into the new year
- Feb 9
- 9 min read
Updated: Feb 11
I wearily remember my password on my work laptop as I open it on a Monday morning. A new OneNote session starts, and I quickly type out "January 5 2025" on the header. Oops, it's already 2026*. As I write out my first draft of career goals for this year, a document that is as living as the monstera in my apartment: in a stasis through the winter break but now looking forward to better care, I wonder "What do I want to focus on this year outside of work?"
I was recently catching up with an old friend who reads this blog. It's funny, we've known each other for seven years, yet we've never met. Somehow, we managed to stay in touch through all these years. She doesn't particularly care about photography; to her, this blog is simply a way to catch up with what I'm up to. Admittedly, I have become quite the unreliable narrator. I typically ghost this website for months, years even, as life goes on. So I'm taking a little detour from talking purely about photography for a brief moment here. I will, however, sprinkle much of this post with photos I've taken since the start of the year.
Right after I came back from my trip to Doha and got back into the routine of actually being an adult with responsibilities, I felt the creative rush that had seized me through December waning off. During my trip to Doha and India, I was reading a lot more, my ebook reader fitting snugly in my front jeans pocket. Not having a constant source of electricity to charge my phone, I was very judicious about my phone usage and my screen time dropped to below five hours a day. Once, I even started reading it while killing time waiting for my friends to join me at a bar in Bandra. A real performative male final boss.
Now, all the books on my coffee table wait patiently like a dog wanting to go on a walk while I cook my next meal in the kitchen, or read the next data book of some sort that would surely come handy at work (Looking at you, Scaling with R and Arrow). While this platform has never really covered much of it, much of the last couple of years have been focused on survival — finding a job in a brutal market, getting visas sorted, constantly upskilling my career skills, somehow managing to be somewhat active at the gym.
Coming back to the haunting question, what do I want to focus on this year outside of work? Only one word springs to mind: Intentionality. It is time to also water the plant outside of career and focus inwards.
In consumption
I cannot remember the last time I woke up and didn't go on a little doomscroll escapade. If you asked me what reel on Instagram I watched last, I couldn't tell. I am inundated on the daily with Instagram Reel after reel, YouTube Short after short. Short-form vertical video has done permanent damage to my brain, probably. Having had enough, I decided to take over the wheel again. Movies, I thought, are such a better way of taking in ideas, a lot more intentional.
The power of dreams
In 2025, not having friends that match my interest in cinema, I missed out on watching both Sinners and One Battle After Another in theaters. So, to perhaps prove a point, I went to the nearest AMC by myself to watch Marty Supreme. Having not watched any Josh Safdie movie before this, or even the trailer for this movie, I was going in cold (which is what I'd recommend anyone to do). All I knew was that this movie is all everyone was talking about. The chaos was extremely gripping, and Marty's conviction felt weirdly inspiring.
Soon after, I would get on a healthy diet of Marty Supreme video essays to listen to on YouTube. Much has been said about the bravado and relentless pursuit Timothée Chalamet has displayed in marketing this movie already. Nothing stuck with me as much as the parallels drawn by Midnight Showing: Marty Supreme is today's Rocky. While older Hollywood focused on the American dream where if you persevere, you can acheive your dreams. Today's cynical youth knows that hard work alone is not enough, and sometimes even relentlessness does not guarantee realization of your dreams, it takes luck, timing, preparedness, and on top of that, several other exogenous factors. No training montage can really show that. Marty, through all his flaws, was a good salesman first who believed in himself, and didn't shy away from showing it to the Rockwells of the world.
It was also the cinematography that got me. The movie is filled with quick shots of scenes you never see again. The scene where Marty waits near a parked car at night in a dimly lit New York as Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow's character) heads back indoors is so short, but it's so beautiful. I remember it because I didn't see it more than a few seconds. The color grading is the right amount of punchy and devoid of the "Netflix Lighting" which often lacks chiaroscuro.
When to snap out of daydreaming
In the next 5 days, I would watch another movie at home, all by myself: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. What got me interested in this movie in the first place was seeing the scene with Sean Penn with his sleek Nikon F3/T (T for Titanium) elsewhere. Someone with a camera like mine? Sign me up, I must learn more.
The movie inspires you to go chase your dreams. It carries the charm of movies from the 2010s, the je ne sais quoi you see in movies like Crazy, Stupid, Love. It follows the story of Walter, a negative asset manager at LIFE Magazine. I didn't know such a job title existed, aren't assets positive? Maybe I was in B-school too long. The movie has even more film photography love to give, as the story takes you on a journey where Walter is looking for a negative 25 in a roll of black and white film shot by famous photographer Sean O'Connell that would be the cover photo of the last LIFE magazine issue.
