Place your step, and the way will show itself
Place your step, and the way will show itself
Embedded Files
I notice some interview candidates at Neuralink roll their eyes at the massive scale we’re pursuing. When I started at SpaceX in 2016, our goal was to enable a launch every other day.
This was insane to me.
We had completed less than 30 successful launches in 14 years, and here I was, designing hardware to save 3 hours from mating the rocket to the launchpad. I couldn’t even fathom there being demand for 100s of launches a year (mind you, this is before the first starlink prototypes were ever completed).
Now a decade later, that launch cadence has silently come to fruition, and the product market fit is so lucidly evident.
It guided me to this fundamental realization: don’t get hung up on applications. relentlessly develop the enabling technology, and the applications will become apparent. Or as Rumi said, “place your step, and the way will show itself”
Doing 10,000 surgeries a year is such a foregone conclusion to me. we will just obviously achieve this, as long as we continue to hire exceptional talent.
We know the guiding vector: decode more bits.
We know the steps we must take now: increase channel count, signal to noise ratio, percent of neurons accessed.
I’m more curious about what ‘way’ will show itself, what applications will arise that enable us to reach millions.
Would we have dreamed of facetime and spotify and netflix and apple pay when the internet was developed? No- the job was just to build the best internet by making progress in a few key vectors (bandwidth, latency, service area).
Like the internet,
like the space age,
we’re at the dawn of a new era.
And I’m all in.
[June 2025] via X
Qadr of the Dreaming Man
Qadr of the Dreaming Man
The downside of working on something so passionately for so long is that you lose the ability to do anything else.
I find it so difficult to remain present in the moment when my mind always wanders back to the problems i’m trying to solve at Neuralink. I’ve spent well over 10,000 hours working on this so it’s become somewhat the default state of my brain. I can’t go on vacation without impulsively checking slack, can’t see any needles or blades without thinking of tissue mechanics, can’t see a manufactured product without teasing out analogous design principles to apply to our hardware.
When I was younger, I used to memorize the Quran and it became so engrained in my muscle memory that even today I constantly find myself mouthing verses under my breath. Now, that same muscle memory has turned to mental loops about surgery. When I’m an old man, sitting silently in a loud room decades from now, I’m sure my mind will go back to my days at Neuralink, and it will all have been worth it.
Anyone who’s been in love will be familiar with this longing, this heartache, this yearning for a dream- the simulated future life that could be willed into existence if you just play your cards right.
And no matter where you go, this muse- this dream- she follows you. She pulls you out of your reality into an imagined Utopia, and enslaves you into bringing that vision to reality.
That’s how I feel about our work. So close, yet so far away, yet destined to happen. Pre-ordained by God.
الَّذِي خَلَقَ فَسَوَّىٰ وَالَّذِي قَدَّرَ فَهَدَىٰ
"The Lord has created and balanced all things and has fixed their destinies and guided them" [al-Alaa 87:2-3]
The future is bright, but we have to fight for it.
[Dec 2025]
The Rooster Dilemma
The Rooster Dilemma
This was the last photograph of my sweet backyard chicken, Bakri, before he was ruthlessly killed.
Bakri spent his whole life knowing I loved him, provided him infinite abundance, and was "aligned" with his incentives.
But he fundamentally lacked the intelligence to understand that Fremont city ordinance bans roosters, or that humans eat his species, or that chickens can have much more fulfilling lives than being locked in a unisex coop with manufactured pellet feed and hosewater as payment for their eggs- being robbed of sex, freedom, and family- concepts that he couldn’t ever understand without experiencing them.
His worldview was consistent and logically sound for the axioms accessible to his brain, but 12 weeks into his life, i was certain bakri wasn't going to be laying any eggs. I give him one last good day, with all the mealworms and cuddles he could imagine, and that's when this picture was taken.
RIP Bakri
As our species builds intelligences that operate on axioms unintelligible to us at bandwidths inaccessible to us, thank you for reminding me that we are chickens building a farmer, and holding on to the hubris that we will be able to control it, and assuring ourselves that life will be better in the coop, because at least we wont have to worry about food.
Thank you for reminding me that the dog eats every day but wears a collar. The wolf may go hungry, but has no master.
