Since I was about fifteen years old, I have always been the love guru in my friend circle. The matchmaker. The wingwoman. The dating profile hacker.
Though I didn’t date a ton myself, I spent three years researching everything that was out there in social science about friendships, romance, and relationships. Then I applied it to my twenty-somethings friends who were down on their luck and desperate for love.
And I started to notice a pattern. There were certain steps along the process to falling in love that almost everyone used, subconsciously or otherwise. Something would feel right — and…
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I famously have no work-life balance. I run an international org that has hundreds of volunteers around the globe and over twenty-five teams from video editing to engineering to mental health. We have community outreach efforts launched in Nigeria, India, Philippines, the U.S., and Pakistan.
To just keep it all running, I work over twelve hours a day, seven days a week. My Saturdays and Sundays are so full of meetings I can’t even grab lunch with my parents. Late night and early morning calls are a requirement when it’s the only way to get people in San Francisco, Lagos…
When I was young, I loved deeply. I’d meet strangers and upgrade them to the best friend tier within weeks. I wanted to share my entire life with my family, my extended family, and my classmates.
I fell in love with buildings, places, and songs. I cried when we flew out of Egypt, head against the cold airplane window, because I didn’t know when I’d be back to one of the most gorgeous countries in the world.
I loved and I loved deeply, passionately, unreservedly. I wrote poetry because my heart was open, the words were honest, and there were…
Over the last few weeks, we’ve started to have a lot of powerful and important conversations about racism and hate crimes targeting Asians. As an Indian American, I’ve supported my Asian friends, spoken out against injustice, and fought hard in the past to elect people who work towards meaningful diversity. But one thing has been bothering me a lot lately: the use of the word “Asian.”
Colloquially, it means East Asian. On the census, it means people from “the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent.” Geographically, it includes Middle Easterners and Russians.
This all brings me to a…
There are many things in my life that I have learned the hard way, after some of the most painful experiences it is possible to have. One day, I sat down and compiled a long list of the lessons I took away from it all and realized that I wanted a way to share it: a way that captured the punchlines without a long essay after each thought about how I learned it and why. …
Whenever I come home, he is the first to greet me, wagging his tail hundred to dozen.
I sit by the piano with my fingers seemingly creating music on their own, music that I can never play twice, music that transcends the little world I live in. He sings along, not listening to humans who might think the raucous noise is anything but Beethoven. He believes it’s beautiful and that’s all that matters.
He jumps up, gorgeous large eyes flitting from my lap to the screen where I write about difficult political issues and send important emails. He dozes off…
When I was a kid, I was ugly. Not in the cute but wears glasses way. Actually, really ugly. I had a huge overbite, top teeth that stuck out, a scrawny and ungraceful body, and frizzy, thin hair.
People let it be known, too, and although I suppose it hurt sometimes, mostly it didn’t. Beauty wasn’t something I internalized as important until I was a teenager. I didn’t realize that beauty was special — that you can never compare people on beauty, that “everyone is beautiful,” and that there are a million sociopolitical aspects to the concept of looking good…
Weeks ago, I said I’d eventually review Clubhouse. It’s an app I joined a couple months ago that is invite-only, audio-only, and operates by people hosting rooms in which they talk for a while, let other people speak back at them, and then leave. So here’s my take on it.
First, to point out the obvious, Clubhouse is extremely selective. It literally grew on the strength of the fact that the first few users were all celebrities. Through those users inviting their friends, it trickled down from there. It’s still open to only a select few, those of us who…
One of my favorite memories from the long years of my short life is this: a boisterous and loud group of my friends and I, drunk on nothing but the buzz of youth and a warm autumn night, spent a perfect evening wandering the heart of D.C. It was Friday in the middle of a busy law school semester for me, my working friends were longing for a break, and we invited a miniature crowd. After a pizza dinner, about ten of us made the short walk up Capitol Hill, arms laden with board games and cards. We climbed the…
I have been friends with him for many long years. He has been in love with me for almost all of them.
He’s never said it. “I love you,” yes. A million times over. I’ve said it to him too. Never anything more. There never will be anything more.
But a year ago, after a long call about our pasts and our futures and the meaning of the universe, he said there was something he’d wanted to tell me for a while, something he’d never shared with anyone. I encouraged him to just tell me. After a lot of back…