My Now | 6th Jul | Dharamshala (Monsoon)
Monsoon in Dharamshala. Overcoming a lifelong fear of abandonment - and learning to share, to ship, and to be fully present. WhatsHappening paywall is live. Athena is almost one.
Writings
Essays and notes on making things, inner work, and being human.
My Now | 14th Apr | Dharamshala
Now page for Abhinav Rai - 14th April, 2026.
My Now | 17th Jan | Dharamshala
Athena is 5 months old, Shifted to new house, Playing Badminton, Going to vietnam for Tet, Integrating my parts, Whatshappening next steps
Opening the Castle gates | IFS Session
I built this beautiful castle - WhatsHappening, my art, all my insights - but kept it closed. A wise child part security guard protected me from bad actors and criticism by locking everyone out. I saw him and everyone had a conversation on how we need to open this castle for everyone now. Now this head of security will handle the 5% troublemakers, but the gates are opening for the 95% who need this.
My Shiva awakening
Discovered my anger isn't destructive - it's sacred fire like shiva's. Having nuclear power but choosing love instead. knowing i can fight back makes me softer, more trusting. The fire protects so i can stay vulnerable.
Abhinav's Now | Aug 25 | From Dharamshala (Monsoon)
Abhinav's Now - New dad to Athena (16 days old), building WhatsHappening app, living as Manifesting Generator. Han's book published! In Dharamshala considering Vietnam move. Learning to follow energy vs forcing, trusting divine timing through parenthood transition.
Friend 101
how to be the friend everyone needs: someone who listens deeply, creates space for authentic sharing, and helps others gain clarity without becoming their therapist. A practical guide to fostering profound human connections through intentional conversation.
My nows | 22 May
Abhinav Rai Now Page | 22nd May, 2025 | Journey through unexpected relocations, tech projects, and meaningful personal growth. Here's what all is happening in my life NOW: challenges with creativity, resilience, and the joy of new beginnings!
Journey through my inner world
From burnout to breakthrough: Abhinav Rai's exploration of his inner world reveals how shame, achievement, and people-pleasing were all protecting him from his deepest fear. A vulnerable story of integration, healing, and building something meaningful from pain.
Safety - A collective need!
IFS journey of Abhinav Rai - My inner CEO emerged when I was about 10 with a belief - I'm safe only when everyone I love is safe. This explains why I struggle with putting myself first, why I'm anxious to fix everyone's problems, and my tendency to take on others' pain. Now I'm giving this part a new job description—one that allows for compassion without sacrificing my own wellbeing.
Money, Love, Freedom connection & the hippy CEO!
What money means to me, 2 core parts of me - freedom and love, origin of slum king & CEO became hippie!
Self is back in control - IT'S BEAUTIFUL!
Self is back baby! I feel whole today - In control, peaceful. Self has a home, missions & is so eager to lead back after many many years!
I fully trust my "self" to lead me to where/how-ever (And that is where I want to go)
Self is the driver with accelerator & brake. It knows what to do - at all times - trust that ~ By the grace of my self, all work gets done!
Thank You Yin, my rational part!
Balancing structure and spontaneity | Honoring my inner guardian - Rational Abhinav, who built my safety net, now deserving rest and love
A dance of Yin & Yang
Reconnection with lost emotions after moving to Dharamshala. Finding wholeness in the dance between my rational and true self
My Now | 14th Feb 📍 Yamunanagar
Hero's journey reshapes life; embracing slow, stable living in Dharamshala. Writing, family growth, and new projects blend into new ordinary
New Ordinary in my Hero's Journey!
At the end of my current Hero's journey, finding my New Ordinary with work, need for new framework, All parts & AR had a heart to heart!
When Field Marshal met the Soul
From managing life to feeling it: A deep dive into AbhinavLand reveals the essence of who we are beyond our protective parts
When All Parts Stood Against Ambitious Rai - No hijacking!
🌱 when ambitious rai became a military officer again, other parts stood united until he remembered - slow is smooth
If you tell the world, it rarely happens? (Evil Eye)
What I think about the Evil Eye | Abhinav Rai
My Now | 17th Dec, 2024 | 📍 Pattaya
Slowing down, reconnecting with nature, creativity, and self. Wonderfruit awakened my artist. Excited for Pai & building Prime. 🌿✨
Feeling emotions again :)
Rediscovering that true creativity flows from feeling, not thinking. When the CEO part embraced the children within.
