What could you do differently?

At 4:36 p.m., a Teams notification broke the calm.

“The task only takes three hours,” it said.

“You still have some slack, right?”

Slack looks like empty space on someone else’s calendar.

What they don’t see are the trades behind it—

asking others to cover,

pulling support just to protect a few hours of focus.

Those three hours aren’t just three hours.

They cost context, momentum, and people.

I still said yes.

That’s the part I could do differently.

Next time, instead of silently absorbing the cost,

I could make the trade visible—

not to resist the work,

but to remind us both that “slack” is rarely free.

If you had a freeway billboard, what would it say?

If I had a freeway billboard, it would say:

Budha · Mahatma · Satnam · Wahe Guru

A quiet reminder on a fast road—

wake up, stay true, honor wisdom,

and keep moving with awareness.

Do you play in your daily life? What says “playtime” to you?

Learning something new gives my gradually stiffening self a jolt.

Learning the violin has become my version of playtime.

Not for performance, but for attention—one sound, one bow stroke, one focused moment at a time.

Between getting stuck and making small progress,

I’m reminded that I can still learn, still struggle, and still grow.

By the way, I still play terribly—

often all over the place,

and I even get corrected by kids. 😆

But maybe that’s part of the playtime too:

being bad at something again,

and not needing to pretend otherwise.

What are your biggest challenges?

In a time when AI accelerates everything, slowing down to think has become even harder.

Speed is abundant.

Attention is not.

How are you creative?

I look for inspiration in everyday life.

In ordinary moments that quietly matter.

I look for inspiration in my work.

While solving problems and refining details.

I look for inspiration in people.

In conversations, differences, and shared understanding.

I look for inspiration in the act of pushing upward.

Through struggle, learning, and persistence.

In the end, I return to where I started—

staying true to myself, holding kindness, and doing my best.

When are you most happy?

I may not have truly experienced great joy or sorrow yet.

But I cherish the quiet, ordinary happiness—time spent with focus, slowly growing.

Wandering alongside the one I love, I look forward to a child’s growth, and to growing old together.

Describe a man who has positively impacted your life.

In high school,

a teacher once told us:

Studying is the best way to change your destiny.

I believed it completely.

I wasn’t a top student.

My grades were never impressive.

But I still followed that direction,

because I trusted his words.

With time,

I began to see the limits of that sentence.

It belongs to a specific moment,

and a specific context.

For those who reach the very top through academics,

it may still be true.

For the rest of us,

other skills matter just as much.

Learning how to connect with people.

Knowing how to choose.

Understanding what to hold on to,

and what to let go.

That teacher didn’t give me a perfect answer.

But he gave me a starting point.

And sometimes,

that’s enough to change the course of a life.

What skills or lessons have you learned recently?

I filled my life with self-taught violin practice,

only to learn something more important along the way—

focus is what gives time its weight.