94andsizzling

[94andsizzling]

shifting my focus from people and starting with my goals

when i am constantly moving or working and have people to make plans with, i seldom have periods of quiet where i can think, and think about my thinking. as much as it’s tiring and overwhelming to have this abundance of time i’m spending in my head, it’s also good; necessary in a way.

i read. i scroll and stop to read heartfelt content and poems. i end up trying to apply them to my life in any way i can, try to see where our feelings or experiences might meet. they’re thought pieces (as opposed to conversational pieces). it’s made me think a lot. it’s helped me to make sense of why people are a certain way and why i am how i am. 

this morning i saw something that says to pin yourself to goals and aspirations, not people. because people change. i’ve held onto people and placed friends on high pedestals my whole life. it’s kind of my thing. very on brand for me. my friends, my people, they’re my whole life. i can be by myself and enjoy a little solitude, but given the choice, i would rather be among people. i crave human time. it’s foundational to what i’d call my equilibrium. 

but i realize i have to shift my focus. we all live our own lives and more and more i’m seeing that no one does life according to others. like no makes decisions on their lives for their friends. it might be a significant other or partner, which is different, of course, but the same isn’t ever done for a good friend. i guess that’s weird to expect as a grown person. only a person who ties themselves to people would think something like that. or kids. 

i value friendships more than anything. idk why it’s so underrated and overlooked. it stresses me to the point where i ask myself why i fuss about it so much. i’m sure there are more people who value it as much as i do. but in the mean time i’m learning people suck and aren’t really great friends. i don’t have the energy for lousy friends. it’s tiring to make room for someone who doesn’t make a conscious effort to be an actual friend. 

i was going to say that i can drop people who don’t show they care, but that just shows how trapped i am in the mindset of other people. i’m focusing too much of my energy on other people. hard habit to break i admit. but i need to. otherwise i’m just going to end up running myself into the ground and alienating myself from anyone who ever mattered to me.

i’m realizing i have to spend less time being critical and giving people shit for being a lousy friend. people are inconsistent, friends included, and i need to be less attached. for my  sanity and my productivity. 

i need to focus on myself more. 

remaining available for people for the sake of being available: something i have to stop. i also have to stop being lazy. lazy is my devil. i really have to buckle down with prepping for future plans. really help me get that much closer to the next job i want and the next lifestyle i want to live. my next chapter. i can do it. i just have to put in the time. really focus. (side note: it is so hard to keep focus!)

i packed up and went to australia. made friends with bogans in the literal countryside. moved to new zealand. got out of 2 toxic jobs. navigated a much overdue break up and lease break that felt more like a divorce - what i imagine one to feel like anyway. honestly, i can do hawaii. whatever it ends up being. i know it. it’s really only still this dream in my head because i keep building it up to be the place i live out my best life. but i guess i’ve done that before and i can do it again? i just want it to be long term, so badly, so i need a better game plan than to just show up and go from there. i can literally also do that too but i have all this time. it would be useful to make use of some of it. 

lots of thoughts happening. rather fittingly. 

time to make things. 

[94andsizzling]

Finished reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari and I think the biggest takeaway for me was the discussion around biochemistry and how we’re pretty much strapped to our individual ‘cheerful biochemical system.’ I think I’m very much a stable 7 or 8. 

“[Most biologists] maintain that happiness is determined mainly by biochemistry, but they agree that psychological and sociological factors also have their place.”

“On a scale of one to ten, some people are born with a cheerful biochemical system that allows their mood to swing between levels six and ten, stabilizing with time at eight. Such a person is quite happy even if she lives in an alienating big city, loses all her money in a stock exchange crash and is diagnosed with diabetes.”

[94andsizzling]

divesting from whiteness

is something that is going to be very difficult for me. totally against the grain. i’ve built all my ideals and goals based on it. i grew up with looking a magazines and learning names of models in a world that put european beauty standards on a pedestal and does not want color in their books. i memorized the names. if brands showed people of color in ads or runways, then and now, it’s probably from an absolute need to or to escape ridicule. if they showed an incredibly dark skinned black person on an ad with accessories, i thought they must have done so to grab someone’s attention by showing a huge visual contrast. not because they wanted to be inclusive, but because it’s a play on eyes. i still think this today. i wished i looked like the models i was seeing on tumblr and magazines. it’s one thing to address that i don’t look like them, but i thought i was flawed and, i need to say it, ugly. i wanted be pretty. and i wanted to look white. it’s no secret to anyone who knows me well that i have an asian complex. i tell them. i say it with a tiredness from repeating myself and having to explain because they don’t relate (or simple can’t, because of who i’ve chose to surround myself with) but even with all that repetitiveness it still makes my heart well up sometimes. i say it and in those moments i think that i am aware. but i’m really not. i’m still learning. but it’s hard because i’ve normalized it. always ending with something like, “yeah, i know, it’s just how i am.” almost as if to say: just accept it; i already have.

