We all want to be like Jordan, that person that looks very put together all the time and seems to have it all.

The person that wakes up early every day,

That exercises before work,

That doesn’t work long hours,

That is successful in their career,

That eats clean and has a fit body,

That has a healthy social life,

That has time for creative hobbies and side projects,

That travels and posts pictures from all over the world,

That spends time with family and friends,

That is spiritually calm and content,

… that is also a fictional character and does not exist!!

We are constantly bombarded with articles like “5 tips to be successful”, “7 habits to change your life”, “How to achieve work-life balance”, etc. LinkedIn feed is full of career success stories, and Instagram feed is a series of perfect snapshots from other people’s lives. Sandwiched between 2 perfect worlds — social and professional, we are left chasing this perfect lifestyle every single day and constantly wondering if we did a good job and if we will ever get there. Instead of finding balance and happiness, we end up with exhaustion and anxiety.

In my life, I have always struggled to find this balance, and it doesn’t help my case that I have so many interests. I am a social introvert; I get my energy from people, but I also need my alone time. I am a software engineer in a very competitive industry. I love yoga and have been practicing for years. I am passionate about cooking, baking, biking, reading, and writing. I am married and I have family all over the world to stay in touch with. And above all, I try to find time for mental health and spiritual growth.

For a long time, my version of a balanced life meant finding time to do all of these things and also being good at all of them. What fantasy! :D

It never worked, or to be completely honest, it never worked for a sustainable long period of time! There were times when the balance seemed to be just there, but I wasn’t invested enough in any certain area to get fulfillment on any front. This balance always falls apart after a week or a month at best, and when it does, I get frustrated, drop the ball, and stop trying.

But how does it fall apart? Allow me to explain… When I wake up early to do yoga before work, I have no time for morning prayer or quiet time before leaving the house. When I started biking to get stronger, my body started to feel tight and I had less time for yoga and stretching. When I am cooking, meal-prepping, and eating healthy, I am exhausted from the hours of standing in the kitchen. When I try to minimize distractions during the day, I miss the opportunity to call my family. When I am so invested in my career and achieving great things at work, I find myself drained after work and having no time or energy for social life and human connection. And the list goes on and on… You probably have your own version of this juggling game!

The truth is, something’s gotta give! We are limited human beings after all. We have limited time and energy. The biggest proof is quarantine; I thought I would have all the time in the world to do literally everything!! Guess what? Nope, it is never enough. I definitely have more time now and could use more time management for sure, but it’s still 24 hours in a day! It’s a constant struggle. It is a game of prioritization and growth rather than balance and perfection.

“It is okay to wobble and fall off balance, even trees dance with the wind.” — My wise yoga teacher :)

Being a yogi, I know for a fact that balance is very intricate and challenging. It changes day to day and its growth is not necessarily linear. Physical balance can be impacted by so many factors: sleep, mood, time of day/month, weather, and stress levels just to count a few. Today I can hold a yoga pose perfectly, and tomorrow I wobble and fall off the same pose. While it can be frustrating, I understand it’s totally normal and I am usually gentle with myself when it happens. However, I am not nearly as gentle with myself when it comes to balancing life. There is so much pressure that I don’t give myself a break nor enough credit for the hard work and progress I have made.

Perfection can truly be the enemy of growth and gratitude! Have you ever seen someone in a park walking a tightrope between 2 trees? They don’t go straight upright all the way from one side to the other. They sway and spread their arms to balance, and they do fall and get up multiple times. But I never walk by them and think to myself, “ This person sucks! They can’t walk straight across the rope.” Instead, I am always fascinated by their grit and strength. In my mind, they have already made so much progress and they are so strong!

Over time, my mentality has shifted from seeking a perfect balance to focusing more on priorities and learning to let go. A new routine won’t help me if all I do every time is drop the ball in one area to be perfect in another. When I started to acknowledge my limitedness, I realized that I will always drop the ball somewhere, so I might as well choose where to drop it and be okay with that. Telling myself that I will do everything all the time is so stressful and unrealistic. However, making a list of priorities and revising it often helps me stay focused and not drop the ball on items high in the priority list.

