Reading, Writing, and Wasting Time

what to do when all of your passions make no money

I've spent the past month mentally and physically obliterated by one question:

What am I even doing with my life?

Like—genuinely—what am I doing?

I am sitting in the computer science building, scrolling through Linkedin with tears in my eyes.¹ I was just on Twitter and got slapped in the face by yet another college dropout startup founder/boy-genius preaching: "Fuck college, follow your dreams, just build." Now, I am again avoiding my real school work to do something silly and frivolous: writing.

The roll call continued. I thought it was very nice that there were so many job openings, yet it worried me too — we’d probably be pitted against one other in some way. Survival of the fittest. There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer.

Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i.e., almost everybody could be a writer.

But most men, fortunately, aren’t writers, or even cab drivers, and some men — many men — unfortunately aren’t anything.

Charles Bukowski, Factotum

I am writing because I can't not write. Even when I'm behind on assignments. Even when the logical, pragmatic voice in my head is screaming at me to do something useful. I'm writing, all while contending with the reality that the things I love most are what rational people politely call 'entertainment' (what they really mean is a waste of time).

Right now, I am only in STEM classes and I feel fundamentally starved because I cannot engage with any of my humanities-oriented interests. I long for the days of my high school English classes—when I read fiction books and wrote about things nobody cared about as homework. At least back then, my English teacher would read my nine-page essay on the politics of George Orwell and give me an A for all my effort. When I spent hours tirelessly reading, writing, and researching, it didn't feel like some pointless pursuit of passion. I was just a dedicated student doing her homework, a necessary step in the hyper-competitive race to get into a top school. It was just my luck that I loved it.

Nowadays, sadly none of my engineering professors want to hear my thoughts on the political and economic state of the world in the form of long-form, well-researched essays, which is a shame because I'm really good at that! Instead, I spend most of my time writing C++ code, doing linear algebra problem sets, and writing lab reports for my chemistry class.

I suppose, in my limited free time, I should be working to become a better engineer. Further, my career prospects—grind Leetcode problems, build the next B2B SaaS GPT wrapper startup (this ones hinge for dogs!)"with blockchain integration," and secure $3 million in pre-seed funding, or, at the very least, I should put on a short skirt and get plastered with my friends (after all, I am only in college once). And yet, I've been doing none of those things.

The Worst Kind of Nerd

This semester, I've completely succumbed to my idealistic desires and have spent nearly all my time reading and writing. Not the "productive" kind of reading and writing, either—not Zero to One by Peter Thiel, a Paul Graham essay, or whatever book the latest billionaire founder-guru says changed their life.

I've been reading fiction (gasp!), Eve Babitz, Kerouac, and when I do read nonfiction, it's history. But not the "useful" kind, like the history of computers or the story of how Apple was founded. No, I've been deep in Cold War history and pop culture rabbit holes. Right now, I'm reading a book about John Wayne and Christian Evangelicals².

I'd honestly rather tell someone I'm reading a kitschy, Canva-graphic-cover, enemies-to-lovers smutty romance novel than admit I'm voluntarily reading about the cultural mythos of American masculinity—not for a class, not for a paper, but for fun. Not only have I failed at self-optimization, but I've also failed at being a nerd.

Anti-intellectualism is in. Everything is a meme. Even now, when I'm writing this, all I can think about is how insufferable I sound. In our current cultural landscape, it's fundamentally uncool to care about anything that won't make you hotter or richer. You have to pretend to be nonchalant, detached from all earthly desires, and wrap every trace of genuine passion in five layers of irony and vocal fry. Not only am I a nerd—I'm the worst kind of nerd. Because in its current state, my nerdiness isn't even making me money. If only I enjoyed machine learning research enough to do it in my free time or went to hackathons for fun—then at least my nerdiness could get me a job, a fat paycheck, or, at the very least, some tech-bro-twitter clout.

me ( all the time)

Entering Purgatory

Last month, I had to study for my Linear Algebra midterm—which I was so completely screwed for—but instead, I wasted an entire day of precious study time writing an essay that had basically taken over my brain. Every time I tried to study the Gram-Schmidt method, all I could think about was this thing I needed to write. Eventually, I gave in.³

I spent nearly ten hours sitting in bed, type-type-typing like a maniac, stopping only to chug coffee and protein shakes. I had to physically force myself to hit "post” before I was even done writing, so I could forcibly redirect my attention back to Linear Algebra.

