LA or New York?
A question that stuck with me for days after the two times I’ve visited LA: should I move here? While I was in LA, I experienced this question as a certainty. I belonged in LA. Everything about it fundamentally nourished me: from the sun to the coffeeshops where no one was in a rush, where people called each other by their name and healthy options were the default rather than something you had to seek out. Plus, there was Abbot Kinney Boulevard and Erewhon’s breakfast burritos and the palm-li...
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant: Is it better to forget?
The most recent book I finished is Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, in which an elderly Briton couple leave their village to visit a son who they have not seen in years. This is a perilous journey in post-Roman Britain, where distances are yet unconquered by advanced transportation, and where people are frail. Still, the story hints that the couple is strong for their age yet, and devoted to each other. There is one quirk: the couple is missing their memories, owing to a dragon’s spell cast...
International Women's Day, and the women who inspire me
A few days before International Women’s Day, a colleague asked a timely ice-breaker question in one of our weekly standups. “Who’s a woman that inspires you?” I loved the question but didn’t have an immediate answer. One single woman didn’t jump out. I said the first name that came to mind (Joan Didion), but started to reflect. Who did I feel inspired by? Who had helped me, through their example, become a version of myself that I liked better? The answer is nuanced. I called out Joan Didion a...
Discovering, remembering, and clarifying my thoughts through writing. Writing to find joy.
LA or New York?
A question that stuck with me for days after the two times I’ve visited LA: should I move here? While I was in LA, I experienced this question as a certainty. I belonged in LA. Everything about it fundamentally nourished me: from the sun to the coffeeshops where no one was in a rush, where people called each other by their name and healthy options were the default rather than something you had to seek out. Plus, there was Abbot Kinney Boulevard and Erewhon’s breakfast burritos and the palm-li...
Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant: Is it better to forget?
The most recent book I finished is Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, in which an elderly Briton couple leave their village to visit a son who they have not seen in years. This is a perilous journey in post-Roman Britain, where distances are yet unconquered by advanced transportation, and where people are frail. Still, the story hints that the couple is strong for their age yet, and devoted to each other. There is one quirk: the couple is missing their memories, owing to a dragon’s spell cast...
International Women's Day, and the women who inspire me
A few days before International Women’s Day, a colleague asked a timely ice-breaker question in one of our weekly standups. “Who’s a woman that inspires you?” I loved the question but didn’t have an immediate answer. One single woman didn’t jump out. I said the first name that came to mind (Joan Didion), but started to reflect. Who did I feel inspired by? Who had helped me, through their example, become a version of myself that I liked better? The answer is nuanced. I called out Joan Didion a...
Discovering, remembering, and clarifying my thoughts through writing. Writing to find joy.
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There’s a magnificent Turkish poet, Cahit Sitki Taranci, who said that 35 is “halfway through the road.”
The poem that laments the loss of youth and recognizes the creeping existential dread that one feels as the concept of their mortality becomes increasingly real.
Taranci’s verses address the physical changes in the mirror, the loss of feeling, the constant worry and day-to-day struggle, and the hard truths that one discovers as one ages.
My favorite verse, and one I agree with: “I discovered late that stone is hard.”
Hard truths hurt. We’re mortal. And as we grow, so does the list of things to worry about.
It’s a beautiful poem, and one that I feel lucky to disagree with.
The poem’s prevailing sentiment is that “this is it,” and it’s all downhill from here on out. It’s a not uncommon sentiment to pick up on from others around me.
“When you hit your thirties…”
“When you have kids…”
“I used to…”
Surely, there is truth to some of it. Closer to your late thirties, you can’t afford to be the same stupid version of yourself that you were a decade ago. Mistakes are more costly and existential. Time is precious, whether you have kids or not. You have to be smarter and more strategic with all the plays you make.
But the beauty is, if you’re lucky, you have the confidence, priorities, and skills to shape yourself and your life into a version that you like better.
I turned 36 just about a month ago—a year into the latter half of my lifespan, according to Mr. Taranci. Despite setbacks, challenges, and times on the ground, life’s never been better.
