S1, E38: There’s No Career Path You’re Supposed to Be On: From Law to Laughter (Comedian)

Sashi: [00:00:00] I went back home to Perth with friends who’d gone into corporate careers or the mining in-house at mining firms and things like that. I was very aware of how behind I was, the conversations would kind of be like, wow, that is such cool work you’re doing. And I’d be like, yeah, there’s no way I am ever buying and renovating a house that is just completely out the window for me.

Sashi: And I didn’t care because I was like, well, I don’t wanna get on the property ladder. I want to help people. And that’s what I decided a long time ago. But then you get to 30, 31 and you’re like, but I do need money.

Georgi: Did you know the average person will work 90,000 hours in their lifetime? What if you could use those hours to find fulfillment and become a disruptor for good?

Georgi: Welcome to the Work That’s Worth It. Podcast. I’m Georgie an Tobin, and I’m here to demonstrate that an ambitious, meaningful, and rewarding career is not just a dream. It’s achievable. Each episode will dive into conversations [00:01:00] with global change makers who crack the code on combining income and impact. If you’ve ever felt like you were torn between a paycheck and your purpose, or maybe you simply yearn for more purpose, you’re going to be exposed to the ambitious humans who have done it themselves ready to make your work worth it.

Georgi: Let’s get started

Georgi: On this podcast. I invite people to share their story with you who are excited and inspired by their work. They’re proud of their careers that they’re building, and ultimately, that’s what I hope for you too. And if you’ve been listening along this season, you will know that it usually does not start that way in your first job or second, it’s more likely going to be a twisty journey that requires intentional choices and tweaks over time for you to find your work that’s worth it, but for people who are not satisfied with good enough or good enough work.

Georgi: Finding your sweet spot is [00:02:00] worth the risks and effort. Today I’m talking with someone who plays by her own rules, puts in the effort, and definitely takes the risks. Sashi Pereira did not want to pursue the mining related high paid jobs in her hometown when she graduated university, but rather she began her career following her curiosity and adventuring out into the world.

Georgi: Where did she begin? She became a lawyer helping refugees around the globe for over a decade. As the years passed by doing meaningful work, she found herself burnt out, financially struggling and questioning everything she thought she was supposed to want. Then in her early thirties, she took a chance, walked into a dark comedy club one afternoon, and discovered she had stories to tell and she was very funny.

Georgi: Now, just a few years later, her comedy videos have been viewed over 40 million times. She’s toured internationally with her solo shows, and she’s just released her debut book, standstill. But the real story isn’t [00:03:00] about her viral success, it’s about the courage it took and the pauses she took and how she listened to herself and chose a path that actually excites her.

Georgi: Hi, Sashi. Lovely to have you on work. That’s worth it. Podcast.

Sashi: Hello. Thanks so much for having me. I’m so excited.

Georgi: Now, I think you’re in Australia, is that right? Yes.

Sashi: Yes. Okay. In

Georgi: Melbourne. In Melbourne, okay. But I wanna know where is home?

Sashi: Oh my gosh. I’ve always found that such a difficult question to answer, and I don’t wanna give you my whole entire life biography.

Sashi: I don’t know how long this podcast is, but in a nutshell, I was born in Sri Lanka, but I left when I was one, and then we lived in Dubai and Oman for some years and then moved to Perth in Australia when I was 12. So I think as a result of that. When all your family’s in one place and you are in another, but in the other place you, that’s where you’re going to school, that’s where you’re starting dating.

Sashi: That’s where you’re starting your jobs. As a result of that, I very much [00:04:00] feel like I call two places home and I get really annoyed when you meet people and they’re like, you can only have one home. And I’m like, well, I don’t know what to tell you, man. Like I, I have the place that I live and I have the place I was born in and I have so much love for both of these places.

Sashi: Both of them are home for me.

Georgi: I have moved around a lot in my life too, and at one point I thought the definition for me was maybe where my stuff was, is where home is. Yes. Where my suitcases are. Yeah. That is home. And

Sashi: I think we can just kind of relax into the concept that it doesn’t have to be one place.

Sashi: Like the world has changed a lot. The way we live our lives has changed so much. It is okay that like who invented this concept that you can only have one? I think you can have as many as you want, so it can totally be where all your stuff is.

