Eric Wang: Cooking on Wall Street – From Private Equity to Culinary Craft

For the final episode of 2025, we are joined by a guest who embodies the spirit of exploration: Eric Wang. 

By day, Eric works in private equity in New York City, managing commercial real estate deals on Wall Street. On weekends, he trades his spreadsheets for a chef's knife, running 81 Eats – a supper club and pop-up series featuring "Chinese-inspired comfort food." 

From growing up in Shanghai and attending boarding school in the US at age 12, to training at Wharton and a top-tier French culinary school, Eric is turning the journey inward. 

We discuss how he balances a high-pressure finance career with the grounding nature of cooking, his solitude during the pandemic in Tokyo, and his personal philosophy rooted in nature ("touch grass" to feel alive) and gathering people together.

Transcript

Rui (00:21)
Hi, good morning, Eric.

Eric (00:23)
Good morning.

Rui (00:25)
Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I came across your profile because I was on this app, RetNote. And your profile featured.

super delicious food that you cooked in places you have explored about the food culture. then I realized that you also work on the Wall Street for private equity firm. So I was like, wow, you must have like very interesting endeavors, experience and perspective. So that's why I reach out. And I am very honored to have you on the podcast. And thank you for accepting the invite.

Eric (00:57)
Yeah, thank you so much for reaching out. I'm very honored that you wanted to reach out based on what I've shared online. And I'm always happy to share my background as well as meeting more people that have like-minded interests or are just trying to explore more in life that's slightly unconventional, especially coming from East Asian family background where you're expected to do something very traditional.

Rui (01:18)
Yeah, for sure. Okay, ⁓ why don't we start self introduction, tell the audience a little bit about yourself, where are you from? And what have you been exploring?

Eric (01:29)
Yeah, for sure. I'm Eric. I'm currently 26 years old. I'm based in New York. My full-time job is in private equity, specifically focused on commercial real estate. my side gig, side hustle would be freelance cooking. And that's a passion of mine since college. I was working in restaurants part-time during the summer and then I went to culinary school in Paris.

and then worked in restaurant in New York and slowly started to build my own projects in the city via separate club formats as well as pop-ups and freelance cooking So that's been something I've really delved into over the past few years. And most of the content I've shared online has been focused on that.

I've been able to meet a lot of like minded people in the food space through social media. So I'm very thankful for that as well.

Rui (02:15)
Sweet. Actually, for listeners who are not familiar with some of these terms, what is private equity.

Eric (02:23)
Yeah, for sure. within the financial sector, there are different types of investments. within, let's say credit debt and other type of investments, equity is one that you kind of own have ownership of whatever you're investing in. And within equity, have public equity, such as stocks that you can invest as a retail investor.

And often there are lot of off market or private opportunities that you can access either through the form of just like, your friends is raising something that can honestly be called as private equity as well. Or you have a actual institutional private equity fund where you're raising institutional capital to invest in a sector or a theme that you believe in you're pitching for. I currently work for

asset management on Wall Street and my specific group is in the real estate equity space. So we raise capital from endowments, pension funds, selling wealth fund. And what we focus on is on commercial real estate within the U.S. My team does it in New York, specifically focus on the East Coast. And my coverage over the past

a few months has mostly been in the office, retail, and just platform focus. That for me has always been an interest for a while. ⁓ When I initially started undergrad, I studied architecture for a little bit.

The idea of grad school kind of pivoted me away from architecture. So I leaned into something that's slightly adjacent and that was commercial real estate. I ended up studying real estate and finance undergrad and started my career first at an investment bank on the more real estate capital advisory side. And then slowly pivoted towards investment side where I felt that I wanted to get to know the asset a lot better and learn more about the operational level and how we can really think through as an owner operator.

Rui (04:09)
So what does your role really entail? Like maybe what is your typical day or week ⁓ actually look like?

Eric (04:15)
Yeah, for sure. ⁓

So my team is the investment team, and then we get deals through our external relationships, whether that is through other counterparties in the space, other competitors, when sellers want to take something to the market, or

I know this other client I have, such as lawyers, And my job specifically is that when we have these leads, we grab all the materials they provide, whether that is just a financial model, the rent roll, or like a proper ⁓ offering memorandum that's like a more polished marketing deck of, hey, this is the asset, this is the rent roll, the tenants, this is the investment thesis.

and these are the potential risks. And then I kind of review all these materials and synthesize whether this is appropriate investment for our fund. And that process entails creating a model, see if it hits our target return for the fund, and then looking at the more qualitative side as well, if the risk and return makes sense for our targets.

