Looking back at a pit stop - turning 25!

Year of Unlearning and Reinvention

Turning 25 today and looking back the last year feels like pulling into a pit stop during an intense race — a moment to refuel, reassess, and recalibrate before getting back into the race. 2024 has been exactly that for me — a period of unlearning, confusion, emotional rollercoasters, and small wins that didn't always feel like victories at the time.

For the longest time, I've been on a constant sprint — juggling multiple things simultaneously. From my college days to the next few years, I was volunteering at TinkerHub, working with Figma, mentoring students, building communities, managing educational programs, and experimenting with different side projects. It was exciting, fulfilling, and aligned with what I believed in.

But by the end of 2023, I hit a wall😔. I resigned from Figma, stepped down from volunteering roles, and consciously took a career break — not because I had a concrete plan, but I was getting bored of what I had been doing so far. Nothing around me felt exciting. I wanted to explore business, understand how companies operate, and gain domain knowledge in different business functions. So I joined STOA, an alternate MBA program, for six months and told myself that this break would be just that — six months to learn, experiment, and maybe stumble upon something that could become the next big chapter of my career.

What I didn't anticipate was how hard this break would hit me.

Emotional Rollercoaster

Just a couple of months into the break, I started getting anxious. The initial excitement of having time to myself slowly faded into self-doubt and emotional turmoil. I was stuck inside my house, binge-watching content, exploring new forms of media like anime, and reading about random topics that caught my curiosity. From the outside, it might have looked like I was wasting time. But in reality, I was just following my curiosity — a luxury I hadn't given myself in years.

Despite having turned down several job and consulting opportunities at the beginning of the break, I found myself questioning that decision during the latter half of the year. Why wasn't I feeling the same drive I once had when I sent out a cold email to Figma saying, “I want to solve this problem for you”? Why wasn't I finding any company or idea exciting enough to jump into?

I was desperately trying to figure out the next step in my career, based on my interests and suggestions from my peers,I was caught between three possible paths:

• Joining a VC firm and starting a career as an analyst.
• Becoming a Founder's Office hire at an early-stage startup.
• Doubling down on product roles that blended tech, design, and business — the sweet spot where I felt most alive.

I kept talking to people I looked up to, hoping someone would give me the clarity I was searching for. But the only answer I consistently heard was: “You'll figure it out in time.”

People 🫂

What kept me going through those dark days were the people around me. My brothers Aravind and Rahul were always there on the other side of the phone — reminding me that it's okay to feel lost and helping me bounce off ideas even when I didn't believe in them myself. Constant conversations with Rahul made me realize that even if there were no tangible outputs, I was still learning, still making progress.

Riya, Kiran, Nihal, Akhilesh and so many others played a huge role in keeping me sane and pushing me forward. Most importantly my parents didn't question my choices and they were always with me, damn grateful have this people in my life 😇

Experiments That Didn't Take Off 📉

During this break, I ventured into things I would have never imagined doing before:

• started a podcast kurious kathakal — something completely outside my comfort zone given that I'm not comfortable in front of cameras, learning video editing and storytelling was one of the major takeaways

• launched a newsletter kurious jobssharing curated non-engineering job opportunities — born out of my own frustration with the job search process.

• tried,built and shelved a couple of side projects

  • slack bot to manage time zones for remote workers
  • anime font picker
  • site that generates portfolio from linkedin profile
  • an alternative to serializd
  • virtual movie scrapbook
  • indie finder
  • ai happiness journal, most of them were shelved either because of my perfectionism or i lost interest halfway

None of these projects made any noise or had massive success. But each one of them taught me something new about myself — that I could figure things out, that I could venture into unknown territories, and that I didn't always need to have everything figured out before starting something. The podcast and newsletter will be back soon.

💌 Letter That Broke Me

I have the habit of writing letters to my future self and on Jan 1st I wrote an email to myself — a letter detailing everything I manifested about 2024. On Dec 31, when that email landed in my inbox, I broke down in tears. I hadn't achieved anything I set out to do. At least, that's what it felt like at that moment.

But looking back now, I realize that while I didn't achieve those external milestones, I did something far more important — I figured out what I don't want to do. I don't want to build communities for companies anymore. I don't want to compromise on my standards just for the sake of a job. And I don't want to chase things just because they're trending or profitable.

Where I'm headed ✨

Somewhere along the way, I realized that this wasn't the end — this was the pit stop. The break I never thought I'd need. The break that forced me to strip down every layer of self-worth tied to my past achievements and rebuild my sense of self from scratch.

Today, I can feel that positive energy slowly coming back. The curiosity, the hunger to solve challenging problems, the drive to build something that matters — it's all starting to resurface. I'm not fully back yet, but I'm no longer questioning whether I ever will be.

If you're reading this and you're feeling stuck — whether in your career, or just life in general — I want to tell you something that took me a whole year to learn: It's okay to be lost. It's okay to take a pit stop. The race will still be there when you're ready to get back on track.

Right now there is an idea that I'm working on that really excites me, this time I am goddamn sure that this will take off ⚡

📝 Note to self

1. Stay true to yourself & believe in yourself
2. Be there for people who reach out to you in need. Keep the people you care about close and be there for them
3. It's not a weakness to ask for help
4. Be kind and do cool things that matter
5. Just like Dumbledore said, "It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities."