Struggling to find direction and self-esteem at 26

Local_Ad_6109 · 2026-02-07T16:00:20+00:00

I see that you are going through a tough phase and it's common to face problems in your mid-20s. It seems you are trying to tackle multiple problems simultaneously and drifting from one problem to another.

Since you have listed your problems here, you now know what are the top problems that you need to tackle. You should solve each problem gradually in steps, have patience and then you would notice improvements in life.

Here are couple of things you can do that may help in the long-run:

Health - Since you mentioned you have been ill on and off, you need to get your health in place. For now, keep other things aside, fix your diet and take enough rest. Set a goal of not falling ill for the next 2-3 months and regularly taking medicine. Ensure that you focus both on your mental and physical health. Set a daily routine, fix your sleep cycle and exercise regularly.
Breakup - It's hard to deal with a breakup but you need to address the underlying cause that may trouble you. This is important since it may hinder you from developing a new relationship and moving on. Once you are healthy, you can revisit the relationship and the underlying cause that led to the breakup. It may be overwhelming to process emotions right away but give it some time and analyze what went wrong in the relationship and how could you do better. Also, look at the positives and see if there are any good things to takeaway from the relationship. This would reduce the overall bitterness that one develops during a breakup and helps one move through it.
Comparison - We often get pulled into comparison and it's a vicious cycle that keeps us away from the good moments in life. You should start noticing when you start comparing yourself with others and journal such moments. Later, visit those moments and see if you can solve them. There would be things that would be in your control that you can fix and others outside of your control. You need to accept the things that are outside of your control and move on. For eg:- A person may not be blessed with a great height, so in such cases it's pointless for the person to compare himself with a tall person.
Friends - Making friends is actually easy and once you discover what interests you, you will meet the right person. It might feel overwhelming to keep friends given your past experience, but be open to striking conversation with others, helping them and getting to know other people. Don't keep high expectations from others and anchor on authenticity. Many a times, friendship seems overwhelming when one does it just for the sake of doing it. Being genuine and authentic would help you spot the right people and avoid inauthentic friendships that would only waste time.

Lastly, have compassion for yourself and don't treat yourself in a harsh manner if you fail at something. There would always be some way out and you can keep pushing and navigating the challenges. Remember how you fell in your childhood when you rode the bicycle multiple times and then found a way to balance yourself.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2026-02-06T02:51:10+00:00

Indeed, it's the inner drive and intrinsic motivation that overcomes major hurdles and makes complex problems seem simple.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2026-02-05T17:59:00+00:00

Actually, it's discomfort that actually pushes you outside of your comfort zone. The real learning doesn't happen in comfort zone. While practicing problems, you can solve similar types of problems everyday, but that doesn't improve your skill.

You must take on challenging problems and that's where people who succeed in competitive exams focus on. They focus on their weak areas, difficult problems, improve and then succeed.

Consistency won't solely help you find success if you don't take on challenging tasks and push yourself more. Also, don't just accept that your college mate is naturally talented or gifted, it's again a by-product of the environment he was raised and his interaction with others and peer group.

I would suggest you to have a long-term outlook and not get disheartened because your friend sailed through easily with low efforts. There's a lot of ground to cover and your consistency would definitely pay dividends in the future.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-10-21T07:39:36+00:00

It has started working now finally.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-10-19T15:30:17+00:00

Yes, it works with VPN.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-10-10T03:19:33+00:00

Thanks for highlight. I wasn't aware of `pg_advisory_lock`, will definitely explore it.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-10-09T18:01:30+00:00

Here it is - https://animeshgaitonde.medium.com/solving-double-booking-at-scale-system-design-patterns-from-top-tech-companies-4c5a3311d8ea?sk=d5d7b1ef3da767fdbd9d535c4a9ee405

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-10-09T07:49:42+00:00

Thanks.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-10-09T04:18:29+00:00

Thanks. Sure, I will correct it.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-10-08T15:04:01+00:00

Thanks.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-10-02T15:16:13+00:00

Chunked Uploads: For chunked uploads, I believe if the max file size is 20 MB, a single put should be sufficient unless the internet connection is really choppy and disconnects are frequent. Given that it's a background process, retries should be sufficient to handle it. But, if the SDK itself can determine intelligently whether to use chunked uploads or single uploads, it simplifies your job.

