Dear Zoe,

Last night you gave me all the feels and I wanted to capture it so I don't ever forget.

In the past 5 years of your life, I've taken a lot of pride in how involved I've been as a dad. Born during the lock-downs of COVID, we established an early bond given how much time we got together. Surprisingly, that early bond shifted my mindset for the first time in my life. I then finally understood why people might "work to live" instead of "live to work" because they had something else more important vying for their attention.

Whether its been volunteering at your school, reading you bed time stories each night, teaching you how to read, hiking with you every weekend, having you as my sous chef as I cook dinner, to so many other little things, we've found ways to connect deeply each and every day to build our special bond.

But recently I got an incredible professional opportunity. I've been teaching courses on product management with Reforge for several years now and I came to believe there was a unique opportunity to now showcase how AI was transforming the role of product management. So I discussed it with Reforge and we decided to move forward with a new course on the topic. The one caveat? The course had to be ready for the mid-April Spring cohort, making it an absolute death march to get there. Your mom and I talked it over and we agreed this was a great opportunity, so we decided that I'd roll up my sleeves to write the course and mom would take on more of the child care responsibilities.

Overall I felt like things were going well. It was of course stressful, but I was loving the intellectual challenge and I still got a chance to read you a book every night before bed.

But last night, I was sitting on my computer doing some work while you were talking to mom. You were showing her your drawing from school today. From what I overheard, it sounded like a typical drawing of your family. But then mom asked you about it. You pointed out your drawing of yourself and then you pointed out your drawing of mommy. Mom then asked, "but where is daddy?" You then flipped the page over and showed a little picture of daddy on the back of the page and said "that's daddy, he is busy working."

My heart sank. Never before had you drawn a family picture without me. Never before had you said the words "daddy is busy working." Never before had I viscerally felt the trade-off I was making between my career and my time with you. My heart raced as I remembered the missed opportunities over the past month to drop you off at school, the missed daddy math lessons you loved so much, the missed chances for you to cook with me. And so that night, I had all the feels.

Reflecting on it, I'm still glad I decided to take on this new course opportunity. But I'm especially glad its just a season. That season will pass and I'll be back to being the dad I was once proud to be. I also feel so fortunate that I can make the choice to spend so much time with you, because I know so many others who feel they cannot.

So thank you Zoe for the life lesson you taught me by drawing me on the back of the page. I'm looking forward to being right next to you and mommy soon.

❤️ Love, Dad

Dear Zoe,

It's Thanksgiving weekend and you're turning 3 in a few short months. It's been an incredibly trying holiday for us. On the flight over we received the horrible news that our dog Dexter had gotten loose and was hit by a car. After a panicked set of phone calls and arrangements, I flew back within hours of landing to take care of him. So far, Dexter has been lucky. While he's got a broken pelvis and a painful recovery ahead, he will recover. As he snoozes next to me, it's our first time apart from each other and I miss you deeply.

Under the pall of these unfortunate events, I have often caught glimpses of the silver lining. It could have been so much worse -- I easily could have been flying home to say goodbye to Dexter. I couldn't be more grateful for our community in this time of need. Our friends who dropped everything on my call to sit in a vet clinic for hours. Our friends who spent an entire day driving Dexter to the surgical specialist and bringing him to our house. Our friends who brought over pet fences to make our home safe for him. Our friends who have been texting and calling to check in. Not to mention the family and community around Sachin and you, everyone pitching in to bring toys, cook food, and keep you entertained. My heart is full of gratitude and grief as I emerge from the chaos of this week.

It's also a good opportunity to reflect on what really matters in life.

When disaster strikes, it's easy to flinch away from the pain and heartache. Dexter could be a cautionary tale about how dangerous it is to open your heart. I know that dogs don't have the longest lifespans, but while they are with us they become part of the fabric of family. It's a guaranteed way to get hurt, where the very act of caring about something or someone creates an opportunity for pain.

I prefer to take the opposite view. To adopt that belief is to insulate our hearts in bubble wrap and never truly feel the positive because we are so afraid of the negative. One way to articulate is the idea of emotional range. If emotions were bounded from 0 to 10, we try to limit our emotional range to safe levels, avoiding the highs and lows. We design our lives in such a way to be at a steady 8, avoiding annoyances and discomforts and pains along the way. However, in the process of reducing the possibility of bad things happening, we become less open. Why date if you might get your heart broken? Why apply for a dream job if you might get turned down? Why have a child if they might get hurt?

In the time that we've been with Dexter, he's been a source of joy and happiness. I don't have a shred of regret that I love him so much. The very scarcity of time with him makes it more precious. These accidents are reminders for us to be present in the today, no matter the risks. Today, I have an opportunity to sit beside him and spend a snuggly, snore-filled day with him. And that's what really matters in life, being present and savoring the joy we have today. While we work intentionally toward our larger plans, who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Living in the present is really hard, especially against the pull of external influences. I'm full of gratitude for the riches I have in my life. It's interesting that when I think about the riches, material wealth is far from what comes immediately to mind. Instead, I think about this wonderful community of friends who popped out of the woodwork and helped. I think about the beautiful relationship that your dad and I have, and how lucky I am to have a partner who I can wholly trust. Even though we are apart, I know that you are safe and cared for. And then finally, I'm grateful for the material wealth, because it enables us to take care of our family members without the need to make impossible choices.

Can't wait to see you soon.

❤️ Miss you and love you, Mom

Dear Zoe,

Coming to a strange new country and growing up as an immigrant wasn't always easy.

In early grade school I brought a packed lunch my mom made me to school. The lunch was a rousong sandwich, shredded pork floss sandwiched between two slices of bread. The kids at my school shrieked out loud when they saw it, pointing, "What IS that? Ewww!"

I was so embarrassed, I could have shrunk down into my shoes and disappeared. I put my lunch away and slunk out of the lunchroom. That very day, I told my mom that I didn't want to bring lunch anymore and wanted to buy it from school. From that point on, I ate school lunch every day until I graduated high school.

I don't know what school lunch will be like when you grow up, Zoe, but growing up it was absolutely terrible. Flavorless red delicious apples, limp sandwiches, chewy chicken nuggets, soggy pasta, french fries, and the ubiquitous carton of milk. And I love food (as you seem to too), so you'll understand my regrets now – I 100% missed out on my mom's delicious food – slurpable noodles, juicy dumplings, flavor-infused rice bowls. It would have been 100X better if I hadn't been so embarrassed and afraid.

If only my little self had known to say to those shrieking kids, "What is this? Why, it's like the most delicious cotton candy pork sandwich you've ever had – try it!" Or, "You guys are missing out, let me tell you about it."

I realize now what a gift it is to have my Taiwanese culture. I have a completely different language, exposure to incredibly delicious cuisine, and a whole history and culture that complements my American upbringing. It gives me a whole new lens with which to examine the world.

You're going to have even more than that, Zoe, coming from both East and South Asian culture. You'll celebrate Lunar New Year and Diwali, feast on parathas and dumplings, and be immersed in so much more. I love celebrating and sharing our differences with you and the rest of our community.

❤️ Love, Mom

Dear Zoe,

Happy first birthday! This first trip around the sun with you has been an adventure. It's crazy and amazing how much progress you've made in only one year from a sleepy little newborn to an active, energetic little kid with opinions and feelings. One of my goals this year has been to spend time developing a parenting philosophy on what kind of parent I'd like to be. As you start asking questions, the intention behind this to be more purposeful in the decisions I make and things I say along the way. A helpful start for this has been reflecting on the values I want to impart to you as you grow up. You can think of these as mom's birthday wishes for you.

