Reflections from Summer 2023
Describing a transition.
I’m curled up on a couch, in a dreamy apartment with its warm lighting and hardwood floors merging with the SF skyline in the window wall reflection. I’m sipping 둥굴레차, playing 아이유 in the background, soft hair brushing my face wafting a hint of Korean herbs from my shampoo. It feels like the first time in months I’ve allowed myself to just… pause.
The past few months have felt weighty, as if decisions were rushing past me and I had to make them or lose the option to determine the forward trajectory of my life. During this time, inaction was a choice in and of itself—a choice I could not afford, because I didn’t want to succumb to the path of least resistance.
Here’s a quick sampler of the choices I made in the past three months.
I temporarily stepped back from the founder role (and have since stepped back in), instead spending a summer in NYC working on Bridgewater’s Sustainable Investing team.
I pivoted to building a patent law startup, rather than continuing to build in climate.
I committed to a year long leave of absence to pursue the founder journey.
Most of these decisions have a long backstory, and this is not a piece for telling them—rather, I wanted to focus my attention on some hyper-specific reflections from their aftermath, to document the present state of their ripple effects on my life. Here we go.
I’ll start by discussing my summer in New York. What a beautiful, tragic, terrible city. Bridgewater obtained free corporate housing for interns in East Village, but I am of the unpopular opinion that free housing in Connecticut would have created a superior experience. I wilted amid the heaps of trash and suffocating, rancid humidity—I dreamt of open space, of greenery on rolling hills, of refreshing breezes and cold mist that the concrete jungle and city juice could not fulfill, even with the occasional shower. I despised the consumerism—I yearned for the days of my weekly dinner parties, where I’d cook and gather with a small group of friends around a table every Friday night, not the entire zoo’s reservation rampage around the newest viral restaurant.
I don’t intend for my distaste of the city to reflect my opinions of its residents. Rather, my reaction is most reflective of where I as an individual locate joy at this stage of my life. Whether it is this past summer in Seattle, or quarters at Stanford, or the past week in SF, I have found that I discover delight in serendipitous excursions from the normal rhythm of life. This summer, I found my attempts at setting this normal rhythm torpedoed at every turn. Perhaps it was a consequence of the tiny fridge, which made any serious cooking time intensive and impractical; or the cut of friends I had in the city, most of whom had self-selected into the city’s quirks; or the big paycheck and endless social media, convincing me I was missing out on the experience of my life if I didn’t leave my room and open my wallet. Some confluence of the above stranded me in a desert devoid of ritual. It stripped away the emotion I would normally have experienced from my undeniably vibrant days in NYC, leaving behind only a pale, monotonous dissatisfaction—one that I felt guilty and ungrateful to be experiencing in what was otherwise the lap of luxury.
Upon stepping out of the plane in SFO, I instantaneously felt that a weight had been lifted off my chest. It could certainly have been psychological, but I argue there was something about the air. It was only then that I realized I had been breathing in shallow little gasps the entire summer, hoping to take in as little of New York into myself as possible. I stopped in the jet bridge to slowly fill my lungs to their full capacity again.
For the past five days, I have waken up each morning to the sunshine filtering softly through the cypress tree that sways right outside the window. There are droplets on the windowsill, little beaded gifts that Karl left behind. I stretch, pad softly upstairs, make a cup of tea, and admire the glimmering bay languorously stretched out in my view. These small acts convince me all is right in the world, that I have a home base amidst the chaos of life to anchor to. I have the mental and emotional space to dedicate to the things that matter, and to let slide the things that don’t. This leads to small changes everywhere—ordering food, for example, is no longer the ordeal it used to be in NYC, because I no longer particularly care whether we takeout Mediterranean or susji. There are more important things to focus on, like figuring out the softest blanket to wrap myself in for my evening read. Over the summer, there was so little I cared about that I obsessed over the tiniest details of the few things that I could wring out some meaning from. Now, I find myself in an abundance of meaning, and relish the grace to release the rest.