[April 2026]
Belize Dive Journals: The Remora
Belize Dive Journals: The Remora
Today, as we hovered three meters below the surface a remora joined us for our safety stop. The remora is a unique looking fish with a grippy suction surface on top of its flat head which it uses to stick to the bottom of sharks and, apparently, to show off to groups of divers.
This particular specimen was around a meter long, a sleek silver creature with a slender body and an unmatched curiosity. I was both in awe + inspired by the courage of this jubilant fish, risking its life just to get a closer look at three large predators armed with spears, the blood and scent of death lingering around them, oozing from the kill bag of freshly hunted lionfish. The remora was unfazed, he was in it for the thrill. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, after all, this fish hitches joyrides on the underbellies of sharks in its spare time. I felt a certain closeness to him, a shared sense of fraternity even. The physical embodiments of our souls were different, his entombed in a fish and mine in man, but that soul and spirit were the same, and briefly they were together — a reunion conspired by a 3.8 billion year causal chain of life on Earth. I wondered how long ago our last common ancestor was. I wondered if he was the culprit responsible for this sheerly irresponsible lust for danger, this shared affinity — nay, reverence! — for proximity to death.
This remora had found us some 13 meters down, on the ocean floor and risen up with us, each revolving around our own axis but also rotating around a central star, like planets in a solar system. The external world was reflected in the internal. We continued to rise.
Were there an external observer, liberated from the constraints of experiencing time linearly, he would see four strands weaving around one another, forming a braided column extending from the Gaussian blur of waves unstack in time at the ocean's restless surface to the calmer, sharper ocean floor, a portal from my world to the remora's. By playfully encircling one another, drawing close to get a better look as we rose, and then finally parting ways forever, we had created a Chinese finger trap of sorts, becoming tighter the more we pulled apart. Indeed, writing this recollection with a day's distance separating me from the event, I feel more fondness to that dear fish now than I ever have. In fact I'd even say I felt more similitude between him and myself than I do with most people.
Even when there are no remoras around, surfacing is my favorite part of diving. There is an inspiring serenity in soaring heavenwards towards the sun's translucent warmth, twisting tight arcs through the gradient blue ether. So rarely is my visual field saturated with such a homogenous display of color as when I spin my way up through the deep blues to the surface cyan. Perhaps only the abyss of darkness has the abyss of the ocean beat in this regard, but it does so in a less majestic manner. Darkness only blocks the light whereas the ocean pulls away the sun's reds, and then the yellows and greens, until only the blues reach my eyes. It restricts my perception to only that narrow band of the electromagnetic spectrum that God has ordained I may see at this depth, and manages to find a way to make it beautiful nonetheless.
I hope one day the remora gets to witness the colors of my world too.
[20 Feb 2024]
Belize Dive Journals: The ZigZags
Belize Dive Journals: The ZigZags
The ocean is teeming with life, and with livelihood. Many brilliant fish emerge from the corals and dissolve into the currents, swaying with the waves, dancing to Earth's metronome rhythm- that natural frequency which resonates its harmonies in all of life: in the serene tempo of the respiratory cycles we so diligently attempt to hasten with the stressors of modern life, and in the dark + light rings etching their patterns into the trees as a testament to the seasons spent bartering gases on the other side of those respirations —; and in the migrations of the butterflies above us and the turtles below, enveloping man to remind him that he is, and forever will be, part of this melodious symphony.
Today, I am taking a break from the aforementioned stressors of that seemingly inescapable modern life. Today, I am snorkeling in the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second largest barrier reef system in the world, on a tiny one-acre island on Tom Owens Caye, in Sapodilla National Park, 25 miles off the coast of Belize.
Today, I am a fish.
I am a fish, swimming in a school of fish, dissolving into the currents. Those currents are not part of the ocean, they are the ocean. And that is how I feel about myself + these creatures. I am not part of this school of fish, we dissolve together into the currents, into the ocean. That blue ocean, by means of that porous membrane the horizon, pours into the empty blue sky we call the Heavens. By some perversion of the transitive property I may claim that I am in heaven. Or I can simply tell you that I am floating, weightless, timeless even, amongst red coral and spiky black sea urchins and big shiny fish that hide in rocks and small tiny fish that float and shimmer like dust in the air and green ones that move in zigzags and yellow ones that hang like kites oscillating in the sinusoid breeze — and ask you to tell me the difference.
