Riding high on the Crisis horse

This article is about crisis - the one thing that has defines so many watershed moments in the world history. However, rather than focusing on the world, this is more of an introspective post; and how swinging from crisis to crisis has defined the past decade of my life, both personally and professionally. At a fundamental level, I also strongly believe that crisis has always been the primary driver for any change, at a micro or a macro-level. Evolution is of course to a large extent non-deterministic and a highly probabilistic mechanism, but every time a major crisis strikes, those most adaptable were the ones to survive. That has always defined the next course of history, rather than a steady-state.

The first time I got hit by a crisis was way back 2014 when I was working with Shell. Since then, I have been in a semi-continuous stream of crisis; with bouts of steady-state or stability now and then. From 2014 to 2018, it was a range of crisis at the refinery unit where I was responsible for the technology and was supporting the operations team. From relatively harmless and quick to solve product quality issues, to extended turnaround duration due to asset integrity issues, and code-red cases with potential safety impacts; it was nothing short of a whirl-wind period. I still remember one of the instances when it was code red, and was called at midnight. I was given 30 mins to do a complex calculation to assess the composition of the toxic gas at a location on basis of which the GM of the plant would advice the local authorities to evacuate or not.

That was one of the best (although quite unfortunate for the plant) situations of my professional career; where all the experience, education, composure, communication, and relationship skills had to come together at the same time. There were several such crisis situations, which I loved solving. Towards the final year of my time at Shell, the situation had stabilized; and there were very few crisis situations. Without crisis, I ended up slipping into depression for the first time in my life.

Fast forward to the end of 2019, when we had just started Umagine and few months into it, there was another major crisis. Our expected fundraise and sales targets for the few months were grossly missed; and the team that we had built was resulting in severe cash burn. This was also the first time when we had to let to go people, and re-negotiate contracts with our office manager. Although it doesn't sound like a huge crisis, but for me it was a first time in this situation. Additionally, around that time I was also in minor depression. I still remember in January 2020, while we were in middle of this crisis; my brother was also getting married. I was completely blanked out and have a very fogged memory of those times.

Again in beginning of 2021, I plunged into the gravest crisis ever - a combination of personal, and professional. On the personal front, I had moved out of our home, and was in middle of a massive fall-out. Professionally, I had my head installer ending up having a relapse on his past addiction issues; and that had massive consequences on the entire team. To top it all, he was ex-military, and given that I was in a hypomanic phase, ended up in in a paranoia state with a fear of physical attack. As I had already moved out, I was changing hotels every 2-3 days to remain incognito for almost 1.5 months. Around the same time, there was a situation where two of my dogs ended up fighting, with me in-between; ended up in one of the dogs and myself in the hospital. All this resulted in having a catastrophic impact on Umagine, and we ended up in a near-bankruptcy situation. Somehow managed to scrape through this all and survived. Again a few months down the line, for several reasons I relocated back to India from NL. In the course of all this, I had to let go of a lot of things I had built over more than a decade, including one of my dogs who had to be euthanized because he couldn't be accommodated in any other dog shelter.

Over the past 1.5-2 years of the base here in India, several micro-crisis situations have arisen that had kept me going. Very recently, about couple of weeks back, another major crisis hit the roof. This time, an established partnership which was operational was just three months had to be broken. It took a very long time to build that partnership, and we had made significant changes to the organization for this to work. Now, we had to find a solution for a new office, relocation, impact on cash-flow, relationship management with staff/vendors/client. In addition to all this, I had to urgently vacate my apartment as the house owner had gone bankrupt.

Several of my friends and family say that I seek such crisis situations, and get high on solving them and getting out of them. Stability is something that I find very difficult to adjust to; with extreme situations of slipping into depression when things became too monotonous or repetitive. However, over the past year or so I had come to a strong realization that such high-on-crisis lifestyle is very unsustainable, especially from a mental health perspective. In any case, living on the edge with very little predictability is something that I cannot just let go of. Just that the kind of problems to solve should get more and more bigger from an impact perspective. In the course of this, I have burnt several bridges, let go of long-term relationships, disappointed family and friends, and eventually ended up slicking pills to prevent extreme states of depression or hypomania.

The global situation is unfortunately not very different, we move from crisis to crisis; and a large one is needed to actually move to needle and push for innovation and change. For the very first time in the course of history, a species has a conscious role to play in its evolution and the future of the planet. Consciousness is one of the latest fruits of evolution, and unfortunately the most under-developed. We end up creating various convenient myths, and have ended up screwing up the climate in the process. We need to find a way to undo all this; and get out of the biggest existential crisis that we are facing since the advent of Ice Age.

This is the crisis that keeps me going, and in a way happy that it wouldn't be solved in my lifetime. :)