sidequestmaxxing my way back

Oct 27, 2025

early 2025. i tell myself i'm resting, but really i'm just scrolling, overthinking, watching life happen through a screen. it was one of those phases where nothing feels real and everything feels distant. the kind where you don't know what you're doing or what's next, you just exist. some days i'd build small apps just to feel something. random ideas that barely made sense but kept my mind busy. it helped for a few hours.

january and february. final semester. we were staying in the college hostel for our fyp. most evenings we'd cancel mess food and walk to rishab's for dosa. that became our routine. make fun of sanjjit, eat, laugh, talk nonsense, walk back. most of my friends were placed by then, so we were more chill than ever. we'd go out in the evenings, marina mall mostly, movies, more food. those days are very special.

then came march. one night a bunch of us were walking to the beach. on the way, themozhi started talking about this startup she is working at called fanpit. she said swe was there too. i hadn't heard of it before but it sounded interesting. i wasn't expecting anything. i'd been telling myself i wanted to do more than build random things, but i didn't really know what that meant. a few days later, them texted me and asked if i wanted to join. i hesitated. i still had my fyp, and honestly i was just lazy. but i said yes anyway.

first call happens. they tell me fanpit's being built on next.js. i know next. i feel confident. then i get to the office and swe walks me through the codebase. it's nest.js. we both laugh. too late to turn back now. i start working on bolt, an ai agent for fanpit. it's small, but it's something. it feels good to be building again.

may 24. my birthday's in two days, i turn 22. we go out that evening for an early celebration. the next morning, me and them show up to the office completely drained. tejas is there, talking about this idea for an events platform inside fanpit, something to replace luma in india for brands and artists. that's how outworld started.

i start building right after that day. may slides into june. i'm working almost every day, learning as i go. our plan is to launch mid-june. i wanted it to be perfect but tejas keeps adding items to my list. invoicing, entitlements, ui changes. every day my pending items would grow. along the way i built a small check-in manager app ↗ for events, something simple to handle on-ground check-ins and scanning. we finally ship at the end of june. there's this one client demo at vinyl and brew. i'm sitting there pretending to be calm but praying nothing breaks. tejas is completely chill. it doesn't break. the demo works. outworld ↗ goes live.

a week later we go on a trip to yelagiri. same hostel gang. pranav's leaving for his masters in the us, so this is like a small bye-bye trip. we're at the hotel when the ticket booking breaks. i open my mac, go through logs while everyone keeps yelling at me to wrap it up. i fix it somehow. we go out after. that moment stays with me. i built something real, something that broke and had to be fixed, not in theory but in the world.

now there are events live on outworld, and shipping never really stopped. i see my classmates attending events they booked through outworld. i hear from organizers who are using what we built. it feels surreal. it feels great.

one of those events was omnivoid. the venue was packed, every single ticket booked through outworld. standing there checking people in with the checkin manager app, watching everything actually work, it hit me how far we'd come from those random side projects in january.

the office days during this time were some of the most fun i've ever had. when tejas, themozhi, swetha, vrishin, venkat, and madhu were around, the place was alive. we'd be talking, building, laughing, eating, and staying late just because no one wanted to leave. most days we built from kup with way too many onion rings. it didn't feel like work. it felt like building with friends who genuinely cared about what we were making.

september now. i still build random things that come to mind, things i see on twitter and want to try out. i've been going out with friends more often, discovering new cafes, playing board games, doing a lot of things with friends. life feels lighter.

october. i decide it's time to finally get done with the fanpit app. for context, we started this app back in april. we spent five nights in the office — me, venkat (one of the hungriest-to-build people i know), and tejas, the gang leader. boxes of pizza, endless changes and too much energy. we were fixing and building, but never really finished.

two major expo releases later, it's october again and i decide to go all in. after so many app store reviews, back and forth on builds, and rejections, it finally happens. the app is approved.

today i pressed the "release for distribution" button on app store connect. i'm very happy seeing my friends install it, send feedback, and talk about what can be better. this is something i've always wanted — to build something that reaches people.

fanpit live ↗ is finally out.

the year started weird. too much noise, too much thinking. but these sidequests pulled me out of that. they made me feel alive again. they reminded me that doing things is the only way to get unstuck.

sidequesting for me is about saying yes to things that pull me out of my comfort zone. it is when something makes no sense on paper but still feels right in the moment. most of the best things start like that, a random idea, a sudden plan, a quiet thought of why not. those small, unplanned choices somehow end up changing everything.

i have realized i grow the most when i do things that scare me a little. when i meet people i never expected to meet, build things i did not think i could build, and find myself in places i never planned to be. that is when life starts to feel real again.

sidequests always connect in ways i do not see at first. every project, every trip, every late night, every random message that turns into something more, they all come together eventually. one day it just clicks.

this is not some big technical feat. not even close. with what i see every day on twitter, this is very very very small. but i think it will add up. it will matter. it already does, in small ways.

so i am going to keep sidequesting. keep building, keep learning, keep saying yes. because that is what keeps life moving. that is what makes it all worth it.