I make no effort to identify the zigzags and the kites. I have no interest in learning what's a wrasse and what's an angelfish or a barracuda or parrotfish. They are all the same to me. They are all fish. Not every marvel must be adulterated by turning it into an intellectual endeavour — into something to be sorted and studied and classified. For a moment, I am even able to forget that they are fish. For a brief, transcendental moment, they just are.
I am.
We are.
And then I drift back into the behaviours that were learned on to my soul as it was natively birthed into this universe. I stop being, and become Danish.
I am looking at fish again.
I wonder which one is a Wrasse.
[19 Feb 2024]
Belize Dive Journals: The Lionfish
Belize Dive Journals: The Lionfish
Here on Tom Owen's Caye, every day is the same and every day is different. The dive bell rings bright and early at 7am. Most mornings I've already been up for nearly an hour, drinking tea or coffee and watching the rising sun paint the sky orange. We run out to the hangers to gather our supplies + don our wetsuits. I like putting my arms in first and using my shoulders to pull the tight leg holes past my feet and calves. Masih says that's weird. He says your legs are supposed to go in first. I don't care. Next I velcro my dive socks on, grab a tank full of air pressurized to 3000 pounds per square inch, and carry the remainder of my supplies to the dive boat, rinsing my feet of sand before I step aboard. I strap my buoyancy control device to the tank, screw in the regulator, and plug in the BCD tubing before beginning my pre-dive check:
B - Buoyancy: I inflate + deflate my BCD.
W - Weight: I check that I've placed 6 lbs in my vest, a 3lb metal ballast on either side.
A - Air: I check the gauge and sip from my mouthpiece as well as my backup.
R - Release: I check that the weights can be released in case of emergency.
C - Final Check: I make sure I have my mask, snorkel, + fins on me, tucked neatly under my seat, + the air tank is secured to the boat by bungee.
I smear antifog on the inside of my goggles, but don't wipe it till we reach the dive site. Until then, I just enjoy the boat ride. I will be diving with Willie's group this morning. We arrive to the site and file off the side of the boat, waddling like penguins until we hop off with a long stride, the BCD's keeping us afloat. We deflate on queue and enter the ocean realm. down... down... slowly down until we see the coral on the floor.
An otherworldly forest — some alien blend between pottery and vegetation and rock, but more aesthetically pleasing than any of them. But I can't let that distract me. We are here to kill lionfish. We are predators. We begin the hunt.
Lionfish are an invasive species native to the Indo-Australian region. Here, they have no natural predators and wreak havoc on the natural environment. I suppose us humans take offense to them encroaching on our Modus Operandi. The transgression won't go unpunished. I spot two at the base of a beautiful coral structure. Spotting them is the fun part. Thousands of years of human evolution have optimized my eyes for highlighting the tiniest motion of prey, even in this foreign, adversarial undersea environment. I cock the spear in my right hand, transferring energy into the strain of the elastic band before unleashing it in a burst of power which concentrates the load into three sharp points, skewering the fish.
By his darker color + beard I can tell he is a male. He accepts his demise like a stoic hero. When I had spotted him, he was puffed out, venomous spines protruding from every sector like a mine, facing me side on, ready for war. He went into battle with the planet's apex predator, and despite losing, I applaud his bravery and hope to emulate it. A few hours later, I will fillet and devour this courageous warrior, and hope to assimilate some of his spirit into my own. The rest of his carcass I will hand feed to wild sharks, so he may go back to dominating the open waters of the Caribbean Sea — a fitting end for a noble demise.
After I have speared him, I notice what he was fighting for, who he was defending. A smaller, more colorful lionfish — a female behind him. There is no time for guilt. I cock my spear and fire again. The shot only partially hits her with two prongs, and she slithers off into a hole in the reef. He has saved his queen, and I feel all the more respect for him.
[21 Feb 2024]
Leaving Pratt & Whitney
Leaving Pratt & Whitney
Earlier this year, I climbed Mount Monadnock, a 400 million year old consequence of the collision between the North American and the African tectonic plates. I remember being astonished by the permanence of everything around me- of the quartzite and the schist, and of the evergreen red spruce, preserved as they had been for millenia. In that moment, I remember feeling particularly alien to the land beneath my feet. I was the only transient in an immortal plane, a raindrop being swallowed by the ocean. The mountain had always been there. It would always be there, and the leaves would always be green. Immobility was a leisure they could afford. As for me, there was a voice in my head.
