My Now | 6th Jul | Dharamshala (Monsoon)
The monsoon has finally arrived. It's been raining quite some since few days and the heat wave is gone. I'm writing this from the little balcony between the stairs, chai in hand, looking out at the forest of Tapovan in Dharamshala. Eagles somewhere above the clouds. This is still the most home I've felt in years.
🪫 The crux of it: I'm overcoming my fear of abandonment
At a very broad level, this is what these two months have been about.
I kept not putting a paywall on WhatsHappening — and I finally saw it clearly: it was a protective move. I didn't want to be hurt if someone used the thing I built from my soul, didn't pay, and then left. I kept not sharing my work — people hate the salesman who just sells! and if they see me as one, they'll leave, and I'll be alone. Even the part of me forever striving toward money, I finally understood him too: money was never money. It's a symbol for safety — for me and the people I love.
Every one of these parts, in its own beautiful way, has been trying to protect one small kid inside me. A kid who is simply afraid he can't survive, afraid of being left out, afraid of being abandoned.
Lately, I've actually seen that kid. I've felt him. Maybe he's a very young me, maybe it's generational, maybe it's a past-life fear of being cast out of the tribe — I honestly don't know. And it doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm here now, fully feeling it, and letting it integrate. Not with force. Not with shame. Just by being all the way present with him.
That's why I could finally ship the paywall. That's why, today, I posted a song I made onto my Instagram — a vulnerable one — and let people see it. I am making my website and sharing honestly now. The fear moved because I stopped running from the kid and just sat with him.
📱 WhatsHappening has a paywall now — and its first paying users
It's live on iOS and Android. Two people are paying — my friends - Dhruv and Sean. About $25 of MRR, (real profit after costs ~ $15). Tiny numbers, and yet I'm genuinely proud. These are people using it to actually come back to themselves. That means everything.
There was one hard moment. 1-2 users who'd been journaling with the app almost every day for 70 days hit the paywall and just never returned. My first reaction was that old ache — they've abandoned me. But slowly I came back. It's not abandonment; it's just life teaching me to go through the very thing I'm afraid of, and find out I'm still here on the other side. Finding my tribe.
Next up: personalised prompts — the app checking in on you every day, gently. An anchor. That's the positioning that's finally coming into focus for me: WhatsHappening as a daily anchor back to your prime self — starting with being that for me.
🧸 Athena is almost one
She's almost eleven months now, and she loves being around other kids — interacting with the world, deciding for herself where she wants to go.
Honestly, she feels less like my kid and more like my partner. She's teaching me the most beautiful things. When I feed her now, she feeds me right back — and she'll eat so easily the moment she gets to feed me first. There's a whole philosophy in that if you sit with it.
The lesson I keep learning through her is the same lesson as everything else this season: I'm learning to be fully myself with her. To do my own work while trusting that I'm not abandoning her. Earlier I'd sacrifice myself entirely just because she wanted me near — now I'm learning to hold both, and to gently facilitate her trusting herself too.
👩❤️💋👨 Han — my true partner and best friend
We're deep, true partners now. Post baby, something changes I think! Always there for each other, and we've gotten so much better at it. She's genuinely my best friend - And I really love all parts of her - even the sharper ones too. We still sometimes hit the odd friction — but then the repair, and then closer than before. Every time. And much faster reconnection over time.
I'm so proud of her journey as an artist. I built her website — artbythepassenger.com — and did the heavy lifting on the site and payments, but now she's learnt Claude Code and edits it herself. That makes me so proud. We are also starting a new brand - Back to Soul - we've already sold 5+ books on Amazon of her Mindful Pregnancy and are moving them into the Prime category. She's producing content about life & art almost every day — beautiful, deeply authentic. Just recently sold her first painting.
She's also my biggest motivator to share authentically. Big gratitude in my heart for her.
🌿 Tending the body, for real now
I did a full blood test - annual ritual, and it was a wake-up call: deficient in B12 and Vitamin D, and borderline on cholesterol and blood sugar. Consider me awakened. My back muscles are genuinely weak too — I've been picking up a random injury roughly once a month for the last four months.
I'm taking my supplements religiously now and doing something physical every day. Right now that "something" is the evening walk with Athena to the playground, where she gets to interact with the other kids. What I actually need is to go out and play. Thinking of getting a bicycle.
🧘 Faith, parts, and a slower kind of trust
The parts of me are all still here — the good boy who earns love by being useful, the one counting the runway, the artist who just wants to make the thing well. I'm getting better at thanking them and letting them soften, rather than being run by them.
Faith is becoming a practice, not a hope. Surrendering to something larger than me — an anchor higher than myself. I understand now what people mean by that. And I keep holding a quiet dream: to run shamanic healing retreats in India someday, when there's a little more money and a lot more space.
🌍 Building a home online — and starting fresh
I'm moving my whole online home from abhinav.ai to abhinavrai.com — a place for my writings, projects, and these Now pages. Part of the sharing journey.
I'm also starting a new Twitter account from scratch. My old one has seen so many versions of me that the algorithm has no idea who I am anymore. Fresh start — to find and connect with my actual tribe.
And I'm excited about a new little app I want to build: a helper for my own sharing journey, something to reduce the friction of sharing honestly even further. A ghostwriter in the pocket. I'm juggling a few things, but this one will be soon.
Oh — and the questions for my card game, One More Chai, are finally done. Just the designing and printing left now. :)