i am a product of an environment that promotes whiteness and sees emulating whiteness as an achievement. i want to say i’ve practiced self-love and that i’ve come a long way. but it’s complicated. i think i made room for self-love after there was validated from others. it started with compliments that i didn’t really believe, but kind of started to due to where they were coming from. white people telling me i looked good gave me validation. i feel more comfortable today than any time in the past, in my body and with my face, but i still have a long way to go. 

i think today is probably the most honest i’ve been with assessing my core and answering questions like: where my mind goes, why it go there and why i do things. some things that immediately come to mind:

assigning judgments to people based on their color/looks,

organizations i join (or more notably the ones i dismiss) and circles of people i try to make my communities,

what i think about the area i live in,

where i plan on locating myself (this pertains to both life and travel).

1. i judge strangers by the color of their skin and vilify people as being shady and potentially dangerous especially at night when i’m by myself. if i speak to someone who’s black or poc and they turn out to be amazing, i’m humbled and tell myself to be better. i made a conscious decision to stop making these judgments. but it’s hard to change a habit and i constantly catch myself reminding myself to be better - more than i’d like to admit.

2. i’ve always had asian friends growing up and i don’t think i connect as easily with white people. or maybe it was my mind playing me down. joining an organization like a sorority was not what i ever imagined for myself. i never thought about it before living at school, but after meeting an acquaintance who was in one, it just became this thing that i wanted so badly to be a part of. i wanted to be in a panhellenic sorority aka og sororities that are primarily white. i wanted to be part of a fun, cool and pretty group that mixed with other fun, cool and pretty groups. this is greek life in a nutshell. i dismissed the idea of an asian sorority or a business fraternity, which would have come in handy for career advancement, but those were heavily asian and we know how i feel about that. these other organizations were pretty much non-options for me from the start. i didn’t want that label and i didn’t want to be in that crowd. i wanted to have fun. the most fun. my whole teenage life, i felt like i was this closeted person that was meant to be social, but didn’t know how to get there and get those fun friends that i wanted. i was a sheltered and shy and i hated it. being accepted into the sorority was my ticket to this big, social fun fest. i loved being in the organization. it made me feel important and special, like i achieved something great. i don’t like tokenism but didn’t mind it in this context, because it crowned me as this asian person who is cool and pretty. cool and pretty for white sorority standards is a huge deal for someone like me who’s grown up with white ideals. this validated my worth ten fold.

3. i don’t like where i live. it has an overwhelmingly large asian presence. while diversity is a good thing, living in this town feels like drowning in a culture that i don’t want any part in. i really judge asians and their culture (i just realized that i used ‘their’ instead of ‘our’) and i despise asian people’s lack of awareness and spinlessness. i hate the image of a dumb, meek asian so much. so naturally i’ve tried to become the opposite of it. i don’t want anyone to even have a chance at labeling me as that. i’ve also categorized asians as uncool and in effect have put whiteness on a pedestal.

4. i plan on locating myself if communities that are diverse but not flooded with a minority such as my home. i value diversity in a place for the food culture it brings. i don’t worry so much on how i might feel more included or safer in a diverse community than one that has strong white presence. i don’t worry about the racial bias i might face if i move to a new city and i’ve wondered why. i’ve proximated myself to whiteness and perhaps i feel like that has to show for something. outside of daily life, i want to travel to places that i like that i think look beautiful in photos. i’m biased against traveling to some asian countries because i don’t have an appreciation for the culture (sometimes a dislike) and have formed a huge opinion on normative spacial distancing in different countries.

i’ve always thought of asians as being second class to white people and i think the only way to change that narrative in my head is to find super educated and well spoken people who are asian, that i admire and listen to the conversations they’re having about racism and the asian american experience. introducing a different narrative and putting it on loop is probably the only way to divest from whiteness in a lasting way. i realize i’ll be reluctant to seek out these new people and show resistance to whatever they’re putting out or only absorb it at surface level, so i’ll have to set some intentions with how i go about it.

for starters, these questions ellie yang camp wrote are a really great place to start and i’m grateful for them.

[94andsizzling]

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.

Charlotte Brontë

[94andsizzling]

week 9 and mdw

i was going to make a comment about the weather and stopped myself. why do we always have to make comments about the weather? 

i’m 26 and still heavily wired by the weather. i’ve gotten much better with rain being abroad but maybe it’s me remembering what i’m like with weather in the context of home. that could be compounding it. when it’s nice out i’m more than fine and that’s even if i do nothing ‘productive.’ when it’s overcast or shitty i feel like i have to do more to just be ok and not feel like a pos. it helps to physically move around, even for a little, to get out of the mental rut. i’m thinking it might be a good idea to take morning walks, regardless of the weather, and kind of make that my morning book end. it’s less about the consistency in doing something, and more about making a conscious decision to move. i’m slowly getting back into working out, which i’m happy about, but even so, it’s kind of a mental drag to commit to hiit workouts. so, for now, walks.

i picked up new plants this week. new plants and some plants not in great shape. i picked up a varigated pothos, baby spider plants, basil, and a baby ish pilea from metropolitan. amanda was throwing away her plants so i scooped them up from hers and am now a mother to a dying fiddle leaf fig tree and a rubber plant, also not in great physical shape. i’m stupid new to plants so i’m really hoping for a lot of luck and a lot of sun to cure these guys. i could also use some sun. 

