Human-Being vs. Human-Doing

New Year Reflections, 2026

For most of my adult life, I lived as a human-doing.

Not intentionally — but because the pace of modern work made it effortless to confuse productivity with purpose, urgency with meaning.

Two decades in healthcare technology will do that to you.

You deliver releases, solve fires, modernize platforms, carry teams, fix broken systems, and shoulder burdens others never see. You build revenue, build teams, build products — until one day you wake up and realize you’re building everything except your own life.

I made good money.

I had prestigious titles.

But I was rarely present in my own moments.

I showed up relentlessly for employers and barely at all for myself.

And eventually, burnout stopped whispering and started screaming.

When the Body Strikes, the Soul Listens

Back in April, my blood pressure was terrible.

The nurse took one reading, looked alarmed, and asked me to breathe deeply.

The second reading? Even worse.

Meanwhile my brain spiraled into classic burnout panic:

• I’ve been here too long.

• Should I text my boss?

• Should I ping the meeting organizer?

• How do I look reliable while my body falls apart?

The nurse finally sighed and said with motherly annoyance,

“I’ll write down the first number — it’s better than the second. Please sleep more.”

Forty-five days later, same story.

Then came my conscious pause — my learning sabbatical.

Months later, with no meeting to rush into, I walked into the clinic:

BP: 121/76.

My PCP looked at the number, blinked, and asked:

“What did you do?”

I smiled and said,

“I quit.”

He burst out laughing.

“Yeah. That’ll do it.”

Sometimes it takes a BP machine screaming at you to realize burnout isn’t a metaphor.

It is biology.

Choosing Life at the Midpoint of My Career

And as funny as that moment with my PCP was, there was a deeper truth beneath it — one that had been quietly building for months.

Somewhere in the middle of my career journey — that midpoint where the first half of ambition finally collides with the second half of meaning — I found myself asking a question I had avoided for years:

“Do I want to keep waking up in dread, or do I want to look forward to my day?”

For as long as I can remember, my mornings began with a to-do list projected onto the ceiling before I even opened my eyes. Even during meditation, my mind scanned gaps, risks, dependencies, and everything that might break by noon. I wasn’t waking up — I was reporting for duty.

It was exhaustion disguised as discipline.

A close friend of mine, a PCP from Brea, listened to me one afternoon and said gently:

“This sounds like meeting PTSD. It’s not worth risking your health. Be around to see your son graduate from college.”

Her words landed with the weight of truth.

Your epitaph doesn’t need to say:

“Died rich but had no time.”

“Earned money but never lived.”

And yet, sharing this inner struggle with my leadership felt terrifying. Vulnerability always does. But when I finally gathered the courage to be honest about where I was, something beautiful happened —

they understood.

They supported me fully. They said yes.

When I turned in my notice, I did what I always do: I documented everything — every roadmap, every AI idea, every RCM gap and its root cause, every hard-earned insight about the product and the architecture. Not because I was leaving, but because I cared.

It wasn’t resignation.

It was a handoff.

A clean, loving, intentional handoff.

Walking away felt less like abandonment and more like completion — like my work there had served its purpose.

They never truly “needed” me; I simply helped them see clarity they already carried inside.

And so I left — not broken, not bitter — but fulfilled, grateful for my leaders, my peers, the PE advisors, and the VP team, all of whom gave me space to step back without guilt.

I owe them more than they know.

That experience wasn’t diminished by my leaving —

it was the catalyst for the self-realization that healed me.

And then, something I will forever treasure:

they gave me the sweetest farewell of my entire career — a KudoBoard overflowing with warmth, gratitude, and memories.

It reminded me that when you lead with intention and leave with integrity, you don’t lose a team; you gain a chapter of people who quietly carry you forward.

What Slowing Down Revealed

I began walking daily — slow, one-hour evening loops through the quiet streets of Morgantown.

At first, slowing down felt odd.

My mind hated the stillness. It didn’t know how to exist without rushing.

But then something softened.

A neighborhood cat began walking beside me like an old friend.

A deer grazed calmly while looking straight at me.

A grandpa in a cul-de-sac stopped me to talk about Napoleon Hill.

And I found myself smiling at strangers, and strangers smiling back.

For the first time in years, I felt fully present.

