I'm just a girl, sorta

Grateful to both firms for teaching me different kinds of strength.

From the outside, my life looks very online.

There’s travel. There are pretty views. There is the suggestion of a “nice” life—one that appears social, aesthetic, and gently aspirational in the way algorithms reward. People who meet me after law school often assume I’m always out somewhere, doing something, surrounded by motion. Or assume I’m high maintenance (I am emotionally) or worse, a gold digger.

The truth is that I spend most of my time indoors, and to be quite frank, I enjoy making my own money much more than spending someone else’s. The latter feels like an investment, but only when I’m in a serious relationship. Otherwise, I take offense. Perhaps my pride saves me from losing myself on that front.

I like candles. I like quiet. I like drafting. I like the particular satisfaction of moving language around until it says exactly what it needs to say and nothing more. I enjoy being a lawyer, not because it’s glamorous (it isn’t), but because it’s precise. Exhausting, yes. But in a way that feels earned.

People have asked me if I was using work to cope or if I was “running away from something”. Maybe I am? was? But when I am alone at night, chatting with my colleagues, cackling over memes and despair— I feel privileged.

I’ve never been someone who naturally enjoyed parties. During the brief pockets of time when I tried, I had to drink myself into numbness to convince myself I was having fun. It took years to recognize that this wasn’t bravery or openness. Slowly, I learned to say no.
No, I’d rather stay inside.
No, I’d rather snuggle with my cat.
No, I’d rather work. And if I’m not working, I’d rather disappear down a rabbit hole learning something obscure, reorganizing my books, or redecorating my room for the fifteenth time.

I have ADHD. My mind is happiest when it’s either deeply focused or quietly wandering with intention. Chaos isn’t my environment of choice; it’s my subject of study.

I’ve been at my primary firm since formation, which feels both impossible and obvious in retrospect. It was just after FTX collapsed that I met Can—now one of my closest friends and not long after that, the most brilliant lawyer I’ve ever known, Tim. They both took me under their wings. What followed was not a smooth onboarding, but a slow, demanding apprenticeship. I had pivoted laterally from litigation into a very different legal discipline, something most attorneys avoid for good reason. You take a pay cut. You’re viewed as having failed at the first thing. You start over in a profession that does not reward starting over.

It was hard. Really hard. And I know that I disappointed them more in the beginning than I admit openly. (But I am now.)

Now they are my second home.

I was lucky. With patience, trust, and more redlines than I care to remember, and two brilliant mentors from Fenwick, I learned. What that really means is that I learned how to be exacting without being rigid, conservative without being timid. U.S. licenses are sensitive instruments… earned slowly, protected carefully. The margin for error is thin, not because the lawyers are better, but because the system is unforgiving. There’s no romance in that. Just responsibility.

Around the same time, nearly three years ago, a breakup rearranged my priorities more than any career decision ever had. For most of my life, I had organized myself around love. Fairy tales. A different type of possibility. I took risks with my career. I bent my time and energy toward relationships with the belief that love, if chosen boldly enough, would justify the cost.

When that belief broke, I folded inward.

I told myself I would never abandon myself again. I doubled down on work. On discipline. On competence. On becoming someone who did not need rescuing. In hindsight, I may have overcorrected. I probably missed out on something real along the way. But growth is rarely clean, and wisdom usually arrives after the damage report.

Parallel to all of this was another home: a Singapore firm that welcomed me not as a resource, but also as family 6,000 miles away. Over the past two years, I’ve left and returned more than once. I remember a call with a friend there, telling him I’d come back better. I meant it. And then, like many sincere promises, it receded into the background as I focused on surviving my primary role.

What surprises people is that I genuinely like both firms.

My primary firm is buttoned up in the way that comes from regulation and structure. The work demands restraint, precision, and a kind of legal hygiene that reflects the fragility of U.S. licensing. It’s proper, not performative. Serious, not slow.

The Singapore firm is faster, looser, more chaotic and I mean that as a compliment. Crypto is not a clean industry. It is volatile, creative, impatient. To pretend otherwise is to misunderstand it. That firm moves at the speed of ideas, not memos. It breathes urgency. It tolerates ambiguity.

Both environments have taught me different forms of fluency. One taught me how to protect. The other taught me how to build. One sharpened my discipline. The other kept me alive to possibility.

They balance me.

I don’t live a loud life. I live a considered one. The travel is real, but so is the solitude. The aesthetic is intentional, but so is the work. I don’t optimize for visibility. I optimize for sustainability.

If there’s a throughline here, it’s this: a good life doesn’t have to look busy to be full. Sometimes it looks like staying in, choosing no, lighting a candle, and trusting that depth compounds—even when it’s happening quietly.

Both of my professional homes have served me in ways I needed at different times. Both feel like home, not because they’re perfect, but because they allow me to be whole.

And that, more than optics, is what I’ve learned to build toward.

P.S.) I, with great bias, believe that Web3 lawyers are superior. We deal with a lot. But the best part about it all is that we have each other. In the trenches and out.