The kitchen light is harsher than the hour deserves, the mug is filled higher than it should be, and my thumb hovers over a message that promises to smooth the room for a few hours if I’m willing to carve a small piece out of myself to pay for it. Steam fogs my glasses and turns the counters soft around the edges, and in that blur the old bargain clears its throat: send the tidy sentence, soften the tone, buy the calm. I know the script by heart and I also know the bill that follows, because the quiet that’s purchased always mails a receipt …
Built for Storms
How discomfort became my teacher—and why I keep saying yes to weather, work, and what-ifs You don’t build grit in comfort. You build it under heat, hunger, and hail. I didn’t first learn grit in the mountains. It started on the streets of Chennai, back when I was a college student with more stubbornness than strategy. I designed my own survival drills and called them “Marketing Experiments.” The rules were clean and cruel: pick an unknown street, arrive with no plan or money, and earn enough that day to buy a meal and a …
Grief Gets a Chair, Not the Keys
The kettle had just begun to sing when my phone flashed “typing” and then went quiet. The steam fogged my glasses. Metal hissed. Tea leaves opened in the strainer and the room filled with that sharp, green smell. Nothing catastrophic happened, yet the floor shifted. In the space of one breath, a small present silence pulled a rope that raised a whole stage set from the past: a dusty platform, a bright corridor with antiseptic air, a table where a dial tone drilled through the afternoon. Grief Doesn’t Archive Grief doesn’t archive. …
🏃♂️ The Race I Never Signed Up For
When someone else’s success makes your coffee go cold One Tuesday morning, I opened LinkedIn against my better judgment. There it was: a friend’s promotion. New title. Bigger salary. Dozens of applause emojis raining down in the comments. My coffee sat untouched. Same graduation year. Same starting point. But he was already there. I was still here. And the word echoing in my head wasn’t congratulations.It was should. I should already be there. That one word is toxic. It turns ambition into shame. Where Should Comes …
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When Plans Became My Excuse
The denim dug into my waist before I even tried to hold my breath.I yanked, pulled, tried to force the button shut, and gave up when the fabric fought back. The mirror didn’t soften the blow. On the wall, the calendar showed five neat little boxes of planned workouts. Every single one left blank. On paper, I looked disciplined. In reality, nothing had moved. The Loop I Know Too Well That’s been the cycle. I sketch out plans with the energy of a fresh start, feel the buzz of knowing exactly what I’ll do next, and then watch it …
Stop Letting Yourself Off the Hook
If there’s one thing I’ve perfected, it’s the art of the excuse. I could write a book about the clever detours I’ve invented to sidestep my own plans. The thing is, after a while, those little “not todays” don’t sound clever at all. They’re just heavy. They pile up, get dusty, and start to crowd out the part of me that actually wants more from life. No one ever warned me how sneaky excuses could be. They slip in quietly, wearing the mask of logic and self-care, telling me I’ll be ready tomorrow, or that I deserve a break, or that someone …
You Don’t Owe the World a Performance
In a grocery store checkout line, I apologized to a woman who hadn’t even acknowledged me. Not because I was in the way—just because I was there. That reflexive "Sorry" didn’t come from manners. It came from habit. A quiet, conditioned surrender. This is what it means to perform: to constantly manage your presence so you don’t offend by existing. Not to gain praise, but to avoid being seen as too much. Anxiety doesn’t shout. It edits. It rewrites posture, tone, even silence. You can breeze through the day—emails done, meetings handled, …
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Nobody Teaches You How to Come Back
Growth is an oddly quiet affair.Not silent like a mountain top or a spa commercial.Quiet like a room after someone has left. You think you’ll feel lighter, but what shows up first is the echo—of old roles,of things unsaid,of laughter that now sounds rehearsed in your memory. The real shift isn’t when you start saying no.It’s when you stop over-explaining the yes. Suddenly, people don’t know where to place you.You’re no longer the cushion they leaned on or the backstage manager who kept everyone else's chaos in check. You’re not …
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