Jan 2016 - Recap

Today's 3rd Feb. I should've written this 4 days ago. But better late than never. 

So the first month of what will be the most amazing year of my life is already over. And it went by so fast, so fast that I have no clue where it went. Yes, I did some work and I traveled to a few places for work, meetings (Sidenote: Must write about the kind of travel I do - for work - which may not be too instagram friendly) and other such trivial pursuits in the larger scheme of things.

Over the last one month, I've had some hits and some loses. Let me list those.

Hits

• I have finally come to accept that I can live survive in Bandra. Though I spend very less time there, I am ok with it. Its a mistake that I dont want to repeat once the lease comes up for renewal, in September. Also, next time I will be wiser with my house hunt. 
• I wrote 14 posts in January. Which is amazing. Because each post took time to think, write, edit and publish. If not more than 14 hours atleast. I am back to serious writing and its now a matter of time when #book2 happens. I am so late on it that its not funny. 
• I am now clear that in this year I will focus on three things - events business, brand / digital strategy business and startups. Well, 'focus" on "three things" sounds stupid but if you know me, you will know that I've cut the list from 30000 things to 3. Which is an achievement. 

Loses

• Did not make 10 lakhs in the month. Adds to the pressure of making 1 cr in 2016. But I did add a new client that hopefully will give me additional 20% income for at least the next 6 months. At this rate, need to add 20 more clients to be able to reach 10 lakhs a mo figure. And that wont happen without a team! So, I will probably try and get one.
• Tried getting over sgMS but could not. This is probably the longest running struggle of my life, apart from trying to lose weight. I have tried multiple times but I cant seem to find a solution. The only two things left to try are, a, substance abuse and b, going far far away from here. The physical proximity (she's in Mumbai and her place is like less than 10 KMs away) keeps the hope afloat I guess. 
• Met Prof Dhruv Nath yesterday and he reinforced what Raj and others have been telling me - that I am a great employee but I will suck as an employer / founder. Funny thing is that apart from me, everyone can see it. And I can either try to ignore what the world is saying. Or leverage on things. I will think more on this.

Thats it. I cant think of anything else. Come to think of it, life is so insignificant. Oh, I have been wondering of that as well over the last few days. I have sort of deep-dived into the life of Elon Musk (this article is a great place to start) and he's making me think on things like life, time, intelligent life, "forever" and so on and so forth. I dont know where I stand on Fermi Paradox or I dont know what impact I am going to have on the world but my belief is now reinforced that our time is limited and we often spend that stupid time on chasing frivolous things that may not really matter. Of course nothing really matters in the long run and everyone, everything has an expiry date. You may even ask what is the damn purpose of living if things dont matter. May be you live for people around you? May be you live for yourself? May be you dont know why you want to live. May be you want to help others. There are just too many may bes. But I do know that some things keep me going - this blog and the thoughts of #sgMS. And the pursuit of enough money that allows me to not be at the mercy of work that I may not want to do.

Also, I realised that I use "that's it" and "so" a lot while writing. May be need to eliminate it?

Also, someone told me that I write as if I am thinking while typing. I dont go back and edit. I concur. I love to see my words spewed on

Going forward, I am planning to take 7-10 days off in February and not do anything and think and sleep and all that. If all goes well, I will be gone from 15th to the 28th (when I goto Goa to play a poker tournament). While I am there, I want to create a model to evaluate if I am doing any better. Some questions that I could ask are...

• So what has changed over the last time I "evaluated" myself?
• What has helped me? 
• Where do I want to be at the end of the year? 
• How am I doing compared to same time last year?

That's it. Hope I write these every month.

Like always, if you read this and you have something to add, please do share!