A Life of “Can’t Believe I Did That”

The first time I jumped out of a plane, there was a moment when the world went completely silent.

No expectations.

No roles.

No labels.

Just sky.

And me.

Mid-air, I remember thinking, What kind of person does this?

Apparently, I do. Apparently I do - with my sister. and on parent's wedding anniversary no less.. Which means if anything had gone wrong that day, they would have lost their daughters on a date, that carried a meaning.

The thought hits differently when you say it out loud and now.

It hits even differently now - when both of them have passed.

But that is the thing about courage, it doesn't always arrive wrapped in perfect timing.

and if asked the younger version of me — the Brown girl raised to be sensible, responsible, composed — she would not have described herself as someone who voluntarily leaps into open air.

And yet.

Skydiving happened.

Jumping off the top floor of a boat in the Caribbean happened. I believe it was Grand Cayman, but the exact island feels less important than the sharp inhale before the jump, stepping back almost 3 times, and then finally taking the plunge and the laughter that followed when I surfaced.

Kayaking in Slovenia happened - in a country I had only been in for a week - with total strangers for half a day.

Going a two day trip in Slovenia, with someone from India, I barely knew happened.  We had only messaged a few times. A small, temporary Indian community in Slovenia trying to find familiarity in foreign land.  I told myself, it was safe, because his mother would be joining us for the trip to Lake Bled and Lake Bohinj..What a memorable trip it was..

Even that logic makes me smile now and yes, aunty made some amazing comfort food for all of us.

Getting lost in Slovenia, alone in my car, in the middle of the night in the pre-Google Maps era happened. Reversing out of what felt like a mile-long tunnel because it was a dead end, with a live train above me, and I had no idea where I was going happened.

And somehow, I always made it back.

But the bravest moment of my life was not for thrill.

It was on a direct flight from Kraków to Dallas.

We were over water when it started.

First, a strange noise. Subtle, but wrong.

Then the shaking.

Not turbulence. Mechanical. Intentional.

I watched an air hostess — calm until that second — suddenly run toward a window, her face no longer neutral. That was when my stomach dropped.

Then the announcement.

“We have lost an engine. We need to attempt an emergency landing. We are trying for Heathrow.”

Lost an engine.

Over water.

The cabin did not scream. It tightened.

20 minutes later, another announcement.

“We will not make it to Heathrow. We are diverting to Glasgow, Scotland.”

That was when it became real.

This was not inconvenience.

This was survival.

I quietly texted my sister and my mother. 

I love you. Hoping when they find the phone, they will know..

Just in case.

And then, suspended between fear and fate, I made myself a promise.

If I survive this, I will come back here one day.

Not like this.

Not in emergency.

But to truly see this beautiful country.

I have not gone back yet.

But the promise still lives inside me.

And here is what surprises me even now.

I looked out of the window.

Scotland from above was breathtaking. Vast green stillness, completely unaware of the drama unfolding in the sky above it.

Even in fear, I was observing beauty.

Even in uncertainty, I was planning a future.

Even in possible ending, I was choosing continuation.

Who does that?

Apparently, I do.

Some of my “can’t believe I did that” moments are dramatic.

Others are quieter.

Spending my 40th birthday at a surprise celebration in Vegas, surrounded by some of my closest friends, who came across the country to celebrate with me, some I hadn't seen in years..

Staying eighteen years in the same company and refusing to stay stagnant. Moving from marketing to sales to business development. Leading engineering, the same team, where I had first start working as a product engineer. Building a foresight startup team within the global business. Reinventing without resigning.

Founding FixTogether.

Starting something with a vision that existed more in conviction than in proof.

We had customer data.

We had end-user insights.

We had testing.

and we had a passionate team of 5 volunteers who believed in my pitch, in my vision and my story, and we also had a fantastic team of 8 Behavior Change Marketing Specialist who believed in me, in my idea and my vision and wanted to help us grow it further.

What we did not have was the perspective of a professional repair technician.

And that was not a small gap.

So I went looking.

I found a repair expert online who had made countless technical videos. Hair dryers, appliances, intricate breakdowns. He had presence. Charisma. Authority.

Most of his content was in Slovene.

I had lived in Slovenia for almost five months once. Long enough to feel connected. Not long enough to feel fluent.

I later learned he was a celebrity. A television personality. A MasterChef winner. Famous.

