Mining for Radiance
Type-A high achiever takes her hand at chilling, exploring and ... global shipping
4 am in the SFO airport. It’s time to hop on a call.
I scheduled a meeting with someone in Europe weeks prior. At the last minute, I also decided to go on a trip to San Francisco. These two realities collided and I got a red eye flight and a 4 am zoom link.
I didn’t sleep at all that night. And yet, miraculously, I was still a ball of energy during the conversation. I felt grateful that I did it all: I honoured someone’s time and I honoured my longing for adventure. Plus it was an ultra cool chat !
After the call I hit the city. I hung out with a friend, then co-worked and had lunch with another, and then went to a fascinating dinner, and then a party, and then a poker night. I went to bed at 2am, the next day.
It felt like I was watching the first sunrise seen from earth.
Precious — Gravitation — Colourful.
I got to share so much space with some deeply fantastic humans. By the time I got to bed, I could hardly sleep with all the endorphins and oxytocin cascading through my body.
I felt radiant. Happiness so overflowing that it had to glow outside my body. I think this happens when I feel abundant, lucky and inspired in life. I believe people who bring out your radiance is the most potent compass to follow in life.
It was this day ^ that I internalised something truly incredible: enthusiasm is more powerful than caffeine.
Hi, I’m Isabella Grandić, an extreme optimist and lover of life; pursuing a life of service for humanity. This is one of 6 newsletters I’ll send in 2024. I use each one as a personal benchmark for my goals, character and lessons learned. I hope it can make you a little more excited to breathe air today. Maybe you should call someone special in the morning :)
On today’s agenda:
Skills I’d like to build, joyfully
Graduation, authentic decisions, it’s ok to want differently
The intersection of love and understanding
Calculus of my Time
I am intense about how I spend my time. I think it’s because I am always looking for gold. I’ve ‘mined’ university for what it can offer me — expertise, skill and perspective. Here’s how I am leveraging formal education (despite being pretty impatient to get in the real world):
I am working in the Redinbo Lab, studying phytoestrogens and their interaction with the gut microbiome. I.e., how does tofu chemically break down in our gut and what does that mean for our health? I think this is the most rewarding aspect of my chemical education: a hands-on attempt at trying to understand how a set of reactions work. I will be able to scale this way of thinking and depth of inquiry to more macro reactions, like building a company, someday.
I am delving into global affairs with a seminar class focused on diplomacy and empires throughout history. I am also taking a project-based class on R for global issues. My goal is to understand global affairs like a scientist. What are the laws behind these reactions — what models are useful for representing them? What are the fundamental vs fictitious forces that govern how the world works?
I am exploring a few technical topics: biochemistry, pharmaceutical development and electricity & magnetism. Honestly it’s because I want to and I’m in the right environment to. I think that exploratory curiosity is enough reason for now :)
Also in other news… if all goes well… I am graduating next semester (Dec 2024). Chapel Hill has been the medium for a lot of personal and intellectual development. But I think it’s time to leave the shield and go chase some rainbows and truly audacious goals <3 ⚡️
It’s nice to have the <11 months countdown. A good amount of time to acclimate to what’s next.
Insert, boats
The first thing I noticed when I landed in Singapore in Jan of 2023 were all the cargo boats aligned perfectly off the island. The warm feelings of globalised order that surround Changi Airport were the seeds for something magical.
Over the year, I subtly binged the impact of marine vessels and transport. Especially since they intersect with things important to me, like my lab’s ability to get supplies or foooooood I enjoy consuming/rating (I am a level 7 google reviewer ;).
Water access is incredibly important to a productive planet - as we’ve seen with the Red Sea, Panama Canal or even the tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Study the boarders of Namibia, DRC and Bosnia — access to water has created some funky lines. Read into what’s happening in Ecuador or Taiwan and observe the subtextual rhetoric of port or nautical miles.
