Picking up from last time: Magic is real. My intention is to convince you of this. I am convinced but I am also the most skeptical person I know. So, I am going to stress test this belief in public so that you can look for any gaps in my test that I may have missed and burst my bubble. Not that you want to, Dear Reader, but because I want you to. These beliefs only strengthen in communion.

It’s not just that I have come to believe that magic is real, I also believe that everybody is a magician. One just need to wake up to it. 

So, if these beliefs was true, I should be able to magically realize my dreams. What are my dreams? Many. I’ll pick one that has been a constant for as long as I can remember. Finding “the man of my dreams”. Cringe, I know. I can’t even say it without putting it in quotes. But it’s the truth. I have consciously and unconsciously genuinely desired for this throughout my life and it has been the organizing principle of my life. It feels a little sad to actually write that as a feminist. The main thread of my life is not all the great experiences I’ve had nor the tough things I have overcome nor the many goals I have achieved. All of them were secondary to this very native desire. Primal desire? Maybe. 

Anyway, the point is that I should be able to magically manifest the man of my dreams. I’ve tried for, literally, decades. Failed. So, I’m gonna try one last time. Give it all I’ve got. My intellect, my passion, my love, my devotion. If this doesn’t work, then I will correct my belief that magic is real. A stretch of a conclusion, you say? Confounding variables, a data scientist would say. As a product manager, I’d say, “let’s look at the data more closely”. Which is what I’ve done. All. my. life. Made observations throughout my life, taken notes, made hypotheses and ran experiments to validate them. Like a scientist except it is life experiments to shape my self and my understanding of the world. Like “Test if I can will it to rain or thunder” or the more successful experiments like “Test if I have what it takes to get one of those prestigious high paying jobs that the 1% MBAs get without an MBA”.

So, this new experiment is quite simple. Like any good experiment, it would have a set duration it would run for. For me, thats by end of April 2025. Starting today. The Indian in me wants to check for an auspicious day/time (muhurat) but let’s go with it. I am here. Now. 

Let’s also define “man of my dreams”. Guy who is an equal partner to me in every way. I will know and feel this deeply when it happens. Thats the exit criteria. It’s a 100% heartful yes. Which has never happened with any of the men I dated. As I write this, I am skeptical. Because I have a guy in mind (but not in reality – as you will learn is often the case with me) who seems like a solid possibility except he doesn’t feel like an equal spiritually. Atleast not yet. He may surprise me. I am willing to be surprised. Heck, I wanna be DELIGHTED.

Alright, what else does a good experiment need? I need to put my PM hat on. It’s not yet natural to me to have my analytical and creative side co-exist. So I may have to come back and fine-tune the experiment. A good experiment has a hypothesis, success criteria and how it would be measured, solid experiment setup with fixed variables of duration and scope. In terms of duration, that’s based on my gut of just loving spring and April as a month in particular. And scope is what is expected conventionally – It will be in reality (not my dreams nor imagination) and rooted in standard conventions of courtship, dating, engagement, wedding what have you. The specific exit criteria is the mutual realization of our shared truth by April 2025.

Just writing that out felt exhilarating with a touch of skepticism. Because, Dear Reader, I have run this experiment many times before. The difference this time is that I am committing to both outcomes – success and failure. And that means taking the risk of wanting and getting something without fully knowing everything it entails. A leap of faith.