Most importantly, I learned to not follow someone else’s guide for a perfect balance because their order of priorities is most probably different from mine! Though they seem perfect from the outside, if you ask them about their life, they can tell you about an area of their life where they have lost control or a part of their soul that they wish to get back. Sometimes you may compromise balance to keep your priorities right. And you always have to make tradeoffs. Over time, your priorities will shift and change as you grow and get through different phases in life, so make sure to revise your priorities often. It is more important to find peace and gratitude with your choices and priorities than to chase a perfect balance that you may or may not find.

Eight months ago, I made one of the biggest and scariest decisions of my career by far. I quit my stable job at a big tech company and joined a series C trucking startup. Yup! Trucking. You read that right!

By the time I left, I had been at Microsoft for 5 years and left at my prime time! It was very confusing to my manager, to my family and friends, and quite frankly to myself sometimes. It was a difficult decision, partly rationalized and partly a leap of faith.

I get asked all the time, “Why did you leave Microsoft? And are you happy now at Convoy?” The short answer is that I am the happiest I have ever been in my career. As to why I left Microsoft to join a startup and why I joined Convoy specifically, this is a much longer answer that unfolds in my story.

Why I Wanted to Leave?

The reasons that led me to leave are not unique to Microsoft or to me. I hear similar stories from colleagues who left big tech and joined startups as well.

Microsoft holds a special place in my heart. It was a dream come true to work there, and I am grateful for everything I learned during those years. I loved being a part of such a large company with a big vision and almost endless resources. I worked in different orgs and grew my career to a senior engineer. From the outside, it looked like I had it all.

On the inside, Microsoft and my team were becoming a comfort zone to me. I knew the system, the tech stack, and team dynamics, but I was not challenged in the ways I wanted. As a frontend engineer, I wanted to work more closely with customers, which wasn’t always feasible. I was afraid of getting disconnected from the fast and ever-changing frontend ecosystem outside of Microsoft. I always wondered if I am developing the right skill set and staying up to date with the rest of the industry.

I started to entertain the idea of switching teams within the company to learn something new. Then I thought I might as well look outside of Microsoft to see what the world has to offer. I wasn’t sure where I was headed, but I knew I was ready for a refresh.

What I Wanted Next?

When I started preparing for interviews and exploring opportunities, the most obvious option was to try another tech giant. It was common to see engineers in my network hop between big tech companies for amazing company perks, better compensation, and even a promotion sometimes. Then why should I bother considering startups?

I had to be honest with myself about the goals of this career move. What do I want to achieve? So would a startup or a big tech company align better with these goals? I came up with this list:

• I care a lot about the team, the culture, and the ability to contribute to them.
• I want to work very closely with customers, designers, and PMs.
• I want to solve interesting business problems rather than making engineering breakthroughs.
• I am craving a fast paced environment with lots of experimentation, where customer feedback constantly drives product improvements.
• I am prioritizing learning and making an impact over compensation and company perks.
• I want to work with a modern stack and use more open source technologies.
• I can take some reasonable risk if I strongly believe in the company.

In the light of this list, I started having many conversations with engineers at startups and big companies to understand what I would get from each.

Why a Startup and Not Big Tech?

In a tech giant, unless you are very lucky to land on a super small and influential team — which I was lucky to experience at Microsoft — you may struggle to measure your impact. Being a small cog in a big machine, you could easily lose sight of the bigger picture. At big companies, you get enormous scale. A feature you build or a bug fix could impact millions of customers, but you may still feel very disconnected from the customers. Moreover, scale often comes with a significant cost on innovation and speed. Creating something new, changing the way the company operates or influencing the culture feels like trying to steer the Titanic. At scale, you have to be more careful — and that probably means slower — because your mistakes and failures are also at scale. It is more expensive to experiment with new ideas and fail. And if you factor in the complex org structures and the amount of process and politics involved, you get how frustrating it can be.

