introduction and pursuit

hi, i’m harsh and i’m a software developer, the term is kinda lame tbh. i don’t develop software, i build stuff which solves some problem. so im a stuff builder?

harsh shandilya: stuff builder now that sounds cool. im also the football guy who broke his ligament twice otherwise would've been a professional footballer. you always know a guy like me. i like to write sometimes and record other times. i have absolutely no practice in colors and shapes and aesthetics and so i suck at art. i recently joined twitter btw and i see people being consistent there, trying to grow and growing on x but I somehow lack the motivation to do so? its not like i wouldn’t love the extra money that comes with x creator rev sharing or that im an anti social media person but i’ve come to realise how social media mostly is a game of cheating people into giving their attention to you. i’m not a fan of that. you could be: - rage baiting(say something stupid apparently as a joke in the hopes of someone getting angry about it and replying) - engagement baiting(say something very contrarian and trying to get everyone who doesn’t believe in it to comment on it) aura farming. click baiting. all the normal stuff you already know about but there is another way, the more difficult, the longer, where you have no idea whether or not you have any skill in writing: be authentic. be authentic to who you are, what you are building. now i have nothing against roy or you or anyone who wants to play the game like a game, tbh im kinda jealous how you guys are so good at it and when y’all are posting your twitter payouts, me and my authentic posts are dying everyday with 27 impressions. its okay though, i really believe in 1000 true fans theory and even take it a step forward and make it into: 100 true connections theory. its where you are not writing or catering to billions of people out in the world, you are only writing for those 100 people like you, having similar interests to you(god i hope you love football as much as i do) and connect with them on a really deep level. you don’t crave followers and money as much as you crave connection. you might think otherwise rn because there is abundance of people and lack of wealth and hacking your way through makes sense(and it does you should go for it). just don’t do it at the cost of true connection because that will make everything hollow. that’s the way im pursuing my growth on socials: being authentic to who i am, what i do and what im building. what im building is such an sf thing to say i just realised. pursuing my growth on socials. pursuit is such a noble task. im gonna do something. im gonna do something great. im gonna change the world in some good way possible. we don’t often think of our pursuits in life but we are always driven by them. more often than not, they are pretty simple pursuits like money or social status. nothing wrong with either of them but i think these pursuits are unending. you can only get rid of these two pursuits after winning substantially in both of them(or either, it correlates usually) and realising that it was never about winning them. you won’t realise that before winning. i don’t realise it yet, im just saying it to sound cool and mature. so gimme all your money. im not too big on social status, i also think that’s cus im short on money tbh im not but yeah that feels like a more basic pursuit than “status”. what’s status even? i dont want the prime minister to know me or to sit in the circles of the world that decide the direction global warming is going in. nah. i wanna be rich and free. both of those things come from winning in money. now you could win in money by: inheriting wealth(easy) or starting a business(a startup, a factory, a shop, a blog, anything). starting a business is again a difficult path to walk on since it takes everything from you or atleast tries to. i have seen very few founders(like marc from netflix) who have successfully lived their lives along with building a business. you don’t want to be on your 3rd car and 4th wife when you’re 34, trust me. you might think that, that life is fancy and its so cool and damn but nah. i think you are smarter than that. whenever i go too deep into this money thing, i ground myself by reminding myself about this one line: what you do not want is what you have already. vice versa is also probably true. if you have it, you don’t want it. such is the human nature. the never ending pursuit of wanting things has never ended well for anyone in our world. at some point after winning substantially if you can’t zoom out and say, that’s enough i think you’d be miserable but hey, correct me if im wrong. i’ll be happy(jealous) for you. so what is it that im pursuing right now? clarity. clarity of thought, clarity of direction i want my life to go in. do i want to start my own thing? do i want comfort and go work in an mnc? do i wanna work at openai or anthropic? do i want to be a standup comedian(im funny pls)? do i continue being the founding engineer? so many questions. no idea how i’ll answer any of them. life is overwhelming. you always have so many choices and all of them seem right and wrong and you don’t know if sacrificing anything is even worth it. truth is, you will never know if anything was “worth it”. you just have to live your life believing that its worth it because what good does it do to think otherwise? “what good does it do to think otherwise” is an insane hack to thinking things through. when you are starting a company, believe delusionally that its gonna beat openai and succeed because what good does it do to think otherwise. when you are training to be an athlete, be delusional enough to think you are gonna win an olympic gold because what good does it do to think otherwise. so i hope you are living your life healthy, happy and content with your choices. id encourage you to start living it with a bit more delusion and ask everything that you want from the world. asking truly is the only way to get something you don’t have. cold email that founder, believe in 11:11 and wish for something, now go work hard to make that wish come true. life is too short to be pursuing someone else’s life, go do your thing and if you think its not good enough, go do something else but remember at the end of it all, there is noone who will remember you for your work. hell there is noone who will even remember you so don’t go live your life as a nobel guy trying to make a dent in the world by sacrificing your self. you are smarter than that.