To new beginnings
“June and I were walking together over dead leaves crackling like paper. She was weeping over the end of a cycle. How one must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life, and that leap the most difficult to make—to part with one’s faith, one’s love, when one would prefer to renew the faith and re-create the passion. The struggle to emerge out of the past, clean of memories; the inadequacy of our hearts to cut life into separate and final portions; the pain of this constant ambivalence and interrelation of emotions; the hunger for frontiers against which we might lean as upon closed doors before we proceed forward; the struggle against diffusion, new beginnings, against finality in acts without finality or end, in our cursedly repercussive being…”
—Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
I have revisited this paragraph almost too many times to count. These words have served as my meditation and mantra for every life transition in this last decade. They’ve seen me though the end of college, the end of relationships, the end of versions of myself that no longer fit as comfortably as they once did.
Now as I wrap up my 8 years at Microsoft, I find myself returning to them once again.
No one tells you how horribly and beautifully painful the growth of your twenties can be. How you can feel like a completely different person each and every year. How learning to integrate the freedom of youth with the realities of adulthood can bring both an exhilarating sense of self and an unwanted kinship with loss. How life is just endless cycles of growth and decay.
Throughout this period, Microsoft remained my constant. It was the steady wall I could lean against when the shifting world around me became too dizzying. It brought me out to a city I could have never imagined living in that I now call home. It introduced to me strangers who became friends who became family. It was the name by which I introduced myself to the world, second only to my own.
Microsoft became the foundation of my life—the main pattern in the fabric of my identity.
I’ve described to my therapist that I now feel like I’m being pushed and pulled through a kind of wormhole: some threads of my identity caught in the past, pulling bunching fraying as they release themselves; some new ones being woven in, the colors clunky and clashing, the designs not yet fully formed.
Still, it is time to step forward out of this cycle and into the next. Time to experiment with the structure of my life to see what holds and what breaks. To take what Microsoft taught me about purpose and principle and pay it forward with a more direct line of impact to my community.
To all the managers, mentors, teammates, and friends I have made at Microsoft: thank you. You all gave me the space and encouragement to grow into the woman I am today. You helped me discover the unique tone and tenor of my voice. These are gifts beyond measure, and I will forever be grateful.
Until our paths cross again.