There are infinitely many ways to structure a cosy little page like this. Defining you, the reader of this page is even harder. Still (anyway) I have chosen to divide it into three parts.

1. The Identity: an attempt to answer the question of who I am.
2. Then The Purpose: what was supposed to explain what I live for, and, perhaps more tellingly, what I am willing to die for, instead just ends up explaining the purpose of this website.
3. I end with The Means: the toolings I rely on in daily life, and the ones I return to when needed.

Finally, a disclaimer. This is going to be a long read (about 20-25 12 mins) so pause wherever you like. That said, not everything is here either. Some details have been intentionally omitted for privacy. If you wish to know more, reach out. Presumably, if you are meant to know, you already know how.

1. The Identity

It is incredibly difficult to define myself comprehensively. After all, who am I really? Am I my name? my profession? a son to my parents? a brother to my sister? Am I my interests? my choices? my preferences? I do not know. So, for now, I assume I am some combination of all these things, and I attempt to list them here.

As a child, I was the curious, silent, observant kid. One of my earliest memories is of being three years old, sitting on the veranda, learning the names of different cars by heart and pointing them out to my grandparents. The process of learning has been very near and dear to me ever since then. The intellectual pleasure I get from satiating my curiosity is unmatched even to this day. I cover this in detail in the next section, however, if I were to be asked to describe myself in one line, the line would be:

An avid learner amidst an arcane world.

My first true encounter with Science was in my 7th grade. That is when simple curiosity started blooming into intrigue, fascination and captivation. That is when I started pursuing science beyond just Academics and school. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) continues to fascinate me because at its core, it stems from acknowledging ignorance, that we don’t know everything. This way of thinking has always resonated with me. I don’t know everything and I might never be able to. This however, absolutely doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try to. In fact, that is why I am an avid learner after all.

Choosing to major in Computer Science has been one of my earliest decisions which was made extrinsically rather than intrinsically. Job opportunities, peer pressure, entrance examination supply-demands, handsome salary slips, all made me pursue Bachelors in Comp Sci. That said, I far from regret my decision. The field lives on the intersection of all of STEM and is one of the most contemporary ones, so it is wonderful to see it unfold before my eyes.

An interesting analogy I like to give is that Science was a love marriage which ended sourly whereas Comp Sci is my arranged marriage which has been holding strong ever since. I cannot imagine my life without it anymore.

Artistic creations (or simply Arts) are yet another piece of marvel of humankind. Stories shape us. They form the basis of our value systems. Our value systems determine (to a large extent) the actions we take in our day-to-day life. Therefore I am a patiently passionate consumer of art, be it video games, tv shows, books, people, movies, sports, music, podcasts, softwares or research publications. That said however, I am generally cautious about what I consume. At best, I get to update my belief systems, sure, but at worst I spend my time consuming cheap, trite, formulaic, cliched uninspiring content. The cost is too high to explore freely. So I am a conscious consumer of creative constructs.

There is yet another reason however for why I consume art. It is also a form of escapism for me. I am able to forget all my real problems for the duration and lose myself to the creator. In this process, I not only gain new perspectives on the problems I am facing, but also some rejuvenation that helps me stick with my life even more dearly. I am always always on a look out for good recommendation. Feel free to drop me your favorite media! I will surely get back to you!

Amongst all other art forms, I hold one particular closer than others. Piano. I usually don’t say “I’m learning how to play the Piano”, instead I prefer “I am learning to express myself through the Piano”. There is a subtle but important difference between the two. Piano provides me avenues to be creative beyond words. As an example, human emotions are at times, beyond words, just words are not enough to communicate what I am feeling. Piano facilitates expression where words betray me. Why Piano? Simply because I ended up learning it as a child, it could have very well been portraits too. The overarching theme here is a form of expression beyond just regular speech.

I am a Bayesian. Most people might not know what I mean by this. So I intend to write a blog on this. However, for what it’s worth, I summarise it in the next few sentences. We cannot be 100% sure of anything. If tomorrow an observation breaks the theory, we do not try to fit the observation in the theory, we break the theory and come up with a new one. Certainty therefore, is just an arbitrary threshold on the degrees of belief spectrum. So being a Bayesian means that a more polarising observation is needed to shift the degree of belief by larger magnitudes, but it is not impossible. Additionally, as a Bayesian, you attach probabilities to almost anything under the sun (and everything not under it too). You attach probabilities to subjectivity too, not just measurable frequencies, i.e. likelihood of you liking my blog as well as rolling of a die. In simpler words, I like to constantly and thoroughly examine my opinions and ideologies irrespective of how measurable they are. The stronger the argument, the more likely I am to agree with you!

With this I slowly conclude this first section of what it is like to be me. I realise that at the end of the day all of the above paragraphs are just stories about myself. There is enough debate on this, however some people argue that you are the stories you tell about yourself (to you and others). So maybe this is who I am.

P.S. In the original essay that I wrote, I ended up writing parts of myself in greater detail. However, upon review with my inner circle, I decided to omit a few more paragraphs from this section. Feel free to reach out to know more “About Me”.

