A Misfit’s Quest for Belonging
Growing up early, people pleasing as a trained habit, and learning to belong as myself.
When my favorite baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, embraced the nickname miSFits during their 2010 World Series run (emphasis on the “SF”), I latched onto it like it was tailor-made just for me. I was fifteen, nerdy, awkward, and convinced myself “misfit” wasn’t just a phase. It was the true embodiment of who I was at my core. I went to a private high school in San Francisco surrounded by students from affluent families whose lives looked nothing like mine. I also didn’t exactly have what people mean when they describe “a regular childhood,” whatever that is.
My parents separated when I was four and eventually divorced. My younger brother Chad was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) when I was six and never learned how to speak. For five years, my paternal grandparents were my legal guardians. Most of my extended family, especially cousins around my age, lived either in Los Angeles or the Philippines. I felt alone and different. “Misfit” felt like the easiest explanation for why.
The kid who became the backup parent
I can’t speak for everyone, but when you grow up as the older sibling of a brother with ASD, you learn early that love can look like responsibility. Feeding him. Bathing him. Making sure he didn’t reach onto someone else’s plate at a restaurant. Keeping him regulated and well-behaved. Ensuring he was calm, safe, and not overwhelmed. Doing all of that while you’re still a child yourself. Even when I was eight, I knew this wasn’t a universally shared experience. I also know it shaped me in ways I’m grateful for. It taught me responsibility. It taught me how to care deeply for someone outside myself. However, that doesn’t mean there weren’t drawbacks. As an adult, I sometimes struggle to advocate for my own needs. I avoid conflict and I people-please. With hindsight, it’s hard not to notice how early those habits were instilled. How do you learn to say, “I can’t do this, I’m eight years old,” when the adults around you are stressed and asking you to help? Maybe it really could have been as simple as saying that. But the narrative in my head didn’t sound like that at all. It sounded more like: Mom/Dad/Patricia (my stepmom) are already under a lot of pressure. Don’t add to it. Be the “perfect” kid. Do well in school. Don’t ask for more than you need. Make life easier for everyone else. I tried to act like a little adult. But the truth was: I was just a kid who wanted to be a kid.
Belonging as an adult is harder than I expected
I’ve worked on myself a lot since then. I’ve made real progress toward healing and forming more secure attachments (shout out to my therapists over the years). Still, there are challenges that remain. I often want to be alone, and I hesitate to make new friends. “Putting myself out there” still feels like touching a hot stove: I can do it, but a part of me expects it to hurt.
Since moving back to the Bay Area in late 2023, I’ve gone to over 100 events connected to the SF tech/AI world such as hackathons, company launch parties, networking events, and happy hours. I’ve met some brilliant and inspiring individuals, and I’m grateful for the friends I’ve made along the way. Yet I’m still trying to understand how to be an active participant in a community that’s constantly in motion. San Francisco is the AI capital of the world, full of startups, venture capitalists, founders, and influencers. That energy can be exciting. It can also feel transactional. Sometimes it feels like people are scanning the room for leverage, not genuine connection, and that just isn’t for me. At the end of the day, I’m not an AI entrepreneur, venture capitalist, futurist, or a tech bro. I’m just a nerdy guy who loves science, likes staying current with AI and making YouTube videos, had a difficult childhood, and wants something that’s simultaneously both simple and surprisingly hard: A sense of community in the city where I was born and raised (SF).
Putting my name back on the front
Last year, I changed my username on most social media platforms from “AstronoMisfit” to “kylekabasares.” I’d used that handle for years, and letting it go felt weirdly emotional. I did it because of a few questions I finally asked myself: Am I a misfit because I truly am one, or because I’ve spent years fixated on that identity? What if I chose to accept myself, flaws and all? It sounds a little silly that it took me 7+ years to ask those questions, but “misfit” felt safe. It provided a ready-made explanation: Of course, you feel out of place Kyle, you’re a misfit. My full name didn’t feel safe, and I didn’t even like saying it loud for others to hear. “Kabasares” is not a name most people pronounce correctly on the first try. (For the record, it’s Kab-uh-SAR-rez.) I won’t bore you with the endless mispronunciations I’ve heard in my life, but I got tired of hearing my name butchered so often that I started avoiding it altogether. Ironically, switching to my real name online made me more comfortable in my own skin because with a high degree of certainty, I’m the only person in the world with my exact name. That means I get to set the example and just be me. Sure, it comes with a little pressure, but it also feels like an honor. (Also: putting a “Dr.” in front of it doesn’t hurt.)
