About Me

It’s slightly strange to think that one day this site will be part of what is left of me, but with that thought swiftly having arrived and now out of the way, I’ll provide a mini autobiography.

I was born in Yerevan, Armenia, and I grew up in Moscow, Russia. I am Russian and Armenian by ethnicity, and I immigrated to the United States with my parents in the latter part of my childhood. That’s really when childhood ended for me, I suppose, as the move was followed by culture shock and a weird feeling of nostalgia typically reserved for adulthood.

I grew up in a lovely little part of Los Angeles called Sherman Oaks and went to a nearby Catholic high school, Notre Dame. That was my first experience with a community of peers outside my ‘heritage,’ in a sense, because up until then I had gone to an Armenian parochial school.

Having graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a specialization in foreign policy, I pursued my academic studies further and received a master’s degree in international relations from Columbia University in New York.

There, in New York, I was most alive.

In a tug of war between academia and law as career routes, the latter won and I ended up going to law school (and hating it). I followed through on three miserable years there, deliberately skipped my graduation ceremony as an act of rebellion, got licensed in CA as an attorney, and am just now piecing together my creative side and rekindling that which is not necessarily the ‘correct’ path but rather the ‘true’ path. Along the way, I’ve learned to make decisions with this simple directive as my lens: “If it’s not a hell yeah, it’s a no.”

And

I am both tender and hard. Tender because I do not start from a place of judgment, I am learning to find meaning in suffering and the ghostly embrace of vulnerability, am driven by intentionality in everything I do (of which one is ensuring a cozy home atmosphere). Hard because I am mindful of how I dedicate my time, resolute once my mind is set, and selective in the things I do.

I am becoming more of both.

I am an individualist, likely because of my years in America, and yet I value the boundless gifts of family, tradition and community, likely because of my upbringing.

I am an immigrant and I seek a deep sense of belonging from places I situate myself in and situations I find myself in.

Contact

If you would like to contact me, in which case perhaps we might become friends, take a look here.