The uncertainty marks everything else futile. What is the point of anything when a few minds can decide to put the whole world in such turmoil?

Read. Write. Do whatever. Everything else feels meaningless.

I understand nothing. I am far away from the land affected. From the people affected. I read about millions of lives affected. About lives lost. Did they know what was coming their way as they lived their normal life? How confident am I that my life will stay normal? That it won't be uprooted on a whim or a frenzy?

I am not meant to understand. But I wonder if people who are close, are in a position of power or decision-making, do they even understand what's happening? Does anyone feel in control?

I could decide to tune the noise out. But, unfortunately, I am not a monk.

But reading about this day reminded me of my relationship with pen and paper.

I have terrible handwriting; often, even I can't read the words I scribble. But how I write narrates a lot more than just what those words read. It represents the state of my mind.

I write notes, to-dos, and thought fragments every day. But I rarely write with intention anymore. There was a time when I wrote pages of words by hand. Writing morning pages in my diary was an everyday routine for years. I still have diaries full of old thoughts in the loft. Every now and then, I pick one, open a random page and read my state of mind at that time. Relive the phase of my life.

Memories abound. Some sweet moments. Some not so. But all crude. No filter.

And I don't even need to read the words to fathom the state of my mind. The handwriting is enough. I didn't recognise this connection until my wife made a passing comment once while I was scribbling away on the page. Without looking at me, she said, "Breathe. A lot is going on in your head. Try to write cleanly, and the cloud within will clear."

To this day, I live by my wife's suggestion. If I see myself writing illegibly, I will pause and try to write more clearly.

The clearer the words on the page, the clearer the thoughts in my mind.

Whatever I say or feel about writing, it remains a hobby for me. I need to find time for it. It does not come naturally to me. I can't get to writing if I am not in the right headspace. Being tired doesn't let me.

And the thing about hobbies is that they tend to get left behind while life happens.

I watched a movie today, and it had a dialogue, "We don't forget old hobbies just because we have some new ones." That reminded me how bad I have become at sticking to my hobbies.

Life will continue to happen. But if I am to live it, I can't let writing die.

My current ritual is to refresh my email in HEY. Once I realise there's nothing in there, I refresh the NDTV website. I hate the news, and yet the futility of the task feels perfect in the moment. The anticipation that something might have changed triggers a quick hit of excitement, enough to steer me through the silence.

How did I land so badly?

I am trying to think now, and I can't even remember what filled those moments before I had my first smartphone. Music, maybe? Endlessly organising MP3s into folders. Or observing stuff around me. There were games, of course. Snake. Bounce. Small, with no context, background or "progress".

I even remember the joy of loading Orkut on the puny screen of my Nokia N73.

It all changed once I got my hands on a smartphone. Games changed. Angry Birds, Doodle Jump, and such. Social media apps killed the games. Facebook became the king. And once Twitter launched, there was no going back.

My only ritual then was to scroll through the Twitter timeline. The meaningless, timeless interactions on Twitter were a perfect respite in those fleeting, yet tiresome minutes. The timeline met all the criteria. And for all.

My interest in social media soon dwindled, and so did my ritual. I read more. RSS feed. Read-later service. I soon realised these are not ideal for short breaks. The fitting short posts are interspersed among the meaningful long ones. The triaging needs attention, and hence, it doesn't stick.

So I've landed on something compulsive that lacks any real purpose. That provides only hollow comfort. Those small games on puny screens once offered the real thing. Now there's not even a game or an app anymore. Just the pull. Just the refresh. Just the tiny thrill of maybe something changed.

Hasn't the mechanical act of refreshing been the ritual all along?

Routine. Reading. RSS Feeds. Emails. Calendars. I have been documenting my struggle to systematise everything. Or am I creating a problem by writing about it? Maybe I'm just writing about the wrong things.

My inability to stick might be a natural fallout of changing lifestyle and priorities. I am not who I was years ago after all.

Maybe I don't need a routine anymore.
Maybe I don't like reading the same things, or in the same way.
Building connections matters more than the medium I use.
And maybe, just maybe, I am disciplined even without a calendar.

I’m starting to worry that my attempt to systemise my life is slowly becoming my life. I want to write about living, not about the meta aspects of how I organise my life.

How can I if I forget to live?

