In January, I moved to Delhi to start a new job. I did not expect my transition to be too difficult — it was my third time moving jobs and cities/countries after graduating from college in 2015. The past year turned out to be surprising, frustrating, enriching, and filled with tons of personal growth. The lessons I write about are the ones most salient to me. I hope they help me understand myself better and guide me through my 2018 endeavors.

1. Nothing is permanent.

I had a rough first half of 2017. All I wanted was to confidently call Delhi home for the near future. I was already feeling burnt out from having moved jobs and countries three times since graduating from college in 2015. Settling into a new job and new city where I knew no one was difficult. I felt drained and alienated. I could barely recognize my usual upbeat, positive, active self.

To top it all off: in June, my roommate’s air conditioner caught fire in the middle of one summer night. When I went home to the US after that incident, I had anxiety about going to back to Delhi and moving to a new apartment — it felt like I was starting all over again. I desperately wanted my “bad” times to end.

And, of course, they did. When I went back to Delhi in July, I moved to a much better apartment, I pursued hobbies I’m passionate about, I made new friends. Times have been good and I can finally say Delhi feels like home. But I have to remind myself to not get too attached.

While bad times don’t last, neither do good times. Nothing is permanent.

All I can control is showing up, doing my best, and continually working on myself. I am grateful for my meditation practice, which gives me the tools to practice this equanimity and level-headedness.

2. Every moment, I get to choose.

Last year, I chose to leave a city and job that weren’t vibing with where I wanted to be in life. I chose to move to Asia and pursue a career in the social sector. This year, while I haven’t made any as-big-as-last-year life decisions, I have continued to observe the power of choice.

As I have strengthened my meditation practice, I have gained greater control over my mind and recognized that many of my “problems” are self-created.

I am a prisoner in a cell without a guard or a lock; I can escape this prison by choosing to consciously think and respond to external situations.

Though it is a work in progress, I try to choose my beliefs, the people I surround myself with, and the things I direct my energy towards. I choose to react to adverse situations with an attitude of gratitude and learning.

I choose to consciously discern reality from the stories I tell myself.

I also consciously choose what I eat. I adapted a plant-based, vegan diet nearly two years ago. To me, my daily food choices empower me and reflect the non-violent, compassionate life I aspire to lead. I initially turned vegan for health reasons; over time, the ethical and environmental reasons have become as important, if not more important, to me. I’m blessed to have the power of choice. I know that every choice I make can either harm animals and our planet or can be driven by love and sustainability.

3. “Being” is so much more fun than “showing.”

I can get obsessive about social media. As an Enneagram Type 3, I often struggle with wanting to paint a specific online image project to the world.

Over the past year, however, I’ve dealt with several personal situations that have required me to reflect on my own. My transition to Delhi was difficult and humbling; put simply, I hit rock bottom in the middle of 2017. I now know that my most significant personal growth happens when I shut off the outside noise and desire to image-project.

It has become so important to me to walk my walk and talk my talk, as opposed to mindlessly scrolling, posting, and chatting. My saving grace has been my spiritual community and practice, mostly in the form of Vipassana meditation, a non-sectarian, experiential daily practice. It is deeply important to me because in our age of instant gratification and outward-looking sensationalization, it is one of the only things that feels raw and real. There’s no fluff, no BS. You either put in the work or you don’t. The work is my own and no one “sees” it other than me.

I tap into the power of being still and silent; it impacts every part of my life. It is enriching, life-affirming, and soul-nourishing.

4. Envy is a telling emotion.

When going through social media, I also often find myself feeling envious of others. I know this is unhealthy so I’ve been thinking really critically about how to rectify my relationship with social media without having to pursue the other extreme and delete my accounts.

Other than decreasing time spent scrolling through social media, I also spent some time earlier this year thinking about what was making me feel upset, angry, and/or envious. Though I know social media never tells the full story about someone (in fact, it’s usually a very skewed story), I was mainly feeling provoked by posts about people pursuing certain careers, people pursuing their passion projects, and people in seemingly happy, healthy relationships with their significant others.

I decided to get out of my own misery and turn my envy into inspiration. This sea change has made a huge difference for me.

By simply telling myself a new story and taking my input as inspiration, rather than competition, I am much more productive and happy.

I believe my envies are my unanswered yearnings and that checking my negative emotions is critical.

5. Gratitude is my attitude.

For the past two years, before bed, I have been saying three things I am grateful for out loud. These can refer to anything, big or small, that may have come up that day. Sometimes, it’s “I’m grateful for the yummy lunch I cooked for myself today” or “I’m grateful to have running water” or “I’m grateful for the opportunity I had to practice patience during the negative interaction with the auto rickshaw driver today.”