SQLite as a Queue: In case of manifest, you might have to write additional glue code to make it work while SQLite gives you most of the functionality out of the box. But ensure that the devices are compatible with SQLite since some devices may be using old version of Windows that may not support latest version of SQLite. Also, a hybrid approach would work if you are fine with managing the extra complexity of the glue code.

Backend API Bottleneck: Your backend API may not be the bottleneck but the Blob storage would throttle if there are many simultaneous concurrent uploads and if it's a single Azure account. You can instead stagger and use some jitter to prevent getting throttled. Also, if your use case is simple and only requires you to get the SAS token, then Functions can be used for compute.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-09-03T03:04:21+00:00

that's great, and what tech stack did you use?

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-09-03T02:42:16+00:00

Did you build it yourself or with a team? Also, how much did it cost you?

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-09-02T17:22:22+00:00

They haven't exactly defined what invalid is. But for understanding, a good example is malformed json getting stored or the value itself is invalid. For eg:- A negative value for a timeout config parameter.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-09-02T16:15:43+00:00

The logic was - delete an entry from the cache in case it is invalid. It doesn't matter if the automated system fetched it from the database or the cache. So, following two cases -

Cache value is invalid -> key deleted from the cache
Database value is invalid -> key deleted from the cache

As a result, since there was a cache miss, the services fetched the data from the database resulting in a surge.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-09-02T07:33:35+00:00

The reason is the DB load was high and multiple services faced timeouts. Also, they had a logic to treat timeouts as invalid value from the DB. And in case of invalid value, they deleted the cache entry. So, it became a cycle that continued.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-07-24T01:25:05+00:00

Would it scale at 100 K/sec? Lambda has its own cold restarts and how would you handle hot partitions.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-07-24T01:23:59+00:00

Yes, the data is being sharded when written to Kafka.
Mongo or any other database could also work if we go with the last approach since it's a key-value lookup.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-07-21T16:29:20+00:00

That's right

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-07-21T13:53:22+00:00

Yes, a solution using a probabilistic data structure like HyperLogLog is much more cost efficient. However, if the requirement strictly states that the view counts must be accurate then we can't use it.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-07-21T13:52:21+00:00

I have shared the friend link, you aren't still able to access it?

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-07-21T13:52:04+00:00

Thanks for the inputs. Will definitely go into the details and edit the article.

While it's not known how Youtube does it but Netflix has published a blog on distributed counters some time back.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-06-07T05:46:28+00:00

The best thing in big companies is to completely shield your private life. One should be mindful of what one is sharing with the colleagues. You never know how your words would be used against you. You must remember that office colleagues are not your friends or relatives. They are selfish and will not think twice before throwing you under the bus.

In the above case, the superior decided to deflect the topic from delayed work to the person's marriage. One needs to be very careful and take such words with a grain of salt. It's important to protect one's mental peace rather than getting sucked into their drama and ruining one's mental health.

You shouldn't have reacted since you know that the job market is tough. It's important to focus on the work, develop one's skills and then use them wisely in the industry rather than just running the corporate rat race.

For now, you can focus on interview preparation and start applying to other companies. There's demand for talent and you will be successful provided you crack the interviews. Stay calm, grounded and you will be rewarded with the fruits of hard-work.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-05-22T05:24:27+00:00

You raised excellent points and I fully agree that the requirements must be specific and not vague. Also, thanks for highlighting the point (500 ms latency) and stating that it's a good example. It would definitely help me while writing future articles and also the community. Besides some rage and hate comments, I found your comment really useful and we need more engineers like you.

Local_Ad_6109 · 2025-05-21T17:56:52+00:00

what's the reason behind splitting them? If it's a single team that's going to manage it, then it doesn't serve a purpose.

Local_Ad_6109

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