Georgi: Well, I appreciate your multicultural background and relate to it.

Georgi: I have been reading a little bit about your career and that’s actually what got me to reach out to you. And I had [00:05:00] read somewhere you said, my biggest learning is there’s no career path you’re supposed to be on, and I wonder if we can jump in there. So yeah, what did you mean by that?

Sashi: I think I found being in uni quite a difficult time.

Sashi: I think it’s so hard being young, I appreciate being almost 40. Now I’m like, oh my God, there’s so many decisions I’ll never have to make again, and I’ll never have to do an exam again. Sometimes when I get a bit worried about getting older, I’m like, well, there’s those things that I don’t have to do anymore, and that’s nice.

Sashi: But when I was in law school, 18, 19. And it just seemed like there was only one path that you were supposed to follow, like especially in Perth. Perth is a big, big mining city, like not a city. It is in a state of mining. And anything related to future careers was all mining related, which is fine, but I just wasn’t that interested in corporate pathways for me.

Sashi: It seemed really boring and not [00:06:00] doing that. There were very few options at the time. I think now because of the internet, everyone kind of gets to access all of these more interesting pathways. But at the time, it’s not that there wasn’t the internet, God, I’m not talking about a time before the internet, but it just wasn’t the social media boom it is now.

Sashi: So you couldn’t see people living lives in very, very different ways and still being happy. So I think even going to law school as a Sri Lankan was expected of me. It was either be a doctor, be a lawyer. Be an engineer. Those are your three options. So I think because of that, it didn’t even occur to me that I could be anything else.

Sashi: And I did find myself floundering in law school a bit because a lot of my friends seemed to be so sure about what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it. And they were just going at it a thousand percent. And I. I just wasn’t as sure. I just, I found refugee and migration law and I thought, okay, cool.

Sashi: Like that sounds interesting to me. [00:07:00] That sounds like helping people. I’m gonna go with that. Now, looking back, I realize the main draw for me was the stories. I was so interested in different countries and different people and different political systems and rather than the law around it, I think I was interested in the stories.

Georgi: It sounds like you did that for a decade, right?

Sashi: Yeah, so first I worked in Perth for a few years and then I went overseas. So I worked in the Philippines and then I joined the UN Volunteer Program. And so with them I was in Turkey, then I moved to Tanzania, Egypt, Thailand, like all in the space of four years.

Sashi: Came to Melbourne to do my Masters and I was supposed to go back overseas. And then it’s only once I got to Melbourne that I started letting go of these concepts of what I’m supposed to do. What do I actually want to do? Because the reality was on the back of those four years, I loved what I was doing.

Sashi: There were some incredible people that I met, incredible work that I felt very. [00:08:00] Driven to do, but also my mental health had taken a huge toll. I was pretty burnt out and I needed to take just a timeout to figure out what it is, what I was supposed to be doing, and worked in the sector for a decade and gotten to, you know, almost that cusp of, and now had the experience.

Sashi: It’s such a hard area to get into. I now had the experience. I was gonna tie it in with a master’s and then go back overseas for a really, really good contract, and that’s when I was like, all right. Hang on. Is this what I wanna be doing? My health isn’t great and if I move again, it’s gonna get worse. So can we just take a second to figure out what we’re doing here?

Sashi: And then I thought, yes, you took a pause. I took a really, really big pause and I cannot advocate enough for pauses. I think that we live in a society where we’re told do not pause. Pausing is lazy, and the reality is that pausing [00:09:00] is necessary. We’re humans, we’re not machines, and if you, you are going and going and going without pausing.

Sashi: It’s gonna catch up to you sooner or later.

Georgi: I think that is wonderful that you shared it. And you know, as an immigrant to the US I have often thought about in the US you have two weeks vacation paid. Yes. You guys have two weeks. Yeah. And what that means when you leave your work. Nothing is done for you.

Georgi: So nobody ever fills in your job ’cause it’s only two weeks and you’re not taking those two weeks in one, one go. So it’s never really a proper vacation ’cause it’s a sort of catch your breath and then recharge so you can tackle the big pile when you get back to work. And from what you’ve just said, the pause probably was a very good opportunity to recenter yourself and ask the harder questions.

