Why i took a break from coding some time ago....

Let's start where this all began. I was at my cousin's house, deep in a gaming session, when his father walked in with some classic Indian parent wisdom:

"Why are you wasting time playing games? If you're already so good at playing, why not learn how to make them?"

It felt like he expected me to quit gaming and turn into a tech genius overnight. Only in an Indian home does nagging come with free life advice, and that one offhand comment is how i started programming.

For the past six or seven years (yes, I counted), I've been buried in code and late-night study sessions. I didn't have many friends IRL. My social calendar was as empty as my bank account after a tech conference. Any spare minute i got, i was either hiding behind a controller or writing code.

School was a nightmare because of bullying, and my parents' constant (if well-meaning) pressure only made it worse. Before college my days ran on autopilot: nine hours of classes, two hours of tuition, then straight into the study→dinner→sleep loop. I had almost no friends. Somewhere along the way i started to like being alone and found some comfort in it. Depression crept in so quietly that i didn't notice it until its weight felt as normal as a heavy blanket i couldn't remember ever not carrying. (More on this some other day.)

In my first semester of college i made one of the hardest decisions of my life: i paused coding, which at that point was the only thing i had going for me. The academic grind was frying my brain, and stepping away from code felt like letting go of my safety net. It was like taking a perfectly timed Netflix break in the middle of an Indian family wedding.

Now imagine someone who hadn't had a real in-person conversation in two years, thanks to COVID and the pressure of JEE, suddenly having to talk to people like a normal human. That was me in those early college days. I even pretended to be an extrovert just so i wouldn't end up in a no-friends void. (Don't ask how many conversations I managed to mess up in those first few weeks.)

During the break i worked hard on my social skills, made some friends, and started gaming just for fun instead of as a way to deal with stress. I also found a new passion: capturing moments with my camera, trying my hand at film direction, and getting properly into movies. And believe it or not, i now code for about four hours after college (mostly late at night, with a wrecked sleep schedule and an even worse caffeine habit).

The break did a lot for me. It's when i finally faced the depression that had followed me through my teens, something i had never told anyone, not even my parents. The weight of those years slowly came off, and i stopped seeing every pause as me being lazy. Sometimes procrastination is the universe's way of telling you to slow down and recharge, and the comeback after that break was way more productive than i ever expected. I'm a completely different person today than i was just a year and a half ago.

So no, this isn't a post full of regrets or "should-haves." Life's been pretty good. My Indian parents still nag about my "waste of time," but these days i'm coding again, laughing at most of it, and i have a few more friends to share the wins (and losses) with, which honestly feels a lot more balanced.

"You do it to yourself, you do And that's what really hurts." — Radiohead

Cheers, Udaysinh