Whenever I have to write. It feels like my body has been taken over by something outside of my own rational being, and I have no agency against this foreign invader. No matter how much I plan, no matter how neatly I color-code my Google Calendar, when I need to write, I have to write. Nothing can stop me—not hunger, thirst, or even the fear of failing a class.

During my last spiral a month ago, I even briefly considered the counterfactual reality where I dropped out of college and moved to New York and tried to become the next Bukowski. Drink cheap whiskey, work a scrappy job, and write all day. And then, two years after I finally got famous, I'd die alone in a fifth-floor walkup when my lungs finally give out from all that chain-smoking, and my landlord would find my magnum opus buried under piles of unwashed dishes and bottles, and and I'd spend the next fifty years memorialized as a tragic genius gone too soon. What a dream.

I'm far too pragmatic to live like a 1960s beat poet—but God, I wish I had the same dedication to Linear Algebra that I do for writing. I should have been studying. But I was effectively paralyzed, held hostage by my own passion. Why can't I be obsessed with something useful? Something lucrative? Why can't I throw myself into algorithm questions or a codebase with this manic devotion? Instead, all I want to do is write—for my fifty Substack subscribers—and work on a book that God only knows if anyone will ever read. Nobody even reads long-form content these days. What am I doing with my life?

This gives me hope that one day I, too, can make it big. Suscribe to my substack!

I try to spend my Sundays at a coffee shop getting ahead on homework for the week. That's the plan: sit down, open my laptop, put on some music, and get to work. But for the past month, instead of getting ahead in my classes, I've spent every Sunday researching the music I'm listening to and writing about its deep, profound personal significance. And from start to finish, this eats up at least eight precious hours of my week, hours spent writing something no one but me will probably ever read or care about. But I still do it—why?

If I want to be a competent engineer, I need to learn how to write a recursive function in C++ using Depth First Search. Instead, I'm writing an essay about heavy metal and the cultural impact of Black Sabbath. How is that helping me at all?

Somehow, the work always gets done, mainly at the cost of my sleep and social life. My grades are fine, but they would probably be better if I spent more time studying and less time writing essays no one asked for and reading things nobody pays me to care about.

I actually do like engineering

Do I even like what I study? Or am I doing it because I feel duty-bound to become an engineer—because I feel a filial responsibility to make my Indian parents proud?

After much thought, I have concluded that I do, in fact, love engineering. I don't always love my classes or the busy work I have to do, but that wouldn't change if I were studying philosophy, history, or anything else. I like learning how things work. I like problem-solving. I like technology and its potential to change the world.

In high school, I was interested in everything—politics, physics, philosophy; I imagined college as the place where I could finally become the renaissance woman I'd always dreamed of becoming. I wrote college essays about my earnest desire for interdisciplinary, intellectual exploration, and I meant every word with every fiber of my being. How naïve I was to believe college would actually be like that.

Maybe it's just USC. Maybe it's elite schools in general. But I quickly realized the real point of it all, especially at a place filled with hyper-driven, hyper-accomplished students, isn't exploration or intellectual discovery. It's about getting a good job. And by "good," of course, I mean high-paying.

When I came to college, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do career-wise. I was told on college visits that I would have the freedom to explore my diverse interests, try on many different hats, and leave college with a well-rounded background and a clearer sense of what I wanted to do with my life. And to be fair, USC does provide a wide range of opportunities to engage with diverse interests and pursue interdisciplinary exploration. But the version of college I was sold, the one on the glossy, curated brochures, looks nothing like the one I actually lived.

Growing up in a regular Midwestern town, where the average income mirrors the national average, I had a very different idea of what success after college would look like. But then I got to USC.

The way my peers talk about money makes me want to throw up. They treat $100k starting salaries as the baseline for barely getting by, and anything under six figures might as well be chump change. I realized quickly that if I didn't catch up, I'd be the chump. And somehow, now, we all ended up in the same place. This meant that if I worked hard enough, those six-figure starting salaries and cushy tech jobs could be mine, too.

But influenced by my high-achieving peers, I quickly fell in line and stopped being idealistic about school and about my future.

We live in a culture, especially at these so-called elite schools, of hyper-specialization. If you want to get ahead, the kind of ahead that makes you eye-watering amounts of money; you have to choose your path early.

It wasn't enough for me to say, "I want to be an engineer." I had to know what kind. What industry. I was surrounded by fast-talking kids who spoke in acronyms like they were already industry professionals, FAANG, SWE, PM, IB, MBB, rattling them off like everyone should already know what they meant. And apparently, everyone did.