I didn’t recognize it at first, but soon I knew it was Henry David Thoreau, who had visited this mountain 150 years before me, and who had immortalized himself in the human narrative but was dead nonetheless. Whether it was his spirit whispering to me, or my brain spontaneously recalling a passage that had resonated with me, I'll never know. But with a rhythmic pulsation, like the very pounding of my heart, one sentence from Walden echoed through the chambers of my soul:
“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one”
I don’t think this line was meant to be inspirational or thought provoking, but against the backdrop of the boulder which had been in that very spot since before the dinosaurs, and in the context of my own mortality, this simple statement transformed into a call to action. The tongue always turns to the aching tooth, I suppose. On that windy summit, I kept hearing this poignant mantra. My aching tooth was my own complacency, and it was a timely reminder to get moving before I settle into a pattern and wake up 40 years later surrounded by the same mountains and the same trees. It was time for me to leave the woods.
Exactly one month later, I resigned from my job, took a few weeks off and moved 3,000 miles away to the west coast to work in an entirely new industry.
[Jun 2021]
Quinn
Quinn
Just hours into our cross country road-trip, my roommate pulled off to the side of a desolate highway that bisected Utah- barren desert on one side, and barren desert on the other side. We were truly in the middle of nowhere.
Before I had the chance to ask why, I noticed three people in the middle of the road bounding frantically about a limp body on the pavement. As soon as I stepped out of the car I could smell the familiar iron blood filling the dreary air around us like a cloud of death, pierced only by the victims agonizing groans.
The panicked crowd had tied a dog leash to his thigh and were tightening it down when I got there. I noticed that the victims injury was too distal to be applying a tourniquet this far up his leg.
Two puncture holes penetrated the skin of his alabaster shins like a rattlesnake bite. Like the notorious rattlesnake, it left him suspended in a cruel purgatory between life and death. His leg had been snapped completely in half by a collision with a speeding uhaul truck and now dangled morbidly above a ruby pool of glimmering arterial blood.
My first instruction was for them to help me move the victim to the side of the road. I was told the dispatcher on the phone had told them to leave him in place. Fair enough, this wasn’t a trained crew and there was a risk for exacerbating any potential spinal cord injuries. My next step was to order the tourniquet be moved distal to his knee, and tightened with all the force they could muster. Half-measures don’t do in cases of volemic shock. With gross blood loss under control, I went on to check airway, breathing, and circulation. The bright arterial blood had deceived me that he was at risk for shock, but now I noticed the pool wasn’t really all that big, and he was showing no other symptoms of going into shock.
Here I had a decision to make. I could leave the tourniquet on, effectively guarantee he lives, but potentially risk losing his left leg forever. I was at a precipice, whose consequence would be death or dismemberment if I made the wrong move, and I had just seconds to pull deep into my past to decide what to do next.
I snapped back to the moment. The boy on the street was sputtering. his eyes were rolling back into his head as I asked him for the date and the name of the president. I couldn’t get a response.
“Hang in there buddy! what’s your name?”
no reply.
“You’re doin alright brotha, just gotta know your name” his lips trembled. “We got the ambulance on the way, I gotta let ‘em know who they’re looking for my man”.
“Q-Q-Quinn”, he said, before lapsing into frantic cries for his parents “M-m—mom-mom-mom-mom-mom. D-d-dad-dad-dad.”
I told my roommate to run and find a first aid kit from the line of cars stuck in the now mile long traffic jam and he returned quickly with one. I applied pressure to the wound, which was oozing and not gushing, “D-d-dad-dad-dad-dad-dad. M-m—mom-mom-mom-mom”
I told dispatch I would be removing the two makeshift tourniquets.
A few minutes later, the ambulance arrived. They thanked me, asked me to hold C-spine, and put him on a backboard on my count, before administering oxygen and splinting his leg.