One evening, watching the WV sky turn purple and gold, I finally captured a truth that had lived in me for years but never had words. I wrote the poem:

“Happiness Is Wanting What You Have.”

It wasn’t a new idea — it was simply the first time I slowed down enough to feel it.

Happiness isn’t a future achievement.

It’s noticing that your life was already beautiful — you were just too tired to see it.

Healing the Body, Healing the Self

For decades, my iron levels were terrible.

My mother lived with severe anemia her whole life and ultimately passed with both anemia and Alzheimer’s.

I quietly assumed the same fate.

Every lab was red.

Year after year.

I stopped hoping.

But my hematologist didn’t.

He diagnosed meticulously, fought insurance battles, and convinced me to try an 8-hour infusion — the long, tiring drip no one else suggested.

Eight months later, I walked in expecting failure again.

Instead:

Every graph was green.

For the first time in decades.

This wasn’t just a medical milestone.

It was a personal one.

A return to myself.

The Grind That Made Stillness Possible

There’s another paradox I’ve been sitting with — one that only surfaced when life finally became quiet enough for me to hear myself. The first half of my adulthood wasn’t still at all. It was two decades of unrelenting hard work as a family: my husband earning his PhD, me working for two startups, me completing my MBA while serving as a CTO and raising an elementary schooler, both of us caring for our parents and building a financial foundation from the ground up. Those years were a partnership in the truest sense — two people trading shifts in courage, sacrifice, and endurance, saving every penny for Sreyan’s future, building a life here while supporting the life we left behind.

And that grind — as exhausting as it was — is also what made this second-half pause possible.

Money homework is done; meaning homework begins.

Without the grind, I might never have earned the privilege of stillness.

Yet without stillness, I would never have understood the grind.

Whether there was a more elegant route to this self-realization… well, I’ll iterate that in the next life!

Reconnecting With Purpose Through Helping Others

During this reflective season, I started talking to strangers on LinkedIn — genuinely wanting them to succeed.

Some of them (they know who they are, thank you J & P!) said,

“You write well.”

It surprised me.

I’ve journaled my whole life, but quietly, privately.

Their words nudged me to write more, reflect more, share more.

And in helping others, I started finding myself again.

Even with my son — watching him volunteer with shy elementary school robotics kids — I told him:

“Find the quietest child.

Let them feel it’s okay to ask questions.

That alone is a good day.”

And I watched something shift in him — purpose replacing fear.

Helping him see beyond performance reminded me of my own journey.

Slowness Didn’t Make Me Stop — It Made Me Better

Here’s the misconception:

Slowing down means losing your edge.

My experience?

Slowness sharpened me.

When the noise faded, my mind became clearer.

I coded more joyfully, with precision instead of panic.

I asked deeper product-market-fit questions.

I helped customers with sincerity instead of obligation.

Even funnier:

the moment the money pressure disappeared,

my thinking improved.

This GitHub streak — ninety straight days of contributions — happened during my “slower” season.

Slowness didn’t reduce my productivity.

It removed my fear.

A Practical Tip: How I Maintain My Coding Streak

Since I’m “Practice Tip Queen,” here’s a habit that changed my mornings:

I always end my day leaving one small, half-finished piece of work ready for tomorrow.

This idea came from the micro-habit philosophies of James Clear and Charles Duhigg — I don’t even remember which book seeded it first, but it stayed with me.

Every morning, before breakfast, I ask Claude to generate focused, atomic commits per file with a clean commit message — my love letter to my future self.

It creates momentum.

It keeps my streak alive.

It gives me a quiet feeling of accomplishment before the world wakes up.

I don’t chase productivity anymore.

I choose my problems consciously — and that makes all the difference.

Evidence of a Joyful, Intentional Streak

I love focused commits — one file, one idea.

I find that commit history tells the story of the system more elegantly than the code itself.

I’m not weird.

I’m a systems thinker who reads evolution, not just implementation.

Burnout → Awareness → A Deep Life

If you’re quietly burning out — numb, exhausted, or disconnected — hear this gently:

You are not weak.

You are human.

And you can come back to yourself.

Burnout forces a reckoning.

It asks:

• What do you want?

• What do you already have that is enough?

• What would a deep life look like for you?

In 2026, I’m choosing to be a human-being first.

The human-doing will follow — but from a healthier, steadier, truer place.

Happiness is wanting what you already have.

And for the first time, I really do.