This is the ninth edition of my monthly review. September was the last month of Q3, so like June’s edition, this one contains two reviews : a look at how September went, and an honest look back at the whole quarter. Aaaand just like that, 75% of the year is gone.

September was built around two birthdays and two trips. Ryan turned 13 on the 3rd. Riya turned 18 on the 20th. What a milestone month : one child became a teenager and the other became an adult. I did a trip with each of them : Almaty with Ryan, Krabi with Riya. In the middle of it all was the fifth anniversary of losing Papa.

September was also my best training month of the year. In August I did zero cardio sessions. In September I did ten. I wrote about this struggle in my August review. I’ll explain below what I think made the difference.

Looking back at the whole quarter, Q3 had three clear chapters. July was the house full : family visiting from Canada, a food trip to Amritsar, long dinners together. August was the house emptying : Riya to her college hostel, Jatu and then Mom flying back to Canada, and a long chapter of family history closing. September was about milestones. It was a full, warm quarter, centred on people. So grateful for this.

Family & Relationships

For the ninth month running, this was the strongest pillar.

Ryan turned 13. I started his day by making him pancakes for breakfast, which he loves. Then we cracked open a new murder mystery and took two hours to solve it, went to the arcade (we go every six to eight weeks, and we both looove it), and grabbed a pizza on the way back. He is such a kind boy. Let’s see what the teenage years do to him.

A week later, on 11th Sept, we flew to Almaty for a week. It was a very last minute sort plan. There was no fixed agenda, and that was a deliberate decision. While we did some tourist activities. We rode the alpine ride at Kok Tobe twice and walked 3.5km back to the hotel afterwards (I was surprised by how much stronger he’s getting). We stood inside a ten-million-year-old canyon at Charyn (yes, 10 million years old), took three cable cars up to 3,200m at Shymbulak. But the best part of the trip was Ryan and I walking around the city, riding e-scooters around the city, and playing poker on a park bench between feeding the pigeons. From my journal:

Happy to have slow lovely days with my boy.

On 20th Sept, Riya turned 18. The evening before, we went to the gym together. At midnight we cut a tiramisu cake and called family, and on the day itself we went bowling and had pizza from Da Susy (we both love this pizza joint). And just like that, my baby is an adult now.

At the end of the month we flew to Krabi, just the two of us. We took a boat to Hong Island, spent evenings at the Ao Nang market, and had long afternoons by the pool, both of us reading. She was immersed in her own Bloodlines novel, the same series I had just finished. I loved that.

The 25th was five years since we lost Papa. I chose to celebrate the day rather than only grieve it.

I miss him dearly and I talk to him regularly. But I want to remember him smiling and be happy. Mumma, Jatu and I are still very close unit and this was the foundation laid by Mom Dad.

On 25th, I cooked mutton and palak dal for my dear friend, and it turned into a leisurely four-hour lunch. In the evening, as I was heading to Bangla Sahib, Ryan asked if he could come along. My boy is so full of love. Bangla Sahab is my annual tradition on this day ; Papa used to love this place.

Friends filled the rest of the month: long lunches, a movie with a friend, and a whole Sunday spent going from café to café with another friend.

Wellness & Fitness

I’m quite proud of this month, especially after August.

In August I planned twelve cardio sessions and did zero. For September I planned six. When I looked at the data at the end of the month:

  • Swim 5, Bike 2, Run 3 : ten cardio sessions, plus seven strength sessions
  • 359,000 steps : an average of 11,977 a day, with 17 days over 10k and 5 days over 20k

And this was without a coach. So what changed from August? Not the tracking : my watch and phone were counting everything in August too. Two things made the difference.

First, I admitted I was struggling. I wrote it plainly in August’s review : zero sessions. Accepting that made it easier to plan for where I actually was.

Second, I took small steps. None of my workouts in September was longer than 30 minutes. The idea was to get consistent first, and then build on it. A short session is easy to fit in even on a busy day, and doing it regularly mattered more than doing it big.

It also helped that training was on my morning “Today’s 3” list on 11 of the 17 days I filled it in. More on that below.