Sashi: I used to be quite smug. I knew that Americans only got two weeks of leave, and I was like, oh, well Australians get four weeks of leave, so I can’t believe, and I met a [00:10:00] German man when I was traveling and he was like horrified. He was like, we get eight weeks, you guys get four. So yeah, I think even this system of, yeah, well we have to work this much because that’s what you do if you’re contributing to society and it’s like.

Sashi: Who said that? Who set that up? That you have to work 50 weeks a year and you only get two weeks off. That’s wild.

Georgi: Not a woman. Not a woman, wasn’t a woman. Yeah. In the book that I released, I talk about the unrewarded Do-Gooder is somebody who really wants to do good in the world and is doing amazing work.

Georgi: But one of the difficulties of a lot of the, in quotes, good work, high impact work that we do in the world is undercompensated. And so one of the costs is that we get the kindest people burning out on the most important work. And I wonder if you, when you talked about burnout, if you can share a little bit more about the experience and how you knew you [00:11:00] even had burnout.

Sashi: I actually started counseling. So on the back of this quite intense period of work, I had a fiance. I was supposed to get married. We canceled the wedding. I didn’t know why. There’s a lot I didn’t understand about mental health and the way that I dealt with my feelings and when things get hard, and the reality is that if you’re doing difficult work, there are people who support you.

Sashi: Outside that work. And that’s your family, that’s your community, that’s your sports groups, that’s your church, whatever it is, there’s a whole support network around you. Like anytime things got difficult, I didn’t like dealing with the difficult feelings, so I just kind of kept moving. And a lot of people keep moving and they love that, and that’s awesome.

Sashi: But for me, what I needed was to just. Chill for a second. So the signs were really, I, once my relationship completely collapsed, I’d come to the end of the contract. I [00:12:00] didn’t know where to go next, and I had been on a number of short term contracts, but I’d like to think if I’d stayed longer, those contracts would’ve been extended.

Sashi: Instead, what I did was once a contract ended, I moved to somewhere else with another contract. And I will say that, you know, 10 years in refugee and immigration law, whenever I went back home to Perth with friends who’d gone into corporate careers or the mining in-house at mining firms and things like that, I was very aware of how behind I was.

Sashi: The conversations would kind of be like, wow, that is such cool work you’re doing. And I’d be like, yeah, there’s no way I am ever buying and renovating a house that is just completely out a window for me. And I didn’t care because I was like, well, I don’t wanna get on the property ladder. I want to help people.

Sashi: And that’s what I decided a long time ago. But then you get to 30, 31 and you’re like. But I do need money.

Georgi: Money. What you’re describing is [00:13:00] exactly the story of the main character that I share in my book. Interesting. I call her Grace, and it’s exactly this. Reaching 30 and not being able to put a deposit down on a house or go on vacation and starting to feel resentful about it and then feeling bad that you even feel resentful about it.

Georgi: It’s something that I see often of people who are doing great work in the world, which is really unfortunate.

Sashi: Yeah. And there are so many occupations that are completely under-resourced, right? And they’re often the ones that women work in, like no banker is ever going to be under compensated for their work.

Sashi: And they’re like, yeah, but we turn money into more money. What do you do? And you’re like, oh, sorry. Just help people.

Georgi: So somewhere along the line, after your pause, you took a giant leap into a completely different path. I would love you to share about that.

Sashi: I think it didn’t feel like as big a leap, the one that I took into comedy only because I was trying a bunch of different things [00:14:00] at the time.

Sashi: Okay. So I was living in a seven person share house loving being back in Melbourne. There were just people everywhere having a good time. And I think after working in the refugee sector for over 10 years. Just to be in spaces where it was just okay to just relax and okay to just have a good time without it being paired with very heavy work.

Sashi: It felt like it shouldn’t be allowed. That’s what it felt like in my brain. I remember the counseling sessions where I just said, you know, I just feel so guilty because it feels like I should be over there. Like out there, the people who need you sector. Yeah. In that sector that I know is overworked, under-resourced.

Sashi: I should get back out there. And the council was just like, Hey. We’re here, we’re doing this set a time period for yourself, do it for a year. And in that time I was going to watch a lot of music and watch a lot of comedy. And a friend said, Hey, you’re really funny. You should sign up for this comedy competition.

