Becoming

A follow-up to “A Dream Deferred”

Three weeks ago, I wrote a piece lamenting the current state of my life. I was thoroughly unhappy with myself and the decisions I had been making, and I had been sick for over a week. The preceding seven weeks of the academic quarter had felt wholly uninspiring, and the dissatisfaction was so great that I needed to write that article to process the emotional weight of not living the life I wanted to live.

The person I was then could not conceive how much life changed in these past three weeks. I now feel giddy to live the life I am currently living. I am writing this now because I spent the last 20 minutes laying in bed, trying and utterly failing to fall asleep, because I am so excited about the life I am living that I cannot slow my mind. And so, I write this article in the hopes that I can capture this joy (and hopefully be able to fall asleep afterwards).

Exuvia

Concept shamelessly snatched from Logan’s delightful “The Exuvia”

When I am ill and retreat into my solitary degenerate quarantine, it feels as though I develop a crusted shell of ick and accrue a latent metamorphic energy within. During fall quarter, I was sick for an infuriating five-week stretch, and so this carapace grew to encapsulate a roiling torrent of latent energy. When I finally broke free of my chrysalis, I returned to my work with a feverish passion, and I relished every moment of it. I soon after would find my winter break cruise vacation with my high school friends nearly intolerable becasue of my inability to do the work I wanted to do.

Two weeks ago, I ripped free of my transitory vessel. I emerged with glistening form, and I feasted on life with ravenous hunger. Weeks of scrolling reels, of seeing the lives everyone else was living, of yearning for the romanticization of small moments I couldn’t experience while ill, the vicarious pride of watching those who push their limits go on to achieve their dreams. I had been building up a storm, and they let down the floodgates, and now I witness myself in my sublime glory.

Gusts of Gaiety

February 28, 2026. My first day of life. I find myself dancing for an exhilarating 6 hours at the opulent Viennese Ball. I over the next two weeks:

• Volunteer myself to do day-of logistics for the largest high school math tournament in the country
• Achieve in a few hours some goals for Stanford Effective Altruism (of which I had recently joined the leadership) that had been backlogged for months
• Run a half-marathon at a sub-9-minute pace around campus quasi-spontaneously with minimal training (had been running some 5ks and occasional 5 mile runs for a couple weeks). I cannot understate how stunning this was for me, nor how momentous this has been for my self-belief
• Contribute feedback to and publish as co-author an AI Safety technical research disussion piece on LessWrong and cross-post to my LinkedIn and website, which gains substantial traction
• Have a wondrous seven hour walk and conversation with a friend I only get to see once a quarter (because our conversations always last so long)
• See the most stunning theater performance I’ve ever seen (I’ve not seen many though, to be fair)
• Randomly run into Logan at a student space and end up on a late night car ride to the coast talking about religion, love, and sexuality until 5AM
• Meet with Parv Mahajan and am reminded that I can be a lot more agentic, AI Safety is very important and urgent, and there are things I can start doing now that will be very impactful. Also realize that I may be more suited for generalist roles - to be discussed in future posts
• Limit test my dips and learn that my ad-hoc lifting routine has me hitting weights and rep counts far beyond anything I would have expected:
  • 36 bodyweight tricep dips
  • 23 reps of tricep dips with 25 pounds on top
  • 11 reps of tricep dips with 50 pounds on top
• Replicate the basic Assistant Axis results as a first milestone for my research (I probably should publish a mini write up on this)
• Hit my first muscle up! The muscle-up has been a bucket item for a while now, and I’d been explicitly training for it for the preceding 9 weeks, and we actually hit it!
• Host a discussion on the DoW vs Anthropic spat
• Speak with some goats (Yixiong, Tzu, and Parv again) on how to better the AI Safety presence on campus
• Dance for 3 hours on the last day of Social Dance III, followed by 3 more hours of social dancing later that night, including learning and teaching multiple dips, lifts, and rides!
• Anoint my ears in the divine performances of Ensemble OH?

A lot of these things are not that exceptional. At some point, my writing just became a list of things I’ve been up to, but each and every one of these things has brought me such joy and passion. All the while, I have been taking care of my class work, exercising almost every day, and doing significant organizing work for Stanford EA. My only deficiency right now is in my sleep schedule, which thankfully has not been wreaking too much havoc on my life but definitely demands attention.

Life is so exciting! This week, I’m planning to climb with friends, have some farewell dinner with friends who are studying abroad in the spring, dance at Dancebreak, play some tennis (Indian Wells highlights got me back into tennis), celebrate a new friend’s birthday, play some beach volleyball, and wrap up my finals. I want to self-study some linear algebra and real analysis over break to prepare for classes next quarter, and I’m really excited for my spring endeavors (scary cool math classes, EA events, SMT, club tennis, social dance, maybe SAIA stuff too!). I also have some other bucket list goals that I’m keeping secret for now to preserve their shakti (I don’t think I’m misusing the word, but I am somewhat butchering it; its personal definition to me is very apt, and so I use it here).

The greater trend here is that I’m very happy that I’m living a life where I am doing many things: things that are epic, things that are fun, things that give me purpose, things that I want to do. I’m also spending a lot more time with people I enjoy being around, and this is a big deal. I am living the life I want to be living and being the person I aspire to be. If frosh-year-me met me-right-now, he would be star-struck awe-inspired by how things are going. Perhaps I already am starting to play my cards right.

I will write about what’s fundamentally going on here more in the future, but I’ve already spent 2 hours writing this piece, and I really should get to bed. Until next time!

A quote that I encountered while scrolling reels today that I liked: