A letter to 2024 | Ahnaaf's 24th Life Update | January 2025
An end of year letter reflecting on work, individuality, and stories.
Written while I should’ve been studying for my Kinematics & Dynamics final. Finished while slightly jet-lagged, and optimistic for the new year.
At the tail end of this summer, I had a series of conversations at the 1517 Summit in August which changed how I think about my future. When I sat down to write this end-of-year reflection, I realized how much I think about what we discussed and how it influenced the rest of my year.
As the story goes, I rock up to the pre-summit social fashionably late. I was greeted with an open bar that was empty, and a dress code that I was unaware of (not so fashionable after all). How is it that I’m Canadian and I don’t know what a Canadian Tuxedo is? This was a complete change of pace compared to the Queen’s socials I’ve been to.1
As I’m making my way around the room, time screeches to a halt and conversations start to feel premeditated. I was feeling jaded; mostly from the lack of individuality from some people in the crowd.
I expected this to some degree. But after spending my entire summer far removed from this crowd, starting a meaningful conversation felt more difficult than ever.
Eventually, I bumped into Harry Gandhi and talked his ear off about my love of Muay Thai. We’d already met earlier that week to talk about my carbon capture research and the memos I had been writing. At that point in the night, it felt more natural to talk about something that I have been doing every day for the entire summer rather than carbon capture.
I told him about the science of fighting, the techniques that are core to Muay Thai, and how much I enjoy sparring. I realized a bit too late into my monologue that Harry probably wasn’t paying too much attention to what I was saying but rather how I saying it.
He told me that my passion for Muay Thai was infectious, and asked me “Would you want to train Muay Thai full-time?”
“Yeah, maybe for a year or so.”
“Well, what’s stopping you?”
I’m pretty sure he knew what was stopping me. I have parents. It would be nearly (or entirely) batshit crazy to drop out of a degree in engineering to train in Thailand.
I’ve come to realize he was implicitly asking me “Are you spending your time on what you love doing?”
I spent this year exploring this question and another that Harry asked me later in the conversation.
Later, when my good friend Mishaal joined the conversation, we talked about what happens when we mix 21st-century tech, medieval institutions, and Paleolithic instincts.
What we get, is what Harry calls “the meaning crisis.”
I'm an 19 y/o climate-tech builder and mechatronics student exploring my curiosity. In the past, I’ve interned at Muse developing their sleep neurofeedback algorithms, co-founded a neurotech x web3 startup, and spoke at tech conferences around the world.
Currently, I’m testing out different hypotheses in the carbon valorization space and understanding how to make carbon capture profitable.
If you want to stick along with me, you’d get monthly(ish) updates from me about my progress in carbon capture or any other insights that I have as I build my career.
There’s something deep within us that desires fulfillment. Back in the day (wayyyyy back) that sense of fulfillment would’ve come from surviving another day in the wild.
Foraging and hunting for food, for example, was a difficult but doable task that was satisfying and fulfilling upon completion. As technology improved, our basic survival needs were easily met with little effort.
As humans, we feel fulfilled by solving problems. When survival (for the most part) isn’t a real issue anymore, we start looking for other problems to solve. However, the challenges in modern life are Herculean: climate change, poverty, financial freedom, war, social inequality, etc., in contrast to the Sisyphusian tasks we complete for basic survival.
It’s easy to fall into apathy & defeatism. Every issue feels unsolvable and a single person’s efforts insignificant.
We work jobs that we hate, to buy things we don't need, to impress people we don't like.
- Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
For some, life starts after 5 pm. For others, work is their life.
The consequences of the meaning crisis in the West are that we have the highest rates of substance abuse of all time; we spend 80,000 hours searching for a purpose to no avail; and we place more value on the health of institutions than on the health of humans.
Even though objectively, this is the best time to be alive, it feels like it’s the worst time because of this meaning crisis.
So what do we do about this? How can we start our true search for meaning? It all starts with a simple question.
What do you want to be here when you’re not?
A deceptively simple question! The idea is that your answer is your reason for being—your purpose.
