The Storm

I’ve always found it difficult to fit myself into a single category. When people ask what I do, the simplest answer is “I’m a physicist.” But truthfully, I don’t see myself as just that—at least, not in the way people imagine physicists. I suppose if I were to give an honest answer, I’d say I’m an artist who happens to use the language of physics to express the patterns I see in the world. My mind floats between abstract and playful realms, balancing the sharp precision of science with the fluid creativity of art and writing. I find beauty in symmetry, joy in equations, and a kind of poetic grace in the dance of particles. If the universe is a grand canvas, then physics is the medium through which I paint, but the lines between scientist, artist, and writer are blurred.

From an early age, I was drawn to two seemingly disparate worlds: science and storytelling. I remember poring over books about quantum mechanics with the same fervor I reserved for writing poems in my notebook or sketching imaginary landscapes. I loved the clean, austere elegance of physics—the way an equation could reduce something as vast as the cosmos into a few symbols. But I was equally entranced by metaphor, where words wove meaning into the complex emotions and experiences that numbers couldn’t quite capture. The duality of these passions became the lens through which I viewed life, and I’ve never truly managed to separate them.

In physics, there’s a particular kind of creativity that I feel is often misunderstood. To many, physics seems like a rigid, rule-bound discipline, where logic reigns supreme and every result must be measured and verified. But I’ve found that the most profound discoveries come from embracing intuition, imagination, and a willingness to see things from a different angle. It’s no different from painting—where a sudden stroke of color, a shift in perspective, can transform the entire composition. In my mind, equations are just another form of brushstrokes. A well-constructed formula has a kind of aesthetic to it, a symmetry that resonates with me in the same way a perfectly crafted line of poetry might.

Some days, I’m very much the practical scientist. My hands are stained with the ink of problem sets or I’m tinkering with experimental setups, lost in the intricacies of particle motion or the behavior of electromagnetic fields. I enjoy the tactile nature of this work—the way it feels like playing with the rules of reality. There’s something deeply satisfying about testing hypotheses, working out solutions, and watching theory materialize into something tangible. On other days, I’m in the clouds, allowing my thoughts to wander into more abstract realms. These are the days where physics becomes less about the precision of numbers and more about feeling out the beauty behind the logic. It’s here that I merge the two sides of myself—the curious child who asks “what if?” and the methodical scientist who wonders “how?”

I’ve written more than a few papers, yes, but I’ve also penned my share of short stories and essays, many of them inspired by the same questions I ask in the lab. Where do we come from? What is time? What is consciousness? I like to think of writing as my way of exploring the same fundamental questions that physics tackles—only from a more human angle. While physics deals with the external, the objective, writing allows me to delve into the internal, the subjective. A physics equation might describe the trajectory of a star, but a poem can describe the awe a person feels when they gaze at it. Both are valid ways of interpreting the same phenomenon. Both are necessary.

And then there’s playfulness. I think the word “play” is often overlooked in adult life, especially in the sciences where we’re expected to take ourselves very seriously. But physics, at its core, is about playing with ideas. Sometimes I treat my thought experiments like games, twisting and bending the rules of the universe in my mind to see what new patterns might emerge. What happens when you imagine time as a loop, or gravity as a form of attraction between thoughts instead of mass? The joy comes from not knowing where these imaginative journeys will take me, and it’s often in these moments of playful abstraction that I make the most unexpected connections.

As an artist, I’ve never fully committed to a single medium. Sometimes I sketch with a pencil; other times, I design on a computer. My art is often geometric—fractals, tessellations, patterns that mirror the symmetries and asymmetries I study in physics. I’ve even created paintings based on mathematical concepts: swirls of color that represent quantum superpositions, or gradient transitions that mimic the behavior of light passing through different materials. For me, art and science are reflections of one another. Art gives physics emotion, while physics gives art structure.

In recent years, I’ve begun to see my life as a kind of bridge between worlds. In the laboratory, I build models of the universe that conform to the rules of physical law. But when I sit down to write or sketch, I allow myself to break those rules, to imagine possibilities outside the framework of reality as we understand it. This duality keeps me balanced—it’s both liberating and grounding. In many ways, I’m still that kid, wide-eyed and curious, bouncing between the joy of discovery and the need to express it creatively.

So, when I’m asked to define myself, I usually laugh. I’m a physicist, yes, but I’m also a storyteller, a poet, an artist. I live in the space between the known and the unknown, between the pragmatic and the whimsical. I study the universe, but I also write about it. I solve equations, but I also draw them. I see no conflict between these identities; in fact, they feed each other. Physics may describe how the world works, but it’s through art and writing that I give it meaning.

After all, the universe isn’t just a collection of particles and forces—it’s a story. And in my life’s work, I’m just trying to tell it.