
**Scarcity makes you hustle. Abundance makes you lazy.**

That is not just a clever line. It is something I really lived.

---

Back in Sri Lanka around 2005, internet access was a luxury. I paid 40 LKR for one hour at an internet cafe. Every click mattered. I had to choose carefully what I spent my time and money on.

So I chose to build, mostly. I spent those hours learning HTML, PHP, Java, downloading software onto a tiny 512MB flash drive, and even saving entire websites so I could read them offline later. I grabbed music videos on a 512 Kbps line too. I was a die-hard hip hop fan back then, so 50 Cent and Eminem were on repeat. I lost myself in music, in a good way. That short window forced me to grab what I could, and that pressure shaped me. Scarcity forced choices, and in those choices I grew.

---

Fast forward to today. Unlimited internet. Unlimited tools. Knowledge everywhere. I can build anything I want.

But the hunger is not the same. Back then I never had to push myself. The drive came naturally because every minute mattered. Now abundance makes it too easy to coast.

---

Looking back, I realize most of the first-principle thinking skills I rely on today were forged in those early days of scarcity. When the cost was real, I paid attention. I valued the hours. I made the most of them.

Scarcity built grit. Abundance built comfort.

---

And that is the lesson I keep coming back to: growth happens when it costs you. Hunger sharpens focus. Limits force creativity.

It reminds me of Steve Jobs’ words:  
**“Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.”**


Scarcity teaches grit in ways abundance never will. Looking back, my best skills were forged when every click and every second online had a cost.

Scarcity Makes You Hustle


Treat every living being with the care you wish to receive, spreading kindness like a shared melody across the tapestry of life.

**Remember this**: Being kind to others is being kind to yourself. Because each being is a reflection of who you are. In life's intricate weave, shared threads connect us all in ways we can't always see.

Kindness isn't just a virtue—it's a _necessity_ for our collective well-being. When we extend compassion to others, we create a ripple effect that eventually returns to us in unexpected ways.

> "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." — Aesop

Every small act matters. A genuine smile to a stranger. A thoughtful text to a friend who's struggling. A helping hand when someone least expects it. These moments of human connection remind us of our shared journey.

I've noticed that on my hardest days, it's often a random act of kindness that pulls me through. That barista who remembered my order. The colleague who sent a "just checking in" message. The stranger who held the door when my hands were full.

The beauty of kindness? It costs absolutely nothing to give but means _everything_ to receive. It's the universal language that transcends all barriers and speaks directly to the heart.

So today, I challenge you (and myself): How can we make kindness our default setting?


Treat every living being with the care you wish to receive, spreading kindness like a shared melody across the tapestry of life.

Love people the way you expect to be loved!


Lately, I've been deep in a side project. I won't say much about what it is yet, but it's something I care about. Something I believe has real potential.

Right now, I'm in the messy middle — not the fun part where things look cool, but the part where the real work happens.

Some of the hardest things I'm dealing with:

**Keeping things safe**

I'm building ways to stop spam, abuse, and shady users before they cause trouble. It's tricky to block the bad without hurting the good.

**Not letting things get too messy**

Features are easy to add. But keeping the product simple and fast? That's where it gets hard.

**Fighting the urge to overdo it**

As an engineer, I always want to perfect things. But I've learned to stop when it's good enough — and improve later.

**Staying in the zone**

Some days I feel on fire. Some days I don't. But I still show up and keep going. That's the only way this gets built.

That's all for now. No big launch. No flashy features. Just steady work, one piece at a time.


Lately, I've been deep in a side project. I won't say much about what it is yet, but it's something I care about. Something I believe has real potential.

Building Something That Matters


I’ve been creating software for over 19 years now. For most of that time, it’s been a part of my professional journey and for the past 12+ years, it’s been the only thing I’ve done full-time to earn a living.

But it didn’t start that way.

The very first piece of “software” I built didn’t involve a single line of code. I used Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 to create a basic calculator by linking slides together each number and operation had its own screen. At the time, I had no idea what programming even was. No internet access. No guidance. Just raw curiosity. I ended up building around 2,000 slides. My old Pentium 4 machine could barely load the slideshow.

