Just because my life has been hard doesn’t mean I have to be hard. I’ve learned that it’s far better to cultivate what is beautiful in life than to dwell on and collect the ugly.

No matter how hard I worked, I wasn’t making any progress with my colleagues. Every mistake I made was a sign of me being a mistake.

It’s another late-night subway ride. I decide to take the train to the end of the line—Coney Island. It’s cold. I challenge myself to...