Topic
Personal Notes
Read Time
20 Mins
I almost got KOed by a Lorry Yesterday. Here's What I'm Thinking About Today.
April 10, 2026
Almost every week I cycle from HSR Layout to Mathikere through the outer ring road to meet my parents. It keeps me fit. It keeps me close to family. It's one of those rituals that feels small but means a lot. This time I was cycling back to HSR at 10pm. Outer ring road at that hour is exactly what you'd expect — chaotic, relentless, everyone moving like the road belongs to them. I've navigated it enough times to know how to find a line through the havoc. But this time, metro construction at Hebbal had created a new detour I didn't see coming. I was on the right side of the road. I signalled, gradually eased left, and stopped briefly to let the traffic rush past before crossing over completely. In that moment of stillness, a lorry overtook me from the right. The load on the side caught me. I felt the pressure before I understood what was happening; I was being dragged, pulled sideways, thrown into the middle of the road. My front tyre burst instantly from the force. The lorry didn't stop. It just kept going. In those few seconds of being dragged, I saw death. And I was ready to accept it. That I'm writing this today feels like a miracle. The lorry driver never looked back. I sat in the middle of the road for a while, just breathing, front tyre completely gone, traffic moving around me like nothing had happened. I couldn't sleep last night. Not just from the shock, but because something had cracked open. In those seconds of being dragged across the road, my brain wasn't thinking about deadlines or unread messages or whether a design was polished enough. It was thinking about the open mic performance I keep putting off. The book I keep meaning to start. The things I've been waiting to do until the time was right. Here's what almost dying taught me: the time is never going to feel right. And one second is genuinely all it takes to be wiped off the face of the earth. The last thing you'd be thinking about isn't your to-do list, it's everything you kept waiting on.
Perfectionism Is Just Fear With Better Branding
Designers — myself included — are professional perfectionists. We frame it as craft. We call it standards. We tell ourselves we're not shipping because the work isn't ready, the spacing is off, the hierarchy needs one more pass. But lying awake at 3am after almost being killed by a lorry, I couldn't maintain that story anymore. Perfectionism is fear. Fear that it won't land. Fear that people will see the rough edges. Fear that the version in your head, the perfect one, the one that exists only in your imagination, will be diminished by the real one that actually exists in the world. And here's the thing about that perfect version: nobody else can see it. It helps no one. It changes nothing. It just keeps you safe inside the gap between almost done and done.
Ship the Work
I'm not saying lower your standards. I'm not saying put garbage out into the world and call it done. I'm saying the difference between your 90% and your 100% is almost never as significant as you think — and the cost of closing that gap is almost always higher than it looks. The work that's out in the world, imperfect, real, visible, does something. It reaches someone. It starts a conversation. It gets you feedback that makes the next thing better. The work that stays in your drafts folder does none of that. A lorry reminded me of this. I'd rather have learned it a softer way, but here we are. So whatever you've been sitting on, that side project, that open mic set or maybe just asking out that girl — do it. Not because the moment is perfect. Because you're here, right now, and that's not something any of us should take for granted. Finish the thing. Let it go. Start the next one.
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