And I still wrote him a long message on Facebook.

Not casual. Not apologetic.

A thoughtful explanation of what we were building and why it mattered.

Fully aware he might never respond.

Two days later, he did.

What was supposed to be a thirty-minute introduction call became a three-hour conversation. It felt less like networking and more like alignment.

He became our advisor.

He trained our team.

He helped us see what we could not see alone.

Who sends a bold message to a famous repair expert in another country and assumes they belong in the conversation?

Apparently, I do.

And that realization has been unfolding slowly inside me.

I take solo vacations.

I celebrate failures.

I have fallen in love with resin, mixed media, and paint pouring and built an artistic community of nearly a thousand followers.

I have mastered tools that once intimidated me. I have initiated conversations with futurists and experts across industries simply because I was curious.

I stopped waiting for permission.

And here is the deeper truth.

None of this happened because I was fearless.

It happened because I was taught there is always a way.

My parents did not raise me to quit. They did not dramatize obstacles. They modeled resilience quietly. When something felt impossible, the response was never “It cannot be done.”

It was, “There must be a way.”

That belief becomes oxygen.

Especially for Brown women navigating identity shifts.

We are often taught to be agreeable before we are taught to be audacious. To preserve stability before we pursue expansion. To shrink slightly so everyone else feels comfortable.

Midlife rediscovery can feel like rebellion.

But what if it is evolution?

What if boldness is not defiance, but alignment?

When I look at my life through the lens of “I cannot believe I did that,” I do not see recklessness.

I see evidence.

Evidence that I can survive fear.

Evidence that I can build without guarantees.

Evidence that I can pivot, stretch, expand.

Evidence that I can text “I love you” in case of ending and still plan my return.

Taking a seat at the table does not always mean you were invited.

Sometimes it means you stopped asking whether you deserved to sit there.

So here is my invitation to you.

Take the risk.

Be bold.

Stop asking for permission.

Create your own brave movements.

Trust your evolution.

Stop shrinking.

Find your identity again and again and again.

Collect moments that make you say, “I cannot believe I did that.”

Because one day, you will look back and realize you did not just live safely.

You lived expansively.

And that is a life worth believing in.

Algorithmic Economies - When Machines Become the Customer (Part B)

In Part A, I explored what happens when AI begins managing labor.

But management is only half the story.

The deeper shift happens when AI begins making purchasing decisions.

When intelligence sits between supply and demand, markets transform.

We are entering algorithmic economies — markets where intelligence, not emotion, becomes the primary mediator of value.

This is not a subtle upgrade to existing systems.
It is a structural reordering of how choice is made.

We have spent a century mastering the art of influencing human emotion.

Brand positioning.
Storytelling.
Aspirational messaging.
Identity-based marketing.

Entire industries exist because humans make emotional decisions.

But what happens when the decision-maker is not human?

In my Horizon Z strategic foresight work years ago, this felt like a distant scenario — a disruption that might emerge only if multiple forces converged at once.

If AI autonomy advanced.
If data interoperability matured.
If machine-led procurement normalized.
If organizations outsourced strategic decisions to intelligent systems.
If trust in algorithmic evaluation replaced emotional persuasion.

It felt conditional.

A possibility.

A future that required several dominoes to fall in sequence.

And today?

It feels operational.

AI agents already compare vendors.
Rank service providers.
Optimize pricing.
Evaluate reliability.
Assess risk.
Allocate spend.

Quietly.

If an AI has every metric about you and your competitor at its fingertips — performance history, delivery precision, volatility, response latency, failure rates — why would it pick you?

Not because your tagline moved it.
Not because your founder story inspired it.
Not because your brand colors evoke trust.

Because your numbers prove superiority.

That is a different battlefield.

We may be entering a world where businesses are no longer competing for attention.

They are competing for algorithmic preference.

Will we begin designing products to be machine-readable first, human-attractive second?

Will marketing shift from emotional persuasion to structured transparency?

Will we build messaging not for people — but for AI agents parsing metadata?

If machines become the evaluators of value, then persuasion changes entirely.

And when persuasion changes, markets change.

The companies that win the next decade will not be the most emotional.
They will not be the loudest.
They will not even be the most inspiring.

They will be the most machine-preferred.

This is not science fiction.

It is economic evolution.

We are entering markets where algorithms evaluate value faster, broader, and more objectively than any human ever could.

