What I've been up to

A laundry list

Started doing stand-up comedy. You can read more here.
The first two weeks after I quit, I did a lot of chores - both for the household and myself.
Started reading about company and business valuations. Now I understand P/E ratios, the PEG model, how to use discounted cash flows to estimate a fair stock price & compare it with the implied P/E ratio and how to determine the health of a business by comparing debt to revenue. I’ve also talked with friends about looking into market cap as a multiple of revenue and using the price-to-sales ratio when a company is not profitable.
Some weeks I did nothing except relax by playing video games or surfing and scrolling.

I spent some time playing the guitar, unfortunately not consistently as always.
I connected and reconnected with family and friends that I had not been in very close contact with. Strengthened pre-existing relationships. Was able to spend more time with my sister when she visited as I did not have to think about requesting time off.
I completed the games Tomb Raider (2013) and Hogwarts Legacy. I also played F1 Manager and Europa Universalis IV, a game which I’ve always wanted to throw myself into. If you told 15-year-old me that someday I would be able to play video games to completion on a handheld gaming device that I owned I would’ve been over the moon.
I made a couple of apps (Hunchle) aiming to show my parents what I actually did/could do for a living. Telling them I worked at AWS and Meta is pretty much Latin for them, but with these apps they could get to use what I had built. The word game used GRE-level words, which makes it hard for most people, but is about the difficulty needed for my parents as they are both former journalists. Learned about LLMs, coding agents and how to use them through the process of building these as well. You can see my posts here and here.
Wrote a few blog posts which you can find on www.ashwinmenon.com.
Built (vibe-coded) some side projects on my blog, for example: https://www.ashwinmenon.com/phones/ and https://www.ashwinmenon.com/lennon-or-mccartney/
Started cycling more and possibly running more as well. Completed the Kitsap Color Classic, a 50+ mile bike ride in 5:10 (in Crocs and with somewhat flat tires for 80% of the ride). One interesting thing to note here is that I was able to go for rides and walks in the afternoons and enjoy the afternoon sun, something I would not have been able to do earlier.
Wrote a few blog posts.
Started playing badminton, including in the afternoons at the Redmond Community Center, for around only $5 a day!
Travelled to Yellowstone, Denver, and the UK. Will write about it, stay tuned!
Sent some open-source pull requests that are currently still in progress (from my side).
Wrote a few helper scripts using generative AI. One to book badminton courts when a slot opens up. Another to find where to stay, given a list of tourist attractions you’d like to visit and potential addresses to stay at.
Started reading more books than before. Five books completed (one being tiny) versus 1 book over the past 2 years.
Spent time watching videos on history (reach out to me if you want YouTube channels to watch!). I knew that history repeats itself, but I didn’t realize how often! A lot of themes from centuries ago are playing out today. Things written millennia ago are still applicable today.
Created some videos to help learn Malayalam.

Peculiar

I’d often forget what day it was. For example, I thought it was a Wednesday when it was a Thursday.
I sleep in late often because I haven’t had to set alarms except for a few days when there were early morning appointments.
Cash inflow is obviously worse, but it’s interesting to try and think of other ways you could earn money. A tech job is surely one of the best ways to get a large, constant, regular inflow of money but there is definitely a dopamine hit from being able to find new ways, even if the amounts are tiny. Taking up new things is a challenge, but also validating.

Regrets

Only that I don’t spend more time with people!