Freedom

If there's any value here that I feel passionately about, it's this one. I sincerely wish for you the autonomy and self-confidence to be able to make your own choices in how you live your life. Your dad and I often talk about how the profession you ultimately choose is unlikely to be one that we understand well or perhaps even exists today. And I can well imagine that you'll find that we are full of opinions because that's kind of the type of people we are. While the weight of expectations and external opinions are heavy, nurturing your individuality and self-awareness so you have the freedom to make an active choice is an important value for me. The best we can wish for is to give you the resources, sounding board, and support to accomplish this.

Resilience

In your life, you will inevitably face setbacks. Failure and rejection are bitter pills to swallow. As much as I wish I could protect you from these experiences, it's important to learn the skill of moving forward when faced with a reality that you aren't getting what you want. Building resilience is not only about having the ability to accept a setback and find a new equilibrium (like your dad's post about his new reality), but it's also about having the right mindset about it. Trying and failing are integral steps to learning, and I want to help you build the resourcefulness to pivot from these experiences to new opportunities without the negativity that often accompanies it.

Growth

My own childhood was raised on a culture of achievement. While I credit this core family value in my upbringing as a big driver for my achievements in life later on, it has its flaws. The downside of achievement is that it tends to focus on the very observable things like grades, status, and wealth. My decision to choose growth as a value is that it's more open-ended. It encompasses my desire to see you grow as a person, from your wisdom in relating with others to delving deep into learning a passion area to marking achievements in your career. As a parent, I want to nurture your curiosity and encourage you to go deep and keep learning.

Caring

As you grow up,  you will often see your dad and I making  decisions about how we relate to and engage with our community, our friends, and our family members.  The skills of empathy and compassion aren't explicitly taught but are so valuable because it's a way to build a connection to others. Especially in the current environment where there's so much political discord, learning to thread the needle with grace and relate with each other as humans feels like an even more significant set of skills. I'm imperfect and often not great at these skills, but wish fiercely to be better at this all the time.

Health

I actually knew very little about health and fitness growing up, and can't wait to share my love of the outdoors with you. Your dad and I already take you on daily walks and weekly hikes, and are looking forward for you to be walking so we can start exploring more areas on foot. Imparting our love of the outdoors and building healthy habits are a gift that we often talk about wanting to give you.

As you grow up, I hope you'll see us model and talk about a lot of these values all the time. (And most likely screwing up a little along the way and building our resilience as we recover.) On one hand, I'm imagining the wonderful adult that you will someday become and on the other, you're currently a sweet little baby. Giving you the space to build these values of growth, freedom, and resilience is going to be a whole tricky set of transitions as you grow older and we ease the guard rails away. What an adventure lies ahead!

Wishing you many more wonderful years ahead.

❤️ Love, Mom

Dear Zoe,

Today we celebrate your first 6 months of life. The expression "the days are long but the years are short" rings so true reflecting back on just how fast 6 months have flown by. On this day, I find myself contemplating your future. In particular, thinking about just what your first 18 years of life living in our home will look like.

Undoubtedly, your mom and I will have an undue influence of your early world view, since we'll be the adults you'll spend the most time with. And so I thought about just what kind of role model I'll be for you. Not some notion of the role model I aspire to be. But just the person I am and what you might see in that.

The first thing I thought you might ultimately notice is just how much our household breaks from gender norms. You'll grow up with a dad that cooks dinner every night, does the dishes, as well as the household laundry. You'll also grow up with a mom that's the handy one around the house, handling repairs, fixing appliances, and more.

You'll also witness your mom and I's true partnership in everything from managing our household, making important life decisions, raising you, and even working together as co-founders of a startup. You'll see just how two type-A personalities take on everything in their lives. But even more importantly, you'll observe the subtle differences in each of our approaches. You'll see the thoughtful rigorous approach I bring to every decision alongside your mom's more prudent drive towards action. You'll inevitably hear your mom's frustration with me asking whether we've been MECE (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive) about a decision and her accurate rebuttal that not every decision in life needs to be so exhausting. And you'll realize that the best answer lies somewhere in between our two perspectives. You'll also witness my ingrained bias towards conflict-avoidance paired with your mom's graceful approach to always directly addressing the elephant in the room. And you'll realize, just as I long have, that she is the role model that you and I both will continually aspire to follow.

When it comes to work, you'll find a dad that's not simply enjoying the spoils of his good fortune and hard work in his 20s and early 30s, but instead a dad that continues to work hard driven by his deep passion for his craft, his sense of obligation to his customers, and the impact he continues to hope to have on this world. You'll also directly experience the many benefits and equally many costs associated with being an entrepreneur. You'll grow up enjoying the flexibility the entrepreneurial life enables, as we go on long meandering hikes on a Tuesday afternoon. But you'll equally see the demands of entrepreneurship that doesn't allow you to simply turn it all off just because it's a Saturday or we're on vacation. While I won't give you the opportunity to watch me change the oil in the garage, I do hope you take me up on my constant offer for you to be an intern with us, teaching you the ropes on everything from handling customer service, managing the books, to hopefully even coding some product features. And ultimately help you to decide whether the life of an entrepreneur is for you.

Beyond work, you'll tremendously benefit from starting your relationship with me in my late 30s as opposed to my early 20s. Back then I honestly derived almost no meaning from anything beyond my work and that was reflected in my maniacal focus on it at the exclusion of most everything else. It was only later that I reached a new wisdom about how much more there was to life. For example, you'll inevitably experience your mom and I's obsession with exercise, whether its the runs I'll drag you on, the RunKeeper screenshots I'll send you and mom hitting a new PR, or learning about the new workout class your mom is trying out this month. You'll also experience first-hand what living in California means to us: access to the great outdoors all year long with incredible hikes, views, and sceneries that demand to be regularly explored. You'll also see just how much we value vacations to see everything this world has to offer and to explore the many ways of living beyond our own. Without a doubt, you'll also be sucked into whatever your mom's latest hobby is, whether it's gardening, sewing, cooking, worm composting, bread-making, baking, and so many more.

You'll also observe how your mom effortlessly acts as our collective social chair, keeping our calendar full of social activities with the best of friends, ensuring we don't lose touch with the family and friends that matter most to us. But you'll ultimately realize that while she makes it looks effortless, building and maintaining meaningful relationships takes real dedicated work that requires careful tending, otherwise you might easily wake up one day having lost touch with those you once cared for the most.

So Zoe, simply by virtue of who your mom and dad are, you'll grow up with all these things and mostly think they are normal. But that world view will in reality be a reflection of the role model your mom and I inevitably were throughout your childhood.

❤️ Love, Dad

Dear Zoe,

Today marks the ten year wedding anniversary for your father and me. We're in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic so we celebrated at home. It's given me ample time to reflect on how much life has changed since we first got married, and how much gratitude I have for him and for you. As a gift for him, I wrote him a letter. Maybe it'll give you some perspective on all the lessons I've learned in life so far from my journey together with him. Here it is below:

Dear Sachin,

Happy ten year anniversary, my love! As I reflect back on the last decade of marriage, I am filled with gratitude for your companionship. As I've grown and changed, it's been a thrilling journey that we've shared together. My life today with you and Zoe and Dexter is a radical transformation from when we first met in college.

I hold deep admiration and respect for you, in large part because of how you've taught me to be a better person. Here are ten lessons you've taught me over the years.

Seek and embrace constructive criticism

Many years ago when we were at LinkedIn together, I was eager to make my case and get a promotion within the marketing team. I was delivering fantastic results and my cross-functional partners were happy. However, the team had recently acquired new leadership and there were a lot of new faces on the team. It came as a shock when the new leader of the team pulled me aside after a team meeting and told me rather harshly that I needed to participate more and that I was making new team members feel like there was a divide between the old guard and the new guard. I remember coming home and telling you about it, expressing my outrage that she'd singled me out to give this critical feedback. Your feedback then was a huge surprise. You said, what if she's right? What if you take the feedback at face value, and rather than have a chip in my shoulder and resent the way that it was delivered, and embrace the content of what she's saying? It was like a icy shower on my private little pity fest. However, you were right. I followed your advice and made an effort to change my behavior and got almost immediate feedback a week later about how much she appreciated my leadership in the team.

This small example was one of the first formative steps for me to learn to ask for and embrace constructive feedback. It would have been the easy route to say yes that is so unfair, but you didn't take the easy way out. For my best interests, you did the uncomfortable thing for you, and engaged in a direct conflict to push me on how to take the feedback to heart so I could improve as a person. These days, I am far more eager to give and receive feedback and self-aware at how prickly I can be when I receive it. However I always think back to this small example and it reminds me how valuable it can be.

Follow your passion

The idea of following your passion has always felt like such a hackneyed and trite phrase that belongs on those signs you see inside of wine country gift shops. It wasn't until I met you that I truly began to understand what it means. You have such a burning desire to build and create software and businesses that the energy and enthusiasm for this shines out of you. It's like a strong internal compass that always tells you what true north is. And as I've watched you navigate your career and life, you've been true to these passions from start to finish. The decision not to work at Goldman Sachs and instead go into technology despite the higher pay and status. The decision early on in your career not to interview at Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation because their mission was not your mission. The decision against joining top-tier VCs because your passion is to build and create. Tempting acquisition offers for Notejoy because people want you to lead their R&D teams. Time and time again, life has thrown these amazing opportunities your way as far as the other things that people value - status, money, power - and while it hasn't been easy, you've been unerring in your clarity of focus. Seeing this clarity has been incredibly inspiring for me and I've benefited so much from seeing you make these hard calls. The lesson you've taught me over the years is that it's important to understand my own priorities and values in life, and use those intrinsic factors to guide the decisions that I make.

Embrace change even if you disagree

It took me eleven years with you to get a dog. Eleven! And now, we have Dexter in our lives and he's become a full member of our family that we both care for and love. I never would have imagined this would be possible at the start of our relationship because we had spirited arguments about whether or not to get a dog and you really dug your heels in. I remember arguments and tears along the way. You made it abundantly clear how opposed you were to the idea of getting a dog. They are smelly, they get in the way of travel, they require work, and you don't really appreciate the benefits. All of that is largely true and I know it still is.

And yet you ultimately were OK with us getting a dog because we bought the house and we hit a compromise on the right breed to minimize the drawbacks. And yes, he did throw up in our car within minutes of meeting you for the first time. What I'm amazed by however is that once you said yes, you were all in. When we hit our rough patches with Dexter, you didn't hold it over my head for even a minute that this inconvenience was all my fault. Despite the fact you never wanted one, the argument was had and the decision was made. And once made, you modeled what it is to move on without hard feelings and accept a new change in your life. When I reflect back on this journey, I am filled with admiration on how wholeheartedly you can embrace change - even change you disagree with - without holding grudges.

Foster a growth mindset

We spent our 20s in relative sloth. After our youthful physiques began to fade, we spent way too much time eating burritos and pizza and all the delicious things under the sun. I had convinced myself that I was just completely unathletic and this was a gift that I was not born with. I remember the first 5K we ran together in 2012. The idea of running 3 miles straight was horrifying. When I finished, I thought I was either going to throw up or my heart was going to burst! It felt simultaneously like a major accomplishment and a horrible life experience I never wanted to go through again.

Fast forward to almost a decade later, and together we have journeyed together to come to the realization that if we identify the parts of exercise we like, it is actually really fun and motivating to achieve a fitness transformation. I've ended the decade in the best shape of my life. While this is a journey that we've gone through together, I am so grateful for your companionship on this journey. So often I have heard stories of partners who resist change for themselves or don't support a change in others if this new lifestyle inconveniences them. We could easily have stalled each other's progress by tempting the other person into skipping just one workout or going out for a delicious meal, but that didn't happen.  Whether it's my decision to start working out, or your decision to do it with me, you've been unstinting in your love and support for me to pursue a change in my life.

Stop keeping score

I have always grown up with money and time as a way to keep score. And there have been times in our career where I've made more money than you and other times when you've made more money than me. Whether you were the product leader for the new product launch of LinkedIn Sales Solutions or I was SVP Marketing at SurveyMonkey through a massive transition, I have never once felt like we had to keep score on money or time in our relationship. In times of extreme stress for me, you would step up and take care of getting dinner together or taking care of errands. With words and action, you've been an incredibly supportive partner who has never once run the tally on who is contributing more money or whose turn it is to pull the weight. Instead, you put your head down and get what needs to get done, and bring it up if it begins to feel like an issue. Our relationship is a place where I feel safe that our priorities are aligned and we are both contributing what we can without competition or measurement. I've learned to truly embrace this idea in our relationship and it's made me a happier and more relaxed person.

Don't just accumulate stuff

From Brandini shirts to Great Erase pencils to Bose Quiet Comfort headphones to the backyard hammock and your specific combination of Nespresso coffee pods and Silk soy creamer, I love your single-minded focus on happiness as it relates to you. I love that what makes you happy is this eclectic mix of sometimes fancy mostly random things that have deep personal meaning and happiness to your life experience. Rather than focusing on the accumulation of more stuff or fancier stuff or the highest rated stuff, you have this beautiful perspective on the world that is more about how you optimize the things that matter to you. And (sometimes infuriatingly) you tend to largely satisfice on the rest because it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Seeing your world view on this has given me a lot of room for self-introspection over the years. Rather than focusing on what others think and buying the latest and greatest things, I've followed your example and really examined what things make me happy over time. And the answer to that has always been accumulating life experiences through travel, building deep and lasting relationships, and maximizing the comfort of my daily routine. I've also come to realize that the feeling of not having something I want is a damper on my happiness, but a lot of those wants aren't really internally derived. Along this journey, the happy side effect is we've saved quite a lot of money and been able to bow out of a lot of reflexive consumer buying without feeling like we're missed out. I love that we drive a 14 year old car and I still have clothes from a decade ago that I wear. In knowing you and growing from that experience, I've been happier for it.

Practice authenticity

On just about the very first times we met, we were at a Starbucks in downtown Seattle and you very earnestly told me, there's something I need to tell you. The conversation that progressed was you telling me about how you have a weak stomach and you've battled IBS for most of your life. And that I shouldn't be surprised if you were in the bathroom a lot and for a long time. What a first conversation to have! And yet, while it wasn't a big deal, it started our relationship with one another off on such a refreshing note of deep authenticity. Rather than trying to make yourself out to be the perfect guy, you quite openly and honestly admitted to a physical weakness in one of our earliest conversations! I love the open and honest approach that you embody in your life.

In contrast, my reflexive and base state is far less open. I tend to gravitate toward wanting to project my best self to others. However, by seeing the example that you've modeled, over the years I've come to embrace a deeper authenticity in my relationship and experience with others. I always saw admissions of weakness as a negative thing, but in observing you I have come to question that deeply held belief. Your authenticity and curiosity comes as naturally as breathing to you, it doesn't ever seem to occur to you to live any other way. And I have seen and experienced firsthand how powerful it can be as a way to engage others and build deeper rapport. You are so effective in doing this that sometimes you don't even know it! It's really inspired me and been a lesson to change how I interact with others and I've become a more self-assured and authentic person over the years because of this.

Embrace your new reality

The past year has been one of the most difficult years of your life to date because of the cochlear hydrops diagnosis. All of a sudden, you've had to upend your entire life and turn it on its heads. And on top of that, we've decided to start a family and we now have Zoe in our lives. An enormous amount of change compressed into a small time-frame, and you've been challenged by life to give up a lot of your favorite things. What is life without pizza, after all?  I am so amazed and impressed by the positivity and hard work that you've put in to accepting and embracing your new reality. You've truly rolled with the punches, and made the most out of the new circumstances that life has chosen to give you.

I know without a doubt as we face the next decade together, and the decades after that, that this won't be the first time that we have unexpected news in our life. We're living through one right now with the coronavirus pandemic going on. And yet I'm so inspired by how you've navigated the past year. You acknowledged and experienced the bad feelings, and then you picked up and starting moving on. After all of that, I still get to hear your laughter all the time. I couldn't ask for a better role model and companion on how to navigate life's worst experiences and how to fully enjoy the best ones.

Family

The very first time you met my family, you walked straight up to my dad, looked him in the eye, and shook his hand. I distinctly remember him saying right after he met you how much he appreciated that.

The way you treat my family and your family, our family, is with respect and kindness. You think before you speak, you seek ways to give, and you are generous with your time even in your most chaotic moments. You make the effort to go home for Thanksgiving every year, and after many years of spending time with your family, I've come to deeply appreciate the value and payoff of making the effort. While you often say that you are not the most people-oriented, when it comes to our family, your actions over time paint a very different picture. This is one of the lessons that I am grateful that Zoe will be able to take away from her father, and she's so lucky to have you as a role model for it.

Learn all the time

I see you learning and improving all the time. Now that Zoe is here, you've taken on cooking. Cooking has been a sore point over the many years that I've known you. When I first met you, you could care less about the quality of the food. You were happy to scarf down a $1 frozen burrito for dinner from a paper towel and call it a night, and it didn't matter to you. The idea of spending time planning, shopping, preparing, cleaning, and appreciating food seemed like a complete 180 from the Sachin that I first met many years ago. You've transformed so much over time and day by day even in this small example I can see the progression of how you're willing to learn new things, improve your technique, and take pride in that improvement over time. Your Sach Chef photo album of food has grown tremendously even in the past few months. I've also see how your time to chop onions has reduced, and your comfort level with building flavor into recipes by adding items in a specific order has improved over time. It's a huge progression and this is just one small example. You take the time to listen and notice details, and make changes due to them.

The lesson I take away from spending time with you and watching all of that everyday we all have an opportunity to learn something and become a better version of ourselves for it. It isn't just about becoming a better person at your work, it's about becoming a better chef, a better parent, a better partner, a better person. The only thing it requires is taking the effort to notice and learn, and the desire to embrace it.

Whew, this turned into an incredibly long letter to you! I hope as you read this, it is clear how much I love and appreciate you for all that you are. While we are not perfect humans, part of the beauty that I see in the imperfection is that we have so much potential for boundless change and growth. The Sachin that I knew a decade ago is a very different Sachin from that one that I know today, but my love and respect for you has only grown over time. Some of my favorite qualities about you are your curiosity, your lack of ego, your excitability and energy, your authenticity, and your honesty and integrity to yourself. I couldn't ask for a better life partner and I am sometimes just amazed at the wisdom of my 18 year old self in finding you! (Good job, younger Ada!) I can't wait to experience what the next decade holds.

❤️ Love, Ada

Dear Zoe,

These days your mom and I spend a lot of time thinking about all the important life skills we hope to teach you before we send you off to college. Everything from finding a form of exercise you love, to learning how to cook basic meals, to instilling values like hard work, grit, and the importance of frugality. While this list of life skills is already ballooning, we've come to realize the far tougher challenge than listing these skills is figuring out the most effective way to teach them to you.

We've come to believe that there is a 4-rung hierarchy of methods of learning, with each higher rung being a far more effective approach.

The lowest rung of the hierarchy involves explaining the concept to you or teaching the skill. We could sit you down and try to explain the importance of frugality, for example. We might tell you that while living under your means may require delaying instant gratification of purchasing something you want now, it creates a financial freedom that gives you the opportunity to more readily pursue your passions, take intelligent risks, and protect against worst-case scenarios. The majority of our education system has us learn new skills in this exact way. And certainly there are many things we need to be taught in this way to understand them. But when it comes to teaching life's most important skills, too often these lessons fall flat.

The next rung up the ladder involves us proactively modeling the behavior we're hoping for you to learn. The idea here is that rather than trying to instill the concepts through teaching, we instead show you the intended behavior day-in and day-out. Given the incredible amount of time you will spend observing us, you can't help but take away something from our modeling. For example, we can model the frugality we hope to instill in you through the actions we take and you observe on a daily basis. Or we can educate you on living a healthy lifestyle full of exercise by you seeing us hitting the gym or going for a run three times a week, plus us taking you on hikes every weekend. Modeling the behavior is far more effective than just teaching the skill because it's reinforced regularly and the consequences of our actions can more directly be felt.

But we can do even better than simply modeling the behavior. Hasan Minhaj, in a recent podcast episode of Business Dad, talked about how he had the typical immigrant upbringing, with his family moving to America, working hard, and striving to create a better life for Hasan and his sister. That upbringing can't help but shape you. Hasan reflects on this by saying so much of his own perspective was shaped through this very personal experience. And now he thinks a lot about, with his own daughter, how he can create the right experiences to help shape her perspective. But how he needs to do so differently, because given his own success, his daughter's upbringing certainly won't look like his own. And this is what the third rung of the learning ladder is all about. Create opportunities for you to have a personal experience that leaves you with a particular insight, perspective, or life skill. There is nothing better than experiencing something viscerally to ingrain the learning in you. Finding and creating these kinds of opportunities, though, is incredibly difficult and requires far more effort, patience, and creativity on our part to try to impart. I personally remember how Boy Scouts summer camp was a formative personal experience for me in my youth, as it was an opportunity to learn to live away from my parents, appreciate the great outdoors, and to cook, clean, and live amongst peers with limited adult involvement for over a week.

When I've shared this framework with parents that are much farther along on this journey, several have pointed out that there's an ideal age when it's easiest to teach most of these skills, which is at the latter end of their 18 year journey at home. Unfortunately, this latter stage is also accompanied by the new reality that parent's influence over their children wanes and the influence of their friends and peers grows immensely. While we certainly have no ability to dictate who you decide to be friends with, we do have the ability to curate the type of people you have opportunities to be-friend. Deciding what neighborhood we live in, for example. Or encouraging the types of extra-curricular activities you try out. Therefore the final rung of the ladder is learning from one's peers and our task becomes curating the selection of peers where possible.

While during your youth, your mom and I will be using each of the 4-rungs of the learning ladder in an attempt to educate you on life's most important skills, these learning techniques will be most beneficial to you as you continue life's continuous journey of learning. College and subsequent education will re-enforce that first rung of learning through teaching. But I encourage you to find ways to pursue the others on your own. As you look to further develop your own skills, there is no better way to reinforce the skill to yourself than to model it in your own behavior, even when there is no one you are trying to teach other than yourself. Similarly, you'll find that meaningful experiences are one of the most profound ways of building your perspective on the world, so seek out unique experiences for learning. And finally, take the time to curate your friends and peers. We inevitably learn so much from those we surround ourselves with. Don't fall in the trap of friendships of convenience, but instead seek those out that inspire you, push you, and cause you to become a better version of yourself.

❤️ Love, Dad

Dear Zoe,

Your mom and I spent an incredible amount of time debating whether or not to have you. We discussed the pros and cons of having a child, we had in-depth conversations with all of our friends with children to intimately understand their experience, and we prepared a financial model to understand the fully loaded cost of a child up until and including college. I still vividly remember one particular conversation your mom and I had. Ada thought an interesting exercise would be for us to discuss what each of our biggest fears were about having a child and how we could overcome those fears. I shared that I felt like I had just gotten to the point in my life where I was living my absolute dream. We were building Notejoy, the company that we couldn't be more passionate about and more importantly, we were building it in a way that was 100% aligned with our values. Despite the demands of being a startup founder, I still found time to maintain my love of writing, taking advantage of the quiet weekend mornings we enjoyed to capture and share my thoughts. I had also worked incredibly hard to make fitness a priority in my life, having run a half marathon and lost thirty pounds. And while doing all of this, I enjoyed 8 hours of sleep each night that ensured I lived each day to it's fullest. My fear was this life we had painstakingly built would be jeopardized by introducing a child into the mix. Parents we talked to warned us of sleep deprivation, of how our weekends would no longer be our own, and of impending dad bod. We came to the conclusion that if we were incredibly diligent about it, we might be able to overcome the worst of it by hiring help when possible and taking turns creating protected time for each of us to ensure we could continue to pursue our passions. The biggest fear Ada shared was losing the close relationships we had developed with our friends over the years, seeings them regularly, and prioritizing quality time with them. She especially feared losing our relationships with our kidless friends, as we heard so many of our friends found it easier to hangout with friends with kids. We vowed to at least not be that couple that assumes that our friends without kids didn't want to spend time with us and to try to create shared experiences with all our friends and family.

Of course you know how this decision went as we did end up having you :) And three weeks ago today, you entered our lives. It's been interesting reflecting back on those three weeks. On one hand, it's been great that so far we've tried to hold to our commitments where possible. For example, I've been able to continue to make progress on Notejoy, keep up my writing, and go for runs at least three times a week. But that all is certainly the least interesting part. The most interesting part is just how much I've enjoyed spending time with you. You certainly haven't been easy these first three weeks. I can't count the number of times you've decided to pee on me when changing your diaper, how long it takes to get a decent burp out of you, and how difficult it is at times to get to the bottom of your fussiness. Yet despite all that, I feel like even now, I'm building a valuable relationship with you through it all.

On my run just the other day I heard one of my favorite songs "If you want love" by NF. The lyrics go, "If you want love, you are going to have to go through the pain. If you want love, you are going to have to learn how to change." And it was such an important reminder of how love actually works.

It reminded me of building my relationship with your mom. It certainly wasn't easy at first. It took so long to truly understand each other, to trust each other. And there were times early on where we wondered if all that painful process was even worth it. Yet it was that process of truly getting to know each other that built our love in the first place. Looking back at the 16 years I've been with your mom, its incredible to actually think about just how much I've changed as a person because of her. I can confidently say I wouldn't be nearly the same person as I am if she hadn't entered my life. And what's amazing is I couldn't have anticipated most of the ways she has changed me.

It made me realize that before having you, I was spending too much of my time worrying about protecting my old life, ensuring it didn't have to change, and bringing you into this world in a way that was completely compatible with the way I had lived to date. But the lessons of love I learned from your mom is that a relationship full of love will certainly change you and change you for the better. And that's not something that should be avoided. But something embraced and looked forward to.

I see many of my friends dating later in their life and one thing I notice is just how protective they are of their existing lifestyle and how they struggle to find someone completely compatible with it. The thing I'll tell you Zoe is that the love of your life will change you in ways that you can't even imagine. And that's not something to run away from. It's something to look forward to. Just how I'm so looking forward to how much you'll change me, too.

❤️ Love, Dad

Dear Zoe,

Finding happiness is one of life's most important pursuits. I want more than anything for you to find your own happiness in whatever way makes sense for you. I've spent quite a bit of time reflecting on my own life and what has been crucial for creating a life full of it and I hope to share everything I've learned with you.

Today I wanted to specifically share a bit about one aspect of the science of happiness and one of the important chemicals, dopamine, that we've come to understand plays a big role in our day to day happiness.

Dopamine is a chemical produced by our brains that when released makes us feel pleasure. It's released in our brain whenever we get or expect to get a reward. So many different kinds of real-life rewards result in the release of dopamine: having a delicious meal, enjoying a glass of wine, the warm sand between our toes on a vacation, going on a long run, having sex, being praised by a colleague, a promotion at work, and so much more.

The pleasure associated with dopamine is strong and addictive and will ultimately motivate your actions, often unconsciously, to seek out more of the rewards in the hopes of ever more pleasure.

The challenge is that not all sources of dopamine are great for us. Drugs and alcohol, for example, are huge producers of dopamine, but can result in drug abuse and addiction that can trouble you for life.

What's been fascinating is that we've now come to realize that the digital world can produce dopamine hits that aren't great for us either. Social media is one of the biggest offenders, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, Snap, or whatever the kids are using in your day and age. When we scroll through our feeds and find an interesting story, we get a bit of a dopamine hit. But then we keep coming back and checking our feeds endlessly just in case we might come across something else that's interesting. Email and Slack in the workplace can have a similar effect. Anytime we see a new email come in, we often reactively check it to see if it's something interesting. More often than not it's not, but the chance of a potential reward keeps us coming back and checking it constantly.

In the modern day there are a thousands of these little distractions, all promising small amounts of dopamine, that can ultimately leave us feeling needlessly anxious and unsatisfied. Yet even the small dopamine hits we get from these activities keep us coming back for more.

Some folks are beginning to fight back against this, with emerging discourse on the value of meditation, mindfulness, and trying to escape the unfulfilling hedonic treadmill of constantly seeking greater and greater rewards by cultivating a sort of non-attachment to the rewards in the first place. I've experimented with mindfulness myself and found a bit of relief in it. But there's a far simpler framework that I've personally adopted to help me navigate this dopamine-driven reward feedback loop.

The way I think about dopamine is just like nutrition. There are various sources of dopamine just like there are various sources of calories. But it turns out the quality of those calories matter a lot. There are a lot of "empty calories" out there that we know are terrible for us: sugar, fast food, and more. So we know we need to be mindful about where our calories come from.

The exact same thing is true for dopamine. I think it's entirely unrealistic to expect to live a life of non-attachment and avoid all sources of dopamine. But instead we should choose our dopamine hits wisely. We can pick which sources of dopamine we allow ourselves to indulge in just as we do the calories we choose to eat. And by doing so, guide our reward feedback loop to far superior sources of pleasure and ultimately happiness.

