To 2023

I’m sorry for treating you so poorly. I’m proud of my awareness of time—I truly do understand how important you are. So it is with deep regret that I begin this new year with the bitter taste of lingering ignorance from the past year.

On paper, you were an action-packed year, but in the midst of it all, I lost myself.

I mean, I’ve had existential crises before. But due to some over optimization, I ended on the opposite side of where I was last year. This year, I tried to have it all. Work jobs, do school, run organizations, go on retreats, travel across the world, etc. A past and future Krish loves you because you are the source of so many great stories, but wow, you broke me.

I had two really big mistakes this year:

Accepting the Cansbridge Fellowship

Honestly, this is a great program, but it wasn’t built for people in my situation. I joined a program centred around networking and discovering myself when I should have been in execution mode. I was already in a good place, I just had to continue committing on what I was already doing. Instead, I randomly found myself pulled from my responsibilities to engage in 2 weeks of conference-y programming centred around the past 2 years of my life. Then, I spent 2 months half way across the world. Alone.

For many people, this is a dream opportunity, and I’m sad that I took up a spot in a program that could have changed someone’s life. For me, it killed all the momentum I had going into Q2. In Japan, I perpetually felt my life’s work crumbling away from me as I sat depressed in my hostel. I didn’t (and still don’t) have the courage to engage with the wonderful people I met because of the fellowship because I feel like I let them down. In fact, I didn’t have the courage to engage with anyone I looked up to. I began to feel imposter syndrome. No. Even worse. I was a sham.

Working on something I wasn’t passionate about

After coming back to school, I felt like I needed to do something—anything—to prove that I could still make impact. I ended up spending a lot of time working on a product that I had minimal passion for. This was in bad faith to both myself and the people I was working with. The product started to make some waves but I felt like I couldn’t attach myself to something so shallow. So I cut myself off. Then I did it again with something else. Then I cut myself off. Then I had small withdrawals. Then I cut myself off quite harshly.

Lessons

1. The golden rule of opportunity cost exists, and doing it all is only cool for so long, but it doesn’t compound well.
2. I’m an in-person person. This applies to work and relationships and is something that would be really high ROI to fix, but it is too high risk to continue trying to change this and failing
3. I’ve noticed that I love to argue for the sake of arguing. It’s almost a primal instinct. I’ve been working very hard to suppress this. I’ve also turned quite pessimistic recently, but I’ll turn that around soon enough.
4. I don’t want to lie to myself anymore. The people that I look up to the most are living a very pure life. I’d like to do the same.

Not many lessons tbh. It was a terrible year after all. I’m writing this all while sitting in a random neurotech hacker house that I joined on a whim, and while being around such inspiring people I still feel dread inside. I think I might be either seriously depressed or burnt out. Anyways, here are some cool things that happened in 2023 so I can sleep peacefully tonight:

• Achieved my childhood dream of making tech Youtube videos and learned a ton while doing it
• Saw Japan! Sure I was a little broken but the country is still awesome.
• Met some really very cool people as always

Gonna go into the new year with the purpose of doing things purely. I’m gonna build with little pressure and lots of fun.

Goals for 2024

• Read more
• Do things purely