Sashi: And I didn’t even win, you know? And I was such a, A type [00:15:00] personality. What is it they call it? Like the A type personality. You know? Like you have to do it, go getter, do it really well, and you have to succeed a hundred percent. And this was just. There’s no rules. You just get on stage, you speak into a microphone and you say whatever you want.

Sashi: No footnotes. That was mind-bending for me. You can just say stuff. And I never expected it to go anywhere genuinely. It just felt so much fun. So for the first two, three years, I was going to my day job and then going to gigs at night. So I’d finish at work, take the tram one way, doing like a five minute spot that had three people in a room and then take a tram the other way home to get back late, you know?

Sashi: And it made no sense. It made me no money. And I was like, just to mix it up. Yeah. And I was like, oh, great, another profession that’s going to bring me no money, but joy

Sashi: and, and then things get started getting faster and faster. And it was really only after my dad, [00:16:00] he retired, he had a really long career as an engineer. Loved his work, but refused to retire. Like I saw him go. At his job hard. Even after my brother and I graduated, my mom was working. He paid off the mortgage on the house.

Sashi: He still felt like he didn’t have enough money and he finally decided to retire. He was like, I can’t keep up with this job anymore. I feel tired all the time. I think it’s time to retire. He was diagnosed with stage four cancer. One month later, four months later, he was gone.

Georgi: I’m so sorry. What a tough story.

Georgi: Thank you.

Sashi: Yeah, it just, it taught me so much. No one wills that and anyone who’s been through the process of cancer just knows it’s simultaneously the longest and shortest time of your life, you know, losing someone in that specific way. But what it did teach me was that there was no amount of money that I made, which would tell me, yes, it’s okay.

Sashi: Now you know, it’s okay. Now you’re safe. Now the world is not set up that [00:17:00] way. The world is always more, more, more, more, more, more, more. So at the time, I’d switched to working in government because that, by then, I’d been in Melbourne for how long? Would’ve been 17, 18, for five years. I was in Melbourne for five years.

Sashi: By then. So I’d switched to working in government in a much more relaxed working environment with much better pay conditions. So I didn’t wanna give that up because I thought it’s taken me so long to mentally get to this space where it’s okay to work at this pace and get this amount of money. It’s so funny whenever like a government employee is like.

Sashi: We’re not paid enough for what we do. I’m like, we are

Georgi: overpaid for what we

Sashi: do. This is wild. And what it taught me was at the time I was balancing comedy, which was really, really gaining in traction and also balancing work and then trying to balance my health out as well. And I was like, one of these has to go.

Sashi: It just. One of these has [00:18:00] to go and comedy brings too much joy. Health is non-negotiable. I’m gonna have to leave my job.

Georgi: So you must have started to feel success at comedy. Like something from that first time where you said, no, I wasn’t even successful and I’m a Type A. And obviously first try, maybe not, but you must have at that point, started to feel that something was working.

Sashi: Yeah. The great thing about comedy is everyone is absolutely terrible when they start, you know? And you just kind of all grow together. You watch people get better. You watch some people not evolve. But I think after we all came out of COVID, I started sharing reels after Dad passed away. So things were already, I was booking more regular gigs.

Sashi: Things were starting to improve, not full shoot up, but when dad passed away, I started sharing reels because I stopped caring about being cool or being perfect or how I would be received. I just thought. I just want people to come to my [00:19:00] show, and so once I started sharing reels, those started taking off, and then it was a year of really trying to balance out this new world.

Sashi: And realizing that something had to change, and I think if I hadn’t lost Dad in the way that I had, that decision would’ve been a lot more complicated to make.

Georgi: Yeah. So in a strange way, it gave you a freedom to live your life and to lean into what was really exciting for you.

Sashi: Yeah, it’s interesting though, like I’m still quite conservative financially having the experience of the previous 10 years where I really at 30 needed to build up cash again because I’d spent all my savings traveling around and working not great contracts and being like, that’s fine, and I finally like, got home, put my head down, got a good job.

Sashi: Paid off my hex [00:20:00] debt. Oh, we have this thing called hex over here, which is your student debt from uni. So I was in such a stable financial position after really not being in a stable one for a really long time that I didn’t wanna give it up again because, so I really had to push myself and I think. If my dad hadn’t passed away, I don’t think I would’ve left my job.

Sashi: I would’ve kept trying to either balance both or given up comedy because I would’ve been like, well, you already spent your twenties doing this. You already spent your twenties not making much money and enjoying the aspects outside your work. Being in different places, moving around. And you don’t get to do that in your thirties.

Sashi: You don’t get to have fun. Now’s the time for, you know, the, what’s that saying? The twenties are for learning, your thirties are for earnings. So I really didn’t want to, but I made a deal with my partner and he said, look, just, just try it for a [00:21:00] year. Just try it for a year, and if it doesn’t work, you can make another plan.

Sashi: These government jobs are not gonna go away. And so even when I resigned, my boss at the time said. The same thing. It’s so funny that, I dunno if that’s like male thinking, but he said the exact same thing. He was like, Hey. Just take 12 months. If it doesn’t work, we’ll hold your job for you, you can come back.

Sashi: So just having that security was really, really great. And that 12 months actually only ran out in April, earlier this year. And I had a conversation with my boss and said, yeah, yeah, I’m definitely coming back. Everything’s been going really well. But I said, I thought I could do the balance again between comedy and office Jam.

Sashi: And he was chatting on the phone. I was like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. And I hung up and as soon as I hung up I was like, oh no, I can’t go back. So we had to have another awkward conversation two days later. I honestly felt I was walking around feeling like I was going to vomit for [00:22:00] about two weeks. And it’s just your brain trying to protect you at like in that week I was on two different TV shows.

Sashi: I was doing two different comedy tours. Match, if not out earned my government income in that past year. And I was still like, you are being an idiot. You are giving up the stability. You are giving up the security. You’re too old for this or anything that you can think of that might be a fear. Your brain throws it at you a hundred fold.

Sashi: And I was feeling that as a physical thing in my body where I was walking around feeling like I was gonna vomit.

Georgi: I saw something that you had posted on your Instagram. You were so open about the struggle and transition of choosing comedy and to throw yourself in, and something that I noticed having followed you for a long time is how exposing it is to be a [00:23:00] comedian and to share stories.

Georgi: What it’s like to be a female, what it’s like to get married, what it’s like to go through fertility treatment or to look differently than other people, or, there’s always these quite vulnerable topics and you don’t use them to be the joke, but you share your experiences to tell the joke. It’s very funny how you do it, but it’s also, it gives a freedom, like you open up a conversation that is potentially hard to have.

Sashi: Not everyone wants to have that conversation, I think is what I’m learning from Trolls online, but it’s also the only kind of comedy that I know how to do. You know, like it’s interesting when you start comedy because first you just need five minutes of material and you are just saying whatever comes to your head, and initially accidentally people laugh.

Sashi: You make people laugh, and then you learn what it is, and then you build 10 minutes of material, 30 minutes of material, and then you have a show. [00:24:00] Of 55 minutes and what I was learning as I was building those. Building blocks of five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes, is that I love observational comedy.

Sashi: Like when I first started, I was only talking about like doors and crows and self-serve checkouts and things like that. Just I was very, very intent that I would only pick things that everyone knew about. I didn’t want to speak about women and Sri Lankans and the migrants and identity. I was like, I wanna stay away from all of those topics.

Sashi: All I really wanna talk about. Are things that everyone knows about to bring everyone together. And then the more jokes I started writing about my own personal life, the more they started resonating. And I think I really, really try hard to write it in a way where I don’t just want to bring in people who are like me.

Sashi: You know? It’s just kind of resonating with people who are like me, but also inviting other people into the conversation. For me, I never wanted to, to be about isolating [00:25:00] people. But what I am also learning, once you put these jokes online, you know, if you make fun of white people, it doesn’t matter how gentle the joke, it doesn’t matter that I’ve making this joke about my husband, who I love very, very much, and is white Australian.

Sashi: And I run all of my jokes by him. You know, like if there’s anything he’s uncomfortable with. It’s not going on stage. And it’s just so funny because he will see that reaction to joking about why people needing to wear hats in the sun, which is just a fact. And everyone should in fact, wear hats in the sun.

Sashi: And I just have this joke about sunscreen, how that’s related to colonization and the vitriol like that comes as a result of it. You are like, this isn’t about the joke you guys come on. So I think. What I think to be gentle comedy and the reaction to that online, I really had to learn how to deal with that because it’s [00:26:00] probably threefold what you get in real life.