In our conversation, Harry remarked that common answers are usually faith and children, with some outliers talking about their work. 2
Over the past year, I repeatedly asked myself this question and reflected on how the answer changed.
When Harry asked me in August, my immediate response was:
“A clean, and healthy planet.”
Let me take you back to the spring of 2023. I was in grade 12 going to calculus when I saw white flakes of snow falling from the sky, despite it being 20ºC.
“Canadian weather is so bipolar.”
Confused, I reached out to touch the snowflakes. However, instead of melting, the snowflake disintegrated onto my hand leaving a soot stain. I was witnessing an ashfall from one of the worst Canadian wildfires in recorded history.
The world was burning down around me and I was holding its ashes. I knew right there, I had to do something.
So when Harry asked me his question (in August of 2024), my reaction was knee-jerk. By then, I had dedicated a lot of time that year to developing myself professionally to fight climate change.
I reflected on the start of this year when I lived and breathed climate-tech.
In January-April (1st year, winter semester) I focused on getting an internship.
My goal was to get an internship in climate-tech to learn under a more experienced engineer. My plan to do this was through building serendipity.
I reached out to interesting engineers and got in contact with two that were incredibly helpful with my journey: Makoto Eyre & Phil De Luna.
I first heard about Makoto and the work that his company, Homeostasis is doing through Michael in November 2023. He sent me an email about a company upcycling CO2 into graphite for batteries since I had similar research interests. At the time, my focus was on converting CO2 into carbon black using methods similar to Molten Industries.
The rabbit hole was there, Michael just gave me a little push. After reading Homeostasis’ whitepaper, I fell and couldn’t get up. Compared to so many other carbon capture companies that I’ve seen, they understand the core challenges of the space and have built incredible solutions to them.
The next six months were focused on using my technical knowledge to understand the patents in the CO2 → Graphite space. My knowledge culminated in this article, where I discuss Maple Material’s patent and how they upcycle CO2 into graphite.
I showed Makoto the article, and he loved it! It was gratifying to see someone in the space enjoy my work. Since then, Makoto and I have kept in contact, and he’s been a large catalyst for my growth.
Later, in January I met Phil when he came to Queen’s to give a talk at the Queen’s Global Energy Conference regarding his work at Deep Sky. I heard he was coming so I reached out to my network (thanks Ian!) for an introduction.
We talked about my research interests with carbon valorization and he showed me—in 20 minutes—why Deep Sky is very lucky to have him on the team.
I learned a lot in that call and my later conversations with Phil. Because of Phil, I fundamentally changed my beliefs on how to think about carbon capture economics (summarized in this article).
Toward the end of the school year in March, I bumped into Jacob, a friend from school while eating lunch. Together we talked about our passion for climate-tech and the fact that there wasn’t anywhere on campus to build in climate-tech.
In one of the most impactful lunches of my career, we decided right then and there to build a design team at Queen’s. We wrote a whitepaper and just ran with it.
I’m proud to say that we’re 22 people strong and building a CO2-Ethanol electrolyzer on campus! You’ll hear more about that in the coming months.
In the summer (April-August), I realized how much joy I’ve been brought by things not turning out the way I wanted them to.
I wasn’t able to get an internship this summer. I was a bit too early in my climate-tech journey to be helpful in an early-stage carbon capture company.
Instead, I wrote stories, took pictures, baked cheesecakes, researched, and fought people (safely!).
I was the happiest I’ve ever been this summer because I had a summer truly off for the first time in a long time.
Of course, at first, I was pissed off because I fell short of my goals. But after having the experience that I had this summer, I realized that my life isn’t about work.
It was incredibly unwise of my past self to wrap up my sense of individuality & meaning with my work. I’m not a robot.
I worked on what I wanted to out of love for the work and not out of fear of not attaining whatever result I wanted to get.
I wrote a series of memos that I’ll continue to build on, that detail my research throughout the summer; I started to bake cheesecakes and sell them to the local community; and I went on photo walks where my mundane town suddenly became full of life in my camera lens.
