This is about how all feelings are complicated. How most joyful things are bittersweet and how love is almost painful to hold in your body. I also talk about how leisure and pleasure isn’t modeled for a lot of us in immigrant families and how difficult it is to get out of a transactive mindset about careers.
I am in Texas with my family and feelings loom large. This is about how perfectionism can afflict every moment and decision. And the contradictions inherent in loving a deeply flawed family in real time vs loving them as a platonic ideal from afar.
I have been an author for four years as of this day. This is about how making art is teaching me how to receive love without feeling as though I owe everything back. This is about true abundance and how I felt like I knew what the word meant but also really didn’t.
A lot of people have been asking what can we do? What if the action you can take is small, self-serving, scary and ultimately entirely radical? What if instead of doing, what if, in this moment of trauma, you let yourself be?
Is being more of an asshole an antidote to non-confrontational Asianism and resentment? Maybe? But maybe not in the way you’d presume.
On healing in the absence of apology.
On the failings of Asian parents and how that makes us desperate to protect them.
This one is about the utility of feelings. And how feeling feelings can seem so pointless and how ripped off I felt yesterday about recovery and healing and therapy when all the work can still lead to depression and despair. I only want to feel feelings if it leads to healing or “better creative work” and maybe that mindfulness is the recovery. And learning to let the expectation go is just a new level.
This is about being Asian in America on this day.
This is about codependency and the ways in which I thought I was passive, meek and overly accommodating when in fact I was in manipulating, controlling and playing the victim. This is GREAT news. I can’t change the way people act or the way they perceive me but I can change my behavior.
This is about optics and allyship. And this instinct to create a moral issue out of actions. It’s about virtue signaling and authenticity and how you are the only one who knows the tone with which you’re doing things. This is about how I am surprised at my own discomfort, shame and fear around acts of dissent. This is also for people who can’t protest for one reason or another and don’t think they can do anything else without being a hypocrite.
Does good news around your career immediately make you panic and feel wretched despite also being aware that you better feel grateful because how dare you? This is about how professional anxiety and how imposter syndrome is universal but also a weirdly egocentric tact to take. Maybe people don’t expect you to RULE at something you’ve never done before. And maybe you can’t totally sabotage a project in which you’re playing one part among many.
This one is about mothers.
This is about how watching nature documentaries can get you out of dissociation and remind you that you are a living, breathing animal that has physical needs. And a gentle call to interrogate any personal mythologies or made-up stories about how long things actually take.
This is about how my routine in the morning and evening are what’s holding me together in this time. Because my natural inclination is to abandon my body and the present moment whenever things get tough.
This is about stinginess. And how I’ve been noticing a parsimonious quality to what I’ll let myself enjoy during this lockdown time. Austerity measures are all around us and economic insecurity is so real but are there small acts of kindness to self that aren’t verboten as outrageous indulgences?
TW: This one is about eating disorders. Specifically binge-eating. And how to invite some gentle mindfulness around meals during a time when food is loud for everyone.
This is about how it’s beautiful and sunny outside and how I can ruin my own mood so easily by being my neighborhood’s self-appointed hall monitor. It turns out that ruining your own mood does not actually change anyone’s opinion or behaviors.
This is about wanting to try on every tight-fitting pair of pants because I’m dissociative and I want to change the channel in my brain to create chaos. Basically it’s about weird highs or random self-harm thoughts that don’t serve you.
This about how creativity, in the time of a pandemic, is indifferent to agendas and ambition. And how to go slow, allow for receptivity and just trust that the work will take shape as long as you gently do a little each day.
This one is about petulance. And how tiny tantrums are distractions from fear and uncertainty that need to be processed. This is also about the small routines I put in place so that muscle memory can carry me on days where I need extra help.
This one is about rehearsing tragedy and the illusion that it will prepare you for or even forestall sad things. It’s about superstitions around hyper vigilance and how you’re “allowed” to struggle with non coronavirus issues.
This is about what it’s like to finish a contemporary YA novel set in New York when everything you’ve ever known has radically changed. This is about giving your work the blessing to be as it wants to. And to let it go with confidence and gratitude even if it feels moot because it will find its audience eventually.
This is about our teammates during this global pandemic (partners, roommates, siblings, kids, parents). And how they are different from us. Their traumas, their stories, their personalities and needs aren’t moral issues. This is also a reminder that we are as annoying as they are so patience and compassion is what we can control. This is also a call to check in if we have unrealistic goals set so that “quarantine time isn’t a waste.” Grief is time consuming and so is acceptance.
Last night I was on a rampage to try to get home to NY from LA. This is a note that for me these urgent, all-consuming thoughts are futile attempts at control. There is what I want and there is what is happening. Trying to change reality only amounts to suffering. This is also a gentle reminder that meditation is available. And that imperfect meditation is a salve because perfect meditation doesn’t exist.
A loving reminder not to lash out at the people around you who prevent you from completely dissociating. Reality is intolerable but they’re our lifelines not our anchors.
This is about how I am personally coping at the moment. And how this is a time to be patient and compassionate with yourself. And to try and not self abandon by checking in with people.
We’re only as sick as our secrets and sometimes our secrets are stories we tell ourselves that we don’t even know we’re telling ourselves. Here are some framing techniques and tools I use to suss them out.
This one is about forcing yourself to work in a spirit of shame and punishment. And how even on deadline it can be vital to the quality of work to take real, restorative breaks.
This is about dread as it relates to projects you’ve abandoned and become scared of and how to lovingly return to them. And how mindfulness around small acts of sabotage can be enlightening about how fear governs larger things in your life.
