What I want in life

My outlook on life changed three years ago. My life has been completely upended since then.

Before I start, let me tell you about the conversation I had with my then-girlfriend five years ago.

I told her, “I don’t have big dreams. A good-paying job, being able to do what I love and spending time with my family on a daily basis. That’s all I want as an adult.” And I know that I meant every word of what I said. My then-girlfriend almost flinched when she heard it.

She told me about how small I dreamt and that she and I couldn’t build a future together if that is what I really wanted.

I was sad, obviously.

Fast forward a couple of years and I had a job. A stable one, just as I had thought. Even paid above market price. It was not even that demanding, so I was spending ample time with people I loved. I even thought I loved what I did.

I really loved creating things. Bringing beautiful Figma designs to life and curating APIs that added soul to the otherwise dumb UI skeletons.

I was content with the bare minimum that I had achieved. Until one fine day at Himalayan Java, when my friend asked me to team up for projects that paid nothing but we would own it. I liked the ring to it. Even though it was unlike what I had imagined myself doing, I was excited and jumped right in.

My friend was more of a risk-taker than I ever could be. Didn’t have a stable paying job like I did but still wanted to build things for himself. I liked that about him and in ways made me want to be more like him.

That brought me to my era of 16-hour work days. I used to go to the office at 9 in the morning, get back at 7, and worked till 2 at night or sometimes even later.

The funny thing looking back to that era was that I absolutely loved it. I was excited to go to work knowing that when I get back home, I would be in a different light, different setting, working at a completely different thing that nourished my soul (cliche, I know but I don’t have other words to explain that feeling).

In a strange way, this made me feel like I lived two separate lives. I felt like Peter Parker as a cameraman at the office and as a Spiderman during the night. And I was successful at being both.

This unlocked my potential. I couldn’t have imagined working 10 hours a day and suddenly I found myself working through the day and night and doing it all over again tomorrow. I started loving who I was and what I was doing during the night time more than my day counterpart. I mean who would still love clicking pictures if they get to be a Spiderman, right?

I still remember it was around 1 am in the morning when I was working on logic to replace a legal template with a form data provided and had to curate a legal contract. I had been working on it for a couple days and I had finally cracked it. It was probably my most satisfying day until then.

A couple of weeks later, my friend and I were having a somewhat serious conversation regarding our future in Nepal. He had asked, “What is it you really want to do in your life? I told him, “I have big dreams. I want to build my own company that specializes in a niche and will be absolutely loved by at least a thousand people. That’s what I want to do.”