Who am I, if not what I do? This was the question that haunted me at the start of the year. I began 2025 willingly unemployed, which was more uncomfortable than I’d imagined. Growing up in Asia, I’d been conditioned to believe that “a life well-lived” followed a clear rubric: education, career, family, being a “good person”. But who am I, bereft of that plan? If not in relation to someone else, and to a job? I work, therefore I am.
In 2025, I battled with feelings of self doubt. Perhaps I wasn’t cut out to be an engineer despite the decade or so I’d invested in it. I didn’t quite love it as much as I was willing to admit and I wasn’t sure I was any good considering how much I sucked at interviewing. Up until this past year, my work had been my lighthouse, the constant that oriented me to shore. I’d prided myself in keeping my professional life intact despite any chaotic waves in my personal one. But what happens when the lighthouse goes dark? When I’m adrift and all attempts at finding my bearings are met with dangerously close encounters with a sharp, jagged shoreline. I was in uncharted territory.
It was not until one of the boys I lived with earlier this year nudged me into volunteering regularly at a nearby food pantry (to get me out of the apartment) that I was forced to stop feeling sorry for myself. Later that spring, I’d go on to volunteer at a community farm in Red Hook, turning compost alongside some pretty passionate community organizers. In the frenetic energy of tech, startups and the quest to be seen as technical enough, I lost myself. But sorting through bins of unwanted, overripe fruit and dirt piles in the middle of an ordinary wednesday, I began to see glimmers of what truly mattered. And for the first time after a long season of vibey nomadic living, I wanted to stay.
Though I moved four times this year (its own separate New York City housing chaos), I managed to sign a lease in a dream apartment close to some pretty fantastic friends who are now my neighbors. And I’ve been furnishing it slowly, tastefully, from scratch—a semi-permanence of ownership that was the cause of so much anxiety in the past. My professional life ended up sorting itself out. I landed a role, quit rather hastily to pursue another exciting opportunity, only to lose that just as quickly as I’d gotten it. The professional losses bruised my ego, but it didn’t devastate me. This time, I didn’t lose sight of who I was. I am, therefore I work.
As I trace the arc of this year, I see a return. Not to who I thought I was, but to who I’ve always been beneath the layers of trying to prove myself, and performing what I thought I should be. This year, I stopped ignoring what was obvious. I think back to the start of my career as a web developer in Dayton, Ohio, before the performance of what it meant to be technical began. I was welcomed and folded into communities, many of which had no reason to do so but did it anyway. I thrived simply because I showed up. That’s who I’ve always been. The lighthouse has always been unequivocally me. After years of searching, I’ve come home. Welcome home.