The last decade has probably been the most eventful period of my life: I went to grad school and got my MBA, I got married, moved back to India and started my first company, Promea Therapeutics. Then came COVID-19 (does this need an explanation?)—which I experienced not only as everyone else did, but also through Promea, one of the few companies that manufactured detection kits and provided testing services to more than a million patients. Somewhere amid all of that, I had two kids.
Some might say I’ve earned the right to cruise through this next decade: focus on raising my kids, be present for all the little moments. Others would say this is the time for me to double down and scale my companies—relaxing is for my 50s.
I turned 35 almost 2 months ago. Since then I go through the work week with this feeling of wanting to do more.
I used to play tennis. Couldn’t I start taking lessons again and maybe be competitive? I have a Kindle lying around—couldn’t I build a habit of reading more books. My PS5 and Switch are gathering dust—couldn’t I finish a few video games? I love writing; couldn’t I write more? There’s so much of the world I haven’t seen; couldn’t I travel more? I love photography and I’ve got a couple of cameras—pretty nice ones at that— shouldn’t I be documenting my life more?
These thoughts especially come front and centre on Sundays while I’m sipping on my second espresso with a slight buzz—and for a few minutes, every possible version of my life feels within reach.
But why now? Why am I flooded with these thoughts right after my 35th birthday. It’s not like anything significantly new happened. It’s not like when the clock struck midnight there was any evidence that time was running out.
And yet, something felt different.
From as far back as I can remember, the question—what next—was easy to answer, almost like I was following a script. Finish school. Churn through med school. Get a business degree. Get married. Start a company. Have children. This wasn’t a playbook written by me…it was every Indian boy’s to-do list. And each milestone naturally progressed towards another.
That doesn’t mean the playbook has completely run out of pages. I will continue to grow my companies, continue to be a better father, be more emotionally present for my wife, and build greater financial security. But these ongoing commitments don’t have clearly defined end goals or a clearly marked finish line.
Maybe that’s why all of these neglected ambitions are being pushed to the front of my brain. Tennis, photography, reading, writing, and travel aren’t simply items from a wish list. The combination represent versions of myself that I can still imagine becoming.
What strikes me is that most of these aren’t new ambitions. They are parts of myself I knew before—or at least parts I once intended to develop. Over the last decade, the demands with the clearest consequences naturally took priority. The camera could wait. The unfinished book could wait. The writing could wait.
And they did wait, without complaint.
Now they seem to be asking whether their turn will ever come.
There is another possibility I’ve begun to consider: maybe I’m bringing the same milestone-oriented instinct to the things that are supposed to provide an escape.
Maybe the script hasn’t disappeared. Maybe I’ve internalised it so thoroughly that, in absence of someone else telling me what comes next, I’ve started writing new milestones for myself.
Or maybe this restlessness isn’t coming from having too little in my life. Maybe it comes from reaching an age when nobody else can tell me what should come next.
If that’s true, doing more may not be the answer. It could be that part of the challenge is learning to do something without requiring it to lead anywhere.
I still don’t know whether this is the decade in which I should cruise or accelerate. I’m beginning to suspect those aren’t the only choices.
Maybe I don’t need to play competitive tennis, read fifty books, finish every video game, travel the world, and scale my companies all at once. Maybe the desire to do all of them is simply the reminder that there are parts of me I don’t want to lose while focussing on the parts that demand the most from me.
It’s possible a full life isn’t built by fitting everything in it. Maybe it’s built by choosing what deserves my attention now—and accepting that choosing one thing means leaving something else for later. And maybe what we leave behind defines our lives as much as the interests we decide to pursue.
For the moment I’m choosing to write.