i’ve been thinking quite a bit about environment and space. ever since i moved to kempton, i feel like my space had finally become my own (minus a few exceptions as of recent). up until then, i had always just lived in whatever was available to me. kempton was a choice. not that my non choices had resulted in bad living — i really enjoyed living with my family and more particularly my sisters and thuy in san mateo — hotpot er’day! the half ‘move’ to sacramento and the straightening of it and the neighborhoods have really made me reassess my general approach to things. environment is so important, it allows for clarity and ease of life flow, but can one rise up to the challenge otherwise? not be a function of that environment? as children we are just thrown in and of course it has its affects. as an adult, can i get past that? i’ve largely been living in my mind the last 5 – 7 years maybe. i still don’t know if i don’t care to or am too scared to go into the world. and is there something wrong with living in one’s mind? boring or buddha? scared or content? how does one make the call for oneself without going out there to observe, to try, to be open to the opportunities of the unknown? can i let it all go for something that is borderline happiness? might be easier as security wanes — have a fire lit as R says. sac is a good test.

and going through all this stuff, i realize it really paints a picture, but do i want my picture painted in the minds of future people going through my ish? maybe life should be lived and then let go — unaccumulate. in the end we are just the stories that make us up, not the things. and oh there are so many things. guessing at the nuance of such things at harry’s place has been an interesting activity. i feel like i’m getting to know him better now that he’s gone and although that means nothing to him, it means something to me. it makes him more human to me and makes me realize even more that each person i don’t know is nuanced. helps for a bigger capacity to empathize.

been excited about switching to qbo — that’s when i have the most fun at work. trying new things, figuring out how to rework broken bits of a system. maybe i’ll have fun helping others with fixing their systems. the advisory work might turn out to be pretty fun although up until then i might also feel really poor. ❤‍🔥 (weird emoji, burning heart, sacrilege!)

happy birthday, K! i don’t even know how old you are — suppose i could do the math. 33! trying to remember my earliest memory of you, but it’s lost. i think i only remember things from photographs. hm, but let’s dig a bit deeper here. hrm, okay, here’s one. unfortunately, not a happy one. i remember when mom hit you on the hand. i think you had thrown a B paper in the trash. M & I knew to throw ours away at school, but apparently we did not bestow this elderly sisterly wisdom onto you and so mom found the paper and she hit your hands with a ruler. think it was pretty traumatizing as she didn’t generally hit up until this point. at the time it seemed like she was upset about the B, but in retrospect — she was most likely more pissed about the hiding of it. i don’t remember what i did, but i wish that i would have comforted you more or at all, but i was young and unaware and so i probably did nothing and i’m sorry for all the times i did nothing as a big sister when you were younger. i hope to always be able to be there for you now. another memory i have about you is when mom woke me up in the middle of the night wanting to call the police because it was almost midnight and you were not home yet. i used to be pretty annoyed when you would do that “to me” but i suppose you had to do what you had to do at the time to strive for some normalcy in your teenage years and i don’t blame you.

oh oh oh! i thought of a happy memory — at least for me. when m and i took you prom shopping. think it was for junior prom. green dress. it was fun, m and i trying to zip up your dress and both probably deep down wondering why you were the only one who got boobs in the fam. we ended up making fun of how ‘pudgy’ you were instead. i thought you looked really pretty in that green dress although i probably never told you for obvious asian family dynamics reasons. i remember that huge felt taco truck pillow you made for josh, pretty impressive. i remember going to your senior awards ceremony and being proud that you had gotten so many awards — again, unspoken sentiments. i don’t think our parents even went to that. more recently, i remember you being at harry’s vigil and feeling comforted that at least one person from my clan was there. thank you for trudging out on the bart. and thanks for the reluctant hug at the end. hah! hbd – look forward to more memories whether to be forgotten or remembered, sad or happy. <3

writing down the bones said to just start writing about anything, don’t get stuck about a good opening line. ‘fighting the tofu’

and so i guess i’ll write about the kind of blister thing that is forming at the corner of my mouth because it’s been so dry from being in sacramento. i can’t open my mouth all the way to eat things. easy fix tho, i’ve just been lazy about it.