The scale was the other story. After Almaty I was 88kg, which was a shocker and exactly the wake-up call I needed. I made a daily meal plan, tracked it, and was at 85.2 within a week (water weight is quickest to lose). Then Krabi happened, and this morning I’m 87.2 again. Both trips added weight. So I need to make eating right on the road easier : carry a portable blender, protein, ground seeds and nuts, and creatine, or just have curd, which is available almost anywhere. And carry resistance bands for days without a gym. Reduce the friction and compliance will follow. This will be my focus in October ; after all travels will continue, I need to stop this as excuse to have a bad diet.

Sleep averaged six to six and a half hours, and I slept well in both Almaty and Krabi. One morning after a good night, I wrote: “Sleep has such direct correlation with energy.”

Across the quarter, July was rehab for my back (the cost, as I wrote in June, of long hours at a desk and no mobility work), August was zero, and September was the best training month of the year. The Q3 rock was to rebuild the body and cut weight. Training is finally back on track. Weight isn’t, yet.

Finance & Investing

Kept light, as always.

My main finance goal for the quarter was to get my finances structured in a proper manner, with a written investment thesis behind it. That hasn’t happened yet. No thesis work happened in September : I was hardly in the city, and there was no structure.

Also, finance didn’t make my morning list even once in September. More on that below.

So I’m changing the approach. First I’ll sit down with a fee-only financial adviser and get the overall structure right. Then I’ll go back to my own stock research.

Learning & Writing

Reading had a great month. I finished the Bloodlines series (three books in September alone), read two books of A Series of Unfortunate Events, started The Power of Unwavering Focus by Dandapani, read Osho’s Awareness, and began The Norwegian Method by the pool in Krabi. That last one is about endurance training (more on why at the end).

French started, and didn’t last beyond a week. Two things got in the way. Starting with Pimsleur’s audio was harder than I expected, because some of the words just weren’t clear. And I built myself an app to learn with, but its progression wasn’t clear, and I lost motivation after the first week. If I’m honest:

My fun was till I was building the app.

French stays a focus. It’s a completely new skill for me, and until I reach A1 it needs some plain discipline. I’m choosing a new way to learn it, and I’ll simply track how many days a week I study.

No standalone article this month. For now, these reviews are my writing.

Mind & Meditation

The weekly plan came back this month, after disappearing for two weeks in August. September showed how much it matters. As I wrote in my notes: what gets planned in the weekly gets executed.

The Sunday reflection, my replacement for the evening journal, didn’t happen even once. In August’s post I promised that if it failed too, I’d delete the field from the template and stop pretending. So that’s what I’m doing. The weekly review already does that job.

Something else I noticed. Solitude kept showing up in my gratitude notes : “the freedom and joy of solitude,” “grateful for being happy in my own company.” At the start of the year, loneliness was one of the fears I wrote down. Now I’m actually enjoying my own company.

One last honest note. Sitting by the pool in Krabi with no agenda, I noticed how much of my attention goes to shallow entertainment, mostly Instagram, which in my own words “doesn’t even feel good.” It’s coming off my phone for October.

Joy

Joy came from the usual places : people, travel and books. Two trips with my kids. Finishing the Matrix trilogy with Ryan. The arcade. A meeting of the community I joined in May. Picking up a new car with Rohin and the kids. And a line I wrote in Krabi that I’d like to remember:

Can get used to such “non todo list” sort of life.

Travel

Kazakhstan was country number three for 2026, after Japan and Hong Kong. Almaty was unexpectedly lovely : a regular, walkable city with parks, big old trees and benches everywhere. In my words, “a great place to just sit and do nothing.” Then Krabi with Riya. Thailand isn’t a new country for me, but it was a perfect week.

Across the quarter: Amritsar with the whole family in July, a hotel week in Delhi and Jaipur in August (which ended in H1N1), then Almaty and Krabi in September. Next up: Goa for a week in late October, more travel in November, and a family trip to Canada in December.

Office

Kept high level, as always. A full, focused month with a lot of deep work. Office remains my bread and butter, and I’m grateful for it.

What Actually Gets Done

This is the most useful thing September taught me, so it gets its own section.