But this isn’t some smug declaration that “I did everything right, and now I reap the rewards.” Luck had a huge role in this outcome. So did a dramatic change in perspective about what was important. But also, just having lived long enough to have gone through some disgusting times, and the quiet confidence that it leaves you with.
I survived this, so I might be okay either way.
***
You see, in my early thirties, I did have a long stretch where I believed that “this was it.”
To start on the shallow side of things: I was feeling the changes in my body. As a decade-long yoga practitioner, I felt something was missing from my yoga practice. It didn’t do the same trick. I felt aches and pains all over. I couldn’t drink and eat the way I used to. I picked up the weights to fix some of the aches and pains, and bulked up immediately in a few months with a more careless diet that I told myself was serving to “build muscle.” (In reality, I was just coming off of intense carb restrictions for years.)
I didn’t like my new body. But I guess this is it now.
I had already been with the same partner for four years by that point, and living together for more than two. The honeymoon phase was long gone. We were in the thick of daily fights over who had not done the laundry, who didn’t wipe the sink, why did you leave your goddamn shoes out again in this small apartment do you even care that I’ve asked you a thousand goddamn times…
Neither of us really questioned where we were. We fought, but the prospect of leaving didn’t really cross either of our minds. We assumed that this is it.
On top of that, we were both battling with intensity at work, compounded by the always-on existential dread that it should have been more by this point. All around us, friends made their exits or started unicorn businesses. They got married and had kids. My partner struggled with his startup. I struggled with just feeling adequate at work.
Career-wise, I was feeling happy-ish. I had by luck ended up in a leading company in a growing sector (crypto), which was exactly what I wanted and felt more stimulating than anything I’d ever done up to that point. But I was just gathering my bearings. I hadn’t gotten used to thinking, what do I want from this role? How do I want to grow?
I was just focused on meeting benchmarks: what can I do to please?
Hint: in that type of stress-driven internal environment, there’s not that much room for creativity or big-picture thinking. So I thought that all I could do was to do, and please, and this is it. And the cost was making myself smaller, internally.
***
Then, something life-changing happened.
My mom went into the hospital with a ruptured aneurysm, had four brain surgeries, and never became the same person again. Her illness fully crystallized the pits of despair life could become, and how it could terminate in the blink of an eye before you even felt you made a dent.
Doing things you believed in was much more urgent than you thought.
I took a flight to Turkey as soon as I got the news. That was my first experience of just having to sit with dread, with no distractions. Just me, my spinning thoughts, and fears for eleven hours straight. I lived through this, even though I didn’t think I could.
I saw my mom in the hospital with gashes on her forehead where she’d had surgery. I held her hand in her hospital room (with sentimental spa music in the background) before she was taken away for her final surgery.
The doctor had already prepared me that she might not come off the operating table. I didn’t know, as she was wheeled away, whether I had said bye for good.
But she did leave the table. She woke up. She was an incredibly resilient and strong woman. And I stayed with her for the next two months as she slowly healed—feeling a rollercoaster of emotions from love to sadness to hope, every day.
My partner came to visit me for two weeks during that time. I spent one weekend with him, just being tourists in the city we grew up in.
My mom’s episodes left me with two important imprints:
I had to live now. I couldn’t live in the shadow of fear and people-pleasing any more. (My reflections from when that realization first hit.) I needed to feel I was alive, do things I was scared of, instead of just checking boxes or doing what looked good on paper.
True partnerships weren’t just about the inconveniences and restrictions. How my partner came through for me in that tough time, supporting me from near and far, reaffirmed my commitment in the relationship. I was grateful for him—something that had been hard to feel in the intense taking-for-granted during our day-to-day life in New York.
I came back from Turkey with a new bravery and zest for life. I made resolutions to not be scared anymore—to live more fully, to experience, to be open.
And for a while, I did.