I think I spent 14 to 17 hours straight on it, barely taking any breaks, completely hooked. I didn’t stop until it _worked_. And when it finally did when the illusion of a functioning calculator came to life I literally cried. Sure, it wasn’t a real calculator, but it _felt_ like it. It showed the right results. It looked like magic to me. I was insanely proud of what I had built.

I showed it to my uncle, an engineer who actually _knew_ programming. He was impressed and that’s when he introduced me to writing macros using [VB.NET] to build a _real_ calculator. That was the second time my jaw dropped. The first was realizing I could _build_ something I wanted using whatever tools I had.

To this day, I still think that was one of the most unique, creative, and wildly innovative things I’ve ever done.

All that to say, the passion for coding is always there. Sometimes it just needs to be reawakened. When you start doing something consistently, it naturally becomes your passion. Then one day, you start getting paid for what was once just a fun little hobby, and it becomes a job. And if it turns into the only thing you do for a living… that’s when it gets complicated. That’s when the exhaustion creeps in. That’s when your engineering mind starts giving you diminishing returns, and you plateau on innovation.

But maybe that’s the real challenge. Keeping the spark alive when it becomes your day job. Finding ways to play again. To build something pointless. To chase curiosity without a deadline. That’s how we stay sharp. That’s how we keep loving what we do. And maybe, just maybe, that’s how we keep building things that still make us cry. Not from exhaustion. But from happy tears.


I've been creating software for over 19 years now. For most of that time, it's been a part of my professional journey and for the past 12+ years, it's been the only thing I've done full-time to earn a living.

How I Fell in Love With Code


Back when I was doing my podcast (and yeah, I'm planning to get back to it), one of the most annoying things I dealt with wasn't recording or editing. It was just… managing short links.

I used Bitly, Linkly, and a few others. I figured this would be the easy part—create short links for each platform, post them, track clicks. But nope. It turned into one of the most frustrating parts of my whole workflow.

## What I Actually Wanted

- A short link for each platform: Spotify, Apple, YouTube, etc.
- One place to track where people were clicking from
- A way to organize links by episode
- And ideally, something faster than doing everything manually

Simple enough, right?

## What I Got Instead

**Annoying limits** – Free plans were useless. Paid plans still felt restrictive for what I was trying to do.

**Zero organization** – Just a list of links. No folders, no tags, no clue which link was for what episode three months later.

**Weak analytics** – Most tools only showed total clicks. I wanted breakdowns by platform, time, location—anything to actually learn from the data.

**Manual overload** – I had to create 4–5 links per episode and manually paste them everywhere: bios, tweets, emails, episode descriptions. Every. Single. Time.

**No automation** – I kept hoping for some "template" feature like: "New episode? Boom—auto-generate platform links with consistent naming." But no such luck.

Even keeping a spreadsheet got overwhelming. And if I forgot or messed up one link? People ended up clicking the wrong thing, going to last week's episode instead of the current one.

## Most Tools Weren't Built for Creators

They were clearly made for ad agencies or marketing teams—not solo creators or podcasters trying to keep things simple. It was overkill in some places (I don't need A/B testing for podcast links), and underpowered in the ways that actually mattered.

I just wanted to move fast and stay organized. Was that too much to ask?

## The Real Problem

Every week, I'd spend 30 minutes just on link management. Create the links, copy them to different places, update my bio, paste them into social posts. It was mindless busy work that pulled me away from the actual creative stuff.

And the worst part? I knew I was probably missing opportunities because the process was so clunky. Maybe I'd skip posting on one platform because I was tired of copying links around. Maybe I'd use an old link by mistake. Small things, but they add up.

## When Frustration Becomes Obsession

Here's where it gets ridiculous: instead of just dealing with the crappy link tools and focusing on my podcast, I went down a complete rabbit hole.

I started sketching out what a better tool would look like. Just quick notes at first—"What if it could auto-generate platform links?" "What if you could organize by episode?" Innocent enough.

But then I opened my code editor "just to see how hard it would be." Famous last words.

Three months later, I'd barely published any podcast episodes because I was too busy building the solution I wanted. Classic engineer move: spend 100 hours building a tool to save 30 minutes of work.

The ironic part? The whole reason I needed better link management was to make podcasting easier. Instead, I stopped podcasting entirely to build link management software.

