Kavi Reads

Throughout college, especially in the last year, I was busy most of the time. With two jobs, a research position, and what was probably my hardest classes, my fourth year was more hectic than the other three combined. I averaged about four hours a sleep a night (which I forced myself to increase to six), I was barely in my apartment anymore, other than for sleeping. And I was eating one actual meal a day. One of the two jobs was in a coffee shop, so I was able to get free coffee any time I wanted. Of course, this also meant I was getting addicted to coffee. In the beginning, it was too much for me to handle. But as time passed, I started sleeping more and getting more organised about what I do when. Once I got the hang of that, I started enjoying it. The classes, as hard as they may have been, pertained to stuff I was actually interested in. The jobs were almost like a break from my own studies, and I got to hang out with some very cool people. And the research was giving me some real work experience that one cannot get from lectures.

In May of 2016, all of that suddenly ended. I graduated from college. After going on a much-needed vacation with my family, I moved to an entirely different environment. In July I started working as a software developer at Cerner Corporation in Kansas City. While going from Illinois to Missouri was not an environmental change, going from college to an actual job was. Suddenly, I was in uncharted territory. In just the first few days, a lot of new things were thrown at me. Despite the month-long training program at the beginning, I was lost as soon as I joined a team. On top of that, I started facing my imposter syndrome. Four years of being around incredibly smart people had left me feeling a bit incompetent, which I immediately started compensated by working longer hours.

It took a few months, but I was able to comfortable once I realised I didn’t have any unrealistic expectations as a newbie, my team was very supportive, and at the end of the day, the work was something I am passionate about, things started flowing smoothly again. I stopped working evenings and weekends. Once I did that, I started having a lot of free time; more than I knew what to do with. So, to avoid watching YouTube videos all day, I decided to give myself a challenge: to read 52 books in 52 weeks starting Monday, January 2, 2017, until Sunday, December 31, 2017. For someone who read four or five books in 2016, reading 52 in 2017 sounded daunting. Still, I wanted to do it. A year later, I’m very glad I made that decision since I was able to complete the challenge very successfully.

My favourite part after finishing every book was going to the 52 book SubReddit and describe what I thought about the book. Every time I posted my updates, I wanted to keep on writing but figured I shouldn’t write too much in what’s meant to be a Tweet-sized post. That’s when the idea of a blog hit me. Although, ever since Sherlock (they blogged a lot in the show) I have been thinking about starting a blog for a while, I never did it. Anytime I’ve wanted to learn about something, blogs are my go-to, other than books. But I could never decide what I would write about. I always told myself, I’d run out of things to say within four posts, get lazy and the blog would go nowhere. Funny thing is, a lot of that still stands true. But I am not letting that stop me anymore. The thing that finally pushed me to just do it was then one of my friends started a blog last year. Obviously, I subscribed to it instantly. Now, every time I get an email about a new post on her blog, I get excited to see what she wrote about. That made me feel like I can do it too.

So, I’m giving myself a new challenge: to blog every week for the rest of the year. It’ll kinda be like a month late New Years resolution. Here’s what I primarily plan to write about

1. Books: as I said, after reading each book, I like reflecting on it. Essentially asking myself what I thought about it (likes, dislikes, and all that), and it’s a good way to summarise what I learnt from it. This way, I feel I’ll be able to maximise the reading experience and have a record of my thoughts on a book
2. Tech: I code every day, so it’s only fitting I should be able to write about it. Right? Right? For the most part, this will involve me researching some topic I find fascinating and writing about it. In my opinion, the best way to learn about something is to try and teach it and that is what I aim to do with this section. While there might be some topics that will have limited readers, I’ll try and keep most posts general enough for anyone to be able to read and understand.
3. Random bits: this can include some random science topic (I suspect astronomy will be very common), something about food, or even some aspect of my life.

Hope you enjoy!

Kavish