Addressing the lack of "emailability" is quick and easy. I love email, but I don't use it enough. I don't email too many people unless it's necessary. I don't email friends. With Slack (at work) and WhatsApp (at home), any need for email goes away. I want to improve here, but the drive is lacking. I know why I should email more, but I can't figure out how to build the habit when there's no necessity pushing me.

With a calendar, it's trickier. Here I know both the why and how, and yet I can't master this service. I oscillate between too much and not at all. I am either marking every minute of my day on the calendar or making no entries at all.

And my inability to use the calendar effectively has a tangible impact on my life.

I can't stick to any sane calendar usage, which is one reason why I suck at routine. I have tried every method productivity gurus recommend for managing calendars. But nothing has stuck till now.

And my search for a balanced way continues.

A recent invoice from Readwise Reader reminded me that I am not using the service enough these days. There was a time when I was syncing notes with my second brain in Obsidian, and taking action on them was an everyday use case. It is overhead now that I might as well get rid of.

So I logged into Readwise, cancelled my subscription, and began my search for a read-later service.

I need a simple feature – an easy way to add articles to the queue. And a good, clean interface to read. Instapaper was, of course, at the top of the list. But I just, out of curiosity, searched for other options. Matter was recommended at a couple of places. I realised it also has a free tier, which was enough for my current simple needs.

A simple queue of articles to catch up later on in a clean reading interface.

I am not interested in any of the bells and whistles. RSS feeds, notes/highlights, podcasts, or text to audio. The clean reading interface was enough for me to create an account on Matter and get going.

Plus, the long list of articles that have been pending for years is finally left behind.

It's not them. It's me.

My current mindset is such that what once inspired me no longer does. Posts about writing setup, meta posts about blogging, or thoughtful reflections on one's life experience would have my ears perk up. I skim through them now. I have read about them all. How many setups can I be excited about if I know I can't have it?

My biggest gripe has been losing patience with most long posts that I come across. They ramble on, the key point getting lost in flowery prose. The words are carefully chosen, pricey. Bejeweled. But they seem to be losing their soul.

And because nothing that I read inspires me, I have lost interest in writing. Only if I read well do I write well. Or write at all for that matter.

Time to correct that. I have unsubscribed from all the RSS feeds. I will start small, with voices that spark something in me.

I finally decided to get typing, and the first thing that came to my mind is how I suck at routine. I routinely suck at routine. I will get into a routine, but soon stop the moment I have one going.

My threshold is a week or two, at best.

I do plan my plans. However, what's the point of so much planning if it's all going down the drain after a couple of weeks? This does sound like a defeatist attitude. But I do feel defeated with my lack of control.

I have moved back to HEY email after a year. Fastmail served me well, and I have no problems with the service. It is a near-perfect email service, to be fair. But it does make email boring, so I'm okay with paying the premium. What about the terrible search of HEY that I complained about the last time? Is it any better now? Well, time to find out. Hope it has improved enough not to be a deal breaker.

The best decision I made when I moved to HEY the first time was to switch all my email to my domain. So email hopping is comparatively painless now. I, however, made the mistake of using the masked email addresses on the Fastmail domain. So there were a few accounts that needed to be moved to an email address on my domain. I guess the fact that I had to do that tells me I didn't use the masked email feature right.

I haven't deleted my Fastmail account yet, though I have cancelled the subscription.

I have stopped (didn't renew) the subscription for Ivory. I am back to Mona after a year. The polish of Ivory isn't prominent enough to justify the premium it asks for. Plus, it requires an annual subscription if I am to use it across devices (iOS and Mac). Mona does the job for me.

Since the last few months, I have started listening to podcasts again. I tried Overcast for a while, but it just doesn't work for me. Plus, its Apple Watch support is pathetic. So back on Pocket Casts. (I had unsubscribed to all the podcasts I was listening to earlier and restarted my subscription list. I intentionally avoid tech podcasts where two or three guys chat about topics. I don't want to listen in on "friends" chatting.)

There was a time when I followed my RSS feeds in Readwise Reader. But the workflow just doesn't fit well – the native reading experience matters to me, and Reader does not support that. So, I have moved all my feeds to Unread Cloud. The app's reading experience is perfect.

After years of managing my todos on TickTick, I have moved to Todoist, given its better cross-platform support. Plus, it has better integration with the iPhone.

I have updated the App Defaults page to reflect these changes.