We returned to our car and drove off. I will never see this kid again, he will never remember me. But I will remember him. I will remember that we were at least 3 miles from the nearest sign of civilization, and that there was no wreckage of a bike or motorcycle nearby, and that he had no backpack on. I will remember the other lady on scene telling highway patrol “if the truck hadn’t hit him, i would have- he came out of no where. He just jumped into the middle of the road”. I will remember his ill fated suicide attempt, and I will remember that in the throes of his agony, when he couldn’t remember the president or the date, and could barely say his name, he called out for his mom and dad.
I hope you’re doing well Quinn. I hope things got better.
You will always be in my prayers.
[July 2023]
Note: names and details have been altered to protect patient identity
Ifthikar Muhammad Khan
Ifthikar Muhammad Khan
Rest In Peace to an absolute legend.
My nana was the quintessential gentleman. He loved his car, his cricket, and his daily akhbaar. He wore pleated pants with a matching blazer and a golf cap. He exuded class. Iftikhar Muhammad Khan was the type of man that took a briefcase to work, the type that took the extra few minutes to make sure everything was perfect. He had travelled the world and filled our imaginations with tales from impossible lands with fairytale names like trafalgar and sharjah and sambhal. In my youthful ignorance, I had envisioned him making these voyages by ships and hot air balloons- until he chuckled and reminded me that no, he’s not THAT old.
When we visited in the blistering summers, Danyal and I would huddle in front of the old TV with our grandfather and watch Pakistan’s test matches, the 5 day marathon version of cricket that’s known to be mind numbingly boring and almost always ends in a draw. But somehow, in the shadow of the halogen glow, we bonded over Kamran Akmal’s dropped catches, Shahid Afridis temperamental batting, and Shoaib Akhtar- of whom I allowed no criticism. In the company of Nana, even this slow paced game took on a new life. And whenever I was back in the US, in comfortable air conditioned classrooms with no fear of load-shedding, I drifted through my daydreams to plastic chairs on the Askari Balcony with my grandparents, the UPS power generator humming in the background, the Karachi horns blaring from rickshaws and colorful trucks down below, and the crescent-topped minaret in the distance reminding me at every azaan, “this is home”. Reminding me that home is not a location, it is the people that you return to- the ones that calculate the time difference to call you at exactly 12:00 on your birthday every single year without fail. iA tonight I will get that call again, and this time it will fill me with sorrow.
He wasn’t excessively expressive of his love, not out of some macho bravado, but because he didn’t need to be. His love was often silent, always genuine- but silent only in the same way air is- so consistent and permanent that it doesn’t need to announce itself- its presence is never questioned. It was a love that radiated in his actions and permeated the people he cared about. My favorite example of this was when I began my job after college, and Nana came all the way to Connecticut to see me. Even my closest friends had not made the trip, but blood is thicker than water and I can’t explain the joy I felt to show him my apartment, my city, my new life. To see the pride he had, to know that I had a relentless supporter, always rooting for me from halfway across the globe- that made all the difference, you see.
He was a brilliantly well-travelled and well-read man who had two masters degrees and had seen every corner of the world but spoke nothing of it (unless to inspire us to accomplish more). To the very end, he took great pride in being a pillar of unwavering strength for this family.
Ahmed Faraz once wondered “kaun dayta hai umar bhar ka sahaara, aye Faraz? Log to janazay mein bhi kanday badaltay rehtay hain*”. To that, I have a very clear answer, and the grief that has rippled across khandaan-e-khanbahadur upon news of this tragedy bears testament to the fact that they do too.
Rest easy, nana. Your absence echoes through us
اللَّهُمَّ اغْفِرْ لَهُ الَّلهُمَّ ثَبِّتْهُ
Allahum-maghfir lahu allahumma thabbathu
[Feb 2021]
*Who can support you your whole life? Even the pall-bearers take turns shouldering the coffin
Graduation!
Graduation!
Just completed my Masters in Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology!
While I look forward to applying my education to technical challenges, I'm admittedly more excited about knowledge for knowledge's sake- for how much "magic" this privilege opens up in my world- how I can see robots for their underlying algorithms, how I can sit in window seats while flying and truly appreciate control surface actuation, and how everyday objects dissolve into mathematical relationships- free body diagrams, fluid flow equations, & electromechanical transductions- transforming the physical world around me into a mirage of constituent systems and their fragile symphony.
