I hope you all are enjoying these last two weeks of 2019, taking the time you've earned to re-charge and reset for the year ahead. I'm earnestly trying to compartmentalize the reality that the decade will be ending in T-8 days. Wow. $hit. Did the past ten years really just fly by?
In 2005, I was one year out of school grabbing lunch with one of my first bosses, Merrill Lynch Internet Equity Analyst — Justin Post. To this day, I still regard Justin as one of the best bosses I've ever had. His hard charging, no nonsense style coupled with his unique ability to embrace patience in developing his team; It's one of those skills that over time, you realize, is an intangible special to that person. The best bosses have left me w/ a distinct understanding of what their intangible superpower is.
Justin and I were grabbing lunch in the Financial District of San Francisco. It's crazy to think it, but I'd argue the Internet was still coming-of-age at the time and mobile still hadn't arrived. Was the era of Java-brew mobile phones, closed networks, and the honeymoon period of the Google IPO. Online travel stocks were all the craze, and video game juggernauts were Electronic Arts and Activision!
Back to the story! He and I were grabbing lunch, I was poking at my $40 piece of Salmon and we exchanged what we had planned for the holidays. Justin had just started a family and mentioned that he would be taking his baby daughter and wife to San Diego to visit his parents. He then followed with, "Yeah I think we'll start looking for a house in the Lafayette Area...it's time."
Me: It's time? You're still young!
Justin: I've been living in the city since I finished B school. Let me tell ya something...the years fly by.
How right he was!
I'll guesstimate I'm within a year or two of how old Justin was when we had this holiday lunch. The scope of all that's transpired in my life...my personal arc, professional journey...when I try to sit silently and wrap my head around it, the sheer magnitude of it all is overwhelming.
It all pokes at an unsettling knot within. A knot that is asking me to lean into the fragility of life, acknowledge how years can slip through your hands like quicksand. How I don't want to be that person who blinks, realizes he's 60, and still catches himself regularly saying "One day I'd like to...."
But I'm a parent now! I can still fly, just now with the understanding that there is precious cargo onboard. A different altitude, a different pace, a different reality. My ability to operate untethered with the unconditional support of a loving spouse are colored with considerations of school districts and sibling age gaps, proximity to grandparents, the need for continuity, routine, and structure in a child's life.
Some select excerpts from my highlight reel of the 2010's? A brief history of my decade:
I got married on the cusp of the decade in the summer of 2009. Iram and I were starry eyed kids, trying to make the long distance thing work until she could find a graduate program in California. I was at Disney, and Iram would come and stay on the weekends while she wrapped up her last year of grad school. We lived in West Hollywood and grew to love it; Something about the creative energy that LA feeds off of. We had a cat named Gatsby that we adopted from the shelter in North Hollywood, and eventually had to give away, thanks to my allergies and Gatsby's inability to thrive in our shoebox apartment :(
Iram got accepted into a graduate program in the Bay Area which at the time was bittersweet. Had finally hit our stride in Los Angeles, it seemed, finally "got" LA and yet life requested us to return back to the Bay Area.
I left the corporate world in 2011 to start a company. Had very little idea what we were doing other than we recognized a market opportunity and thought there was no time like the present to stretch ourselves and build a solution. There were high highs, low lows, tons of things I would do differently and other moments that with time, I've come to appreciate, I wouldn't change for anything. Building something, anything, is an adventure that should be relished day in and day out. It can always get better and will surely get worse. In the end, it all evens out.
Our family grew in orthogonal ways — I became an uncle five times over. A new brother in-law was welcomed into our family, a sister in-law into my wife's family, and Iram and I became parents in October 2017.
Parents, uncles, aunts, and grandparents of close friends saw their last day, had their last breath. Some had their last chapter written slowly, gradually. Others faced an abrupt ending that left their loved ones with the cruelly minted understanding of what the phrase "Life Isn't Fair" really means. The symphony of life, the indifferent cadence of sunrises and sunsets, baby showers and funerals...
