It feels good to have a cold robotic heart

I have a milestone to report.

Yesterday at midnight, Meenal and I felt as if the whole week was over. For some reason, it seemed as though a lot of time had passed although we were only on the third day of the week.

I was recently reading an article that detailed the tricks and tips to make full use of your down time during the weekend in order to give your mind enough space and time to rest and to trick yourself into believing that you got a lot done and had a lot of fun during the weekend. The whole article can be summarized in just two points - 1) avoid doing mundane tasks like cleaning the whole house on a Sunday evening because "chores" make things worse and 2) include a lot of activities during the weekend (up to at least two per day). What the second point does is, it tricks your mind into thinking that you did a lot of things which in turn will trick your mind into believing that a lot of time has passed. And not just any time, but down time. Free time. Time for you to enjoy yourself and take a break. It all made a lot of sense to me.

I think the same applies to any day or a string of consecutive days of the week. If you do a lot of things within a short span of time, it does give you the impression that a lot of time has passed. Hence, the whole feeling of "What? It's just Wednesday?"

And during that time when a lot of things were happening, almost all of those things kind of went wrong in some way or the other. For example, after spending close to 12 hours researching a guest for an interview and preparing to interview said guest, we got stood up. Twice.

About two weeks ago, Meenal and I spent our weekend watching the documentaries shot by this potential guest. We also listened to a couple of speeches delivered by this person at prestigious universities, read up a couple of magazine interviews, and even went so far as to stalking this person's family members. We had a date fixed for an interview and on that date, some of my friends asked me if I would join them for lunch. I said "no way" because I was finally going to be able to interview this person that I admired. So many feathers in the cap, surely this person was going to be a delight to talk to. And you know what, that was probably the case. Only I wouldn't know because, like I said, we got stood up.

On the day before the interview, we sent a confirmation message as we always do. *No response*

On the day of the interview (yes, the day I didn't meet my friends for lunch), we sent a couple of messages again saying we were right here and were ready to start the interview as soon as we got a green flag. *No response*

That was the first time we got stood up without a warning.

Soon after that, Meenal left for Sweden and I thought, "You know what? I watched those documentaries. I actually did my research and spent a lot of time preparing meaningful questions for this individual. I'm gonna give this person the benefit of the doubt, suck it up, lose my ego, and request another appointment".

So I sent my first email detailing how I perfectly understood how busy they must be, so if they could kindly pick another date and time, Meenal and I would make ourselves available. *No response*

Then I sent a second email expressing our genuine interest in this person's story. This time though, I received a response. It had an apology for taking time to get back to us (none for the part where we got stood up) and an excuse that basically just said, "Eid happened". I thought, "Whatever. At least we're making progress, might as well get this over with".

The guest picked the date and time, we obliged. The guest cooperated with the initial setting up process, sent us details we'd asked for etc. And then, the guest requested a sample list of questions we'd prepared. Once again and as always, we obliged.

But once the sample questions were sent, we were met with an eery silence. It's not something you would have picked up on, dear reader. It's something Meenal and I have been able to sniff out with experience. On the day of the interview, Meenal and I set up, called each other, did a final run through of the questions and then Meenal said to me, "I have a feeling this guest won't show up again".

I said nothing because I had the same feeling but I wasn't ready to say it out loud. A couple of messages and an hour and a half later, we packed up and left. The guest didn't show up after all. And that's the end of that. We're never interviewing that guest again.

But now for the milestone. You guys might have already guessed how I may have reacted. I'm sure you think that totally flipped. But I'm happy to report that that was not the case. I was as cool as a cucumber and it creeped Meenal out. She thought that I was broken. In fact, I showed so much calm and to an extent, indifference to the situation that I'm sure she half expected me to have smoke coming out my ears as my robotic heart came to a stop and I muttered my last words, "Malfunction. Malfunction." And by the way she was looking at me, she would have totally taken me to the store to get me fixed, had the smoke actually come out.

It feels so good to have a cold robotic heart, y'all!

My current run streak of calm (even when da shizzz went down time and again) is 25 days. Exactly 25 days as of today. 25 days of not losing my shit. It feels surreal.

I may have no idea what day of the week it is, I may be so exhausted by the end of each day that my eyes start watering and I pass out the second my head hits the pillow, I may be waking up on some days and saying, "But I JUST went to bed!", I may be getting stood up by random people, but here's the thing - I'm totally fine. And life's good.

But don't leave just yet! There's more where that came from on this week's podcast:

I hope you enjoy the show and have a wonderful day wherever you are!