Yo! This is my first post in an attempt to explore my curiosities, articulate the questions that’ve been swirling in my head, and maybe even spark some conversations for you to have with yourself. I’m stoked to be sharing what I’ve been learning and to give a peek into what’s going inside my mind.
I’m currently living in Honolulu, Hawaii and I’ve felt welcomed back after spending three months here last year. I’m excited to experience living in a familiar place in a different space with a new roommate and to try new things. As the seasons change and transition from ski to surf season, I’m looking forward to sliding down water in a different state of matter.
Why am I starting this thing?
In America, the path is laid out for you from the beginning. We enter preschool, then go to kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high school. Then you’re supposed to try and get into a good college so you can get an internship so you can use that as a stepping stone to your next internship so you can get a decent job out of school. And that’s pretty much as far as things go in terms of the default, structured path.
Along the way, things are predictable. The curriculum is set and you can even figure out exactly what classes you’ll be taking the following year since everything is already determined. There is some freedom in how you choose to spend your time in electives or outside of school, but the set of choices is still limited compared to what the new college grad life unlocks. When you’re growing up, the choices for after-school free time are finite and might be deciding between art vs. sports vs. video games vs. drugs (hopefully not). Compare that to being an adult - the choices are limitless. This is biased because I grew up in the suburbs of Virginia and now live a nomadic lifestyle, but when we’re young, we tend to pick from a pre-selected set of activities rather than take the time to fully explore our true interests and seek out things that deviate from the norm.
This anticipated, expected life path doesn’t stop at college. Because for many new grads like myself, we move to a new city with a new job and are excited to finally become adults. This period of time that lasts roughly two years from the time you start your first big boy/girl job is sometimes known as the ‘getting your shit together’ era. Everything is new and exciting. Friends are throwing housewarming parties and there’s happy hours to meet new faces. But that also comes with the post-grad blues which is a non-scientific mild sadness that arises when you go from a college campus of extremely high population density where co-living in dorms exists and serendipitous conversations happen while walking between classes to the real world. During the ‘getting your shit together’ phase of life, the goal is still predetermined. We started from chasing A’s to internships to landing that first job and now the goal is getting that first promotion. This might not be the case for everyone, but I think the first promotion becomes the default goal for many new grads because a lot of us enter the workforce with imposter syndrome and getting promoted is a decent proxy for not-actually-being-bad-at-your-job. During the transition from college to new grad, you get more freedom at the expense of structure and not enough of us realize this early on, so we end up putting our heads down and marching towards the next default goal - the first promotion.
Getting back to the title of this post - the reason why I’m starting this newsletter/blog/thing is because I have done all of the above and I still have no clue what I’m doing. I had a great childhood with a lot of support from my parents, studied hard, got the internships, got the job, and even got promoted. And now I’m wondering ‘What’s next?’
So far, I haven’t actually figured out the answer to that question, but at least I have realized that no one is going to tell me ‘What’s Next?’ Currently, every major aspect of my life is fluid. Where I live, what I do for a living, what I do in my free time, and who I spend it with can all change - if I want it to. I hope being aware that I’m in this malleable situation and approaching it with intentionality will lead me to the next immediate step I should take. Writing is simply just a tool for me to check on myself and articulate my thoughts - Thoughts that are usually too jumbled up in a world of notifications, doomscrolling, and instant access to an infinite catalog of content.
Starting this thing is a forcing function for myself to think about these deep, existential life questions and I’m hoping to try and clear away some of the fog, one step at a time. From Nat Eliason’s ‘What You Should Write About’:
The best writing isn't for anyone else. It's for you. It's to try to clear the fog on the questions wracking your brain, regardless of who wants to join for the ride. For writing to resonate with others, it needs to resonate with you first. And the scarier the fog you're willing to share your journey through, the more people it will resonate with.
And lastly, there is the (small) chance that the same things I think about on a daily basis and want to write about actually resonate with others. From Nicole’s ‘why you should create in public’:
“I see it this way: hiding your creative work has infinite opportunity cost – it prevents you from getting any feedback (good or bad) that helps you improve; it silences the variety of luminous, expansive, electrified ideas that seek articulation. It severs any possible connection to other people who could inform and add color to those ideas. On the other hand, sharing your work has infinite upside – as soon as you gather up the courage to allow yourself be seen, you activate this latent serendipity tucked into every crevice of the world. In the very best cases, you can provide people with the language or framework or experience by which they can explain something fundamental about themselves. You can create access to a hidden dimension – something good and true. You realize that our human experiences can be both broadly universal and intimately specific at the very same time.”
I definitely don’t have all the answers or even some answers, but I’m hoping that I can start by asking some of the right questions.
📚 What I’m reading
Not Fade Away - How a successful and happy man navigates the rest of his life after he finds out he has terminal cancer. I re-read this book after reading it front to cover last year in one sitting. Highly recommend.
🎵 What I’m listening to
Intruxx by Glass Animals
🙏 Shoutouts
Jen for talking with me about writing and other stuff for hours at Honolulu Coffee Experience check out her newsletter
Kora for helping me with surfboard advice and driving me to check out a moped - things are starting to come together