The 6-Year Journey Behind The E-Waste Column

I have written The E-Waste Column every week for the last 4 years, but I (unknowingly) embarked on the journey that led me to write it 6 years ago…

At 25, I quit my well-paying job in corporate law, terminated the lease for my dream penthouse overlooking the city of The Hague, and packed up all my things to move them across the border to my grandparents’ house for storage. The plan at the time was to just take a year-long hiatus from practicing law in order to get a U.S. law degree.

Six years later, I have still not gone back to working at a law firm. The last long-term housing lease I signed ended in June 2022, when I graduated from Columbia Law School and left New York. The majority of my things are still in the same boxes that I packed at 25, with the only difference being that they have since made their way from my grandparents’ house to my parents’ house.

Due to a series of wildly unexpected twists and turns in my life, I have now “floated through space and time” for six years – living for a year in New York and then a few months at a time in Amsterdam, back in New York, in Porto, and in The Hague. Between it all, I have spent more time than I could have ever imagined on the remnants of my family’s farm in – what the city kid in me likes to refer to as – “the middle of nowhere”.

I often joke that the life I live nowadays would have given the 25-year-old version of me an existential crisis or a heart attack, but then again that version of me had yet to learn how utter joy and the deepest of sorrow can come to co-exist. They say that life is messy, but I love to say that following your heart (and starting a company) is even messier. And over the years, The E-Waste Column has been my chaos, my bliss, my coping mechanism, and my North Star through it all.

If you would like to share your own story of the impact that The E-Waste Column has had on you or your career, I welcome you to submit your #impacttestimonials here.

The photo is of me at 26 in Morningside Heights, after getting home from an evening at the Metropolitan Opera. After having spent the entirety of my career until then pretty much alternatingly wearing black, white, grey, and beige, living in New York taught me to rediscover the joy of making bold choices in my clothing (and also in my life!).