At a startup, your ownership and impact span way more than a feature or a small part of a big project. You get to wear different hats and influence the end to end product. In one project, you work with PMs and data scientists to define requirements and success metrics, collaborate with engineers on your team or cross-org, create experiments, and measure impact. Most importantly, you are working very closely with customers and iterating quickly to find success. You fail and recover quickly. Your skill set scales in different ways, and you learn to adapt and reinvent yourself every day. There is so much work to do and opportunity to go after, but not enough people to do it. If you are passionate about a problem space, even if it is not technical or not in your team/org, you are empowered to go ahead and fix it!

If you would like to visualize it, imagine you were a professional Olympic swimmer. Moving to another tech giant would be like learning to do a breaststroke or breaking a new record time in the butterfly stroke. On the other hand, moving to a startup would be like learning to do swimming, snorkeling, surfing, diving, parasailing, and Ironman triathlons.

Having this comparison in mind, combined with my goals, made it very clear that I should consider startups even more than big tech.

Why Convoy?

I interviewed at a few companies where I believed my goals will be fulfilled and my learnings maximized, but I was open to be surprised by some companies. I got offers from 3 startups at different stages and sizes, some even on the verge of IPO, but I still picked Convoy. Why?

Perfect Company Stage

I wasn’t sure how to evaluate the risk and reward of joining a startup and what startup stage would give me the experience I was looking for. Tim Prouty, VP of engineering at Convoy, shared with me this graph, which helped me a lot in the decision making.

Looking at this graph, it was clear that Convoy is going through an inflection point toward hyper-growth. The company has just passed the point of extreme risk and is shifting gears to start growing rapidly — a priceless time to join. From an experience standpoint, I could learn a lot if I join as the company scales. And financially, it was a balanced risk/reward compromise as Convoy could potentially double, triple, or even 10x in size, market share, and valuation.

I eventually had to ask myself a difficult question. What would I regret more, staying at a big company or leaving for a startup?

I immediately knew that if I missed the experience that comes from joining a startup at hyper-growth, I would definitely regret it more.

Incredible Engineering Talent

One of the common fears and misconceptions about leaving a big tech company and going to a startup is leaving behind a team of rock star engineers, and downgrading the talent you work with. Will I be learning and challenged every day at work? Will I find mentorship and growth opportunities at a startup? That was a legitimate concern.

It’s worth mentioning that I came to the onsite loop at Convoy to practice interviewing, but left dying to work with these people! True story :) Convoy exceeded my expectation in terms of tech talent. I left the company after the onsite with so much respect for the engineering team at Convoy. Everyone was so sharp both on the technical and product side, and most of them had experience working at big tech companies or starting their own startups, giving them a rich depth and breadth that reflected on Convoy’s engineering culture. I had a lot to learn from these people. Every day at work, I am fascinated by people’s backgrounds and humbled to be working alongside such incredible talent.

Modern Tech Stack

To make the technical experience worth it, I always asked about the tech stack wherever I interviewed. Convoy’s tech stack was very modern and compelling; it had a lot of the ingredients I wanted to add to my skill set. While I tried learning some of these technologies on the side in my previous job, it’s not the same as using them at work and learning from experienced engineers around.

I have to say that the first few weeks at Convoy were beyond overwhelming. Most of the tech stack was new to me. It was a steep learning curve, and I am still learning every day.

Company Values and Influencing the Culture

As a people person, the team and company culture really matter to me. I can’t handle toxic environments even if they have the smartest people on the planet. I would happily give up the technical learning in exchange for a diverse and healthy team, but it would be pretty awesome if I could get both!

Even though I hadn’t accepted an offer from Convoy yet, the engineering team invited me a few times for lunches, happy hours, and casual 1:1s. I was encouraged to know the people and get a good sense of the company culture. Company values were truly alive in the team, not only posters on the walls. I also learned about a lot of diversity and inclusion initiatives across the company. Everyone seemed happy and passionate. Every time, I came home more excited to join Convoy.

Later after I joined Convoy, I understood what made the team fantastic. Convoy sets a high bar in both technical competency and values fit in their hiring process, which is extremely hard to achieve, especially at such an early company stage. There is zero tolerance for brilliant jerks around here, and that makes it a delightful place to work! And the best part about working at a startup that profoundly cares about culture is having the chance to influence the culture and pave the road for those joining after you.

