As the conviction in your imagination becomes fainter with the presence of reality, you get on with turning 26 without..feeling 26. The separation from youthful years is a state of mind compounded by the weight of things. In other words, let no one interrupt how ever long you need to take to come to terms with growing older at any age.
Not today, not ever.
I hadn’t fathomed that this is the 6th(!) year of me writing to you all on my birthday. The collection of years [21, 22, 23, 24, 25] looks back at me as I look out for it. This year, I intentionally stopped myself from revisiting each entry (at least, until I completed writing this one) to navigate turning 26 independent of previous years’ recollections.
A minor detail present all through out the last year has been the absence of poetry from my life. The last poem I wrote was on July 15th, 2023. The importance of writing poems, regardless of their mid quality, is difficult to fully explain. My clarity of thought and self-expression has always rested most significantly in them. Despite this apparent writer’s block, the part of me that is occupied with observing all of life’s intricacies has stayed. And for this very reason, I have hope that a poem, inevitably, is within reach.
What’s been interesting to observe has been my growing fascination with cricket. It reminded me of what discovering technology events and pathways felt like some years ago. While me, my age, and my skillset are all too unfit for pursuing cricket as a profession, I can pursue being an expert amateur (narrator voice: it’s befitting that this same determination gets my thumb bruised and swollen on my birthday as a result of batting like a non-expert amateur during practice).
Through cricket, I found my reason to show up at the gym and hire a personal trainer. I still struggle to reach the gym outside of PT sessions but, overall, this whole experience pushed me out of my comfort zone and improved my diet.
In the past, I had attributed a lack of time to my lack of consistency in the pursuit of becoming a better developer. That still holds some truth in it. What these recent weeks have highlighted is that you can’t push to create time without first giving yourself permission to recuperate your energy. Thus, even if you find yourself on a detour for an extended period, you can still influence your experience.
Until next time,
Riz