time – Page 4 – untitled atm

029b – a case for content-creation

Had a terribly lonely week last week. Didn’t feel like stepping out and couldn’t stop ruminating over thoughts of lost love for almost four days in a row. Eventually, the week picked up though. I met some people. Crazy how that helps.

If I’m being fully honest, I do feel a bit tired of plainly introspective writing. I’ve decided I’m going to publish poetry on here as well. And I’ll count it as a full post since it takes much more effort from me to complete one of those.

The other day I mentioned “content creation” as something that I perhaps actively would want to do, and I realized that it was the first time I said that out loud. I think I always had this image of content creation not being a ..respectable (?) activity? Because I always that there’s too much content to consume. I guess I need to find the case for content creation.

Personally, what had initially drawn me to it was of course, validation and compliments over stuff I made. Or just the feeling of being seen. But eventually, I think I’ve realized there’s a little more to it. There’s resonance and connection. The more I accept that I do seek connection with other humans, the more I can see how things I create help me feel it.

I think it’s got a little bit to do with owning these dimensions of yourself. Whether you’re making Instagram reels over silly things, or making covers of music that you like, or clicking pictures of things that appeal to you – there’s a layer of judgement which you’ve shed in order for you to share it with the world. It’s natural that connection would follow.

Plus, isn’t that the ultimate (or perhaps, only) cure to loneliness? Moments of connection, even if they are fleeting or temporary?

But, I also heard something about over-expression being the bane of our generation. How it can lead to a lack in actual intimacy between people. Is this worth paying attention to? I don’t know. If I think of the people closest to me, I don’t think emotional intimacy’s missing in any of those, so maybe I don’t have to worry about this just yet? There’s never a shortage of things to talk about or do.

Okay so I’m almost at 400 words now. To summarize,

A little tired of plain, introspective writing. Need some variety. Poetry is a good option.
I have a case for content creation – clarity and acceptance (for self), feeling seen and heard, resonance and connection (with people). Probably a good counter for feelings of loneliness too.
Over-expression doesn’t seem like a problem yet. Can potentially learn a little more about this though.

—

I wrote this almost a couple weeks back so I’m adding a little more to it, since I don’t think I have enough stuff for a separate post, and this one was missing a bit anyway. Had the 4th July long weekend this weekend and it ended up being super-duper social. For the first time in a couple months I felt like I didn’t get enough of the “sleeping-in” time or “me” time or “chores” time. (Don’t think all of these words need the quotes but eh.)

Oops, I just realized it’s already midnight and my evening has completely gone by in a blur. Time to get ready for the last holiday of the long weekend tomorrow!

Also, my god the last 10k words have been a drag. Definitely need some more (and potentially different kind of) motivation to keep this up.

029a – platonic intimacy and friendships

We don’t always get what we want. But we get other things. Other things that sometimes end up being silver linings.

I took a somewhat spontaneous weekend trip with few of my friends from grad-school this week. I’d never realized how platonic intimacy has many similar stages like romantic intimacy does. The obvious, tangible things like shared spaces, shared bathrooms and beds. But more than that, the smaller things – the newer fights, some of them caused by unsuspecting jokes, the small adjustments to each others’ habits. Quirks. The privilege of getting to see each others flaws. The vulnerability that comes with telling someone you’re a late sleeper. The vulnerability of being cranky when you haven’t had your day’s coffee. Then there’s the meditative moments when you all sit around someone packing their suitcase on the last night, watch them slowly fold their clothes, one piece after another. You realize how much at peace you all can be, together. Nobody says anything until it’s done and everyone suddenly realizes how magical the moments that just passed had been.

I’m all for virtual friendships and long-distance relationships, but I’m realizing that some dimensions of intimacy can only be achieved by spending actual time with people. I think throughout school and college, some of this happen pretty automatically, since trips and spending time with each other is kind of a default. But as adults, some of us often have to be a bit more deliberate about it. Glad to be able to do it though!

In general, it’s been a great year for friendships for me (of course, being single will do that to you anyway). But I have realized that I’m much more social than I used to think, and it’s been fun to lean into it. Though one new concern that’s come up for me is whether having “more” friends can affect the quality of friendships? (I mean obviously, but I wonder what the numbers are.)
I was definitely a believer of “quality over quantity” earlier, and though I have liked increasing the quantity so far, I don’t want the quality to be affected.

