'Tis the Season for Spontaneity

A few hours ago, I showed up at a barbecue place in Brooklyn to meet with a group for brunch. It was a chilly 50 degrees spring weather, and I just came from my date, so I was still in last night’s clothes. I wrapped myself in a large black coat hoping I didn’t look like a huge embarrassment, and like this, I pushed the door and entered the restaurant.

The brunch was an invitation from a girlfriend, and I was expecting a typical girly encounter - like the one you see in West Village, with three, four girls sitting at a small table, making small talk. Instead, I walked into a day-drinking party, with 10 people I didn’t know all chilling under the sun at a long outdoor table, holding their glasses of beer. Which was great, because it was cold outside, so I didn’t have to take off my black coat and reveal what was going on last night.

Meanwhile, these people had already been there for 2 hours.

I introduced myself to a French couple who had just moved to New York from Madrid, and a guy who had just flew in from Geneva to visit his girlfriend working in the UN. I caught up with my girlfriend, and saw another friend that I last met 3 weeks ago at a bar. We chatted under the sun for 2 hours about everything and nothing - the Shanghai lockdown, Sunday scares, the best Italian restaurant in the city, and then we ended up at a courtyard of a cafe. We said goodbye afterwards.

And just like that, spring is back with its full spontaneity.

The other day, me and my friend were walking along the East River on Queens' side after work, when we decided to try out a new Malaysian restaurant nearby for dinner. Google map led us to this block behind all those warehouses right next to a homeless shelter, and it became questionable whether we should go back or not.

The sky was already dark at around 7:30pm, and the only lights we could see were the car bumper lights on the road. Tempted by the food, we decided to still give it a go and head to the restaurant on full speed, by foot. Suddenly, a random dude across the street started yelling at us. It sounded scary, and I didn’t even dare to look his way. I was about to grab my friend’s arm and tell her to walk faster, or even start running, except that she realized the guy was actually her boyfriend, trying to say hi.

So, all three of us made it to the restaurant, located deep inside a warehouse, and discovered that the place was just an industrial kitchen - with only one guy sitting at the front to greet all those delivery people. We watched him heat up all our food, took it away, and had dinner at the rooftop of my apartment building, overlooking the amazing Manhattan skyline. The food was great - we were definitely ordering it again - but probably just online only next time.

After a winter of hibernation, I, or we, start having escapades like this again. We get spontaneous, and give it to the world to guide us to where we are gonna go. Both you and I know that we are aching for things like this just as much as our afternoon naps, and we’re excited to have more of it this summer. After all, there are only so many days of Netflix and chill we can stand, before we get bored out of our mind.

So, there’s that, and cheers to the beginning of everything fun in the year of 2022.

The Most Important Relationship

I have been single most of my life, so I spent most of the Valentine’s Days single.

When I was younger, I would be super envious of the people who ended up finding their love, whom they can celebrate Valentine’s Day with together. To love and be loved romantically, what a wonderful feeling that must be!

However, as years go by, the definition of love and relationships to celebrate on Valentine’s Day became broader and broader. I’ve since then celebrated Valentine’s Day with my date, and I’ve celebrated Galentine’s Day with my girlfriends. Most importantly, I’ve celebrated Valentine’s Day with myself. I cooked up a wonderful dinner by myself. Went for a walk with myself. Read a book. Watched a movie with myself. At the end of the day, I had the whole bed to myself. Truly, it’s a wonderful day.

When I was younger, I’d be uncomfortable when I was alone. I felt sad and disconnected to the world. Now, I know that it is critical to have time alone and connect from within. I sense my own emotions, energy level, and needs. I ask myself: What should I do to make me happier? And I do exactly that. By providing happiness to me, by me, I regained strength and power.

To quote a role model of mine, the wonderful Diane Von Fürstenberg:

“Love is about relationships, yet the most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. Who else is with you at all times? Who else feels the pain when you are hurt? The shame when you are humiliated? Who can smile at your small satisfactions and laugh at your victories but you? Who understands your moments of fear and loneliness better? Who can console you better than you? You are the one who possesses the keys to your being. You carry the passport to your own happiness.

You cannot have a good relationship with anyone, unless you first have it with yourself. Once you have that, any other relationship is a plus, and not a must.”

