Notes towards becoming a better investor

There is a divine nature inherent to labor. The key to finding professional success and happiness is in seeking that sacred thing. Some people find that the divine comes from only devoting their labor to missions they care about. For me, I’ve found something spiritual in delighting in the minutia of my work.

The term at hand, umarell, is borrowed from Emilian and is rare enough for my word processor to display it underlined with a string of pink dots. Literally it means “little man,” but within my tiny sub-community it means “someone who spends time observing workspaces, typically construction jobsites.” I am an umarell. I love watching work being... See more

What I found though is that making myself understandable all the time diluted the joy that lies instead in specificity — in concisely crafting a life that only needs to make sense to me.

Allowing yourself to be misunderstood teaches you who values you for your personhood alone and how much you actually need from other people to feel sufficiently... See more

What is neoliberalism anyway? One common understanding of the term describes neoliberalism as an ideology of “free markets” and “deregulation.” But this definition mistakes advertising for reality. A better understanding, and the one Baradaran implicitly invokes, sees neoliberalism as re-regulating, not deregulating. Rather than getting the state... See more

Being a woman in a male-dominated industry has made me very aware that this culture is sorely lacking something I am naturally able to provide in spades. Not in a way that saps me of energy or makes me feel like a martyr, but in a way that feels fulfilling and grounding in my sense of self.