In other words: I’m writing a book!

Hi, hello again! In case you haven’t heard, I got DOGE’d a couple of months ago. Along with 280,000 other people. 

“Being DOGE’d” is apparently the phrase we all use now to describe the painful process of suddenly losing one’s job because Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has deemed it was an unnecessary or stupid one. 

Though everyone seems to agree that the government can and should be more efficient, government efficiency is not what DOGE seems to be after. The New York Times reporter and podcaster Ezra Klein noted that “Department of Government Control” would be a better term for this new entity, given what it is actually doing, and I agree.

Elon Musk, Peter Navarro, Marco Rubio, and some other powerful men decided that my job, my team’s jobs, our project, and in fact the entire government agency I served as a contractor (USAID) wasn’t needed anymore. So they slashed it. According to most analysis I have seen, this will not lead to any meaningful savings for US taxpayers. But it did lead to a whole lot of confusion, chaos, job loss, and the sudden cutting off of lifesaving foreign assistance for millions of people around the world.

I spent the last ten years working in foreign aid, including most recently five years with a government contractor based in Washington, D.C. My job (and career) evaporated quite suddenly on January 24, just four days after Trump was sworn into office for the second time. 

A few weeks later, I published an exclusive post¹ summarizing that hectic time period. But the short version is that on January 23, my team and I were humming along as usual, managing a busy, multi-million dollar project which was in its third year of implementation providing research and analysis to the US government. One week later, we were all furloughed, and a month after that, we were formally laid off after the government terminated our contract due to the sweeping DOGE cuts and the dismantling of USAID.

SO NOW I’M WRITING A BOOK. 

(Take that, Elon.) 

The last few months have been a roller coaster. I was devastated to lose my job, my team, and my project, all of which I loved. Now, the sadness is still there, but it’s sharing mental space with the huge excitement I feel over working on a long-time dream of mine: writing a memoir.

I’m not going to tell you all about this book yet, because I want to reveal all the juicy details when I’m closer to publishing. For now, I’ll just tell you that it’s a memoir about my time living overseas in Jordan. 

I’ve been dreaming of writing this book for the past seven years. In the margins of time, while working full time and navigating whatever else life threw at me, I’ve been slowly chipping away at the beginnings of a manuscript: a tentative outline. A working title. I sketched out ideas and turned stand-alone essays into portions of chapters that can hang together. 

I say slowly because writing in the margins of time means I made painfully slow, incremental progress. Pretend you’re weaving a vast tapestry which is big enough to cover a football field. Every day, before jumping into your busy day and full time job, you have time to weave only a few threads.

That’s been me and this book project. It’s been frustrating to see the whole tapestry in my mind, and each day, to weave just two more threads. Two more threads. Two more threads.

I tried different ways of carving out writing time: some weeks, I’d write for three hours each Saturday morning. Sometimes I’d spontaneously write a bit if I found a free half hour in the morning before work. One week, I woke up before dawn and wrote every day from 5:00-6:00am. (That didn’t last long.) Yet no matter how I sliced it, I only ever had time to weave a few threads at a time. 

Then I got DOGE’d, and now I’m diving fully in.

Over these past few months, friends have asked me: how are you doing? 

One true answer is: I’m insanely stressed out. I lost my income, career, and job stability; the US government seems to be imploding; and no one knows what’s going to happen next. I’m afraid to look at my 401k.

Another, equally true answer is: I’m living my actual dream.

My dream was to write this book, and I’m writing it. Every day I wake up, I make coffee, and then I write for hours. I’m getting the chance to experience that beautiful phenomenon they call the flow state. Hours pass and I forget to get up from my desk or eat or (God forbid!) check my phone. I jump when the mail gets pushed through the mail slot. This is because I’m completely absorbed in drafting and researching, as well as reading every memoir I can get my hands on — to see other examples of how authors approach structure, tense, or perspective.

Most days now, I wake up before my alarm with a feeling of excitement buzzing in my chest, and I think: I get to write today!

Though it happened suddenly, not on my terms, and due to ridiculous circumstances, I feel lucky that I have this experience every morning.

