Asana gives everyone a sabbatical at four years. I joined knowing that and I'd been looking forward to mine. I'd taken a five-month break between jobs a few years ago, the first long pause of my career. I knew what unstructured time could do.

The first day was a Saturday. It didn't feel like the first day of anything yet, but was the perfect start. Varun's baseball team won their championship final. I rode my motorcycle to the field and stayed for the whole game, watching him field and bat and celebrate with his teammates. That evening I went to a mindful sketching workshop at the Dharma Collective on 24th Street. I've been journaling more since, and I discovered Lynda Barry's approach there. Her books remind me I want to draw more, the way I used to when I was Varun's age.

Then Monday came, and my calendar was just empty. I kept looking for something urgent to do. I was planning the whole sabbatical in the first three days. By evening, as I got more tired, I found it harder to remember I was on my break.

Getting in the pool helped my restlessness melt into calm.

I wasn't always comfortable in the water. Learning to swim properly was an investment I made in myself the last time I had this kind of space. It changed things. Swimming starts my day now. I wrote that down in my journal when it finally felt true. After a swim the rest of the day feels like mine. Bonnie Tsui puts it well in On Muscle, a book I've been reading: "Exercise is a way to grapple with existence, to act." I read a piece by Maria Popova that described swimming as subversive, "a way to break free of the official version of things." Reading it, I thought: this is what learning Rust feels like right now.

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I've been learning Rust, starting with Rustlings, the first step in a progression designed to challenge but not overwhelm. I've set a bar for myself: can I explain it, not just compile it? After each section, after a back and forth with Claude to test my understanding, I note what I learned. I'd like to be able to describe why a derive macro works after doing the exercise about it. I'd been circling Rust for years, eager to understand it but not believing I could. Taking the time to learn something deeply like this calms me emotionally. In the past it has added up to knowledge I've been able to share and apply for years.

I'm still working out what AI means for me as a programmer. For now I'm using it to understand more, not to know less. For Rustlings, I've asked Claude to be a patient & pedagogically sound tutor. It's challenged me to focus and go deeper than I might have on my own.

Matthew Crawford makes a related point in Shop Class as Soulcraft: "The disappearance of tools from our common education is the first step toward a wider ignorance of the world we inhabit." He was writing about trades. He could have been writing about AI-use in 2026.

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Last Saturday I rode my motorcycle to Tomales Bay with a couple of friends. We stopped for excellent pizza at Route One Bakery & Kitchen. I've been riding for a couple of years. It took four days of cornering school, one fall, and a lot of miles on straight boring roads before the longer rides started to feel like something I could actually do. The attention needed to focus on riding cleared the restlessness away.

I've had good conversations with people I hadn't talked to in months. When your mind isn't somewhere else, you actually listen.

One Tuesday, Madhavi and I went to Golden Gate Park with a book about California birds, naming what flew past.

One afternoon a very friendly aussiedoodle found me at Crissy Field and insisted I play with him. It was the most wonderful thing.

I've been writing these things down. Sometimes with drawings rather than words.

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There have been hard days too. Some mornings I felt a sense of not having enough time, on days when I had nothing but time. I think some of it was muscle memory.

I kept coming back to the same things anyway. Swim. Ride. Sit with Varun while he tells me about something I don't fully understand yet. I finished Simone Stolzoff's How to Not Know walking from the pool to Columbus Avenue one Thursday morning. These aren't hobbies. They're how I remember who I am when everything else is in flux.

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Rustlings is nearly done. Next comes building small tools, then Rust for Rustaceans. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on something real.

In just over a week I fly to Bangalore. My grandmother passed away in March, and I haven't been back since. There are others too, people I won't get to see again. And people I can't wait to hold.

I'll write more from there.