field-notes/

> short observations from the body, the road, the day.

> dated. mostly unedited.

2026-07-23·

the paper oscilloscope, half-published

the series is done on paper. all eight articles written, most of them sitting in the code quietly — not linked anywhere, not visible to anyone.

only the intro and article 1 are live. the rest exist but i'm not sure they're ready. or i'm not ready. or i don't want to release something and then have to live with it being wrong in public.

i don't know if staggered publishing is discipline or cowardice. maybe both. maybe the distinction doesn't matter if the articles actually get better while i wait.

the paper oscilloscope is what i'm calling it — warm aged-paper aesthetic, bangla-first. the first honest thing i've written about what computer science actually is, from someone still inside the confusion of learning it.

2026-07-03·

catching fajr, missing it

the tuitions moved to 7am this month. which means waking at 4:30, 4:45. which means fajr is no longer a prayer i choose to get up for — it's just there, at the edge of waking, unavoidable now.

i thought this would fix my namaj problem. for months my record was bad, more missed than kept. now i catch fajr almost every day. the getting-up is solved.

but i stand in it half-asleep, reciting on autopilot, my mind already on the 7am student. i catch the prayer and miss the prayer at the same time. presence turns out to be a separate problem from attendance. i solved the easy one and called it the hard one.

no clean lesson here. just noticing that showing up and being there are not the same thing, and i only fixed the first.

2026-06-25·

the correction list

finished my first paid website this month. a real client, a real event. i poured more into it than the fee justified — made it as premium as i could, because i couldn't help it.

someone outside the project saw it and called it premium, amazing. an hour later the client sent a list of corrections. no thank-you first, just the list. it landed like a verdict on the whole thing.

it wasn't. the list was four small items, most of them fair. but for an hour i couldn't tell the difference between "here are some changes" and "you failed." that gap — between what the work is and what one blunt message makes it feel like — is the actual job. not the code.

the work was good and the work needed changes. both true at once. learning to hold both without the second erasing the first is the thing i'm actually practicing now.

2026-06-19·

dhaka 25k, even splits

2:32:40. six-oh-seven per kilometer. 68th overall out of 942. my first 25k back after the injury months, and somehow my most even race — the second half almost exactly the first.

it fell apart in one specific place. right glute gave out around km 18 to 20, and everything downstream started compensating. i finished on borrowed mechanics. the time held; the body filed a complaint.

the even splits felt like discipline while i ran them and like luck when i looked back. maybe they're the same thing at this distance — holding a pace you're not sure you can hold, and being wrong about the doubt.

2026-05-08·

heat sickness, then a run

woke up feeling like fever. body weak. it was a long-run day, but i decided to skip the morning and rest. tuitions all afternoon. the heat outside was worse than my head, somehow.

at 7pm i went out anyway. ten kilometers, slow as i could run. the weather was hell — humid, still warm. but i finished, no pain, just sweated through everything.

the lesson, maybe: my body lies to me about what it can do. the fever-feeling in the morning was real, but it wasn't a no-running signal. it was a be-careful signal. those are different.

2026-05-05·

no morning run

today was a running day. but relatives stayed at our place, and a 5am dawn run would have raised questions. why is he out so early? where is he going? what is this?

the answer "i'm running a marathon next month" doesn't fit into the kind of conversation a relative wants to have at 6am tea. so i skipped.

this is what order-vs-truth looks like in practice. not big philosophical decisions about disclosure — just small ones. the run is moved to tomorrow. the relatives don't know. the order holds.

2026-05-01·

forgiveness, between tuitions

i listen to podcasts on my phone in the traffic between tuitions. usually background. occasionally a line catches.

today, ramjan bhai on a podcast with sadman sadik:

আমি তাদের ক্ষমা করে দিতে চাই, কারণ আমি চাই আল্লাহও আমাকে ক্ষমা করে দিক।

i want to forgive them because i want allah to forgive me.

played it back three times. it shifted something. forgiving the people who've wronged me has always felt like a transaction i wasn't getting anything back from. this reframes it: i forgive not for them, but for the kind of person i want to be received as.

simpler now. less argued with.

— nj · 7 notes · 2026-07 · more as they come