New Year

First, let's review 2025. One of my main goals was rediscovering the kind of work I like doing, and this went pretty well! I rekindled joy in technical work through a series of experiences: from Nick and the group at ARBOx who started my year strong with some deep ML/AI safety programming, to my tutors who emphasise learning and diligence, to Mehedi and everyone at Granola for helping me develop confidence in my engineering abilities and allowing me to build things I'm proud of. I also got this very site up, something that I have been growing and hope to grow over time!

I didn't travel much at all in 2025. And I'm really happy about it: this freed up space for other important parts of my life to flourish. Much of 2024 was spent travelling and I think it tired me out, especially alongside all the work I was doing. This year, I completely changed my attitude towards exercise, which is discussed in depth in this post. I am really grateful for the quality time I got to spend with my family this summer in London, probably the last summer I'll spend in London! My mom in particular really helped me become less critical of myself, and my dad helped me find my way through more serious strength training. I learned a lot about the importance of friendship-- I feel like I do every year; but this year, my friends really had my back through difficult times; I am extremely lucky to have such supportive people in my life that push me to be the best version of myself. I spent lots of time at the linocut studio, deepening my relationship to art through my friendships with Sarah, Alice, David, and Robert. I was able to take up pottery for the first time seriously—this was amazing. The Turning Earth studio in Highgate is such a beautiful space and my teacher, Ben, was extremely talented and warm! I enjoyed heading there every Wednesday this summer, and I plan to continue pottery as soon as I can be in the same place for a long time again!

The last thing I wanted to focus on in 2025 was slowing down, being less on edge, less burnt out, but it remains on my mind. I notice I want everything now now now! I'm intense, I'm restless, I don't know how to get anything done otherwise. I never had a concrete system in place to work on this, and so I did not make much progress. I notice this come up in all aspects of my life. I remember I started feeling critical of the art I was making, and hence tightening up and making worse art—art needs to be about the process, else nothing will go right. When progress in research would not come fast, I would get frustrated really quickly and start to think of quitting the project.

These problems come from the cycle of setting goals, doing anything to achieve them, and then feeling purposeless afterwards with no goals. It's hard to break this -- after all, goals are a standard method for achieving what I want. But, I now think that goals can't give me real purpose. It's about routines, not checkboxes. It's about being over becoming.

In 2026 I want to mainly focus on moderation and slowing down, again, but unlike last year, I have a clearer idea of how that will happen. I want to focus on habits and listening to my intuition, instead of chasing goals and results. I want to focus on enjoying the process, regardless of what happens. Some real ways to do this: viewing habits less like metrics towards a goal but more as small daily rituals that I get to enjoy intrinsically, allowing space for rest and spontaneity, focusing on the effort I put in rather than the output the world gives back to me.

On a less serious note, I'd like to be on some project or quest most of the time this year, especially since I have so much room for side quests. Some things that I'm excited about but have been putting off include: starting a supper club or a writing group, working on a difficult intensive letterpress/magazine project with the printmakers in Oxford, going to the Oxford wood fired kiln building, building small distributed systems projects, prototyping new tools for thought, learning new ways of programming, making a video, multi-day hikes, learning to cook from my grandmother in India, making a travel blog, 3d printing/coding something more hardware-y with my brother... it feels like my urge to create has never been stronger!

I'm going to graduate this summer, so I will likely reassess all these intentions after that, as I start to live an entirely new life. But I believe many of these intentions will be valid forever, and I am excited to put this into practice in 2026. Happy new year!