Preface: I started this blog post around a week before my birthday, June 24th. In the interest of silencing the inner-critic and continuing the tradition of writing a birthday post every year, I’ve decided to publish it only 91 days later. We love to see it.
I turned 24, suddenly. Time’s passage is a longer tale than all of Time could entail. When years are condensed into few sentences, they blur into each other as effortlessly as the vocabulary between you and yours. “It’s been too long”, some may say. Others, only ruminate.
The last few times I sat down and leaned into myself on turning an year older, I came prepared to feel unprepared. The lessons I picked up along the way were undiscovered, sure, but the search hadn’t ended. Writing became my confidant as it always had. I wrote about things my future self would recognize in present me. Past me succeeded in this endeavor. Reading through turning 21, 22, and 23 — I am me. Each year, me, in a terrarium not entirely of my design or prediction.
But, me.
What would I want my future self to know about me at 24?
I’ve found myself accepting that life isn’t totally personal. ‘My life’ is actually ‘a life’ and I am living through different chapters of it. My expectation for it to be entirely composed of pages I’ve memorised is, sweet, but impossible. The mechanism by which it all unfolds are the moments that define me: when I found poetry by chance, when we had to fly away from home, when I received my final year Uni results to share it with those I love. I could go on but you get the idea.
With a decreased amount of socialising after the irrevocable affects of an ongoing pandemic, I’ve spent most of the past year, both, working from home and staying at home with my family. It’s true: one’s own company isn’t terrible. I expect this isn’t unalike what others may have also experienced: our friendships diluted through the lack of face-to-face contact and intentional/unintentional distancing; our acquaintanceships affected tenfolds into vanishing in entirety.
It’s natural to then question the authenticity of these relations from the start, but, memes aside, I do still hold these to be unprecedented times. Under these conditions, the benefit of the doubt is easy to grow. An immediate byproduct of this has been a greater refocus in how I choose to spend my time and with whom. What’s essential is invisible to the eye is a signpost I will never ignore.
I also got to experience bringing ProjectFunction back for its seventh course alongside the help of a wonderful team and my fellow all-rounder, co-founder, Daryl. Planning for and executing an in-person course after so long (that too, in a whole new venue) was possibly the most stressful thing we’ve done in a while, but it turned out really, really well. Folks showed up and amazed us with their eagerness to learn, as well as, their end-of-wave project demos.
Following the end of this course, Daryl and I collectively knew and agreed that it’d be our last. This decision wasn’t one we made easily or quickly (and you can read more about it here), but it’s one that I’m confident was the right one. From starting PF back at Uni around 4 years ago to the last session of our last Wave — everything we accomplished, and everything we wish we’d accomplish, will remain close to my heart for evermore.
Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention, Mastoo Khan.
Until next time,
Riz