Seattle Diaries

Trimming the Sails

August 23rd, 2026

There’s a moment on a sailboat, right after the wind shifts, where nothing happens yet. The sail is still holding its old shape, full of a wind that’s already gone somewhere else, and for a few seconds you’re moving on momentum alone. Then it luffs — that soft, unmistakable flutter — and your hand is back on the sheet before you’ve fully decided to move it.

Change tends to announce itself the same way. Not as a single loud decision made on one clear morning, but as a small flutter you register a beat before you can name it — a role that used to catch the wind and now just flaps, a conversation with someone close to you that used to fill the sail and now doesn’t quite, a version of “home” that’s drifted a few degrees without telling you. By the time any of it becomes a decision, you’ve usually already felt it flutter.

The career version of this gets talked about most, probably because it’s the easiest to log — a title, a resignation letter, an offer. But it’s rarely trimming its own sail alone. The same wind that’s shifting the job is usually shifting how you hold your relationships, where you let yourself call home, which parts of an old identity are still cut for a wind that’s stopped blowing. Treating the job as the whole story is a little like describing a sail change and leaving out the wind.

What’s uncomfortable isn’t the adjusting. It’s that a sailboat can’t point straight at where it’s going if the wind is coming from there — it has to tack, angling away before angling back, covering more distance than a straight line ever would. The instinct is to want the motor instead: point at the destination, hold the course, ignore the wind entirely. But there is no motor here. Only sail, and wind, and the discipline of reading both honestly enough to adjust before you’re forced to.

Maybe the more honest way to hold it is that the tacking isn’t a detour from the real journey — it is the journey, for anyone actually paying attention to the wind instead of insisting on a straight line the conditions were never going to allow. Constant, not because the boat never arrives anywhere, but because the hand never really leaves the sheet for long.

I don’t know which way it shifts next. Hand’s still on the sheet, and I’d rather feel it flutter early than late.
Unlearning at 30,000 Feet: Reflections on Change and Growth

January 9th, 2025

I have always been fascinated by how thought-provoking flights can be. Knowing that you are by yourself with little to no real connection to the rest of the world for a few hours allow you some quality time to self-reflect. As you hear the clicking sound of feelings from experiences settling in their rightful places in your brain and the revelations that you deducted out of those learnings keep flowing into your mind in disguise of fancy words, you find yourself regretting having left your laptop in the overhead compartment.

Nowadays, there is another hot topic that never ceases to impress me. The pace at which we are experiencing change lately has reached a level to cause unlearning to become more important than learning. Regardless of the level of our potential, we are all operating with a limited set of resources. Even the most well-endowed person would be limited with the energy and time available to them at any given time. Information flow, on the other hand, is accumulating through the collective effort of most of humanity and progressing at a much faster pace than a single person can absorb.

Unlike the previous generations, we no longer have the luxury to be able to accumulate experience and knowledge that will lead us to a peaceful retirement. Unlearning is now a more essential skill than learning in the first place, as we need the freed-up processing power and peace of mind to be able to re-learn new things from scratch rather than running into conflicts with the current (well, previous) status quo.

The next generation? They bring a ton of energy to the equation and are very well-situated as well as promising to shape a better future for themselves, as opposed to what we have been able to achieve so far. On the flip side, being as successful in having their voice heard at an earlier stage in life comes with its consequences. This might be the first generation in the last decade that actually managed to pull off having their demand to learn by themselves through experience embraced by their predecessors. This means they will first go through the partial recurrence of history in disguise, before forming more settled opinions around life.

This is a very exciting time for the ones that are actively participating in the game of life and striving to contribute and be part of the newly shaping world order. As the battery of the laptop slowly drains and the flight is beginning to descend, humble recommendation is to make an intentional effort to constantly remember challenging ourselves and others on what can be unlearned to prioritize what’s important at the time. Also, make the decision that has been lingering, try a new approach, take the flight. If the initial intention is genuine, it will all be worth it.
2025

January 1st, 2025

First day of the new year is perfect timing for a fresh start. Reflections on the past year don’t help much with building a life from scratch, six thousand miles away from your hometown. Neither does new year resolutions.

What counts when you are trying to establish a new life is mostly focusing on the next thing that you need to achieve, as well as constantly taking care of your own physical and mental well-being with an intentional effort to wake up self-motivated next day to keep building on the little foundation that you have in the new location.

Even the smallest achievements count to carry yourself towards the next one and eventually to tangible results that will motivate you further to keep going.

As you strive to keep yourself together while juggling multiple priorities, unexpected surprises, like a welcoming smile or a gesture, help you keep the hope for brighter days ahead alive.

The decision to change countries at mid-life on your own is not one to be made randomly. No matter how much you think it through, life will keep happening in its unique way.

If you manage to embrace change in the way that we all have to when it comes to observing the weather change with seasons, adaptation follows naturally just like wearing the right clothes for the weather instantly make you feel better.

Avoiding change for longer than needed results in getting trapped in the illusion that we are in control of our lives and what will happen next. Taking a step forward comes together with its own risks and rewards, but most importantly a humbling experience that teaches you no other can. One that makes you realize that you were never in control anyways.

It would be fair to say that most people are fans of summer rather than winter. However, it’s often the effort in winter that leads to a rewarding summer. Even before that, winter has so much to offer including tranquility as soon as the turbulence is over.

Let’s keep the first chapter concise, with hopes that it will be a consistent practice of writing throughout the year and beyond. Only thing to leave the ones who made it to the end of the essay is:

If you have something in mind, make an intentional effort to pause thinking about it for a while and for once, act on it this time. I promise, you will have plenty of time to keep thinking on the go.

To new beginnings and a wonderful 2025.

Trimming the Sails

Unlearning at 30,000 Feet: Reflections on Change and Growth

2025