Rui (05:15)
Interesting. So what are the aspects of a property that you usually end up evaluating and looking out for,

Eric (05:22)
let's say we're looking at retail and within retail for US specifically, the spectrum is quite wide. It ranges from mall to power centers. So these you can think of like a strip center let's say, Target, Burlington, Marshalls. So a lot of large box retailers, and we have lifestyle centers, which are more

higher end geared towards, let's say you have a SoulCycle tenant or Lululemon or Sweetgreen, some higher end QSR as well. And then you have high street retail, which are where you see, let's say in SoHo in New York. And you also have more neighborhood centers or community centers are a lot more local for the suburbs that you're in. And what a strategy that has been quite ⁓

more popular, guess, in this year for a lot of the real estate players in the space are interested in grocery anchor retail. Just given that in economic downturns, grocery is something that's a necessity-based purchase. And so if your anchor is a grocery, an anchor meaning that there's a tenant at the space that is a grocer, and usually it's the largest size by square feet tenant.

you will expect a pretty consistent demand for traffic from consumers. So likely your other tenants can benefit from having a grocer on the strip. So that's been a thesis that's been popular these days. And yeah, when we're looking at it, we'll look at tenants, like what type of tenants they are. And specifically, if their health ratio makes sense, what health ratio means is that

Rui (06:37)
Mm.

Eric (06:54)
you look at their sales per store and then look at what the rent they're paying, whether that percentage is something that we think is sustainable for them. And if we're able to push rents on it to increase our revenue on investment as well, ⁓ if that's the thesis that you're going for.

Rui (07:12)
Interesting. What does it really take to succeed in this real estate?

evaluation or assessment space.

Eric (07:22)
That's a great question. I think within the real estate space, relationship is the foremost important, especially in a private space. lot of the people are very well connected and some of the best deals that we get are off market deals, which means that like, hey, we have this kind of party that you're, the only party that I able to receive this information and their interest in selling to me. Otherwise, in a more broadly marketed processes, like everyone else that's in the market is able to

Rui (07:37)
Mm.

Eric (07:49)
grab the materials from the broker and you're just like an open bidding process. So you don't really have pricing power in that sense unless your return profile and cost of capital is a lot lower. So with ⁓ very extensive relationships, you're often able to find more discrete deals that no other players is aware of. So I think that's probably the most important in the private real estate investment space, yeah.

Rui (08:12)
Do you think this type of success model would get shifted over time instead of a relationship based to something else, given that there is so much technology out there and I don't know how potentially AI would sort of impact this specific space, but it sounds like you are also just building a model to try to predict the potential success of a space. And if you collect enough data, potentially all of those predictors could help you understand.

is this worth investing? that's on the evaluation side, but like on the sourcing, deal sourcing side, right now it looks like a relationship based. Do you see it to be anything different than that?

Eric (08:55)
Yeah, that's a great question. That's a question that I've asked myself and other colleagues all the time, because I feel like real estate sector is one that's a bit more archaic to adapt technology. For example, we're looking at whether marketer processes for open deals or even I'm looking for lease comps or rent comps. And often a lot of these data points are just kept offline or within a vast network of

Rui (09:07)
Mm-hmm.

Eric (09:24)
brokers or just other third party people. And then so really have a consolidated space that everyone is able to put in information. I think that will take a long time just given how large of the asset class and industry is. And I think that specifically in terms of this investment process being adapted to like a more algorithm driven platform, I think I personally don't foresee it in the near future just given

the senior people in this space are kind of used to this model.

I think it will take a new sharpshooter in a sense to really disrupt the space in a way. Otherwise, this model tends to be the case as the junior people are learning from the senior leadership in this type of relationship-driven process.

Rui (10:05)
Fascinating because I think there is also an incentive problem and like there is no incentive for existing player to drastically change how they operate and if you really share data across different like Investment firms even though everybody's prediction could become a little bit better, but then if everyone's prediction could become better Why would you win the deal or how could you invest It's a very difficult

Eric (10:14)
Exactly.

Exactly.

Rui (10:31)
competitive dynamic to manage. And there is inherent barrier to gate people from like pulling data together and change the way things have been operating.

