without the darkness, you would never know the light

This year was the worst in recent memory. I'm so glad it happened.

Usually, I feel like every year of my life has been better than the last.

I often look back at myself and cringe, which is great because that means I’m learning and growing so much. But in the moments, I feel like I’m doing the best I can.

This year was not that. This year, I was doing shit and I knew it. December 2024 was God testing my strength and was the worst I’d felt in conscious memory (since I was about 16). The 4 main things in my life are always work, family, friends and romantic relationships, and each had some crazy shift that month.

At the start of the year, I felt like I was going to enter my villain arc. Everyone hates me anyway so might as well. I’m gonna get super rich and jacked and “who cares about other peoples feelings? I gotta look out for number 1” was kind of what was going through my head for a bit.

That, coupled with feelings of self-hatred, led me to kind of just… disappear for a few months. Not physically, I still went outside and stuff, but I was just not present the way I normally am. I simultaneously felt like everyone would be better off without me, but also so desperately didn’t want to be lonely.

By about April, it became clear to me that I was actually going through a redemption arc. I had committed some serious emotional crimes and, after much wallowing and self-pity, realized that I wanted to make up for them with community service rather than jail time.

It might sound like I’m setting this up for a surprise twist. Like, “And that’s how I realized that 2025 actually WAS the best year, even though I didn’t know it at the time.” No. It really f*cking sucked. Changing is so hard! Even when I want to! And I’m never really sure if I’ve changed at all in the moment, or if I just removed the stimulus that made me act out. Change is a constant in life, but also at a given point in time, I can never grasp it if I tried to.

Only in this past month I started to see it was kind of a blessing being so down, because hitting the wall made me open to so many new things my stubborn ass never would’ve tried before. I was way too up on borrowed confidence before, thinking I was too good to make a fool of myself, when everything really good and memorable in my life has started out by doing something “cringe”. Like:

• making youtube videos again

• doing a 5 min standup comedy set in front of 40 people

• going to China and trying to communicate and get around and haggle in Chinese (they stared, laughed, and took pictures with me)

• quitting a job I didn’t care for right after getting my visa

• saying “I love you” to my parents

• writing A LOT

Most of those things I’d wanted to do for years, and part of feeling socially isolated for a bit was I dropped the bit where I felt like I needed to impress anyone. I mean, if no one’s around anyway, no one’s there to see me screw up, so might as well try. Nothing needs to have rhyme and reason because I don’t need to explain it to anyone else anyway. No one’s asking.

Then a funny thing happened. People started paying attention. To the things that I didn’t even care or want people to pay attention to.

Anything I made that I wanted people to look at would get… *crickets*. Like I started making YouTube videos again, put in weeks of filming and editing, and came back to 100 views. Then a blog I wrote in an hour went Hacker News viral. I wrote a blog about selling to engineers, hoping to get noticed by some startup that’d hire me as a tech sales person, posted it on Hacker News and again… *crickets*. Then I hung out with my friend for a week and wrote about what I think makes him special and all of a sudden all the famous Twitter people are in my DMs. I didn’t even think it was that good! Like it was good, but everyone else thought it was GREAT, and I’m thinking “guys I have better pieces out… go read those too…”

It was to the point where I felt like anything I held too tightly had the life squeezed out of it, and that was palpable to everyone watching. I’ve long said my preferred state is toiling away in obscurity. When people are watching, I get nervous and can’t translate my brain into the world without distortion anymore. But if no one's watching, it’s all for me, and I can just make what I think is good.

I’ve made stuff that’s gotten attention before and always stopped it for that reason, even though I didn’t know it at the time. A watched pot never boils and a watched aadillpickle never toils.

I have a feeling this time is different though. Even though a good number of people are watching. Because:

a) Earlier last year in April, as a way to inject some structure into my life after some late night frustration, I started writing weekly logs about what I’m up to and thinking about. I sent it to some friends mostly to keep me accountable and a little bit to stay connected. We’re 38 logs deep now with only one missed week, and it’s something I look forward to almost every week. No matter what happens, I’m going to keep writing that log. Not want or need or have to, I just will. I never know what I’ll write about til I do, I never know my thoughts until they're on the page, and I realized making stuff with that intention is what I want to keep doing. I want to see what I pull out of myself because I have a jungle up here filled with lost treasure. “Got presents in my mind but couldn’t open up my own vault.” It really isn’t for anyone else anymore, and I’ve proven that to myself 38 weeks in a row , because I was writing it even when no one was liking or commenting.

b) I used to say “I have to” a lot. Like if I commit to something publicly, I have to do it. Now, I don’t care. I’m already naked. There is no more shame left if I commit to something and don’t do it. Even saying this now, even saying this time is different, I still don’t care if somehow I stop writing and creating, because I know it’s all part of the path. That ability, that feeling in my hands that everything is on the path, and not holding myself tightly to anything is actually what lets me loosen up rather than holding things so tightly I crush them. Letting my mind flow through my hands in everything I do, and if one day my mind and hands truly choose to do something else, that’s fine. I trust them.