Am I making “enough” friends so that I don’t have to face disappointment when someone is unavailable etc, or do I just genuinely like having that many friends? I think it’s okay when I have multiple friends for different purposes, like enjoying different kinds of activities or when people fill different roles for me, but having multiple friends for similar purposes and roles might be an overkill.

My eventual goal though is to reduce my dependencies on social media and have just enough close friends that I can keep in touch with them and be able to reach them through the older mediums of connectivity. This should provide a good enough upper constraint, I guess.

Anyway, that’s all on this. Onwards.

028b – flights

Adding this picture here since I think it has some interesting things worth noting. I love how it has things related to the pandemic as well as the fact that it’s the pride month – something else I wanted to talk about it in this piece, but didn’t end up getting to. Still worth it, though, I think.

I’m stuck in a five hour flight. Two of the five hours have passed and I’m slowly starting to enjoy it. Had a terrible night since this was a 6 am flight, and why past me thought it’d be feasible is beyond me. Spent the whole night in the “too anxious to fall asleep” and “too sleep-deprived to focus on anything” loop / limbo. But.. I’m here now, and not unhappy nor frustrated. The airport was terribly packed, by the way. In a way I’ve almost never seen before. It’s not completely unexpected since the pandemic is sort of coming to an end here, or at least a pause (who’s to say, really), but still took me a little by surprise.

I was trying to write a little bit earlier too. I was thinking about how it’s been difficult to sit down and focus on writing coherently. I was thinking about how inspiration has been fleeting lately. How it does knock on the door from time to time but flees before I can invite her in. But it’s interesting how a medium-long flight offers exactly the right kind of an environment to focus.

My body is, admittedly, quite uncomfortable, but I’m sure my plight is nothing next to that of the very tall boy sitting next to me who seems incredibly uncomfortable in the middle seat.
This got me thinking about the economics of shared but unequal travel, or in general… shared but unequal experiences. It’s been quite a while since travelers have been able to afford various privileges for an additional cost, but it’s one of the first times I’ve been on the more privileged side. It’s a weird feeling, I didn’t expect so much guilt around it. I wanted to let him know to let me know if he wanted the windows up or down, and for a minute I’d even felt like offering him my seat if it were slightly less uncomfortable. Then I remembered I’d paid more for my seat and there was no reason for me to have to do that. So yeah, the guilt around privilege was and is very real.

Anyway, my time in the States will be coming to end in around 7-8 months. And it’s weird how that changes things so much. I’ve noticed how ever since I got the confirmation of this news my perspective on my remaining time has shifted quite significantly. Every experience feels retrospective even as I’m living it. I was thinking about the people who made the last three and a half years worth recounting. Some of them were people I knew from before I moved, some I met once I got here. So, so happy and content with this last phase of my life. I think I’ve grown a significant amount and learnt so much about myself and what I want from life. Of course, I don’t know whether I would get everything I want or not.. but it’s still nice to feel more aware.

Flights always bring up a lot for me. Something I can’t stop thinking about is the first flight I took when I was moving here. I was seated with another girl similar to me in age, and a married man probably in his 30s. The three of us had ended up talking a lot and having a great time (flights from India to the US are terribly long), – and it just warms my heart to remember that experience. It was such a great welcome to this place, and I’ve always been so grateful to both of them for providing me with that. Hope I can pass that on to someone else at some point.

023b – frustration over the lack of time is generally about something else

Turns out there are limits to introspection. They’re not as straightforward as “I’m done now, I have nothing more to think about”, but more of a gradual decrease in the number of times you get triggered into introspective loops, daily, weekly, and so on.

Since I was mostly doing personal writing so far, my posting frequency has drastically decreased. I feel emptier now, in good ways though. It’s good for me generally, but not great for this “numbers goal” I had. I might have to consider sitting down to write even when thoughts aren’t coming up naturally. This means there’s going to be deliberate effort needed now. And we all know how bad most of us are at keeping things up when they get even a little tough.

I’ve been watching a lot of Netflix for the last couple weeks. I don’t think I watched a super unhealthy amount, but I do feel some sort of negative feelings around it, which could be worth paying attention to. The good thing is, the show I was watching is over, so I don’t have anything great (or bingeworthy) queued up for the next few weeks.

