Rut
Answering the "Aashna, when's your next substack post coming out?" question
I’ve been in a rut. I know I’ve been in a rut because I don’t want to talk about it, I don’t want to write about it, I don’t want to think about it. But what is this “it”: this “it” that makes my skin scrawl, makes all the muscles in my face any many of the muscles in my back tense up, makes me wish someone would grab me and artfully shake me and in a way that will make all of the pieces inside me, around me, fall into place?
I think “it” is feeling like I’m losing momentum. Like I’m wasting my potential. Like I’m wasting my youth (woah age anxiety, you’re a new one! Happy 26 I guess). Am I? I think yes, but the people around me argue otherwise: maybe because they’re kinder to me than I am to myself, or maybe they see a grand plan where I only see unstructured chaos, or maybe because they look at my track record so far and straight-line extrapolate future successes.
I want to surgically dissect this rut like it’s a tumor. I want to figure out what is feeding the rut, what other parts of my body the rut has metastasized to, and what the prognosis is. Can you tell that I am binge watching medical dramas in my rut? Sadly, a rut is not a linear cause-effect situation. It’s a stinky vicious cycle that is hard to break — despair, executive dysfunction, loneliness all compounding the problem.
I don’t mean to worry you with my scientifically inaccurate mixed metaphors. Overall, I am doing well. I just returned from a truly magical trip to Laos, Cambodia and Thailand — it was very gratifying to be in nature, to be in a new place, and to be with people I love. The break provided me perspective — frolicking in a lagoon, climbing a mountain, eating good food, loving and being loved — this is the point of life.
But this trip also exacerbated some of the anxieties that I felt at HBS that lead me to taking a break: the guilt of being on vacation when I’m not “locked in” to work otherwise (i.e. being on vacation from vacation), anxiety around spending money I haven’t earned, fear of going back to the real world without a good plan. And so predictably, this first week being back to the real world has been a really loud, obnoxious party of this guilt, anxiety and fear.
But Aashna, what have you been up to? How are you keeping yourself busy?
Before this trip, I was doing three things part time - working for a startup part time to figure out if it’s the right fit, working for my family business, and doing some college counseling. I could write more about these experiences, but I don’t want to just yet. The primary thing I enjoyed was being busy. But —
I was being pulled in way too many directions and felt like I wasn’t doing justice to any of these three things, and
None of three things were really sparking joy
In this post, I want to diagnose this second aspect.
I am terrified that nothing is going to spark joy, professionally speaking. I’ve spoken to a lot of companies and entrepreneurs, gotten some job offers, and put in a good amount of thought on what types of roles I am interested in. And while I can fake it on a coffee chat, nothing I’ve seen so far makes me feel genuinely excited about waking up in the morning.
Why? Maybe I’ve just exhausted my first round of leads and I need to start afresh. Maybe I’m chasing an unattainable ideal — I’m trying to find a job that is perfect, where 100% of the time feels like top 10% of my time at McKinsey. Maybe I’m in the wrong place (Mumbai/ India/ startup world). While I desperately want to be intentional, I’m realizing I don’t exactly know what I’m looking for, or how I will find it. I’m used to trying a little bit to do something and things falling into place. But now that I am trying to rise beyond the mindset of accepting the first job offered to me, I don’t know what my decision making criteria should be to decide what the right thing to do is. I feel demotivated and lost.
So, I want to take a step back. Instead of talking about what stage of company, what sector, what job description I’m looking for, I want to ask — what will spark joy? What will make me excited for how I’m spending my day, my year, my life?
Being busy. (Or being “productive”, if you wanna be like that).
I like having routine: even something as small as a set AM gym class and an office to spend 9-5 is necessary.
The whine: The routine/ gym part has been especially hard, since I sprained both my ankles a month ago. Whoever is writing the sitcom that is my life needs to do better. And I’ve always been bad with unstructured time, why did I expect this time around would be different? Because the stakes are higher? Are they even though, with a hedge so solid in place?
The solution: I need a place to be at a given time in the morning. Maybe that looks like spending more time at my parents’ place in Surat and syncing my morning routine with theirs. Maybe it looks like joining a gym class. Maybe it looks like springing for a co-working space in Mumbai. Maybe it looks like becoming an omnipresent ghoul in my neighborhood coffee shop’s attic and drinking 76 cups of their iced banoffee flatwhites a day. All sound like good options, all better than the status quo of beginning every day with a bed-rot session that doesn’t really ever seem to end.
