Who is Dagny?

whoisdagny — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 10:59:07 +0000

Happy 50th anniversary, Atlas Shrugged!

whoisdagny — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 00:00:55 +0000

“I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York’s skyline. Particularly when one can’t see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window – no, I don’t feel how small I am – but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body.”

whoisdagny — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:00:43 +0000

“Love is our response to our highest values.”

What are your values?

whoisdagny — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:00:15 +0000

“She was twelve years old when she told Eddie Willers that she would run the railroad when they grew up. She was fifteen when it occurred to her for the first time that women did not run railroads and that people might object. To hell with that, she thought—and never worried about it again.”

whoisdagny — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 00:00:17 +0000

I lead a social lifestyle and am quite an extrovert. I’ve mistakenly assumed that this should extend across all parts of my life – from personal to professional. But after several years, I’ve noticed that at work, I prefer individual responsibilities to team-based ones. I dislike needing to depend on the effort of others to determine the quality of mine. I don’t like the lack of control from anyone when tasks are divided by everyone.

I sought the consulting profession for the variety of projects available and the challenge of an environment where nothing but the best is expected. While all this still true, the field also requires a large amount of relationship-building with clients – translated, a project’s worth, value, and direction are set and determined by someone else. Success is then based not on the what you’ve produced, but what the client, with your ‘guidance,’ thinks is produced. This doesn’t work for me; I’m the only one I will allow to determine the worth of my own work. There are no compromises.

whoisdagny — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

One of the biggest questions each of us asks ourselves is at what point in our career is a good time to go back to graduate school. I’ve been neck deep in application essays for the past few weeks. I think the answer to that question is a simple one when you find so much joy and empowerment in writing about your future career plans.

Another driving point for me is the thought of going back to New York. After the past few years of hopping back and forth between the city and random other cities and states and countries, I’m excited to finally return home.

whoisdagny — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:04 +0000

Seeing the poverty in this country makes me crave to be home. Here, there are only two classes – the rich and the poor. You either have servants, or you are the servant. You are either being driven, or you are the chauffeur. Both do so willingly. There are only two types of people who can comfortably live in this poverty. Those who look at the poor and enjoy the self satisfaction from giving alms, and those whom driven by a self-imposed guilt they call ’selflessness,’ fight for equality. I look at the poor lazily strolling in the streets with their blank stares and thoughtless chatter and hands reached out for spare coins, and I am filled with disgust. I don’t belong here.

whoisdagny — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 01:56:38 +0000

Someone noted something about me today – I don’t have the personality of being a consultant. Meaning, I don’t have the personality where I’m actively approaching others and seeking approval from others.

It is by definition that a good consultant is always looking for opportunities by being extremely social, by getting people to like them, to use their type-A personality to get friends. The proverbial “ass kisser.” Apparently I seem more like the type who’s more content to just ‘expect’ things to come to me. But I am. Not because I’m lazy and don’t work for what I want, but because something within me innately believes that what I naturally deserve things that that I want and work towards – and it’s not out of unfounded arrogance. It’s just a natural thing that I honestly believe in. It’s not that I don’t believe in hard work; it’s that if I put in the hard work, I expect that I’ll get something in return. Whereas others may shrug and say “oh well” in realization that there’s no reward at the end of the day, I’ll stomp my feet and demand justice when I don’t get it.

whoisdagny — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 01:25:29 +0000

It’s been 6 years.

I notice how much it matters to me to assert that I am a New Yorker and how much satisfaction I get from announcing it, not because New York’s a great place and therefore I associate myself to it, but because everytime I declare it, I get the pleasure of realizing how deep my love is for the city.

And I can’t, and won’t go to pains to paint my love for it for another’s eyes – it’s impossible to list out or convey in words. Kind of like trying to explain the deep love you feel for another person, for someone else’s judgements. Love for another is a reflection of yourself. The more you try to explain it, the more it becomes simply a display of who you are. Through my words, others will not be able to see New York, but see a display of my own passion.

The city is a reflection of my experiences there – the joy and freedom to explore myself in my early twenties; the highs of feeling extremely independent; the lows of being suffocatingly lonely. During each transition, each step, the city in my eyes took a different tone, a different shade. But through all the change, New York stayed with me – when I praised its beauty, or cursed its filth; when I loved its passion, or hated its coldness. Inevitably, as I grew, the city grew with me. I love my city as I do my best friend. I love it as I do myself.

And it takes a certain amount of time for you to develop this relationship; the city doesn’t reveal itself to you immediately, neither does it expect this from you. Living in here is a cleansing experience; here, you can’t fully hate this city until it has pushed you to your absolute lowest. By that same token, you can’t fully love it until it gives you no option but to fight yourself to climb back up. New York brings out the absolutely worst, weakest part of yourself to light, right in front of your eyes, but gives you that platform to understand it, and forces you to correct it.

I love watching New Yorkers try to explain their love for the city. They mention the little things, the inanimate things, the completely irrelevant things that paint a picture not of how New York looks to the objective eye, but of how much their passion for the city allows them to love every piece of minute detail. And you can sense that passion; it spills out from their words. And you can revel at the vibrant sense of life that the city brings out in them. An outsider would never be able to understand.