Over the last few years I've worked hard to design my own dopamine diet to maximize pleasure derived from high quality sources. It all started with the realization that the time I was spending on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram was about as unproductive and unfulfilling of a use of time as it got, yet somehow I was being drawn to all three on a daily basis. To make a change I banished Instagram from my home screen to avoid the temptation. I got myself to check Facebook only once in the mornings as well. Twitter was a more complicated beast, because it has been such a powerful tool for my career, both in terms of acquiring new knowledge and expertise from thought leaders in my industry as well as building and growing my own professional reputation. Yet mindlessly scrolling through my Twitter feed was still largely an unfulfilling waste of time. So I decided to change the way I consumed and leveraged Twitter. I now use a great app called Nuzzel which reads my Twitter feed for me and gives me a summary of the top shared articles amongst those I'm following. This way I get the knowledge acquisition benefit of Twitter without actually having to scroll through my feed. I then post interesting commentary on the articles I read and engage in conversations with others about them. This more limited use of Twitter allowed me to focus on the valuable parts without all the constant checking and cost.

I ultimately made a similar change in my professional behavior, only checking email about three times a day instead of constantly when a new message comes in to reduce the distraction. I did this by removing all inbox notifications from my phone and desktop. But the other professional change I made was more interesting: instead of just reducing dopamine-driven distractions, I thought maybe I could take advantage of the reward feedback loop to create an engaging experience that was actually productive instead of distracting. I ultimately created what I call the feedback river: an automated Slack channel that is constantly pushed interesting insights about Notejoy's customers: new subscribers, reasons for canceling accounts, help search queries, tweets mentioning the product, NPS results and feedback, and much more. This way when I'm stuck in the Starbucks line, instead of pulling up Twitter or Facebook, I could scroll through the feedback river and learn something insightful about our customers. Since it was updating in real-time all day long, I could tap in 5 times throughout the day and learn something fascinating. And thereby hack the dopamine loop to motivate me to do a far more fulfilling activity.

As I reflected more deeply on the sources of my dopamine hits, I realized that consumption-driven experiences were far from the best. When I say consumption, I'm referring to any activity where you're consuming something. Consuming media on Twitter, Facebook, Snap, or even Netflix and HBO, and the news. Watching a movie. Consuming email or Slack messages at work. Consuming a delicious meal or beverage. All of these are consumption experiences. In stark contrast to consumption is creation experiences. Building something with your own two hands. I came to realize that anytime I got in a state where I was consuming far more than I was creating, I found myself far less happy and satisfied. And that focusing my dopamine hits on creation was a far better way to derive happiness. For me there are two primary forms of creation that I love. The first is building software products. It's what I've done throughout my career and still love to today. I derive pleasure from the very act of creation such as solving a hard coding problem or coming up with an innovative design. But I derive even more pleasure from customers sharing how software I helped create improved their lives in a meaningful way. The second form of creation I love is writing. I've been publicly blogging for over ten years, sharing everything I've learned about my profession, about career optimization, and more. Publishing a new piece and following the collective reaction to it is such an incredible source of dopamine hits for me. I think it's so important to find something you love to create. It doesn't matter what it is specifically or whether it's part of your profession or just a hobby. Be it writing, art, music, cooking, woodworking, gardening, beer making, or something else entirely. But there is nothing quite like the joy associated with being a creator.

Sometimes previous sources of dopamine no longer become available to you. The new low sodium diet I was forced to adopt because of a medical condition unfortunately destroyed the food I previously derived so much pleasure from. But I was ultimately able to replace it with a far higher quality source: exercise. While it took me a while to get to this point, I now totally understand and appreciate the runner's high. The way I feel after a run is just incredible. The way it makes my lungs feel. The endorphins. The accomplishment of achieving new personal records. I am quite literally addicted to exercise which I couldn't have imagined earlier in my life. I hope you can find your own exercise addiction as well.

I ultimately realized the very best dopamine hit for me was one that was difficult to produce yet so satisfying. I think it stems from some impactful experiences I had in my youth. I absolutely loved a few of my high school teachers. What was amazing about them wasn't just that they were energetic and were great at teaching, but they went well beyond teaching and actually inspired me to love learning, to love certain subjects, to want to pursue certain careers. At one point I wanted to be a teacher so I could give back to others in a similar way. While I never pursued that route, I have found ways throughout my life to inspire others. And I can't tell you just how incredible it feels when someone tells you that you personally inspired them. I keep a list of every time someone has told me this and seek to find new ways to inspire others. Because for me personally, it's the greatest dopamine hit of all.

Zoe - While we can't escape our biology and the dopamine-driven chemical pathways that make us human, we do get to decide which dopamine hits we allow ourselves to indulge in. So choose wisely.

❤️ Love, Dad

Dear Zoe,

On Saturday, we celebrated the news of your upcoming arrival with a baby shower thrown by your Aunties Flo and Kathy. As I gazed around the room at all of our friends and family, my heart was full. I was amazed and humbled by how many people turned out to celebrate or sent notes about how excited they are to meet you.

My wish for you is that you grow up surrounded by the love and friendship of your village of uncles and aunties, and for you to have the skills to build your own relationships to anchor and sustain you as you go through life.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I was reflecting on how all these people are your village, and how lucky we are to have them. Relationships have always been a top value in my life, and I wanted to pass on some of my lessons learned in this area in hopes that someday it's useful to you. Often considered a soft skill, I consider relationship building an incredibly important one. There's data supporting that not feeling lonely is an incredibly important predictor of long-term health and happiness. However, it's so tough to find time to invest in relationships and they often end up on the wayside, important but not urgent. In my experience, you'll have so much pressure throughout life to focus on tangible achievements like status, physical goods, money, etc. as well as measurable milestones like what college you end up going to, what profession you're in, the awards and achievements you've on, etc. The temptation (which I certainly have fallen into!) is to focus your time and effort only on the things which yield tangible results. After all, the next achievement is only a few hours of effort away, and even better, it feels productive and useful.

My perspective has shifted on this over time. I've come to realize that these tangible achievements are only the scaffolding that we build to support and enable our journeys through life, and not a destination in and of themselves.  Don't get me wrong, I have a strong belief in hard work. Your dad Sachin and I have worked hard in life and continue to do so. However, our hard work is with a purpose: to empower ourselves to have control over our destiny and support our values and priorities in life. Both of us have always wanted to be able to spend our time doing something we're passionate about. Our hard work has enabled us to be in a position to work on our company, Notejoy, together, rather than the more straightforward path of working at the larger technology companies. It's enabled us to take many risks and take passion into account in many decisions throughout our lives.

If the achievements are the scaffolding, the relationships we have and our experiences with them are what provide meaning and destination along the way. All the achievements in the world feel lackluster without someone to share them with. These relationships, including and especially the one I have with your dad, have always been a top value in my life and I've tried to create systems in my life to support their growth. To that end, I wanted to share some of the lessons that I've learned to prioritize them.

Actively manage your relationships like you manage your work

One lesson I've learned is that relationships take hard work and you need to manage them just like a job to reap the rewards. It wasn't always like this. Growing up it always felt so effortless to maintain my friendships. In grade school, I used to call my best friend Michaela every day after school, and we had a lunch group of friends that always ate together and caught up every day in class and school. After we went to college, all of those easy connections from connecting  in-person broke apart because we scattered off to college. Those friendships drifted. The same thing happened in college. I built many amazing friendships because we lived minutes away of each other and had endless time to hang out in study rooms and over late night pizza together. Afterward, my classmates and I split up to different companies and different places all over the globe and I lost touch with so many of them. This cycle repeats itself over and over again, in different forms, where relationships are formed from proximity and then it takes very real effort to keep them going afterward.