Numerous loved ones faced "adult" problems — life hardships that when considered along side the struggles of our teenage years and twenties, make these struggles look puny in comparison. Inconsequential. Sick parents and siblings, sick children, trouble conceiving, martial strife, financial struggles, and more. I'm reminded of this quote by the South African Poet, Iain Thomas:
"All the hardest, coldest people you meet were once as soft as water. And that's the tragedy of living."
The one exception to Iain's observation is my grandfather, perhaps. I can't think of any time he struck me as having ever been soft. Other than with his animals! He loves his animals. Have you ever met someone that appreciates the company of animals more so than humans? That's my grandfather. Something special about an immigrant who came to the US in his late 40's, not speaking a word of English, and quickly felt at home with red-blooded patriotic ranchers in rural Northern California, more than he did with his native Pakistanis. Ranchers who dislike people as much as he does.
Friendships came, friendships went. Others were re-kindled, and others had a renaissance of sorts. No hard feelings for those lost, nothing to mourn. People change, we evolve, lets harness what sustains naturally and let sleeping dogs lie. I've cultivated this vantage point partially thanks to my introduction to Adler Psychology with the book "The Courage to be Disliked."
Speaking of friendship — you come to appreciate the familiarity and authenticity of those relationships...the relationships that, as Naval Ravikant puts it, "You can have with someone about nothing." Who falls into this list for you? For me, I've found it to be my siblings, my childhood friends, and most of my college buddies. Also those friendships that sprouted from a close working relationship with a colleague...us weathering a tumultuous storm together, professional growth in tandem.
I drafted two novels which still haven't seen the light of day via a New York Publishing House. One day :)
I was fortunate enough to travel to numerous countries near and far and wish we could have traveled more. From Western Europe, to Slovenia, to Turkey, to Buenos Aires for a few weeks, Bogota for a few days, and the Amalfi Coast for a college buddy’s wedding. I firmly believe travel makes us grow as people. I get my travel bug from my father. I hope I can create a life for Sufi where he gets to see as much of the world as he wants.
In January 2016, I made a pledge to get in shape by my sisters wedding. Part fueled by vanity (wedding photos), and part fueled by my primary care physician showing me my BMI chart which resembled what an investor would call "breakout growth" for a startup. It was hard as hell! Lots of sleepless nights, fighting impulses, reprogramming myself to live off of 1100 calories a day. I came within two pounds of my goal (lost 48 pounds) and have managed to keep most of it off, although it hasn't been easy. The struggle is real. Every day.
The practice of meditation. I eased into meditation in 2016 with Headspace and decided this year to advance my sessions to ~45 mins per day. The longer I sit, the better I feel. Attention span is strengthened, mind is present, less judgmental, less reactive. Remarkable how often I can recognize my mind has traveled to re-living the past or envisioning the future. All Jedi mind tricks to not deal with the present.
Was the past decade a success or failure? While I've mulled this question exhaustively in recent times, I've decided that the answer doesn't really matter. Why? Because the past is prologue.
I've disagreed with Prof. Galloway countless times, primarily around his publicly stated views on how technology companies are valued. Yet, this tweet of his found me at the right time, in the right place, quite serendipitously:
If you decide not to click on the link, I can paraphrase his paraphrasing of the data he combed over:
Happiness has an arc —
0 - 25 Years of Age :: It's the stuff of Star Wars, Discovery, Spilling into Adulthood, Football Games, and Magic
25 - 45 Years of Age :: $hit gets real. Work is hard, economic stress, you realize you're not going to be Senator, or have a fragrance named after you. And most devastating, someone you love gets sick and dies.
45 - 60 Years of Age :: A wonderful thing happens. You begin to take stock of your blessings, realize life is finite, and start finding appreciation in relationships, in nature, in your achievements, and you get happier.
"The lesson here is keep on keepin on. Happiness waits for you." — Professor Scott Galloway