And yes, it’s also difficult. Yes, I don’t exactly know how to write a book because I’ve never written one before. Yes, it’s daunting. Yes, it’s a long road to publication. Yes, I don’t know if I’ll ever make money from this.

I want to try to go the traditional publishing route, which means I’ll need to (1) progress my manuscript further, (2) write a book proposal (separate from the manuscript, a book proposal is required to explain who you are, what your book is about, and why it’s marketable), (3) try to get an agent, and then (4) try, via the agent, to sell the manuscript to a publisher.

(It’s going to be a long road; feel free to grab a snack while you wait.)

But because we have a little financial buffer right now (thanks to savings and Raja’s current job), I get to spend almost all my time doing what I love. This led me to a question:

Can we actually do the thing we dream of doing right now? Instead of later? 

These last few years, I’ve thought countless times: can’t wait till that moment when I get to sit down and finally write that book! “That moment” took on different meanings for me at different times. Sometimes it meant if my job ran its natural course. Or if I quit. Or if my project ended. Or if I applied for a Master’s degree and then took a summer off between working and studying. (Pause to hear authors around the world guffawing at the idea of writing a book in one summer.)

Or if we reached $X or $Y or maybe $Z in our bank account. Or when we bought a house. Or if I went on maternity leave. (Pause to hear parents of newborns around the world laugh-crying about the idea of writing a book while on parental leave with a new baby.)

Whatever. I got DOGE’d, and the moment is now. 

When I first got DOGE’d and turned to writing, I thought: is this allowed? Are you allowed to just do the thing you want to do? Even if it’s not earning any money (yet)?

Then I looked around, and no one seemed to be stopping me. Raja, in fact, was actively encouraging me. (He’s been hearing about this book idea for enough years that when I said, “I think I’m going to do it,” he probably thought, FINALLY.)

What is your dream, and can you do it right now? 

Here is where I will give you the caveat that yes, I do realize my situation is somewhat unique. I sincerely hope, dear reader, that you weren’t recently DOGE’d, and that instead of having the rug pulled out from under you, you are humming along in whatever your current life’s work may be: family, work, creative pursuits, building something for the future, tending to your pets or garden, or some combination of the above.

However, even if your situation is not as extreme as mine: what is your dream, and can you move incrementally towards it right now? Today? This month? 

I wrote about Martha Beck in a recent post, so you already know I think she’s fantastic. At the time I wrote that post, I was reading her book The Way of Integrity, and I loved it so much that I’m actually reading it again (for the second time in three months, sorry-not-sorry).

This book has a section called The Power of One-Degree Turns. She writes, “Positive transformation happens more quickly when we do it in small steps rather than heroic leaps. Every day you make thousands of tiny decisions about what to do with your time. Every single choice is a chance to turn towards the life you really want.”

She encourages readers to repeatedly put “a little less time into what you don’t love, and a little more into what you do love.” She even suggests that by doing something you don’t love ten minutes less per day, and adding in something you do love ten minutes more per day, you can end up in a very different spot than where you are right now.

My recent turn from USAID contractor to full time writer was not a one-degree turn. It was more like screeching to a halt, flipping over twice and banging a hard left.

But looking back, I see that all my writing in the margins of time over the last few years was my way of doing one-degree turns toward this dream, even in the midst of doing all the other things I was doing in life.

I also see now how all that margin-writing prepared me for this deep dive into the manuscript which I’m doing now. I’m not starting from scratch. I already have many threads prepped, sorted, dyed, and ready to be woven (if you’ll allow me to stretch the book-tapestry metaphor to its breaking point). 

I can’t wait to keep working on this and, eventually, share it with you and the world.

PS. Today happens to be my birthday and, in celebration of that, I’ve been working on something exciting (besides the book) which I can’t wait to share with you. Stay tuned for an announcement coming soon!

What’s a dream you’re working on in the margins of time? Can you turn one degree towards it this week? I’d love to hear about it ↓

1. Sign up for my email list to receive future exclusives. ↩︎