I'm sitting on a mossy covered wooden bench set atop a mild cliff on a cove across from Angel Island. Inscribed in it is a quote by Rumi which reads "When the Ocean comes to you as a lover marry at once, quickly for godsakes! Existence has no better gift." It's 10:02 AM and the sun is shining down on my face, it feels as if this moment was meant to be, a divine gift amidst the chaotic life I've been living for the past few years.
I've always been drawn to the water. It could be because I was born in March, and my birth sign is Pisces, but I don't believe in astrology, so I think it has to do with the rhythmic randomness of the waves and their constructive and destructive nature. It's something about the vastness of bodies of water, that can absorb the chaos and anxiety I've carried. The ocean symbolizes the divine or true, selfless love that is boundless, unlike the fleeting, self-serving love of the world. I grew up near a park on the east side of Crystal lake, and often I would approach the rocks on the water around sunset and listen to the waves lap at my feet. In the winter when it was too cold, I would drive down to the park at night and sit with my window open and the heat blasting. It was during these quiet moments in high school where I would reflect on my goals, the direction I wanted to go in life, and my heart's desires.
It makes sense then, that when I did end up moving to California at 18, Muir Beach became my safe haven. I've brought Mila, my best friend, there, along with a handful of other friends and every time I dive in, it feels like I'm baptized again in the peace that only the ocean can bring. Sutro Baths and Baker beach are other of my favorite spots, watching the moon on the waves as they crash in and out, lighthouse beams shining off in the distance.
I've been wrestling with what I want out of life since I was 16, when I skied 50km into West Yellowstone on a quest to meet Old Faithful. At the time, all I wanted out of life was to escape Minnesota. It felt like I was the main character in a video game, ready to start her quest, but instead I was shackled to a stake forced to look out and dream about what could be out there. West Yellowstone provided a glimpse of what the world apart from my parents and home could feel like. And for the past 6 years, that's what I've been chasing.
I'm brought back to my senior year of high school, when me and my group of friends from my club ski team would sneak out at 10 PM onto the ski jump hill at the top of Theodore Wirth park and careen down the hill, up to five or six of us on the sled. In some ways it feels like I've been in a continual tumble down a hill since 2020.
I've had a chaotic past few years to say the least. It started in June of 2022 when I was 18 and left home to backpack Europe. A theme of my manias is urgency, I both thrive in, and fall apart from the stress; it's a fine line. I traveled to 9 countries and built a basis for the future of my adventures for the next nearly four years. I then moved straight to California, and met people running hackathons, coding cage free chicken sites, and writing articles for teenagers about how CPUs and AI work— a sharp contrast to the inertia I had been met with at my high school in Minnesota when I wanted to produce a film about how the cities' recycling process, write a research grant for biodigestable cafeteria food, and do research on why adolescent endurance female athletes consistently lack ferritin storage from cross country skiing.
I've held the belief that we as humans, with one life, are meant to explore. In a world where some people have access to five metaphorical ice cream flavors— which college they go to, what entrepreneurial ventures they could scrape together or join, what jobs they have access to, how far they can travel, how much food they can try— some have access to twenty because they know about the shop down the block, and the friend next door with a couple more flavors. I believe that to have a complete life, you have to go out and try them all. In life, resources certainly put you ahead of the curve in some respects, but at some level every human being has to make the choice for themselves as to how far they want to explore, how many samples of emotion they want to taste, and how deeply. It's not all highs, I've failed spectacularly too. I was depressed and twenty pounds overweight by my twentieth birthday in March of 2023. Although I was producing a lot— running alignment jams, retreats, coding my own games, organizing trips for my friends, and boxing a couple times a week— I was spiritually lost. I had forgotten my values and what state of feeling I was searching for internally. It all hit me in the spring of 2023 at a rationality camp in Texas. I was physically trying to run away from the camp, towards the perimeter, and I kept running up along the perimeter wall. I wanted so desperately to feel free, but we were miles away from the nearest city and the entire camp was enclosed by a chain link fence. It's how I felt internally at the time too. I was waking up, showing up to my job, attempting to feel something, to no avail. So I tried to patch it up, to keep traveling, first back to Minnesota for a month, where I got rejected by UCSD at the end of March. Then back to California, and then I spent a summer flying all around the world. Europe with friends where I wrapped up my internship in Dublin, then Minnesota, then out to Vermont and New Hampshire, then back to San Francisco to move out, then back to Vermont for Outernet, and then Japan for Hackuba. It was a whirlwind and during all of it I was spinning out of control. September of 2023 was a major crash. The culmination of a multi-month long crusade, the Enchantments in Seattle were the final pit stop where the wheels totally fell off.
But ultimately that didn't stop me. It did hinder me quite a bit— moving all of my items out of my dorm room the day after I flew home in defeat, skipping out on my freshman fall, going months with my parents being the only two humans I interacted with, if even them. But in the winter of 2023 and the start of 2024 I found new jobs, I fell madly in love and went on a road trip to Colorado a few days after meeting a boy at work. I joined Air Force ROTC for all of 2024. It was an exercise in discipline, community, and excellence. I joined i5 Space and created the first chatbot in any ROTC branch. I did freelance work for the first time in 2024 and explored what it was like to build a product for someone directly. I backpacked in Tahoe with my best friend and boyfriend, and visited California again two more times that summer. I spent January of 2025 in California. I ran a group trip with thirty of my friends to Big Sur, skied in Tahoe for New Year's, and built a custom Windows era inventory system for my cousin's art gallery in Carmel. And then suddenly it all came crashing down again. I broke up with the person I had spent nearly every day with in 2024, I was kicked out of ROTC for my peanut allergy, and eventually tore my ACL in April. But there was so much good too, getting 3rd place at the Fowler Social Global Innovation competition at my school, celebrating my birthday in March in California with my best friends, visiting Colorado as the result of a canceled Space Force conference, and attending the Creator Camp film festival in Austin.
Love —and the absence of it— is the reoccurring motif. Love for my friends, for my family, for adventure, for the cats. Falling down, getting up, falling down, getting up, falling down, and getting up. At some point it does become exhausting. But at this point I kept going. Taco Bell HQ, the Tesla diner, cheering for my friends in the SF marathon, and then another mania. Back to San Francisco for a week, a night going out alone in Minneapolis, lots of nights crying alone in my bed. A burst of joy after getting 3rd at HackMIT with an amazing team, and then another crash. A camera roll filled with screenshots of Clash Royale games, screenshots from old iMessage conversations, and assorted 0.5s— running at Lifetime, a night dancing, or an adventure to the hot tub in below zero temperatures.
But my four years of careering down the hill that started when I left Minnesota for the first time at 18 began to come a stop. Like HAL's consciousness slowly degrading as Bowman removed the modules one-by-one in a 2001 Space Odyssey, so did my quilt of dreams. I had to cancel the first ever trip of my entire life in the November of 2025 because for the first time ever in my life I wanted to kill myself. I'm not sure if it was the result of watching Midsommar a couple of months beforehand, or because I could see that if I kept on this path— the one of constantly performing: running trips, winning competitions, pushing myself to output a manufactured life at the cost of my own daily happiness— I was going to implode. In fact I did implode. I had to fly my friends to Minnesota to feel like I was deserving of happiness through fostering human connection— the one thing I felt I still knew how to do. And yet after finals ended, I pushed myself even harder. Was it recklessness, or the epiphany I had that I could completely ruin my life so that I would be forced to stay in Minnesota and burn everything to the ground so that I could truly start over?
It's possible I never know. Maybe in four years I'll be able to look back and retrospect on why I booked a two week trip to Europe as a last hurrah. Why I flew to SF and rented an ostentatious orange Jeep for my last week in the city, and went to Yosemite with my dear friends for the hell of it in spite of willingly climbing into debt. Why I planned a goodbye party with the designs that had gotten me through the fall, disguised as a clothing launch. And why after traveling for eight weekends in a row— Amsterdam, Paris, SF, back to SF after a week of work, DC, Treehacks, and finally Buildfest, the Universe had the irony to curse me with a peanut allergy attack, the first one since I was 5 months old. But for now I won. I did it. I finally nerfed myself. I've deferred my SF marathon registration, and my LEGOLAND admission, and plan to do so for as many years needed until I feel stable.
As I'm sitting outside of Wolfe Alumni Hall, on a sunny winter day in Minnesota finishing this story as St. Thomas's first 24 hackathon chugs along, a girl is playing piano and singing in the foyer. It's not perfect, but it's beautiful. It's an intentional stab of love, of beauty, in an otherwise quiet world. As I lay in my bed on the night of February 21st while my stomach tore itself apart hours before the ER visit, I watched the videos of Alysa Liu skating in her final routine. In a pained double-epi penned state, it dawned on me that I would aim to strive to feel like that on a daily basis, for as long as it took me to get there. The only way to escape the suffering is through carving your path, it can be a path of adventure, of wild dreams, or it can be a path of peace, and calm. Last night, on the 23rd, I watched the Jessie Diggins documentary, Threshold, and it really resonated with me. For so long I was trying to prove that I matter, that I have inherent value through the achievements I accomplish, the people I know, the places I've been, and the projects I'm working on. But really, for a long time I just wanted to feel accepted, to be seen fully, in all my chaos and intensity, and loved, not judged. I want peace. No more hackathons, no more travel, just a consistent schedule. Waking up slowly, building happiness and joy into my own life. It's okay to be stuck. It's okay to be overwhelmed. But you lose by failing to try, and giving into what society, and your peer group tells you that you should do. If you eat the same ice cream flavor your whole life, the unquenchable desire to at least see what you're missing will always be there. But if you optimize for eating ice cream, you lose the ability to sit in the moment with a single lick. And maybe being able to sit with appreciation over a single lick of ice cream, or the gentle lap from the ocean, was the point the whole time.
By the way, the venture capital and innovation scene in Minnesota is not dead, far from it. I plan to give my roots a chance to grow here. I want to seek the warmth of friends, and the peace that comes from walking in the light, in Minnesota. I want to help the people around me: the homeless, tutor those who I can, and volunteer more. I want to nourish my body— with exercise, with healthy food, with positive music, and wisdom from books and people.
I often think about all the ways I have failed. I think about the ideas I've had: a video game called the Fisherman's Curse about a girl who falls from the sky and has to journey to Lake Chabot to heal herself, laser tag on Angel Island, implementing an efficient routing feature in the Target app, a retreat in Tahoe for my friends, the surfing trip I couldn't find the strength in me to board the plane for. I think about the money I have spent recklessly, plane tickets, campsites, clothes, items that I haven't used: a USB message in a bottle, the Gamma mini synth stuck in its packaging in San Francisco, and a rave outfit.
I believe this provides some insight as to where my life is headed. I'm no longer chasing intoxicating highs: codependent love, reckless dopamine chasing, and experiences to placate and numb the wildfire in my brain. I'm reading The Life Impossible by Matt Haig right now, and my life is a little bit like that of Grace's in Ibiza. I don't know why I was dealt the hand I was. I don't know why I grew up where I did, have had the experiences I have had, or met the people I have met. All I can do is—through trial and error—figure out the type of person I want to be, make the impact that I can, and keep fighting towards the light and sharing it with the world and those around me. Whether that's through music, art, writing, or just showing up and asking about the cinnamon buns in the older lady's cart next to me at the checkout in HyVee.