Some spoilers in this paragraph for this movie here, skip to the next paragraph to avoid them. I liked the consistency in writing the most. When they see a snow leopard through the prism finder, Walter asks Sean "When are you going to take it?", Sean says "Sometimes I don't... if I like a moment ... I don't like to have the distraction of the camera". This is not a feeling I agree with, but it is consistent with what we know about Sean so far. Sean is very frugal with his film roll usage. Earlier, we note that with each negative in the roll that Sean shared with Walter, the photos are singular, and taken in different times at different places. A photo of a person's thumb in Greenland, a photo of chipped wood of a piano in New York, and then we have negative 25. Sean does not take too many photos in the same place on a single roll. Thus, his statement about not taking photos is in agreement with what the audience has subconsciously picked up about him. When the final scene happens and everything is right in the world, it doesn't feel like a deus ex machina, it feels consistent to the writing of the characters. Of course Walter's mother saved the wallet that Walter threw away in the trash in frustration. Earlier in the movie we saw how his mother saved memories of Walter from when he worked in Papa Johns and local newspaper snippets of Walter's time as a skateboarder, even though seeing those would make Walter embarrassed. It is this attention to detail in writing that made me appreciate the movie even more.
To more movies watched intentionally this year. On that note, here's my letterboxd.
In friendships
Last year, I finally got out of the cocoon I'd put myself in for all of 2025 and decided to go out and make friends in the city. One evening after work, a new friend, Chirag, and I were getting beers at a local bar in the Chicago Loop area. We'd found out about each other through a common friend. He'd just moved to the city earlier in summer while I had been in the city for a year and a half at that point. We chatted at length on the struggle of adult friendships.
Amidst jobs, hobbies, routines, friendships in adulthood often take a backseat. This is only amplified when living alone. It's easy to fall into the individualism fostered in this climate. We're all busy with hundreds of chores. It's no longer as easy as the casual hangs were back in school. This demands intentionality. You're always choosing between things to do and maintaining friendships (and sometimes you can do both, say hello to the old friend, the Casual Hang, now rebranded as Admin Day, because god forbid we sit idly). It also requires surrendering any leftover ego and pride that we end up collecting over the years. Embrace being the planner, the group-chat-maker, the initiator-of-fun. To me, this also means coming from a place of abundance, and not focusing on the transactional aspect that friendships can boil down to. You cannot be stingy and gregarious at the same time. 2026, I've decided, is the year I am choosing friendships more, showing up more, and inviting friends over more.
I briefly tasted what this feels like in November when I decided to host 10 friends at mine for a casual dosa night. I was also bringing people who hadn't met before together. This was scary. What if they wouldn't like each other? What if they end up not having a good time? What then? Luckily for me, people are more amiable than I thought. Besides, if nothing, the dosas were still a hit.
When I first met my friend Dhairya in Chicago, he was celebrating his birthday with the most diverse friend group I'd seen. Later I found out that many of the folks didn't actually know each other, ie. they weren't from the same circle. Some were his classmates, some neighbors, some friends of roommates, and so on. Yet, that night when I didn't know anyone, it felt like everyone had always known each other. When I asked him about this later, "How do you effortlessly merge friend groups?", He replied simply, "I just bring people together, how they gel is no longer up to me". This mindset definitely shifts the anxiety off the shoulders of the connector.
So far, I've hosted 2 parties/events at my place since January. The first, a half-failure of a movie night (Don't go watching Once Upon a Time in Hollywood without knowing Hollywood history!) brought in around 10 friends. I didn't know my tiny 600-something-square-foot apartment could fit so many people at the same time. I would be left shocked again as early in February I hosted a games night that brought in 18 people!
It's definitely a learning process for me, as I have been relatively isolated for the last 2 years. It's like coming out of a shell that I put myself in and rediscovering the things I like. Close friends could probably sense my anxiety in trying to be a functional host and making sure everyone is comfortable. A friend asked me, "I haven't seen you drink!" of course he hadn't!
In photography
Now what do I mean by this? Isn't photography innately an intentional process of editing the scene in front of your eyes? Aren't you, the photographer actively deciding what goes into the photo and what stays out? The intentionality I mean here is not about the photo-taking act alone, it is about stepping out with photography in mind.
What is the everyday camera? Photographers tout the benefits of having a small camera with you when you are out and about on other activities. While I agree with much of it, and my trusty Sony ZV-1 is still locked safely in its pouch on my hip, there is a pattern I started to notice in my photography in the last two years. Yes, I had a small camera with me on most occasions, but I wasn't out to take photos primarily. They weren't photo-walks, they were commutes to the office, grocery runs, bus rides to the gym, dinners with friends. Photography took a back seat and I would only take pictures in the moment.
If I want to improve my craft, it will not happen by placing it as an afterthought. There needs to be a focused, concerted effort in improvement and a discipline through ideas, vision boards, and actually going out. On off days, my everyday camera still stays with me and allows me to lock-in momentarily while photographing the quotidien. Its practicality is not lost on me, as it still lets me practice my ABCs of composition. That said, there will be a more focused attempt on photography with discipline and dedication.
I am looking forward to this year. My first draft of career goals is set; simultaneously, I am focusing on myself outside my career. I am still figuring out how to balance the lofty goals I am setting for myself while still being a functional adult. That said, many books are still waiting for me to open them and get on with reading them already.
With me trying all this, January has proven to be a bit of a packed month, and this draft sat patiently on my computer for a few weeks. I kept coming back to it, slowly fleshing it out. I am also hoping to do more introspective/reflective writing like this one, and branching out from purely talking about photography. Of course, the photos have and always will be an integral part of the experience here.
Thank you for reading another post on my website! With ever-changing algorithms and platforms, this is the corner of the internet I intend to keep alive. I hope you enjoy reading this. The next draft is already in the works, and that piece will be about some of the intentional photo walks I've been on.