Eric (10:36)
Yes.

Yeah, for sure. Exactly.

Rui (10:49)
fascinating.

Okay. Well, let's talk about your cooking side of the story a little bit more. ⁓ It's fascinating to learn a little bit about finance and investment. And I feel like that world is probably dominated by both the logic and people relationship side of the things. But I'm also curious about your cooking side of the business. You have a business, right? ⁓ it's called 81 Eats.

Eric (11:12)
Yeah, I guess let's let's do a business more so just a self form platform that I just give it a name that made it more formal that allow me myself to just put more Eric cooking content on there. And just as I have a name that raise a bit more awareness that's beyond just my personal name. Initially that started in 2023, September. So I

Rui (11:28)
Mm-hmm.

Eric (11:40)
In 2023 summer, I was switching between jobs from investment banking to my first ⁓ real estate private equity job. And I was able to have a gap period of three months where I attended school in Paris for culinary school. And after I came back, I had this job lined up. I knew that, I still love to cook.

but I don't think I can pick up another weekend gigs at a restaurant when I'm starting this job. What are some formats that I can continue to cook while managing this new job and also moving apartments and whatnot? So I was like, hey, like I wanna cook for friends. And the final exam at my culinary school was creating a five course menu for a panel of judges with their group. And then I kind of just took that.

idea and then transform it into my template of Supper Club. So I started doing a monthly Supper Club consecutive nights. So I'll pick a weekend every month, I'll do Saturday, Sunday nights and do a five course for a guest of eight people at my house and all like just close friends or they're like plus ones. And that was initial cadence of me doing it and I enjoy playing around with seasonal ingredients in New York for me to learn more about

the farmer's producer and other purveyors in New York region. And that was a very cool way for me to learn about the city that I had never before. And then also kind of learning more about, like what are some Chinese ingredients or Japanese ingredients And as well as French techniques that I learned in school, how can I kind of draw inspiration from all of these and share something that is meaningfully mine?

but also not over the top that exceeds what I believe should be the foremost important thing of food, which is comfort. So that has allowed me to slowly do a lot of R &D and then kind of have a own sense of style in cooking in a sense. I call it Chinese inspired comfort food.

And then through that, I was able to kind of grow my online community just by sharing what I've been doing.

But then at the same time, with the online audience growing, a lot of people are like, hey, I really want to try your food. Are there ways that we can do it? And I started to point around with the idea of pop-ups.

rent out a space, do events or like work with existing restaurants or wine bars where they take over the menu for a day, or even to public spaces and parks on the streets where they just have like a street grill or a food truck. And I wanted to just

tap into something that felt like as me. So I started to just like attending some and then was able to meet people that own spaces in New York as well that share a lot of similar creative visions. I started my first pop up back in April of 2024. That was at Hudson Welder in Dumble, Brooklyn. And that's like a design studio where

They have a showroom of all their products, but also has a public space where sometimes they work with friends, they do events and for the community. So I did a lunch mental pop-up then, because I wanted to do something that allowed a greater reach than just eight people at the table. And also something that I felt I would want to eat at.

And growing up in China, the set of like, have different sides, have different like, Sancai Yitang, like you three dishes and one soup, and then you have the main starch. That concept is always really fun, because you get to try a lot of things in one meal. And it doesn't feel as cumbersome as a seated course meal, you're waiting after every single course. So that was the initial concept. And it was a really fun event. And I learned so much from it because

Rui (15:20)
Mm-hmm.

Eric (15:32)
learning to really

scale up from cooking for eight people at once to cooking for 50 people at once in a remote setup kitchen that you don't really have a gas stove or you had to bring my own induction. So that was a great learning lesson about just like the logistic side of pop-ups. as tiring and stressful it was, it was incredibly rewarding meeting people that have followed me for a long time. Even when I was in culinary school, I remember one girl was like, yeah,

I remember seeing your post when you're in Paris. I've been following you. It's like I've been wanting to come to try your food for a long time. I'm really excited there, this opportunity. And that was really rewarding to be able to use my food as a medium to connect people.

So that slowly has become what I've been doing over this past year.

that's been really fun for me to experiment and also meeting people that are just walking guests as well that don't know who I am, have never seen my content, but because they know the space or just because they're walking by a neighborhood, they just pop in and actually get to meet me. And as much as I enjoy growing the online community, I think my in-person connection and these ⁓ offline events

are what I love the most.

