Truth be told, last year hadn’t been so promising, and many of the companies I’d invested in failed. It was like playing snakes and ladders—just before I reached 100, I was bitten by the longest snake on the board, and I was back to square one! But that’s the whole game of being an entrepreneur and investor. You’ve got to have the will to build anything and everything from scratch in life.

The last two years were also tough due to the pandemic, but I have a newfound sense of gratitude for being alive. I rejected an offer from one of the biggest IT companies in the world, and then went on to sell my first venture, the one I had started in the third year of college, for ten million. Entrepreneurship has been in my blood forever, and I’m raring to step my new game up!

There Is No Magic

Kiana

Friday, 9 December 2022
Josie’s Cafe, Downtown Chicago

‘The good thing about bad times is that they pass. And the bad thing about good times is that they pass as well.’

Maybe adulting is realizing that you’re the one constant in your life, your truest best friend until the end of time. The people around you will grow, they will face their own battles, and sometimes, they won’t be there when you need them the most. And while all you might crave in a moment like that is a simple hug, you might not get one. Instead, you’ll find comfort in the most unexpected of places—an old pillow, a soft toy from your childhood, or even the fleeting warmth of a dog brushing past your legs.

Because maybe, just maybe, adulthood is also about accepting this truth: that you can carry pieces of home with you, but you may never get to fully return to it again.

When I step out of Willis Tower, which is the tallest skyscraper in the city and where my office is located, the wind hits me like a million pins piercing my nose and forehead, the only uncovered parts of my body. The rest of me is bundled up in an upmarket black trench coat, a grey muffler and cap, grey gloves, a white sweater, black pants and black boots.

The weather app on my smartphone says that it’s a minus 8 today! No wonder it’s fucking freezing, and it’s only going to get worse. Apparently, it’s supposed to snow around Christmas.