Trucking Deserves Better

While exploring startups and finding interesting ones to apply for, I found all sorts of industries. However, it is extremely rare to find an industry that is completely undisrupted by tech. What’s even harder is finding a tech startup innovating in the space and doing it successfully.

Trucking is a very complex industry. Everything that we consume, the food we eat, the furniture we own, and the construction materials of our homes have been on a truck at some point! The number of stakeholders involved in a shipment and the hell of manual and inefficient logistics it goes through is really shocking. By introducing more automation and efficiency in the process, Convoy is fundamentally changing how shippers and carriers do business in an industry that is hungry for innovation and change. From the business side, that’s what made Convoy stand out for me amongst other tech startups I have seen.

Never in a million years would I have thought to end up working in trucking!

It sounded so dull, ancient, and absolutely not technology related, and yet these are the same reasons that make it so ripe for disruption and an exciting domain to innovate.

The transition to Convoy has been a very satisfying career move for me, and I am very grateful for it. However, this is my journey, and it is not intended to be a recipe for switching companies or a one-size-fits-all plan. If you are embarking on your next career move, I encourage you to be deliberate and clear about what you want. Beware of the social pressure and think deeply before following someone else’s path. Depending on your goals, a big company or a small startup might make more sense for you. Make a list of goals. Keep your eyes open. Analyze your options. Take your time. And figure out what works best for you.

Keep on truckin’ 🚚

Thanks for reading! If you would like to meet more of the team, learn about Convoy or apply for jobs, check out product and engineering at Convoy.

Why I Left a Big Tech Company and Joined Convoy was originally published in Convoy Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Metathesiophobia: The fear of change or changing things.

No wonder there is actually a word for this! Most of us experience fear of change to some extent at some point in our lives. We are not the same though! Some of us would rather be stuck in one phase for a long time only to avoid the change and uncertainty of the next one, while others get so excited about the slightest thought of a change, an adventure, or a complete life makeover and would jump above and beyond their limits to get out of their comfort zone. The spectrum is huge with a big range of tolerance to change in between.

“The Only Thing That Is Constant Is Change -”

― Heraclitus

No matter where your tolerance to change falls in the spectrum, you will have to face changes and put up with uncertainty in your life. Sometimes changes come from conscious decisions and life choices like going to college, changing jobs, or getting married, but that’s not always the case. Oftentimes the changes are completely out of our control, like layoffs or losing loved ones... And whether you have a choice or not and no matter how prepared you are, you find yourself in a situation where you have to deal with changes, make decisions and keep going because life won’t stop and wait until you are ready!

Over the last decade of my life, I had to go through a lot of changes and uncertainty. Some were fun and pleasant; others not so much! I learned different lessons from each, but the most common challenge across the board was overcoming my fear and self-doubt. And now when I look back, I realize these two questions have always been the most important and helpful to answer when dealing with change anxiety. There could be a million other important questions in my head, but these two in particular have guided me to make good decisions and helped me keep my sanity during times of turmoil. I hope they can be helpful to you as well.

1. Why should I do this?

For this question, let’s focus on changes that you choose and have some control over. In the past, whenever I had to take a big step and make a significant career or life related change, I have noticed that I would get stuck in this mindset of “Can I do this?”. I would go down the rabbit hole of these thoughts: this is too difficult, that’s “too much” change, I am not going to make it through this, or I am not sure I can adapt to this new thing. These inner voices are very normal, but not very helpful because they bring with them stress, anxiety and self-doubt.

A perfect example is starting a new more challenging job and leaving behind a comfortable stable job. I did this a couple of years ago when I switched teams within the company. Work, people, culture, pace, and everything dramatically changed with this move. For the first few months, it was so hard and there was a lot to take in. I was so scared and I even felt dumb. ‘Can I do this?’ I was constantly asking myself. And in my head I was defeated by fear and I believed I couldn’t. I was so depressed and I lost my self-confidence. This new environment is “too much” to adapt to, I thought.

I have already taken this job. It is so challenging! Now what?

