Another Life Update

May 2023, September 2023 and now July 2024. Let’s be honest – this isn’t the first time. Will it be the last time? Probably not. Am I at least going to try and learn from it? I mean I’ll try but-

WELCOME BACK!! It’s been, what, <checks blog> 10 months since I last posted? I am aware that the last post was also a life update, but there have been a lot of changes since then. Also no, it isn’t going to be just life updates from here on out but more on that later.

Let me start by telling you there has been a lot going on in the past 10 months. I will try and talk about the important stuff.

Firstly, I am finally done with high school. It’s been a roller coaster of a journey, and I looking back, it was also some of the most fun years of my life. The freedom of being a ‘young adult’ while carrying pretty much none of the responsibilities of an adult was exhilarating but did require a very fine balance. The tough part, however, were the goodbyes. As I looked around during our high school farewell party, I couldn’t begin to imagine by life without all those that I had grown up with. The room buzzed with laughter and bittersweet tears. Each hug felt like a goodbye to a chapter of my life that had shaped me in ways words could never capture. I am still in touch with a lot of my friends but some drifted apart and turns out that’s just part of life. It isn’t a fun part of life but you can’t win everything.

I am now looking to start a new journey, with new peers, in an entirely new location. I will be going to university for my undergrad years now…getting into the university itself was a bit tough, but in the end, we did make it! I will be studying Mechatronics Engineering with a focus on Robotics & Automation, a field I have been wanting to work in for a long time now. From being absolutely destroyed in the World Robotics Olympiad 6 years ago to getting into the oldest mechatronics program of the country, we have come a long way.

Turns out moving away from home isn’t a very easy task. Logistics themselves are a whole different nightmare on their own, but stepping outside the protective bubble my parents and teachers kept me under thus far is a bit scary. Leaving home feels like stepping into the unknown, a mix of fear and excitement swirling in my chest. But I remind myself that this is what growth feels like – pushing past comfort zones and embracing new challenges. I’ll be leaving my hometown and going hundreds of kilometers away. The one solace I have is the fact that there are lots of teens just like me, coming from diverse backgrounds, facing this chapter with me. It’s definitely going to be fun, I tell myself.

Now, another important topic on the agenda. This blog. I questioned for a long time about what I should do with it. Should I turn it into a technical website for robotics? Am I still going to read as much? Will I have any time to do so? I still haven’t figured out the answer. What I do know for sure is that when my younger self created this blog, he promised himself he’d never stop posting. Looking back, it was probably an immature move but there was a certain innocence to it that I like. Back then, I tried to be the next big blogger. After trying for a long time, I eventually realized how much I did not want to be that “dream” my younger self had envisioned. I didn’t like writing for the sake of appeasing my audience, I didn’t want to write about what was vogue, I didn’t want to spend hours looking at Google Analytics and figuring out why one post did so much better than the other. That just isn’t why I write. I write for my future self. I love looking back at the kind of posts I wrote, the kind of jokes I made and while my sense of humor still is as terrible as it was when I started the blog, I love seeing the evolution I have gone through. And that is what Bookgest is for me, a corner of the internet that outlasts even me, documenting myself. Ignoring how narcissistic it actually sounds, there’s a certain beauty to it.

So yes, the blog will still be on the internet. Whether about books or random thoughts, I will still be posting. Probably as irregularly as I do now, but you can count on the occasional email in your inbox, regardless of whether you guys are still reading. Because however much I grow, whatever I decide to do with my life, regardless of what is going on in the world, there will be a kid out there, at the edge of the internet, typing away at his keyboard. The clicks like music to his ears, the books like old friends, and these posts like cherished memories.