Outside of the city itself, my internship at Bridgewater also certainly shaped my summer. Where to begin? Working with my team on sustainable investing, perhaps—and all I can pass on are glowing reviews. My experience with green finance until Bridgewater had been disillusioning at best, filled with posturing and misaligned incentives. It felt that the SI team at Bridgewater was filled with people that were genuinely passionate and wanted to prove to the rest of the world that doing the right thing could work. I was invested (pun unintended), and I wanted to give each of the people on that team my best.
The broader firm culture was more of a mixed bag. Without diving too deeply into the details, I found the feedback oriented culture to be lacking in empathy on occasion, but was confused by how pleasant my 1:1 conversations with everyone in the firm were—I didn’t understand the source of my dissatisfaction, how it could be that everyone I voiced my critiques to seemed so receptive and empathetic and yet summed to much less. I haven’t figured out the answer yet, and have trouble separating out the confounding factors that contributed to my lethargy and dejection this summer.
But over the past few days, I’ve discovered that it likely doesn’t matter. Whether it was the city, or Bridgewater, or something else in the air, I have been so energized and fulfilled and happy over even just these first few days of working on my startup, it doesn’t even compare. The infinite potential, the unformed vision, the complete latitude that comes with being a founder is terrifying, daunting, and electrifying—I frankly feel that the past few days have been a gateway drug and I cannot bring myself to stop. I feel despair and elation in turn, sometimes over the course of a single hour long brainstorming session, and the rush of emotion is unmatched from anything else I have ever experienced. I still suffer from doubts that the founder path is right for me, but after the intoxicating first week, I don’t know how I could possibly settle for less.
I’m convinced the almost overwhelming nature of these emotions is part of why I let my cofounder convince me that we should build in patent law, an area I have essentially no prior experience in, instead of climate. On some level, I think I’m scared—scared that if I were to be working on a startup in climate, an area I care so deeply about, all of the emotions I’m feeling today would be exponentially sharper, and I don’t know if I have the fortitude to weather them given everything I’m already feeling. I believe the level of emotional separation allows me to be more clear-headed in making the most rational choices in the best interest of the company and myself.
This post was intended to be longer, but I think it’s bedtime given my new old person daily rhythm, so… I hope to wrap up this abrupt ending with a written dedication to documenting my thoughts here more frequently. This may end up reading more like a startup blog (one of frankly too many out there) or a personal diary, but I hope to bring you along, reader, in this wild and fantastical journey. Until the next time.
Addendum
Coming back with one more on NYC. Something that struck me is the blindness of ambition that pervades the inhabitants of the city. There was a moment right before the summer started when I was in the mountains, watching the sun set between the peaks, mosquitos biting my ankles, breeze ruffling through my hair. I’m self aware enough to know that this sounds hippie, but in that moment, I realized how little everything that consumes my attention on a day to day matters. The vast majority of my time is dedicated to figuring out things like my next career move, my academic standing, some nuanced social situation—things that are simply social constructs we have almost unconsciously attached ourselves to to give our lives artificial meaning. In that moment, I had complete freedom to assign value to my life via any system I wanted: not money, not popularity, not success, but perhaps the number of blades of grass I could count in a day, or the number of purrs I could elicit from stray cats.
In the city, it feels as if people have wholeheartedly bought into certain constructs that we have deemed as markers of “success” without ever pausing to question if these are the milestones they want to strive for. It feels like they walk so fast, work so hard, party so late that they never have the time to ask themselves “why”—and I say “they”, but while I was in the city, I certainly meant “we”.
Perhaps some people are able to maintain their curiosity of “why” while inundated with all the city tells you, shows you, you can have if only you reach high enough, play by the rules of its game. I was not such a person, so I felt that my desire to endlessly question and reexamine my life was stifled while I drowned in the depths of the city. Now that I am out, surrounded by views of sky and water and trees that are vaster and older and wiser than I ever hope to be, I find myself asking “why” again, and I hope to never let it go.