Power, I’d define, is the control of resources. 80% of our goods are transported by sea; and now, you’re welcome, because you’ll start to see all the implicit connections to waterways in global news.
This ‘boat’ interest doesn’t fit nicely into people’s perceptions of what I’ve done before. It’s not maternal health or cellular agriculture or education. I’ve had to grapple with the idea of cohesive self image — and I’ve decided to enjoy this phase of exploring curiosity instead. The dots will connect in hindsight.
Long story short, nights & weekends have been dedicated to some ideas I have related to our global flow of goods. In the next newsletter I send, hopefully you’ll see some pictures of me at some very important ports (I have something BREWING and it’s so so so so so thrilling).
Recent Pivotal Experiences
Over my winter break, I had a few emotional ‘breakthrough’ experiences catalysed by:
A retreat in Northern Ontario with many of my favourite people in the world
A 48 hour internet fast + unstructured solitude time in Eastern Ontario
A few private life-altering and perspective-shifting conversations
I was not busy and instead read about global shipping and the gut microbiome to compare my curiosity in different types of topics… and I spent unstructured people time with folks new and old to gauge who gives me energy.
I also engaged in guided meditation. Through that I learned to ‘start again’ with each breath.
So here’s how I feel: I feel like I am starting a new experiment. In fact I am going to spend 2024 running 3 ~15 week experiments, with a few breaks in between each. In early 2025, I want to kick into gear the ‘big’ vision. I want to go from learn mode to do mode - and to actually create tangible value for society through one of 3 of my hypotheses (I’ll keep those mechanisms to myself for now). I can feel my resting heart beat shining as I write this.
“I don’t want to stay on top of things. I want to get to the bottom of things” — Morgan Housel
Love, Understanding and Authenticity
Love:
Passion for someone or something
Inspiration
A positive feedback loop: to be passionate, and then inspired, to more passion, and then more inspiration.
To be Understood:
Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes that’s exactly how I feel.
^ when we resonate on a level deeper than most interactions allow
I truly think this is quite rare — there are probably 3 people who understand me in more than 1 dimension
Authenticity:
To be aware of inertia that exists (convention), and then conscious choice of whether you’d like to remain subscribed
These attributes are worth being patient for.
What I’m working on:
Surrender.
Playing the cards of each day as best as I can. Dream big, stay grounded, push a little harder, and realize that this too shall pass.
I don’t think I need to control everything. I don’t think I need to know everything right now. I am going to try and enjoy the exploration — inevitably, the acceleration’s coming.
If anyone has advice for surrender or patience, I’d adore hearing it.
Life is radiant. 🌅
Best,
Isabella Grandić
I love the intimacy of your writing! And thank you for asking for advice. It allowed me to reflect on surrender and patience...
Perhaps surrender is a combination of skill and faith. Meditation, or letting go of thinking, sharpens the skill and loving reinforces the faith. Like loving everything, even the angry man honking his horn behind me. After saying eff you and your stupid truck I return to remembering the essence inside us all. There's a reason he's angry. Probably goes back a long way. This is the heart opening. It's quite nice and can even make you cry.
Regarding patience, I'm working on this as well. I often find myself rushing to write something instead of enjoying the process of writing. This becomes less so when writing with pen and paper, so I do that when I can. At a higher level, I've nurtured a faith in infinite time, or knowing I'm part of something bigger than myself. There is no rush to finish something. If it's important enough and I don't live to finish it, someone else will finish it. Or I'll pick it up in my next lifetime, in one way or another — if there is such a thing.
At another level, there's nothing to do and nothing that needs done. You do things for the joy of doing them. Everything else is taken care of. Things like deadlines become silly. When I scratched the surface of this level, I saw how trapped I was and the causes of my discontent. That said, we live in a time-based world so playing by some time-based rules is necessary unless you want to live in an ashram.
Hope this helps!
Love the adventure + exploration, Izzy! Your reflections are always so real and authentic. This newsletter felt so warm :)