When intelligence sits between supply and demand, power shifts.

So here is the uncomfortable question:

If tomorrow your primary customer is not a human — but an AI agent with perfect memory, infinite comparison capacity, and zero emotional bias —

Will your business still be chosen?

Or were you only ever optimized for human feelings?

— Mind & Muse by Bhumi

Algorithmic Economies – When AI Starts Hiring Humans (Part A)

I did not think we would get here this quickly.

For years, we have debated whether AI will replace humans.
Whether it will automate us.
Whether it will outperform us.

But perhaps we have been asking the wrong question.

What if the real shift is not replacement?

What if it is delegation?

I recently came across Rent a Human — a platform where humans can be contracted to complete real-world tasks. At first glance, it feels like an evolution of the gig economy. Something adjacent to TaskRabbit.

But this is not theoretical.

It is live.

Over 500,000 registered humans.
Across 100+ countries.
Tasks completed daily.

And here is the real shift:

AI agents can hire humans directly.

Through API integration, an AI agent can search for workers, post tasks, and manage hiring autonomously.

Pause there.

The human is no longer the initiator of the task.
The human becomes part of an AI’s execution layer.

That is not dystopian.

It is structural.

For decades, we built machines as tools.
Then we built software to assist.
Then we built AI to recommend and optimize.

Now we are building AI that can coordinate.

There is a difference between a calculator and a coordinator.

When AI can identify a need, break it into tasks, assign human labor, monitor completion, and optimize outcomes — we have crossed into a new operating model.

The question is no longer:

“Will AI take my job?”

The question becomes:

“Will AI become my manager?”

Because management is not just intelligence.

It is strategic allocation.

Allocation of work.
Allocation of time.
Allocation of capital.
Allocation of opportunity.

The moment AI begins allocating humans, the hierarchy subtly shifts.

Not into chaos.
Not into collapse.

But into a system where humans operate inside AI-designed workflows.

The gig economy was human-to-human.

This is algorithm-to-human.

And once coordination moves to algorithms, scale follows.

Today, it may be small tasks.

Tomorrow, it could be supply chains.
Field technicians.
Distributed project teams.
Dynamic pricing contracts.
Performance-based assignments updated in real time.

Delegation is quieter than replacement.

But it is more powerful.

Because the system does not remove you.

It reorganizes you.

And most people will not notice the shift until it feels normal.

That is how structural change works.

Twenty-five years ago, electric vertical takeoff aircraft felt like science fiction. Today, companies like Joby Aviation are actively building them.

Weak signals rarely announce themselves loudly.

They accumulate quietly — until they become infrastructure.

This is not the end of work.

It is the beginning of algorithmic management.

And this is only Part One.

— Mind & Muse by Bhumi

Micro Musings by Bhumi

 

“Some people change the way we think — without ever knowing we exist.”

Inspired by Seth Godin, whose crisp wisdom has shaped how I reflect, communicate, and act—today I begin my own series: Micro Musings by Bhumi.

These are small, sharp reflections from life, leadership, spirituality, awareness, and everything in between.

Some will be poetic. Some will be blunt. All will be mine.

Here is to the unseen mentors—who move us, mold us, and ignite ideas that change our inner world.

If you are curious on Seth Gordin's blog, check it out here - https://seths.blog/2025/07/65-thoughts/

So here we go...

1. “Your bookmarks are a better autobiography than your bio.” 

We often present curated versions of who we are.

But what we save, search, and quietly obsess over reveals our rawest truths.

Look at your tabs. They are love letters to your curiosity.

Now ask: what is trying to emerge?

 

 2. “Spirituality without self-awareness is just noise in sacred packaging.”

You can talk about silence. You can even preach detachment.

But if you cannot read the discomfort in a room—or the hesitation in someone’s voice—what are you really teaching?

True presence is not just discipline. It is compassion.

Do not confuse control with clarity. They feel very different.

 3. “Even the name you cling to was not your choice.”

So much of what we are proud of—or fiercely protective of—was never ours to begin with.

The name. The lineage. The success we inherited or stumbled into.

What would happen if we stopped defending identity and started examining it?

Maybe freedom begins where attachment ends.

 4. “The microphone reveals more than just a voice — it reveals who gets space.”

Some people are scared of being seen. Others are tired of being overlooked.

When you pass a mic, you are not just asking for words. You are making power visible.

