The Never-Ending Nexus

An unrelenting tug at the center of my chest. Knots twisting in my stomach. Flushed heat in my cheeks.

This is how my social anxiety announces itself.

Someone once told me there are only three constants in life: pain, uncertainty, and work. I resisted the idea, but like my anxiety, it persisted.

And the more I tried to escape it, the more I understood its truth.

Coming from a small town where neither parent had attended college, Stanford amplified everything—not just the campus, but the distance between who I was and who everyone else seemed to be.

The map sold me a ticket to a life of potential and promise. But the map was not the territory.

I remember lingering outside dining halls where late-night tutoring sessions happened. Through the windows, I could see my classmates casually discussing problem sets I'd spent hours struggling to understand. My body made the choice my mind couldn't—my feet wouldn't move. I stood there, paralyzed between walking in and admitting I was lost, or walking away and staying lost.

I walked away.

Every class discussion, every study group, every casual conversation in the dorm confirmed the same thing: I didn't belong here.

I threw myself into work instead—late nights alone, grinding through problem sets, avoiding people. If I couldn't belong, at least I could survive.

But the isolation fed the anxiety. It convinced me I wasn't smart enough, didn't belong, would never measure up. I wanted to be accepted for who I was, but I didn't even know who that was.

That anxiety still follows me.

As an early-stage investor, my job is to find brilliant founders before they're ready to start companies. To do this well, I need to build real relationships—the kind built on trust and authenticity.

In other words: I have to do exactly what I couldn't do at Stanford. I have to show up, be seen, and risk rejection.

This means being judged—the very thing I insulated myself from in college.

Industry mixers. Invite-only hacker houses. Networking events where I have to convince founders I'm worth their time. These situations still trigger the same physical response: the tug in my chest, the knots, the heat.

But I go anyway.

I came across a graph recently that captured what I've been learning. It shows two paths: one that stays comfortable, flat along the X-axis of time. The other shoots upward toward your potential—but only by first passing through suffering.

I'm choosing the upward path. I walk into those rooms. I build relationships that require vulnerability. I've accepted that suffering isn't something to avoid—it's the price of a meaningful life.

I may never fully shake the anxiety that took root at Stanford. But I've stopped trying to. Instead, I'm walking toward the person I want to become, even though the path goes through fear.

As Viktor Frankl wrote, "What is to give light must endure burning."

H/t to Frederik Gieschen from Alchemy of Money and Tom Morgan from What’s Important for the inspiration for the post and the graph included in this article, respectively.