had a wonderful call with @minal_hasan yesterday(she is so inspiring!) and we talked about decisions we had made to put family first.

i made a difficult decision to turn down a dream job as a vc associate at the beginning of 2020 bc it was across the country from them...

i wrote about that decision here, and I'm now reflecting on how much I've appreciated the outcome of that decision as I moved into an apartment in san diego (25 min from my parents): https://www.notion.so/Between-the-Sets-3afb9a598bc2448cb3f1f4a88fcd506b

I did a ton of calls throughout my recruiting experience in senior year - and one piece of advice that really stuck out to me was:

"ask yourself: what are you optimizing for?"

by choosing family over an incredible career opportunity early on, I've cemented them as the key factor in my decision making process.

making that one hard decision has made every decision after easier, and it's also helped me decouple my sense of self-worth from my career.

all throughout college, I wholly tied my sense of self-worth to what I was working on...and separating those two things over the past six months has surprisingly brought more joy and abundance, not only to my home life, but to my work life as well.

i woke up this morning feeling really grateful and wanting to share how a difficult decision has brought so much happiness into my life.

i'm learning that intentionally saying no to things can bring you so much more than saying yes.