Daybook, 1 September 2026

Twenty-eight. Yesterday was my birthday. People wished me, and my mom and dad celebrated back home and gave food to people.

A solo date. I took myself to a bookshop on Murphy Avenue in downtown Sunnyvale and spent about two and a half hours there, going through the shelves. Every book I picked up, I tried to relate to — the how, the what and the why of this book and me, and whether the two of us should go along together. I came home with two.

The Way Forward. A slow read, even though every page is only about ten lines — reflections and poems. I opened it at random and landed on a piece about how you build a good life:

• relentlessly follow your intuition
• build with people who also love to grow
• take responsibility for your healing
• love yourself so deeply that you feel at home in your own body and mind
• teach yourself to forgive
• never stop being a kind person

That is exactly why I picked it up. I need a book that makes me reflect, keeps me calm, keeps me grounded and keeps me moving forward.

And a philosophical one — a deep dive into Socrates and the Socratic method. I really liked that one.

28 at 28. I wrote twenty-eight questions — on self, life, work, AI, health, and a few other things. Spent the time journaling and noting them down, and I want to publish it. It came out good.

Alone. This is the first birthday I have spent completely alone. I am in San Jose, and I am much more alone here than I was in New York. Maybe it was also the first day of autumn.

The fall I am walking into. I have started applying for full-time roles. I built an automation with Claude so that every seven days I put out a batch of applications. Compared to the internship search I have far more hope and confidence in this one — a year of experience behind me, everything I have learned, a lot of projects. I can see real alignment. I just have to be strategic about the search rather than reactive. I started on the first day of fall itself, maybe the day before that.

Four months to graduation, and I am excited for them. Right now OPT and CPT and other things are being stopped, and I could not quite digest that — but I still have to move on and work on things. Irrespective of anything, I should be able to make it possible.

One more thing. I got into a campus leader program this year, and I am excited about it — a better community, people to interact with, people to work alongside. Better work this time. Explore New York. Always happy. Just go ahead: there is nothing stopping me.

Settled · 1 Sep 2026