I think every time I feel frustrated about not being able to meet my writing goals, I think about time-management and end up on the “how do I make time for everything that I want to do?” question. But I think the truth is I’m not frustrated with the apparent lack of time, the frustration is simply about not having anything to write when I do actually sit down to do it. It’s a frustration about being distracted, about thinking of Y and Z while doing X.

I think the frustration is also about not getting enough engagement on the things I’m posting lately. Be it blog posts or song covers. Although I’m aware that I’ve been putting in less effort in “sharing stuff” and engagement is only in limited ways a reflection of the quality of my work, it’s still generally nice to keep getting engagement on it. Even though it might not be enough to create motivation when it doesn’t exist, I think it can keep the flame burning, so to speak.

I’ve been thinking about whether I feel ready for “society” in the post-pandemic world. There’s still a decent amount of time to go before I absolutely have to start working from office, but even then, it’s something that’s on my mind. I’d be excited to see some people, some old hands, some new ones, but I’m also anxious about some of my old worries that used to come up when I was going in to work everyday.

Lastly, feeling grateful. Grateful that I get to do this. A weird random thought about how I probably wouldn’t be able to carry on a lot of the things if I had kids and/or dependents? Not sure whether it’s true but feels like it.

Sometimes I feel like reducing my minimum required words to 500 from 1000 is a little hacky. Since some of the interesting stuff is only uncovered much later into a 1000-word post. I feel like 500 words come around even with some of the surface-level stuff, and it allows me to exit before I can get to the juicy stuff. But I’ll think more about this later. Adios!

022 – achieve flow in self-exploration

Yesterday someone told me how “no sleep is better than the sleep you’re not supposed to be sleeping”. We were talking about whether I’m enjoying writing only when I’m escaping into it, or whether I can enjoy it even when I have ample time to do it. So here I am trying to enjoy writing even when I have a couple days off coming up, starting tomorrow.

There’s a few things on my mind, cigarettes and shame, for starters. Shame about cigarettes and smoking, to be clear. But I don’t know if I want to think about it or elaborate on it. The other thing on my mind is loneliness. I don’t know if I want to think about it, either. They could be related, possibly. Maybe it’s smoking alone that’s shameful. It’s definitely easier when you do it with company. Maybe it’s the alienating aspect of it that brings shame sometimes.

I’m definitely getting distracted by loud talking voices coming from outside my room. Music doesn’t help either, since it’s quite distracting also. I never understand how people are able to work or do mental tasks alongside of music. Even instrumental music can be distracting for me, more often than not. Trying not to pick my phone up every five minutes.

Was thinking about how it’s insane that I was doubting my ability do code. I have proofs from various systems that I can, I am “employed” as a software engineer. And yet, imposter syndrome + anxiety had got me doubting myself so intensely. Even if I’m not a “star” programmer, I’m okay. Feels good to see it again.

Whenever I get stuck in the middle of any of these posts, I end up checking the word count. I don’t think it’s a great habit, since it can be discouraging more often than not. It’s like checking results in the middle of an experiment. Should perhaps take into account the problems that come up with the observer effect. I know this isn’t exactly the same thing but it feels like it.

What is loneliness? Can a textual or video conversation resolve it? Can it be broken down into other feelings? I know intellectual starvation was one. Lack of people who understand you and care about you is another. Lack of people you are interested in, could be another too. I think part of loneliness resolution is having enough people you’re curious about. With tons of information coming at us every minute, maybe we forget who we intentionally want to hear and know about. Maybe when there aren’t enough people around me arousing my curiosity, I could make myself the subject. Maybe I can achieve flow in self-exploration. Maybe it’s the right amount of challenging and interesting. And we all know that we are equipped enough to do it.

Recently read a bit about flow again. Saw a video that mentioned how people who achieve significant periods of flow in a day can be happier. I think I’m definitely able to achieve flow with programming, and photography, and writing. For the last few days, I’ve managed to spend 3-4 hours at least, at work, “in the zone”. But it’s not as satisfactory, I feel. My main motivation to get my work done is just that – to get the work done. To reduce the stress and worries. But my motivation with photography and writing is often more positive. Of course, I know the relationship could change if I were doing these things to earn money or make a living, but so far, I don’t need to worry about that. I suppose it’s okay to notice that there’s a difference, at least currently.

I want to explore film photography. There’s so much to research, though. It’s daunting. I really don’t love the research part of things.

