When It Works Out, It All Makes Sense

Now that I’ve got placed at American Express, I often catch myself looking back, tracing the path that led me here. Every project that I made from YouTube clone in 1st semester to Arkham Labs, every night of self-doubt, every hour spent at Allen since 9th grade and building the logical reflexes to solve that puzzle and guesstimate on the spot in my 2nd round of interview, every moment when I felt like I was spreading myself too thin, i had my legs in too many boats, it all suddenly feels like part of a larger plan. A story that was always unfolding in the background, waiting for its ending to make sense.

But here’s what I keep thinking lately: what if it hadn’t worked out?

What if that placement didn’t come through? What if I was still waiting (probably would have been grinding DSA right now), still uncertain, still trying to justify all those restless hours? I think I would’ve looked back at the same choices, the same late nights, the same projects and called them mistakes. I would’ve said I lacked focus, discipline, or direction.

It’s strange how the same journey can look like destiny or disaster, depending entirely on where it ends. Same actions. Different outcome. Entirely different story.

The illusion of a well-written story

We like to believe that life is a story that unfolds logically, that the chapters connect and that every struggle has a purpose waiting to reveal itself. But most of the time, life is just a set of half-finished drafts. You only see the theme after the book is done.

It's like watching a movie for the second time, you spot all the foreshadowing, all the subtle clues that pointed toward the ending. "Of course that's how it had to go," you think. But you forget that the first time you watched it, you had no idea where it was headed.

I've been working toward this moment since 8th grade. That's nearly a decade of my life oriented around a single goal, get placed at a good company, secure your future, make it all worthwhile. And now that I'm here, I can trace a clear line from that 13-year-old kid to this 21-something with an offer. The narrative writes itself.

When something works out, our brain rewrites the past to make it look intentional. Psychologists call this retrospective coherence, the tendency to connect random dots after the fact. We build narratives around success because it helps us make sense of the chaos that led to it.

But before it works out, that same chaos feels unbearable.

I remember days when I couldn’t focus for long, After covid, I had lost my ability to study for long hours, my attention span shrank. There were months where I felt completely lost, months I wasted playing Valorant, pushing my rank in the game (platinum-1 is my peak). I’d jump from one project to another, trying to learn all the new JS frameworks, trying to learn vim just because it seemed cool, trying blockchain, picking up Rust, dabbling in Devops, ML/AI and what not, all while feeling like I was behind everyone else who seemed to have their life sorted. I am not kidding but there were times I’d look at my screen at 2 AM and ask myself, “What am I even doing? Where is this going?”

Back then, none of it felt meaningful. It felt like motion without direction.

And yet, now that it has worked out, now that there’s a tangible outcome to point at, those same scattered efforts look like stepping stones. Suddenly, the chaos looks like strategy, and the confusion looks like curiosity.

If the Amex offer hadn't come through, I'd be writing a very different reflection right now. Probably something about how I spread myself too thin, how I should have been more strategic, how I confused activity with progress. The same facts, reframed as failures.

The story didn’t change. Only the ending did.

The Uncomfortable Truth About "Making Sense"

Here's what nobody tells you when you're in the thick of it, most of life doesn't make sense while you're living it. The coherence comes later, and it's mostly something we impose on the chaos after the fact.

Think about it, when you're learning something new, really learning, not just following a tutorial, it does feel messy right (what is this public static void main, why is this syntax so ugly). You're confused more often than you're clear. You make mistakes. You backtrack. You try things that don't work. And if someone asked you in that moment, "Does this make sense? Do you know what you're doing?" you'd probably say no.

But then, months or sometimes even years later, when you've actually learned the thing, you look back and think, "Oh, that's when I was figuring out X. That mistake taught me Y. That detour led me to Z." The mess retroactively becomes a journey.

The danger is that we use this backward-looking coherence to judge ourselves in the present. We think, "If I can't see where this is going, I must be doing it wrong." We expect our lives to make sense in real-time, like we're characters in a story who can read the transcript.

But you can't read the transcript. None of us can. We're all just doing our best with incomplete information, making decisions that might look smart or stupid depending on what happens next.

If it hadn’t worked out…

It’s unsettling to admit how fragile our sense of meaning can be. We often say, “Everything happens for a reason,” but that reason is usually something we write later, when we have the comfort of hindsight.

If I hadn’t been placed, I would’ve told myself a different story.

That I got distracted too easily. That I should’ve focused on one thing. That I was inconsistent.

But the truth is, both stories are true at once.

Because success doesn’t rewrite the past, it just reframes it.