Maybe the world doesn't break down into math or physics for you. Maybe it breaks into sociology or chemistry or theology. But Emerson said "God reappears with all his parts in every moss and cobweb" so whatever your passion may be, pursue it to equip yourself with the tools to dissect those mosses and cobwebs; to let your world melt into the form of beauty you most readily appreciate.
Special thanks to my managers Craig, Fei, and Raji at Pratt & Whitney, and my command at the Rocky Hill Fire Department. Studying while working full-time is hard, but it would have been impossible without their support.
[Dec 2020]
Nur Muhammad
Nur Muhammad
His name meant light- that resplendent energy which turns saplings into trees, which nourishes everything it touches, which brightens every room it enters.
Which guides us, and without which we feel lost.
He was the first friend I had when I arrived on Earth. And though it’s been ages since we last met, I often find myself reminiscing about those simpler times, on the marble floors in sector F-10 in Islamabad where we spent hours playing Ludo and talking about whatever it is that a four year old talks about. I remember how I used to cheat in those ludo games and pretend it was because I couldn’t count. How my grandmother would never let me get away with it, but you never said a word when she didn’t notice. Surely, Nur Muhammad, you saw right through my sly ways, but as always my antics were met with your trademark smile.
I remember sitting on your shoulders as you made parathas and the hens pecked outside in envy of our friendship. I was captivated, from my aerial vantage point, by the dexterity with which you crafted little cobras of dough, coiled them up so they were ready to strike, and dusted them in flour and oil before flattening them and throwing them on the tawa. Such an algorithmic and efficient process- one which I had committed to rote memory. It felt like sacrilege to interrupt this immaculate ritual, and so I watched, mesmerized, from my perch. Yet somehow whenever you noticed I was ready to try my hand at it- and you always did- my parathas ended up too square or too big or too small. But it was never about the parathas, and so in each batch of flawless flatbread that made it to the table as evidence of your culinary excellence, there was also an oblong, burnt testament to your kindheartedness.
I remember how I’d walk outside cowering behind you, my palms sweating into yours, because I was so scared of the roosters. How you would occasionally let go and cackle at my frightened screams, just long enough to enjoy your prank and just short enough that I knew I’d still be safe.
I remember the ruby-stained white marble of the stairs you scooped me up off of, blood gushing from my forehead, just weeks before I moved halfway across the globe with four stitches, one to commemorate each year we lived life to the fullest together. I remember my parents consoling me in a scarcely furnished room at the Schilletter University Village student apartments in Ames, Iowa when I couldn’t make any friends in this strange new country and just wished you could be there with me; just wished we could make parathas and watch the snow fall. I wondered if you’d ever seen snow like this. And I remember the goats, and the bicycle, and the Super Crisps and the Catty Chins. I remember all these things, and yet it pains me that this is the last time I’ll remember them in second person. I only wish I had taken the time to say this when I had the chance instead of writing it posthumously. I wish I had called you when I’d gotten older, after destiny separated our paths, because I also remember the calloused hands and the creaky knees. I remember the childhood you helped give me did not come for free, and I only wish I had tried to repay it while I had the chance, even if it meant just a call to tell you how much you mean.
It’s a hard name to live up to, Nur Muhammad, but you did it beautifully.
For looking after me when I was a sapling, for nourishing me with endless parathas, and for brightening my days with your sincerity- thank you for the memories.
Rest In Peace
إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعونَ
[March 2020]
Joe Zoino
Joe Zoino
“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps… I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one,” I read out loud before slipping Thoreau back into the bookshelf between Huxley and Tolstoy.
A blue guitar sat in the corner of the cozy apartment. It was thanksgiving day, and I had plenty to be thankful for. I didn’t have many friends in Connecticut, but the ones I had were great to me. Today, Joe had invited me over for dinner, and it was just the two of us painting self-portraits while listening to a lecture about Jungian Archetypes in The Lion King. I glanced back at the guitar, thinking about all the tunes it could play, all the beautiful lives it could live. I wondered if, like me, that guitar was so torn between which song to play that it sat silent in the corner.
