Here I am, back at my laptop, writing regularly again after a two-year hiatus, it’s been about two months now since I picked up the habit again. And honestly? I have stroopwafels to thank for it.
A couple of months back, I got back from a quick two-day trip to Bangalore, you know, one of those “blink and you’ll miss it” kind of trips. But sometimes the universe has this funny way of making even the shortest trips memorable. I’m hanging out with a friend when she suddenly pulls out this package. “Upendra read your Amsterdam post,” she says, handing me a box of stroopwafels. “He asked me to give this to you.” Here I am, holding Dutch cookies and feeling unexpectedly emotional.
I kid you not, I almost teared up right there.
It wasn’t just the stroopwafels (though let’s be honest, those caramel-filled circles of joy are pretty amazing). It was the realisation that someone, an actual human being, had read something I wrote, remembered it, and cared enough to do something about it. In our world of endless scrolling and double-tapping, that felt like finding a handwritten letter in your mailbox.
Austin Kleon talks about this in “Show Your Work“, the whole idea of putting yourself out there and seeing what happens. I’d read the book, nodded along wisely, but never really got it until that moment in Bangalore. The benefits he mentions? I always imagined them as abstract things, maybe more followers, perhaps some nice comments. I never thought the payoff would be so… tangible. So sweet. Literally.
But here’s the kicker, that small gesture didn’t just give me a sugar rush. It dragged me back to writing after a two-year hiatus.
Writing has been this weird relationship for me. When I finally sit down to do it, I remember why I enjoy it, and wonder why I stayed away for so long. Plus, it’s definitely helped sharpen my rusty writing skills along the way. More importantly, it’s become my way of capturing moments that would otherwise just… slip away. You know how you’ll be scrolling through old photos and suddenly remember something you’d completely forgotten? That’s what my old posts do for me. They’re like little time capsules, reminding me of the person I was when I visited that random café in Amsterdam or got caught in the rain in some other city. Reading them back, I realise how much these experiences shaped me, even in tiny ways.
And that’s the thing about memories, they’re not just about the past. They’re like breadcrumbs leading you forward, making you hungry for more adventures, more stories, more moments worth remembering. Every time I revisit an old post, I think, “Man, I should really get out there and create more of these.”
I’m incredibly grateful to my friends for this unexpected push. Sometimes it takes someone else believing in your work to remind you why you started in the first place. Their thoughtful gesture didn’t just give me stroopwafels, it gave me back my motivation to create, to explore, to make memories worth writing about.