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Chasing Time When What’s Left is Fleeting
Hi guys! I think I’m going to move to substack, so if you want to keep reading my blogs, subscribe there! https://riyamcyriac.substack.com/ I’m acutely aware of the fact that life has eras. I knew as a child that one day, I’d stop playing in trees and start driving cars. I knew in high school that… Continue reading
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none of us are qualified for anything
Recently, I signed a job offer for after college and am preparing to move my life to California. Two years ago, this reality was unimaginable. I’m extremely privileged for the support that has led me to the incredible opportunities in my life. While those opportunities taught me a lot about leadership and tech, none of… Continue reading
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the thief of joy is pleasing people
I never considered myself too much of a people pleaser, and I’ve been no stranger to rejection in my life. In elementary school, I tried to get into the Gifted & Talented every year. Without fail, every year but fourth grade, I was told that I indeed wasn’t Gifted & Talented. At some point, they… Continue reading
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the cemetery closet
This blog post is two years in the making. last year (2023) I pack up my stuff to go back to college. During the summer, my short adult life is stuffed in a closet full of artifacts that defined me as a child. Journals are filled with messy handwriting that my parents tried to perfect… Continue reading
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my wife and mistress
For the past four years I’ve been treating my writing like the mistress that you avoid when the wife gets suspicious or when work goes late. I’m in the tech industry now. (if you told me in high school, I would laugh in your face.) Tech is exciting, novel, innovative, and most of all, comforting… Continue reading
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sometimes, i think war is beautiful
Violence is not often conflated with beauty. In most ways, that statement is the ultimate paradox. Blood and death and suffering is rarely beautiful, that is until you look outside during a hurricane. As debris spirals around your home and the water knocks harshly at your fragile windows, you begin to entertain the idea of… Continue reading
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i listen to noah kahan so that must mean im grown up now
“the death of my dog, the stretch of my skin, it’s all washing over me, i’m angry again. the things that i lost here, the people i know, they got me surrounded for a mile or two” “the view between villages” – noah kahan They say you can feel your bones aging. The skin on… Continue reading
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a toast to the friends lost on the way
I see a picture of an old friend in a mutual’s Instagram story. The person smiling on the other side doesn’t have social media and never really smiled with me like that. And I remember, wow, I used to hear the sound of their laugh in my dreams and imagine their grinning on my side… Continue reading
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doing everything, being everywhere, pleasing everyone, all at once
I am a workaholic. There was a time in my life when I prided that statement, just like how teenage boys proudly tout that they scored high on the narcissism test. Out of all the addictions to be seduced by, overworking clearly can’t be the worst of them, right? Honestly, at surface value, it’s not… Continue reading
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The Deception of Perception: Idolization of Strangers
By Riya Cyriac In today’s world, we know everything, or almost everything. But those small things we don’t really know, the gaps of knowledge, consume us. We crave to know people, but we don’t even know the true depths of a person until you are living inside their body and breathing with their lungs. We… Continue reading
About Me
A student at UT Austin. Founder of The Young Writers Initiative.
