100 Days in TRUMP's USA: Real truth of living in San Francisco, USA🇺🇸
An Indian content creator reflects on her first 100 days living in San Francisco after leaving a ₹40 lakh/year career in India. She shares both positives (clean air, women's safety, higher income, AI exposure) and negatives (family distance, visa uncertainty, guilt about leaving India). She also addresses online harassment targeting her family and discusses key personal learnings from the experience.
Summary
The creator opens by contextualizing her move to San Francisco 100 days ago, explaining she left a ₹40 lakh annual income in India to escape a 'negativity loop' involving pollution, traffic, safety concerns, and societal anger. She addresses the polarized public reaction to her previous video — some supportive, others calling her a traitor — and firmly draws the line at people targeting her family and friends, who she stresses never signed up for public scrutiny.
On the positive side, she highlights three main improvements: quality of life (clean air, water, no traffic), greater personal safety as a woman (reduced need for constant alertness compared to India), and significantly improved financial standing with higher income and increased savings, which has also benefited her family back home.
On the negative side, she discusses the emotional weight of the 15,000 km and 12.5-hour time zone gap from family and friends, the volatile and uncertain visa situation under current U.S. political conditions, and a persistent guilt about not being present for her parents' new life phase and friends' milestones — particularly given her roots in Bihar, a region with significant development needs.
She then outlines three major learnings from her time in San Francisco: first, becoming comfortable with her own company and detaching her happiness from social validation and friend group dynamics; second, multicultural learning — specifically admiring Chinese professionals' focused work ethic and confidence in their identity, and Europeans' emphasis on fitness and family; third, the critical importance of engaging with AI, given that she is now living at the geographic epicenter of AI development (near OpenAI, xAI, Anthropic), which she frames as a generational wealth-building opportunity akin to selling shovels during a gold rush.
Key Insights
- The creator argues that being close to AI development hubs like OpenAI, xAI, and Anthropic in San Francisco was a primary reason for her move, framing it as a 'gold rush' moment where proximity to the source gives a critical advantage in upskilling and career growth.
- She claims her alertness level as a woman is noticeably lower in San Francisco compared to India, where she felt the need to be constantly on guard both outside and at home — framing this reduced vigilance as a meaningful quality-of-life improvement.
- She observes that Chinese professionals in San Francisco demonstrate a strong sense of confidence and identity — being unconcerned with external opinions about their work or culture — and argues this is a quality Indians lack due to widespread inferiority complex.
- She expresses a deep guilt about leaving India, particularly because she is from Bihar — a state she sees as having major development needs — and acknowledges this guilt must be 'endured' while focusing on personal life goals.
- She states that over weeks in San Francisco she has gone without any social outings or hangouts without feeling distress, and credits this as significant personal growth — arguing that happiness must come from within rather than from social validation or group activities.
Topics
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