But humans and feelings are fickle. And as I slowly returned to my routine, fears, and daily frustrations, I forgot my resolutions. On top of that, challenges started to mount. My parents’ marriage had fallen apart after her health episodes, and I was mired in bitter arguments with my family over this forced separation, and financial and caregiving costs. I fought with my partner over our growing existential dreads: me grappling with work, mounting career stress and urgency, and family challenges. He, on the other hand, was entering what would be the final year of his startup—what would turn out to be the most challenging year of his life.
Above all, we fought over our diverging views on the future: were we going to stay in New York? Were we going to have kids? The latter was something he deeply wanted. For me, the prospect of anything that would make me feel any more stretched than I already was made me want to scream.
***
All this came to a boiling point in December 2024, when I was 35.
I had a new job offer and was wondering about whether to make the jump. Where I already was, was the right place to stay on paper. It was incredibly challenging, fulfilling, creative, and paid well. But my gut told me it was time to do something else, and I had an idea of what it was.
My partner and I were at a very clear crossroads. Both emotionally and circumstantially, we hit a point where either of us could walk away. And for a few days in December, we lived through that separation. He left home, unsure what was next. I was by myself. I lived through the heart-ache and ambiguity. I went to yoga classes, spent long minutes picking wine for myself, met friends, took myself to dinner, and went through sleepless nights where I was alone with my heartache. I didn’t think I could survive this, but I did.
And all through that, the realization became clear.
If we had a second chance, I would do it differently—without taking him for granted this time. I would work through our challenges in a more empathetic, grounded, and mature way.
But if we didn’t, I might also be okay. Eventually.
At the same time, I would not let myself be taken for granted, either. I wasn’t there to just serve. I was there to experience love, and thrive—as a partner, but above all, as an individual human being that I’d long neglected.
He came back.
We spent Christmas together, just bonding over simple shared activities once again. Making mulled wine. Cooking with the beautiful knife set that he’d gotten me as an unexpected gift.
I ended up doing the opposite of what was the right choice on paper on both fronts.
I took the new job.
I stayed with my partner, and decided to re-build.
It’s been eight months since those decisions. And I’ve been grateful every single day for both of them. I experienced more joy this year than I ever have—joy at waking up every single day to the life that I’d so taken for granted in my early thirties.
But everything I lived through also made it better.
I didn’t take my partner for granted. We did more things this year than we had in the majority of our relationship. We simply felt more connected and more aligned.
I didn’t take my family and their sacrifices for granted. I was more calm and empathetic in all of my conversations—also because I had made it a rule to enforce clear boundaries.
I didn’t take my body for granted. I knew it took work to maintain a level of fitness and mobility as one got older, but the physical activity became my emotional anchor and a way to challenge myself regularly.
I had to re-build on many fronts: my relationship, my career, and my relationship with myself. I realized I had to be more forgiving, and uphold myself to higher standards. This, actually, is it. The sum total of everything you do. Thirties rob you of the luxury to be mediocre and stagnant. The antidote to the feeling that “this is it” is intentional motion, in every sense of the way.
It’s harder, but it’s a good thing. It forces you to be better.
It’s been more than a month since I turned 36. And while my late thirties will come with their own challenges, I feel more equipped— with a stronger sense that I’ll be okay, and that I might just find a way. That I will make mistakes, and course-correct. And that’s the toolbox one needs for a richer second half of life. With all due respect to Cahit Sitki Taranci, yes there are hard truths to life. But there’s also a lot of beauty that comes from having weathered a few storms, and to realize you’re where you wanted to be in the first place.
There’s a magnificent Turkish poet, Cahit Sitki Taranci, who said that 35 is “halfway through the road.”
The poem that laments the loss of youth and recognizes the creeping existential dread that one feels as the concept of their mortality becomes increasingly real.
Taranci’s verses address the physical changes in the mirror, the loss of feeling, the constant worry and day-to-day struggle, and the hard truths that one discovers as one ages.
My favorite verse, and one I agree with: “I discovered late that stone is hard.”
Hard truths hurt. We’re mortal. And as we grow, so does the list of things to worry about.
It’s a beautiful poem, and one that I feel lucky to disagree with.