This practice has changed my worldview and connects me to something higher than myself. I also am unapologetically vulnerable and open to all that comes my way; I regularly tell people I appreciate them and recognize their unique potential and talent, without the expectation that they will reciprocate my feelings.

I don’t take much of anything for granted anymore. I know I am privileged in many realms and I used to feel guilty about these privileges. I now find this guilt to be unproductive. Instead, I take time to verbally express my gratitude.

I acknowledge the goodness in my life and I recognize that the source of this goodness is outside myself.

6. I am not my identities.

In the past year, as an Indian-American living in India, I’ve struggled a lot with my identity and how I’m perceived by both myself and others. Though I consider myself to be fully American (I was born and brought up in the US), I have often felt otherized as a person of color in the US. When I’m in the US, I am sometimes perceived as the token Indian or person of color. I think other hyphenated Americans can relate to both the overt and micro aggressions that cause me to not feel fully “American.”

When I moved to Delhi in January, I was prepared for my identity experience in India to be complex. On the surface, I blend in. I am not overtly a minority as I am in the US. However, when people find out I’m from the US, their preconceived notions kick in. They no longer see me as Indian; some have even said to my face that I’m “ABCD,” “rich,” “here just for fun.”

I’ve come to realize that my fellow first-generation South Asian Americans understand the context of my upbringing in a way others don’t. I don’t mean to lump all South Asian Americans’ experiences of growing up in the US into one category but there is something special about the common vocabulary and culture we share.

Simultaneously, I am not bound by my worldly identities (Indian-American, college graduate, woman, daughter, sister, professional, etc).

I am boundless, universal energy expressed through a human body. My power lives within my infinite existence.

Looking forward to 2018…

I am thankful for the lessons of the past year and for everyone that’s come into my life. I feel ready to enter 2018 with a better grasp on life in Delhi, my own desires and goals, and a heightened sense of consciousness. I can’t wait to create my reality.

Happy New Year to you and yours! I wish you all the best in 2018.

As of today, I’ve been in Asia for a full year. It has been exhilarating and turbulent, messy and beautiful, unbelievable and ordinary. Most importantly, I’ve learned a lot, 0.0001% (unscientific estimation) of which is captured below.

#1 — You must be your own leader.

When I told people I was leaving my job at Facebook to pursue a career in international development, I usually got one of two responses: (1) Wow, that’s so inspiring!, or (2) You’re making a naive mistake.

I had no idea what would come after my four month-long Kiva fellowship. But I knew I wanted to stay abroad and continue to work in the social sector.

With my goals in mind, I did the only thing I knew how to do — I put myself out there. I applied to several full-time positions and accepted an offer with IDinsight in New Delhi.

I actively chose my path. The opportunities that “serendipitously” showed up during my search would not have showed up, had I continued to wallow and daydream at my desk in the US. This was not luck or a miracle — it was a result of months of action and conviction.

We often tell ourselves stories and get handcuffed by the status quo because we forget our power to actively choose. This happens in job searches, romantic relationships, friendships, and even in day-to-day situations.

People tell me I am brave. I respectfully disagree.

I am brutally honest with myself.

I am not bound to what people expect of me.

I set high expectations for myself and that is enough.

#2 — I am fortunate.

In the early 1980s, my dad moved from India to the US to pursue a better life. In 1990, my mom joined him.

They were younger than I am now when they each first moved. That is humbling. If my parents could take on so much at age 21, it’s high time we all grew up.

They built a life from scratch in a foreign country with a rusty grasp of English and no support system to fall back on. I have seen them work their butts off to give my sisters and me the educational and personal opportunities of their wildest dreams.

When I complain about the day-to-day challenges of living in India, my dad endearingly (and sometimes, sternly) reminds me, “So now you understand why we moved to America? Come back!”

I see tremendous signs of poverty and ineffective institutions around me. Frankly, it’s hard to not feel guilty about the cards I’ve been dealt. I am now more cognizant of not taking my upbringing and comforts in the US for granted.

I feel ridiculously lucky and grateful that I get to choose the life I have chosen. My parents’ hard work to ensure I get a high quality education has granted me the freedom to be where I am now.

It’s a work in progress…

to recognize my privilege,

to embrace my identity,

and to never forget where I come from.

#3 — Most people have no idea what I’m doing.

Some people think I’m traveling, others think I’m teaching English, and I’m sure some think I just take pretty pictures to post on Instagram. For the record, those are all admirable but are not my primary occupations. In fact, I’m most surprised by how ordinary my job is.

Just as I would if I were working a corporate job in the US, I make Powerpoint decks and Excel tables, I send emails and Slack messages, I use Dropbox and Google Drive. I work a day job in an office.

More specifically, I work on an Operations team at a quickly growing social enterprise that is committed to changing how the social sector innovates, learns, and improves. Since I joined just eight months ago, my organization has nearly doubled in size. It still feels like a startup, in many ways, and that’s what I love about it.

I get tons of ownership and am learning what goes into properly growing and scaling a promising social venture. Because we are a nonprofit, we don’t have the luxuries (or, to look at it in another way, the oft-frivolous waste) of a large for-profit corporation. Scrappiness is valued and necessary.

It is thrilling.

It is also hard.

Being in a resource-constrained, developing country, nonprofit context is a test of resilience and grit.

#4 — Life really sucks sometimes.

In mid-June, there was a huge fire in my apartment. My roommate’s air conditioner blew up (luckily, we all got out in time) and the place became unlivable.

By some grace of God, I had a month-long trip to the US booked for the day after the incident. The entire apartment situation, due to personality conflicts, weak institutions, and a certain senile homeowner, became even more messy while I was in the US. I can’t get into details for legal and personal reasons; this whole debacle deserves a post of its own.

I drowned my trauma and debilitating anxiety in pints of kombucha in the comforts of my parents’ home in New York. I laid on the floor and bawled my eyes out on more than one occasion. When I told people in America I would be going back to Delhi and be there for another 1.5–2 years, they were confused.

I’ve now been back for two months and I’m doing pretty okay. The first few weeks after the trip were rough. Not having things sorted on the home-front was unsettling. I had a few (okay, maybe daily) breakdowns. (Seriously, thank you to the people that listened to my irrational thoughts and ugly cries.) I’m still processing a lot of things.

But such is life and this is what I knowingly signed up for. Challenges are a prerequisite for growth.

Learned resilience and grit come in handy while life seems to suck.

Gratitude is also powerful.

The good times don’t last but neither do the bad times.

#5 — There are problems everywhere.

While in rural Cambodia, I met many of Kiva’s borrowers. While I was inspired by their stories and hard work, I became frustrated with faulty public, private, and social institutions that require such significant outside interventions.

And the problems are not only abroad. November 9th, 2016, the day after the last US presidential election, was one of the hardest days of the past year. I had long imagined my career to be international. For the first time, I reexamined my beliefs and goals in a critical way. I felt awful for not being in the US.

I eventually came to terms with the idea that problems are universal. It’s not worthwhile to assign competing values to these battles; while I am glad to be working internationally right now, I can always shift my focus back to the US when the time is right.

I was idealistic and wide-eyed a year ago; I now have a more realistic view of and appreciation for the complex problems our world faces. I also have a lot more questions than I do answers.

I will continue…

to be curious,

to be empathetic,

and to stay committed.

On paper, my life after college has been impressive and exciting.

In reality, it’s been complicated.

Two years ago, I graduated from college and moved to Austin, TX. Last fall, I moved to Cambodia. Four months ago, I moved to India.

Most people that know me well would not describe me as “complacent.” I’m always thinking about my “next step” and obsessively planning my future. I’ve been like that since I was a child. Up until college, this was an easy impulse to act upon; things were laid out for me. All I had to do was choose what middle school to apply to (yes, we even apply to middle schools in New York City), prepare for (read: stress out about) high school applications, and apply to college. It was straightforward to plan in these highly structured environments.

And then I graduated from college and all that structure was gone.

I’ve heard over and over again that the skills required to succeed in a school environment are entirely different from the ones required to succeed in real life. In school, we are given instructions to follow and learn lessons before we are tested on them. In real life, there is way more ambiguity and choice. And life tests us before teaching us lessons.

I knew I wanted to work for a few years in between college and graduate school — so the world was mine for the taking for the next few years as I “figured it out,” right? Wrong. The world suddenly became really confusing.

As soon as my family and I drove away from Washington, DC in May 2015, I thought of Marina Keegan’s reflections about “The Opposite of Loneliness” —

“More than finding the right job or city or spouse — I’m scared of losing this web we’re in. This elusive, indefinable, opposite of loneliness. This feeling I feel right now.”

I felt it. And I felt it slip away so quickly.

Navigating an unstructured life is a new skill I am learning to hone in on. In the process, I’ve felt pangs of loneliness and confusion stronger than I’ve ever felt before. And I wish people talked more about it with new college grads. Cliché commencement speech wisdom tells us to “follow our dreams” and to “make a difference in the world” (okay, cool, but how? And when? How long do I have to wait to live the future I’ve always dreamt of? And where are all these friends I’m supposed be making?! When is it okay to switch careers? And how do I do my taxes? HELP).

While I wish someone had told me the following things two years ago, I’m glad no one did. It’s been an adventure learning about myself and about what I want out of life; no advice list could ever replace the richness of the journey that’s always just beginning.

1. BRANCH OUT

When I moved to Austin two years ago, I knew close to no one. It was exciting to be able to craft a new identity. But I had major FOMO, thanks to all the posts I saw from friends that had stayed on the East Coast, especially in New York and DC, where most Georgetown’s new alumni end up.

