#2. Living a Life Full of Experiments — Loud Introvert’s Coffee Table
On Tuesday, February 21, 2023, I had my second coffee break with M, an anthropologist who left her tech job to follow her big question, “what’s the purpose of life?”.
When I received M’s message before we met, I had a strong feeling that I would enjoy the conversation with her. To my surprise, we had so much in common. We are around a similar age and have a UX background. We married engineers, came to the Bay Area for our tech careers and previously worked for modern mobility tech companies. Both of us are also thinking we are selectively social with our ambivert personalities. M mentioned she found my story touched many things she’s been focusing on for her ethnographic field research about Silicon Valley. I felt we should talk.
1-hour Drive For a Cup of Nice Coffee
Soon after I was surprised again that she was willing to travel 50 miles all the way down to South Bay from East Bay just for this coffee break. 1-hour travel for a cup of coffee, really? It made me even more curious about M. I thought perhaps she was just excited as I was about our meetup. To find a better location in the middle, we decided to meet at Devout Coffee in Fremont.
Two Loud Introverts
Devout Coffee was a cozy coffee roastery located in the historic Niles district. We texted each other at 11 am and I joined a nice seat that M found in the backyard.
It was funny that both of us arrived there 15 minutes earlier without telling each other. I was writing inside and M was reading a book in the backyard.
M had a calm and gentle demeanor, yet her presence radiated with colorful vibrant energy. As soon as I met her, I found myself full of questions about her.
Silicon Valley Rat Race
Our conversation started with how I began Loud Introvert’s Coffee Table and how it became my new journey of self-discovery. After 6 years of living a career-oriented life, I felt lost, empty, and numb. M had also left her tech job and started a PhD. in anthropology for the same reason. Although it was such a coincidence, both of us knew very well that this has been a well-known problem, especially among tech people in the bay area.
Fat Paycheck
In the Bay Area, many people in the tech industry achieve material comfort quite easily. They get paid well enough to manage high-cost living. I worked for an electric car company that produces vehicles that cost over $100K. Nobody was surprised about six-digit price tags on the cars. Of course, there were people who wouldn’t spend 100K on cars. However, it was more about their investing decision, not affordability.
M and I shared our frustrated feeling about most tech companies’ mission “we make our world a better place”. We both felt a significant gap between the beautiful company mission displayed on the big screen and the reality we as employees had to deal with. From our hands-on people’s point of view, it’s all about how to lure more people effectively to our product and how to make more money in the end. To make a better world for a better future, employees are sacrificing their quality of life to achieve the company’s goal while dealing with working overtime to get things done, feeling nervous about performance reviews, and securing their spots safe at work. On top of that, if there are company politics or dramas coming in, it drains people’s energy even faster. We wondered. What’s the bigger purpose? Could we ever truly find fulfillment? Is the fat check truly worth sacrificing my life to help “them” achieve the goal?
Always Be Loud, Always
Be Ready to Talk 9–5
M and I also talked about the prevalence of forced open culture in the open workspace environment. Most companies in the Bay Area took down partitions between people to encourage more conversations naturally between employees. It came from the philosophy of embracing open culture to enhance productivity, but sometimes, it has worked in the opposite way. If you have someone who really loves impromptu talking, you are forced to join the conversation unless you leave your desk. People struggle with finding a decent amount of heads-down time to get things done between meetings, but it is very difficult to manage your focus time while you were on site. Especially if the company becomes a cheerleader encouraging spending more free time with your colleagues, it is challenging to decline invitations without coming across as unfriendly.
Talk While You Eat Too
M and I had a very similar experience with awkward team lunches too. It is very normal that the team sets occasional team lunches. We both understood it very well about it and didn’t hate it. However, somehow, the team started creating a casual lunch group that invited everyone on the team almost every day. It happens often when your team is not big.
In those everyday team lunches, there usually has an unofficial ground rule (a.k.a. icebreaker) to share what you did last night and what you are planning to do for the weekend. M and I are people enjoying the routine and our own small rituals. Even though we often go slow and there’s nothing very new, we enjoy the small but steady progress we make, one by one. For M, it was reading and handcrafting, and for me, it was practicing tennis and aroma therapy. M and I sincerely enjoyed what we do (and we still do the same), but didn’t love talking aloud about those serene daily rituals with people who didn’t really care about them.
Another challenge for me was company politics and dramas. Some colleagues were trying to build stronger connections with others by sharing a common hatred of something or someone. Regardless of where my stance was, I felt uncomfortable with talking too much behind someone’s back and was overwhelmed by intense negativities.
M and I found it so funny that we both took the same solution for protecting our peaceful 30-minute lunch break: finding a quiet and safe place for solo lunch. It was usually somewhere around the out-of-the-way corner or in a small meeting room away from the social hubbub. Soon enough, coworkers started recognizing someone didn’t like to join the party. Later, it resulted in us becoming one less approachable and less social in the team. The same happened to M too.
Who Do I Want to Be
If I had been wise enough to set reasonable boundaries between my work and personal life or know how to better align them together, probably I wouldn’t get burnt out this badly. Without knowing what I truly want, I felt stuck when I imagined my foreseeable future in the office.
As we continued, M once asked me if I have someone who gave me good inspiration. Looking back, I certainly have had a bunch of wise people who I’ve wanted to model after. It changes over time, but they all have in common that they are/were brave enough to make their lives full of experiments.
As we journey through life, we inevitably encounter many new things at each phase of our lives, even during adulthood. I believe it is essential to actively observe the world around us and remain awakened. We may come across people who can enlighten us on our pathway or show us how they have discovered their own routes. Or, while not everything may be transferrable to each unique situation, we can still draw inspiration from others and be more proactive about our decision-making.
4 Hours with a Stranger
Around 2 PM, I realized we had already spent over three hours together. To avoid the worst heavy traffic, we were to better start off soon. Then the funny thing suddenly happened. We were hit by a heavy windstorm and it forced us to stop our conversation anyway. The sunshade collapsed over our heads, the string lights fell down and shattered, and tables and chairs rolled everywhere. It was just so messy and too dangerous to stay.
We left the cafe and continued our conversation while walking down the gusty street for another hour. With no one else around on the empty street, we chatted about how we want to navigate our current pathway and what we want to learn from it. Around 3 PM, we thought we should start off back home.
After I arrived home, I realized that there was a heavy windstorm warning for the whole day! I guess I was too used to the mild weather in California and didn’t pay enough attention to the weather.
Despite the weather being uncooperative, I enjoyed our refreshing, tranquil conversation full of curiosity and energy. M and I were in the same or similar boat for many things in our lives, so we didn’t have to explain every detail about our feelings. When one of us brought something up, then the other side quickly resonate with it and started sharing their own feelings. It was the first time in a while that I found someone who understands my life struggles and shares peer support. I enjoyed the moment we found the safe place to exchange our honest thoughts and feelings.
After the second unique, positive experience with a fellow neighbor at my coffee table, I felt motivated to continue LICT. I began to feel more confident that I could discover a different version of myself on the way or explore new facets of a real me.
How LICT works
At Loud Introvert’s Coffee Table, I find people who would like to join my coffee break. I introduce myself anonymously on social networks and get connected with people who find it resonating.
If you find it interesting, fill out the form and get on the list to join my coffee break.