The poem’s prevailing sentiment is that “this is it,” and it’s all downhill from here on out. It’s a not uncommon sentiment to pick up on from others around me.
“When you hit your thirties…”
“When you have kids…”
“I used to…”
Surely, there is truth to some of it. Closer to your late thirties, you can’t afford to be the same stupid version of yourself that you were a decade ago. Mistakes are more costly and existential. Time is precious, whether you have kids or not. You have to be smarter and more strategic with all the plays you make.
But the beauty is, if you’re lucky, you have the confidence, priorities, and skills to shape yourself and your life into a version that you like better.
I turned 36 just about a month ago—a year into the latter half of my lifespan, according to Mr. Taranci. Despite setbacks, challenges, and times on the ground, life’s never been better.
But this isn’t some smug declaration that “I did everything right, and now I reap the rewards.” Luck had a huge role in this outcome. So did a dramatic change in perspective about what was important. But also, just having lived long enough to have gone through some disgusting times, and the quiet confidence that it leaves you with.
I survived this, so I might be okay either way.
***
You see, in my early thirties, I did have a long stretch where I believed that “this was it.”
To start on the shallow side of things: I was feeling the changes in my body. As a decade-long yoga practitioner, I felt something was missing from my yoga practice. It didn’t do the same trick. I felt aches and pains all over. I couldn’t drink and eat the way I used to. I picked up the weights to fix some of the aches and pains, and bulked up immediately in a few months with a more careless diet that I told myself was serving to “build muscle.” (In reality, I was just coming off of intense carb restrictions for years.)
I didn’t like my new body. But I guess this is it now.
I had already been with the same partner for four years by that point, and living together for more than two. The honeymoon phase was long gone. We were in the thick of daily fights over who had not done the laundry, who didn’t wipe the sink, why did you leave your goddamn shoes out again in this small apartment do you even care that I’ve asked you a thousand goddamn times…
Neither of us really questioned where we were. We fought, but the prospect of leaving didn’t really cross either of our minds. We assumed that this is it.
On top of that, we were both battling with intensity at work, compounded by the always-on existential dread that it should have been more by this point. All around us, friends made their exits or started unicorn businesses. They got married and had kids. My partner struggled with his startup. I struggled with just feeling adequate at work.
Career-wise, I was feeling happy-ish. I had by luck ended up in a leading company in a growing sector (crypto), which was exactly what I wanted and felt more stimulating than anything I’d ever done up to that point. But I was just gathering my bearings. I hadn’t gotten used to thinking, what do I want from this role? How do I want to grow?
I was just focused on meeting benchmarks: what can I do to please?
Hint: in that type of stress-driven internal environment, there’s not that much room for creativity or big-picture thinking. So I thought that all I could do was to do, and please, and this is it. And the cost was making myself smaller, internally.
***
Then, something life-changing happened.
My mom went into the hospital with a ruptured aneurysm, had four brain surgeries, and never became the same person again. Her illness fully crystallized the pits of despair life could become, and how it could terminate in the blink of an eye before you even felt you made a dent.
Doing things you believed in was much more urgent than you thought.
I took a flight to Turkey as soon as I got the news. That was my first experience of just having to sit with dread, with no distractions. Just me, my spinning thoughts, and fears for eleven hours straight. I lived through this, even though I didn’t think I could.
I saw my mom in the hospital with gashes on her forehead where she’d had surgery. I held her hand in her hospital room (with sentimental spa music in the background) before she was taken away for her final surgery.
The doctor had already prepared me that she might not come off the operating table. I didn’t know, as she was wheeled away, whether I had said bye for good.
But she did leave the table. She woke up. She was an incredibly resilient and strong woman. And I stayed with her for the next two months as she slowly healed—feeling a rollercoaster of emotions from love to sadness to hope, every day.
My partner came to visit me for two weeks during that time. I spent one weekend with him, just being tourists in the city we grew up in.
My mom’s episodes left me with two important imprints:
I had to live now. I couldn’t live in the shadow of fear and people-pleasing any more. (My reflections from when that realization first hit.) I needed to feel I was alive, do things I was scared of, instead of just checking boxes or doing what looked good on paper.
