"Why Are You Moving to India?"

Editor’s Note: In case you missed my announcement last week, I’m moving to India in just 7 days. Since sharing this news, many of you have asked me (paraphrasing here): why the F would you do that?  

What’s your goal?

Will you try to become famous?

Are you going into Bollywood? 

To which I respond: No. Well, maybe. Who knows…

Even if I don't have an outsized outcome, I think it'll still be worth it. For the challenge, if nothing else. Worst case scenario: I'll have given something that I care about a shot, and hopefully learn something about myself that I wouldn't have learned in my normal 9-5 Chicago life.

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Too Comfortable

I’ve been too comfortable for too long. And it turns out, I’m not the only one. Michael Easter unpacks this in The Comfort Crisis:

“Humans evolved to seek comfort. We instinctually default to safety, shelter, warmth, extra food, and minimal effort. And that drive through nearly all of human history was beneficial because it pushed us to survive...In an uncomfortable world, consistently seeking a sliver of comfort helped us stay alive. [However] our common problem today is that our environment has changed but our wiring hasn’t. And this wiring is deeply ingrained.”

It’s definitely deeply ingrained in me.

For the past few years, I’ve been the queen of comfort. Stable jobs. Solid income. Amazing benefits. Not to mention living in Chicago, where I’ve lived my whole life. On paper, it felt like exactly how I was meant to be living. But I kept feeling like I was bumping up against the same wall each year. The wall being a realization that I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough. 

I tried changing within the walls of the corporate edifice — changing roles. Changing companies. Changing industry. 

With all the change I sought, I still couldn’t kick the feeling that it just wasn’t enough. And this year, I’ve realized it won’t matter how much change I manipulate within edifice of the “traditional” path. I will not be satisfied with myself until I leave the building entirely and see what else is out there. 

You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide

They say the one person you can’t lie to is yourself, and that phrase has continuously run across my mind like ticker symbols on a stock market ticker tape. 

The lie I’ve been telling myself is that I’ve been working hard.

And I have, in some sense. In small spurts and cookie-cutter ways. But not in the right way. Not in the way where I tap into my real potential. I haven’t worked hard on the things that I care about. In a classic catch-22 fashion, I’ve only ever worked hard to uphold the facade of hard work. The title, the paycheck, the social signal of Big Tech.  

But the truth is that I don’t care about any of these things.

And what I’ve realized is that achieving goals that were not entirely crafted by you makes any accomplishment a mere simulacrum of success. Having fallen into this pattern for years, I was left feeling astonished — not accomplished — that I went down a path so distant from the one my true self would have ever intended, losing sight of who that ‘true self’ even was. 

Mumbai: An Inspiration

When I thought about what I wanted to get out of my sabbatical, it really came down to one thing: explore a few deep-seeded creative interests that my true self has had for a long time, but that social-signaling-Shiv has never taken the time to develop.

While I’m keen to try my hand at several moonshot creative pursuits, the three main interests I’m referring to are writing, acting, and filmmaking.

It became clear to me that the best place to learn about these things was either LA or New York. Both have relevant, booming creative scenes that are nearly unmatched. That was until India was on the table. 

My partner moved to India two years ago to start a company, so it’s always been in the back of my mind that I’d consider a move there too. In my frequent voyages back to the Motherland with my family I never considered moving there. It was just a place I enjoyed visiting.

But my thoughts on India changed during my trip to Mumbai this February. The creative energy and overall entrepreneurial spirit of the people of Mumbai reaches a level of hard work and determination I’ve never seen before. 

You know how people say ‘when there’s a will, there’s a way’? In Mumbai, there is no lack of will. 

I didn’t meet a single person who has a standard 9-5. People are just as relentless with their goals as they are about keeping you accountable for yours. With underground hip hop scenes and salsa nights every night of the week, Mumbai (in comparison to other Indian cities) feels like a version of India that should exist in some distant future.

With steep population density — a conversation for another time — nothing is guaranteed, which means nothing is taken for granted. I got the feeling that the people of Mumbai simply want to get the most out of each day in order to get the most out of their lives.

To say it’s inspiring is an understatement.

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The upcoming flood of change will be a lot to process: quitting my job, breaking into a creative scene wildly underprepared, relocating to the other side of the world, AND moving in with my partner for the first time. (Narrator voice: what could possibly go wrong?)

And while I don’t know where this journey might take me, I take solace in knowing that I definitely won’t have to worry about being ‘too comfortable’ for some time.

Wish me luck,

Shiv