But I could not stick with any other browser either. The experience generally sucked. I have tried them all. Firefox (again). Orion. Vivaldi. Brave. Zen. Each of them lacks something or other.

I am back to Safari again. I am fully into the Apple ecosystem now, from mobile to laptops. So, it's effective to stick to the default.

I hate The Browser Company for killing the promise that was Arc!

How's this written? What do I want to convey? Who do I want to convey it to? Why? Am I writing it correctly? In the right tone? Does the post sound too messed up? Do I sound too messed up? Am I too messed up?

The never-ending line of thought. One that I always wanted to stay away from.

In short, I am thinking a lot about readers. Others. Unknown. I can't let the unknown steer my thinking.

I said one thought. It need not be coherent. Well-worded. Essay. I don't write to earn myself praises. I can't—I suck at writing.

My blog is a vessel I pour my unformed thoughts into so that I can revisit and reflect on them later.

1. Do you floss your teeth?
   Nope. Flossing teeth is not big in India.
2. Tea, coffee, or water?
   Tea is love. Black coffee is what I drink currently.
3. Footwear preference?
   Clogs. Prefer Crocs.
4. Favourite dessert?
   Ras malai. But then I am not a dessert person in general.
5. The first thing you do when you wake up?
   Drink a glass of water.
6. Age you’d like to stick at?
   Why would I do that? If I must say, 22 it is. I had just joined my first job – new city, new people. Plus the least responsibilities.
7. How many hats do you own?
   Don't love hats. I do own a cap, though, if that counts.
8. Describe the last photo you took?
   Curious Bee bursting crackers – it is Diwali time.
9. Worst TV show?
   Can there be just one? All the shows that I gave up watching.
10. As a child, what was your aspiration for adulthood?
    Something to do with computers. I ended up doing just that.

The only thing that existed then was a comic explaining the state of browsers and why a new one was needed. The whole comic is such a brilliant read even today – I wish more products launched with a comic book than a prerecorded event.

My post also linked to an unofficial announcement post discussing what distinguishes Chrome. This line caught my attention (emphasis mine).

The browser won't become very popular, but the ideas behind it will influence the next versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari.

Well, can a prediction be any more wrong?

You don't need to look for a desktop app. No need for a ready writing set-up either. All you need is internet access.

Sure, a desktop app, when available, eliminates all prerequisites. The experience is far better than logging into anything. I got writing from a native app today. iA Writer. No thought in mind. Just words trailing a blinking cursor.

When you are struggling to write, that is the best way to get you to.

I was uncomfortable for the whole two months.

Most of the people in my family liked my beard. My sister loved it. My wife was indifferent to it. My daughter and parents hated it. My feelings went on a ride of their own.

I liked it at the start. I was ok to survive with it in the third week.

But as the days went by, I started regretting the decision of keeping the facial hair. It is very high-maintenance – you either spend a reasonable amount of effort to keep it clean, or it makes you look shabby. Plain. Sick.

My life in its current form does not lend me the time to care for a beard. And without that effort, it's like wrestling the unruly bush and losing every day.

This is foolish. I am not writing perfect prose. I am not writing to meet a particular word count. I often write to convey a thought. One thought. I should write just that one thought.

It doesn't matter if it takes 10 words. Or 500.

If other thoughts supplement the current post, they can follow later in separate posts. I don't need to ramble on this one just because I haven't made my point succinctly. Perfectly. Perfect is never achieved.

After all, who do I need to convince? No one other than myself. Because that's who I write for.

I have a bookmark for a new post which takes me directly to this nice, empty page. Sometimes, the unfinished parts are what make something feel authentic and personal.

Here's the longer version of the story. I have had a version of this theme running on my blog for some time, first created for Hugo on Micro.blog. When I moved to Kirby, I ported my theme to make the switch seamless. I wanted to attempt the same with Ghost, too. The only thing holding me back was my lack of clarity on moving each aspect of the carefully crafted theme. Could I recreate it exactly?

This question led to an unexpectedly enjoyable coding session with Claude, where we embarked on a complete theme migration that turned into something like pair programming with an AI.

Starting with "How Hard Could It Be?"

When I first asked about porting my Kirby theme to Ghost, I expected a straightforward template conversion. Kirby uses PHP, Ghost uses Handlebars—how different could they be? Well, it turns out quite different.

