28 is a weird age to be. I am now closer to 30 than I am to 25. I know I am young but still feel old. I know I have time but still feel that I am running out of it. There is this nagging feeling of not doing enough or being enough that, weirdly, has never been this prominent in my life before.
It seemed like a good time to mark this checkpoint in my life and reflect on how my 28-year-old self is different from my 25-year-old self.
And I suppose, if you look at it, I still have dark hair. I wear specs. I have lost some weight compared to when I was 25, but honestly, I could be in better shape. I wear a lot of black, and my favourite shoes are still Converse low tops.
I now live in New York, which is not a sentence my 25-year-old self thought I would say. I am lucky and extremely grateful to call this place my home.
I live close to the water, and I have never done that before, which means a great deal to me. Whenever I leave the city, a part of me feels incomplete, and whenever I come back, I get hit with this great hit of energy.
This is what my table and my room look like.
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things I wanna continue doing as i turn older
- Fuck around and find out. I don't have a long list of things I like about myself, but this is probably in the top three. Doing “stupid” shit has gotten me a lot of things and has made my life richer with lore.
- Lead with love and kindness.
- Screen-printing
- Be me. I want to be unapologetically me, especially in my work life. I have encountered so many fake people in the world of tech, and I am afraid that if I try to be like that, it will make me hollow and numb. If I am your vibe, great; we will get along like nothing else. If I am not, then maybe we don't need to talk, and you should find other people.
I have been much more immersed in art than I was before.
I can now make jewellery, screen print, make stuff with leather, do installations, and so much more. That's another thing my 25-year-old self never thought would happen. I am trying to develop something of a “practice”. I don't know what it means or how it will pan out, but I am excited to find out. Art is a leap of faith first and foremost, so I feel it's essential for me to keep experimenting and see where I land.
Me in my element while working with metal on sculpture and jewellery
This is my favourite jacket, and this is my favourite poster I made this year.
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my fears at 29
- Hitting a child when I ride my Citi Bike
- Losing my friends
- Anything happening to my dog
- Arthritis
Life here was rough in the beginning. I remember crying on my friend’s couch all by myself on my birthday last year. I was alone and barely had any friends in the city.
Since then, so much has changed. I have been lucky to find my people, and I rely so much on them for support. I am glad to report that my friends have never let me down, and I am more grateful for the people I have in my life than anything else.
Here are my weird friends. They are the best thing to have happened to me.
Work-wise, I got laid off twice this year, and those experiences taught me a lot. I have worked in tech all my life but lately product design was feeling super exhausting to me. I strongly feel I have done everything in this field and I have nothing left to prove to myself. Being answerable for business is a never-ending pursuit and I think I am more than that.
I have a lot of ambiguity about what I will do next but I am super excited to have these questions.
This year was also a big year for the sports fan Sid. Saw the Knicks win and New York going crazy, went to 4 FIFA matches including the finals, saw my idol Messi and went to the US Open. All amazing all worth it. Sports is one of the last monocultures we have left and I love being in a stadium.
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things I wanna stop doing
- Letting anyone and everyone into my life. This year was tough because I feel I trusted the wrong people and paid a heavy price for it. I am always great at dealing with work crises because I know I can find my way out of them, but I struggle with people. I try to lead with kindness and am generally a very open person, but I am tired of paying the price for it and would like to be more cautious.
- Eating junk food. Gotta cook primarily to save money.
- Being reckless with money.
- Listening to music ALL the time.
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Some bucket list items I would like to check off before I turn 29
- Do an art installation
- Travel to Europe
- Buy a retro Mac and refurbish it for myself
- Learn music production
- Publish a research paper and establish myself more in the world of academia.
- Get a teaching gig.
This past year was great. Even with the ups and downs, the layoffs, and the heartbreaks, I wouldn't change a thing. I got to live my childhood dream of watching a FIFA match, and I was so happy and moved to see Messi in real life. I made more friends than I could imagine, and I am not super proud of the work I created, but I still tried my best.
28 feels super scary to me. I am under a lot of pressure, largely from myself, to be great. At 25 I was figuring out what I wanted. At 28 I'm figuring out how to get it and what to do when I don't.
The problems carry more weight and feel more consequential to me now. Aging parents. Career as a real thing, not an abstract future. Rent. Visas. The weight of being far from home and not knowing when that stops feeling heavy.
At 25 I wrote: "25 feels very similar to 18 in so many ways."
28 doesn't feel similar to anything.
It doesn't feel like 18, when everything was uncertain but exciting. It doesn't feel like 21, when I was just starting out. It doesn't feel like 25, when I chose discomfort on my own terms.
28 just feels new. The problems are new. The stakes are new.
I look forward to writing a draft of this at 29 and seeing what changes and what I actually follow through on. I am only human, and I know life happens, but this feels like a good enough list to go off of.
So this is me. At 28.