Hello world, my little one!
Ten days before my wedding, a child part of me refused to celebrate. Not because he was sad, but because he wanted something deeper than ceremonies.
It's my wedding!
When wedding anxiety struck, my parts gathered in AbhinavLand. What started as fear became a beautiful celebration of growth
Love as a Currency
Social Spark part realizing love isn't scarce: from viewing relationships as jobs to embracing trust, space, and authenticity in connections
Unveiling "Social Spark" part
Meet the 'Social Spark' part: The invisible force behind relationships. From fear to fascination, explore the core of human connection.
Abhinav-Han Land: Exploring new dimension - Conflict, Boundaries & healing
AbhinavLand faces a new dimension: conflict resolution. As Healer Rai departs, Fear Alone emerges. A journey of setting boundaries and welco
Ambitious Rai, the Project-Prime CEO
Unveiling the invisible CEO in of Project Prime, recognising his acknowledgement & him stuck b/w creative & anxious part.
Intentionality over Productivity
balance between intentionality and productivity
Ambitious Rai's journey through fear & WWE binge to Breakthrough
Ambitious Rai's tale of fear and triumph in AbhinavLand. From late-night WWE to morning epiphany, a story of growth and self-acceptance.
How to export all blocks in logseq for a specific tag (even from linked pages)
Exporting Tagged Blocks and Linked Pages in Logseq: A Step-by-Step Guide
How my Warden learned to Chill
Journey through AbhinavLand: Overwhelmed CEO, overprotective Guardian, and lessons on embracing life's chaos for true freedom.
The Slum King Emerges
Just uncovered a hidden part of me living in the 'slums' of my mind 🏚️ This teenage guardian's been shaping my life from the shadows, teaching me empathy but also self-sacrifice 🤔 Time to bring him into the light and find a healthier balance! #SelfDiscovery 🌱
My NOW | 28th Aug, 2024 |📍 Nha Trang
Abhinav Rai Now - 28th August
Protest outside Ambitious Rai's house
Growth of Ambitious part of me and telling my other parts to on how I've overcome my fear of failure. Inner harmony through self-compassion
Nha Trang: Vietnam's hidden gem
Indian & Vietnamese digital nomad couple living slow quality life Nha Trang - journey of stability, nature, and local culture. Breathtaking views, healthy living, and a slow, fulfilling lifestyle
Profilebud | Instagram Data Scraper | 2019-2021
Built Profilebud, a Chrome extension for IG lead extraction, from Indie Hack project at GoJek to $8K MRR. Grew fast, shut down. This is my journey
Growpad | Instagram Automation tool | 2020 - 2021
Started as an indie hacking project, our Instagram automation tool hit $3k MRR in a year with 2000+ users. Shut down due to Instagram’s stricter bot policies.
Regulate yourself
Abhinav’s journey to explore human connection, solitude’s challenges, and the role of meaningful relationships in personal growth.⬤
Welcoming my parts: Reflection on Self-Acceptance
Reflecting on Existential Kink: Embracing my shadow parts, understanding my coping mechanisms, and fostering empathy on my journey to self-awareness.
Who's a customer?
Redefining customer as a stable pattern of human behavior and exploring the interplay between marketing and innovation.
Product Engineer @ GoJek | Jul 2018 - Jan 2021
GoJek: My first job where I learned coding, built scalable products, saved millions, traveled, and wrote 80+ blogs. An incredible 2.5-year journey!
Prepping a VM for Developer
By Default, any ubuntu VM lacks quite some things & plugis. Zsh, Oh-My-Zsh, Ruby, Go, etc. (Will keep on adding more items in this)
Whatsapp to Google Sheets
A Chrome extension to transfer incoming whatsapp messages to a Google Sheet
Subpath with Nginx and Gatsby
Use Case
Setting up a Go droplet in Digital Ocean
First, ssh into the digbox | ssh root@123.123.123.123
How to copy Postgres data to your CSV
Keeping here so that I don’t fog
How to Handle Rate Limit in Grambuddy
Instagram Rate limits us. So we need to use a vpn. Browsec is a free VPN and another chrome extension like Grambuddy.
How to Update chrome extensions?
Chrome’s auto update does not work most of the time. So, you got to manually do the update.
