Letters to a Robot

not gonna lie, i’m pretty bored in sacramento. part of it could be that burb life, but i think it’s also all i do is work here. it’s tax season after all. you would think there would be no time for boredom. and i have lots of things i could do — read, write, play little nightmares. so what makes it different from oakland. is it still the feeling of displacement? it’s not home. it’s like being on a trip with nothing to do. maybe i should try thinking of it more like ‘home’ for the time being. but how to make the shift? the mind needs to be stronger.

my dad told me he’s not talking to my mom anymore due to something she said back in december. no idea what it could have been, he said it was so vulgar he could not even repeat it. but this has always been the problem. talking but not openly talking. a whole generation who has hidden behind their social norms and suffered for it. i find my mom to be much easier to approach — hard to deal with, easy to approach.

mind is a bit scattered today, writing is a bit hard — not flowing. got a 90+ score on both readiness and sleep but still groggy. too much to do maybe, just want to get on with it. but this activity is to just write whatever, so here it is and it’s just whatevers. can’t be good every day.

i started browsing on amazon and caught myself, maybe also a sign of my mental state. wonder how meditating would go right now? feels uneasy. 12 seconds left. four five seconds to wildin’

lots to do this week. haven’t written for a while.

so 1 month sober, woohoo. i feel accomplished. didn’t actually think i would ever do it. in the past, even the thought of it just deterred. a lot of it was social though — the fear that situations would not be lubricated enough. but this month has proven that even though it can get a bit draggy and tiring, it’s all good. sometimes it’s nice to be the only clear-thinking person in the room. but it can also suck — not because of wanting to be a part of the group, but people can just be annoying when they are drunk and you are not. and it’s not them, it’s just them talking about the same topic over and over again or being overemphatic about things that are really not that interesting (to me). it’s a nice realization though and it’s all totally fine. just a different experience, it’s good to have a range of experiences in one’s life so i’m not complaining. if anything, thank you for allowing me to experience these things. helps me understand the human psyche better as well as my own.

i’m looking out the window right now, sitting at my sacramento desk. vision board in front of me on the screen — i really like it this year, owl, water, daisies and all. outside the lemon tree leaves are swaying in the wind. a few lemons still remain at the top of the tree having escaped e’s harvesting wrath only to eventually fall to it’s fate anyway. sky is blue, sunny, yet it looks cold. the world seems as it should be and life is good.

wow, time flies when you’re not having fun. back to writing and working out today. been knee-deep in alpha stuff the past two weeks, 60 hr work week last week. gah! felt good tho — lots of progress being made. lots of scariness too. like having to borrow for expenses, been in a cushy zone for a while and throwing myself out of it at age 40 feels bad, but mentally i know it just has to happen. i feel like i’m switching careers in a way and i know that can’t be easy. it’s not so obvious as with if you were a w2 employee. i hope i manage it well, not let the fear of insecurity swell up, but not in be in denial either. i mean, i’m only 40, right? why do people seem to always make it seem like you’re already 40. for more than half of those years you’re a confused mess anyway. these are the prime years to do sumthin’ — with some additional awareness and clarity. looking back, i somehow made it here in a pretty good whole piece. staying in sac has been eye opening to how sheltered i am. it makes me realize i am afraid of the world in some weird way, a world lacking in resources. cushy and cozy is nice. but i sense an unhappiness will settle in if i keep doing the same work that i’ve been doing, in that i just don’t find it enjoyable anymore. need to step it da’ eff ee-up! dork cussing, new dialect. keke

happy and prosperous new year to me! rawr. 🐯

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.