Atomic Stories
Appreciate your hometown while you can
Florida is a constant punch line, but it’s also where I formed my early self. I was always angry at my parents for moving to Gainesville, a sleepy college town, from Queens. Our hometowns shape us in ways we don’t appreciate until we leave, and most people with ambitions leave Gainesville. Staying there after schooling meant you didn’t ‘make’ it. I experienced it as a child when it had little diversity and as a student at the University of Florida, which taught me to appreciate it for its intellectual culture. Contrary to its image, Florida is a vibrant microcosm in which the sheer cultural diversity of the country can be found. The diversity of culture is complemented by diversity of thought. I once thought it was the worst place I could have grown up because of the media’s image. But now I realize how wrong I was, despite living in one of the ostensibly coolest cities in the U.S.
Find a woman who will push you in your career
I encountered a powerful and intellectual woman in 2020 who changed my life for the better forever. Carole was my engineering lead, and I was her product manager. We were seen as a duo unlike any of the other engineer/product manager pairs, likely because we were women with similar personalities - we spoke directly and without fluff, which didn’t endear us to people. However, we produced the product with the highest annual recurring revenue in the company. We struggled together with the invalidation of being unrecognized for what we contributed. But, she encouraged me to learn the Salesforce platform profoundly and because of her guidance and friendship, I have become known for my technical skills in my network and job. Were it not for Carole, I wouldn’t have been able to climb to the income rung I reached; I started in the workforce with a history master’s and no ‘hard’ skills. Carole doesn’t even have a bachelor’s degree in an industry that shuts people out based on credentials. She taught me that I can master anything I attempt. I’m eternally grateful to her for enabling my class to climb. She held the ladder to pull me up with her.
Don’t write off people who study cultures other than their own
It is en vogue these days to insist that only ‘natives’ should undertake scholarship on a culture deemed ‘marginal’ in the U.S. In my brief time in academia as a master’s student, a Gen X white woman, Amy, gifted me the cornerstone of my current spiritual life - the language of bhakti (or devotional) poetry from medieval India that undergirds modern Hindu practice. She was a scholar of Hinduism & South Asia, speaking Hindi/Gujarati/Urdu fluently with reading ability in several others. As a child, I heard that vernacular version of Hindi before I heard English. But I didn’t understand how to parse it until Amy. Bhakti literature and music are now the cornerstone of my spiritual life and connect me with Indian aesthetics.
Don’t let your struggles dampen your risk appetite
The financial crisis upended my expectations for life and mobility. The process that had overproduced elites at an unsustainable pace had reached its logical end - the implosion of the pyramid scheme. I have had a chip on my shoulder and a perpetual fear of falling backward, as it were, and I didn’t believe in myself because of that initial struggle in the labor market. My sense of self-worth became overly defined by my career or lack thereof. I’ve made progress, but it’s still there, like an albatross. The total lack of security and erosion of the middle class have shaped my life trajectory such that I lament all the years of lost income simply because of where I started. The financial crisis represented dashed hopes of middle-class security. Ever since, I’ve struggled to change my relationship with risk-taking.
Opt out of the status games on the Internet
Before the pandemic, I was a shell of a person obsessed with the phone, a veritable zombie-like they say the kids are. The release of Facebook was my senior year of high school, so I eventually became addicted to it as it replaced T9 texting as a mode of social organization and signaling. One’s level of popularity was based on the amount of pictures they were tagged in. I found Cal Newport and read Deep Work because I heard a random episode of Ezra Klein’s podcast. My life changed, and I eventually removed social media from my life. The breaking point, naturally, was the summer of 2020. Newport brought me back from the abyss where I might have been lost to a life of shallowness. He lit a spark in me that no amount of scolding from my ex-husband could. My writing practice is only possible because of that random entertainment choice in 2019 that opened my eyes. Our inability to focus is an underrated reason for our lack of meaning.
Talk less, smile more
Alexander Hamilton is perhaps an odd person who has shaped my life, and yet I feel like he and I have the same neuroses and a striking amount of personality traits in common. He was strident, opinionated, brilliantly verbal, a prolific writer, a veritable polymath, and a Renaissance man. He was brash in his communication and often made people angry with bitter truths. He was also a Cassandra whose genius was unrecognized until after his untimely death. From him, I learned to stick with my convictions and that my ‘masculine’ coded personality would help me go far. I realized that intellection and writing would afford me a rich inner life. After slogging through the famous biography, his story inspired me to read books heavily again. Hamilton’s spirit lives in me, externalized when I write. The most important lesson from him I imbibed was to talk less and smile more. If he had, he might have lived longer, which was a great tragedy for early American society.
Find your greatest fans outside your regular friend circles
Were it not for a man, S, with whom I had an on-and-off fling in my twenties, I may never have stuck with writing in 2024. I remember being attracted to him while we were both involved in student politics at UF because he didn’t care at all about his Indian American identity and more about ideas. That was downright revolutionary for me at the time because I had ensconced myself among Indian-Americans until then as though they were my people. They weren’t because racial/ethnic identity isn’t a good foundation for lasting bonds for me. S and I were romantically unsuited to each other, but we’ve corresponded intermittently for the past decade. When I began writing, S was my very first subscriber. He reads more of my writing than any other real-life friend, and we haven’t seen each other since 2014. He gives me feedback and sends encouraging words in response to most posts, even though I never would have expected it from someone in the ‘ex’ category. Sometimes, exes can positively shape your life even after the trysts are in the rearview.
Take the leap and make yourself uncomfortable
My first product management job was a golden ticket to the middle class. While I didn’t work for a prestigious company, I gathered rare and valuable skills that have helped me in every job since. I apply product thinking to an absurd amount of life contexts. I make bad product management jokes with my partner. Had I not accidentally fallen into it, I would never have had the capital to throw money at my primary problems: depression and my lack of career direction. Product management principles help me stand out among my peers in consulting today. I acquired a wide range of skills that have helped me adapt to a constantly changing labor market. I’m grateful to the people who gave me a chance - I accidentally broke into a field that people pay gobs of money to enter.
Get outsider perspectives on what’s close to you
While in graduate school, I was lucky enough to qualify for scholarships to study language and literature for two summers in India. There, I made lifelong friends and experienced India through the eyes of people who have no ancestral connection to the culture. That broadened my perspective on my ancestral homeland beyond the experiences I had with family. I learned how to be on my own in India those summers; my family had never let me out of their sight and kept me in a bubble. India, however, is chaos, and learning to live in it changes you. Getting around in a country so disorganized taught me a different kind of self-reliance that the college couldn’t have taught me.
Find a life of depth
I would start a cult for Cal Newport’s ideas if his audience were susceptible to that. Newport’s methods of living a deep life immunized to the influence of tribalism and the toxic internet environment. He taught me how to construct my life to promote mastery of complex skills, reading, and writing, and how to spend my limited time on earth intentionally. His books changed my life, proving that books can be some of the most valuable objects anyone can own. Without Newport, I wouldn’t have a good life, nor would I have been able to climb. Where I am now is miraculous compared to where I was before his ideas entered my brain.