This note is the thirteenth letter in the 104-days-of-summer-vacation series. You can also follow the full twitter thread here, and leave any thoughts and comments that might come up!

Dearest Reader,

Today’s letter will be a short one, and I will start by saying that I’m a terrible observer. My sister wastes no time in calling this out, I can be present in a room during an argument and not clock that the argument happened at all (there are many such missed observations in a large Indian family gathering).

This is because I tend to zone out when I’m bored, or because I tend to zone really in when I’m doing something interesting. Regardless, one of the things I’ve noticed while writing the 104-days-of-summer-vacation series is that it forces me to look around more. The series requires me to generate new letters everyday, and there’s no way of doing that without being inspired by my surroundings.

This actually seems very useful. Writing as a means of grounding myself in present reality. This is especially clear to me in India where there is no opportunity for me to do deep work, a few of my recent letters have been inspired by the people around me, see: biohacking-before-it-was-cool, planes-going-places.

A lot of people think of writing as an escape, but it’s curious that it can also have the opposite effect. So maybe, dear reader, this is a gentle invitation to look up and around, there just might be something interesting happening :)

~ Shan