Hi everyone! Happy to be back, in case y’all have been wondering - where have you been Kush? Well, a lot of things have been happening on my YouTube channel and Twitch Channel - buffetcodes. But in any case, I wanted to write something out - so here it is.

Disclaimer: this is more on a personal level rather than on an educational level, I’m sorry to disappoint if you were expecting a detailed tech blog today. I’ll come up with something soon. :)

Alright, so… this thought came into my mind, probably it’s just me but how easily do we forget good things, people and moments? You’ll see people talking about their down moments, but why have we stopped appreciating and recognising the ups we have had in the past? While reading this, let’s all think about the good moments you had in the past, and think about the people who contributed to your journey (irrespective of their presence in your life right now), maybe close your eyes - speak out loud - or write it down - do whatever that suits you, but let’s do it together.

Make sure to include very small wins as well when you think about the moments! :) A win is a win. I’ll write things down as I think, please note that I chose to not name people/companies to keep their privacy and my peace 😉

  1. I interned at NTU Singapore, immensely grateful to the friends who contributed significantly in the journey. Also thankful to my mentors, colleagues at NTU and professor as well. My elder brother and parents supported significantly in this internship, as it wasn’t fully funded. I remember my brother and my parents telling me, “You go, we’ll take care of the money part”. Going to Singapore changed the course of my life…
  2. Because of the time I spent in Singapore, I realised I absolutely love low level programming, I didn’t know it all though (I still don’t :)) but it fascinated me. I started writing blogs for PyTorch C++ API. Doing that while in the institute, it kept me focused on my goal.
  3. I decided not to sit for on-campus placements, there are many reasons to it - probably good for another blog?
  4. Many developers helped me in the journey while writing blogs, they weren’t just a “technical content” writing gig, each blog took me a month to write and reproduce results - each blog was a project to me.
  5. I travelled to the US, many may not know this but when my VISA got rejected (first try) - I talked to a few professors of my institute, and talking to them comforted me. I got the VISA eventually, but I was never nervous - even if I would have “failed” to not get a VISA to the US, I would have happily worked for any company who would give me a job at that time, and would have tried creating an impact.
  6. I travelled back to India because of COVID pandemic, and worked for a few startups. No matter how the experience was, I had my learnings - and have fortunately not committed the same mistakes again.
  7. Started my YouTube channel after hitting the rock bottom of my emotional state. Streaming my projects, talking about things openly, helped me a lot.
  8. Continued contributing to Open Source, Got laid off once (no shame in admitting this) - ran 7 kms after that 🏃- and got another job within a month - very grateful to the God and family.
  9. Shifted to Bangalore, worked on a lot of projects, streamed a lot, did a lot of running and started playing badminton 🏸.

Okay, now once all this is done, lemme ask you a simple question - How many times did you express your gratitude to the people who helped in your journey? Do you still value them like the way you should have…? Not all, maybe, I’ll leave that decision to you, but think about it.

I’ll be back with another blog after this, meanwhile… let’s all take some time - and express our gratitude to the people who were in the journey and who deserve knowing that you’re doing GREAT! ❤️

Until next time,

Namaste 🙏 Kushashwa Ravi Shrimali