Chapter 7: Restlessness, Revolution, Roots
Threads of ambition and ancestry
Chapter 6 was about my pivot from fixed income trading to consumer research and data analytics, how I got the rug pulled out from under me, and how an unlikely path from working in suburbia and struggling with irrelevance eventually led to a career foothold in NYC. This chapter is about the next turning point as I entered my mid-twenties, a moment when I finally felt stable in my career yet grew restless almost immediately, hungry for something more. It was a year charged with ambition and frustration, filled with experiments in work, side quests, and identity. Alongside the career drama came a deeper exploration of where I came from, first uncovering Revolutionary-era lineage on my mother’s side, and then, months later, standing on the homestead of my father’s family in Ireland, and what these experiences suggested for my future.
