I know now I was grieving something , the death of an ambition. I started attending reading events at Green Apple Books, my local bookstore, because it was something I liked in grad school, and I had to get myself out of the house. Going to those events was (is) a way of traveling without moving; they have afforded me an incredibly valuable... See more

Smart quitting is such a vital skill.

Something that my Substack audience generally doesn’t know about me: before I was known as a writer, I was a mediocre singer-songwriter, in my early 20s. I’d taken this up after failing to finish a novel had tanked my mental health. I told everyone I was done with writing, but I still needed some way to get... See more

So I’m taking my belated gap year, I’m “dropping out” of the tech career ladder. At some point you run out of excuses (save more money, figure out immigration stuff, also these layoffs, also the uncertainty, and what if you just spiral, or what if you fail, blah blah blah). By the end it felt less like a decision and more like an inevitability: I

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