Revolution happened when I shifted my focus and started asking a different kind of question. Let’s forget for a moment about whether I can do it or not. Let’s assume I can. Why should I do this? Should I stay in this job? Am I learning something new and valuable by being here? Is it good for my career long term if I stay? Is it worth it to suck it up for sometime and try harder? The moment I had my answer, I was able to slowly escape the fear and self-doubt trap. I started to figure out ways to learn and adapt rather than constantly wonder if I can. I had a rough year, but I made it through and I believe it was worth it. Two years later, I became a senior on this same team where I doubted my abilities and struggled with the idea of quitting.

When in fear and self-doubt, you have to dig deeper below the surface. Question your intentions, and find out the real reasons you are freaking out about the change other than self-doubt. Evaluate the cost and benefits of your decision. After knowing why, you may decide to take on the challenge and think about coping techniques and growth opportunities, or you may choose that it’s not worth it to take on this change at this time. Knowing why will help you stay focused beyond the fear, prioritize correctly and pick your battles when there are a lot of changes coming your way.

2. What’s my anchor?

This one applies to all sorts of changes whether by choice or not, but most importantly, what if the change is out of your control? At this point, it doesn’t matter whether you can do it or not because reality is you have to work with whatever you got. In this case, fear and anxiety could be nerve-racking and paralyzing, and that’s when you look for your anchor and support system.

If a lot is changing at the same time, it is only natural to hold on to any constant. Sometimes it’t the only way to stay sane when life gets so overwhelming. This constant could be God, a beloved person or group of people (spouse, family, friends), a place, a habit, a belief system, or a combination of those. It’s critical to be able to identify this anchor at all times because it will be your shelter in the storm, your quiet place amidst all the banging noise, your safe zone against fear, and your strength when every bit of you wants to give up.

I believe that an anchor or a strong support system is the biggest weapon one could possibly have against fear and self-doubt. Sometimes all you need in your dark time is someone to reassure you that you are good enough and can do this. Sometimes finding your strength and ability in a sport, a hobby, volunteer work or a side project could inspire your ability in the other areas of your life where change is making you doubt it. Even if you are struggling with depression or a devastating life change, your support system is key to survival and finding your strength again.

The point is human beings have a tremendous capacity to learn and adapt to changes, way more than we think. You may struggle a bit, bang your head against the wall, pass through a rough phase, and likely grow in the process of adapting. However, if you know why and have a solid support system, in most cases you will eventually adapt and it’s a matter of when not if. Of course there are some extreme cases where adapting is not an option, or not the healthy option. For example, if you send an African giraffe to the north pole, it is highly likely the poor giraffe won’t survive. And it’s up to us to decide where to draw the line between challenging changes that are useful and adaptable versus toxic and damaging. That’s why it is very important to answer “why should I?” before “can I?” because you almost always can!

The tricky part is that on one can answer these questions for you. If you asked multiple friends for advice, each will give you a different opinion. At the end of the day, their judgement and perspective is very valuable, but it is coming from their own life experience. You — and only you — can answer for yourself.

Personally, I am very grateful for God and for all those beloved people in my life who are strong anchors for me. You are the reason I can stay sane when life keeps proving that change is constant and inevitable. You give me courage even when fear and self-doubt is all I can see.

And oh if I had a dime of every time someone heard my story and said ‘Oh, you are so brave!’… In my head, I never believed it. I don’t think I am brave because change still terrifies me. However, slowly over the years, I am starting to learn that courage is not the opposite of fear. In my dictionary, courage is to keep moving in the right direction even when fear is blocking your way.

I teared up. Then I shivered to my bones and got so scared. I know these pictures are so sweet, and people share them online to talk about true love and how they wish to be loved this way when they are old. However, when I read these posts, I get over their sweetness so quickly and then my mind is flooded with a thousand freak out thoughts and my heart sinks within me. At the end of it, all sweetness is gone and I am left with fear.

I realized that I am scared of aging… And to me, these kind of stories are not cute or heartwarming; they are only scary.