It's a curious fact that the strongest of friendships can begin with the most benign introductions. A few years ago I was working a corporate tuck-your-shirt-into-your-slacks and log all your hours into a timesheet type of job; A be-here-by-8:30 type of job. If we spent more than 6 minutes on a task it had to be recorded with the appropriate charge number. We ate $9 lunches in plastic cafeteria trays and were ecstatic when they announced we would be getting free coffee in the engineering offices. This workstyle of course didn’t quite suit my nature but I liked the job and the paycheck was good, and anyways- what else was I to do? The whole course of my life had been charted out for me up to this point- grade school, then junior high, then high school and college and a graduate degree, and now collared shirts and socks that matched my pants. Why couldn’t they match the shoes instead? You’re not allowed to ask, I guess.
It was okay.
I was okay.
I was content, I kept telling myself. but I took a LOT of coffee breaks. I walked over to the Keurig probably 5 times a day. Every time my eyes grew strained from looking at CAD graphics and FEA meshes, I took the routine stroll over to that Keurig, through the engineering aisle, past the windows, to the back. The coffee was shit. And besides that, I don’t even like coffee. But right behind the Keurig there was a big poster of the world map. I’d spend 4 or 5 minutes (but never 6, lest I have to find a charge number to bill it to) daydreaming about all the other lives I could be living. Id chart out all the paths I could trek, all the places I could live. I could see all my potential lives hanging before me like the fat purple figs on Sylvia Plath's fig tree. One was Danish taking a motorcycle trip across Europe, and one was ditching the corporate life to join a tiny startup, and one was falling in love and settling down in East Haven in a nice house on the shore. And just like Plath, I saw those figs dry up and drop to my feet with each passing moment.
But one day, as I was walking to the Keurig, through the engineering aisle; past the windows, to the back, something caught my eye. Amidst the buttons and the belts and the slacks, there was something that stuck out. A few desks out I saw a new face rocking a full man-bun, a gaudy shearling fur jacket, and a dress shirt with the top 3 buttons undone.
In the adjacent building, we manufactured hundreds of jet engines every year, with thousands of parts to an engine. Each part had to be exactly the same, or the system would break. In the engineering office, it felt we treated our workforce the same way. Each individual was molded into the same fit- clock in, work hard, clock out. Tuck your shirt in. Get the raise. Promotion to senior. Then staff. then management.
And then there was Joe. Joe didn’t give a damn what we were “supposed” to do. And this attitude permeated every aspect of his life. He was forever questioning the arbitrary constraints that shape so much of who we become. Most people work these 9 to 5’s. They get married. They have kids. And they hate themselves the whole way through. Joe thought about all of these things differently. Instead of letting fears define his route, he carved a path based on what he wanted- no matter how unacceptable it was to the societal palate.
I’ve never met a man with more range than Joe Zoino. He’s the only person I've ever known that could fight in an MMA tournament on Friday, prepare roadkill squirrel for dinner during his wilderness course on Saturday, visit the botanical gardens with me on Sunday (musing about Orwell and Emerson and Hemingway while identifying every tree we came across), and be ready to engineer jet engines bright and early on Monday morning (without having even studied engineering in undergrad!)
If anyone had a right to arrogance, it was the guy that could kick your face in six ways to Sunday and also design aerospace turbomachinery. But Joe wasn’t arrogant. He was incredibly humble, hospitable, and caring. Every Saturday night, he’d invite me over to watch UFC and boxing. And invariably, between Canelo’s artistic footwork and Poirier’s calf kicks, our conversation would drift to existential romanticization. For at least the last 8 months I was in Connecticut, Joe and I would discuss the grand plans for our life. We would talk about what it means to be happy, and to experience the breadth of the human endeavor. We would dream up intricate schemes to slip off to Peruvian jungles to smoke ayahuasca with shamans or filter through busy Bangkok streets in tuktuks to learn muay thai or find some other excuse to shed the lives that were beginning to cocoon us. We would talk about what we wanted, and more importantly about who we wanted to become. I grew so much in the company of that speechless blue guitar, and it’s antithesis the ever-convivial Joseph Zoino.
The effect Joe had in my life is not quantifiable. He was a man of action and that rubbed off on everyone around him. He lifted up and improved anyone that he interacted with, from strangers to neighbors to coworkers, by showing us we don’t have to settle for good enough- that we can always go for what we really want. With this in mind, I resigned in June of last year to pursue an opportunity more closely aligned with my life’s mission. On my last day of work, Joe put his two weeks notice in as well, to begin bicycling across the United States.