Sashi: I think it’s so much easier to be mean online. You know? And the management company that I’m now with, they represent a number of different artists, and we’ve talked about this before because they track a lot of what happens online. And what they say is, all of us get one layer of, you know, you are dumb.

Sashi: This joke is bad. You are not funny. Everyone gets that baseline. And then me and another POC comic, we get another layer of. Racism. And then me as a woman, I get another layer of women aren’t funny, get back in the kitchen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So you’re kind of dealing with these three tiers of negativity just for putting a joke online, and it’s up to you whether you accept that or not.

Sashi: Like sometimes on days that I’m really. Not feeling great, not feeling resilient, then I’ll kind of shut down all the apps, put my phone away. My husband bought me one of those like phone lockbox things, and then it’s just gone. I’m engaging with the real world, my real friends, my work, [00:27:00] all of that. But yes, I think as a result, the only kind of comedy that I know how to do is about my life.

Sashi: And I still put things about doors and crows in there, but the things that go viral are always related to race or identity because people are fighting in the comments, and that’s how the algorithms unfortunately are rewarded. And so as a result of that, it is very, very exposing. I’ve got two factor turned on, on everything you know, because you just never know about this stuff.

Georgi: Yeah. So I wonder if you can capture that feeling or what you thought when you decided to go for it. I was reading in some article, there was a scene where you were in a comedy club and maybe it was your first gig and you were doubting whether to get up or not and watching the people go before you.

Georgi: Finally you decided to go and the whole time you were sort of debating whether you should run in the other direction, and I think it’s so relatable to whatever you’re doing. I wonder if you can share your experience with that, [00:28:00] that moment or those moments of where you want to run.

Sashi: I think I’ve learned over time that that feeling is always going to hit me, and now I know that it’s just the first wave of my mind trying to protect me.

Sashi: And if I push past it, there is more good past it. And I think to have learned that took time. So I do remember the article that you’re talking about. That’s the first time when I went to the comedy competition and I told no one about it. I didn’t know anyone there. You know, I was in this dark room on a Sunday afternoon just being like.

Sashi: What am I doing? I am 31 years old. Why am I here? That voice in your head is back. Oh my God, you loser. But it’s the same voice. It’s the same voice. When I wanted to do my first show, it’s the same voice. When I downloaded TikTok, it’s always. You’re a loser. You’re too old for this. Look at all your friends who went and were actual lawyers.

Sashi: You know, like [00:29:00] it just, there’s so much to disconnect from and a lot of the time I feel it really physically. So before I got on stage, that first time I feel it in my stomach, like I feel like my guts are gonna drop or like that, I’m gonna vomit. I feel it very physically. But I think that’s just your body trying to tell you what your mind has already been trying to tell you for quite some time.

Sashi: And I ignored it. I got on stage and I think you have to see what happens if you ignore it. If you ignore it and you go do the thing and you hate it. Great. You’ve tried it. You don’t have to do that again. But for me, I ignored it. I got on stage, I loved it. You know, it just that first feeling of speaking into a microphone, no footnotes, laughter coming back from the audience.

Sashi: I was just. Completely hooked, and I just kept following that feeling. I think for the first year that I was doing comedy, getting in front of people, I just really disassociated a bit. You know, I’d come off stage and be like, what [00:30:00] happened? Was that good? But just your body’s trying to cope with being in front of people and telling jokes and not knowing how they’re going.

Sashi: So I got better. I got better at managing the anxiety of before I got on stage. So I think if you know the payoff is worth it, you’ll keep doing it. And for me now, I know I’ve done two solo shows now with tours around Australia and then also overseas in Europe and, and. The UK and before every single tour, the show’s not great.

Sashi: The show’s kind of crap, actually, and I can’t believe that you’re putting it out there for these people and it’s a waste of time. And there’s just so much that comes. And now I know it’ll come. I let the thoughts come and then I go do the thing anyway, and I have the best time and I’m like. I’m so glad I ignored all of those things that flooded my brain, whatever that was.

