my digital garden

Identity

Warning: This is a living note, an auto generated page synthesized by my self updating second brain managed by Claude. While it's input was my actual organic writing, this is an AI summary/extraction/synthesis part of my The Living Notes section.

If you prefer to read my organically written words or work, please go to any of the other nav links besides living-note or a page, route, or tag without #living-note.

Identity

Who I Am

I am a systems thinker, accessibility engineer, spiritual seeker, and dad. Autistic. Living with bipolar II (2.5+ years episode-free). Bengali-American. Based in Austin, Texas.

My professional identity is inseparable from my lived experience — I don't audit accessibility from the outside, I feel it from the inside.

Professional Identity

Differentiators

Personal Identity

Neurodivergent: Autistic. Alexithymia (difficulty identifying emotions). ADHD traits. This is not a footnote — it's the lens through which I see systems, people, and design.

Spiritual: Non-dual awareness practice, Sufi tradition, ego observation, shadow integration. Not religious performance — active inner work.

Dad: Parenthood is part of his identity and public self-presentation (on perennialsif.me). Not detailed in Bear notes but present.

Physical: Judo at Kokoro Gym. Body-based awareness. Sensory needs (fidget tools).

Cultural: Islamic heritage, Sufi philosophical tradition, Khaleeji cultural interest.

Other interests: Animals, insects, photography — listed on personal site as public identity markers.

Avatar / Visual Identity: Profile image is a digital art piece — a cosmic diver with a galaxy inside the helmet visor, set against a vast sky. Chosen as a values statement: seeker/explorer archetype, vast inner world not visible from outside.

Mark of Cain Fire: A complementary symbolic image — a hand holding fire in darkness. The Mark of Cain as wound-gift: what marks you as different is what illuminates. Maps directly onto invisible disability as expertise, exile as authenticity, and the neurodivergent identity as both cost and power.

Values:

Things I've Been Told I'm Good At (Kudos)

Early Life Arc (from Day One journal, 2015–2023)

San Francisco (2015–2016): Delivery driver (gig work), building toward entrepreneurship. First startup: Motofix (motorcycle repair app). Parallel obsession: touch typing, disciplined meditation practice, daily journaling. Financially precarious. Already meditating and counting mindfulness moments as daily metrics.

New York startup phase (2016–2018): Built ShuttleBy/WeShuttle (car repair pickup/dropoff platform) — did cold customer discovery on Day 1, visiting 5 shops in Queens with no prototype. Got 2/5 interested. Built a web scraper (Node.js, 20K+ requests), GanjaToGo (cannabis delivery, React/Redux), Morpheus wallet (crypto). Daily algorithm practice and company outreach for job hunting. This period is structurally the prototype for the SIGNAL founder-market-fit arc a decade later.

The 4-year gap (2018–2022): No journal entries. Biographical inference from other sources: hired professionally, eventually joined Gap Inc., married Romana, became a father (Jed), navigated a period of deep personal challenge, received autism diagnosis at 32.

Resumption (2022–2023): Journal resumes in Yaphank NY as a changed person — married, employed at Gap, in personal recovery, moving toward spiritual inquiry. The entrepreneurial restlessness, meditation practice, and systems-thinking that defined the SF/NY period are still present but have been transformed.

Resume Highlights (for reference)

See gap-inc for full professional history.

Key achievements:

Contact / Public Presence

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