How far have you come along?

A constant question that I ask myself.

Hey friends 👋

It’s been almost 2 years since I completed college. I’m not the same person I was 2 years back, and I’m definitely not the same person I was when I gave my 12th exam thinking my life would change after going to college. Yes, it is true because I moved to a hostel and I was away from my home for the first time. There were a lot of changes that happened in the ‘physical environment’ but more importantly, the people I look up to also started changing.

During my high school and college days is when I started consuming a lot of content from people I don’t relate with. Before this, my whole worldview was limited to a few people who had similar goals, and lifestyles and those were no different from me. I was totally satisfied back when I was in school because I was doing well in things that people around me cared about. But when my models started changing, I begin to become ambitious about what I wanted to do with my life. Or in other words, my bar has increased.

My models were no more my closest friends or the people I used to roam around with. These are people mostly from the internet, on the other side of the world, doing their stuff. There were 2 sides to this story - One, I identified my curiosity towards new things and in general, started seeing the beauty in creating something. Two, I started comparing my journey with tons of profiles on the internet. Behind these profiles were real people who had their journeys, but only their work and the milestones were visible to me.

Suddenly, all my frame of reference shifted to people I was following online. I compare myself with great designers, great filmmakers, great YouTubers and whatnot. Everyone seemed to have their shit figured out and the people I followed were always a few steps ahead of me. Their work was a great source of inspiration for me, but it also made me overthink my ability to produce good work. I don’t regret any of the things I did because it was fun. I had a lot of fun doing all of this and following some crazy people from across the world.

But here’s the problem, it did not feel fulfilling even when I got better. While in the constant pursuit of getting better by comparing myself with others’ work, I forgot where I came from. All this while I have been running and following my curiosity, but it never seemed enough. I never thought I would be doing something like this 2 years back. My 18-year-old self would be happy seeing me do all of this, but I was blinded by this perspective of chasing something. I was constantly looking at the front and never cared to look behind to see where I came from.

Progress is relative. I was definitely getting better and moving fast. Though, I was far behind relative to the people I keep comparing myself to. The funny thing about this is that I always remain the constant but the people I compare myself are going to keep changing when I get better. Leading me into an unfulfilling endless race.

One possible way to handle this is to pause and look back. Look back at the person I was a few years back. Reflecting on the journey I have come along to feel a sense of accomplishment in my journey seems very important to me. Everything is a double edges sword. Balancing them is what matters. Having models and constantly being inspired by other people’s work is inevitable. But this is just a reminder to myself that I have my journey and it’s always good to compare and reflect upon the person I was a few years before.

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💫 This week in Read Write Run

🎙 David Foster Wallace's "This is Water." commencement speech (Best piece of content I consumed in a while)

🧵 Wonderful retelling of the monologue from Good Will Hunting for startups

🧵 Thread on hiring a psychologist to deep dive into your life

🏃 Run - 25 km this week - Back after a few bad weeks. Enjoyed running consistently and I feel great!