Alright, going to keep this short. I enjoyed this. I think I can be happier when I keep reflecting a little bit from time to time. I love uncovering the strongest thoughts and feelings, the ones that persist across hours and days, and are significant enough to come out even when they’re completely unrelated to everything else that I’ve been thinking and talking about so far. The need for an outlet is quite real.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a thing such as too much self-awareness? Is that possible? Are there downsides to it? Both the therapists I’ve had in the past have often told me I’m quite self-aware. Some of my friends have often told me that too. And I think most people have meant it as a compliment. But I wonder what I feel when I hear it. I think a part of me relates it to narcissism and/or being self-absorbed.
Looked up a few articles. Couldn’t really find any clear downsides apart from potential over-thinking and over-analyzing. Joke’s on you, article – I already do that anyway.

It’s crazy how on the one hand I feel sad about how I don’t know what I like who I like what I want and on the other hand I worry about too much self-awareness. Just goes to show how much nothing is worth believing.

Well, I didn’t actually end up keeping this short. I’m happy, though. Got a long day ahead of me tomorrow. Excited about the outside time I’m planning to get. Maybe it’ll give rise to another post. Or maybe it’ll just be a nice day by itself. Thinking of treating hours and days as opportunities. Time, in general. I suppose. An opportunity to be curious and authentic and brave.

018a – can we make it in time?

A puff, two, four. His first cigarette of the day, two, three. A honk, two, a few too many. He finishes his pack, he wishes he had another. The car in front of him finally moved an inch, two.

There wasn’t much in the world Aakash really cared about, but he valued being there for his friends. He was finding it terribly hard to accept that his best friend was struggling to get through a depressive episode at home and he might not be able to make it in time to help. He tried calling him. A ring, a text. Voicemail. A prayer. ‘Fuck’, he swore.

He’d never been so upset about being stuck in Delhi traffic, even though he complained about it everyday, ever since he’d started driving. For all his promises about how he’d get out of the country soon, he knew he wasn’t really sure if he wanted to leave. There was a reason he hadn’t talked to his manager about potentially quitting soon. He had the options, he had the admit letters in his inbox, starred and marked unread for him to access easily, but he wasn’t sure if he was ready. For one, he genuinely didn’t like the thought of leaving Dev alone. He knew he wouldn’t be alone alone, but he also knew that none of their other friends really understood Dev’s struggles as well he did. They never seemed to have the same sense of urgency, the same sense of concern. Dev had never said anything though, of course he never would, they both knew they were adults with their individual, independent hopes and dreams.

A sigh. The traffic was finally moving and he was breathing a little normally again. He typed another text: “Yo I’ll be there in 10, you hanging on?”. A familiar swoosh told him it was delivered. He found himself speeding, touching numbers even he normally wouldn’t. He knew he was creating quite a bit of anger in people as he passed them, but he believed he was justified. They didn’t know what he knew, he thought.

They didn’t know what it can mean to not make it somewhere in time. They didn’t know what regret can do to someone. They didn’t know about the promises he’d made himself that one night. The night his life had, for the lack of a better word, changed. The first time he’d lost someone. Really lost someone. They didn’t know the value of time. They didn’t know that sometimes you have to push aside rules for things that really matter. For people that really matter.

‘Fuck’, he swore again. His rumination over the past wasn’t helping anyone right now. He finally slammed on the brakes. He’d reached Dev’s apartment building. He haphazardly parked the car and ran upstairs. Knock knock knock knock knock. He rained a swarm of knocks all over the door. He tried the doorknob, realized it was open and blasted inside.

‘You could have replied to my texts, bitch!’, he yelled at the empty living room. ‘Dev! Dev?’, he continued to yell and seek. He entered his bedroom and finally saw him sitting on the floor, staring into nothingness. Not an unfamiliar sight. A breath, two. A sigh of relief.

‘Hey, buddy’, he sat down next to him. He exhaled a few more breaths. He knew he’d made it in time.

013 – it’s okay to value your time

I made a mistake. I was actually feeling really good about getting done with the day around 11:15 pm but then I dawdled. I dawdled and I checked my phone and then I started reading stuff on twitter. And now it’s 11:45. This isn’t a great feeling. I wanted to explore a bit when I’m at peace. I don’t want to fall into the trap of revenge bedtime procrastination. The only way I would be able to sleep on time is when I find enough time in the day to be able to feel “satisfied”. And that’ll come from being able to do a little bit of things that make me happy and give me personal satisfaction.

