Life Markers
August 2025
For the last three years, I’ve found myself on the same couch in Miami on December 31st. The same exact leather square. The same knees, pulled into the same sitting position. And a similar yet different reunion with my overwhelming feelings of the year’s end.
I see this moment as a life marker. A point in time where I can relive a moment from the year before, but in a different self.
This past month, I stepped onto a bus headed toward summer camp grounds for my fifth annual Contrary retreat—a gathering of all the people that were Contrary venture scouts during college. Imagine wooden cabins, sparkling fires, laying amongst forrest trees, and looking up at the night sky, with my now half-decade long friends.
This time, I sat on the right side of the bus, in a window seat. Just like I did three years ago.
I was just finishing my internship at Google, and I remember watching cows, maybe they were goats, pass by. I remember making a personal agreement with myself to make the most of the weekend, to “turn on” and be my most social self.
Later that night, I walked out of my cabin to crisp air and trees steeped in dust and lacy vines. I joined circles with people from all the big cities, older, younger, with glasses, new hair, slowly marking off my Guess Who board. In each conversation I joined, I heard more and more announcements of new jobs and companies founded, who was raising and how much. I remember thinking, “I want to be like that person” and feeling an impatience, “I’m ready to get back home, to dream bigger, and to get to work”. Back then I already saw this retreat as a life marker, but framed as a kind of accountability tool. “By next year at this retreat, I too can tell everyone what cool things I’m up to”.
A year into my first job out of college, I landed on another camp ground to familiar faces. I had just gotten promoted, yet I remember when people asked me “How’s work?”, “How’s Mosaic?”, “Are you still at Databricks?”, I intuitively felt this need to express dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction that I wasn’t working at an early startup like many others. Dissatisfaction that I wasn’t founding my own company. All in the guise of convincing myself that I would be onto “greater things” and others should believe so too.
But this year, in the summery Austin heat, I stepped off the bus and felt different. I felt breezy and with heart. I spent my time sitting on ground with new and old friends, hearing about what had transpired in their lives in the last 365 days, the new feelings, new people, new revelations. And inevitably, when I heard the successes of their new funds, companies, and teams, I cheered for them. I felt myself, unbothered.
Unbothered because, I’ve internalized more than ever before, this feeling that my life is my own to live.
I’ve had a difficult year, largely recovering from an eye infection that has permanently impaired my vision. I’ve felt the feeling of “putting my life on hold” in the months when I stayed at home and focused on rest. Aptly put by a woman I saw on YouTube fighting her own health battles: “all your friends are changing jobs, getting promoted, falling in love, making memories, and you’re at home, sick. Your life is on pause.”
But even after I made peace with “the pause” in my life—I enjoyed the feeling of having a single goal to recover, appreciated the people that have shown up for me, and understood that this pause is small part of my life—the real weight that dawned on my June and July was acknowledging that I’ve permanently scarred my eye and it will never work the way it used to. Impending great medical discovery, I will not be able to see that faces of people the way I used to, feel as carefree walking on streets, going on hikes, exploring new places as I did back in February of this year. I feel vulnerable by its purist definition.
But this also reminds me that I am on my own journey, with my own timeline.
No one is living life like I am.
And no one will live life like I choose. In an exercise where I’m tasked to sketch out the next film roll I live, I’m not sketching scenes of coming back to retreat and telling people I’ve raised. Or scenes of a younger woman hearing my accomplishments and aspiring to make similar announcements. I mark the edges of the roll with NYE in Miami, next year’s Contrary retreat, and fill in scenes where I’m sitting on the couch with each of my family members and friends, sipping tea, and getting invested in what’s going on in their lives. I’m waking up, feeling energized to work toward a mission I believe in and leading a team of people who believe similarly and are great at their craft. I see scenes of me writing and reflecting and feeling excited by how great my human experience is.
I came back to Kantine this month to write my August monologue. I’m sitting at the same table with the same IKEA cup filled to the brim with black coffee—the same setting in which I wrote my July monologue. And I feel excited to add new life markers to my film roll, to sketch what I want the next month to look like, and to color in the lines in between.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading my August monologue. If you have questions, opinions, experiences about any of these topics, I would love more than to discuss! That’s why I write after all :) You can find me @jjanezhang on X.
A special shoutout to my friends Taneisha, Vansh, Jacob and my sister Joyce for reminding me that I’ve come out of my recovery stronger and that I’ve navigated it well.
Other topics I thought about but didn’t write about:
Some of the other life markers in my life have been college reunions, going to Miami every year for NYE, and personally not the strongest for me but universally, my birthday (which was this month!)
Loneliness is the lost of the enjoyment of being alone. It’s colloquial to point out the “loneliness epidemic”, attributed to the use of phones. And I believe screen time is a drug preventing us from doing the hard work of connecting with people but even more, I think we are forgetting the joy it is to be alone and to enjoying being in our thoughts and doing things on our own time.
I wrote about the “weight of showing up for people” in my February blog post. This month, I experienced similar moments, and I enjoyed the reflection that my persistence to do so has not wavered.
This is such a refreshing perspective Jane! I’ve been dealing with my own health issues and I relate to the frustration of your life feeling like it’s on “pause”
Jane you are incredible and I am rooting for you