What are you up to this week? What are you looking forward to this week? We have something special launching for Founders over at Surge, I’m excited about a weekend trip to the city by the bay - it’s been 2 years since I traveled beyond Bangalore and Mangalore and also, time for my first RTPCR test. I know, I’d roll my eyes at myself too. Happy Lunar New Year to those who celebrate!

I just watched 14 Peaks on Netflix this past weekend: A happy reminder of what happens when preparation meets opportunity meets belief. It is game-changing: With insight, with focus and just pure unbridled joy and belief, a small team can unlock what others can only imagine!

What I’m reading: Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly, a funny, wonderful book of 52 mini memoirs. Some are a few sentences; some a few pages. I’m reading this one random page a day - to keep that warm glowy feeling going for a while. Fennelly talks about marriage, motherhood, writing, loss, friendship, whatever is on her mind and going on in her heart.

Here’s a few shorts that I sent to Mum and other friends. If you get your hands on it, I hope it makes you feel seen and glowy too.

Amanda Gorman waxes poetic while speaking about how she almost didn’t read her poem at Biden’s inauguration: “fear can be love trying its best in the dark.”

Maybe being brave enough doesn’t mean lessening my fear, but listening to it. I closed my eyes in bed and let myself utter all the leviathans that scared me, both monstrous and minuscule. What stood out most of all was the worry that I’d spend the rest of my life wondering what this poem could have achieved. There was only one way to find out.

By the time the sun rose, I knew one thing for sure: I was going to be the 2021 inaugural poet. I can’t say I was completely confident in my choice, but I was completely committed to it.

I’m a firm believer that often terror is trying to tell us of a force far greater than despair. In this way, I look at fear not as cowardice but as a call forward, a summons to fight for what we hold dear. And now more than ever, we have every right to be affected, afflicted, affronted. If you’re alive, you’re afraid. If you’re not afraid, then you’re not paying attention. The only thing we have to fear is having no fear itself — having no feeling on behalf of whom and what we’ve lost, whom and what we love.

Everyone has a love language…and language of love. What’s yours?