I recently went down a rabbit hole thinking about personal fulfillment and development, spurred on both by some reflection-inducing life choices as well as by some periods of more extended isolation over the past couple months. To avoid loneliness or depression, I leaned into work with added intensity and found that it brought me a lot of focus and determination in ways I’ve never experienced. At the most extreme state, I lost myself into a problem for 5 days on end, relying heavily on the accumulating coffee cups to indicate passing time. When I took a step back, I felt real satisfaction and pride for my accomplishments, but also was fairly unsettled. It had become harder and harder to put energy into other outlets, especially on my own.
My love of cooking seems to pertain mostly to cooking for other people. I can spend an entire week preparing a meal for friends, but sometimes can’t muster more than 10 minutes to figure out food for myself. My desire to engage with art or crafts is strong when making a gift or project that other people will engage with, but fades when I try and create something just for myself. And when I crave social interaction, it’s often from specific people, and otherwise I wind up more satisfied by work instead of downtime. But despite very obviously settling into workaholism and embracing the privilege of loving work with all my heart, I am determined to find new ways to grow.
Unsurprisingly, thinking about personal development isn’t straightforward. It unearths a lot of big picture questions and looking inwards for answers reveals a lot of unknowns. I’m grateful for the people in my life who also care about this type of development, as they’ve helped me find more tools to think about the person I want to become. There are skills and traits I would like to foster, experiences to embrace, and inspiration to seek out. As a starting point, I made a commitment to myself to use this past month to start by setting a few rituals around gratitude and daily learning, with the hope of nurturing my inner contentment.
Some aspects of the rituals I chose were more effective than others. Arbitrarily saying I would read or learn new things each day was hard to adopt initially. But nightly pauses for appreciation, even when I was falling into bed after exhausting days, helped me end the day optimistically. I challenged myself to slow down, and tried finding comfort being completely still with my thoughts, not checking my phone, not worried about how much time had passed. It was hard, and I discovered that I handle stress better than I handle downtime. But ultimately, consciously restraining myself from trying to be productive all the time was a step towards letting my mind expand. It continually surprises me that figuring out what I want to be spending time on (outside of work) is harder than making the time for it. And it’s a chicken and egg cycle where I get sucked into work because I’m not sure what else is as enticing, but then don’t have the time or energy to figure out what would be enticing to explore.
I finally broke the cycle a bit, and just came off of a proper holiday with Natasha. I didn’t open my laptop in a week and spent no more than 1 hour in total across any work platforms. The photos will attempt to convey the jaw-dropping beauty of nature that we immersed ourselves in, but as with any time we spend together, it’s rarely about the surroundings. There are so many ways in which time we spend together lifts my spirits, helps me learn more about myself, and fills me with love and joy. In the spirit of personal growth, one thing that continues to blow me away is the ways in which we’ve grown as individuals over the past 6 and a half years, and also grown together. Living our lives in separate countries, the mental and emotional journeys we’ve been on resonate so strongly between us. And when we’re together, we’re in sync without even trying. Our conversations span such a range, from silly to self-reflective, to the state of the world. And incidentally, one philosophical endeavor gave me the spark to finally commit to my recreational learning goals with proper earnest.
As with any goal setting process, it’s rare to come out completely on top. And as with all personal growth processes, it’s not about achieving completion. But a dedicated month of trial and error helped me get back on track, renewing my attention towards these topics. Being in an environment with limitless scope to grow, the onus is on me to push myself, so I’m continually experimenting with tactics and mindsets to make my goals more accessible and sustainable. I found the simple act of sharing insights and progress with friends was a powerful motivator, leveraging the energy I gain from people I care about and channeling it towards activities for myself. I rarely have as much time and energy to commit towards proactive growth as I plan, but thankfully, no matter how little progress I think I’ve made, I’m surrounded by people who bring me up, probably the best tactic of all. (Sentiment taken from Okra team value #4).
Lots of photos to catch up on! Going all the way back to March, I met up with Natasha and her partner in Kuala Lumpur for a quick weekend trip. We hadn’t seen in each other in so long, so the reunion, while brief, was incredible. We basically ate our way through the city.
Next group is from my trip to Australia at the beginning of April. Given how spread apart our dev team is, we make an effort to periodically get together for internal hackathons, where we tackle the greatest challenges all together. Usually there is little sleep, incredible nerdiness, much delirium, and massive progress. On this trip, we hackathoned in Canberra first, and then Damo and I carried on in Sydney for a week. Despite lots of coding, we snuck in some great views and adventures! I played around with a wide-angle lens that his dad let me borrow, which resulted in particularly incredible landscape shots.
I’m pretty bad about remembering to grab photos from the special moments we share as a team, running around Phnom Penh. With everyone’s travel schedules resulting in rare moments of togetherness, we prioritize the time we do get and make the most of it. With almost the whole Phnom Penh team together around Affy’s birthday, we loosely surprised him with a boat party, complete with the famous dj decks that accompany us for all big occasions. The first photo is blurry, but I think it captures the moment.
Finally, get ready for a zillion Bali shots, that can hardly do justice to the actual experience, but still make my jaw drop. The first group is from time we spent in Jimbaran, which is where Natasha used to visit when she was young. The trip was to celebrate Natasha’s birthday, so her parents treated us to some time in a villa there, and we were proper spoiled. Most luxury I’ve ever experienced and an incredible way to truly relax.
The next group is from our trip out to Nusa Penida. We drove around, saw some random hills, and explored the most incredible coastal cliffs. We ventured down a couple, and the views were unreal.
The last chunk of the trip we went up to Ubud, and then explored Northwest from there. In this part of the Bali we had mountain views, waterfalls (including a cafe we found part way down the side of a mountain, almost under the waterfall itself. We amused ourselves with a photoshoot in that random nest for quite a while), hills and rice terraces, and incredible street food. We befriended one particular satay lady after we consumed around 75 of her incredible seafood version, in the span of 3 days.