thinking of starting a writing group with my sisters, maybe a2 and cathy too? maybe start small and see how it goes first. no sharing or sharing? maybe meet once a month and share one thing? we’ll see — goal to start in march. maybe start it with R? would be fun to see him struggle through it based on the many letters restarts he had written me. buahahaha

this week is off to any okay start. alpha seems still all crazy and just tons of work that i can’t get done in a day. managing clients, always something that can’t be delegated. triage causing a cluttered mind. need to figure out how to manage all that better. it’s a work in progress, but it’s discouraging since i’ve been in this mode for so long. and i really don’t want to spend the extra time to work on weekends because i really do need the decompression. the thought of going to my workspace on a weekend, sitting down, and looking at client work has really been turning me off lately. lately as in the last half year or so? i used to do it all the time, but something about it seems to almost gross to me. that is not how one’s free-time should be spent. at times i wonder if i could survive just working at mc donalds — could i support my parents and C and myself? but then i get scared of things like ending up in the ghetto when i’m old and so i trudge along. avoiding working on weekends, but it seems like the setup is all off. rat in cage, not quite raging yet. probably never because that’s not my nature. just a slow treadmill, comfortable enough — no pain, no hard breathing. R would say, sometimes you need to breathe hard — and just run for rlz, damnit! even if your ears do hurt.

just started reading writing down the bones today — liked this line a lot — “Like grating a carrot, give the paper the colorful coleslaw of your consciousness.”

it’s been a long four days, last thursday (the start of it all) seems forever ago. and a lot has been done, accomplished, achieved. a chapter closed and a new one beginning. i look forward to drives with E to sacramento the next half year or so. looking forward to d’s wedding — finally getting to travel. fingers crossed. forward to (dare i say it) omicron — hopeful that it will really be the start of the end. i’m not sure how to feel about leatha. it’s kind of a weird in between place, but i can see some positive smaller happenings here. a respite away from home and vice versa. a bit odd thinking of living this dual life. saw a real ghetto yesterday (maybe). sorry for the naïveté — but i was born into a bubble, and i like it. parts of the world come off scary. i admire those who are able to live in those tunnels of humanity that i dare not venture, some of these parts my parents have had to endure. and so i understand i have lead a lucky life. a life not lacking in resources, a life not facing death and for the most part, one free from fear as i shuttle from one bubble to another, but deep down i’m deathly afraid that the bubble will pop. but hey, let’s also not get ahead of nor belittle oneself. it doesn’t do any good and i think this bubble gurl in this bubble world has turned out pretty okay so far. don’t cha think?

fingers crossed whilst knocking on wood

today is harry’s vigil and tomorrow his funeral. i haven’t experienced death much very much as an adult, and even as a child. and so here are some thoughts. i can’t say i’ve ever been really scared of death (most likely due to the little exposure I have had), much more fearful of suffering. i wasn’t sure how i’d feel at the hospital when E told me to come as the time was nearing. i’ve never really liked hospitals, but who does? but i knew i needed to and wanted to be there. i was more concerned about what to say and how to act around harry rather than anything else. i really didn’t know what to say to a dying person — what did they need to or want to hear? do you just act like nothing bigger is happening? do they just want some normalcy in this last period of their lives? everyone is different, but whatever it is, it seems like you should try your best to give this person what they want and what they need during this time. and it’s much easier when the person is an open person, however, when they are private i guess you just do your best to understand. when i got there he was no longer speaking and so i didn’t get the chance say or act in any which way. i just sat there thinking that maybe my presence was some sort of comfort to him and that was enough. when E and Kate left the room at some point, i quietly said my goodbyes in my head. i felt it weird to speak out to an empty hospital room. but i felt like i wanted and needed to do something. i’m not one to believe in (or know) about if afterlife/spiritual life is real or not, but i guess that doesn’t matter. the human in us has evolved to deal with grief in a certain way and whether you believe in it or not, going through the motions is necessary and fine for whatever you need and your community needs and so through this, it helps me understand better all the rituals, especially the religious ones (on a broader scale) that i find so tedious most of the time. i think i understand better something about humanity than i did before. i’m happy i was there in the room with harry and E and Kate when it happened and something unknown to me — the ending of a human life — can be majestic and beautiful in its bittersweet way. we played this song for him after he passed. rest in peace, Pops.