We all know that aging is a fact of life. There is no escape from it and we are all going to go through it. And yeah sure, you can tell me all you want that age is just a number, that youth is in your heart, that you can be in your 80s and still very fit, and blah blah blah… I wouldn’t wait to hear the end of your speech because that still doesn’t make it pretty! That’s all well and good, but my mind is already in freak-out mode. If anything, it makes me feel like we are all concerned about aging and just trying to pretend it is fine so we can all feel better about it.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am all about fitness, healthy eating, and physical and general wellness. I watch my weight almost too closely. I do yoga every morning and I want to be a yoga teacher in my 60s if God grants me long life. I am not obsessed with fitness, but I do care. But all that doesn’t make me feel any more secure or any less worried about aging. Deep down in my heart, I know I am going to age — maybe just slower if I maintain a healthy lifestyle. I can do all the right things, but there is no guarantee that life won’t throw a curveball at me and change the game.

This anxiety is so overwhelming at times that I have to stop for a bit and think about the root of it… If this healthy lifestyle doesn’t help, then why am I doing it? Am I the only one who is this concerned about aging? Am I the norm or the exception? Is this common in my age group? And was this something that my parents or their generation thought about and struggled with when they were my age? Could it be related to my culture and where I come from?

Well, my parents and my culture definitely contributed to how I think about health and aging. I was born and raised in a small town in Egypt in a middle class family. I grew up in a big extended family of cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. We ate typical heavy delicious middle eastern food. No one in my family had a gym membership or cared about health and fitness. Between the ages of 10 and 15, I witnessed all my grandparents pass away due to serious diseases. Following their parents’ footsteps, my very loving parents didn’t have the luxury, environment, or awareness to foster a healthier lifestyle or take care of their health as much as needed. Sometimes it seemed like they embraced the status-quo and didn’t even try to change it. I remember they always chose our comfort and health over their own, and growing up, this translated in my mind to an ‘either or’ relationship. Parents have to choose either their kids’ well-being or their own. One choice at a time, they age slowly and lose a little bit of themselves with every tough choice along the way.

Taking all this into consideration, my parents still have more peace and gratitude with their health and life in their 50s than I do now in my 20s. It makes me believe that something is either deeply broken or drastically different about my view of life compared to theirs.

Trying to figure out what is wrong with me, I chatted with some of my friends from the same culture and I realized that I am not alone. I was shocked to discover that most of us share this anxiety of aging and so much more… Our life is complex and challenging in a very unique way. Not to say that our parents had it easy, but they had different challenges. The contrast between our culture today and our parents’ is so fascinating!

While they lived in a big lovely family with a fairly similar lifestyle, we live in the age of social media, in a picture-perfect world. Taking tens of selfies and posting the perfect one as a Facebook profile picture. Snapping only the healthiest looking meal and giving an impression that we eat right all the time. Choosing the best moments and picturesque scenes to share on Instagram. Following celebrities and models with perfect bodies that we obsess about, not even realizing they could be Photoshopped.

We are so exposed to this image of health and wellbeing that our expectations of a good healthy life have become distorted.

Being bombarded with loads of superficiality every day, we sometimes fall in the delusion that a healthy body only looks a certain way and a good life only follows some certain criteria. If you are doing yoga, you must be doing headstands and crazy back bends in expensive yoga gear. If you don’t have a six pack, then how dare you post a picture in a swimsuit on social media? Oh, you don’t travel to a new country every few months, your life must be so boring! It’s like we all live in this bubble of a perfect looking life and have a very hard time accepting anything less. We don’t know how to take no for an answer anymore or how to get through unpleasant phases. After all, we want to select life moments and stages the same way we nit-pick our Instagram pictures. And you know what, aging doesn’t fit the palette; we wish we could just cross it out…

So every day as I get older and think of my health, I ask myself this question. Do I want to be more like my beautiful kind mom or like a perfect fit Instagram model? To be honest, I want neither. I am striving to find myself in a healthy balanced place in between. Yes, I have to admit that having the perfect body is so tempting, but I am also very passionate about life and committed to many other interests beyond fitness. And yes, I wish to be perfect in all the things I love, but I am limited (we all are!) and can only juggle so many balls at once.

