I flew from Lahore to New York last week, culminating a six month “fashion tour of the world” — an excursion I gifted myself to explore my childhood love of fashion, which I’d all but forgotten about during my years working as a software engineer. Essentially I went shopping around the world; Barcelona, Lisbon, Paris, Morocco, Thailand, Pakistan, California, New York. My suitcase was always overweight, at times by 6kg, and yet I never had to pay excess baggage fees — such is the power of a smile.

Founder house in Barcelona; basically adult study abroad, group of kids exploring a city together, long enough to build a rhythm but not so long that we grow to hate each other. Shopped at Zara and Desigual, two Spanish brands you may have heard of. One night while watching Eat Pray Love the group was inspired to travel (lol) and we spontaneously booked flights to Morocco for the next day. How fun was that?

I stopped by Lisbon, previously the site of one of my lowest moments, to honor my growth since. I fittingly fell ill and spent the entire time in the hotel — same hotel I cried in on the last trip — really getting cozy with the memories and how far I’ve come. I’m proud of myself.

I spent an evening in Paris, having dinner and walking around the Seine with a friend I went to high school with. I used to think because I attended a conservative all girls convent in Pakistan, my schoolmates and I were somehow uncool on the global scale. When I got to Stanford, the cool kids all grew up frequenting rooftop bars and ultra-chic clubs. I definitely did not grow up clubbing, in fact to my knowledge Pakistan does not even have clubs. I was very, very wrong about this. I went to school with some incredible women and I’m grateful that thanks to Instagram, we get to reconnect as adults.

Thailand — this should be three chapters, but I’ll try to summarize. My cousin’s wedding; a Pakistani destination wedding in Thailand, exactly as dreamy as it sounds, and an obvious stop during fashion tour of the world. This was a visual feast, and a very special one for me, as it’s a rare time the whole extended family was on vacation together. Sipping on a coconut getting foot rubs on the beach while having a heart to heart with my Nano — that’s a memory I'll keep with me until the end. Thank you, Alizeh!

Then I briefly lived on the island of Koh Phangan, where I learned to ride a scooter. My daily routine: ride to my MMA class, do ice bath, then sit at the local vegan café and write. Evenings I would attend fight night and bet on blue (I lost a lot of money, thankfully it was Thai baht). I lived at a beachside resort with the most adorable Thai kids (all boys) — they would pick out seashells to gift me with their tiny little hands and I swear to god I felt like someone had just handed me diamonds. I love those kids, they will forever live in my heart. I hope one day I have a son as cute as Lucas.

Life intervened and I got to attend a Coldplay concert in Bangkok. Hearing them play “Biutyful” was a peak experience which just about explains how I felt about life in that moment:

I hope that you get everything you want in this beautiful life
Watermelon moon, so happy you're alive
And I feel like a river finally arrived at sea

When you love me, love me, love me

I don’t know, it was beautiful and I haven’t been able to stop listening to this song since.

I stopped by California to do the Hoffman Process which I wrote more about here.

Lastly, Pakistan. Home. The place where I fell in love with fashion to begin with. I manifested a collab with my childhood girlcrush Pakistani design house. I have always wanted to be one of those girls who get free designer samples — I know, if I can do all of this then surely I don’t need free clothes but here’s the thing: I do. As I was leaving I made some “New York vs. Lahore” videos contrasting a dress with a saree. I fell in love with Pakistan again, this time without the anxiety that plagued me growing up. This time I know how the story goes: it all works out in the end.

Now I’m back in New York and back on my bs; living in Nolita, running the Glow Up Squad, taking people shopping in Soho. It really does all work out in the end.

Oh, and the mermaid Barbie came along everywhere :)

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I regret that a few years ago when I left Stripe, I started a writing practice, it was going really well and gaining momentum, but then I let my fears get the best of me, tore it all down and went down the safe path: I started a crypto company for which I rather easily raised millions. Yeah, that didn’t work. I had a sense of what I wanted to do with my life but I put myself on the deferred life plan; figured I’ll quickly make some bajillions and then get to what I really want to do. It turns out the gurus were right, the deferred life plan does not work.

But I can live with that, because the detour taught me countless life lessons I would’ve had to learn sooner or later. It gave me a lot to ponder when I did eventually take that one way ticket to Bali.

I regret the imperfect trades; times I sold stock simply out of fear and scarcity, when I didn’t need the cash at all. Now that I’m out of poverty mindset, I wish I could buy back at that price. Like many people, I regret not putting all my savings on Nvidia a year ago.

