On Being a Seasoned Fish
This year, I turned 30.
Leading up to my birthday, I didn’t overthink the occasion besides how I wanted to celebrate. In some ways, it felt like another day; in others, I had a sense of underlying urgency that had pervaded long before I got to 2023.
Reflecting on the previous decades, there was a distinct and rigid pathway. Finish school, figure out your first job, and then the rest of your life begins!
So what’s next?
How do you know you’re on the right path? What makes a successful career? Are you living a good life?
Well, this all depends on you, but I’ll share how this manifested in my life and highlight how the dots have connected.
The Early Days
As early as I could remember, I used creativity and the pursuit of learning to keep myself occupied and engaged. Shy and cautious, I loved to draw to pass the time and use pencil strokes to communicate my worldview to others. I played with colors using my mom’s makeup and advanced when she enrolled me in local Bob Ross-inspired painting classes.
From the age of 12 or so, I saw my destiny with technology. My dad brought home a laptop from work, which I used to surf the internet and play games. I was in awe of the possibilities of the computer and knew that leveraging it was part of my path. Although I needed to figure out how it would pan out precisely, I learned to code and create websites.
Since then, I’ve infused my artistic and technical ability into my process, no matter the subject matter.
My First Job
The pressure of the first job seemed so intense as a senior in college. I feared being pigeonholed by my decision — It felt like my choice would force me into a static spot forever. In reality, my first job was a completely different experience. It’s been my only full-time job, but my work has evolved significantly.
I started a few weeks after graduating from Northeastern University as a full-stack software engineer at Apple. My day-to-day involved writing code and communicating with the rest of the SW team for feedback or customers of my code for requirements.
After a few years, I was inspired to learn more from working with Human Factors engineers. I took classes on UX principles and visual design because I believed investing more time to create intentionally yielded a higher quality product. It was more efficient in the long run by preventing foreseen issues through thoughtful communication beforehand.
I expanded on this concept when I saw the tremendous impact on the product, team, and customer experience from the change in approach. Deciding that I didn’t want to go deeper into an engineering niche combined with my interest in developing networking and communication skills (something absent from my engineering degree), I worked with my manager to pilot and eventually transition into a project management role for my team.
What Now and What Else?
So far, this has been mostly about work. Work consumes most of our adult lives, so I would be remiss if I didn’t detail so much of how it influences my life. However, health and wellness are the foundation of how we function and set limits to performance and achievement.
About a year after starting my first job, I began working on my health. College did not teach me great habits; I didn’t exercise, ate horribly, pulled all-nighters, and had little emotional and stress management skills.
I started with fitness. I’ve always known I was strong but never applied it physically. Because using my passions and skills to chart my path has served me well in my career, I believe it could also work for other activities. I went to the work gym with colleagues to lift weights and outlasted them. I began my foray into powerlifting after meeting my coach at the gym and have been training consistently since then. Passionate about the sport, I competed in powerlifting meets twice, achieving 1st place.
Next up was nutrition. Before 2020, when COVID-19 brought us working from home, I had a 3-hour minimum round trip commute five days a week and would regularly wake up at 6 am and return home between 8 and 11 pm. Meals were primarily at work, and I only kept a few groceries since they would often spoil. When I stayed home all day, I decided to work on my cooking skills. Eating healthy depended on my ability to make it delicious (because I’m a gastronomist) and adaptable (I will not follow strict recipes). With my creative and engineering mindset, this was just another constraint to an achievable goal.
After considerable people sampling my creations and receiving high praise, I am eager to share my methodologies so you can be a seasoned fish. Stay tuned to learn more!
With love and excitement,