Rui (16:49)
Fantastic. And I just love for the fact that you just keep volunteering all of the information that I wanted to know. Maybe one quick question. What does 81eats stand for? Why that name?

Eric (17:00)
Yeah, it's quite funny. So initially the name was 81 eating club, just because that was the initial format was a supper club. I remember I was having my last meal with my classmates back in Paris. I was like, hey, I'm thinking about doing this when I'm back in New York. What are your thoughts on some names? And that was the time I was I knew I was switching apartments when I came back. I initially thought my apartment was going to be on 81st Street because I had the apartment set up already.

but I didn't bother to check the actual address. So I was like, okay, let me just call it that. It turns out it's not on 81st street, but I like the sound of it. So I just kept that with it. And when I was pivoting from the 81 eating club concept to a more just like a larger platform of any food events I do, I didn't want to have the club aspect to make it feel exclusive in a sense. And also as another way to share a bit more content.

Rui (17:30)
You

Eric (17:57)
beyond just the actual events. I want to share a bit more about my food adventures, my travels, and other adjacent things I think some of my followers could be interested in. Such as like attending different food workshops and lessons learned from there, or going to farm tours and seeing different kinds of produce I'm learning about. Because I felt that that was beyond the scope of 81 Eating Club. So was thinking about different names that would make sense.

So decided to just shorten the name a little bit and call it 81 Eats, one afternoon. Maybe it'll change again. I'm not really sure. cause I feel like I'm really grateful that I, for the past few years of me exploring all these stuff, I'm able to do so in a sense, I'm not stressed about the financial.

outcome of it, because I have the finance job that keeps me sustainable financially. So I'm really able to think about what drives me the most in terms of psychological excitement or just fulfillment in general versus what is going to drive me the most revenue. So I think I've been quite fluid with what I've been doing versus some of my other friends are more, I guess, full time.

in the space, have a set of guidance of what they're doing and then pretty straightforward. So audience can understand really well what you're doing. Where some people ask me like, Oh, are you still doing separate club? Are you just doing public? Like they're a bit confused sometimes. And I think I kind of have enjoyed that freedom of, yeah, I can just do whatever I want. There's no guideline for it in a sense. So I like the flexibility that

at least this name I felt has given me. But maybe if I do something else down the line when I go on my other adventures, it will change again. ⁓

Rui (19:45)
What does food actually mean to you?

Eric (19:48)
Yeah, that's a broad and great question. I think I'll backtrack a bit in terms of like why I kind of dove into food of anything else. sometimes I'm challenged with decision-making because I feel like there's so many things one can do with their life and why do what you're doing.

And for me, felt that food as for human existential purposes, it's a requirement. It's something you have to encounter three times a day or two times a day, depending on how you eat and that kind of helped me feel more committed. like, Hey, this is something that It's something I am experiencing every single day. cannot avoid. and that it.

is a mode of cultural representation and nature representation and nature, which includes season as well. And then slowly, think it became a broader idea that allowed me to connect a lot with where I grew up in, especially during food events in New York. feel like a lot of people, even like other cooks, they kind of know me as the Chinese adjacent cook.

so I think that cultural background has been a great, ⁓ representation through food. And the other aspect has been the more nature stuff. I think having been working in finance, and where you're looking at a screen for such an extended amount of period, I felt quite out of touch with just, just, just life in terms of like, I'm living on earth. I felt I wanted to like the common phrase, like, touching grass or whatnot. I really felt that I wanted to be.

touching something that I know came from the earth that is not manmade and I can feel it's alive, the liveliness of it. And I think food is something that allowed me to feel that way. I'm touching raw produce, I'm touching meat, fish, other proteins that are alive that came from the earth and able to trace back and learn more about the regions within New York, like

Union Square Farmers Market is my weekend activity every single Saturday where I go see what's in the market, see what's in season and see what farmers are doing. And for me, that felt like another way to really feel like I'm living, living, I guess, in general and feeling that I'm changing with the time by seeing the type of produce you have each month and

I think in Chinese cooking as well, there's very strong emphasis of eating with the season too. You should only eat what's in season and you shouldn't be counterintuitive and try to preserve something for too long or, or, or kind of changing the chemical or creating a, artificial environment to grow something. And for me, I feel like that has been a

guidance and a safety net that made me feel alive. Yeah. And lastly, guess food slowly it's becoming a mode to create community and meet people. I think that's what drives me the most social happiness aside from these two other factors I mentioned are more internal.

