The Night I Questioned Everything

It was 4 a.m., and I couldn't sleep. I tried blasting my favorite "Nights" playlist and doing those slow breathing exercises, but my brain was like, "Nope, let's overthink instead." Desperate for calm, I stepped outside to find the moon. It was a chilly winter night, the sky glowing like a cloudy day, but the moon? Nowhere to be seen. Sitting on my porch, staring at the weirdly bright night, I started spiraling with my thoughts: What am I even doing? Why am I here in the USA? I didn't want answers, but my mind wouldn't quit.

Ugh, why does my brain pick the worst timing possible to hold TED Talks with itself? I wrapped my sweater tighter and sank deeper into my chair, replaying the last month. Back in India, I'd be curled up in my room, probably watching something, arguing with my best friend about what happened at the office, or laughing with friends while sipping tea at our favorite spot. Here? I'm dodging people and their small talk.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. — Alan Watts

The spiral got real when my mind gave me a reality check about my current semester and how I'm struggling to install scikit-learn in Python. I'm working my butt off, staying up late decoding lectures, and somehow on my way to pulling off good grades that I'm going to be proud of. But that night, all I could think was: Is it worth it? I missed my room, my freedom, the chaos in my apartment, and even my barber and tea wala bhaiya. Then I looked at my phone. A text from my best friend back home: "You're living your American dream, doing your masters, making new friends. You're set for life!" I laughed. I hoped she was right.

Maybe I was expecting a tiny nudge from the universe to say, 'You're here for a reason, even if you can't see it yet.'

I looked up at the sky again, still no moon, but the clouds were shifting, letting me peek at a few stars. Those stars were twinkling like they were winking at me, and for a second, I felt a little less lost. I took a deep breath, the cold air snapping me back. Living the American dream, huh? Maybe not the Netflix version, but wrestling with Python code errors and acing my skills are my kind of epic right now. I'm not just surviving. I'm building something, even if it's messy and exhausting.

I chuckled, thinking about my latest culture shock. Last week, I tried explaining the magic of ginger chai to a classmate. The next day, he saw me drinking coffee alone at Dunkin and said, "So this is how you fix your day, huh?" That took me back home. Back in India, my tea wala bhaiya decided what kind of tea I needed by looking at my face after a long day at work. But then I remember the people I see here are different. Maybe I'm finding a new kind of temporary home, one error code at a time.

I shuffled back inside. Back to that scikit-learn error. It didn't feel like just a coding glitch. It felt like a metaphor for my whole semester. I'd spent hours debugging, only to realize I missed a single pip install. I wasn't ready to give up. Not on Python, not on my masters, not on this wild adventure. I added a reminder: Call Mom tomorrow. She'll probably say, don't lose sight of what I wanted to be and what I promised her. Six months in, I'm learning that doubting myself is part of the deal. It doesn't mean I'm failing. It means I'm trying.

- With Love, Aj✨