One of the things I’ve wanted to capture in this blog is personal experience. For me, this has been a way of savoring the moments, and lingering in them far beyond their original scope. In this regard, I am reminded of that excellent Richard Curtis movie About Time, which teaches us that love, joy and fulfillment are not gifts that are simply granted to us, but something we must create with intention in every moment of our lives. It is this idea of intentionality that I would like to discuss today.

Earlier this year, Anu and I made an intentional decision to move to the city of Austin in Texas. While we continue to love the Pacific Northwest and Bellevue, Washington in particular, we figured it was time to shuffle things up, having lived in the same place for over a decade (over 17 years for me). It wasn’t really a straight-line decision, much more of an exploratory one where we decided each step on its own merits and landed where we did. Some ideas were set in motion around April of 2026, we made the decision to move around mid-May, and we finally did in mid-August. It is a curious fact that when you lean into change and go with it, you don’t notice it all that much. Everything is different in Austin, of course, but in many other ways, everything is still pretty much the same. Personally, I have committed to travel back to Washington every few weeks to stay connected with the team at work.

What’s been interesting to me in this entire (albeit still short) journey is the commentary and questions from the people I know. First, more than one person has characterized it as a Big Move, and second, we’re asked why. Now this may seem like a natural question, but the answer has struck me as post hoc rationalization — we decided to move, that’s all, the rest is a story we make up. For some people, the idea of picking up and moving somewhere else seems like a scary thing and perhaps it truly is, and we just didn’t notice it. For me personally, this was no different than many of my earlier moves from one apartment to another, or one house to another (I reckon I’ve lived in 5 apartments and 3 houses in Seattle / Bellevue). Our main additional complications were the interstate transport of our stuff and the comfort of our cats. Hobbes and Susie travelled with us in the cabin of the plane, and they clearly did not enjoy their moments on the flight. Hobbes in particular had had enough of the descent in the first 5 seconds. But no matter — we made it to the house, and we made it our home.

What is intentionality without clarity of purpose, you may ask. I am a strong believer in the idea that we have to define our own purpose and substantiate it with the right goals, and moreover, how we get somewhere matters far more than where we get to. After all, if the moments are all we have, what does it matter what the destination is? All we have is today, this hour, this minute, this instant — like the derivative in calculus, just because you take the limit to zero doesn’t mean the slope ceases to exist — the trajectory is all that matters, and we must learn to seize the moment and soar.

My library has travelled with me to Austin, and I hope to get serious about reading my books.

The question of freedom is often looked upon through the lens of un-freedom, defining the term not in terms of the positive but that of the negative, of what its lack implies. But there is an alternative approach to the question, framing freedom as being given the space — the nothingness — to thrive, evolve and grow. To let some-one or some-thing free is to let it go, to create an emptiness around them that they can choose to fill howsoever they wish, taking away the guardrail of concrete that chafes and injures the very thing it claims to protect. Ironically, it is the desire to protect and do good that is the source of all un-freedom. It is weakness that props up the proponents of un-freedom, whether it be a cry of help to save oneself or save the children or save the wretched. Morality is the fount of un-freedom, inviting the sludge that ossifies the spaces around us, driven relentlessly by judgment that hearkens to the call, coming for one and all of us. Conversely, a moral vacuum is the friend of freedom. To suspend judgment, to invite evil into the world without allowing it to consume the world and convert it into its own image, to embrace the void — this is what it means to cherish freedom. At every critical juncture, we must make this very choice: do we wish to play the game of morality and judgment, or do we ally ourselves with freedom?

Each December, we look for a warm place to spend our time, ideally one that’s a stark contrast from the gray skies, damp air and brief days of the Pacific Northwest. This time around we decided to go to the city of Austin in Texas. Austin has decent cafes, restaurants and bars to hang out at, and plenty of parks and lakes to spend time around. On our last day, we hiked the River Place Canyon Trail.

One new construction stood out during one of our walks. This was a large 3084-square-foot house with a unique architecture.

But perhaps our most novel experience during this trip was taking Uber rides in Waymo vehicles (the autonomous and driverless ones).

Waymo’s autonomous and driverless car.

“NO is a complete sentence.” —Anonymous

It’s surprising how much trouble people have with just saying ‘no’. It may well have something to do with social norms, but while I’ve never had any compunctions on this point, it wasn’t until recently that I realized how hard it is for people to simply say ‘no’ (to anything).

Being able to say ‘no’ is a superpower. The simplest way to do it might be to say “No” or “No, I won’t do that”, and then offer a long pause, at which point the other person will likely ask you why. If you’re feeling charitable, you might then take a deep breath and offer some explanation of why you won’t (note: won’t, not can’t). You don’t always have to offer an explanation, and you must never be apologetic about it unless you truly feel that way inside. Regardless, you’ve already won, because you’ve done the one thing that’ll give you peace of mind that compounds over time: you’ve established and communicated your boundaries, and put truth and kindness ahead of appearing nice.

I am thrilled and excited to welcome Susie into our home!

Susie is a rich brown Bengal kitten, born on May 10^th of this year. She quickly figured out what’s what, zoomed around to explore all the nooks and crannies (she’s quite a blur), and most importantly kept Hobbes at bay by hissing and snarling at him, even as he persisted in chasing after her (very cautiously) trying to make her feel welcome.

Susie is named after Calvin’s nemesis — but Hobbes knows they secretly like each other.