The FOMO really hit on the Friday nights where I would find myself sitting alone on my couch in my one-bedroom apartment in downtown Austin, crying to my mom on the phone: “Everyone else has it so easy and I’m here all by myself. I think I want to move back to New York or DC.” And my mom, barring no sass, would remind me that I had chosen this job and this move to a new city — no one had forced me to do this.

But the more I spoke with my friends from college that had ended up in New York and DC, I found that they were undergoing major shifts, too. Social media doesn’t always tell the truth — people weren’t hanging out with each other as much as they seemed to be, most people didn’t love their jobs, and people were finding it challenging to make new friends. Life required a new type of effort and comfort with ambiguity, no matter where we ended up.

Recently, I read a book called The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter and How to Make the Most of Them Now that talks about the concept of “weak ties” and about why the idea of an “urban tribe” is overrated.

“Too many twentysomethings huddle together with like-minded peers. This limits who we know, what we know, where we work, and who we date. While the urban tribe helps us survive, it may not help us thrive.”

Making connections with people we don’t know well or who are not like us is crucial to our own growth. I often think that if I had stayed on the East Coast and not moved to a city so different from everything I was used to for the first 21 years of my life, I would have learned this lesson much later.

2. CHOOSE YOUR CHANGES (BECAUSE YOU CAN)

Senior year of college, I thought I would have to stay in my first job for at least two years because there was just no other way to “do life.” While going through recruiting with various companies, I thought I had to “get it right” and make a choice that would define the rest of my life.

I look back at those thoughts and chuckle — if someone had told me that in two years, I would be living in India working in the social impact and international development space (or writing a post called “two years out, three moves in”), I would have said, “That’s not happening. That’s impossible.”

I’m now living the dream I always wanted to be living in my early 20s but I got here in a pretty roundabout way.

Facts: I applied to Facebook several times before I got an interview. When I interviewed for the job I ended up getting, I was first rejected before then being contacted by the recruiter 1.5 months later asking me if I was still interested in taking the offer. I applied to my current company three times, over the course of nine months, before I got an interview.

I always tell people that ask me for advice about these instances because my career after college has certainly been anything but linear. It’s been a series of choices and changes that I’ve been iterating upon. I’ve treated my life as I would the design of a new product — find what works, what doesn’t work, what sticks, what doesn’t stick, get feedback, reflect, make tough decisions. But I’ve kept in mind that I get to choose my next move whenever I want to choose it. Real life doesn’t come with set chapters or a manual; it’s up to me to shake things up.

And I definitely didn’t know that two years ago.

(Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that and, maybe, this makes me sound like “such a millennial.” We have many other things to take into account — student loans, family dependence, expectations from others, etc. But given whatever freedom you do have, know that your first job out of college doesn’t have to define the rest of your life (or even the next two years of your life)).

3. REMEMBER WHAT MAKES YOUR HEART SING

My first 2.5 months in Delhi were rough. I couldn’t figure out what was missing from my experience or what I was doing wrong but I just couldn’t recognize myself anymore.

I’ve always been really active and involved in the community, wherever I go. But when I came here, I felt mentally paralyzed. I would lie on my bed, exhausted after work, and just not want to move or interact with anyone. Perhaps, it was the sheer fact that this was my third move in less than two years and I was so burnt out by the energy it takes not only to physically move to a new place but also to meet new people and make it your own home. Delhi is also very chaotic and overwhelming so I’m not surprised that my instinctual reaction was to shut down. But that’s just not the Omika that I know.

I had been meaning to get involved in the local dance/yoga/movement community since I arrived but I just didn’t have the energy or bandwidth to do so in the beginning. I have been dancing since I was a baby and dance has always been a huge part of my life. Most people know that I’ve become very invested in yoga over the past few years but most people don’t know that my initial fascination with the body and movement that led me to explore yoga comes from years of dance training.

In April, I finally made my way to a local dance school here to learn both about training and teaching opportunities. After just one week doing some teaching demos and taking classes, I didn’t just feel happy again; I felt complete. I felt like myself. My mom told me, over the phone, that my voice sounded different. I sounded peppy and excited, like the daughter she has always known. I recognized myself again and she did too.

I’ve always been very aware of the things that make me complete but it wasn’t until I was completely stripped of them that I really have begun to appreciate them more. Living abroad teaches me that I need very little to be happy and complete. But I do always need to dance. It makes my heart sing like nothing else does.

So while I figure out the next two years and my next three moves (don’t worry, Mom and Dad, I won’t move three times in a two year time span again), I’ll keep dancing.

Happy Graduation Season to the Class of 2017. Welcome to the real world. Never stop learning (not even in this unstructured environment that is nothing like school).

Two Years Out, Three Moves In was originally published in Student Voices on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.