Joraaver Chahal

Growth in Rest

Happy New Year for those reading this from my newsletter feed on the first day of 2026.

I believe I owe my beloved readers a reflection of 2025. It occurred to me a day or two ago how crestfallen my readers would be if 2025 ended without one last quirky Joraaver wisdom bomb. So without adding another unnecessary hook, let’s get started.

The biggest action I took this year was an enormous, all-encompassing step back.

The surgery in January of this year would have been the impetus for that step for most people. It wasn’t for me. I had a bigger problem to face than some pesky space in my knee where meniscus and cartilage should have been. As one good friend pointed out to me late 2024, surgery was my comfort zone. In a twisted way, I looked forward to surgery, because it stripped me of my physical autonomy and forced me to sit still, theoretically. But still I was not.

I finished a textbook on reinforcement learning in the early weeks of my recovery. I sat down, took notes, and did the coding exercises while recovering. Awesome, supposedly. So proud of myself (sacrasm aside, this presentation was funny during show and tell with friends). What a load of hogwash.

The truth was, if I felt like I couldn’t run myself down physically, I had to run myself down mentally. I had to continuously do something. To justify my self-worth. To provide value. To meet expectations. The bare minimum. A downright awful mindset, but one that had made me capable of creating significant output. Until I couldn’t.

With serendipitous timing, intervention arrived in many forms.

The first, and most obvious, source of succor, was a new relationship whose one year anniversary occurred just three weeks ago.

My girlfriend could sense something amiss in my behavior, as if I were always running out of time. “Frantic” is the precise word she used to describe my ferocious need to quickly unplug from social activity. Deep down, I knew she was right, but the moment she called me out, I found it difficult to explain why. Regardless, the fact that I was helpful, valuable, or useful to everyone else yet pernicious to the person that mattered most to me was not acceptable. Earlier this year, I hated that I had become that person. On the eve of the new year (as I publish this essay), I’m grateful to now understand a fraction more of the human experience, and that I have someone by my side who helped me endure the change necessary for that perspective.

The second intervention was a cocktail of different media: two video games my younger brother gifted me before my surgery and an anime that aired on Netflix just after I came home from the operation.

The first game and my first foray into true “rest” was Disco Elysium. Playing a single player game with no expectations about outcomes is definitely one kind of rest. But for me, the real rest only started as I let the story draw me in. I don’t want to spoil the story nor bore you, so all I’ll say is that the game uses a prolific amount of writing to answer questions of identity and slowly unveils how your identity warps your interactions with the world. Those questions and interactions created the space necessary for me to breathe, allowing myself to become whatever I wanted. Experiences of deep sorrow and unexpected levity in the game ensured the heavy inquisition never loomed for long. After all, much like life, the story must go on.

The second game I played was Outer Wilds. An intricate single player game that celebrates the theme of exploration, Outer Wilds helped me accept the vastness of our existence and appreciate the moment we live in without fighting or fearing the future. Now, even though my younger brother opines based on streams of me playing that I bumbled through the game like a lost lamb, I would counter by arguing that I really leaned into that idea of exploration. There were times where I forgot where I needed to go, reread directions three or four times, and even abused a bug in the game’s geometry to complete a puzzle because I didn’t understand what the true solution was. I love that that is how I completed the game, but what I love more is that the game never asks, pushes, or even entertains the concept of completion. If exploration is truly the theme, there can be no completion. Only the unraveling of a story you are still writing.

The final intervention was a new anime that came out this year named Orb: On the Movement of Earth. The one thing I can share about the story is that I consider the protagonist of this story to be “truth.” I started the show while lying in my makeshift sofa bed after surgery in February. I ended it on a flight back from Denver in August. I took my time watching the show because, frankly, I didn’t want it to end. But when I finished the show, I understood why I felt like I was always running out of time. Unlike time, which simply exists, “truth” is a model of the world that you’ve accepted because you either trust those who instructed you on it, or you found it on your own. If you’ve never questioned, or stop questioning, then both are dangerous. Both are flawed. Either way, commence the search.

Of course, what are interventions without observable changes?

For starters, I moved into a new place in San Mateo. A new place is often the sign of new beginnings, if it’s something you rarely do. My home is barely furnished. The walls are purposely empty. Expert friends that can name the brands of furniture on sight are telling me I need an area rug. But I like the view and I have wonderful morning walks by the water. So I’m happy.

I’ve started to reengage with my interests without some kind of value attachment. You see, after my startup failed and I let multiple people down, I had to ask myself why I tried it, and what I seriously wanted. After a lot of questions, the conclusion I drew is that not only do I not care about money, but that it drains me. But for as long as I can remember, money, success, and the idea of freedom were both modeled for me and expected of me in that way. What ignites my fire is solving hard problems and the complexity in building the solutions, not selling a product. So I’ve let that go and moved in a direction that feels right to me. As of now I’m keeping it simple, relatively speaking. I attended a two day cadaver intensive in North Carolina. I took a vacation in South Korea where the first four days were spent attending the Conference on Robot Learning, a.k.a CoRL. I’ve learned how to use a 3D printer and am becoming more accustomed to CAD tooling. I’m engaging in the passions that don’t exhaust me, and I’m happier because of it. And in the future, I expect to reengage with the topics that drained me because, like time, those topics simply exist, and by themselves cannot “do” anything to me. Other memories and emotions that lurk far below the surface of my mind associated with those subjects are at fault, and in due time I’ll hunt them one by one.

Being grateful and letting go has made living a lot simpler. As someone who has always practiced a large locus of control, admitting there are outcomes I cannot change was, is, and will continue to be, difficult. On occasion, the practice happens in what should be small talk. Not because I react in a negative way, but because what should weigh one pound weighs a thousand. Like when a friend I haven’t seen in a while asks if I’m still playing volleyball, and I tell her it’s a sport I may be done with. Or that my place isn’t well furnished because I only want what I want in it, not what others expect I should have. But most of all, it happens in conversations with myself. Moments when I ask myself if what I’m about to engage is from a place of want, or a misplaced sense of urgency manufactured by my mind. In all honesty, finding some balanced middle ground sounds a bit too idealistic. If push comes to shove, I will always choose sheer stubbornness while ensuring I’ve got someone else in my corner who can ask what in the ever-loving hell am I doing to myself.

That’s the biggest aspect of my life I’ve come to appreciate. This year has had its fair share of profound conversations with my closest friends. People in my corner. A handful of them involved tears. There was an abundance of connection and stillness. Genuine laughter slowly made its comeback.

I look forward to more of these conversations in the future. Never forced, of course. Only at the right time, which is, would you believe it, beyond my control.

In the new year, I shall engage with life again, slowly. And the writings shall continue. Not until morale improves, but until novel experiences vanish. Which isn’t happening anytime soon.

I hope the holidays were a time of merriment for you. If it wasn’t as jolly a time, I hope you found small comforts to keep you going.