How to make a GIF of screen recording
Step 1: Install Screencastify chrome extension. Link…
Hiring interns
Intern selection is really important. You hire a wrong intern & it’s equivalent to going down the drain.
SSL, TLS, HTTPS, SSH
SSL was made by Netscape in 1985 and after many browser wars between Netscape & Microsoft, Netscape gave SSL 3 to IETF (Internet…
Blog and Mime type
Problem: I have an instagram Video url. How to download this in JS?
Domain Driven in GoLang — A problem with worker & the solution
Domain Driven in Golang means you have a specific “domain package” handle the “domain things” via an interface.
Stripe Vs Paypal
My Developer friendly rating: Stripe — 9, Paypal — 7
SEO — Another level powerful thing!
So I am making Grambuddy and one of the things I am learning for the same is SEO. Am doing this course where they explain the important…
HA Proxy
HA Proxy is High Availability Proxy. Say, you have a rails server and you run 3 VM instances of the same. Each with their own DB. HA Proxy…
Reduce in JS
Lets make arrays great again!
One small thing — I was getting 403 until I moved my code to /var/www
Took my 25 minutes time to debug
What is Logical / Illogical?
Is earth at the centre of the universe? No, right. We “know that” right now. But if you talk to people in 1200s, they all believed that…
Triple dot in JS
One of the most used features of ES6. You must have seen this syntax in many places. These tools allow us to perform some common operation…
What is 99th Percentile response time?
I was making a dashboard in Grafana for our service when I came across the term 99th Percentile response time.
Scraping youtube urls
I wanted to get a long list of any youtube urls for an experiment I was performing. There is no easy way by any softwares. I tried half an…
Don’t tell others what you want, It rarely happens
Disclaimer: This is how I personally feel. I was a believer in this concept. I ventured to the opposite path of this for some time and now…
Monitoring — StatsdD, Telegraf and InfuxDB
Monitoring is very important for any system. Both for system variables and application. How many people logged in to your site at a given…
Threading in Rails
Task: Make an API which makes 10 API calls to other services. Combine their result and return.
Garbage Collection & Chrome extension
My first language was C,C++. Both of these languages do not have a garbage collector. In it, whenever you allocate some memory…
CORS & CSRF
If you are seeing this, you should at one point have been stuck in this issue or are stuck. We tend to solve the issue with different…
Javascript — Call by value or Reference?
Javascript uses a pass by value strategy for primitives but uses a call by sharing for objects. Call by sharing is largely similar to pass…
Javascript — single threaded, non-blocking, asynchronous, concurrent language
**_Well, what?_** I use languages to get my job done. And for me and javascript this process started with building a small game, ajax requests and form validations. Our bond deepen
Knowledge of competitive coding helps!
I’ve done competitive coding for quite some time in college and today was another such instance when this helped me figure out an…
Javascript — A prototype based language
Javascript is not a class based language but a prototype based language. What does this mean? I’ve only known about class based language…
How to squash and rename commits
Well, If you are reading this, you must have encounter a situation where you must have taken multiple steps to fix an issue. Recent…
A Wednesday
It’s just another Sunday afternoon in Kemang Timur DSU for the agents and guards. Kemang Timur DSU, the place where faceoff battle was won…
Well, you are correct.
Well, you are correct. Have edited. What I meant is: promises are cleaner way for running asynchronous tasks “to look more like synchronous” with the .then syntax.
Me before you
Its the morning, I haven’t slept the previous day and I watched me before you on my flight to Indonesia. Its 5th of May, Sunday. That time…
What is session in flask?
I’ve been using flask for a long time and every time I just get my work done with session and auth without seeing what’s happening…
Tale of 2 Go Snakes
Lets walk through the journey of 2 venomous and powerful snakes residing in dense Go-Forests. Namely: Viper and Cobra
JS Under the hood
Well JS runs on a single thread. Wait, then how does all the async operations happen. Well they happen on the someone’s else thread.
Async — Await & React Promise testing
With the ES6 taking over the planet, its time for everyone to either know Async — Await or spend their life in callback hell.
MLM / Network Marketing / Chain Marketing — First Time experience
Its Sunday today. A friend called me to tell the “business” she is in and how happy and great her life is since then. I thought of it as a…
Working with AWS S3 bucket in Go
A beginner’s help guide
Session vs JWT (token based authentication)
Am building a CMS for a service and we need authentication for the same. I’ve done a lot of coding by accident in my college…
Map vs Flatmap (in reference to RxJava)
Lets start with basic understanding of map and flatmap with an example ->
Whatsapp stalking — the noob way!
