The greatest fear being not being able to do this daily. I have committed to write this blog daily in various places and most of all in my mind but I’m shitting my pants thinking I might not be able to do this. There is no point to this project if I do not maintain this as regularly as I have committed to. That is the point: CONSISTENCY & DISCIPLINE. Now there are various instances where I have failed to do so.

Take for example Casey Neistat. That guy is fucking insane, his life and work ethic are insane. Watch this for example, or this, or this and this. But what I specifically have to take from Neistat is his running. My friend, Akash(Nuwanda) is the one who introduced me to Neistat not over a year ago and really got into this guy himself. He regularly went running for better part of the year. I was in Bombay then on an internship, not graduated from college yet. Whenever I went back to Baroda for college obligations, Akash and I used to run together at Kamatibaug. Later I got into unregularly taking a 5km run at Tithal, a beach at my hometown whenever I was there for a family visit and felt like in the groove. I have been making up my mind on and off to take a daily morning run here in Bombay for forever now. But nothing has come of it yet.

And various others things I have made up my mind for and not done. Hence this blog. Writing is something I do want to do as a profession in the future. Better start doing it daily right? There is one more challenge that comes my way when I am doing this daily. The QUALITY. I don’t want this blog to be a dumping ground for short sentences during the times I don’t feel like writing or am just scared of it or am not motivated enough after the initial excitement for this thing has passed. Maybe instead of overthinking this I just need to go with the flow. There is an interesting thing about flow related matters I came across not too long ago. Back in 2013, a freshman course in Chinese philosophy at Harvard got really popular. The course involved reading through translated ancient Chinese texts firsthand. Texts like Confucius’ Analects, Zhuangzi’s Zhuangzi, Lao Tzu’s Daodejing and others I know nothing about. Now I have been interested in Zhuangzi for a long time now. There was an interesting passage I came across in this article interviewing the Harvard professor who teaches the course:

The argument of the Zhuangzi is that we should do this in our everyday lives. Imagine, in our everyday lives, training ourselves with the same kind of work that we would do to train ourselves in a sport or when we learn a musical instrument. We would be training ourselves in our lives, not to be battling through the world, not to bash against the world, but to sense situations, work with situations, alter situations as we work with them. In other words, in your daily life, you would be performing the same sort of work that we otherwise think of doing in these restricted, skill-based activities.

Looking forward to getting a copy of the book soon.

Yesterday bored at work, I came across this article on Bloomberg. Now, I’d heard of ISDA before in The Big Short. Soon, I went down the rabbit hole of finance. I recalled the two occasions I’d heard of the CFA course and exams and how difficult it is to beat it. I imagined being someone in finance working in a big investment bank making my millions, not giving a fuck and trying to make more and more. Greed overpowering me. I wanted to play the game so bad. I wanted to know everything about all there is to know about various financial instruments and have enough wisdom to perform alchemy with them. Too many ‘I’s. Soon I came across another article, again on Bloomberg.

The thing about me is, I think I am very bad when it comes to practical intelligence. Give me a theoretical framework and I am good at everything and my intelligence shows, but give me the games people regularly play and I am a havoc. Take playing cards for example. I am bad at it or atleast I haven’t played it as much as to become any good. Take chess. Now I can attest being the worst at it. Players who started later than me have beat me after a month while I just seem stuck on the same skill spot. I think anyone would beat me at gambling. The house or the pot of players. This is something very shameful to me personally and I think it is high time I do something about it. Because the idea of gambling does appeal to me to be honest. Forgoing the negative connotation, the major reason it appeals is the gaming part of it and somehow gaining an edge over the regular odds of the masses in the gamble one is currently engaged in.

Anyway, I’m looking for a way for the real voice and being of this blog to emerge. The initial posts might seem swaying, haphazard and going nowhere. But the agenda remains to do this daily with good quality and increasing experimentation and cutting the “artistic” crypticism. Will have some ideas soon. I’ll be going home for two days over the workdays next week. Not sure when. My family is planning a trip to Saputara when I am there. Will probably be on a mountain soon. Nudes will keep coming regardless.

See you tomorrow,
Avi.