For a while, I was in a rut. I noticed that the friends I was seeing were the ones of convenience or those who made an active effort to reach out. The downside of this approach is that it's incredibly passive, and I ended up only seeing the subset of people who make an effort rather than those I really want to see. It struck me that if I could apply a fraction of the effort and structure to managing these personal relationships as I do on my career, I could move to a mode of more actively managing my personal calendar. What if managed it in the same way as I do my to-do list at work or professional networking? A few years ago, I went through the exercise of setting a personal goal for myself:  make a list of 50 people that I haven't spoken to in 4+ months that I regret losing touch with, and reconnect with half of them over the next 3 months. It was an INCREDIBLE experience. I spent the next few months on phone dates, stacking in-person meetings, making office visits, and having some of the most energizing and fun conversations in recent memory. By making it a concrete and structured goal, I felt such a great sense of accomplishment doing something that has brought me a ton of happiness. I've since doubled down on this by making a regular weekly reminder on my calendar to review my relationships spreadsheet. It's literally a spreadsheet with a list of people in my life, with frequency and last contacted fields to help me keep track of who I should reach out to. The entire system now takes less than 10 minutes a week, but it's been so rewarding. Our time is better spent and we feel so much more connected.

Develop your skill in repairing relationships

Another relationship lesson I've learned is that the ability to repair relationships is a very real and important skill that isn't taught in any formal setting. Just like communication, decision making, time management, this is a skill that is incredibly important to practice and learn to do well. What does repairing relationships mean exactly? I'd define the skill of repairing relationships as the ability to have an open and vulnerable conversation with someone else to resolve and close a conflict.

This is important because you'll inevitably reach many points in your life where your feelings are hurt by what someone has said or done, or you have a disagreement with someone and say or do something that hurts one another. When you don't have this skill, it often feels like your only choices are to confront them (fight), maintain the peace by looking past it (ignore), or distance yourself from the other person (run away). These approaches are convenient but problematic. Fighting can lead to a rupture and deepen hurts, ignoring can create distance or build up into resentment, and running away is basically throwing the baby out with the bathwater and calling it quits on the relationship. Running away happens all the time, we even have a term for it: ghosting! Ghosting is where a relationship is ended suddenly and without explanation by just stopping all communication with someone. Rather than have a direct conversation, the person ghosting you will just stop responding. If you've ever been on the receiving end of this, it really hurts.

In recent history, I've never had the tool set to manage conflict constructively. If a relationship starts going the wrong way, I would distance myself from someone until the feelings settle enough to ignore them away. Or I'd fight and this usually resulted in everyone worse off. To build this skill of repair, the first half is learning how to have an open conversation about how you feel. How you engage matters. Rather than starting with an attack, "You are so selfish! I can't believe you did X," engage in a way that creates space for them to share their side of the story, "Earlier when you did X, it made me feel Y. I don't feel good about this, can we talk about this?" In one possible outcome, maybe there's another side to the story that you didn't consider or know, and with that your hurt is eased. In another, maybe you have irreconcilable differences, but at least you both have closure that it's not going to work out.

The other half of building this skill of repair is learning how to say "I'm sorry that I did X". It's crazy to me how many times I've been in a situation where those two words are all it would take to resolve the situation, but it's so hard to get out. There is real power in acknowledging your role in making someone feel a certain way and expressing sorry for it. I know it's easier said than done because often there's a lot of pride tied up in sorry, but rather than framing it as winning or losing I now see of it as a way to express care for the other person.

In closing, whether it's managing your time to grow my relationships or repairing them, I've learned not to take my family or friends for granted. It takes hard work to keep relationships strong, and even harder work sometimes to bring them to an end. If the relationship is important enough, it's worth the discomfort to take an active role in managing this conflict rather than having it slip out of your grasp. Zoe, I hope that your dad and I continue to develop in these skills and model them for you throughout your life.

The recent baby shower stirred up all these feelings of gratitude and love for our friends and family, and I'm so excited for you to meet all of them. We all have our own definition of happiness and you have an entire village supporting you in charting your own path as you grow up.

❤️ Love, Mom

Dear Zoe,

One of the life lessons I hope to pass onto you is the importance of and ability to embrace your new reality. Throughout your life there will undoubtedly be moments where aspects of your life will completely change. Some of these will come naturally as you transition to a new phase in life: going to school for the first time, moving away to college, beginning your first full-time job. Each of these will rock your reality in ways you can't easily prepare for. When it happens, it's so important to accept and embrace these new realities. Unfortunately this is far easier said than done. You'll be tempted to cling to the life you've always known. And to miss it and wish for it to return. But unfortunately doing so will only create more anxiety and not help you deal with your new existence. You will ultimately need to internalize this new life as your new reality, embrace it, and only spend your thoughts on ways to make this new life better.

Some of these new realities, though, won't just be the result of natural transitions in life. You may encounter completely unanticipated (and often unfortunate) circumstances that require you to adapt in ways you would never have wanted to. A professional setback, a loss of a loved one, an illness, and so much more. These will challenge you the most and will cause you to ask questions of why you were so unfortunate. But nonetheless, the only way to persevere is to once again embrace this new reality, accept it as your own, and optimize against it. If you are able to do so, you'll ultimately realize that you can personally grow to entirely new heights and thrive in ways you may have never imagined.

This all won't make much sense to you until you encounter such a new reality. So to make it more real, I wanted to share the story of a new reality I've recently had to face. One I truly struggled with. But one which I ultimately embraced, overcame, and thrived because of it.

It's been just over a year since this new reality rocked my own world. Let's head back to September 2018 when it all began. I started to notice that when I went to crowded bars, networking events, and conference parties, I found myself no longer enjoying them. It was odd for me because as an ambivert, I'm equally energized by throwing myself into a crowd, introducing myself, and cultivating interesting conversations as I am holed up at home coding away for hours. But alas, that fun had disappeared. At first I thought maybe I was coming of age as I was on the eve of my 35th birthday and was finally growing past the party scene, which so many of my friends had lamented had happened to them. But I noticed something odd at a conference I attended in October. When at the kick-off party that night, the bass roared from the music the DJ was pumping as usual, but I realized I just couldn't hear the people I was trying to talk to very well. I kept asking "what did you say?" a hundred times and it frustrated me. And I seemed to remember that same hearing issue at a few previous events I had gone to.

When I returned home from the conference, I messaged my doctor and mentioned that I felt like I may be experiencing some kind of hearing loss. She didn't think much of it as I was also recovering from a cold which sometimes causes such symptoms, but scheduled a hearing test nonetheless. A week later, the hearing test shocked both my doctor and me: I was suffering from severe hearing loss in my left ear. And unlike classic hearing loss that happens with old age at the high frequencies, my hearing loss was specifically at low frequencies, making it even more surprising. My doctor and a series of specialists then subjected me to a battery of hearing tests, an MRI, and steroids.

After about a month of this, a specialist was finally able to diagnose what caused my hearing loss: I had acquired a rather rare medical condition called cochlear hydrops. Each person's inner ear has three fluid chambers, each of which automatically regulates the amount of fluid in its chamber. I, unfortunately, was suffering from a condition that caused those fluid chambers to no longer appropriately regulate their fluid, causing excess fluid buildup and pressure. This pressure caused a whole host of symptoms. Not only the low frequency hearing loss I initially experienced, but a whole series of symptoms I would become intimately familiar with in the coming months. Tinnitus, or constant ringing in the ear, was the most frustrating, making it incredibly difficult to sleep at night without a white noise machine or fan running. Sound distortion also caused these annoying reverberations anytime I heard low frequency sounds, making it even more difficult to hear beyond the hearing loss I was already suffering. The worst part? If this condition wasn't managed, it would progress to Meniere's disease, an even rarer condition that causes vertigo (a spinning dizziness sensation accompanied by loss of balance) and constant migraines, which becomes debilitating.

