There are times that I think about my milestones in life. While there is so much to be proud of, there is always this downward spiral of “well, it could be better.” This was a feeling that was eating me away all of February. It was probably the reason that you saw no blog posts during this time. Because there wasn’t a great way to talk about it. The words were failing me and honestly between work and trying to establish a social life, the time to write long format took the hit. Its not hard for me to type and think but I have to always create an environment — I have to feel like I have done everything else before I can sit to write. This includes having food, watching TV, playing on my Xbox. Once I have checked all the boxes, I can begin the actual art of writing.

That first paragraph was also a not-so-clever tactic to deviate from the topic. The law of averages is an interesting phenomenon that I don’t think I understand completely. However what I do get is that for every good event in your life, you will have an equally bad event in your life that will essentially annul each other out in many ways — leaving you feeling “well this is how life is.” I think that it many ways my achievements are like this. If packaged well, it all sounds great but peel the layer of plastic and the feelings of “average” just come right back. I see this phenomenon throughout my life. The first instance was the college itself. While I got a scholarship to study in the United States — a dream opportunity, it wasn’t the biggest and best school there was. Even though I loved my education and the relationships I made, I always felt that there were others who just did so much more with the opportunities that they had. From choosing a major that wasn’t really aspirational to any employer in the country, to not really winning any awards or getting on the dean’s list — while what I achieved is something I am very proud of, there is a whole lot more that I guess I could have done.

My blog gives me similar feelings too. I constantly talk about focussing on short format content and building purpose-built content for long term growth but then I see COVID content creators start off at 5k followers that have just blossomed and get all this recognition and monetary compensations. I, on the other hand, have just plateaued at this sub 50k level. And while I am doing more than what I can with the number of hours there are in the day, I again feel as though why I am not hitting the same success. 2022 will close five years of content creation for me, should I not have compounded some more fame through this time? This is what eats me up from time to time. I can blame it on luck but maybe, there is just something about me.

My job is the one place where I feel this the least. I have reached the top in many ways at my company. The fun this is that anything I do becomes the top as well. So in that way, I find it easier to spend more time on the job, but it feeds me that ego I desire. But then, the moment I take the blinders off I see that even though I may be on the top at my 60 person organisation, people my age are doing so much more — both financially and in terms of accolades.

There is no positive swing to this rant haha. It’s my way to air out how my February went. I don’t think these thoughts will stop me or force me to make drastic changes. Plateaus are part of life. We aren’t supposed to always keep climbing, sometimes it’s almost better to coast along and say— “hey it could be worse.” These confit tomatoes are a recipe that follows the law of averages as well. They aren’t the best things that you can make with them, but they aren’t the worst either. They sit plum in the middle and somehow 55k viewers seem to agree with me as well given just how well the reel did for this post haha. I hope you do try this recipe and until next time, happy cooking!

Glimpses from the week

Ingredients

300 grams of cherry tomatoes

1 cup olive oil

6-7 cloves of garlic

Handful of basil

Flaky salt to taste

Method

1. Smash garlic, remove the skin

2. In a cast-iron pan or a baking tin, add all the ingredients

3. Place the pan in an oven heated to 160 celsius for 30 minutes. Enjoy with some flaky toast!