It was 2020, and I was living in a one-bedroom loft in the Mission District of San Francisco. My mornings began with sunlight streaming through industrial windows, illuminating the exposed brick walls I'd come to love. I had just started a new job as a postdoc at a prestigious research institution—the culmination of years of grinding work, sleepless nights, and sacrificed relationships.

Three months into joining the new lab, the pandemic hit like a tidal wave. The bustling hallways of our research building fell silent almost overnight. The sharp smell of disinfectant replaced the familiar scent of coffee and lab chemicals.

I felt tremendous pressure pressing down on my chest each morning as I sat at my makeshift desk—a repurposed dining table cluttered with journal articles and empty espresso cups. I needed to perform, to prove that my success during grad school wasn't a fluke. But my mind felt like it was wrapped in fog. I couldn't think of what to work on. My fingers would hover over my keyboard, trembling slightly, as performance anxiety, doubt, and fear of failure plagued me. The weight of unwritten grant proposals with looming deadlines hung around my neck like an anchor.

I coped by smoking weed in the mornings in an attempt to quiet my racing thoughts and the aggressive hiss of my espresso machine. The bitter taste of too much coffee coated my tongue. My heart would race, but not with excitement—with caffeine and cannabis-induced anxiety that mirrored my professional dread.

But then a new problem emerged: lockdown. The solid weight of my lab key card in my pocket became useless. I couldn't work. Yet my whole identity was wrapped up in how hard I worked. In fact, that's all I had, all I did, and who I thought myself to be. The silence of my apartment was deafening—no lab equipment humming, no colleagues discussing protocols—just the sound of my own shallow breathing as I faced an identity crisis.

Panic and fear spread through my lab like wildfire. Our Zoom lab meetings, once focused on data and methodology, became battlegrounds. Despite being in one of the most liberal and open-minded institutions on the planet, lab meetings became contaminated with identity politics, birthing the very divisions they were supposedly addressing. I could feel my jaw clenching during these calls, the metallic taste of frustration filling my mouth as I remained silent.

Being unable to work and being "highly encouraged" to attend countless anti-racist meetings eventually led me to a boiling point. I worked so hard to get to this point in my career—my fingers calloused from pipetting, my eyes strained from microscope work, my social life sacrificed at the altar of academic ambition. And now I hated the situation I was in. To top it off, I was now muzzling myself from an unknown pathogen, the mask tight against my face, unable to see from the fog of my own breath coating my glasses, and making my words sound muffled even to myself.

I found myself in eerily familiar terrain to that of Cuba 25 years earlier, where my people's voice was taken from them alongside their freedom. The memory of my ancestors' struggles and stories about censorship felt uncomfortably present as I watched lies shut down uncomfortable truths in conversations in real-time.

Race and gender-based identity politics became the Trojan horse for neo-Marxist doctrines to etch themselves into the psyche of my labmates. I could see it happening—in the tightness around their eyes when certain topics arose, in the rehearsed quality of their responses. Truth itself became subservient to this new ideal.

But it didn't stop there; the scientific leadership at my workplace began to operate under different rules than they preached. The hypocrisy of moralizing in public forums while behaving differently behind closed doors became blatantly incoherent. Each contradiction I witnessed was like sandpaper against my values.

One late morning, as the bay area sun shone brightly and bounced off my apartment windows, I knew I had to do something. My chest was tight with anxiety, my stomach churned with stress, and my thoughts swirled with judgments, blame, hatred, and frankly, fear.

That's when I thought to do the one thing that was in my control: manage my mind.

I sat outside in my Ikea lawn chair and began to observe my thoughts like a scientist might observe cells under a microscope. I watched as thoughts appeared and disappeared. Gradually, the knot in my chest loosened. The tension in my shoulders released. A deep sense of peace washed over me like a warm wave.

I also realized how my thinking intimately informed what I was feeling and how my thinking was impacting me. The narratives I constructed were creating my suffering. I could feel this truth in my body—a lightness replacing the heaviness I'd been carrying.

I then decided to do something I had never done before. I began to really question my beliefs. The scratch of pen against paper became meditative as I wrote down every thought that had been poisoning me. I was instantly blown away by how my thoughts were creating the world I was living in.

I put all of my judgments of my coworkers on paper, all of my judgments of COVID and the lockdown, the powerlessness I felt. The pages filled quickly, my handwriting becoming more frantic as I purged these thoughts. I questioned everything, and I discovered such tremendous peace that birthed a level of acceptance I couldn't remember ever experiencing.

I began to realize that the hatred and vitriol I saw in my coworkers also lived in me. I saw how much blame, racism, greed, self-loathing—all of the things I saw in them—lived in me! And that realization was so utterly profound and freeing. It was like removing a heavy backpack I'd been carrying for miles without realizing it.

On the one hand, I knew I wanted to leave my job, but I could no longer avoid feeling the way I was feeling. The decision to leave came from a deep clarity that emerged from sifting through what was actually true and letting go of what wasn't. The sensation was physical—like clearing muddy water until it runs crystal clear.

I left my job because it wasn't in alignment with my values. The day I submitted my resignation, I felt my shoulders relax for the first time in months. I walked through the Mission District, noticing the vibrant street art I'd been too stressed to see before, the scent of fresh pan dulce from the bakery on the corner filling my nostrils.

I left with newfound love for the shared human experience we were all going through. I now help others free themselves from limiting beliefs and find careers they love—watching their faces transform from tension to relief as they discover the same freedom I found that sunny day on my patio.