Diary of someone Terribly Real, week 1.

Two years ago I left a stable job for an idea I couldn't stop thinking about. Told myself it'd take six months to figure out. It's been two years. I'm still figuring it out.

Nobody warns you what year two actually feels like. Year one has adrenaline — everyone's proud of you, the risk still feels romantic, you tell the story at dinners and people lean in. Year two, the story's old news. You're just... in it. Rent's still due on the 1st. Payroll's still due before that. Some months those two dates fight each other and payroll wins, quietly, without anyone knowing it was close.

I still Careem breakfast because the kitchen feels too far, except now it's not laziness, it's the fact that I've been up since 5am replying to a client in a different timezone and the fifteen minutes it'd take to make eggs feels like a resource I don't have.

The group chat still plans the Maldives trip nobody books. I still say I'll go. I mean it less than I used to.

This is what I actually wanted to write about — not the highlight reel of "founder journey," but the terribly real one. The version where some weeks are wins and some weeks you're just checking your account balance like it might've quietly refilled itself. It hasn't. It never does.

So that's the frame for this: my two years in, still building, still terribly real about it — and the everyday stuff around it too, the UAE-life stuff most of us are quietly living the same way.

Every week, one honest piece of it.