[94andsizzling]

washing myself in the sun, week 8

i spent a lot of time in the sun yesterday and the day before. and i still feel so good about it. even though it was cooler and cloudy today. 

yesterday i made a ham egg avo sandwich for breakfast and brought it outside. i also had chilled papaya i cut the night before so that alone resulted in my having a great day. i had an all day picnic. a bed sheet over grass is nice but have you ever had a picnic on a bed comforter? it honestly makes all the difference. i laid out and listened to music, baked a bit, read a bit and did a couple hiit workouts. this is the first time in a really long time that i’ve worked out. i don’t think i worked out once in the near year i was in queenstown. and i don’t consider hiking “working out.” it’s definitely physical and requires you to be in shape, but a large part of it is for enjoyment and it just hits different than setting aside time to die over abs. proud of me! but more just happy that i got to spend all day outside. don’t care that it was just a few steps from the house because i had a pretty splendid fucking day. 

the day before i went on a run for 8 minutes. i am hilariously out of shape but it was sunny and warm and i was super happy. i went down to the hudson and had a peaceful sit by the river. the hudson and peaceful really don’t belong in the same sentence but it was honestly nice. had a nice walk the rest of the time. i left my phone at the house and just came out with water and the ipod mini with old dance songs from hs and early festival days. i never thought i’d be listening to this music - so untouched - this far into my life. it was a time machine. it just didn’t sound as good as i was expecting it to. objectively there were a lot of bad, hectic songs in the mix. but it was still good. 

i love what the sun does for me. i love what i am when it’s nice out. it makes me feel fuck-ing fan-ta-stic. after a wack couple of weeks it feels like i just came out of a detox - full mind and body cleanse. a much needed wash in the sun. 

[94andsizzling]

what may has been like. a haiku

slow days anxious mind

chocolate tea and frequent lays

trying to relax

[94andsizzling]

sun watch. a haiku

slanted lines of sun

coming through the trees there’s wind

in this breeze life flows

[94andsizzling]

not all lost. a haiku

unwelcome and not

twisted fiction of life past

fatefully intact

[94andsizzling]

I think that maybe this is the place for us. Maybe there are entire worlds where there are no fences, where feeling bears you like a tide.

Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper)

[94andsizzling]

Two thousand years ago the night sky looked completely different, and so when you get right down to it, the Greek conceptions of star signs as related to birth dates are grossly inaccurate for today's day and age. It's called the Line of Procession: back then the sun didn't set in Taurus, but in Gemini. A September 24 birthday didn't mean you were a Libra, but a Virgo. And there was a thirteenth zodiac constellation, Ophiuchus the Serpent Bearer, which rose between Sagittarius and Scorpio for only four days. The reason it's all off kilter? The earth's axis wobbles. Life isn't nearly as stable as we want it to be.

Jodi Picoult (My Sister’s Keeper)

[94andsizzling]

7 weeks in isolation

is doing weird and weirder things to me. i’m more like a plant than a human being recently. 4 weeks ago i functioned as an entirely different person. i woke up looking forward to do 65 min flows, even squeeze in a quick 10 min hiit or ab circuit, write in my journal and have a 2-3 cups of tea in a sitting. then i would make a bangin ass tropical green smoothie. doesn’t that sound so nice?

it felt so good.

i’m not really sure what happened but i guess i also don’t know what is happening. i’ll get genuinely upset if i’m not productive. i’m trying to be kinder to myself. even if i did absolutely nothing that day. and the days following. it’s a weird time and everyone i know is working full time or trying to “make the most” of their free time. but people are also allowed to do absolutely nothing and that be ok. me included. i decided i’m giving myself full permission to chill and to not do anything for however long i want. it’s not like someone or something is waiting for me to get shit going. just me. i am literally not obligated to do anything and i just need to fully absorb that. things are weird and i am probably going to continue to feel weird so i have to lower my expectations. plan to do less. make less to do lists - because i just am not going to finish them. even the simple ones. and right now i need to be ok with that.

“your worth is not measured by your productivity”

i saw this a few days ago on insta and god did i need it.

you know what’s funny? when i concoct things like this myself i feel like i’m full of shit. feeding myself bs. but then when i read it in writing somewhere, it’s the complete opposite. i become a believer in .2 seconds. i’m like omg ok it’s not just me. and i’m entranced. i let go and i relax. my mind relaxes. when it comes to me and my thoughts, i battle so much with giving myself permission to do and not do things. why is that? god it’s so tiring.

but baby steps