I have an Ivy League MBA, a very healthy respect for my 401(k), and absolutely no idea why adulthood doesn’t come with an instruction manual.
Ideally a searchable one. With a section called “Is everyone else also confused, or should I be concerned?”
I’m a brown girl who followed the blueprint. Studied hard. Got the education. Built the corporate career. My parents gave me a work ethic, not a trust fund, and I have taken that arrangement quite seriously.
I like working. I like being good at something. I’m also attached to the part where money arrives in my account on a predictable schedule.
Employer-sponsored health insurance? Beautiful concept.
Somewhere along the way, I seem to have absorbed the idea that doing the right things would eventually make life feel straightforward. There would be a point at which I had accumulated enough qualifications, experience and sensible financial decisions to stop feeling like I was figuring things out for the first time.
That point has been difficult to locate.
One of my unexpected firsts was being laid off. I’ve written about those first days in another letter, including some expensive peanut butter and my initial reservations about the word “funemployment.”
I had savings. I was fortunate to have options. I was still scared.
I also remained quite interested in having a salary.
There is a familiar internet story in which someone leaves corporate life, books a one-way ticket and discovers their true calling somewhere with excellent natural light.
I enjoy those stories. I just don’t always recognize myself in them.
I want financial independence and work I care about. I also want time to read a book without extracting five actionable insights from it.
I love a beautiful hotel. I would like to see the total after taxes and fees before developing an emotional attachment.
And I love to travel, especially the part where a place starts becoming familiar. Finding a coffee shop I want to return to. Working out where to walk. Noticing what people do with an ordinary morning. A city gets more interesting to me once I can imagine having a Tuesday there.
Movement and wellness are part of my life. So are good meals, long conversations and the occasional Bollywood reference that explains a situation better than several paragraphs of analysis.
All of that belongs here.
Welcome to The Firsts Club
The group chat for all your firsts.
The money question you feel slightly embarrassed to ask. The career decision that looks good on paper but feels complicated in practice. Your first visit somewhere. The book that gives you something new to think about on the way to work.
Some letters will be practical. I’ll share resources, questions worth asking and things that helped me get a clearer picture.
Others will take us somewhere: a neighborhood, a coffee shop, a different way of spending a day.
I’ll tell you when something comes from my experience and when I’m still working it out. Having an MBA has given me many useful things. Omniscience was apparently an elective.
I want this to be a letter you enjoy opening. Somewhere you might find an answer, a recommendation, or a sentence you immediately send to a friend because, yes, that is exactly it.
You don’t need to have been laid off to belong here. You don’t need the same background as me, either.
You may simply have worked very hard to build a life and occasionally wondered why you still have so many questions about how to live it.
Pull up a chair.
I have notes. You probably do, too.
The Firsts Club