It’s good that I know this and I see this. It’s good that I recognize this feeling that arises whenever I dawdle and scroll for too long. At least I think it’s good.

I want to get a little better at valuing my time. Earlier I was pushing back against this a bit. Because I thought I don’t want to be overly attached to my goals and desires. But now I feel like there can be a compromise. I’m sure it’s possible to have goals and desires and yet be non-attached to them? I know this is a pretty ideal state to be in, so I’m not taking it lightly.

I was also questioning where the need to value my time was coming from. I know now that it’s coming from a recognition of unfulfilled wants and desires. One of the reasons I was fighting so hard against my day job was that I felt like it was leaving me with no time for all my other pursuits. Of course, the anxiety and stress was real too, but maybe it doesn’t have to be a wild change. I see what’s happening, I’m trying to find a compromise. I’m trying to see if valuing my time (and eventually managing it better) will help me be more satisfied.

Whenever I think about creative pursuits, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs comes to mind. I keep thinking about how I’m often sad and/or dissatisfied because I keep trying to fulfill the (self-actualization, esteem) needs even without fully fulfilling my (physiological, safety and belongingness) needs. Why are the bottom three rungs so boring to look at or think about? Maybe because I haven’t solved them. Maybe because they’re supposedly easy and I keep failing at them. We keep trying to hack at happiness.

But then I also remember seeing a few posts about how Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is flawed. I also dislike research so I don’t think I’m going to look this up, though I do feel like it would be interesting to. (Well, note to self.)

I’m very glad that I’m not consuming mindlessly a lot these days. It’s nice. I think I’m not as addicted to scrolling and content anymore.

How do you set boundaries with your parents? I really love them and I genuinely like spending time with them, but I can’t figure a good way to seek and take their support without also inviting “parenting” in. I don’t want to be parented anymore, I just want some support. It’s a fine line. I’ve already had a couple of really tense arguments with my mother, and she’s barely been here two whole days. I remember it’d been the same way with my sister when she’d come to stay with me for a month around a year ago. But I remember making a shared document of working styles and communicating styles which had actually worked pretty well for us. Maybe I can do something similar this time too.

It’s already 12:30 am and I really wanna be in bed by 12:50 am. Can I try writing 400 more words in 20 minutes? I mean if I really just want to ramble on I probably could. What stops me generally is wanting to write something of relevance, something of value, something that ties in well with whatever I’ve written so far. Even though I’ve (way too) often told myself I don’t need to be worrying about all of that. I suppose there’s a part of me that thinks unabashed writing is lazy writing. And honestly, it probably is. But it’s probably better than no writing. Doing this day in and day out. This is the primary reason I really like my music teacher. She keeps asking me to sing and keeps reminding me how singing wrong notes is better than singing no notes. She gets it, she gets me, and she really “attacks” the biggest and the most primary fear in me. The fear of being bad.

I’m happy to have some of these structures in place. I think I do need to take some time out to set up a few more of these. I probably need monthly check-ins for admin tasks, large cleanup tasks, decluttering tasks. I know that getting these things done feels really good and yet I don’t do them enough. I think there’s something about batch processing not done right that just ends up being worse than the unideal alternative of stream processing.

I think at some point, somehow, I had just accepted batch processing to be the superior option for most tasks. This is especially true for chores. I would often skip daily chores and let them be a “weekend problem”. But when the weekend would come around I would often not feel like getting them done, sometimes just whimsically, and sometimes because it would feel more mammoth. So then I unconsciously shifted to stream processing for “all tasks”. Which then ended up crowding my daily life way too much. So now I gotta do an intentional evaluation of the treatment different kinds of tasks deserve.

Well, I’m kinda done. So it turns out I’ve started valuing my time again. I think it’s a good direction to be headed in. This doesn’t mean I would want to be crazy about saving time all the time and not be okay with wasting it once in a while, but in general, I would probably want to be at least a little aware of it. I still have 4 minutes to 1:00 am so I’d say not too bad. *pats self*

009 – why we’re scared of failing fast + are we?

Why am I scared of failing fast? Why do we spend hours and hours in preparation for important things only to tank them anyway? I think it comes from a belief that “opportunities are limited”. And for me, that comes from my parents’ upbringing, and hence mine. When they got opportunities in their time, it was critical for them to make the best of them – because opportunities were indeed, limited.