Unfortunately there isn't much known about this condition given how rare it is. What causes it? The medical community's best guess (and it's only a theory) is it was a common cold gone awry. And how do you cure it? Unfortunately no known cure.

The only option then is just to manage the symptoms. Since my inner ear membranes were no longer functioning properly to automatically regulate the amount of fluid contained within them, the only thing I could do is dramatically drop the total amount of fluid my body was retaining in an attempt to get those chambers to drain. And the way to do that was to dramatically reduce the amount of sodium in my diet... for the rest of my life.

It turns out almost everything you eat has sodium in it. It's naturally occurring in all animal products (milk, yogurt, meat, fish, etc). And it's in the most surprising things (salad greens for example). And of course, every canned and frozen food is stuffed with additional sodium. And all restaurants add an incredible amount of sodium to their food for flavor. And that's when my new reality started to dawn on me: I'll never eat fast food again. I'll never eat my favorite food, pizza, ever again. My days of eating out more than eating in would no longer be possible. Even cooking with canned and frozen food would no longer be possible. Traveling would forever become difficult because of my new sodium restriction.

This new reality was incredibly difficult for me to embrace. I felt sad about the fact that my relationship with food, which was a huge part of the pleasure I had always derived from life, was completely changing. But then I felt even worse for feeling sad in the first place. It's not like I had cancer or was dying or anything, yet why did this diet change feel so overwhelming for me to deal with?

And I continued to try to cling to my previous life. Ada and I, for example, worked hard to try to create a low sodium pizza with a completely low sodium home-made crust and low-sodium cheese. But the fact it didn't taste anything like real pizza depressed me even more.

After about a month of flailing with this new diet, I came to the realization that I just wasn't accepting that my past life was over. I kept asking why this had happened to me and trying to find ways to hack it to bring back some part of the previous life I had always known. But I knew then I needed to stop. I needed to just say it to myself: "My past life is over. This is my new reality. There is no going back." As depressing as that statement might sound, it was actually very liberating. And critical to begin down the path of embracing my new reality.

And ultimately, I did just that. I realized that my relationship with food had changed forever. It could no longer provide the kind of pleasure, comfort, and stress relief I had relied on it to provide throughout my life. So I asked myself then, what did I want my new relationship with food to be? I decided food would become a means to other ends that I had begun to care deeply about. Diet and exercise had increasingly become a priority in my life. I had lost about 8 lbs since leaving my role at LinkedIn and I knew I wanted to double-down on those efforts. I had started to exercise a couple of times a week to start to bring that into my life as well. And I knew now I could dedicate myself to kicking up those efforts a notch and leverage my new relationship with food as fuel for my more important diet and fitness goals.

I devised a brand new diet plan that was low sodium, low calorie, and low carb. The only thing required for my medical condition was a low sodium diet, but it was the low calorie and low carb part that would give my diet purpose and enable me to achieve new heights in health and fitness. I ultimately put together a meal plan that got me to ~1,400 calories a day. My diet consisted of Greek yogurt and berries for breakfast, a huge salad for lunch, and usually an assortment of veggies with chicken or fish for dinner. I kept a detailed spreadsheet of every calorie that I consumed and optimized it for taste and nutrition as I went along. And through this diet I've now lost 30 lbs and maintained it for almost a year.

As part of this, I ultimately learned to cook as well. Ada used to be the sole cook in our house, but given eating out options were no longer available to me, it was important for me to learn to maintain my independence. And I actually have come to enjoy and take pride in my cooking. And I've even gotten to the point where my cooking, despite being low sodium, low calorie, and low carb, is actually decently tasty. (Don't worry Zoe, soon enough you'll have your chance to tell me if you agree :)

As I got my diet under control, I began to shift my focus to exercise. I went from just exercising to specifically training for a half marathon that Ada and I ran together in April this year. I had previously only run a few miles, so was amazed to discover that I could complete my first half marathon in under two hours.

Ada then got into weight lifting after that, so I ultimately transitioned to learning to lift with a personal trainer and then ultimately building out our home gym to enable us to easily lift three times a week. It's been so rewarding to see a 3x increase in the amount of weight I can bench and squat in under 6 months time.

The benefits of all these changes in my life were unimaginably positive. My health KPIs (blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose) went from border-line to ideal levels. I thought I was already an energetic person, but my daily energy and alertness levels have never been higher. The quality of my work improved as well with far greater stamina that I brought to every task. I literally feel like I have reverse-aged, now being in the very best shape of my life at 35 versus even my twenties.

In addition to all the physical benefits, I've seen a ton of mental benefits as well. I've bolstered my confidence as well as my growth mindset: my conviction in my own abilities to take and learn skills and talents I didn't think would ever be a part of my life. Running a half marathon, lifting, cooking weren't even part of my life a year ago.

As I celebrate my 36th birthday this week, I couldn't have imagined just how much my life would have changed in the past year. And yet despite starting the year with a diagnosis of a rare untreatable medical condition, all these changes have ultimately been so positive and I can honestly say I've never felt better about myself nor been prouder of what I've accomplished.

We are measured not by the adversity that we are dealt, but by the way we react in the face of that adversity. And that reaction is entirely up to us. So I hope Zoe, when you face your own new realities throughout your life, you are able to embrace them and not just cling to your past life. Because when you can, you'll ultimately realize that you can find your own unique way to thrive.

❤️ Love, Dad

Dear Zoe,

I still vividly remember the very first moments after your mom told me she was pregnant. I was immediately inundated with a cacophony of emotions as I processed and internalized your existence. But as that day progressed, that myriad of feelings hushed and my thoughts began to singularly focus on my hopes and dreams for the life you would live once we welcomed you to this world. I found myself reflecting on how blessed I had been to live such a charmed life, full of so much. I thought about how lucky I was to have found your mom, my soul mate, who brought so much vivid color to the monochrome life I had lived before her. The close friends that enriched every aspect of my life with fun, comfort, and new adventures. The loving family that continually encouraged and supported my own hopes and dreams as they evolved. The career I ultimately built that embodied my deepest passions and allowed me to make my dent on the universe in a way that strongly aligned with my personal values. The financial success that afforded me the freedom to design my life to optimize for my desired pursuits. As I reflected on all of these aspects of my life, I found myself wishing and hoping that you would similarly enjoy your own charmed life filled with all of these things and more.

But I quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn't enough for me just to hope that you would find such a life. I realized I wanted to pass onto you everything I had stumbled upon in my 35 years of existence that had enabled me to build a life full of meaning and happiness. And I thought what better way to do so than to write you letters sharing everything I have learned. Many of these letters won't make much sense to you until you're much older. But I do hope that as you go through your life, you find some nuggets of wisdom in them that enable you to perhaps pursue a straighter path to what you ultimately desire than my own meandering journey. And all the while, maybe you'll enjoy hearing about your mom and dad's adventures as I share the stories of how I stumbled upon my own life's most important lessons.

Zoe - I just can't wait to welcome you to this world.

❤️ Love, Dad