But I can live with this. Now I have enough to feel safe, take risks and experiment, but I’m still motivated to work in the long term. Maybe if I had made all the “right” trades and become a bajillionaire, I wouldn’t be pursuing my dreams the way I am. I could be like my friend N who, having inherited some $100MM+ in cold, hard, cash, is pushing 40 now, still talking about all the things he’d like to do, but stuck, confused, unsure how to move forward. I’m a decade younger than him, and I’ve done everything he talks wistfully about.

I regret every time I allowed the wrong person into my life; friends, dates, coworkers. Then again, I regret being the wrong person myself, so disconnected from myself and my own intuition.

But I know that every wrong person was a stepping stone to me, today, the right person, and I’m so glad I made my way home to her.

I regret getting caught up in the American way of life, forgetting how wonderful it is to be a Pakistani woman. I worked in Silicon Valley and all but gave up my feminine side to fit in with guys who in the end, I don’t even think are that cool. I was used to dimming my light and letting other people define what was cool.

But then when I did reconnect with my true self, I got to start the Glow Up Squad, styling tech founders and having so much fun with it. I now get to bring the best of Pakistani culture to the world. I wouldn’t be able to do this if things had gone any other way.

In the end, I regret nothing at all. I believe in the butterfly effect; that something as simple as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can cause a hurricane across the world. What if the winding road I took was the right road all along? If I had done anything differently — made the perfect trades and become a billionaire, always lived in complete alignment and authenticity, never started an ill-fitted friendship — I would not be the person I am, living the life I am today. And I quite like it this way.

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One of the most insidious blockers to our happiness is those pesky beliefs I call “shoulds.” Once I made the decision to leave the company I had founded and get on a one-way ticket to Bali, I was amazed to find just how much of my life was run by scripts written by some unknown deity. Scripts I never agreed to or even knew about. They were just there, in the background, running my life.

Up until college, the big should was to get into a top American college. In my life even in Pakistan, getting into a brand name American college was the be-all-end-all and I, like many kids, cared about that. So I contorted myself into shapes that didn’t always fit me in order to fit what I hoped would be, well, Stanford.

Once I got to Stanford I had little idea what I wanted to do, because I hadn’t been writing my own script. So I took on the Stanford script: work in tech, make a bunch of money, start a company, go through YC, pretend that being a woman has absolutely no impact on the way I think or act or aspire to things differently than men. Oh, pretend that gender is like, not even a real thing, it’s just a social construct. Cool. Let’s go with that.

So I found myself at 29, building a YC-backed startup, having raised millions of dollars, running a team, etc, but quite unhappy, some would say. And what I’ve learned the hard way is that we can’t lie to ourselves; the truth will always catch up. Living out of alignment is unsustainable; sooner or later the bill comes due. And the longer you wait, the bigger and uglier it will be.

I was lucky that my spiritual awakening came relatively early; I was only 29 when I could no longer deny that I was on the wrong path. The Stanford script had little room for quitting and taking a one-way ticket to Bali, and at that crossroads, I jumped from their script to mine, which I am still writing today.

Contrast this with my friend K. K grew up under much less pressure to pursue prestige; few scripts written for her. So she knew, at a young age, that she wanted to pursue acting, and she loved clothes, and wanted to start a clothing business. Now in our 30s, she is doing exactly that; a famous actress with 1.6M followers on Instagram and a thriving clothing business, I can barely walk with her in Hunza or Karachi without her getting stopped for an autograph. K’s life may not be perfect — is anyone’s? — but it is true to her, and free of many of the anxieties that plague my Stanford classmates and myself.

For those of us who did lose our way, all is not lost. The antidote to shoulds is knowing that we are all lovable exactly as we are. We don’t need to earn our worth in achievements or money or Forbes nominations. I am not worth more than you because I went to Stanford and you, community college. You are not worth more than me because you make a lot more money. You just are, and I just am, and everyone is fine, and the world keeps turning.

Knowing this frees us to experiment, to try and fail, to pursue things we love even when they don’t give us immediate validation. We do them because we want to, we are lovable because we just are. And if we love something enough to keep doing it even when nobody else cares, that is how true greatness is born.

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September 2020, I looked in the mirror and there it was: my first white hair. This single white hair served as a better reminder of my mortality than any School of Life book ever could. Shortly after, I left Stripe as I’d been mulling, gave up my apartment in New York, and bought a one-way ticket to Pakistan. I had no plans.

In the coming months, many people inquired what I was up to. I dressed the answer up, but at the core it was: nothing. For months after I quit, I did absolutely nothing that people expected. I didn’t binge Netflix. I didn’t jump into building a startup. I certainly didn’t look for another job. Instead, I gave myself a blank page to play with. What would I do if there was little I had to do?