And while I started a new life in California, we’d catch up every few days or every few weeks. He always had these grand stories about the people he’d met and the places he’d seen. I couldn’t wait to see Joe again when he finally made it to the west cost, so we could celebrate our respective futures and reflect on the times we had.
Unfortunately on November 11, when he was just 300 miles away from completing his journey, Joe died. His family transported his body to San Diego and held his funeral there, so he could symbolically complete the trip. But I wish things were different. I wish I could see him dip the front wheel of his bike into the pacific ocean. I wish I didn’t have to put a flower in his casket.
I miss you brother, but perhaps you have many more lives to live and could spare no more time for this one. Rest easy, Champ ❤️
[Nov 2021]
Rocky Hill FD Recruiting Post
Rocky Hill FD Recruiting Post
Thank you to the LBJ Fire Academy for preparing me for the fire service by providing me a world class education in firefighting, leadership, and emergency medicine- but most of all for connecting me to a cadre of incredible friends that I am still close to today. If you have any interest in community service, please consider joining your local fire department or ambulance.
Orange Creamsicle
Orange Creamsicle
This morning I experienced one of the purest joys of my life. After a rough morning where I couldn’t eat anything without throwing up, I went out to my balcony and looked at my plants. My tiny sunflower saplings, my wilting geraniums, and my blooming blue escheveria. I ate strawberries directly from the garden without washing them. I felt more viscerally human than I have in months. It was delicious, and I let the ambrosial juices run down my forearm. I thought about the billions of humans that have experienced this specific form of joy, scattered across times and places unknown to me, and felt connected to them. I recalled the advice from Imam Ali, “be like the flower, which gives its fragrance even to the hand that crushes it” as I pulverized a geranium in my hand, and then let the powdered flakes fall in the wind. And as I watched them floating or flying or falling- whatever it was that they were doing, I was reminded of Forrest Gump's monologue at Jenny's grave, “I don’t know if we each got a destiny or if we’re all floating around accidental like on a breeze. But I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is happening at the same time. If there’s anything you need Jenny, I won’t be far”. I pondered that question for a while. I thought about what the “Jenny’s” in my life are- those people or ideas we have the most affection for, often irrationally so- and would make immense sacrifices for. I was distracted by the music of an ice cream truck, and I felt a longing for the days past when my parents would take my hand and walk me down the four stories of the Askari apartments in Karachi to buy whatever I wanted from the little red Wall’s pedalcart full of orange creamsicles and icecream sandwich’s and vanilla drumsticks. I grabbed some cash and ran outside. I will never get those days back, but at least I can still have an orange creamsicle and be grateful that they happened.
[Jun 2022]
Advice for New Engineers
Advice for New Engineers
I wrote this list after completing my first year of working full-time as an engineer:
1) BUY A CHEAP CAR AND AN EXPENSIVE TOOLBOX
2) GET A LIBRARY CARD (IT'S FREE). READ FICTION NOVELS
◆ They're not quite as exciting as ASTM standards, but if your employer wanted an uncreative math whiz, they would've bought a calculator.
3) ASK ALL YOUR QUESTIONS
◆ "Better to be a fool for a moment than a fool for a lifetime"
4) DON'T ASK YOUR BOSS ALL YOUR QUESTIONS
◆ Google » Coworker » Mentor » Boss » Technical Expert
5) NEVER LET YOUR COWORKERS KNOW WHAT PHONE YOU HAVE
◆ Keep it in your pocket except at lunch. Finish your work in 8 hours so you don't have to stay 10.
6) IT'S OKAY TO LEAVE WORK AT 5
◆ Bragging about sleep deprivation is tacky. Invest in your mental health.
7) IT'S NOT OKAY TO STOP WORKING AT 5
◆ Have passion projects and never stop learning. Develop skills in areas you have no experience in.
8) SET YOUR ALARM 2 HOURS EARLY. HIT THE GYM
◆ I'm not a morning person either (is anybody?), but would you fly in a plane designed by a sleepy engineer?
9) VOLUNTEER REGULARLY.
◆ Keep reminding yourself you chose this profession to make the world better.
[July 2018]
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