Learning is simple but not easy, doing is complicated but critical. Learning new skills or attaining new knowledge is not easy, but it is simple. Choose your topic, obtain the courses/videos/books/articles you need to hone your expertise in it, allocate the time to study, off you go! Until my mid-twenties or so, I had spent…
Applying the Engineering Validation Mindset to Building a Business… Simulations vs. Stories I have been an engineer for the latter half of my life. My ‘apprenticeship’ started years before college, from the moment I decided to study coding with nary a carrot or a stick provided by any teacher, and to initiate ‘side-projects’ that undoubtedly…
… as the Glass Animals album cover goes (I’m not Glass Animals fanatic, just enough trivia has rubbed off from my partner’s die-hard dedication – I am yet to observe the same phenomenon with American Football). I’m told that each of the eleven songs on the album represent a story based on a different person…
When I slip up for the umpteenth time in ED recovery, or hell, when I slip up in life, when I slip up in this Type A Gremlin’s interminable pursuit of perfection, when I behave like a normal fucking human being is wont to behave …I bang my head against the wall in my brain…
I wise therapist once told me that “your only job is to see the truth in this moment”. I think of this “truth” as reflecting your core needs and desires in that “moment”. Not only is it “your only job”, it is nobody’s job but yours. Nobody else has a unique view into your mind.…
The original version of this article was posted on a private blog shared with a dear friend, on April 23, 2023. I have revised it and reposted it here to capture a time in my life when I began to have an inkling of awareness regarding my “addiction to progress”. Eckhart Tolle said that “Awareness…
I’m reading Martha Beck’s book, The Way of Integrity, at the moment. In it, the author guarantees a method to find “a sense of purpose, emotional healing, and a life free of mental suffering”. Big promises indeed. As an academic in STEM, I have my qualms with the book – she refers vaguely to studies…
If you are one of my regular (three) readers, you’ll know that the topics of addiction, recovery, and more generally, compulsive behaviours we (I) adopt to control or distract from feelings we judge as painful, are recurring themes of my blog. I had an insight recently, regarding a run-of-the-mill compulsive behaviour I don’t consider problematic.…
We often have qualms about the people closest to us: our romantic partners, our best friends, our parents. We expect more from these people than we expect of others. We expect them to understand us, to tend to at least some of our needs, to absorb our flares of frustration. We hold them to a…
I have an irresistibly fluffy, but threateningly grumpy, roommate. She goes by Zora. On the outside, she appears to be an adorable kitty. But make no mistake. On the inside, she is a brusque elderly woman with no fucks left to give. She will use you for pets on her own terms, and make it…