Everyone always asks how my parents react to all the things I do that are the opposite of a good Asian son, like dropping out of college, changing jobs so frequently, or moving to San Francisco with no plan, money or visa.

I told my mom I quit 6 weeks ago then asked her how she felt about it. Her response then sums it up best:

“Me? I’m fine. You always find something. You have given us so many shocks in the the past few years. Now we are shock-proof.”

It took a few years to here, but her thinking finally somewhat lines up with mine now. I’m shock-proof. Might as well play with some electrical sockets.

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A big change this year is I started believing in the universe. Before, I was fully a man of science and prided myself on cynicism, but now I know it’s much more fun to believe. In that spirit, here’s some stuff I’m putting out into the world for the new year:

• I will be allowed to live in San Francisco legally as a non-immigrant alien

• I will make an income enough to pay my living expenses in San Francisco without a W-2 job

• I will publish 100 pieces of work publicly on the internet next year, be it writing or video or whatever, in addition to the private daily logs

• I will get a Twitter payout

• A Fortune 100 CEO will somehow engage with SF Alexandria

• I will hit a devious lat spread

• I will make 100 pieces of pottery, and sell at least 1 piece to a stranger

• My wonderful friends and I are going to create epic dad lore

I know a lot can happen in a year, but I’ll admit: even writing these down right now, I don’t full believe they’ll happen. But if you read out the story of my life to 16 year old me, he wouldn’t believe it either.

The biggest part he wouldn’t believe is all the friends that feel like family I have around. How I get to spend each week hanging out with them, making memories we’ll talk about on rocking chairs 30 years from now. Looking back on my year, I can’t believe so much joy took place among all the chaos. Every single scary thing I did, I had someone in my corner with a towel and water bottle pushing me to get back out there and tending to me when I was KO’d. Every single goal I put up there is directly tied to a friend who pushed me to dream it up in the first place¹.

This year I want to do more for and with my friends, because that’s the best part of every year. I want to be the friend that ropes people in, and do for them what they’ve done for me, without holding on so tightly. I want to be the catalyst that makes people realize they can do more than they previously thought possible, by doing what I want so unapologetically that everyone is freed up to be themselves. “And as [I] let [my] own light shine, [I] unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” I want to care so deeply that caring becomes cool again à la Timothee Chalamet.

I look back and think about how sad a lot of my writing was, how confused and scared I was, and how many people reached out saying how much they resonated. I felt great about that, being able to give people catharsis by following along with my journey. To give off the vibe that, “yeah honestly I don’t know what I’m doing, and nobody else does either, so here’s me figuring it out in real time, so you can too.” I hope to carry a similar vibe forward except with a 2 small alterations.

We’re still figuring it out, but we’re:

a) unburdened by what has been

b) confident it will all work out, because it always does, or else we wouldn’t be here right now

Anyway, from the depths of my soul, to everyone who’s reading this right now:

THANK YOU.

When I started writing on the internet 7 years ago I never thought more than me, my mom and my friends would read it, let alone tens of thousands of internet strangers. I have started keeping a wall of love with all the nice messages people send me to look at in times of despair and remember that what I do matters, and that the world is pulling for me to keep pouring my soul into it. Imma keep it up. Hopefully you do too, in whatever it is you choose to care about. Just make sure you care about something. Cue Japanese hot dog man:

Ganbate!!!

—Aadil

1. In order: DJ, myself, SS, RW, AY, GZ, JZ, everyone <3. Immediately others who comes to mind are CY for pushing to write down my goals, BR for helping me through SLAM, AA for being my papa, JZ for pushing my craft, SS for pushing my self-confidence, ST for always checking in, SR and RW for always being there to talk it out, AY for setting an example as a friend and child, and actually literally so many people for making me realize I could do more than ever conceived myself, and just being so fun to be around. I think my acknowledgements page needs an update.