True partnerships weren’t just about the inconveniences and restrictions. How my partner came through for me in that tough time, supporting me from near and far, reaffirmed my commitment in the relationship. I was grateful for him—something that had been hard to feel in the intense taking-for-granted during our day-to-day life in New York.
I came back from Turkey with a new bravery and zest for life. I made resolutions to not be scared anymore—to live more fully, to experience, to be open.
And for a while, I did.
But humans and feelings are fickle. And as I slowly returned to my routine, fears, and daily frustrations, I forgot my resolutions. On top of that, challenges started to mount. My parents’ marriage had fallen apart after her health episodes, and I was mired in bitter arguments with my family over this forced separation, and financial and caregiving costs. I fought with my partner over our growing existential dreads: me grappling with work, mounting career stress and urgency, and family challenges. He, on the other hand, was entering what would be the final year of his startup—what would turn out to be the most challenging year of his life.
Above all, we fought over our diverging views on the future: were we going to stay in New York? Were we going to have kids? The latter was something he deeply wanted. For me, the prospect of anything that would make me feel any more stretched than I already was made me want to scream.
***
All this came to a boiling point in December 2024, when I was 35.
I had a new job offer and was wondering about whether to make the jump. Where I already was, was the right place to stay on paper. It was incredibly challenging, fulfilling, creative, and paid well. But my gut told me it was time to do something else, and I had an idea of what it was.
My partner and I were at a very clear crossroads. Both emotionally and circumstantially, we hit a point where either of us could walk away. And for a few days in December, we lived through that separation. He left home, unsure what was next. I was by myself. I lived through the heart-ache and ambiguity. I went to yoga classes, spent long minutes picking wine for myself, met friends, took myself to dinner, and went through sleepless nights where I was alone with my heartache. I didn’t think I could survive this, but I did.
And all through that, the realization became clear.
If we had a second chance, I would do it differently—without taking him for granted this time. I would work through our challenges in a more empathetic, grounded, and mature way.
But if we didn’t, I might also be okay. Eventually.
At the same time, I would not let myself be taken for granted, either. I wasn’t there to just serve. I was there to experience love, and thrive—as a partner, but above all, as an individual human being that I’d long neglected.
He came back.
We spent Christmas together, just bonding over simple shared activities once again. Making mulled wine. Cooking with the beautiful knife set that he’d gotten me as an unexpected gift.
I ended up doing the opposite of what was the right choice on paper on both fronts.
I took the new job.
I stayed with my partner, and decided to re-build.
It’s been eight months since those decisions. And I’ve been grateful every single day for both of them. I experienced more joy this year than I ever have—joy at waking up every single day to the life that I’d so taken for granted in my early thirties.
But everything I lived through also made it better.
I didn’t take my partner for granted. We did more things this year than we had in the majority of our relationship. We simply felt more connected and more aligned.
I didn’t take my family and their sacrifices for granted. I was more calm and empathetic in all of my conversations—also because I had made it a rule to enforce clear boundaries.
I didn’t take my body for granted. I knew it took work to maintain a level of fitness and mobility as one got older, but the physical activity became my emotional anchor and a way to challenge myself regularly.
I had to re-build on many fronts: my relationship, my career, and my relationship with myself. I realized I had to be more forgiving, and uphold myself to higher standards. This, actually, is it. The sum total of everything you do. Thirties rob you of the luxury to be mediocre and stagnant. The antidote to the feeling that “this is it” is intentional motion, in every sense of the way.
It’s harder, but it’s a good thing. It forces you to be better.
It’s been more than a month since I turned 36. And while my late thirties will come with their own challenges, I feel more equipped— with a stronger sense that I’ll be okay, and that I might just find a way. That I will make mistakes, and course-correct. And that’s the toolbox one needs for a richer second half of life. With all due respect to Cahit Sitki Taranci, yes there are hard truths to life. But there’s also a lot of beauty that comes from having weathered a few storms, and to realize you’re where you wanted to be in the first place.
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