It is a real struggle to find balance. Should I stop trying to be better or just settle for less? No! I am not bound to my parents’ choices, but I am not bound to the world either. If I let social media with a bunch of unrealistic standards tell me who I am and how my body should be, I could end up really anxious and depressed. I should always do my best, be as healthy as I can, and live to my full potential, but I also need to be grateful and kind to myself. I don’t want to lose myself trying to find this balance. Even throughout the journey of growth and change, there is virtue in loving who I am and finding peace where I belong right now.

I wish I had better reassuring answers to manage fear and anxiety. But I don’t have complete control over my body or my life, even if sometimes it feels otherwise. Knowing that, I will do my best while I can. I will keep doing yoga even if I never perfect the poses. I will take deep breaths, count my blessings and be aware of how fortunate I am. I will cherish the love in my life every day. I will remind myself that life is so much more than this body that will eventually decay and go to dust. I will always look for beauty in the journey even if it gets rough.

It was a typical Monday… Rough, stressful, and lots of meetings. Most people come in the morning trying to push through the day and adjust back to work after the weekend. And on days like these, no matter how positive of an attitude I have, some of the weariness and gloominess of the day make their way to my heart. Trying to resist this mood, I stepped out of the office around noon to grab lunch, and my mind checked out for a bit. I wanted to forget about work, deadlines, challenging coworkers, and anything in the environment that made my heart heavy. I walked in the cafeteria with a deep breath and a faint smile while my heart was searching for an escape away from my desk. I walked around the food stations for a couple of minutes, checked out a few options, and made my way to the one I picked.

At the food station, I met Esmaeel, the chef preparing Teriyaki. He was the most cheerful person in my day so far, probably with the biggest smile I have encountered since I came to work in the morning. We said hi as I ordered my food. His eyes were full of curiosity, not the kind that intimidates you, but the one that invites you in. We chitchatted a little bit as he prepared my order. We played the “Where are you from? Take a guess!” game which I always enjoy as a nice conversation starter. He asked if I had a good weekend and how my day was going. He asked with real genuine interest to connect and explore another human being, not just to fake an intro for something he would ask later. I was really interested to talk, and I got to know a little bit about him too. We found out that we have a common friend, from the same approachable smiley species, who eats at the same cafeteria. For this brief time, we bonded and had a warm conversation. At the end of it, he handed me the food with his big smile and wished me a great day… ‘You too, Esmaeel!’ :)

I walked away with my lunch and my day was brightened. As I made my way back to my desk, I had the biggest smile on my face that people who saw me on the way either felt weird and gave me a look or loved it and smiled back. I went back to my team room and my coworkers’ reactions were pretty much the same. In one of the small focus rooms, I ate my lunch while I worked on my laptop. Work wasn’t any different, but that meal definitely was. I am not a big fan of Teriyaki and I don’t crave it very often, but I enjoyed this meal more than any Teriyaki I have ever had!

Esmaeel made my day without even realizing it. I was so happy for the rest of the day that I had to pause and think about it for a moment. Actually, I could trace a trend right here… I realized that I have a relationship with almost half the chefs, cashiers, and facilities staff working in my building’s cafeteria. We either chitchat while they prepare the food, say hi and wave from afar if I am not getting my food from them, or smile at at each other without a single word. And on many days, the unexpected smiles and random conversations I have in the cafeteria are the nicest times of my day. I actually enjoy and appreciate a humble meal that was prepared with love and served over personal bonding, rather than a fancy meal served by someone I don’t know and didn’t get a chance to connect with. The first feels like a family meal, while the second is a standard commercial transaction.

Well, I am a people-person working in a very techie environment where people sometimes forget about the human aspect of the workplace. We are locked to our computers most of the day that some of us became like one. We talk about projects deadlines and pay attention to work burn-down charts more than we care about the burnout of the humans working on these projects. In some extreme cases, an unjustified smile could be considered weird and a personal conversation is perceived as a waste of time. And when any work environment takes this sharp turn, it becomes harder to navigate for relationship-oriented people who cherish brief personal moments and delicate human interactions.

So thank you Esmaeel and other folks who make our world brighter with a smile, thank you everyone who tries to bring joy and love to the workplace, and thank you all those out there who remind us that deep inside we are still humans, as loving, joyful and wonderful as we are meant to be.