so easily distracted. i just went to search for the ‘easy come easy go’ bracelet again after thinking of new blog url names. i swear someone stole that bracelet from me. i’m addicted to scrolling, not even buying. +__+ it’s really hard to disentangle from wanting to show your identity — appearance really is a minimal effort way of telling others about yourself without really trying. and if you’re intentional about it, then i don’t think it’s easily misunderstood. my anime sweatshirts, loose clothing, girly yet boyish, all trying to tell you something, cause i do care what you think of me initially. just not enough to take action. and if you come to the wrong conclusion, we were never meant to be anyway, damnit!

learned a new word in w&p today — interlocutrice: female speaker in french. thought of using it as my new blog name because it has ‘tri’ in it. keke but it’s a bit too formal and i can’t even pronounce it in french. and R would call me pretentious.

i dream of the day when we are house of two. more so for the space. empty space, clear mind? could probably meditate myself through the visual clutter, but that is a battle i’m not willing to take on at the moment.

little scuba is really good. five stars.

i made the saltiest soup and ate it for two days, finally ended up just throwing it away. know when to admit defeat. my egg cups didn’t come out so good this week either. i ended up compensating by eating a bunch of high-grade japanese snacks instead. not the best eating strategy here but it happened. resulted in poor digestion. my new way of writing ‘poop’ is ‘pewp’ — much cuter. cewter. i just realized cuter sounds like cooter. h8 ernest.

w&p — a lot about infinitesimally small moving individual motivations and how the major players in the world are just a coincidence/bi-product of them. and i suppose this is true, we all make our own decisions based on our personal values, goals, upbringing, inputs, outputs. can anyone person ever be blamed? and so yet, another philosopher who speaks of the lack of will. we’re all just moving parts. started listening to watts – the world just peopling.

i should make it a point to spend more time with my mom, maybe watercolor together or do projects together.

start once a week dinners with C again

the plan journal really works, i felt much more calm and composed yesterday. it’s really easy to go off course from processes when ish hits the fan. just don’t do it. and stressing about things that aren’t done doesn’t help. just still need to get things done one thing at a time. point is to not overload oneself which is easier said than done. i’m super excited to finally be serious and not scared of hiring someone. it’s the first risky big move i’ve done in years, possibly actually having to go back into debt is a big fear of mine. it was so hard to get out of it. but this is good debt i have to tell myself. life-changing debt. E constantly telling me that runaway inflation is going to make the world collapse isn’t helping but that’s another story.

i’m super proud of C and am really happy that she is moving out at such a young age. something we could not do and it really seems like there is generational progress. i see how helpful it is when roots have been laid down and spread to younger generations. each generation just getting a little better and progressing. maybe at some point my parents thought of that for me. although i don’t think they’ve ever admitted or said they are proud of us. maybe they are too lost in their willow wallowing sorrows to recognize? maybe they are a little bit proud but just don’t say. which is all fine, i know i wasn’t perfect — but i still think i have contributed to the progression.

hm, ok — lots of things. so many things to do in the new year. started off today by  reading ~10 pages of W&P, making it a goal to finish in 2022. made everything bagel egg cups, trying eat healthy again with minimal effort. i know, cliche for the new year but doesn’t mean it’s not good for you, so whateva all you haters out there. this year i really need to hire someone and get the compliance side of alpha down and properly get into the advisory phase of things. i will be a financially burdensome year i think but i’m feeling positive about it. will be good to get back to the basics anyway and be more aware of the minimalism i struggle with pursuing. another thing i want to practice is not putting “haha” or “lol” at the end of every text — why do i do that? lol

fighting!