Cheers to a great Valentine’s Day, with the love of your life, with your friends, with whoever and whatever that give you love and are loved by you, and with yourself! <3

Rupi Kaur poem print on Etsy

Cheers to a New Job (and a New Path!)

Recently, I started a new job. After doing investor relations advisory for three years, I transitioned into being a product manager. I was so thrilled, I ordered my favorite Diptyque candles and asked the shop to send them to me as a gift, personalized with a card that writes: “Happy New Year and congrats on your new job!” I put that card on my fridge.

As some of my friends may know, I was feeling stuck for many years before this. For a long time, I was in a job that I knew wasn’t for me, and I was trying everything to pivot into a new field. A few months ago, I received an exciting job offer, and I finally felt that I was on the right track for the first time. It’s so refreshing to be on the other end of the tunnel, after all these frustrations and struggles.

In college, I was one of the bright-eyed students who dreamed about working in investment banking. I’ve always been interested in business, and it’s so cool to have a chance to learn how a business is built. However, despite hundreds of applications and networking chats, I didn’t get any offer. I enrolled in a masters program and tried again at recruiting.

This time, an offer came around, taking me to New York to do investor relations advisory. While it wasn’t a dream job, it was what I had at that time, and I had a plan for transitioning into something that seemed more interesting, which was equity research. For a while, I thought I was doing well.

Then Covid hit, and so did my quarter-life crisis. Suddenly, the finance industry didn’t sound interesting to me anymore. I began to struggle finding value in my job, and what I did day-to-day became increasingly unfulfilling. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I was extremely lost. I dreaded going to work every morning, and was constantly feeling like I was wasting my time, letting my youth slip away.

It was a time of deep reflection, and I explored numerous ways to find an answer. However, I had no luck for many months.

First, I tried to connect the dots as I reflected my life journey. I realized that, growing up, the things I always had the most fun with were all creative. I wrote short stories as a kid, and I was a student journalist as a teenager. However, working in creatives required me to start over, and I was scared by this big commitment. Was that really my calling? Was I talented enough? I wanted to find something that intersects between business and creativity, so that my current work experiences were not going to waste.

As an art enthusiast, I thought about brand management and fashion. Perhaps data analytics in the retail industry? Fashion merchandising? Still, neither sounded right to me.  

Looking around what my peers were doing, I thought about tech. I signed up for a product manager bootcamp, but I was intimidated by all the technical jargons. My first try in product was a failure.

Looks like I was not going to find an answer for a while, I thought. The pandemic seemed to be getting better, but I was still where I was. Eventually, my mind came back to my current role, and I thought about new possibilities in my firm. What was the one thing I wanted to do the most, if I was going to stay? I asked myself. That was when I got started on building a VBA excel template to automate workflows for my team.

Something sparked in my second try in product, and I was hooked. I was thinking about my project day in and day out, and I was constantly dreaming up new ideas to improve my design. Coding no longer looked intimidating, as it was now a tool to solve problems. By googling and asking around for help, I overcame all the technical difficulties. I ended up building something that cut workload by 90%, and I was beyond ecstatic. Finally, I discovered the fun in building a product.

And just like that, my journey in product management began. My template launched successfully last April, and it was another 8 months before I found a new job and officially started as a product manager. Now I am a month in, I’ve been enjoying every minute of it. For the first time in the last few years, I felt that I was finally unstuck.

Most people will get stuck some time in their life, and it takes a lot of work to pull themselves out of the trap. For me, the most painful period was figuring out what I wanted to do for my career. I wanted to find an answer as soon as possible, and I was anxious I was wasting time. Looking back, I realized that as long as I was proactive in self-discovery and trying out new things, no time was lost. By taking on new projects, I discovered new interests. By signing up for new classes, I learned about my strengths and shortcomings. Even in the job I knew wasn’t for me, I made a significant amount of progress without realizing, strengthening soft skills that are important for working in product.

Today, I am thankful that, throughout my years of feeling stuck, I was never actually stagnant, and I never gave up finding a way out. After a few years of trying, I finally pulled myself out.

Readers - have you experienced feeling stuck? How have you forged your own path?

Cheers to a new beginning!

*Picture from Mad Men.