Every morning’s journal entry starts with a “Today’s 3” : three things worth a chunk of my finite time that day. I filled it in on 17 mornings in September. Here’s what went into it:

Area Mornings in “Today’s 3” What happened
Training (swim, gym, steps, physio) 11 of 17 Beat the plan: 10 cardio + 7 strength
Work email 11 of 17 Under control
Time with Ryan 3 His birthday, a movie, an afternoon together
French 1 Stopped after a week
Investing 0 Nothing moved

For two quarters I’ve been telling myself that solo goals fail and social goals succeed, because other people create deadlines. September doesn’t fit that story. My training was entirely solo, and it worked : I kept it small, and it was on the list most mornings. Investing wasn’t on the list once.

So it isn’t really about solo vs social. It’s about whether something gets a slot in my day. If it’s on my morning list, it gets done. If it’s not, it doesn’t happen, however important I think it is.

And the uncomfortable bit : Finance, which I keep saying matters most for the next phase of my life, got no slots in the morning. Am I surprised that I didn’t make progress on this?

The Q3 Big Picture

Three months ago, I wrote down three Q3 rocks. Here’s how they landed:

Q3 Rock Final Status
Invest the idle money Missed. Not deployed, and no written thesis. Next step: a fee-only adviser.
Rebuild the body + cut weight Partial. Rehab in July, zero in August, then the best training month of the year in September. Weight ends roughly where it started.
Trip with Mom Missed, and retired. She left for Canada at the end of August.

None of the three rocks fully landed, second quarter in a row. But Q3 still gave me some of my favourite moments of the year : Riya starting college, a summer with Jatu, an old chapter finally closing, both kids’ milestone birthdays, and a trip with each of them. Same as Q2, my best moments came from people and real deadlines, not from my rock list. What September taught me is the fix : put the goal on my morning list.

The Honest Scorecard

Pillar Q3 Verdict
Family & Relationships Very Strong. Riya into college, two milestone birthdays, a trip alone with each child, Papa remembered with a smile.
Wellness & Fitness Weak, then recovering. Two lost months, then the best training month of 2026. Weight still to move.
Finance & Investing Mixed. Finances still to be structured properly. Next step: an adviser.
Learning & Writing Weak. French started and stopped. Reading was the bright spot.
Mind & Meditation No practice, real calm. Weekly plan back. Solitude became a pleasure.
Joy Strong. People, travel and books.
Travel Strong. Amritsar, Jaipur, Almaty (country #3), Krabi.
Office Steady. Full and focused.

Looking Ahead

I’m 48, and I’ll turn 50 in two years. Sitting by the pool in Krabi with nowhere to be, I wrote down what I want the next phase of my life to be about. In Hindu tradition, life is divided into four ashramas of roughly 25 years each. I’m not planning to give up worldly life, but I am thinking hard about the next 25 years.

Two goals came out of it:

  • Financial independence. Get my money structured properly, so it can grow and support the life I want.
  • Endurance, done properly. I have ten years of endurance sport behind me, and I believe I’m far from my potential. The dream : a sub-10 Ironman, built on strength training and good nutrition.

So Q4 has three rocks:

  1. Lay the foundation for financial independence. Work with a fee-only adviser, come out with a written plan and a real number, and then put the idle money to work against that plan. My own stock research comes after the plan, not before it.
  2. Rebuild the endurance base. Train every week, including travel weeks, with a minimum to hold on the road. Mobility every day, which is the real lesson of June’s back injury. And 80kg by mid-December.
  3. Canada in December. Riya, Ryan and I spend the holidays with Mom and Jatu, and bring Mom home with us. It needs a fair amount of paperwork in October.

For October specifically: the trip paperwork, the first conversation with an adviser, my full training split at home with a minimum in Goa, French on a fixed number of days a week, and Instagram off the phone. Bihar stays off for 2026, but I’ll put it on the 2027 calendar as soon as Mom’s return flight is booked.

The goals aren’t what’s different this time. What’s different is that each one gets a morning.

I am a warrior monk.

This is part of a monthly series where I review my life across the pillars that matter to me. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s awareness. If you know where you are, you can choose where to go.