To the younger me and to anyone who’s worn the word “misfit” as armor
If I could talk to a younger version of myself, I’d want to offer the following pieces of advice.
1. Being unique doesn’t make you a misfit. You might not fully understand or appreciate the parts of yourself that set you apart yet. Some of those parts might even hurt. But your experiences, especially the painful ones, can still be valuable. Not because pain is noble, but because it teaches you what you care about, what you notice, and what kind of life you want to build.
2. Be yourself, but also give yourself permission to become a better version of yourself. Sometimes that looks like therapy. Sometimes it looks like practicing honesty, learning to ask for help, or letting people get close without needing to “earn” your right to belong.
3. You don’t have to prove you deserve connection, and you don’t have to be perfect to be loved.
The Giants’ miSFits nickname from 2010 will always make me smile. But these days, I’m less interested in donning that nickname and more interested in belonging as myself.
My 2023 Learning Journey in Review
On this last day of 2023, I want to reflect on my learning journey this year. As the adage goes, "The end of one journey is the beginning of the next". In June 2023, I not only finished my PhD in Physics from the University of California, Irvine with the culmination of my thesis on the dynamical mass measurements of supermassive black holes, but I also started a new and independent learning journey.
Admittedly, this journey was motivated by the desire (more so the need) to get a job. I decided academia was not for me, and one of the main reasons was the constraints it placed on my ability to learn (being unable to get a postdoc was also a big reason). Sure, I learned to a depth where I became a supposed expert on my dissertation topic, but during the past 6 years I felt there were many other topics of interest I had to forego learning to complete my PhD. Reading the same types of papers on the same concepts for 5+ years had made me too narrow. I personally feel that I thrive when I get to engage with many different ideas and topics, as opposed to sticking with just one or a few. Then, I found Coursera (I promise I am not sponsored by them; I swear!).
Coursera to me was a return to a mode of learning I was familiar with and that I enjoyed: Online video courses. You see, I attribute much of my success in academic environments to my vast consumption of YouTube educators during YouTube’s infancy. To me, watching creators like KhanAcademy, PatrickJMT, Doc Schuster, and many others in high school made learning FUN. I could go at my own pace, pause when I needed time to absorb things, and rewatch their videos as many times as I needed to finally make the topic stick in my brain. I am not and have never been someone who quickly absorbs new material. For example, it took me 3 separate course (2 in high school, 1 in college) that featured Newtonian Mechanics before I felt I truly “got it” and felt confident enough to switch my major to Physics. I remember watching PatrickJMT and KhanAcademy for hours the night before Math exams in college and having it pay academic dividends.
After 6 months of using it, I can say with confidence that Coursera has made learning fun for me again. I started with the magnificent Machine Learning (ML) Specialization course taught by Andrew Ng, one of Coursera’s Co-Founders, and a titan in the ML community, since I felt that deepening my knowledge in this area would be important for the current times that we live in. This course did not disappoint. I would even go as far to say that I would not have the job I have now if I did not take this course. The ML Specialization course was like a new source of food for my brain, which had been strictly on a supermassive black hole diet for several years. And, as an object in motion tends to stay in motion without an external force to slow it down, I felt that with my PhD behind me, there were no external forces (aka academic obligations) to slow my new learning journey’s momentum.
Learning has and will always be a solace for me. I especially needed it this year. Many of you reading may not know this, but my 2023 was additionally complicated with health issues that started in May and persisted through both the Summer and Fall seasons. Now, as we approach a New Year, I am happy to say these issues have largely been resolved, though I remain diligent to this day in making sure these issues do not return. To distract me from the daily pains I felt over the course of several months, I started other Coursera courses to help keep my mind occupied on novel and fascinating ideas, as well as develop new skills. This was preferable than allowing it to wander and focusing on the despair that often accompanied my pain.
As 2023 ends, I want to use this post as a way for me to look back and say, “Wow, I did all of that in half a year?!”. I also want to use this post to encourage people to actively seek out the joy that comes with learning. Whether it is a new skill like computer programming, learning a recipe for a certain dish you have always been curious to try, or nailing a skateboarding trick that has tripped you up in the past, please embrace the challenge it poses! Most importantly, have fun with the process, as even when it feels we are lost, it is through the joy of discovery that we truly find ourselves.
Coursera Courses I’ve Taken in 2023:
1. Machine Learning Specialization by DeepLearning.AI + Stanford University
2. IBM Data Science Specialization
3. Remote Sensing Image Acquisition, Analysis, and Applications by UNSW Sydney
4. Introduction to High-Performance and Parallel Computing by University of Colorado, Boulder
5. Natural Language Processing on Google Cloud by Google