39 Years In. Different Lives. Same Person.

Turned 39 over the weekend. I’m in my 40th year now.

Birthdays make you look back a little. Not because a year makes you wiser, but because some things only make sense once enough time has passed.

Looking back, it does not feel like one continuous story. It feels like a few different lives lived by the same person.

There was the college kid spending far too much time around Quake, Unreal, gaming cafés, clans, and the early internet. It looked like a spectacular way to waste a few years. I had no idea it would eventually become work.

Then Games2win, Tata Sky, and Games2win again. Nearly 15 years around one company, never in a straight line — a break, a return, and years learning how much sits underneath anything that looks simple from the outside: product, people, growth, money, data, and a lot of imperfect decisions.

Somewhere in there I became a husband and a father. That changed the definition of success more than work ever did. Money stopped being abstract too — it became school fees, responsibilities, and eventually enough room to choose what I work on next.

Each version carried something forward. The competitive part stayed. The curiosity stayed. Some of the older definitions of success did not.

Thirty-nine years in. Still figuring some of it out, and okay with that.