## The Tool That Ate My Podcast

I kept telling myself "just one more feature and then I'll get back to recording." But there was always something else to fix, optimize, or improve. The perfectionist in me took over completely.

And then life happened. You know how it is—work gets crazy, personal stuff comes up, and suddenly you're in this weird void where you're not podcasting *and* you're not building either. Just... existing in the gap between intentions and reality.

Looking back, it's probably the most expensive productivity hack I've ever attempted. I traded months of podcast content for... a really nice link management tool that sat half-finished while I dealt with everything else life threw at me.

## Getting Back to It

But you know what? I don't regret any of it. Because now I'm finally finishing what I started.

These days, I'm working extra hours to get Link on Link across the finish line. It's exactly the tool I wished existed when I was publishing episodes every week—simple, creator-focused, no unnecessary complexity.

The gap taught me something important: sometimes you need to step away from both the problem and the solution to see what actually matters.

When I get back into podcasting (soon), I'll have the tool I always wanted. And hopefully this time, I'll resist the urge to "improve" it mid-episode.

Stay tuned.

---

_Sometimes the best products come from solving your own annoying problems. This was definitely one of those problems._


Back when I was doing my podcast, the most annoying part wasn't recording or editing. It was just managing short links.

Why Every Link Tool I Tried During My Podcast Days Drove Me Crazy


**Do your very best, noo I mean give your everything, to achieve your goals. And then live in the present.**

---

On this exact day, 12 years ago, I was sitting at this desk. My office setup at Tech One Global. Two monitors, a cheap phone on the table, and me grinding away in my very first job as an Associate Software Engineer. Writing code on Sublime Text like it was the coolest thing in the world, not even knowing where life would take me.

Back then there were no LLMs, no AI assistants, nothing fancy. Just pure curiosity and grit to debug issues and learn every gist of things and challenges I found. That is how we grew.

Looking at it now, it feels crazy. Everything I did back then were contributing to the life I have today. Not to say I have the best life or that I have made it. Because I am far from that. But it is just to remind myself that every little action compounds in the future.

12 years from now, I will look back again and say the same thing. And that will never change.

The reminder is this. When you do small things, small but effective, and you know it moves the needle towards your goals, then just hang in there. Keep grinding. Because your future self will thank you later.

And yes, enjoy your life during the journey too, because we never know when we will go. It is that simple.

---


12 years ago it was just me, Sublime Text, and curiosity. No AI, no shortcuts. Just grind. Looking back now, I see how every small step shaped the life I have today.

Reminder To My Present Self from 12 years ago


George Bernard Shaw once said:  
**“There are two great tragedies in life. The first is not getting what you want. The second is getting it.”**

He was right. Both hurt, just in different ways.

---

**Not getting what you want**

We all know this one. You try for something and it slips away. The job goes to someone else. The savings never seem to add up. The goal you worked toward for months still falls short.

That kind of loss builds endurance. It forces you to carry the ache and keep moving anyway.

---

**Getting what you want**

This one feels like it should be different, but it isn’t. You finally land the promotion and discover it comes with stress and long nights. You buy the dream house and then meet the mortgage bills and repairs. You reach the big milestone you were chasing, and it still doesn’t bring the peace you expected.

This kind of “win” teaches perspective. The thing you thought would fix everything rarely does.

---

**The real truth**

Both tragedies show the same lesson: outcomes don’t save you. Not getting what you want leaves you restless. Getting it leaves you wanting more.

The only way out is learning how to live inside the process.

- Enjoy the work for its own sake.
- Notice small wins instead of throwing them away as “not enough.”
- Pay attention to the present, because most of life is made of small, ordinary moments.
- Stop tying your identity to outcomes. You’re not your paycheck, your house, or your failures.
- Pick paths that matter even if the prize never shows up.

---

Not getting what you want builds endurance.  
Getting it builds perspective.

Both are painful. Both are teachers.

And if you can learn to find some joy in the steps themselves, then maybe neither tragedy has the final word.  


George Bernard Shaw once wrote that there are two great tragedies in life: the first is not getting what you want, the second is getting it. He was right.

The Two Great Tragedies


A few years ago, I was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, when this completely random thought hit me: What if our entire universe is actually inside a black hole?