For me however this is barely true anymore. I’m privileged enough to have more than a basic set of skills, tools and financial support to sustain myself. A few missed opportunities is probably barely going to make a difference for me.

I know it sounds like I’m coming at this from a “work and career” perspective here but I mean this for everything. I have a terribly strong fear of failure in me. It shows up in long-term “important” actions like wanting to quit my job sometimes (and here maybe it’s aligned with my values for that to exist), but it also shows up in the most minuscule of actions. I only put up code changes once I’ve made them “as perfect” as possible, because I’m afraid of “too many” comments or feedback on them. (Even though I don’t need to be.) Failing fast should probably work much better for most communities, and at some level I do know this. I should be able to bring up issues and problems out in the open, as fast as possible. It’s not “on me” to fix everything. The more problems that exist, the happier my company would be, ideally. These are people who enjoy problem solving.

I’m afraid of going on dates until I feel like I’m in a good place, even though.. I think, in reality – all of that barely makes a difference. I can be the most perfect version of myself and it still won’t work. Or I can be flawed and rough and it still might. Plenty of people in the world, right?

(Emotional) tunnel vision probably has a big role to play here too.

It’s the same thing with difficult emotional conversations as well. Scared of testing the waters. Afraid of saying the wrong thing too soon.. when in reality – the faster you fuck up – the faster you improve and grow. I’d heard this advice from someone on how to do college best. It was that one should try to get a C or a B right in the first semester itself – it’ll free you up. Though it made sense to me even at the time, I wasn’t fully able to absorb it. And then there’s this other piece of how a bad grade might also not feel like enough of a failure sometimes. I still think it’s brilliant advice though. I see one problem with it however – it’s often hard to fail deliberately. It’s hard to go into something “knowing” you’re likely to fail at it.

The only thing you can really do is continue to set yourself up for failure (without thinking you’re doing that), by doing every little scary or difficult thing that you’re pushing away. Probably best to do a quick cost-benefit analysis though – we don’t want to be impulsive and risk getting traumatized.

The other reason could be low self-esteem, of course. The lack of trust and confidence that I’ll be able to cope with failure, that I’ll be able to build myself up again. I’ve been beating myself up lately about how “I haven’t really failed enough” and that’s the reason these new failures feel so big. But today as I’m thinking about it, I think that’s not correct. I have failed enough. I do remember how much some of the “hardships” I’ve had to face in the past have affected me. Like if I made a list – I’m sure I could come up with at least 10 ten things which at the time felt like “the end of the world”. Yet, this month, I felt like everything bad that was happening to me was for the first time in my life. So maybe we forget how strong we are? Maybe we forget how much we’ve coped with? There’s a famous quote by Donald Winnicott, which is – “The catastrophe you fear will happen has in fact already happened.” It makes sense – trauma is probably so painful that it makes sense for us to suppress it when it happens – but often it manifests as fears instead.

Does that mean my fear of failures points to a bunch of unprocessed failures? It’s possible.

I’m sure personality types do have a role to play here. What makes some people grow from failures, and what makes some people more fearful instead? It’s possible that different people are afraid of different types of failures though, so it might just feel like we’re alone in our fears.

Didn’t really get too far on this but here’s what I have so far (for myself, at least)

Beliefs about scarcity and limited opportunities, people
Beliefs about self’s inabilities to cope with failure, to cope with the emotions that accompany failure
Hazy memory, inability to collect and remember past failures
Potential unprocessed failures
I might not truly be as fearful as I think I am
- This might have some truth to it since I’m up at 5 am not giving fucks about my sleep schedule, even though last week was traumatic and I’d told myself I that I need to be disciplined

Okay, I think I have one more. People like me don’t value our time enough. And I don’t mean this in a harsh way. But if I did, I’d probably be getting more done – I’d be failing more and succeeding more. I’d spend more of my time facing my fears than I’d spend living in those fears. This one’s good, this one’s important I think. And seriously fuck the pandemic excuse. Anyone who’s saying they’re not growing during the pandemic is probably not being creative and intentional enough*. It’s interesting, this one was present in the question all along. We were talking about failing “fast”. There’s clearly a time dimension there. 🙂

*Of course, assuming one is safe, healthy and has a job.