Georgi: Yeah, I can relate so much. Now you have a book. I wanted to hear about your new book, and it’s called Standstill, right? [00:31:00]

Sashi: Yeah. In terms of exposure and vulnerability, at least with my comedy, they’re just like really short reels that people can comment on, but. This is a book. These are my feelings and thoughts, and it’s a weird thing to write it all down and then give it to whoever wants to read it and have it be like, those are bad thoughts.

Sashi: I’ve been making myself read one star reviews of books that I really love just to understand that, look, it’s really subjective and people might not like it and that’s fine, but it really covers the period that. We’ve talked about where I basically, I start with the night of the wedding being canceled like so it’s on the 1st of January, 2015.

Sashi: I’m at this New Year’s Eve party with all of my family and friends in Sri Lanka who flew in for the wedding. But the wedding is not going ahead on the 3rd of January, and after that, I moved to Egypt. And so it’s kind of the through line is me trying to figure myself out. [00:32:00] But each chapter is focused on a different place that I’m working in and what I’m learning, the politics of that place, the refugee situation in that place.

Sashi: So I don’t know. I loved being able to sit down and work through that period in my life because a lot of my memories were really quite jumbled. I remembered a lot. But to set it out in a timeline, like, oh, thank God I’m such an oversharer on social media and have been for ages. ’cause I just went back through my old Facebook posts and emails home and paired that with my journals and tried to figure it all out.

Sashi: So that’s what the book is about.

Georgi: What an interesting story. When is it coming out? It’s out everywhere on ebook and audiobook. That’s amazing. My last question is, my book is called Worth. That’s worth it. And for comedy, what makes it worth it for you?

Sashi: Being able to connect with so many people. So I enjoy the viral success that I’ve had to some extent because it’s allowed me to reach a lot of different people.

Sashi: But the point of [00:33:00] those reels is to get people to book tickets to the live shows because. Being in that room with so many people, everyone laughing at the same time. That is why I do what I do. There’s nothing like that feeling. It’s kind of the antidote to the news that tells you that everything’s terrible and everyone’s horrible all the time.

Sashi: You are living in real time of what it looks like when everyone laughs together about something that they find funny, and that’s what I really hold onto.

Georgi: That’s beautiful. Well, I’m so glad that I got to meet you and thank you so much for agreeing to be on here. And little side note, you told me in the beginning that you’re even feeling sick and you’ve showed up in your pajamas with a sore throat.

Sashi: It’s why I’m in my pajamas. I swear I normally do shower and put in the clothes,

Georgi: but I really appreciate it and I look forward to keeping in touch.

Sashi: Yeah, I can’t wait to read your book. I’m gonna go read

Georgi: your book. Oh, thank you. We’ll, we’ll be in touch now for the [00:34:00] takeaways. There were so many gems in this episode with Sashi.

Georgi: First expect vitriol and do it anyway. If you are putting yourself out there authentically, especially as a woman or a person of color. Sushi’s experience shows you’ll face multiple layers of criticism, but as she learned, it’s up to you whether you accept that or not. The vitriol says more about the critics than you, so keep creating and keep sharing your voice.

Georgi: The second point I want to make is about mental health or mental wellness. Get professional help Early in your twenties and thirties. There are so many life decisions to be made. And having support when needed is beyond helpful. Sasha’s honesty about how therapy helped her distinguish between what am I supposed to do versus what do I actually want to do, was so refreshing.

Georgi: Don’t wait until everything falls apart. As she says, the cracks just get bigger if you don’t address them. Therapy isn’t a luxury. It’s maintenance for ambitious people doing hard things. Third, [00:35:00] let’s reemphasize the power of a strategic pause and a culture that glorifies the grind. Taking time to reassess isn’t lazy, it’s strategic.

Georgi: Sometimes you need to stop moving to figure out what you actually want to do. And that’s a wrap for today’s episode of work That’s worth it. Remember, every conversation we share is designed to empower you to build a career that’s truly worth your time and energy. There are future disruptors out there just like you, who would appreciate the conversations in this podcast.

Georgi: Please support me by spreading the word and sharing this episode with a friend or two. Or visit my website@georgieanto.com. That’s spelled G-E-O-R-G-I-E-N-T-H-O-V-E n.com. Until next time, ask yourself, what problems am I solving and are they worth my valuable time? Your intentional choices today can lead to exponential impact tomorrow.

Georgi: Thanks for [00:36:00] listening.