It felt like a labour of love, and I was incredibly happy with that.
While I started to have these thoughts pop up toward the end of the summer, I went to the 1517 summit. Thanks to the conversations I had, I was able to articulate them.
A month after Harry, Mishaal, and I’s conversation I find myself in Waterloo for Hack the North (September).
I’m at the largest hackathon in Canada, run by one of the best technical universities in Canada.
Waterloo is a lot of things, including (at one point) my dream school. The culture at Waterloo is the complete opposite of Queen’s. Whereas Queen’s is all about “work hard, play hard,” Waterloo is “Cali or Bust.”3
I came to the hackathon mostly to see friends at Waterloo that I haven’t seen in a while, as well as connect with other cool hackers. For me, this hackathon was about meeting people.
For others, it was about grinding for the whole 48 hours so that they could have a better chance for a prize or a possible internship from the event. I saw baggy eyes, trash cans overfilled with coffee cups & Red Bull, and even seizures due to a lack of sleep.
It would be hypocritical of me to say that I didn't understand. When there’s so much pressure on students to hit such high standards, this is an inevitability.
From the event, there were a lot of really cool projects that people built that show the talent at Hack The North. What I’m saying isn’t to detract from the intelligence at Hack the North. However, Harry’s question kept ringing in my head.
“What do you want to be here when you’re not?” It sure as hell wasn’t a hackathon project.
By sheer luck during the hackathon, I bump into Om Gandhi, my good friend from TKS and coincidentally Harry’s brother. We ended up talking about the conversation that I had in August, and my experience so far at Hack the North.
It would be drastic to call what I was feeling to be a culture shock, but it was near there.4
I told Om about the question at the top of my mind, and I realized in that conversation what I wanted to leave behind to the world.
“I want to leave behind stories.”
Looking back on my (short) life, I don’t remember any of the times I was cooped up in an office, my room, or a cafe working away on whatever I was working on for fear of not getting my desired result.
What I do remember is fighting climate change, becoming a Muay Thai fighter, starting a pop-up bakery, writing short stories, hitting up jazz concerts, and making stupid decisions with friends. I want each and every part of my life to be a story that someone could talk about when I’m not here anymore. Nothing more, nothing less.5
Looking forward to 2025, I think about how my year was in 2024 and how thankful I am for the experiences that I had throughout the year.
The first half of 2024 was about developing as an engineer, whereas the second half was about developing as a person. I wouldn’t want to take away any part of this past year despite the challenges of exams, stress, and everything else.
Because of what I learned this past year, I don’t have a new years resolution or some fancy set of goals that I usually do each year (a habit inherited from TKS).
All I want to do in 2025, is to live a life I can remember.
Thank you so, so, much for reading this end-of-year letter! Please feel free to email me if any of what I talked about resonated with you, I’ll always be happy to chat.
This letter took a long time to write and went through multiple drafts, many of which I threw out completely. I hope you enjoyed the end product and learned a bit more about me.
Till next time,
—AK
Indeed, they were just parties.
There’s nothing wrong with those first answers!
A common Waterloo saying where if you don’t get a FAANG job or something else in Silicon Valley, you’re a failure.
A story from the hackathon that didn’t fit into this letter but I still wanted to mention.
Before the hackathon, there’s a conference hosted by the sponsors of the event where you can network with them to talk about internships. I’m walking around the conference chatting with each sponsor to pass the time when I find myself in line for the RBC booth. The student behind me asks me:
“Hey, what are you looking for at RBC?”
“Ah, not sure to be honest. Not super interested in banking, but I wanted to see what’s up.”
“Really? Get a move on then, other people are waiting.”
Thank god I’m at Queen’s.
Sometimes with my friends, I joke about wanting 15 eulogies at my funeral all depicting a different side of my life. Nowadays, I’m starting to think that may not be such a bad idea.
My heart is warmed 🥹 I hope you continue to live a relentlessly authentic life this year
so appreciate the authenticity and zest for life that radiates from this piece!! happy 2025!!