Life took a turn for me the past year. I feel like the most significant events in my life creep up on me when I least expect them. I applied to my university over a weekend simply on the context that most of my childhood friends were going there...and I got in. I applied to my master's degree on a train ride back from Manhattan over a text I received from a close friend of mine during that same ride. I incorporated a company and everything associated with it, over the course of two hours on one quiet evening. I found out my sibling was getting married when I sent my mother a text showing off my newly acquired TV, to which her one and only response was "Save your money, your sister is getting married." Some might call it reckless and carefree, but those who know me, know I am a very calculating individual. I actually overthink and overanalyze everything and set up mental gameplans for my life, years out into the future. Yet, for all my over-thinking, it seems that my best and most important decisions have been made without a thought behind my eyes and a "eh, why not" attitude. It made me really wonder whether all my over-planning was worth it, and whether or not I should just start becoming more impulsive. These are all stories for another time however, as this one is about a story that took place August 2023.

Prologue

I finished all my master's studies around December 2022. I had completed all the necessary coursework, applied for graduation and got approved. The months that followed, I mostly practiced leetcode, worked on personal projects and merely existed (thanks to my parents generosity for keeping their offspring alive). I mostly waited for the formal graduation ceremony that happened in May 2023.

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Around this time, I began intensely applying for jobs. The scorching job market of the pandemic era was beginning to sizzle, and the competition started to heat up. I knew what I wanted to do, but was pretty open to applying to everything, everywhere. Somewhere in that application chaos cycle, I received an email about a role with a request to have a quick call about my background and the position. I genuinely do not remember when and how I applied for the job, but it turned out to be for a position in my dream field, financial engineering. I won't bore you with the interview details here, but over a month of anxiety riddled nights and several interview rounds later, I was presented with an offer I didn't want to turn down. The catch? I needed to relocate to Virginia...and they didn't provide relocation assistance. The best I got, was a negotiation to give me a month of remote work at the start to give me time to move.

Road Trip

to be continued...

Epilogue

It has now been exactly a year since I relocated, and for better or worse, I agreed to extend my lease another year. It has been quite the journey. During this time I managed to survive on my own, get some mental healing in from the generational trauma and mental taxation that comes with living with your family for so long, and began to acclimate to "adulthood".

Unfortunately, the experience also left me with some thoughts to churn through. During my initial move, the sense of adventure and independence motivated me like no other to push me to set higher goals and take action on the dreams I have put off for so long. But I also realized that over time, a sense of comfort and routine put me into the same lifestyle I had growing up as a child. I have grown bored of my day to day tasks and find myself putting off the very things I have sought to achieve. Every time I travel abroad, I experience this overwhelming sense of motivation, ambition and restlessness. My mind gets flooded with all the things I want to build, do and become. And I have the urge to start that change, right then and there. However, upon returning back home, I find myself losing all of that, as if flying back home takes me through some misty door which denies any of that energy from entering. Now I'm sure there can be a plethora of reasons for this, and I know that I can also mix things up in my day to day life to try to rekindle some of that energy. But I also wonder if I should lean into this newfound knowledge about myself and perhaps consider changing roles and relocating more frequently. Perhaps move to Europe for a few years; pursue a PhD.