When you're thrown into a world you barely understand but desperately want to succeed in, there's only one logical conclusion: pick something and start pour all your willpower into it. Check the boxes. Keep the GPA high. Join the right clubs. Network with the right people. Get the internship and then the return offer.

And all of that takes time. Time, you no longer have to explore the things you used to love. The things that made you feel curious, creative, and alive, the things I thought college would be about.

It's not really anyone's fault. It's just how the system works. The new-grad job market rewards specialists. Raw technical ability and a "cracked" resume trump all. The most successful candidates narrow down as early as possible, learning to code before losing their last baby tooth, and they're basically seasoned professionals by the time recruiting rolls around. And at the new grad, entry-level stage? Nobody cares if you double majored in Philosophy. It might make you more insufferable at dinner parties, but does it make you a 10x engineer?

The Death of The Renaissance Woman

So I crushed my own dreams with a kind of cruelty you can only do unto yourself. Whenever I was presented with a choice, I always chose the one that would optimize for a higher-paying job post-grad. At one point, I had the opportunity to double major in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics alongside my engineering degree or I could pursue a masters degree in Electrical Engineering.

No one told me what to do, not my professors or parents. But all I could think about was my resume. No employer would care that I studied politics, philosophy, and economics, but a good GPA and a master's degree would deliver immediate value. In a world where algorithms scan resumes, a master's would get me further. Maybe just a couple thousand more in total comp, but that's more than an extra humanities degree would ever get me.

I told myself I'd satisfy my intellectual curiosity later. Once I had enough money⁴, I could buy all the books I wanted, visit every museum on the planet—I could even fly to Italy and pretend I’m living in the Renaissance.

So I did. I delayed gratification. I checked all the right boxes, made every pragmatic decision, and worked myself into the version of success that my impressive, driven freshman-year peers seemed to expect from themselves. And it worked. I landed a decent, respectable internship that will likely turn into a full-time job if it goes well enough.

Now that I have the future that I thought I wanted freshman year, I can't shake the feeling that I still want more. Not more money, but this inarticulable something I've been chasing my entire life. I’n not quite brave enough to admit to myself what it is I exactly want out of my life and career, I’ll get there soon I’m sure. But I know it has something to do with being able to follow my curiosity wherever it takes me. A tender, starry-eyed belief that everything will fall into place if I just work hard and care earnestly—the sort of idealism that probably should've been beaten out of me by now.

I've come full circle—back to the naïve, idealistic seventeen-year-old who wrote her college essays about exploring every passion. And this rediscovered connection to everything I used to love has led me to wasting a lot of precious time.

me, published author at age 10, writing about reading

Going to USC and studying engineering means I have many options in life. I do not have to settle for anything, I'm capable of doing the hard work it takes to earn this degree. I can do the math. I can write code. If I really "locked in"—did more Leetcode, prepped for technical interviews, networked harder, I could probably get a job that pays more than job I already have, which is already more money than I ever imagined making at twenty.

But I don't really feel like it. I no longer want to maximize my total comp; I just want to do what I want. Right now, what I want is to write.

I feel like a whiny child who still believes Santa brings the presents and doesn’t have a clue about bills and the real world. And I can't stop assigning morality and shame to my desires. Every time I forgo something I'm supposed to be doing to write, I feel like that friend’s jobless older brother who lives in his mom's basement, smokes too much weed, and swears his shitty garage band is just one gig away from making it big someday. A walking embodiment of laziness and wasted potential.

So, for the past couple of weeks, I have been living in my own self-inflicted purgatory: I do what I want, succumb to my desires, and then feel bad for having them in the first place.

I wish I wanted things that were easier to explain. Things that neatly aligned with my major. How do all my scattered interests fit into a ten-year career plan? Do they even have to? How can I justify spending so much of my precious, limited time reading and writing, especially in a world where the only writing that seems to matter is either a self-help book or something with a shirtless man on the cover?

But instead, I just keep giving in to my insatiable need to do what I love. And I still have no clue what I'm doing with my life—all I know is that I'm doing what I want.

My life will always be a constant balancing act between rational choices and desire. But how lucky am I to have desires, options, and dreams? Having an existential crisis in the computer science building on a Wednesday morning is embarrassing, but at least it's proof that I exist. I am not alive in spite of my desires, I am alive because of them.

The only thing I will ever be able to do is what I want and right now that is reading, writing, and wasting my time.

1. I started writing this at 8 in the morning, by the time I post this it will be 9 pm. I

2. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.

3. read my essay please I worked so hard on it

4. an essay I wrote about money last may

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