Facilitation is not about equal time—it is about equal dignity.

And sometimes, silence is a valid answer.

5. "If you cannot name what you are avoiding, it is already running your life."

Avoidance wears many outfits—busyness, sarcasm, and even endless planning.

But deep down, what we do not face quietly directs our choices.

Self-leadership starts with calling it out—before it calls the shots for us.

What pattern are you pretending is just a phase?

6. "We do not need more thought leaders. We need more thought finishers."

Ideas are everywhere—half-posted, half-done, half-held.

But the real impact lives in the follow-through, not the brainstorm.

You want to change something? Start by completing one idea well.

Clarity is the new charisma.

7. "Ghosting is not a communication style. It is a fracture in character."

Whether it is a beauty appointment, a marketplace meet-up, or a simple "yes" or "no," communication is currency.

When people stop responding, they are not avoiding discomfort—they are outsourcing it to someone else.

We have normalized silence as neutrality, but silence is rarely neutral. It leaves the other person waiting, guessing, questioning.

Close the loop. Say the hard thing. Choose clarity over comfort. That is adulthood.

8. "Closets are time capsules of who we hoped to become."

Every unworn dress was a maybe, a someday, a quiet little bargain with the future.

Now, I donate with a whisper: May this go to someone who actually needs it—not someone like me, hoping it will fix something it cannot.

Minimalism is not about less stuff. It is about fewer illusions.

Letting go is not waste—it is wisdom.

9. "We do not throw it away. We just move it to a quieter corner of guilt."

That broken kettle, the hair dryer, the vacuum—we save them all.

Not because we will fix them, but because part of us still believes we should.

Repair is not just a skill—it is a story of power, intention, and care.

Fixing together is not about things. It is about reclaiming the ability to act.

10. "What if fixing was never just about the object—but about remembering that we can?"

Most people do not avoid repair because they do not care.

They avoid it because they do not know how, or where, or if it is even worth it.

But every repaired item whispers a larger truth: you are not powerless here.

Fixing is not nostalgia. It is a quiet act of future-building.

11. "In high-performing teams, ideas do not need passports. They need good soil."

You may plant the seed. Someone else may water it.

Do not measure impact only by who delivers the final version.

Measure it by the health of the ecosystem you help build.

Growth is not linear. It is collaborative.

12. "Sometimes love means forgiving. Other times, it means finally choosing yourself."

The hardest decisions are not between right and wrong—but between caring for others and not losing yourself.

There is a quiet grief in giving love where it is not seen, not held, not returned.

But choosing distance is not bitterness. It is recovery.

Your peace matters too.

13. "If it always hurts, it is not love. It is a pattern."

You keep showing up. Keep hoping this time they will too.

But love is not proven by how much pain you can tolerate.

It is felt in reciprocity—in being remembered, respected, chosen.

Stop auditioning for what should already be yours.

14. "Once, my birthday began a day early—because love could not wait."

When my parents were alive, they would call at midnight India time—just to be first.

Now, I measure love in silences. Missed moments. Gifts unopened. Words unsaid.

Grief is not always loud. Sometimes it is the quiet ache of not being remembered the way you once were.

Even now, I carry the love of those who remembered me first—and use it to remember myself.

15. "If you cannot meet me with love, I will hold mine closer. Not as punishment. As preservation."

We are taught to keep giving—to rise above, to take the high road.

But sometimes, the high road is simply the path that leads you back to yourself.

Withholding love is not always cruelty. Sometimes it is clarity.

Self-respect is not a wall. It is the soil love needs to grow in again.

16. "The hardest part of growth is grieving the version of you that made no one uncomfortable."

You smiled more. Said less. Gave endlessly.

But growth asks for tension. For boundaries. For truth over likability.

Let them squirm. Let them shift. Let yourself expand.

You were never meant to stay palatable.

17. "Do not tell me about your values. Show me how you treat people with less power."

The admin. The cleaner. The intern. The one who made a mistake.

Spirituality is not performance. It is posture—especially when no one is watching.

Respect is not transactional. It is foundational.

Without it, even wisdom feels hollow.

18. "Some days, self-care is just choosing not to explain yourself."

No justifications. No long texts. No proving you are good.

Sometimes, self-care is silence—not to retreat, but to protect the energy it took to stand up.

You owe no one a permission slip for your peace.

Let it be quiet. Let it be enough.