I had no formal physics training, but I'd always been drawn to cosmology and theoretical physics as a hobby—reading everything from Hawking to Greene, watching documentaries, and following the latest research out of curiosity. No equations or peer-reviewed papers from me, of course, but years of fascination with how the universe works. And something about this idea felt... right.

## The Logic That Led Me There

My reasoning was embarrassingly simple:

We know black holes are these mysterious things that bend space and time in ways we can barely comprehend. We also know that time slows down as you approach one. What if, instead of being crushed into a singularity, matter and energy get compressed into something else entirely—another universe?

Think about it: From our perspective inside, this universe would appear to be expanding. But from the outside, it might just be the natural result of matter falling into a black hole in some larger reality we can't see.

The Big Bang? Maybe that was just the moment our "parent" black hole formed, and all the expansion we observe is really just the interior geometry of that black hole unfolding.

I remember feeling both excited and slightly ridiculous about this idea. It was the kind of thought you keep to yourself because it sounds like something you'd come up with after too much coffee and too little sleep.

## When Science Catches Up to Daydreaming

Fast forward to 2025, and I'm starting to see headlines that make me do a double-take:

**"Did our cosmos begin inside a black hole in another universe?"**

**"What if the Big Bang wasn't the beginning? Our research suggests it may have taken place inside a black hole"**

**"Black holes: not endings, but beginnings? New research could revolutionize our understanding of the universe"**

Turns out, there's a Polish physicist named Nikodem Popławski who's been developing this exact theory for years. His research, published in serious journals like Physical Review D, suggests that instead of forming singularities, black holes with torsion (a property of spacetime) could actually create new universes.

The University of Portsmouth released research in 2025 showing that gravitational collapse doesn't have to end in a singularity—it can bounce back, creating an expanding universe that looks remarkably like our own.

Even more mind-bending: researchers at the University of Sheffield published a paper suggesting that what we call the Big Bang might actually be the "bounce" that happens when matter in a black hole reaches maximum density and then explodes outward into a new universe.

## The Weird Satisfaction of Being Right (Sort Of)

There's this strange feeling when you see your random midnight thoughts showing up in actual scientific papers. It's not exactly validation—these physicists are working with mathematical frameworks far beyond my amateur understanding. But there's something deeply satisfying about knowing that curiosity and intuition, even from someone exploring these ideas as a hobby, can sometimes point in the same direction as rigorous science.

What strikes me most is how this happened: I wasn't trying to solve any cosmic mysteries. I was just curious about black holes and letting my mind wander. No agenda, no hypothesis to prove, just pure "what if?"

Maybe that's how a lot of breakthrough thinking actually works. Not through methodical reasoning, but through letting your brain make weird connections when you're not trying too hard.

## The Beautiful Uncertainty

Here's what I love about this whole thing: we still don't know if we're living inside a black hole. As one researcher put it, "We can't rule it out completely, but so far there is no compelling evidence."

The beauty isn't in being right or wrong—it's in the fact that we can even ask these questions. That our reality might be far stranger and more nested than we ever imagined. That somewhere in another dimension, there might be beings debating whether _their_ universe is inside a black hole too.

And maybe, just maybe, the next breakthrough will come from someone else lying in bed at 2 AM, letting their mind wander in impossible directions.

## The Pattern I Keep Noticing

This isn't the first time I've had a random thought that later showed up in research. It makes me wonder: How many of our casual "what if" moments are actually picking up on something real? How often does intuition stumble onto truths that take science years to catch up to?

I'm not claiming any special insight here—just the perspective of someone who's spent years reading about these topics for fun. I think most of us have these moments where our curiosity leads us down interesting paths, we just don't always pay attention to them or we dismiss them as beyond our understanding. But maybe there's value in taking our questions seriously, even when they sound completely absurd.

After all, the idea that we're living inside a black hole sounded pretty absurd to me too. Now it's the subject of serious academic research.

---

_Sometimes the universe (or whatever larger reality we're nested inside) has a sense of humor. Keep having those random thoughts. You never know which ones might be onto something._


A few years ago, I had this wild idea that our universe might be inside a black hole. Now I'm seeing actual scientists saying the same thing.

Scarcity Makes You Hustle

Related Posts

Love people the way you expect to be loved!

How I Fell in Love With Code

Reminder To My Present Self from 12 years ago

The Two Great Tragedies