Storm Before the Storm
Storm Before the Storm
How I Got Here
I’ve been thinking a lot about purpose lately. Not purpose as a slogan or a motivational quote, but purpose as a real, lived thing. The why behind staying up late, behind caring too much, behind continuing even when nothing feels finished.
For religious people, purpose is often framed as serving God. I grew up with that language. But stripped down, purpose is simpler than theology. Purpose is the point. It’s the answer to the uncomfortable question: Why am I here, and what happens when I show up fully?
When I don’t feel connected to purpose, everything feels heavier. When I do, time disappears.
---
Flow, Alignment, and Time Disappearing
There are a few moments in my life where time consistently collapses:
- Music production - Drawing - Designing - Leading something creative - Being with certain people
Psychologists call it flow, but I think of it more as alignment. When I’m in those states, I’m not performing or proving. I’m just doing. Creating. Solving. Listening. Leading.
That word flow keeps coming up in my journaling, and I don’t think that’s an accident.
---
Usefulness as a Throughline
Another recurring thread is usefulness. People tend to thank me for the same things:
- Intellectual stimulation - Honesty - Humor - Clarity - Being someone who “gets it”
Someone who can zoom out, connect dots, and still care deeply about the details.
The moments I’ve felt most alive and most useful weren’t abstract. They were tangible:
- Leading on a music video set - Being a one-man band at weddings - Watching people dance together because I was the source of the music - Showing up fully for friends - Creating tools that helped others express themselves
That’s when purpose has felt real to me.
---
Roots and In-Between-ness
I come from an Orthodox Jewish family of ten. I grew up Mizrachi, with Arab roots, living between Ashkenazi and Sephardi worlds. I also grew up poor.
That constant in-between-ness shaped a lot of what makes me me.
I was raised in a system with structure, certainty, and very little room for ambiguity. Leaving that framework didn’t just mean changing beliefs. It meant rebuilding meaning from scratch.
---
2016: Competence as Armor
In 2016, I was a teenager in a yeshiva environment that taught me some hard truths early:
- Adults can be wrong - Being different is costly - Wanting to be seen can feel like rebellion when it’s really just survival
I leaned into being controversial and entertaining. I organized things. Planned a dozen Shabbaton’s. Produced a dozen Purim Shpeils. Made music. Edited the school newspaper.
I performed competence loudly. Underneath it, I felt depressed, isolated, and invisible.
The edge of being gifted became armor.
---
2020: The GED Era
In 2020, everything shifted. I left traditional schooling and entered what I think of as my GED era.
That year taught me something humbling and freeing at the same time: most people don’t care what you do. And that’s not a bad thing.
I didn’t leave because I didn’t want to learn. I left because I was in a religious school and didn’t believe in God.
I learned independence. I learned how to talk to strangers. I traveled. I experimented creatively. I made a lot of bad music and a few important discoveries.
I built my first websites. Released my first sample pack. Created my first plugin.
That year was messy, loud, imperfect, and free. It cracked something open.
---
2022: Paper Town and Finishing Things
In 2022, I released Paper Town, my first full album.
It was the first time I felt genuinely proud of a body of work. Not because it was perfect, but because it was complete.
That era taught me professionalism:
- How to show up for clients - How to advocate for myself - How to run a studio and pay rent every month - How to finish things even when self-doubt is loud
It also taught me something quieter: my friends would show up for me, even when I was experimenting, changing, or unsure.
That mattered more than I realized at the time. I have great friends.
---
2023: Discipline, Choir, and Belonging
In 2023, I attended Marcy Lab, a tech trade school. That year was about discipline and humility.
I learned how to think like an engineer. How to break problems down. How to build things that actually worked. It was hard. It stretched me. It forced me to fight for myself in new ways.
I also found unexpected meaning in community again, especially through choir. I sang as a Tenor for several semesters in a Brooklyn community chorus.
Singing regularly gave me structure, challenge, and a sense of belonging that felt earned. My voice improved, but more importantly, so did my confidence.
---
2025: Love, Honesty, and Alignment
In early 2025, I experienced a relationship that mattered deeply to me.
It didn’t last, but it taught me about honesty, attachment, and choosing long-term alignment over short-term comfort. It reminded me that connection can be real even when it’s temporary.
---
Naming the Chapter
If I had to name this chapter of my life, I’d call it Rags to Rags or The Storm Before the Storm.
I’m thinking about jobs. Thinking about apartments. Imagining furniture.
There’s a strange feeling when I think about the future. I don’t really know. There are a few futures I can imagine:
1. Continuing as a software engineer and designer, building products, hosting creative projects, and growing my side work steadily. 2. Returning to school and committing fully to something like aerospace or scientific research. Exploration has always pulled at me: space, maps, tools, discovery. 3. A third path, less defined but just as real: creative or exploratory work that doesn’t fit neatly into a resume but feels alive.
I joke that if I were born into a middle-class family, I’d be an archaeologist right now. I joke that I should be in a mangrove in Africa, not on vacation, but doing something meaningful.
I am obsessed with outer space. I think about the cosmos every single day.
---
What I Know for Sure
What I know for sure is this:
My purpose has never been about one medium.
It’s about:
- Exploration - Connection - Contribution - Creating things that help people feel more themselves - Leading when something meaningful needs to happen - Staying curious - Finishing what I start
I grew up poor, in a loud, crowded home where survival came before curiosity, and where the luxury of studying history or space belonged to other people.
Still, I am obsessed anyway.
I stared at maps until they burned into me. I can draw the world from memory. I built a geography app and put it on the App Store not because it was practical, but because I needed proof that my mind had somewhere to go.
Outer space became the same refuge. Aviation school felt like a door to the sky, and when I was rejected, it cracked something open instead of shutting me down.
That rejection landed on top of everything else: class, instability, the feeling of always reaching from below.
---
The Storm Before the Storm
Storm Before the Storm lives in that tension.
It’s the sound of someone standing under gathering clouds, obsessed with what’s above him, aware of how far he still has to climb, and refusing to look away.
My inner crisis is the engine: wanting lift while carrying weight, wanting order while living in chaos, wanting a future vast enough to justify the struggle that shaped me.