Hi! Welcome to my world.

About Me

I have accomplished many things in my life that most people would find pretty impressive.

• Academically, I graduated as an engineer from (in)arguably the top engineering institute in the world with a 3.9 GPA. I continued on to complete both a PhD and an MD. I have schmoozed at conferences with Nobel Laureates. I have traveled the world for various career-related events. I have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and scholarships.
• Socially, I have a ton of friends who now live all over the world and I keep in touch with a good many of them. I currently co-host a virtual book club, and I used to host regular game nights. I have done some kind of regular (at least monthly) activity to help introduce math and science to kids K-12 since 2003.
• Avocationally, I am an avid Crafter, with a capital C. I knit, sew garments, quilt, spin yarn, weave (though I did sell my loom), cross-stitch...anything with fiber. Gifting is one of my favorite love languages; one year I made 14 quilts (cutting, piecing and machine quilting myself) between October and Christmas to gift for the holidays. (That’s less than 1 week per quilt, if you are calculating.) This year, I sewed 78 masks with the works: removable nose pieces, removable filters, and contoured. I am a very active postcard-writer (over 6000 postcards sent in 2020) and stationary lover.
• Relationally, I have been married for 5+ years (been together for 10+ years) to my husband who is one of the most fun people to be around. His gregarious personality and Southern charm are infectious. My parents gave me a wonderful, loving middle to upper middle class upbringing. My brother and his fiancé and I remain close, communicating at least weekly.

Purpose of this blog

Why did I just tell you all of this? My husband would argue I do not brag enough, so this was me attempting to brag. The reality is, I write all of this to contrast all of the ways my life is crap (the constant loops that run through my mind instead of what makes me proud):

• I am obese. I always felt chubby as a kid, but I did not creep into overweight territory until med school, and then it kept blossoming? blooming? ballooning? from there. Yes, I binge eat. I just ate a pint and a half of ice cream while writing this post. I don’t exercise enough (though I used to have a regular exercising habit).
• I don’t have a steady income right now. This means my traditional career track is on pause. My individual financial situation is terrible. I became so desperate for money, I fell for a financial scam. I owe money. I have only about $1000 in investments.
• I have lost my sense of discipline. I suffer from depression and anxiety, and when these kick in, productivity goes out the window. Instead, I lie in bed most of the day trying to figure out how to hide further into the bed. Under the bed leaves you exposed on the sides, FYI.

Since I was in college, I have always been "trying to be better." That, in fact, was the name of a blog I started then. But the title never felt descriptive enough of what I was actually trying to do. I wanted to be a badass.

As life moved on, my desire to push myself to constantly and consistently improve slowly waned. I lost a lot of the vigor and enthusiasm I had. Life got to me.

I don’t want to lose that enthusiasm for aiming higher. That’s why I decided I would go back to documenting my journey of becoming more of a badass. This is that journey.

Privacy

Due to the nature of the career trajectory I would like to pursue, I ask for you to respect my privacy. I suppose the details in this post would narrow down who I am by a lot. I am sure in the future, I will reveal more details that can identify me. However, I ask that you please maintain my privacy, which I understand is basically awash on the internet anyway.

I struggle with how public and private I want to maintain this blog, but I do not want that struggle to stop me from starting. I hope one day, I will feel more comfortable to share the obvious details.

Topics I will likely cover in this blog

I believe that there are three ultimate (quasi-finite) resources in the world: