Just over 6 months ago, in November of 2019, I embarked on a mission to build a new kind of map experience that’s social by design. I began the dance of the oft-repeated philosophy “real artists ship” by picking a starting point — build a socially curated map of places you and your friends want to explore. There was a lot of uncertainty in where I was headed but I had a lot of conviction that this was what people needed in 2020. At the very least, I needed it myself. I reckoned that I can’t go wrong if I’m in tune with the “scratching your own itch” thing. By March, after some redesigns and code overhauls, I was getting ready to ship the first public version of the iOS app.
A couple of weeks prior to that, I had occasionally been hearing chatter about a virus that was plaguing China. As an Indian who grew up in a Northern India battered with seasonal diseases like dengue, chikungunya and a host of other deadly ones, my brain was conditioned to view the news of such outbreaks from India and China as pains of densely-populated developing countries — concerning but not out of the ordinary. However, things changed quickly in March. Before people could catch a breath and wrap their heads around what was happening, cities outside of China were getting shut down, horrific stories of hospitals in Italy and Iran started circulating, people were ordered to #StayHome, and Covid-19 was declared a pandemic. Death became the daily update everywhere.
In a matter of weeks, the app I was working on — the premise of which was getting out more to explore the world outside your home with your friends — went from a potential need to literally the last thing people needed. I was depressed that 5-7 months of work+thought basically evaporated into thin air but I was infinitely more depressed and shocked by state of the world. Hearing stories of the pain people were experiencing and the rapidly increasing death that gripped the world numbed any other thought. The looming uncertainty about what was going to happen with life provoked a great deal of anxiety every single day but the worry for the health of family and friends around the world held precedence over any other concern.
Fast-forward two months from March, we live in a new world, that we are only vaguely starting to understand through caricatures drawn by influential columnists, economists, epidemiologists, doctors, politicians and Twitterverse. No one knows what it will really look like at the end of 2020 or in 2021 or 2022. In addition to the war with the virus, countries around the world face other crises. America is in the midst of widespread protest against the systemic racism that has existed in the region for centuries. Hong Kong resumes its political struggle against the Communist rule in China. In India, after the lockdown ended a few days ago, the virus is now starting to surge and chaos is ensuing all over the nation. The outlook of the world looks grim for the rest of 2020.
I am left thinking as to how I can contribute meaningfully to what’s going on right now. Amidst all this, I am a speck of dust and the question of “what should I do with my life now?” are really of no significance to the rest of the world. However, from my individual perspective, it is of great significance to me. And as any human, I’ve had dreams and aspirations, but now I am not so sure. I am needing to really rethink my life and where I fit in from a first principles standpoint. What’s next for me?
To be very honest, I don’t know. The confidence and conviction I had in my goals several months ago have been replaced by a great deal of anxiety and dread. However, I’m not the type of person to lose all hope. I’m searching for opportunities to make the world better, ways to feel content about what I’m doing for work, and figuring out how to pay the bills.
My intuition and dreams of being a self-sufficient entrepreneur are taking me towards using my product building skills to create apps for this new world. Apps that are mindful. Apps that make life slightly more convenient. Apps that bring a bit of joy to our very chaotic world. While I’m not really sure what this inclination will transpire into, I am experimenting with ideas. For the last 3 weeks, I have been getting my friends to test an iOS app I built called Dino Journal. It was a desperate pivot during the month of April in an effort to be distracted and wanting to ship something. It’s a simple and basic “social journal” that lets you broadcast bits from your daily life and let friends subscribe to them. While it is a social network, in the very basic form, I built it as an antidote to the circus-like, anxiety-marred spectacle of social media. It’s far from accomplishing that goal and I’m trying to really figure out what it is and whether it adds any good value to the lives of people who are using it.
For the next little while, to carry out my vaguely-defined “what’s next” plans, I’ve renamed the company I started in Oct 2019 to Dino Network Inc. I see it as a legal entity to facilitate publishing of mindful apps that add some positive value to people’s lives. I don’t like swimming in uncertainty, so this is my attempt at reducing that uncertainty and instil some direction. Ideally, it will lead to being content about my work life. But it could lead to nowhere and if so, I will have to change course.