I slept better than I had in years and left my phone off for days. I played hide and seek with the servants’ kids on my street —a community that doesn’t stress about grades or status or corporate politics but instead rests, satisfied. I started kickboxing, then injured myself. I met models and learned to pose, bought a camera and took photos I couldn’t with an iPhone, started painting and writing again. I hid from my “real world” with no definitive plans to return.

And then I willingly and enthusiastically moved back to New York. Disconnecting was peaceful but I missed progress; new ideas, products, experiences. I didn’t have a clear vision of how I’d spend my time, but I knew I wanted to make things - technology, art, whatever - that resonated with people and moved the world forward. The future was going to come whether I sat it out or not; I didn’t want to sit it out!

The vague vision I had of my new life in New York is crystalizing quite well. I’m bootstrapping a dating app with a team of one: me. I design the app and develop prototypes, go to parties and find people to add to the beta. It’s a blast. I no longer need to convince myself to work; I have to drag myself to eat and sleep. Any temptation to hide out in the mountains is all but gone.

I’m writing this for a good friend who’s at a recognizable crossroads. One side of her wants to drop everything and live somewhere remote and cheap, away from her phone, advertisements and responsibilities. The other side wants to move to America and launch a consumer product, spend her time on exactly the kind of capitalism she wants out of. She’s worried because of the apparent contradiction within her, but I don’t believe there’s a contradiction at all.

Modern city life can be stressful! Our phones demand constant attention; they connect us to our friends, family, and work 24/7 and constantly bombard us with stimuli. A decision as simple as where to eat or work out can trigger analysis paralysis in me. Despite efforts, my Screen Time report for last week reads 6 hours and 15 minutes per day spent on my phone. Absurd. I understand the temptation to run away - I did.

But there are, of course, reasons to return. I personally get pulled back by technology, art, and people. I love being in cities because of the people and art I’m surrounded by; I hear live music just sitting in a New York park. I can go to a concert and meet fascinating new people. Technology stitches us all together and I want to build it.

The urges to run and return may seem at odds, but they have a symbiotic relationship. Some of the biggest contributors to our modern way of living have spent significant time hiding from the world.

Andy Puddicome has single handedly helped millions of people reduce their stress levels through Headspace; an event business, an app, now a TV show. I can attest that I was a lot more neurotic before I started using Headspace. Without Andy’s work, even if I had tried meditation, it likely wouldn’t have stuck.

While he’s an influential figure in our world today, Andy spent much of his early years disconnected from it. During his early twenties, Andy was a sports science student living with the trauma of two deaths close to him. He dropped everything and moved to Asia to train as a Buddhist monk. I doubt he could have pictured how that decision to disconnect from modern life would end up changing the very world he was disconnecting from.

Taylor Swift is another cultural icon who spent significant time hiding. For the better part of a decade, fans looked forward to Taylor’s albums not only because they sounded great, but also for all the juicy details about her personal life. Is “Dear John,” which paints a meagre image about a man named John, about Taylor’s fling with John Mayer? (yes it is). Could it be that “All Too Well” is about Jake Gyllenhaal, and that the sister in question whose house the scarf is left at is none other than Maggie Gyllenhaal? Is this the scarf she left behind? (You guessed it: yes and yes!).

But Taylor got sick of it all; the scrutiny, the pressure, the expectations. She didn’t release any music between 2014 and 2017, an anomaly for her, and kept a very low profile. She began dating someone and didn’t tell any fans. At her Super Bowl performance in 2017, she told fans that she was only doing one show that year, and she kept that promise. Fans missed her, but many of us moved on with our lives.

And then she came back with a bang. She shed her good girl image and took a political stance despite warnings from her campaign manager. In 2020 she dropped two consecutive albums and a documentary explaining her hiatus. She’s back, and better for having taken that time off.

The temptation to run away from modern life will strike from time to time. But there will be reasons to return, and it’s on us to find the balance.

As I wound my life down in 2020, I had applied to Y Combinator with a good friend. We got the interview but as we prepared for it, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wanted to make no commitments to investors, cofounders, or even myself at that moment. The problem we were working on was important and interesting, but I wasn’t convinced that I wanted to dedicate myself to it. Heck, I didn’t want to dedicate myself to anything at the time. Eventually I told my cofounder and backed out of the interview. His response:

“Don’t discount the inner voice that wants to take some time off or head in a different direction. Let's recall how Mohammad also retired to a cave before he became a founder.”

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