2. The Purpose.

The two questions, “Who am I?” and “What am I supposed to do?”, have been quietly sitting in my mind rent-free ever since then. In the earlier section, I answered the former question, in this one, I chose to omit the latter publicly due to privacy reasons. However, if you end up reaching here and want to know about it, reach out! I am eager to share the original paragraphs with you!

That said, let me acknowledge how lucky I am to ponder on my reason of living. I realise that many people do not even have this luxury.

Skipping over from my purpose to this website’s instead.

stillanyway.com was incepted in July of 2025. However, the idea of a personal website is as old as October 2023. As a fledgling computer science under-grad, I slowly was gaining the confidence and a realisation that I can have a place of my own over on the internet. This place, in my eyes, would be my digital expression. A place where I would be able to broadcast to the entire world. All other social media come with their own set of “standards”. Linkedin: be professional, Medium: be informative, Substack: be engaging…I can go on and on. But stillanyway.com, I have ultimate creative freedom here. I can choose to be who I want to be, hence I end up being most myself. And last but not least, I have complete agency over my actions. This control means the world to me. I wanted a place that answered to me and me alone and here you are.

3. The Means.

Being a productivity nerd, I am generally particular about the tools and technologies I use. Over time, I have realised that my tools are rarely just tools. They quietly shape how I think, remember, create, communicate, and recover. Broadly, the tools I rely on fall into a few categories. I break it down into about 5 of them below.

The first category is that of Personal Knowledge Management Systems (PKMS). I do not trust my brain to hold everything at once, nor do I think it should have to. These tools help me store information which I would need at a later point of time. To pull from computer architecture terminology, they are my hard disk, whereas my brain is the RAM.

The second category is the one that I use to create. From musical notation to intricate software systems, I have quite a range of creative abilities. I constantly like to play around with these tools. I always want to ensure that my creative abilities are not hindered by the tools that I use.

Next up are the tools for recording consumption and rejuvenation. I am an avid fan of databases. I like to track my watching, reading, playing, listening histories. These tools help me see how I have evolved over the years. I like to analyse trends and patterns of my consumer behavior which provide insights into my interests and likings.

Then there are organisational tools. These include devices, backups, archives, calendars, reminders, and systems that help future-me inherit less chaos from present-me. They may appear boring at the first glance but they help me stay consistent with myself. I do not think of organisation as a personality flex. To me, they provide means to being kind to the version of myself that will wake up tomorrow. I say what I do and I do what I say (and I take pride in that).

Unlike most tools I use, the final set that I mention here is about boundaries. It is about deciding who gets to read what, who gets to speak as whom, and how much faith we need to place in invisible intermediaries. I use cryptography both practically and poetically. Practically, it allows private communication and verifiable identity. Poetically, it represents something I deeply value: the ability to create a small, intentional space between two people in a world where almost everything is copied, indexed, forwarded, and flattened.

You can find my public encryption key below:

<add-public-key-here>

You can use this key to send me an encrypted message. This blog post walks you through the exact steps for doing so. I like the idea of public-key cryptography not just as a technical system, but as a quiet promise: you may write something meant only for me, and I will receive it with care. If there is something you want to share privately, this is one way to create that space between us. Of course, privacy is not immunity; please keep anything you send within legal and ethical boundaries.

Similar to public encryption key, you can find my public verification key below:

<add-verifying-key-here>

You can use this key to verify messages that I sign. In simpler terms, it gives you a way to check whether a message claiming to be from me was actually written by me, and whether it has remained unchanged since I signed it. I like this as a companion idea to encryption: if the encryption key is about creating a private space for what you want to tell me, the verification key is about accountability for what I say to you. It is a small cryptographic way of saying that my words are mine, and that I am willing to stand behind them.

4. The Ultimatum?

So this is it then. This is where I need to conclude this page. But how am I supposed to do it even? A conclusion assumes that something has been settled. I am not sure anything has. At best, I have put together a coherent narrative in a shape which is trying to resemble me. I do not know what kind of person this page makes me seem like. Perhaps sincere, perhaps self-indulgent, perhaps thoughtful, perhaps confused. Most likely, some combination of all of them.

Closing this feels strange because I am not done becoming the person I am trying to describe either. The more honest ending would simply be an ellipsis. There are things I have not understood yet, things I have misunderstood, and things I will probably have to unlearn with some embarrassment later. Maybe a few years from now, I will read this page and disagree with most of it. Maybe the things I call central today will become footnotes. Maybe some of my convictions will soften, some will harden, and some will quietly disappear without ceremony. I hope that happens. It would mean I was alive enough to change.

There is also the possibility that all of this is meaningless. That these are just stories I tell myself to make a life feel coherent from the inside. But even if that is true, I find myself attached to the act of telling them. A story does not need to be eternal to be honest. A map does not need to be final to be of some use. And maybe that is enough.

So, this is where I am today. I will not close this as a final word.

This is merely where I stop writing for now.

Still, anyway.