I like feeling like I am accomplishing things, and even doing small, time bound tasks helps with the lil dopamine hits. When I am busy with work, I also become better at taking care of myself. Rotting in bed somehow automatically gives way to calendar blocks.
The whine: The rut has given me bad habits. As I am writing this blog post in a coffee shop, I am fighting every cell in my body that wants to go home and lay in bed.
The solution: I need micro goals. What am I doing today. What is the plan for the AM? What is the plan for the PM? “Finding the next thing” is not concrete enough a mission with which to structure my life, let alone my day, so I need to create lil tasks tidbits that make me feel productive, and give me lil dopamine treats.
Having community. I want to be surrounded by friends I can learn from, lean on, and love.
The whine: I really miss my friends at HBS, my friends in Seattle. I miss having a groupchat of 50-odd people, of which at least 5-6 are constantly making fun plans and inviting me, and at least 5-6 are always down for whatever latest harebrained organized fun exercise I’ve devised. I know these were unique, ephemeral communities, and recreating this, esp. without a school/ workplace to center around is difficult. But I crave this type of community. While I have a good number of one-on-one friendships in Mumbai, I really want a GROUP too. And I want more female friends.
The solution: I just have to put myself out there and hope something sticks. Unlike “finding the next thing”, this one is really a numbers game. I need to join book clubs and gyms and host parties and go to dinners and follow up and welcome people into my life and (small) community the way I would want to be welcomed in theirs. I should also probably not settle to do a completely remote job — it’s easier to make default mode friends at work than it is to do any of the above, and community has to be a portfolio, ranging from easy-mode low effort hangs to overly scheduled catchups.
Velocity. I need to know what I am doing (direction), even that answer applies to the next month of my life, and I need to make tangible progress towards it (speed).
The whine: To Settle or Not to Settle — that is the question. Settling for a job at an “insert company here” that I am not very excited about gives me speed. By working full-time, I put myself in action mode, and I solve for the "being busy” requirement that I weighing heavily on me. But it perhaps sets me back on the direction metric. It seems like settling will continue to be an option in the future, and that today, I am uniquely positioned to be able to not settle. I am uniquely positioned to be able to spend time “finding the next thing”, and dare I say, even building the next thing myself. I recently heard someone say that where they are in life, the opportunity cost of NOT starting their own thing seemed higher than the opportunity cost of starting their own thing — that hit. So I guess, the running hypothesis for me right now is to take risk, to not settle.
To summarize with yet another metaphor: I feel like by taking a step back from business school/ America/ consulting/ investing in India, I’ve decided to jump into the ocean. But so far, I’ve been refusing to swim. And if I keep that up, I will drown to a stupid death. So getting myself to swim, focusing on keeping my legs straight, coming up for air at regular intervals, holding and releasing my breath appropriately, is the discipline I need to have. It’s the “speed”. But where I am swimming towards? Am I going back to the shore/ to safety, or out into the ocean, where I could find a beautiful secret island or a magical lagoon or a shark-infested reef? I am scared of what I will find, I am scared that I’m not a good enough swimmer. But why would I go back to the shore, having voluntary entered the ocean and knowing how to swim.
So, today, am I losing momentum/ wasting my youth and potential? Maybe a little. Is it a fixable problem? Absolutely. Will I fix it? Yes.
My asks:
In my last post, I asked you to share with me songs that will help me feel more comfortable with the non-linearity of life. Thank you everyone for the amazing music you sent (special shoutout to LuceDawg who made me a playlist!) . I’ve made a playlist of the songs that resonated with me the most, I hope you too can find comfort and inspiration in them. Also, please send me any other songs you think need to be on this!
I don’t have any other asks today. I think where I am in life right now, I need to push myself, hold myself accountable. Hopefully next time, I have more to offer and more to ask.
I am very grateful to all of you for being with me in this phase of my life. I appreciate every check-in message, every meme, every time you asked me how things are going, and every time you chose to not ask, every time you inquired about my next substack post, every time you came to visit, every time you thought of me and wished me well. I love you all and I will make you proud.