Rui (22:56)
Amazing. ⁓ When you first come to the US, I remember you mentioned that you came to the US when you were maybe in teenage years. ⁓

Eric (22:56)
Thank

Yeah,

so I grew up in Shanghai and then came to us when I was 12 for for school.

Rui (23:11)
Right, what was the dish that made you feel at home again?

Eric (23:15)
Yeah.

I don't think there is one specific dish. I think it's the idea of using food to gather. Because like growing up in China, like,春节 is the most celebrated holiday where every single members of your family, extended family are gathered together and just celebrate and be in that moment. I think that image is something that is so

such a big resemblance of what I think home is. And so just anything that is able to bring a large group of people together, I felt I had the sense of home in that way. ⁓ and boarding school, like whether we have barbecues and then everyone in the dorm, I'm to gather, I feel like that moment is in resemblance of home. So I think like this idea of food to create a moment that you, you have these emotional feelings and comfort and safety. yeah, it is what it reminds me of.

Rui (23:51)
Mmm.

Well, just hearing your description about how the food is a way to grant you to live this life, to actually feel that you're connected with other people, and also as an extension with the nature as well, it's really moving for me. Like I actually feel emotional right now because I'm like, yeah, that totally makes sense. And even the feeling of people come together and you cook a large amount of like ⁓

different dishes and everybody is sharing and talking. That image is also deeply ingrained in me. So when you were describing it, it naturally evokes certain emotions. So it's incredible. This is how you really see about food and how you feel about it. And you seem to have a huge sense of like self-awareness and also the ability to really even take a step back and ask yourself,

wait a minute, what do I really want to choose given that there are so many choices? Do you feel like that type of self questioning ability is something that's just like always in you or like over time you developed it? Like what are the maybe events where people that really impact you on thinking through these like really, really big existential questions

Eric (25:29)
Yeah, for sure. it's something that I feel like I think a lot all the time. And that's been a pattern since when I was young. But this strong sense of introspection, I think came mostly in college. I so initially when I took a gap semester in my third year in college, I was planning to go to culinary school in Tokyo. And I flew there. School is about to start the following week.

But that was the same time as COVID was happening. It was mid-March and we were a bit unsure of whether school was going to go on or not. I just knew I had to take a chance. still go. It ended up being shut down and I ended up being in Tokyo for three months by myself and I didn't know anyone. And that time, it was the first time I hung out by myself for that long ever.

And I was forced to kind of just think every single day because I had no one to talk to. sure, I can have some very brief conversations with the cashiers at convenience stores or some restaurants were still open and the waiter and waitresses, but just because of the language barrier, the conversation is quite, quite, quite minimal. So just a lot of thinking of like being comfortable with my thoughts and questioning

my own belief and my own interests as well. I feel like I've gotten more clarity over the past few years, mostly when I've been working and doing my own events. ⁓ but I feel like that time was the start of it all

That was also the time I spent so much time with nature because a lot of places were just weren't just open in Tokyo. And I remember I was in Hakone On the bus there, I was the only passenger and on the mountain, I was the only person climbing. And then there was still a guard.

Rui (27:04)
Wow.

Eric (27:05)
And the garlet was a bit confused while I was still there. And then by the lakefront, I was the only person there, aside from a few locals, there was like walking past. And that made me feel really alive in a sense, and made me feel really connected and drawn to nature that solely has become this foundation of my interest in food. Yeah, so I feel like that was an episode that started a lot of my...

new pathways of introspection and adventures to this point.

Rui (27:34)
Fascinating.

since AI is the latest hype, I guess I have to ask you a question.

one idea that to entertain, because AI is all about data, right? Like the data is too restricted right now to text or at most pictures or a little bit of videos. What if at some point we collect data that people smell,

and the taste of things. And I don't know how do you translate that into data. But I think it will be quite interesting if AI model is trained with some senses that that's not just about seeing or reading things.

