scene from a home depot parking lot on a foggy night

anchors

I had a recent conversation about routines. It prompted me to think deeply about the type of routines I follow and the habits that have crept into my daily life. Ofcourse there are little things like brushing teeth, eating lunch, and cleaning the kitchen. But across a full 7-day-week, we are forced to juggle a vastly varying set of tasks and they never seem to get easier. Especially for someone like me, who’s always trying to fill their plate with too many things and stay constantly busy, it’s important to find a routine so that the variation of tasks can be accomodated for week-over-week.

Looking back at my routines over the last few months, I noticed a set of anchors. These anchors are tasks and habits that I consistently follow every week, and they happen no matter what. These anchors allow me to reset the weekly calendar each time I come around, kind of like passing “GO” in Monopoly. You know that even if you lost $5000, your properties got stolen and you were sent to jail twice, eventually when you turn onto Broadway and see that street corner… you’ll inevitably get $200. Similarly, every Monday evening, I go grocery shopping. It takes me about an hour from start to finish. The ‘start’ is taking inventory of my pantry/fridge to make a list of what I need, and then the ‘finish’ is restocking the pantry/fridge with all those things I just purchased. Sometimes I need just 2 things, sometimes I need to re-up everything. But the importance of this anchor is not in the task itself, it’s in the consistency of its occurrence within my weekly routine. Getting groceries every Monday evening - without fail - allows me to reprocess the weekend, reset for my week, and contain the spillage from the previous week. Otherwise I find myself in a constant snowball-accumulation-situation where things will pile up on my shoulders. Having that anchor allows me to feel like I’m turning a new page every week and maintain a sense of rolling progression. Another anchor of mine is pick-up soccer every Thursday night. It gives me something to look forward to and brings the weekend a little bit closer. Yes, these might just seem like normal weekly scheduled events but really embracing the consistency of these occurences allows for a more efficient cycle of time. I use certain anchors to reset my weeks and other anchor to make time feel more dynamic. I encourage y’all to find one or a few weekly occurences to anchor your routines. Embrace the consistency and find your own rhythm.

link dump

the reason I set my alarms 9 minutes apart

a beautiful house with indian design principles

unique thoughts on ai and it’s place in art

the ISS is in grave danger and needs your help

when you realize that the wiggles are actually a great band

and one more for the lovers of school of rock

i doubt any of you will actually read this article

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and all the other letters I send. I put a lot of thought and effort into each sentence and I hope it shows. I’m especially proud of my piece on the human hard drive, although I might read it back in a couple months and call myself crazy. But that’s okay.

Please do reach out and drop me a line if you distilled any value from this letter. Or maybe just hit the ‘like’ button, as you’ve been conditioned to do through social media. I hope y’all finish the year in company of good spirits and tunes. See you in 2023.