Hi,
"What Happened to Monday?" is a 2017 dystopian sci-fi action thriller directed by Tommy Wirkola. Coincidentally, it's also how I feel today.
I drove over 370 km from Chennai to back home on Sunday night while it heavily rained, hence the delay. Well, I could've sent it out yesterday, but like I said, what happened to Monday?
This past week has been incredibly productive. In these past few days, I've done the most amount of actual real-ass work. It's too ironic that I couldn't send the newsletter on a Sunday.
For starters, my whole plan of waking up early has been working (kinda). I was consistently up before 6 am for many days, so I usually sleep on time. I'm still not 100% there yet; it's a work in progress for sure.
Last weekend, I returned from a family trip, and everyone in my family fell sick except me. I thought, oh my god, all that waking up at 4:45 am is paying off. Spoiler alert, I just fell ill a day later.
My fever was a whopping 100.2 or 100.7, I don't remember. I was bedridden for a couple of days, yet I got a bit of work done; there was nothing to complain about. I'm all good now, for the record. I'm back to being fully functional. Still, I'm not waking up early nearly as consistently as I'd like to.
Moving on.
Somewhere during my second year of college, my imposter syndrome hit an all-time high, and it has stayed like that since. Of everything that is wrong with me, the same imposter syndrome has consistently bothered me.
This has affected me in multiple ways throughout the years, such as having a hard time being active on LinkedIn or having second thoughts about applying for jobs. I can't get into the nitty-gritty of it without it being too depressing, so we'll conveniently skip past that.
For someone who has made "work" his whole personality, it truly sucks to feel like a fraud all the time; shoutout to everyone who can cope with everyone else being better than them at everything all the time.
I bring this up because I'm getting better. I have started coding more, working on multiple projects, and learning multiple new skills. The learning curve of it all has always fascinated me.
I love being able to build stuff, and I love trying to come up with creative solutions to solve my everyday woes. Sometimes, it's as simple as writing a bash script to rename 113 jpegs in a folder; other times, it's implementing a complex machine-learning algorithm to predict the results of a coin flip to make meaningless fake bot money.
Simply put, I like building stuff; I love learning about things and tools that let me create that stuff. It can be really frustrating sometimes, but historically, I've thrived under conditions like that.
Since I last wrote, I have finished building a complete website for a client, made a website to track how many days I have left until the USA, and made a blog site because I was bored on a Friday afternoon—finished it in under 10 hours, probably a personal best (given that I built it using a framework and language I've never coded in before). I also worked on a bunch of old projects, reviewed the code, and made them better and faster.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F0f35b8ba-28ad-4a9d-9a2a-cd05f30ac8ac_226x272.png)
That was a heartwarming story, but believe it or not, it wasn't today's central issue. I didn't pick up my laptop to write about my imposter syndrome. It's actually because of an old friend.
I had this friend in school, let's call him Rohit. We weren't best friends or anything, we used to play together and all, pretty good friends. Rohit wasn't the brightest of kids and academics weren't his strong suit.
One time, probably in fourth or fifth grade, this teacher got really concerned for Rohit; And by concerned I obviously mean she ridiculed him in front of the class many times, as did many teachers for many students. But I digress. I'm not here to complain about the government school and the education system, not today, at least.
Any way, this teacher paired Rohit and me together as study buddies. I was fairly good at whatever the subject was, so she asked me to help Rohit out—help him write well, help him with class work, the usual shebang. So I obliged and did whatever I could. Years passed, and after my 10th, I moved to a different school. We never spoke again.
Now that I think of it, that was my only core memory of Rohit, despite studying with him till tenth grade, until a few years ago, when he followed me on Instagram, and we briefly talked. I forgot what it was about; it involved some vague catching up and some Juan Elia poetry-related discussions, and that was it. Years passed, but nothing has happened until today.
I have no idea, but for some reason, I opened LinkedIn, and one of the requests was from Rohit. So I accepted and did something I usually never do on any platform—stalked him. I have one explanation for this radical behavior: his sub-heading thing on LinkedIn.
Well, it turns out that Mr. Rohit, the "dull" kid who was humiliated by teachers in front of everyone, who needed his peers to make sure he spelled the words right, is now an editor at a national newspaper company. One of his articles was published on an international platform, too.
I actually like teachers—my mom's a teacher, too. But sometimes, teachers can be jerks. Of course, if you show this to the teacher, she's going to credit herself for Rohit's success; tell us that shame is a powerful motivator. And maybe she's right, but like, 𝒻𝓊𝒸𝓀 her, 𝒻𝓊𝒸𝓀 everyone who is mean to kids when they have a hard time learning, 𝒻𝓊𝒸𝓀 them and their "tough love."
The funny part is, there's a chance I've got this thoroughly mixed. Maybe Rohit's miserable at his job, and he hates working there. But in life, when there are these moments, these zoomed-out, before-after pictures you see of people from your life, I think we ought to believe that they made it.
Personally, it felt too good not to be shared with you—a kid who had trouble with language goes on to work for the newspaper industry; find me a better underdog story in your 50-mile radius.
Weekly Recs
Song: I heard this song years ago, and it's one of those songs that you like from the very first listen. I heard it again today after many years in the outro for one of the episodes of House M. D.
Video: He's too good at his job.
Links:
This is a link to another Substack post inside a substack post; it surely has to be the first.
The article delves into the phenomenon of music paralysis, exploring how our music taste evolves with age based on statistical analysis.
This past week, I have been overdosing on the show House M. D. I've been known for my incredibly slow pace when it comes to watching TV shows. It usually takes me months to get through 10 episodes that are 30 minutes long on average. I finished over 20 episodes of House M. D. in a week, which are nearly 50 minutes long. I'm back on my binging days, boys.
Alright, that's it for this week. Take care, drink water, call your parents, text your friends. I'll see y'all again next week. Have a great week ahead, and do something for yourself that your future self will thank you for!
I hope you're happy.
Coder,
whybhav