Eric (28:12)
Yeah, I mean, I guess with the taste part, like you can kind of have outputs based on the chemicals, right? There's a lot of things that we do taste is based on the chemical reactions of whatever you're cooking. And you can see the chemicals that make umami tastes very umami. there's this Instagram,

Rui (28:30)
Hmm

Eric (28:31)
account that follows Takashi-san and he, I think he's like part of a soy sauce brewery in the Northeast and does a lot of like fermentation projects and studying of these type of fermentation and impacts of ways of cooking and then have data to see actually what is achieving more umami, achieving more results that we might taste, able to taste.

I can send you the account after this. And I find his work very interesting. like, for example, he'll be like, hey, I'm to marinate the beef in three different ways for different durations, and then measure the actual

meat when I cook it, what the balance is or whatever the specific chemical they're looking for that you're able to taste. So I do think increasingly the food science aspect of things is able to have greater findings in cooking as well. But I personally am more so the type of people that cook without anything. Like I have never really

read cookbooks or hardly follow recipes and kind of enjoy the process of just going with the flow. Like a lot of people ask, Hey, do you bake, do you do pastries? I'm like, absolutely not. Cause I feel like it's too scientific. It's too, um, low, margin of error when cooking, can just go along with the flow tastes as you cook and then improvise and innovate as you cook. I think that's the beauty of it.

Rui (29:50)
Mm.

Eric (30:03)
and another reason why I enjoy the experience of cooking.

Rui (30:06)
any stories from the behind the scenes that like pop up events that you're doing that left deep impression or emotional impact on you?

Eric (30:15)
Yeah, I think always the biggest emotional impact has been people not from Chinese culture tasting Chinese food and feel like this expanded their realm of their understanding of Chinese food. So back in August, I did a Rojamo pop-up in East Village. It's like a Northwest style Chinese burger.

it's not something from Shanghai, but something I've had before. And I was able to add my own twist with it where I kind of braised the pork belly in a more Shanghai-y spice blend. And then, did it in a more, New York format where it felt like a proper larger burger with some sides and some other compliment, ⁓ sides, ⁓ compliment dishes as well.

What I remember the most were these people that were like, oh, this is my first time trying a Chinese burger. oh, I didn't know. this is also consider Chinese food. And just seeing responses like that, that makes me feel at least I'm sharing my culture and doing a little in that effort. And I think more and more so, I feel like because of my cultural background, because of my educational experiences,

I do understand both culture very well. I can be a bridge for a lot of people that are not. And I want to do my best in doing so as well.

Rui (31:33)
Amazing. I really appreciate what you're doing. Unlike me, who basically only critiques what kind of Chinese food is in the States, you actually do something about it. So I really, really appreciate that

What is your vision for where do you want to take this? Meaning like, what kind of food or what kind of understanding that you want to bring to the table, literally bring to the table

Eric (31:53)
Yeah, I feel I'm at a point right now that I enjoy the work of this, but I don't feel educated enough to really be a good representation for the people here. And that's why I want to explore a lot in China to learn about regional cuisine, work with Chinese chefs, learn under them to really understand.

the flavors of China and the techniques of Chinese cooking, is beyond incredible. when I initially thought about doing French culinary school was that I felt just French cuisine was...

in an academic way, structured pretty well for you to understand. And I think just because how vast the regional Chinese cuisine in China, in mainland is, I think there's so much to learn. And I think I was initially overwhelmed by the idea of trying to focus on one thing back home.

But now I'm very excited to travel around and really work even at some restaurants back home and learn under these master chefs that have been doing it for decades to really understand the history and the culture of it and then become a better, like a, I'm trying to think of the right word. Cause I don't think.

I wouldn't imagine myself an educator, but I want to be as a medium that I can share this knowledge with the people in Western culture where I think I have the benefits and the experience of really understanding how to translate this culture and knowledge in a digestible format in this Western culture.

Rui (33:29)
Hmm. I cannot wait to learn more about your journey after you come back from China's exploration.

cooking and private equity and finance is, you know, different, identity tags you are also a content creator on the side because of this food business.

and you went to, Wharton for undergrad. So there's also top-tier education experience as well. Which identity tags speak to you the most? Or what are the other tags that you actually identify yourself with the most, besides all of the things that I just mentioned?

Eric (34:01)
Yeah, I think increasingly so these institutional and like job title identity tags I identify with.

less I feel like what I'm identifying myself with is that I'm just someone that's trying to.

learn more about myself and try to embrace myself. Like I think that the agency of wanting to do things and the desire to explore is what I identify with the most these days.