My theme wasn't just a simple blog template. Over the years, it had evolved into something quite specific: a homepage with curated "Start Here" posts, support for both long-form blog posts and microblog "notes," IndieWeb microformats throughout, and a custom newsletter integration for my Square 101 series. Oh, and a navigation system where previous/next buttons appeared on every page but only worked on post pages.

The first challenge came immediately. Ghost doesn't have Kirby's flexible content structure, so we needed to think creatively about how to maintain the distinction between blog posts and notes while working within Ghost's framework.

The Dance of Debugging

What followed was a delightful back-and-forth debugging session. Claude would examine my Kirby templates, suggest Ghost equivalents, and inevitably, something would break. "Missing helper: feature_image" became a running theme as we discovered that Ghost's template system had its own opinions about how things should work.

Each error led to a deeper understanding. When the homepage lost its intro content, we realised Ghost's context system works differently from Kirby's page structure. When dates showed up as "July 0" instead of proper dates, we dove into Ghost's date formatting. When the navigation buttons disappeared entirely, we learned about Ghost's template inheritance.

There's something satisfying about this kind of methodical problem-solving. Each fix revealed another layer of how Ghost thinks about content, and gradually, the theme began to take shape.

The Moments of Discovery

The best part of the session was those small victories. When we finally got the two-column layout working perfectly, matching the original pixel for pixel. When the microformats are appropriately validated, preserving the IndieWeb compatibility I'd worked hard to maintain. When the newsletter integration callouts appeared exactly where they should.

One particularly satisfying moment came when we implemented the navigation system. In Kirby, I had previous/next buttons that appeared on every page but were only functional on post pages. In Ghost, this required understanding the difference between global and post-specific contexts. The solution—checking for post context and showing active or inactive states accordingly—felt elegant once we figured it out. Though this is not a solved problem yet, I got the necessary understanding of why it breaks,

The Art of Preservation

Throughout the process, the goal wasn't just to make something that worked, but to preserve the exact character of the original. This meant paying attention to details that might seem trivial: the precise spacing between elements, the way tags are displayed, the subtle colour variations in different modes.

Claude was remarkably good at this kind of detail work. When I mentioned that the post structure looked different, it immediately went back to the original Kirby templates to understand what was missing. When I pointed out that dates were wrong, it didn't just fix the format—it examined the original to match it exactly.

What Emerged

After several hours of this iterative refinement, we had something remarkable: a Ghost theme that was virtually indistinguishable from the original Kirby site. Every visual element, every interaction, every piece of functionality had been preserved.

But more than that, the Ghost version was actually better in some ways. Featured images now work seamlessly with Open Graph tags. The template organisation is cleaner with reusable partials. Ghost's built-in SEO handling is more robust than what I had cobbled together in Kirby.

The Unexpected Joy of AI Pair Programming

What struck me most about this experience was how much it felt like collaborating with a thoughtful colleague. Claude understood not just the technical requirements but the aesthetic goals. It caught details I might have missed and suggested improvements I hadn't considered.

There's something uniquely satisfying about this kind of work—the methodical process of understanding how something works, translating it to a new system, and refining until it's exactly right. Having an AI partner who could instantly examine templates, spot patterns, and suggest solutions made the whole process feel more like exploration than tedious porting.

The migration proved that switching platforms doesn't require sacrificing your site's character. With patience and attention to detail, you can maintain exactly what makes your site unique while gaining the benefits of modern tools. Sometimes the best way to appreciate what you've built is to rebuild it entirely.

The complete Ghost theme emerged from this session, ready to deploy. It maintains every aspect of the original while embracing Ghost's modern publishing platform—proof that good design transcends the tools used to create it.

But the polish is what kills my drive to write, to be frank. Every time I open the portal to publish my clumsy thoughts, I think the site does not deserve them. They are too ugly. Just like these. And it is not as if I haven’t gone down that rabbit hole earlier. I have tried Ghost multiple times over the years. I use it. I have these thoughts. I stop using it. This cycle has run itself many times now. Yet I keep burning myself up, signing up for the polish every time.

Why do I do that?

Of course, my eternal quest for change is one reason. And another is my dissatisfaction with my current online platform, whatever that platform is. I am never satisfied. Plus, I am tired of these meta posts. But they never end. And I am back again for the umpteenth time.

Everything has something that I like. Nothing has everything that I like. So the fight within continues.