What was once “unfocused” becomes “diverse experience.”

What was once “confusion” becomes “exploration.”

What was once “failure” becomes “a lesson.”

And that’s what makes success arbitrary in a way, it doesn’t just define where we go next, it defines how we remember where we came from.

You only earn coherence by surviving confusion

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this, meaning doesn’t exist in the middle. You can’t expect clarity while you’re still building the bridge. It only appears once you’ve crossed it.

Was I focused? By whose definition?

If focus means having a clear, unwavering vision of exactly how everything will unfold, then no, I wasn't focused.

If focus means showing up every day and doing the work even when you can't see the finish line, then yes, I was.

The truth is, I was doing many things at once because I didn't know which one would matter. I was experimenting, trying, doubting and yes, it was scattered at times.

But that searching phase was necessary. You can't really stumble into the right path if you're standing still, right?

The only thing that kept me moving was the quiet belief that this won’t go to waste, that's what I used to tell myself

“kahin na kahin toh kaam aa jaayega yeh”.

Even if I didn’t know where it was leading, I trusted that the act of trying, of showing up despite confusion, meant something.

And it did. Not because it led to Amex, but because it built resilience. Because it taught me how to keep going without proof that it would work out.

That’s honestly the hardest phase, when nothing adds up, when people around you seem more focused, when your path feels like noise. But maybe noise is just music you haven’t learned to understand yet.

The Six Months of Silence

I have six months before I start at Amex. Six months to breathe. Six months without the pressure that's been my constant companion since 8th grade.

And I'm terrified.

Not of the job, I think I'll be fine at the job. I'm terrified that I've lost the fire. That the discipline I built over a decade of relentless work was only possible because of fear and necessity. That without the looming threat of "you need to make it," I won't know how to function.

What if I spend six months relaxing and forget how to work hard? What if the person who shows up in January 2026 is soft, complacent, unable to summon the intensity that got me here?

But then I remind myself, the discipline I built wasn't only fear-driven. Yes, necessity was a factor. But I also learned to show up. I learned to deliver. I learned to push through discomfort. Those aren't things you forget in six months. If anything, rest might make me more sustainable, not less capable.

Still, the fear lingers.

Because now I have something to lose.

To anyone still figuring it out

If you're reading this and you're still in the thick of it where everything feels uncertain, where you’re trying many things, failing often, and questioning whether you’re doing it all wrong, I want you to know this, you’re not lost. You’re just in progress.

You can't see the shape of your story from inside it.

Right now, it feels like chaos. It feels like you're doing too many things, or not enough things, or the wrong things. You look at people (in real life or on LinkedIn) who seem certain and focused, and you wonder why you can't be like that.

You're probably tired, probably scared of the future. And some days, you genuinely don't know if you're moving forward or just moving. You don’t have to have a clean story right now. You don’t need your life to look coherent from the outside.

Keep learning. Keep experimenting. Keep staying curious.

I can't promise you it'll work out. I can't tell you that if you just keep going, success is guaranteed. Life doesn't work that way, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. But here's what I can tell you it only makes sense because you didn't stop when it didn't.

And honestly that's the only thing you can control. Not the outcome. Not whether it all makes sense in the end. Just whether you keep going when it doesn't make sense yet.

You're not lost. You're searching. And searching looks a lot like wandering until suddenly it doesn't.

It all makes sense, but only later

When things finally align, people will call it destiny, timing, talent, or even luck. They’ll say its because I was part of the Discovery program and therefore I got the job. But only you’ll know what it really was, the quiet persistence during the uncertain days.

So if you’re reading this in the middle of your own chaos, not knowing whether your efforts are leading anywhere, remember this: it won’t make sense now, and that’s okay.

Because someday it will.

The Ending That's Really a Beginning

I'm about to start a job I worked a decade to get. I'm about to have money to spend on things I've always wanted. I'm about to have six months to figure out who I am when I'm not constantly chasing the next milestone.

And I'm terrified. And relieved. And proud. And uncertain.

Because the truth about success is that it doesn't actually resolve anything. It just changes the questions you're asking.

Before, the question was: Will I make it?

Now, the question is: What do I do now that I have?

And honestly? I don't know. I'm figuring it out as I go, just like I always have been (and I promise to write about it as I face it).

Maybe that's the point.

Maybe we're all just figuring it out as we go, and the people who "make it" aren't the ones who always knew what they were doing. They're the ones who kept going even when they didn't.

The story you're living doesn't have to make sense yet.

It just has to keep going.

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A letter to the version of me who thought it was all going nowhere.