Knee Pain :(

In my 2025-01-02-Recap-2024 I mentioned that the left knee had started hurting after the Kumara-Parvatha hike. After weeks of trying to retrigger the pain, I was able to trigger it finally on a timed loop climb of the Nandi-Steps Strava Link

I was extremely scared after this; however my physiotherapist said this was just a bout of ITBS. I am extremely glad that this is not something that is wrong with my inner-knee components as that would mean that I would have to go through the BMC with a compromised knee.

Mountains

The only plan this year was to complete the Basic Mountaineering Course. However, a couple friends and I made plans to complete the Manaslu Circuit Trek in Nepal during the second half to May.

This is a very very exciting development. I have always wanted to hike in Nepal. This will also be my first international trip.

Work

January is also the end of my stint at last9-io. I've spent 2 years here building out the metrics backend infrastructure here. It is at a stable-enough state that I feel good about myself leaving the org. I am severely burnt-out and I need to escape. I can see my work and personal relationships suffer because of this.

Over the last month I was working on the 2.0 version of our infra which would make the stack completely Kubernetes-native. This is a major breakthrough for us, but I am slightly sad that I could not wait long enough to see all of our backend infra being migrated to the 2.0 stack. No harm though; my friends tell me that my mental-sanity is more important that completing any project. I will take their word for it. :)

I am going on a break. I will look for a new job after I come back from the mountains. I plan to spend my time reading and programming recreationally. Will update on what I do.

PyCon 2025

This year I am volunteering for PyCon from the very beginning. The last couple of calls were amazing. I am learning a lot. I am on the techology workgroup. I will look at the server and I am building the initial website for the conference I love this bunch.

Live close to Friends

January has been very nice. Living close to your friends is the best decision that I took last year. I LOVE the fact that my friends can visit me without significant planning and vice-versa.

Tanvi keeps visiting me randomly and I LOVE it. A friend Swati has been living with me (and my other flatmate) because she is yet to find a place in BLR to rent. It has been amazing. Another friend Rizwan came over and stayed with us for a week. It was greater.

I cooked food for the the bunch one day. They liked it.

My flatmate (Srijan) and Swati have seen me spiral sometimes during this period. I mean if you live with someone, it's hard not to see them spiral. To my surprise it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Having them around really helped me stabilise myself.

There was also a house-warming party that was very very nice. I had lots of fun.

Living close to friends is awesome. My heart is full and I can not take it. :)

Setting Boundaries

For some reason I always shied away from setting boundaries. A part of my reasoning was that I need to be easy to love in order to be loved. I've known this for a while but I didn't really do anything about it.

Now as I've grown older, I have gotten more and more comfortable in my skin. I can occupy space without feeling guilty. However setting boundaries is something I still struggle at. This was rudely pointed out one day and since then, I must admit that things have been much much better.

What I learnt is this: Good people will respect and uphold your boundaries and these are the people you want in your life.

Bought a domain and new Blog

As I write this I am migrating my blog out of Pelican and into a mk-docs format. I also bought a domain. Hopefully by the end of this month, I will set it up.

Gym PR

Before leaving Bangalore, I went to the gym for one last session as I will be returning to Bangalore only after May. In this session I set 2 PR for myself. I was able to squat a 100 Kilos and perform 3 deadlifts with 100 kilos.

:)