The first thing one does when you wake up is check your whatsapp notifs. Thats also the last thing you do before sleeping. We are the…
Some patterns in life …
Life seems complex. There are things which everyone goes through. This experience is different for different people based on their way of…
Errors in GoLang?
Errors are an integral part in the application but deciding how to propagate error in Go is a difficult task. Generally every other…
Can we record conversations by google home?
Short Answer:
GoJek Bootcamp 03 — Hell of an experience
I did my 2017 summer intern at Go-Jek and since then, the mystery of bootcamp has always fascinated me. One of the things I was most…
Whats happening when you scroll on your device
Majority of the apps use lists to display the data. Be it your settings screen or the one in my app shown below.
Devops phase 2
We made the CRUD app which Creates, Reads, Updates and Deleted the user by api. We made user as resource in rails. Rspec for testing (100%…
Google Home — Ease or Privacy?
Its been about 2 months since I am using google home mini. Its my one stop solution for music. Connecting it with phone or PC and then use…
Gradient Descent in Linear Regression — 1
I am a beginner in Machine Learning and faced a hard time in understanding what these big terms are in our Data Science module at Go-Jek…
Gradient Descent in Linear Regression — 2
How Gradient Descent works
Trip to Agara Lake
Its Sunday, October 7th. Not much bootcamp homework for the weekend. It had been quite long since I had gone anywhere in Bangalore. Its…
How important is writing
You wake up. Rush to office. Learn new things. Finish your work. Come back home. Maybe drink a beer or chat about the day with you…
Coding is everywhere
I shifted to Bangalore about 2 months ago. Got a semi furnished home. The major task now is to design it. Where to keep the things, which…
First Time with Android
Its GoJek’s Android bootcamp for a week and we have to make a movies app in it. Android has always fascinated me but I couldn’t get a good…
Devops — Phase 1
A Gojek bootcamper’s journey through devops bootcamp
My visit to Food Street in Bangalore
It was Saturday, September 15th, 5 PM. I started my bike to drop Abhimanyu at the bus stop. Baba(Abhimanyu) stayed with me after the…
A Beautiful room
You come home from work after a long day. Now enter this room:
The 10 commandments for a programmer
There are some basic coding etiquettes which we have to follow every time we write code. The first metrics I use to distinguish a good code…
How do you know you are growing?
Everyone of us are after success and growth. If you are reading this, then you are an ambitious person who wants to rise high, earn money…
Bike trip to Nandi Hills
“Bike trip”, the name itself is sufficient for any traveller to be excited. It had been 15 days since I got my bike in Bangalore and the…
Understanding life via Bootcamp
I did my 2017 summer intern at Go-Jek and since then, the mystery of bootcamp has always fascinated me. Joining as product engineer this…
Mean Data Generator
There were few Humanities projects in my institute bachelors which required survey. I usually hated filling such surveys and assumed that…
How to be correct in an argument — 1
There are times when we are talking to the person and have a sense that the other person has wrong opinions. There are some categories made which can help you and make the other pe
How to be correct in an argument — 2
This is in continuation of the previous blog. I would recommend to read it here before continuing.
King and his 4 wives
Once upon a time, there lived a king who had four wives. The king got seriously ill and was on his death bed.
Cyclomatic complexity
Cyclomatic complexity is a software metric used to measure the complexity of a program. These metric, measures independent paths through…
The power of heart break
Bollywood has always shown us the happy sides. Hero crossing few barriers and meeting the heroine! Happy endings! But nobody talks about…
What is travel for me?
We fight our battles daily. Following the routine and doing the stuff we are meant to do. Finding the answers of the problems as a mouse in…
ViaBlimp
How do you do the below things:
Becoming a better engineer
I joined GoJek as a product engineer 5 weeks before. As a product engineer, its our job to take care of product end to end!
Saying what you actually want to say
Psychology confirms that there are very few people who actually say the thing what they have in mind.
Game of Life — the Infinite world!
Thats the first thing which came to my mind when I heard of the game “Game of Life”. It was our first day of the bootcamp at GoJek and we…
Ruby & Rails — some thirst satisfiers!
This blog covers: