Craft By Zen by Jeremy Wong

📍 Location: Bay Area, CA

An anxious election day to you too. A follow-up from my last newsletter, Morgan and I closed on our home towards the end of this past month, and we couldn’t be happier.

The whole process has been a whirlwind. I have a ton of notes that I will eventually put into a blog-style post. Hopefully, after we wrap up the chaos of moving.

We are starting to feel the neighborhood spirit. One of the big conversations I had with Morgan is finally having a place of belonging. I have moved 5 times in the last 5 years, and frankly I’ve had enough. And every place I’ve moved to, the neighbors sure haven’t been too friendly or chatty. In the last apartment, there are familiar faces, but most leave before making a long impression. With this card, we are hoping to be friends with some of our neighbors.

The cold air is finally here in the Bay Area. And with that, I leave you with our little puppy.

Ciao!

📍 Location: Bay Area, CA

I never received a mailed, annual Christmas letter. For the unreceived, these are letters you receive from friends or family who send out a letter of how the year went.

I feel like it’s a feat to wrap up the year. When done right, the letter should evoke good feelings of the highs and lows, while inspiring the reader to reflect on their own year. When done wrong, it sounds like a rambling, incoherent confession. The emails I would send out prior to my (now defunct) holiday cards was my own version of an annual Christmas letter.

I read end-of-year newsletters with envy. Authors would rattle off their big accomplishments or mistakes. They would share their favorite things of this year.

Hallmark recently released a movie about crafting an end-of-year annual Christmas letter. In the movie, the main character and matriarch Settie Rose wants to win her town’s holiday writing contest. She’s struggling to put her year in words that will melt the hearts of all in her town. So she does what any sensible person does — she hires a writer, Juan, to write the letter for her. This is as middle of the road Hallmark story structure, and I can’t say I would recommend it, but it did hit a nerve.

I put too much emphasis on the prep work. The annual review is where you write down everything significant that happened that year. Then you go through your new years resolution and check off what worked and didn’t work. I fall flat with this task because when I really think back to it, it feels like a heavy lift. I would go through my calendar, note the significant items. I would skip the resolutions — I’ve replaced them with quarterly goals. And I lament the fact that I haven’t done any weekly or monthly reviews, so I would get discouraged to look back.

Then again, that’s steering away from the main point. The Christmas letter doesn’t care if you did that work or not. It’s a comfort letter that you send out to remind people you are still thinking about them. Of course instead of sending out a letter, I could instead have 50 conversations with 50 people that are important in my life. And maybe that’s a nice thing to do at a future date. For now, writing this is my compromise. We have put up our Christmas tree, we are drinking hot cocoa, and we are watching more middle of the road Hallmark movies.

Happy Holidays everyone!

P.S

Thanks for reading my little rant about letter writing. Let me share with you my end of year music playlist! Here it is on Spotify and YouTube!

📍 Location: Bay Area, CA (in transit)

I find it difficult to get started with writing. It is easier for me to give up on writing if I’ve lost a streak. The cadence of the monthly writing rhythm can be easily knocked off balance with any size excuse. I’m reminded of Simon Willison’s idea of escalating streaks, meaning improvement with each iteration. I’d like to think that I can write a better newsletter for every issue and it is about something bigger. Therein lies the Sisyphean lie for writing. The best thing to do is to just start.

The tardiness of this newsletter comes from purchasing our first home. Morgan and I seriously started looking at the beginning of September, and last week, we got an accepted offer. It’s been a whirlwind of emotions. We lost the first offer being outbid by 8 other prospect home owners. 5 of those 8 bids were asking 20% over. We have our fingers crossed the we will get through closing without any hitches.

Otherwise, beyond chugging away at work, I’ve finished two books this month.

1. How Infrastructure Works

I mentioned this one on my blog at the beginning of the year. Deb Chandra’s newsletter, MetaFoundry, has been a favorite of mine for years. I can’t remember how I stumbled upon it. It reminds me of the Engineering classes I wanted to take, mixed with my interest in Civil Engineering and public infrastructure. The book is a welcoming compliment to those ideas, going deeper into the ideas of networks and introducing the social and political structures around infrastructure.

1. Frostbite

As a fan and donating member of Gastropod for years, this book is a deeper dive into a topic than a typical podcast episode. This well-researched book is an examination of an aspect of food overlooked — freezing food. While this appears commonplace now, that wasn’t the case a century ago. Going deep into the cryosphere, Nicola Twilley examines the history and relationships we have with storing our food in the cold climate. Strange fun fact: some people working in large refrigeration plants develop illnesses at the beginning before their body acclimates. Sometimes, when they are driving home, they blast the AC since they are so accustomed to the cold.

The idea of summarizing books annoys me. I want these elegant book notes like summaries and lessons learned. The ability to distill knowledge into bite-sized tips or notes sounds appealing, yet I know it takes a lot of work.

This issue was inspired by Celine Nguyen’s newsletter, “Personal Canon” where in her latest issue, she also addresses the large task of summarizing books. I’m neither as eloquent nor comprehensive with book summaries nor do I think that’s my strength. Are you a huge book note-taker? Do you have a system? If you are, Jillian Hess’ Noted newsletter might be right up your alley.

Ciao.

📍 Location: San Jose, CA

I’ve been a fan of making seasonal music playlists for more than a decade. I started in iTunes, making new music and fitting them into playlists for road trips on my iPod. Looking back, these playlists feel like a snapshot of my life and where I was. It evokes specific memories of who I was with and where I felt I was at that time of my life.

There was this time when my friend Teagan and I were road-tripping through the coast of the Pacific Northwest while listening to a song Moby made as part of NPR’s “Project Music” called Gone to Sleep. While on the narrow highway amidst windy roads cliffside, as well as the void of light through the redwood forests during the nighttime, I had an eerie, yet hopeful mood. There’s a video game called Pacific Drive that I haven’t played, but I must wonder if it captures a similar mood in its soundtrack.

In the late 90’s at the supermarket checkout aisle, I remember looking at the back cover of “Now That’s What I Call Music” compilation CDs. The curator took the billboard’s top 20 list and burned them onto a CD. I remember challenging myself to make a more personal CD for the music I was listening to and started ripping them and putting them into my CD player. It was always a challenge trying to fit the 70-minute form factor. The result was always a mishmash of the music I was listening to at the time. Whether it was rediscovering rock bands of the 70s, or new pop hits, it all got smashed together unordered. And inevitably, I would hit skip on songs I knew didn’t fit after the 10th listen-through.

Much later, I found myself in the Metafilter community where I would participate in a seasonal CD swap. An organizer would connect a small group and you. Each swap had a catchy title, usually alluding to a song, like “Swap Me Maybe”, “The Songbird Swap”, and “Swap Battle”. I loved taking a walk with my music player and strolling to someone else’s curation. As one of those people who have said “I listen to a little of everything”, the eclectic range appealed to me. It might have been a warm surprise from Ray LaMontagne, or an electronica beat of Phantogram.

I feel like the tides changed when I converted to a streaming service. I know the argument sounds like a broken record about not owning a physical copy of the music. Beyond that, the playlists that have been curated for me don’t feel as personal as receiving a mixtape cassette. The Algorithm supposedly knows my tastes and creates a warm echo chamber of what’s come before. But if I’ve learned anything from different music eras, disruption is required to challenge the listener. We need Stravinky’s The Rite of Spring to drive into our brains atonality. Or Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band’s Trout Mask Replica to challenge our ears with discordant rhythms and motifs. I would like to think the Algorithm works by keeping you in the echo chamber long enough that everything starts to sound the same, and the potential for a playlist to be great becomes mediocre.

With the advent of short video platforms like TikTok, Vine (RIP), Instagram Reels, Snapchat, and so many others, the music that plays along is the sound bites. You can’t fit an album into that form factor, and the music industry has transformed with it. Add to that the oddly structured price per stream and you get a mix of more singles that can hit viral numbers. I’m not interested in dissecting if that’s good or bad for the industry. I’m more interested in how that affects my personal music listening habits. The streaming giants have created music ecosystems around machine-learned playlist creations based on what is similar and viral, and rewarding those who have figured that formula out with the biggest payouts. All of this said, this also feeds into the Algorithm’s playlist selection.

With our current modes of listening to playlists, I have to wonder, where can I fit my voice in playlist curation? I haven’t changed my habit of making seasonal playlists, but the ways I discover music have.

There’s an idealized version of the playlist creation process I have in mind. I would take the time to listen to dozens of albums end to end and pick and choose the handfuls of songs that have resonated with me. But more and more, the Algorithm prevails. I try hard to go with a select few curators who have great tastes. Or radio stations that still employ DJs to spin their favorite tunes.

My friend D and I created an end-of-year playlist that has rules. The songs chosen must have been released that year, is something we find has resonated most with us that year and must fit on a 70-minute CD. It mixes what I felt in those seasonal playlists and puts my thinking cap on what is worthwhile to include. Since space is limited, you can’t put all of the year’s hits. I find creativity in these constraints and mindfully listen to that playlist over and over until it feels right. That’s what I think makes a great curated mixtape. And it gets to be saved and listened to whenever, like a few months from now, or listened to a decade later as a retrospective. Let’s bring back the era of mixtapes.

📍 Location: San Jose, CA

This summer ramped up slowly, then became scorching. And that comes with a fire watch warning. 90F/32C isn’t what I would call ideal, especially in dry heat. And a high of 129F at Death Valley is enough to make one wonder. We held a family and friends BBQ earlier this month that was well attended. Even with setting up a canopy for our guests, it remained hot to be around the yard.

Around The Blog

I’ve re-written the home page and main pages of the website. It has more of a feed form factor plus pagination. Also, updated content is now fed back to the top. This helps re-surface curation posts and project updates.

Interwebs Highlights

I liked the new format I started last month of sharing 2 or 3 things I read over the past month, so I’m going to continue having that in the newsletter. Here are two things that have resonated with me.

• The True Story of Hushpuppies, a Genuine Carolina Treat by Robert F. Moss. It started with a general curiosity if Confederate soldiers had come up with Hushpuppies, and once you’re in the rabbit hole, you come out understanding the lore.
• Consulting Firms Are the Early Winners of the AI Boom. There’s an analogy floating around that you can compare AI to the Internet boom of the 90s. Except there are major differences, mainly cost. Training an AI model takes a lot of compute time, and getting to the next step takes Trillions of dollars. And with that investment, it’s not a given there will be a major difference between the current model and the next one. These consulting firms are selling slightly better workflows, but organizations aren’t getting the 10x delivery they were promised.

Currently Reading

I’ve started reading Frostbite by Nicola Twilley, and it satisfies my curiosity. For example, large refrigeration warehouses is a cryosphere. Many people who start working in it quit before the end of the day due to the cold. And those who do stick it out get all sorts of sicknesses before their body acclimates.

That’s all I have for this month. Stay cool out there, and watch some Olympic sports.

📍 Location: San Carlos, CA

If May was a happy time in our lives, then June erupted with a rude awakening. My wife and I caught COVID for the first time, which is surprising we didn’t catch it sooner. The first week hit me hard, the second week I lost my sense of taste. It was the weirdest thing as I was cooking some stew, I felt lost without my sense of smell. I know there were some viral moments during the pandemic of people showing how they could eat the weirdest combinations, and it was bizarre, but that seemed like a blip in history. When I lost my sense, it dawned on me how much we rely on our olfactory to navigate the world. I burned a candle and couldn’t smell it, convincing me if I was in a burning building, I’d have to rely on my sense of touch over smell.

I was mostly recovered by the third week. I dread anyone suffering through long COVID. Let me know how your COVID experience went if you’ve caught it. And if you haven’t, my goodness, keep it up.

Crafting Around

• After a short hiatus, we are back to posting my weekly notes.
• Sometimes, you’ll see me posting on my personal stream. I’m thinking of adding Webmentions to the website so I can tie these into federated social networks. If you have experience around this, please let me know 😀
• On my “build list” is a small AI app to allow students to ask questions about their class given their syllabus. I shared my notes about RAG understand the topic.

Interwebs Highlights

• As China’s Internet Disappears, ‘We Lose Parts of Our Collective Memory’ - China’s Internet lacks the number of websites and has set up a few walled gardens. The loss of digital identity and the ways in which these few apps lose in accessibility make it different to navigate around their world.
• Boz breaks down his system, Inbox Ten. “For those who are curious, my system is Inbox Ten. That means I aim to end every day with fewer than ten emails in my inbox. I also have fewer than ten open chat threads across all interfaces. I’ve also read all relevant notifications in internal tools, read all relevant posts in internal groups I care about, and started rough drafts of any relevant proactive communications I intend to produce.” Personally, I try to stick to clean my digital house weekly via a weekly review.
• “Amateurs, in contrast, are not certified as knowing. They may or may not know, and their ‘knowledge’ may or may not be trustworthy, but they are always seeking. They are striving to know, in their own ways of knowing, ways that are meaningful to them but may or may not be meaningful to others. Amateurs are always learning, never at a steady state of knowing.” Some of the ethos in this blog is to have a beginner’s mindset, and this piece of writing embodies that by Peter Gray on his newsletter post, In Praise of Amateurism.
• Nadia Asparouhova explores jhanas. “Jhanas are like swirling the paintbrush of your consciousness across a palette of altered sensations. These states vary in intensity; some are comparable to psychedelics, MDMA, or dissociatives.” I’m extremely interested and will be diving deeper.
• Kent Beck writes “Make the Change Easy Then Make the Easy Change” in his post Hinge.

See you around 👋🏽

📍 Location: San Carlos, CA

This month’s newsletter is purposefully shorter because I got married this month! I decided to take off time from work and other obligations to embrace the moment. There’s times in our lives we want to cherish the experience over spending time lost in our devices, so I dedicated two weeks to wedding preparation, having the wedding, and enjoying a much needed break on our honeymoon.

I hope you all are doing wonderful and looking forward to starting something fresh in June!

Switch Flipping

📍 Location: San Jose, CA

The weather in the Bay Area during this season is like Mother Nature flipping the switch between cold and hot. She can’t make up her mind if it’s ready for full blown summer or cold rainy days. This comes as I think if lavender bushes will bloom for my wedding next month 🤞🏼. Like most things in life, these forces are outside our control. You prepare as much as you can and let the rest play out.

As with the previous months, I come with some website updates.

Inspirations

I carved my own space of curated inspirations. A table of websites that should technically be a mood board of the vibes I think could go with CraftByZen’s website.

For the past few years, I’ve kept a note of inspirational websites. These websites include blogs that I continue to follow, creatives showing their talents, and web design that makes me wonder.

In the future, I want to expand this to other types of inspirations. It’s driven by my own curiosity attractors.

The Stream

I created a separate feed called “The Stream”. I wrote a short blog about it.

The stream is a personal feed of my thoughts on things I’m working on, interested in, or a random shower thought that might be worth putting some additional thought into. The stream is a form of expression, posting something spur of the moment, without the crowdedness of a social network like Twitter or Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, those places are great for comment and reply interactions. But I also need my own trail of what I’m writing and thinking about that’s not hammered by likes, comments, and other social features that I find distracting.

Classifieds

As part of an ongoing effort to engage my network, I want to use this opportunity for anyone to advertise on my newsletters. If you’ve got a big launch, trying to look for work, maybe find that missed connection, feel free to reach out to me.

• Keith Eastman looking for new opportunities
• Brian Smaalders is looking for new opportunities

Closing thoughts

As mentioned in the last newsletter, I’ve been practicing something along the lines of my theme, “The year of renewal”. In March, it was testing out different activities to break my dopamine addiction. A dopamine detox if you will. I realized how strong my pulls were and it will take more than a month to break those addictions, like doomscrolling and a constant feed of consumption. During April, I’m experimenting with renewed interests in language learning. I’m almost half a year with my streaks on Duolingo!

I hope you are all doing well and enjoy this lovely spring transition!

Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.

— Diane Ackerman

Happy Springtime everyone!

Yearly Theme

For the past few years, I’ve been trying something new instead of New Year’s resolutions: a yearly theme.

But first, what is a “yearly theme”? Instead of setting resolutions at the start of the year, you set an overall idea of how you would like to approach each year or season. This then becomes a guide for your personal and/or professional life throughout that period.

Ideally, you would also think of what the ideal outcome is for a set period and some key actions you would like to complete. This helps you maintain focus throughout the year when considering new projects.

My yearly theme for 2024 is “Year of Renewal”. As I mentioned in the last newsletter, I was under a lot of stress last year, and I thought I would take a step back and gather myself again.

In practice, this looks like a goal a month, focusing on a different part of renewal. January was defining boundaries. I answered the following questions:

• What do I have to accept?
• What do I leave behind?
• What do I adopt?

This helped me determine how to bring in the new year by making these identifications.

In February, I wanted to renew my sense of play. As I’ll go over in my highlights, I’ve been playing with code again. ChatGPT and other LLMs have renewed my interest in bespoke applications, i.e. one-off applications that serve a singular purpose. It’s renewed my sense of what I like to work on, even if it’s a selfish purpose to fulfill my curiosities.

I’ll go over March’s goal in the next newsletter, as I’m still in the middle of it.

Craft By Zen Highlights

Now that I have a routine of adding content to my website, here’s a recap of what I did in March.

• Weekly Notes - Weekly notes continue! I’ve been using that as a scratch pad collecting what I’ve discovered over the past week. I’ve wanted a reflection process that slows down the hose of information presented to us daily. There’s too much endless scrolling, and by forcing myself to review what it is I’m looking at. And also, at a second glance, I realize what’s important and not important to share.
  • Case in point, here’s an article about a couple who reconnected 77 years later.
• Recruiters - as recruiters reach out to me, I’ve been adding their job postings to my classifieds.
• Curations - I haven’t been as active in adding more curations. I have plans on adding a micro-blog at some point that will distinguish longer posts and a free-form stream of thought. I love the examples like The stream and The Verge authors.
• Projects / Experiments - I was messing around with ChatGPT to create a Guitar Fingering tool to help me quickly look up a chord. I wasn’t satisfied with what I found online, so I aided ChatGPT to build on it, although, at the end of the day, I took what it outputted as a template and finished it myself.
  • Another experiment was building a Chrome extension to quickly add links to my Obsidian vault.
  • Lastly, I was putting together some small scripts to help me parse through my Google Contacts export and add them to my Obsidian vault as a personal CRM. I will have an article to follow up with how I use the personal CRM soon.

Thanks for all of the support from everyone! If you like these updates, you can always reply to these emails and let me know what’s going on in your life.

That’s all for now!

Ciao

None of us know what will happen. Don’t spend time worrying about it. Make the most beautiful thing you can. Try to do that every day. That’s it.

— Laurie Anderson

I hope everyone’s winter has been going well. This is typically the time we throw on additional blankets. The family enjoyed a Christmas tree this past January, and it’s been our signal for a warmer, cozier time. We may throw on a feel-good movie for good measure.

To be honest, I was scared to start again. I left in silence, leaving the last part of a 7-part series go unpublished. It has been silently published on my website, in case you care to go back to the archives. And I’m afraid I let everyone down by going silent for 5 years (seriously 😳). But another part of me wants to reach out, say hello, and tell the world what I’ve been up to. I miss the intimate space and the replies I would get from you, dear readers. Maybe in the future, I’ll make a Discord server or a forum. But alas, there’s only so much time in the day for starting new projects.

🧹 Housekeeping

I’ve made some major updates to my website. Last year, I did a major rewrite to make publishing as seamless as possible. I’ve had a lot of configuration issues in the past with my Jekyll project, and rather than futzing around with yet another Ruby manager, I’ve moved myself over to Astro.

The other reason for making updates to my website is it feels like my attempt at reclaiming space I willingly handed over the past decade with social media. I like the tiny web circles, like my friend’s Discord server and other blogs. By that same token, I love carving out my own Internet space.

As such, I’ve been hammering on additions that make my personal space feel more at home and less of a microblog you shout into the air with countless other quasi-anonymous people.

Curations: In my mind, a curation is a collection that has been personally selected for a topic or theme. I think of it beyond listicles, where I can dive into other thoughts as I’m describing my favorite book, movie, or favorite creator. There’s much to explore.

Now: I have added it to the now-list page. A Now page is what you’re up to now. Here’s mine. However, if you want an update, I’ll email it in this newsletter.

Projects: I’ve been busy updating my projects so they are all consistent.

Writing: I’ve been experimenting with different formats. Today I Learned (TIL), Weekly Notes, Website updates, and things that I’m learning. I’ve noticed I like a mix of short-form and long-form, and I’ll continue to publish regularly now my website administration is a lot easier to handle.

Logs: In case you didn’t know, I’ve been putting all of my media consumed in one place. At least the things I keep track of.

I won’t be as extensive in future newsletters about my housekeeping updates.

📣 Personal Note

I left some of you wondering about my father and his health issues. He’s back home and still recovering. We’re visiting him once a week, and things are slowly progressing. I will give you more updates when I have them.

As always, feel free to reply. Share something you’ve been up to this winter. Send pictures of your favorite captured moment of 2024. That’s all for now. 👋🏽

As some of you may know, Tinyletter is out of operation. I’ve been using them since I started my blog back in November, 2014. My readership numbers have been low enough where it didn’t make sense to ever migrate off of it. The free tier limit was 500 emails.

With Tinyletter’s end meant I was in search of another service that has a free tier, or something with a reasonable price. I don’t like the idea of making people pay to read what I want to say, so I’ve chosen buttondown. Their free-tier is limited to 100 subscribers, so I’ve had to knock down the readership a bit. Also, I want to scale this back until my newsletter is back in an appropriate cadence. I’ve been thinking of keeping a monthly rhythm as my writing output isn’t as prolific as it used to. I’ll start with that for now and see if I can handle more than that.

With that, I’m going to send my first newsletter sometime in February, so make sure you are subscribed. Check out the form to on the newsletter page, or try below.

Introduction

Hello letter friends,

This is my last letter for the series, “Seven Degrees of Strangers”. If you haven’t followed the journey, you can check it out on my website. I’ve written about 6 different people I talked to one degree of separation apart.

For those of you who may have noticed an error, the phrase is six degrees of separation, not seven. I would like to say I did that on purpose. I didn’t. I could have lied and said this is to close the loop. To be frank, I was deluded by my title, I thought this would be a great experiment.

Nevertheless, Raina chose a wonderful person last. Someone with a perspective I don’t have, yet we had a fantastic conversation.

Enter Megan Jolly

Megan lives in Portland and met Raina through a basketball camp Raina’s husband was starting. I believe Raina chose to ask me to speak with Megan because of Megan’s vision impairment. She has Leber’s disease, a mitochondrial defect that affects the optic nerve and can lead to blindness. Men are more prone to blindness from this recessive trait, and Megan is one of the unlucky ones in the gene pool. She found out in 2016 when she was getting a new prescription for her glasses. That was subsequently the last time she drove.

Going Blind

Megan isn’t completely blind. She’s got no central vision and about 45% of her peripheral vision. Before her diagnosis, Megan’s life was playing soccer, working in non-profit land, hanging out with friends. And after the diagnosis, Megan still does many of the same things, but some activities are a lot harder. Since Megan doesn’t drive, she relies on public transportation. While service is good in Portland, it takes longer to travel. Also, Megan can’t do some of her finances, so her friend became her power of attorney since the banking website she’s supposed to use has poor accessibility support.

For the first two months, Megan’s life wasn’t going well. A few months in, Megan’s mom found the Oregon Commission for the Blind and got her to sign up.

Oregon Commission for the Blind

The Oregon Commission for the Blind is a state agency with paid staff to help teach the blind best practices by delivering courses. They also help students find jobs. The classes run 4 terms a year and each of them lasts around 12 weeks. These classes range from orientation and movement to sightless self-defense.

The instruction is 1 to 1, tailored for each student. Everyone’s skill level is different, like computer competency. Megan’s an expert at using a computer, so the teacher tailored her education accordingly. Someone with no computer skills would have to start out as a novice, like starting by using a keyboard.

While the curriculum has some general guidelines and best practices, the teachers help with one-off things too. Megan wanted to vote for the upcoming election but didn’t know how to do it. Her instructor and she went to the voting station and the person manning the booths didn’t know either. They investigated and figured it out given some other voting staff support.

The commission’s job is to help the blind reach the point of doing what people normally do. Megan loves to hike, so with her instructor James, she’s been able to hike around. Some spots are a bit tricky than others. She recommends Angel’s Rest if you’re every around Portland want to see an awesome view of the Columbia River.

As I was doing some follow-up research about the organization, I ran across this quote. “The real problem of blindness is not the blindness itself—not the acquisition of skills or techniques or competence. The real problem is the lack of understanding and the misconceptions which exist.” It’s from the National Federation for the Blind. After talking to Megan, I walked away with a better understanding of blindness and how it affects us.

Takeaways

I loved talking to Megan. I was able to learn how her disability does not limit her. She told me how the commission has sightless defense classes, how students there come to learn about blind athlete events such as dragon boat races. She is mentally competent, and would like some kind takeaways for readers.

• If you come across a blind person, please ask if they need help before helping them.
• Don’t touch them. Introduce yourself and ask them if they assistance.
• For my web developer friends out there, please build websites with accessiblility in mind

I’ve opened my eyes to a new kind of awareness by talking to Megan. So if you have the chance, strike up a conversation with a visually impaired person. You never know what you’ll learn.

Acknowledgments

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped me with this project. This wouldn’t be possible without all of you readers who have stuck with me, even while I went through a few months hiatus. It’s time for me to re-read Steven Pressfield’s “The War of Art”. First, I’d like to recognize Megan Gebhart whose blog turned book, 52 Cups of Coffee, inspired me to write this short series.

Of course, I’d like to call out every person I got to interview. To my good friend, Simon, who helped kick off this series and being kick-ass at what he does and reminds me how much potential we have. To the fantastic Evan whose illustrations elevate the writing and logo that signifies the connections between all of us. To Joe for being such a great storyteller and having such a great philosophy on life. To Mary who gave me a phone call earlier this year and continues to remind me how much connections matter. To Julie for writing a book that read after and uses her last concept as a mantra for life. To Raina for waiting patiently for my piece to come out and for reaching out and being a champion. To Megan for showing me a part of life I rarely get to see. You all have been great guests, and I thank every one of you.

And I thank my family and friends for sticking with this series. Your feedback has inspired me to continue writing. And maybe had to stick around and were forced to listen to me talk about all of my guests. Thank you. You’re the best.

Introduction

If you’ve been keeping up with me for this long, that means I have some loyal readers out there. Hi, it’s been a while. Haven’t spoken about this project in forever. I’ve had this aching feeling of completing this project for months. Every time I would start, I’d get distracted by something else. A new job, obligations, travel. Needless to say, I had trouble with time management for creative pursuits.

And now I’m back. Ready to tell you about the last two people I interviewed for “Seven Degress of Strangers”. This week, I’ll recall a conversation I had with Raina Evans, last September. Yikes. Raina, if you’re reading this, I’m truly sorry this took so long.

Enter Raina Evans

After speaking with Julie, I asked for someone diverse, with a varied background. Enter Raina Evans.

Raina and Julie’s ex-husband used to work for a youth organization in the mid to late 90s. Her daughter and Julie’s oldest son used to play together and were the same age.

On the day I spoke to Raina, she had finished a nice brunch with her daughter and grandchild at Black Bear Cafe. Raina was radiant. This woman was full of energy, excited to talk about what she does and what she’s accomplished.

Raina’s worn many hats. She is the current owner of Ready to Rent, a program to train residential renters. As the owner of the program, Raina trains the instructors of this program. After speaking to Raina, I only found a glimpse of how rich her life really is.

She adds so much detail through her language and exuberance of how she talks. It showed in our conversation in the tiniest details, like her mention of how her brunch went. I knew this was going to be an interesting conversation.

Ready to Rent

In the early 2000’s, Raina was working at the Portland Housing Center. This organization she worked for ran a training program for first time renters. They called the program “Ready to Rent”. In 2006, the board wanted someone to run this program. They asked around, but couldn’t find someone with the right skill set. They kept getting candidates with social work backgrounds. What they were looking for than management and marketing backgrounds. Putting two and two together, and they looked at Raina’s background and saw a great fit. But the first time the board asked her, Raina refused. They came back a few days later and asked again. And again, she refused. On the third try, Raina relented. She just got married a few months prior and lost her position on the board. The new marriage came with their own children. Raina thought this was the third time, and perhaps this might be her calling.

Raina gave the board one year to try it out. And then it turned to giving it a second year. By the third year, Raina stayed at this position. But the board came back and told Raina they would be cutting the program. The board chair asked Raina if she might want to run “Ready to Rent” as a private entity. Ready to Rent’s curriculum is one of a kind. There isn’t one quite like this. Raina, with the support of the chair, spun this out on her own. To her surprise, the program grew. A lot. Raina took this operation across the US and Canada. She trains instructors to be certified in the program.

By 2010, Raina took the IP from the commission. She’s been working at this for a decade and still going strong.

Memorable Moments

I asked Raina what were some memorable moments she’s had training adults. She gave me two stories.

1

On the big island of Hawaii, the mayor of Hawaii country was amongst the group Raina trained. Raina doesn’t jump into the material on the first day of training. She focuses instead on how adults learn. After that first day, Raina jumps into the program.

The mayor spoke with Raina after the class was over and said, “Now I get it. We’ve been communicating wrong this whole time. We’ve been communication with our people and with clients the wrong way. You taught us how adult learners learn.” The course changed the policy on communicating with others. This was an eye opening experience for the mayor.

2

Raina came out to teach in Sacramento, California. During the first week, she taught city and county workers. The second week, she taught a consortium of agencies. Today, about 100 trainers in Sacramento delivers this curriculum. But it didn’t stop there. The woman who first asked Raina to teach in Sacramento moved to another county. She asked Raina to teach people in the county over as well.

Raina continues to thrive by a viral effect. The cirriculum is effective from years of iteration. People take away a lot from the course. All in all, Ready to Rent continues to grow through word of mouth. As Raina puts it, “the program markets itself.”

3

Raina’s niece and boyfriend had a baby shower. The family’s mother came out from the other side of Mt. Hood. Essentially the boonies. They may be the only African American family in their town.

The mom was talking about how they send clients to Ready to Rent. She asked Raina if she heard of it, and Raina revealed she’s behind it. “You are ‘Ready to Rent’?” Raina proves word of mouth is one of the best techniques in marketing. Also, Raina’s right. The curriculum is so good, it does market itself.

Class Evaluations

One of the requirements of teaching the course is distributing class evaluations. At the end of the course, students fill out class evaluations and get sent back to Raina. This helps Raina gauge how the students and teachers are doing and if the classes are of quality. One of the questions on this evaluation asks the students how prepared they are in renting. The students always respond with similar answers: Yes, they are ready.

There’s also freeform text where the students can give back general feedback. Raina was blown away when she read the student “no longer has to lie on housing apps”. Ready to Rent was taught in prisons, and the inmate had that profound realization.

To circle back to the viral effect, 80% of evaluations show they would recommend the course to a friend. Raina often sees the same feedback. “Everyone needs to take this course”. Former students bring “Ready to Rent” up at church, AA meetings, at work. All over.

Takeaway

Raina’s takeaway message was “you never know what your calling is. Leave yourself open to everything”.

Conclusion

After each interview, I realize I want to continue the conversation. Each person I’ve spoken to for this newsletter have more stories to tell. Many more than could ever fit in a one hour time slot or 300 page biography. And, as I truncated an hour-long interview for you, dear reader, I have no doubt I could write so much more.

At the end of our conversation, Raina told me about a talk show she hosted on local broadcasting. This was back in the late 80’s, and it was called “Let’s Talk with Raina”. Raina was talking about inclusion and diversity. I have a huge interest on teaching diversity to youth and Raina and I could talk for hours about this.

Introduction

If this is the first time you are reading this series, welcome. This is a series about communication, connections, and perspectives. My last interviewee, Mary Aipoalani, gave me too many choices on who to interview next. I was in choice paralysis until I received this text from Mary. “You need to connect with her. I just told her about you.”

Attached to the text was a VCard, a digital business card that makes it easy to add them to your contacts list. Or at least in theory it’s supposed to be easy. I had the complication of incompatible file formats. Android phones hate Apple’s VCards attachments. If you ever run into this problem, save the VCard text to a computer and add it to your contacts online. And if you’re a iOS or Android developer, please make this integration easier. Thanks.

Enter Julie Valenti

Julie is alive, energized by the southern California sun. She harnesses that energy and uses it to help people rewire their brains. Rewire metaphorically. Her hidden agenda is by rewiring brains, people will be more alive. And by being more alive, she hopes people can become contributors and producers in our world. In turn, she hopes people consume less.

Let’s step back for a moment. Who is Julie? She’s a new resident of San Diego. She moved here because she’d rather soak up the sun than live in a cloudy and low-lit place like Portland, Oregon. She lived in Portland for the past 23 years. From Portland’s dreary weather, she developed SAD - Seasonal Affective Disorder. When Julie’s friend invited her to come out to San Diego months ago, she knew she had to move there.

Besides sun worshipping, Julie is the owner of Portland’s Wisdom and Recovery Wellness Center. She works with patients who suffer from confusing childhoods. This is post-traumatic stress disorder in childhood. This is a result of bad parenting. The range varies from parents who were abusive, or neglectful, or emotionally taxing.

Julie’s center has been around for over a decade. Julie has been in practice from much longer. Julie is also an author. She wrote a book called “Knowing How: The 20 Concepts to Rewiring Your Brain” based off her practice.

Empty Nest Syndrome

Julie cites one of the reasons to move to San Diego was to be closer to her youngest son. Her son was the last child to leave home. He moved to Los Angeles, and Julie wanted to be able to visit.

I asked Julie what was a mother’s perspective on empty nest syndrome. Julie explains “empty nest syndrome” is a fancy term for grief. When children are around, the mother produces a bonding hormone, oxytocin. When the children leave the nest, the mother stops producing as much oxytocin. A result of the hormonal change is the same symptoms of grief and loss.

The mother must come to her terms with the life adjustment. When neglected, the result is oftentimes a “mid-life crisis”. She withdraws and re-evaluates herself. When recognized, the mother feels it in her body.

The mother must setup boundaries with her children. The child is in a different place with life, independent from the nest. Part of the re-adjustments Julie talks about is developing boundaries with the children. For Julie, she had a conversation with her son in LA. She asked how often they would talk over the phone, how often they would see each other, how much space they needed from each other. Julie wants to make sure she would not suffocate her child.

I asked Julie about empty nest syndrome for personal reasons. My sister, the youngest sibling, has left the nest. My mother hasn’t been dealing with empty nest syndrome head on. Armed with a better understanding, I am tasked with having a conversation with my mom about empty nest syndrome and grief.

Wisdom and Recovery Wellness Center

Julie works with patients who suffer from PTSD introduced from childhood. She spends every two weeks in Portland to help with logistics for the center. When she’s back in San Diego, she takes clients remote. When Julie is on-site, she is also training staff members.

To be clear, Julie is not practicing traditional psychotherapy. That means, clients do not come in and lay on a couch for an hour every week for the rest of their lives. Julie is a licensed hypnotherapist. She wants her patients to heal and be less dependent of a therapist. Stop going altogether.

Neuroplasticity

“You can’t teach a dog new tricks.” This is not true. Brains are not fixed after a certain age. Recent research shows neurons that fire together wire together. The result is neuroplasticity, an ability to rewire your brain. By taking the time to learn or un-learn, the brain will form neuropathways that forms new habits.

Carol Dweck wrote a book about this called “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”. In the book, Dweck describes and differentiates between fixed mindsets and growth mindsets. Dweck talks of people with fixed mindsets are less prone to take risks and fail. She talks about how people with fixed mindsets shut down after unable to do specific tasks. On the contrary, people with a growth mindset allow for failure and learn from mistakes and try again. In reality, everyone is a little of both. We allow for failure in some aspects of our lives, growth mindset, and we are set in our ways in others, fixed mindset.

Julie uses this understanding of neuroplasticity to teach her clients they have the ability to change. With some guidance and practice, the client will be able to re-wire their brains.

Rewiring Communication

I had the chance to read Julie’s book on a plane ride from San Jose to St. Louis. The book is for people with a confusing childhood and therapists. I would make the case the book can also be for people who don’t have a confusing childhood. I recognize I struggle with some of the concepts.

The 20 concepts are tools to help arm the reader. Julie writes about each concept by going into examples of how the concept applies. At the end of the concept, she supplies a self-assessment. The self-assessment asks the reader questions. These questions help solidify their understanding of how the concept relates to them. I have not finished through the self-assessments on my first reading, and will return to them.

Many concepts apply to the reader’s efforts in dealing with tough decisions. By giving alternatives to dealing with these situations, the reader can build habits. Or unlearning habits that have been ingrained since their childhood. After reading the book, Julie hopes the reader asks themselves the big questions. What they are doing in the world? Why do they do what they do based off their hardwiring? What they can do different? How to go about doing different?

Betty is at home, making dinner for her husband James. She’s had a stressful day when her car broke down. She wants to ask James about buying a new car when he gets home. Betty hears James come in and welcomes him home. James has a frustrated look on his face and tells Betty he can’t talk now. James proceeds to the living room, sits down, and turns on the television.

Betty’s confused and frustrated. As mentioned, Betty was expecting James to come home and talk to her. Now that her expectations are thwarted, Betty must face her own thoughts and emotions. Betty has yelled at James in the past for similar behavior before. None of the previous encounters have ended well. Betty takes a breath and reviews the 5 part communication formula.

1. Observation

Betty takes an objective view of the situation and reviews the events. Betty was making dinner and she noticed her husband came home. He looked frustrated and told Betty not to talk to him.

2. Thoughts

Betty thinks this is rude. Betty thinks this is a form of rejection, and thinks James doesn’t love her.

3. Feelings

Betty feels rejected, sad, depressed, confused.

4. Analyze Desires

Betty wants James to talk to her when she comes home.

5. Participate

Now that Betty has followed the first four steps, she can recount that to James when they both have calmed down.

“James, I’d like to bring up what happened earlier. I was making dinner and noticed you came home. You looked frustrated and told me not to talk to you. I thought this was rude. I thought this was a form of rejection and thought you don’t love me. I felt rejected, sad, depressed, confused. When you came home, I wanted to be able to talk to you. I wanted your attention because I’ve been alone all day. Are you willing to talk to me when you come home?”

At this point, James could counter with something else. He needs time to calm down from his day at work. The important thing is the conversation has started. Each party can reach a point of compromise. Also, James understands Betty’s perspective, so he is primed with an answer or counter.

With practice, Betty can get better at communicating with others. She can work through her thoughts and feelings and let others know what she is going through. Betty is a metaphor for people who go through similar situations. Betty is a metaphor for situations I’ve found myself in.

Adult Responsibility is Non-Negotiable

Julie grew up in Idaho. Her mother had an addiction to pain killers. Her mother’s addiction affected how her children. Julie’s upbringing and relationship to her mother was toxic. Julie writes how her mother’s dependence to legal drugs created problems at home. When the drugs were there, Julie’s mother was fine. But when the drugs weren’t, Julie’s mother would turn into a different person. Julie thought she had to take care of her mother, and became the caretaker for her mother.

It wasn’t until much later Julie understood the impact. Her relationship with her mother resulted in bad behavior and life choices. For example, Julie was in a relationship where her partner was an addict. Julie played the rescuer to her partner and created a co-dependent dynamic.

Julie made decisions to change her behavior. She studied issues in parent-child relationships. She was able to develop a framework to help her re-wire her brain.

Julie sees traditional therapy as ineffective. Some therapies continue for decades without lasting results. Patients come back, lie on the couch, and talk out their issues to their therapist. Rinse and repeat for years to decades. It feels like all the therapist is there for is someone who will listen, for a hefty sum. Sounds eerily familiar to the co-dependent dynamic.

At the end of the book, Julie’s last concept is “Adult Responsibility is Non-Negotiable”. Say there’s a situation you have had a tough time dealing with. Like having a conversation with a complete stranger. Or getting angry over things out of your control. What do you do now? You take the high road. You act like an adult because you’re an adult. This is my personal take on the book - of being able to liberate yourself. It’s not an easy road for all. For some, it will take time and practice. Julie’s hope is if you’re not able to take on adult responsibility, it is your duty to get to that point.

Takeaway message

Julie’s takeaway is to understand and resolve your childhood trauma. Resolution may come in the form of rewiring your brain.

Promotion

I read through Julie’s book and recommend it. I want to giveaway one free copy of Julie’s book to one of my readers. To enter, reply to this email and tell me what you think of this series so far. If you read this on my social media links, subscribe to the newsletter. New subscribers will be added to the contest. You have one week to apply. Deadline is December 18th, 2017, 12AM PST.

If I have perked your interests with childhood trauma, please buy Julie’s book. If you’re interested in joining a reading group, let me know. I would love to continue the conversation.

Update: 2024-02-01

Tinyletter is out of operation. I’ve created a new newsletter using button.down, which you can subscribe to on the newsletter page.

Introduction

Last week, I wrote about my interview with Joe Lazzara, owner of Joe’s Butcher and Fish Market. This week, we’re reviewing the core theme of the series: connection. If you’re new to this newsletter series, I’m interviewing strangers one degree of separation at a time to chronicle connections. And there’s no one better to talk about connection with none other than Mary Aipoalani.

Enter Mary Aipoalani

I had no background on Mary when I asked her to be my next interviewee. I called her a few days before our interview to schedule the meeting, and immediately, I knew I was going to enjoy our conversation. She exuded a lot of energy in her voice. It’s as if she was ready to take on the world and ready to jump on any opportunity.

Mary met Joe through work. Mary is the VP of Product Development at Renaissance Food Group. She met Joe on a business trip to Indiana. Although her company does not sell their products at Joe’s butcher shop, she struck a great conversation with Joe. Mary knows the who’s who in the food industry. When Mary’s work brought her to Indiana, and she could tell the city’s placed a lot of capital building their downtown. She spoke to Joe for two hours about her products, about his shop and life, and the competition he faced. Mary has an eye for marketplaces that sell well.

Mary came from humble beginings in Michigan. She grew up on a farm and her food was her family’s language. She and her husband travel around all over the US, selling and managing food products. From what I can access, Mary is a busy person. Yet, as I find out, Mary makes time for people. Case in point, during our conversation, she was driving her daughter to an appointment.

Storing Contacts

If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “The Tipping Point”, Mary’s a prime example of a super-connector. A super connector is someone who keeps a record or memory of a lot of different people. They connect people who don’t know each other but have mutual benefits. The average person keeps tabs with about 150 people, also known as the Dunbar number. Mary keeps tabs with so many more people. She’s able to do this by her system on how to connect with people.

I was super interested in Mary’s system of recording contacts. Mary explains it to me with Joe as an example. After Mary finished talking to Joe, she writes down additional information about him. She may write, “Joe’s Butcher Shop and Fish Market. Spices and seasoning blends. Carmel, Indiana.” The description can inform Mary that Joe knows how to season meat, and if Mary needs help, she can call him. She may also synthesize later other vendors that might want to work with Joe based off the store name.

Entrepreneurs work on connecting, Mary tells me. They figure out people’s capabilities. At the end of chatting, I mentioned some opportunities I’m looking for. Mary was able to take that information and come up with a few names I could collaborate with. She connects people with head hunters. She elects them to be advisory board candidates. She pairs them with a founder. Mary’s theory is when the student is ready, they have to find the right teacher. If you’re past step one of identifying your problem, step two is to talk to Mary. Check with her if she knows someone in her network. Mary works like a matchmaker and marries the student with the teacher.

I’ll admit, I’m not the best at keeping notes or tabs on people. I try for a little while until I’m discouraged from making any headway with others. I am pessimistic in trying to get people to do things. But I can reframe my position. I can think, “how would Mary approach this?” I would try to get people together who don’t know they need to reach out to each other. If nothing comes out of it, that’s that. But for the few times it does, innovation can happen.

The World is Ripe with Opportunity

Mary sees opportunity. She can’t help it. Her family is a group of entrepreneurs. When I asked Mary who I should speak to next, she recommended her brother, Ed Dominion. It was amusing she referred to her brother as D6, the first letter of their last name followed by their birth order. He runs his own company in Portland, Oregon. Mary runs businesses on the side. For example, she has a high performance camera company. She is starting another venture called Animal Bacon.

When it comes down to it, Mary’s journey reminds me of the protagonist in “The Alchemist”. Mary’s journey is wandering, yet focused on goals. And at the end of goals, that’s not the end of the journey, but the beginning. We talked hypotheticals. If Mary wanted to go to the White House, she’s pretty sure she could go with little to no credentials. That’s because she thinks that in her mind.

Mary learned a long time ago the importance of connections. When her father died, the funeral was packed. People came all over to visit her father. Her father was a man who could walk up to anyone and strike a conversation with them. He would listen to them and try to help in any way. Because the paper wrote about his passing in the paper, people picked up on his passing from all over and came to visit him. That made an impact on Mary, and it’s shaped her to be the way she is today.

And she doesn’t believe in coincidences. Life is nothing buy coincidences. And that’s led to successes. Action comes first. Things are not handed over to you. She gave me some strategies in optimizing the search for opportunities.

• Traveling is a great way to make connections. You’ll listen better with fewer distractions.
• Dress Appropriately. Don’t wear sweatpants. Dress up. Why? Because people judge you by your appearance. If you dress in business attire, you will attract business people.
• Be Interested in people. Ellen DeGeneres does it for a living. You can do it for yourself.
• Record people you meet. Everyone has a different strategy of this. You can go with Mary’s, like I described in the last section. Or you could use Twitter and follow handles. It could be rolex based, if you’re into paper.

The Game

Mary travels a lot for work and could spend her time eating alone. But she refuses to. Instead, she’s come up with a game.

Mary enters a restaurant and looks for the bar. She scouts the bar to see if people are there eating alone. This has to be someone who’s eating alone who’s towards the end of their meal. She will sit next to this person and wait for the bartender. When the bartender comes over and asks Mary what she wants to eat, she turns to the person next to her. This is the same person she scouted for when she entered the restaurant. She asks this person, “Oh, that looks delicious. What are you having?”. The person responds with the name of what they’re having. Then, Mary asks the ultimate question, “Can I have a taste?”. Every single person has given her a sample, if not the rest of the plate, of food. Inevitably, this turns into a conversation.

The goal is to have a better experience than to eat alone. If Mary can have a conversation with someone, she will try to. She’s proven to friends and family this game works. She’s even had her daughter do it once. Mary’s daughter isn’t embarrassed by her mother, as I thought. Instead, her daughter has a role model who is brazen and bold to approach strangers.

Mary told this to an Uber driver once. He said, “You inspire me.” He is sold on the experience. I am sold on the experience. The next time I’m traveling and am hungry, I’ll run through the game.

Mary’s pitched this idea to television producers and they say she could get a TV show deal. It sounds appealing because it acts on our human tendencies to want to connect. And she doesn’t do it to flirt with strangers. Mary’s more interested in the stories people have to tell.

Takeaway message

Take the opportunity to reach out to people. And Mary has a saying to go along with this. “Stop looking at your glass, get off your ass”. Her daughter was listening to the conversation, and told me she couldn’t say that last word.

Mary says in the younger community, boys are always on their glass. It is important to move your ass. It can be exercise, smiling and making eye contact with other people, or working on body language. That’s how she sees life.

Side Tangent

Years ago, I visited Budapest and hung out with a friend of a friend. She surprised me by bringing me to the river across from the parliament building during sunset. It was the most magical moment of the trip, and we attempted to open a bottle of wine. We clicked glasses took a sip, and she asked me, “So, Jeremy, what’s your story?”. The question confused me.

“You mean, what do I do?”, I asked.

“No, like what’s your story. Everyone has stories.”

I understood, and told her about the beginning of my trip, the tragedy that had befallen my family. I started to cry. Both for the tragedy as well as for my friend who listened to my story. That was one of many turning points I found in the power of conversation and of listening.

My journey so far has been to listen to others’ stories, to listen to what matters to each of us. If there’s anything I’ve learned from my friend in Budapest is the power each of us has to listen. When Mary tells me the opportunity to reach out to people, I remember this period of my life I didn’t do it. I lived oblivious, not connecting to the people around me. Mary’s takeaway is reinforcement for me and invigorates me to continue this project. I’m glad each stranger I’ve talked to has given me something special, and I hope you have enjoyed this series so far. See you next week for more stories.

Author’s Notes

I lost half of our conversation. Mary was driving through poor cell service areas, so the call dropped many times. For the last part of the interview, I couldn’t record it so I transcribed notes. As my luck would have it, my notes were stolen along with my backpack. I’ve chosen to omit this conversation because my memory is impartial. And to be frank, I can’t remember what we talked about.

Announcements

Thanks for reading the Jear Bear Letters! Before we begin, I’d like to say thanks for the support. I really appreciate your continued readership.

If you’re a new reader or have missed the past few letters from the new series, “Seven Degrees of Strangers”, you can find the archive on tinyletter or check out the new section on my website.

That’s all. Back to the newsletter.

Update: 2024-02-01

Tinyletter is out of operation. I’ve created a new newsletter using button.down, which you can subscribe to on the newsletter page.

Introduction

Welcome to the Jear Bear Letter’s third letter of the series “Seven Degrees of Strangers”. If you’ve started reading this series, I interview a stranger one degree of separation at a time. This week, I’m presenting a conversation I had with Joe Lazarra. He runs a butcher shop and fish market in Carmel, Indiana. He also happens to be the previous interviewee, Evan, father’s best friend.

Joe has walked an unconventional path. We dive into his past work, his butcher shop, and so much more.

Enter Joe Lazzara

I wasn’t expecting Joe to be a masterful storyteller. If you ever talk to him, he has a very solid sense of self. He started his story by transporting me back over a century ago. His great grandparents grew up in Sicily. Different invaders have conquered Sicily time and time again. So much so that other Italians call them outsiders. Sicilians have a different dialect and different culture. They value family, culture and food. Especially food.

Joe’s grandparents and their brothers sold produce in California and southern Indiana. Their lives included stories of escapades, murders, and running from the KKK. If I ever get to hang out with Joe, I’d love him to tell me some of them. What’s important to Joe is the Sicilian heritage followed them to America.

Joe’s mother learned recipes passed down from the older generation. Joe’s aunt taught his mother how to cook, handing them generation to generation. Needless to say, the family bonds over food, like Joe helping make the sauce.

Joe is youngest of 6 children. There’s an 18 year generational gap between his oldest brother and himself. Because of that, his father, his eldest brother, and he are born in different generations. His father was born in the 20s, his brother in the 40s, and Joe in the 60s.

Joe’s father didn’t make much money. Yet, he valued education and funded all 6 children through college. He knew that going to college is important. He didn’t have a large house. He made sure none of his children never paid a dime. Joe’s very fortunate and grateful to his father.

College and Early Career

In college, Joe met Charlie Roar, Evan’s dad. They became dependable friends and fraternity brothers. Today, they remain close. Joe is a godfather to Charlie’s daughter. Joe’s a part of Charlie’s family as they moved from Chicago to Minnesota to North Carolina. When Joe’s father passed away, you can bet Charlie was there for him and his family.

Joe studied Quantitative analysis, which during the mid to late 80’s, was the thing to study and get a great job. When Joe graduated, he worked at Indiana Bell on a software project. That project got sold to General Telephone and Electric, GTE. But, Indiana Bell didn’t want to help with maintaining the software.

GTE needed consultants. Joe’s co-workers and Joe saw this as an opportunity to create their own consulting company. They formed United Informations Technology. Joe was 23 at the time and moved with the company to Tampa Bay. On weekends he’d invite friends. The job demanded Joe travel all over. With the sales commissions, Joe was making 6 figures. But the company’s success didn’t last long. The company hired an HR manager to manage pensions as they started growing. But, no one else knew this HR manager would take their pensions and buy coke in Florida and resell it in Chicago. One day, the FBI and DEA knock on Joe’s door asking about the illegal activity. Joe exits as soon as he can; the company gets dissolved.

Joe took a position with GTE in Indianapolis selling cellular to wireless carriers. The market was ripe for cellular networks, and selling was like shooting fish in a barrel. Year over year, Joe was the top 1% of sales people. He rose the ranks and became a general manager over other sales people.

During this period, he got married and had kids. He’s in his early 30’s, and he’s traveling all over the U.S. for his sales job. He got tired of going out to the bars with his guy friends. Instead, he uses this time to explore restaurants. Today, many of these restaurants have Michelin stars or are James Beard candidates. Those are prestigious accolades in the food world.

Joe told me a story of how he met Emeril Lagasse before he was famous. He was in New Orleans. Charlie’s cousin invites Joe to meet Nellie Brennan, owner of Brennan’s restaurant. Nellie brings them to the Commander’s Palace to meet the head chef, who turns out to be none other than Emeril. This was right before he opened his flagship restaurant. Well before he was a Food network celebrity.

Joe meets Susan Spicer before she became big at the Bistro at Maison de Ville. Some of these restaurants catch wind of Joe, thinking he was a food critic. They would invite him at the Chef’s table if he called. When they found out he was only a food enthusiast, they laughed and would cooked up a storm. It was during this time Joe’s food and wine palette expanded.

GTE gets bought out by Bell Atlantic and forms Verizon. Joe becomes in charge of the telecomm act where he has to negotitate contracts on behalf of Verizon. He has to travel even more. In 1999, Joe quits to join a telecomm start-up in Indiana, First Mile Technology. The company was ahead of their competitors.

Business was going well. Then 9/11 happened. VC capital dried up. Joe had a tough time getting developers to invest upfront because they didn’t have the money. Joe left and consulted for a bunch of small companies.

After that, he consulted for a few years. But Joe grew tired on traveling around. Clients were asking Joe to do things that tested against his principles. For example, they asked him to move phone numbers around, move money around, and lose trails. He sought solace from his brothers and Charlie. They reminded him of wanting to start a restaurant or be in food.

Butchershop

Carmel, Indiana is a progressive city and their mayor wanted to build a city center. The mayor asked Joe if he wanted to start a restaurants there. When Joe asked his wife, she objected. She told him they have three children, ages 3, 5, and 7, and he wouldn’t be there for them at night. Joe remembered his friend, Mark Zannoni. He was also Italian, and Mark’s father owned a butcher shop outside of Chicago. Joe asked his wife about a butcher shop, and she agreed that would be a better choice.

They put about a year of work into opening the shop before it opened. The first year’s return was at a loss, but since then, they’ve been on the up. They’re netting a few million a year, and it has become such an integral piece to the community. Joe’s been at it for 11 years. You can find the butcher shop and fish market’s website at the end of the article.

There was an old couple that used to shop at Joe’s butcher shop weekly. They loved talking to Joe and the staff. One week, Joe noticed the husband stopped coming. The next Saturday, she came in early, right after the opening hour. She walks through the entrance, dressed top-to-bottom with a red dress.

Joe asked the lady where her husband. The lady leans over the counter and tells Joe her husband passed away. Joe tells her he’s sorry to hear, but the lady stops him.

“I came here to tell you. We loved interacting with you and the staff. Coming here for the past 5 years made him happy.”

Of course, Joe’s ready to melt after this. It’s situations like this that has taught him he’s the caretaker of community trust. He’s seen customers have babies who have now grown to become pre-teens. He caters to community member’s funerals.

Joe tells me it’s not about the money. It’s all about giving back to the people. It’s the satisfaction knowing you are delivering the turkey to your customer’s home during Thanksgiving. Early on, Joe wanted to franchise the business and build many “Joe’s Butchershops”. Now, Joe wants to make his shop iconic, like Ann Arbor’s Zimmerman’s Deli or San Francisco’s Ghirardelli’s Square. Carmel is an up and coming, affluent city, about an hour or two away from Indianapolis. People from all over the state come to visit the butcher shop.

Joe picked the right location, and he owes his success to his background in sales. Without it, he couldn’t see a different side of business. One where the customer gives you feedback and where you listen. Joe’s mission is to share good karma, because things come back. And he can’t see himself doing anything else.

“I sleep at night. I sleep like a baby, for the most part. Whereas before, I was always concerned about the next sale, or how I was going to get that revenue stream.”

Takeaways

Joe’s takeaway makes a wonderful quote. “Love unconditionally, and you will be returned with unconditional joy.” Very humbling.

Check out Joe’s Butcher Shop and Fish Market if you’re in the Carmel, Indiana area.

Credits to Joe Lazzara for talking to me. Credits to Evan Roer for the illustration and letterhead.

Introduction

If you missed the newsletter last week, I started a new writing series. In this series, I interview one person a week, one degree of separation from the last interviewee. The theme of each talk is about connection and communication. This is the second installment of my series about connections and communication.

In the last newsletter, I talked to Simon Gondeck, a young Web Developer and Entrepreneur. This week, I’m talking to Evan Roer, Simon’s close friend. We talk about how he landed his design job, working for clients, and what Evan’s favorite font is.

Enter Evan Roer

The first thing I wanted to know about Evan was how did he know Simon? As Evan recalls, he’s known Simon and Sevy, Simon’s twin brother, for as long as he can remember. Growing up, their families were part of the same gourmet club. Years ago, Evan’s family moved to North Carolina. Evan was in third grade, yet the families kept in touch. For example, Evan’s older brother is roommates with Simon’s older brother. And, if Evan’s traveling to Minneapolis, which happens once or twice a year, he’s staying with Simon.

Evan resides in Raleigh, North Carolina. He works for Design Dimension, a design firm specializing in exhibit design for museums. He started this job over a year ago and has an unconventional story on how he got there.

Landing the Job

Evan was a brand ambassador at North Carolina State University. That means Evan would prepare the university’s recreation center with school events. The school designates brand ambassadors 13 mandatory office hours to do prep work. But as Evan learned, it doesn’t take that long to set up tables and handout merchandise. With this idle time, he noticed peers making posters in the gym promoting upcoming events.

Evan wasn’t studying graphic design. He was studying business marketing. He wanted to follow a creative itch and make posters. As Evan puts it, he got to see graphic design in the works. He would create posters, learn the tools from Lynda.com tutorials, and develop a portfolio. With his boss’ permission of course. By the end of Evan’s college career, he had an extensive portfolio.

After graduating, Evan was looking for a job. Evan applied to design studios and businesses seeking his skills in Business Marketing. One of those design firms he submitted his portfolio to was Design Dimension.

Evan got an internship with a tech firm. He said the office was decorated like a Silicon Valley start-up. A week or two later, Design Dimension called him. He thought it would be worth a shot at the interview since his current role may not hire him full-time. It was convenient his internship was five buildings away from the Design Dimension.

Evan was the only candidate without a design degree. He meshed well with the firm’s lead designer, Betsy, his future boss. She liked Evan’s portfolio, and even more, his tastes and preferences in beer and music. And it helped they both went to the same school where Evan’s fraternity had close ties to Betsy’s sorority. Betsy likes to blast music in the design studio. Whoever she had to work with would have to be tolerant of that. The candidate had to mesh well with her. And Evan sure did.

Design Dimension

What does it mean to be a professional designer at Design Dimension? From Evan’s perspective, it sounds like a lot of work. He could be juggling many clients at once. “People don’t like to read long paragraphs”, he tells me.

For example, Evan could be working for a Botanical Garden. The job could be to layout a design for explaining photosynthesis. Evan’s work is to take the given space and design the entire experience. Evan knows the exhibitors don’t want to read a barrage of words when they can see pictures.

I thought back to my recent trip to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The museum had a forest canopy exhibit. There was some text to go with the massive forest installation. But the text was not important to me. I was in awe of the size of the trees with its intricate details. The text is an example of hidden design, open to the curious but not distracting to others.

Restraint

Being a designer means knowing when to restrain. Evan will try to push his client’s brand. For example, a Town Hall, the Opera House in Sumter, NC, or small companies. But if he’s working for an established corporation, like IBM or the Raleigh-Durham International Airport, he will stay within the boundaries of their existing brand.

Restraint also comes to play with dealing with clients. Evan may have clients where his clients want to be the graphic designer as well. The feedback sounds more like barking orders. If he finds himself arguing with a client, and the client is wrong, he has to find a way to come to a compromise. “And that’s what pushes you as a designer”, he tells me.

Clients

In general, the clients come with the content. It’s Design Dimension’s job to make it presentable. And the clients are super involved from start to finish. When Evan was working for a “Black History of Wilson” exhibit in Wilson, North Carolina, the clients wanted to pack as much information as possible. But, it doesn’t tell a story. The client is wrong, and it’s Evan’s job to convince them to change their content by selling them on the design idea.

The work can be rewarding. Evan worked on a children’s museum in Wilson that teaches science and history. Before the design firm came in, the museum was outdated, a relic from the 80s. The museum’s administrator secured the funds to update and upgrade the space. and Evan’s team worked with the administrator to come to a good design. When it was all said and done, this space was resurrected, brought back to life with updated science. And for the administrator, her reaction was priceless because she put her heart and soul in it.

Feedback

It’s only recently Evan’s had interactions with the client. A theme from last week’s newsletter was feedback and criticism. I wanted to know how Evan deals with those themes. Evan tells me it pushes you to be better. You have to be able to speak the same language, and rarely does one design iteration is enough. As a great designer, you have to be able to let things go. Even if Evan thinks one of his logos looks damn amazing, the client could reject it and have the whole process start over. Evan’s learned to let that go.

Takeaways

Evan’s takeaway for you is to make connections in life. Everything’s connected in relationship to each other. And to find those and be able to point those out is a fun thing to do. Put yourself out there. Make connections.

Random Tidbits

• After our interview, I hired Evan to create illustrations. Credits to Evan for the letterhead and accompanying illustrations for each letter
• Evan loves discovering music, new and old. His favorite music festival is Bonnaroo in Tennessee
• Evan’s favorite font: Din Condensed

Introduction

Welcome to the next installment of the Jear-Bear Letters. After a half year hiatus, we’re back with a new series called “Seven Degrees of Strangers”.

The title is a play on “Seven Degrees of Separation” where you are at most seven links away from knowing any random stranger on Earth. So if I met a stranger on the street, I could trace them to at most seven degrees of separation until I found a connection.

Over the course of the next 7 weeks, I will write about the conversation I had with 7 people, each one degree of separation away. I’ve chosen communication as the theme for each conversation, trying to understand what it means to communicate to each other and how can we build connections when we don’t know the stranger. You’ll get to hear their stories and experiences, and how I relate to them.

Why are you doing this project?

It started with a thought about connections. On LinkedIn, you can see potential new friends who are second or third degrees of separation. I wondered, who are these people? How does everyone know each other? If I continue down the path of separations, could I meet someone famous?

Then in May, while I was conceiving the idea for this series, I went to a talk with Bill Burnnett and Dave Evans. They are professors at Stanford who wrote a book called “Designing Your Life”. In their talk, they asked everyone to turn to their side, speak with their neighbor, and ask them something you need help with. I turned to my neighbor, we introduced ourselves, and I asked about a question about appropriative technologies. She didn’t have any tips, but she knew someone who could direct me to who might.

I pondered about the interaction for a week. It’s not an everyday feeling for me to ask for help from strangers. Even though the woman didn’t know someone directly, she knew of someone who could get me closer to my answer. This project is my exercise to practice that power of connectedness.

Throughout the series, we’ll find out what connectedness means to other people. And build a new connection by the end of our conversation.

The First Degree of Separation

To begin this series, I reached out to my friend, Simon Gondeck. He’s an entrepreneur and web developer for his own consulting company, MG Web Partners. Besides catching up with an friend, I wanted to probe him about starting a company. Simon did not disappoint. In our conversation, he went over that and so much more.

Enter Simon

Simon’s a recent grad from the University of St. Thomas with a B.S. in Accounting. I met Simon three years ago at a software bootcamp. At the time, he was on his summer break; he was one of the younger members of our cohort. He clicked with me because I grew up in the Bay Area and he wanted to know if I knew G-Eazy. I didn’t, but I know people who knows the rapper, and Simon kept asking more questions about the Bay Area.

And I loved Simon’s enthusiasm. We paired programmed a few times and hung out outside of the program. I got Simon to join our final team project where we created a social network for grieving. Simon was a total team player and whooped my ass into gear when we took a break at the gym.

Simon’s an athlete and spent his college term playing lacrosse player. Unfortunately, at the time we were talking, he was recovering from an injury when we had the interview. I realize that he’s a person to go to for my atheletic questions, so in the future, I’ll be reaching out to him more.

MG Web Partners

After the software bootcamp, Simon returned to school, living in St. Paul, Minnesota. He got a part-time job working at a web consulting company. While on the job, he discovered he was compensated far less than the contract stipulated.

An epiphany came when he was at a yoga class. The studio were in need of a website, but all of the contractors they found were out of their budget. Simon and his friend Johnny and he drafted a reasonable offer, and they got their first contract. MG Web Partners was born.

Lessons on Starting a Business

Before their first contract, Simon and Johnny had little to no knowledge on how to draft one. They looked online to figure out what a contract should say. And contracts weren’t the only thing they had to figure out for the business.

Simon brought on his twin brother, Sevy, to help out with growing the business. One of their challenges the team faced was to find more customers. They drove around the area, going business to business to attract more customers. They sent out an email campaign last June, seen below.

My partners Johnny Mulvahill, Sevy Gondeck and I have started a web design and development company called MG Web Partners. We specialize in building businesses remarkable websites that deliver new customers and drive revenue.

We help three kinds of companies:

1. Companies with outdated websites
2. Companies with poorly designed websites
3. Or Companies that just need a new website

Most companies fit one of these three scenarios, so if you know of anyone, please forward them my contact information and I promise we’ll take good care of them.

Simon was hesitant to use email marketing and social media because he viewed it as mass spam. He didn’t want disinterested people to see his work, and worse, find he was bombarding friends and family with unnecessary mail. Sevy convinced Simon to reach out and not worry about that. What you write will have no interest to some people, and a lot of interest to a few people. You never know who those people are until you cast a wide net.

Listening to Simon talk about his business reminded me how much we learn on the job. When we talked about the details of drafting proposals, Simon talked about the mistakes he previously made. For example, it’s better to draw up a proposal that’s less stringent and allows for flexibility with the client. And it’s better to make the process transparent, so the company uses Proposify, a website that allows clients to review proposals while also giving the business insight into how their clients are reviewing their proposals.

Upon reflection, Simon says the best strategy that attracted the most customers was word of mouth. In the business of contracting, referrals matter more. Having previous clients tell potential future clients of their work has been more substantial than other techniques. And with every new client, the business learns they learned something new.

And while we’re on clients, how do you communicate with them? Simon has found the best way is to make a phone call or face-to-face. Texting and email interactions are easy to evade and do not convey the same tone as his voice.

After the customer signs off on the proposal and agrees to the timeline, the team gets to work on the project. After the first design iteration or prototype, the team shares it with the customer to review. The team has learned that it reduces the amount of time on wasted work if there’s less guesswork on details.

What’s Next?

The team has worked with clients all over the area. All of the team members have graduated college. Sevy will be leaving the company later this summer to join Deloitte. Simon still plans to growing this company, and getting the formula right before bringing more people on.

Questions for me

After our conversation about MG Web Partners, Simon turned the tables and asked me a few questions. The benefit of being a first connection is they already know something about you. And in Simon’s case, he’s a long time reader of the Jear-Bear letters, so he had some questions around writing and growing an online presence.

On Writing

Simon asked some advice about creating a writing habit and how to get through writer’s block. One of his goals is to boost his company’s blog by writing more frequently. I had a few recommendations for him.

• Write a minimum amount every day. I choose a page a day.
• Read “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lammont, or at least the chapter on “Shitty First Drafts”.
• Don’t be afraid to delete. This one took me a long time. In fact, while writing this section, I deleted half of my work because it didn’t matter.
• Don’t expect success. As counter-intuitive as it may be, that piece of advice helped me release what I consider terrible writing to my letter friends. A few of those letters have been very well received, like my “Caltrain Suicides” letter and my “Lost Keys” letter.
• Editing is just as important as writing. And its corallary: Polishing takes more time than writing.
• Find peers to review your writing. Earlier on in my letter writing, I decided to open up each letter for critique. I reached out on Twitter to see who could be my critique, and a few people helped me. I’d send a draft out, and they would give me some helpful criticism.

Take-aways

I asked Simon what’s one thing he wants people to take away with.

Over-communicate with clients. It might not always be clear what they want. Don’t do it over email. Do it over the phone or in-person, if you can.

Next Week

At the end of each interview, I asked the participant to choose the next person for me to interview. At first, I was loose on criteria, but as I progressed with each interview, I decided to give the participants a question. Who is someone you know you would like to hear an interview from?

I didn’t get to ask Simon this question, yet he knew intuitively I was looking for someone interesting. And he didn’t disappoint. Hope that’s tease enough for you to continue reading.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank Simon Gondeck for being the very first participant. Without you, I wouldn’t have started this journey. I’d also like to thank Evan Roer for illustrating the series’ letterhead and an accompanying graphic for this letter. Both of you rock.

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
— Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

A thought crossed my mind. “Am I rushing to die?” I had this thought before. I used to brush it off. The Ferris Bueller quote encapsulates the essence of life, to open up to live. “Am I missing life?”

Yet, I have an urge to rush to the end. But I risk not thinking through consequences. Rushing through my day, I jump into solutions without thinking about other options and alternative outcomes. When coding, it’s jumping into a solution without thinking about intentions. The implementation could have an immediate problem within the technical details. Or it can have an ethical one. For example, if we have a selection input for gender, you may assume the world operates on a gender binary. That is not the case.

To rush is to deny room to be aware. And thats a decision. It’s my decision if I treat work like race to exhaustion. It’s my decision to rush out of the door every morning, without checking if I have my essentials, to catch the early train. It’s my decision if I prolong getting my eyes checked. It’s my decision to stop working out.

These scenarios lead to stress. Our bodies give us indication of stress. I have made myself numb to some of it. When the neglect goes too far, the body prevents us from moving forward. I’ve been close to passing out the last time I pulled an all nighter at work.

The past few weeks of writing about failures is a reflection of what I’ve neglected in my life and why I stopped paying attention. These letters are to kick myself in the ass and ask, “what I’m going to do about this?”

Let’s say the solution is as simple as slowing down; be present. This is my invocation to begin. I’m standing firm not to neglect the mind and body’s needs. I will let that guide my present intentions.

My hope is for my future self to read this. My hope is my future self has slowed down. And if he has, please follow up and tell everyone how you did it. And say Bueller was right.

Lost Keys

In the frantic rush of the morning, I’m scrambling many things. I’ve got to shower, eat breakfast, work-out, gather my things for work. In this scramble I inevitably ask myself, “where are my keys?”. If I was wise, they would be in my bag. If I was unwise, I start my descent into madness.

In my key’s perspective, it’s a journey through my room. First, they’ll be in my pocket, ready to open a door. Then they will be on my work table, eager to see me when I’m ready to leave. Then they’ll be on top of the drawer because I’m changing my pants. Then they’ll be god knows where because I was in the middle of another activity and decided to place them wherever was convenient. Then I’ll spend an inextricable amount of time looking for them.

It’s times like these I feel helpless to my lack of coordination. I hate my forgetfulness because I lack the foresight to place things in proper places. My keys have a place in my bag, and should always be there. And for the scenario where I don’t bring my bag, it should be in my pocket. But therein lies the problem. If I know I won’t bring my bag, where do I place my keys when I change my pants?

A System

When I was working in manufacturing, we implemented a 5 step program to achieving lean manufacturing. One of those steps was setting things in place. In one scenario, say you use a hammer. You take the hammer from its proper placement, use it for a bit, then place it back. To make things easier, one of our technicians placed an outline of a hammer so it is easy to place the hammer in its proper place. The alternative is placing the hammer wherever, which would be harder for the next person who wants to use the hammer.

With this practice, I should be able to implement it in my personal life. However, I am rarely open to the idea of changing my space. This is prompted by a stubborn attitude that I should remember everything. Added to that, I find moving things around my room to be a chore. And it’s all over when I consider something to be a chore because I’ll try to wiggle out of it any way I can.

Applied System

Back to they keys. Because I lack a system to place my keys in the same place for every scenario, I find it difficult to find them when I’ve placed them in a spot at the time I thought was memorable. I’ve thought about a cubby, or a bowl, but haven’t acted on it. I’m skeptic it works for me.

Question for those readers. Do you follow a system for placing your things at home. How do you remember where you put your things? Does your system cover all scenarios?

Addendum

I’ll be honest. After drafting this letter, I’m going to give the bowl a try. At least I can cross it off my list if it really doesn’t work. Then it’s back to the drawing board.

My bestie has a romanticized version of my life where I am a perky, social butterfly always engaging in social activities. This isn’t true. I spend most days alone when I’m outside of work. I tend to keep my personal life in solidarity.

I’m not averse to being around people. I’ve made the decision to be content being alone. My state of solidarity allows me to relish my life in different ways than super extroverts.

In practice, I hang out with friends, spend time on the phone with family, and rest around a fire pit with my housemates. To my bestie’s credit, I am a social butterfly at social events. But those are anomalies in my daily routine.

I wasn’t always at peace with this idea of being alone. I grew up in a large household where everyone shared everything. There weren’t enough restrooms to go around and weren’t enough space to spend alone. I was reliant on the people around me; I would get sad if I was alone too long.

Once, my grandmother took forever to pick me up from school. Turns out, she fell asleep at the wheel a few moments after she entered her car. This was before everyone had cell phones, so there was no way of reaching her. I was close to tears waiting at the school steps, contemplating whether I should walk home alone.

In college, I had times where no one wanted to grab lunch or dinner, so I would go to the campus cafeteria alone. I found the experience miserable because I didn’t socialize with strangers at other tables. My resolution was I brought food back to the dorm and eat in the common area instead where there would always be people hanging out.

This habit continued into my early working life. I had some of these same fears eating at restaurants alone. In a conversation with my housemate’s cousin, she told me about her experience after beating cancer. She said she had no worries about being alone anymore. There’s too little time in life not to appreciate good restaurants, so if that means going alone, so be it. Her motto in life made me re-think the way I approach being alone.

And being alone doesn’t mean one-on-one time with your phone. Quite the opposite. I like to bring a composition notebook and write or draw if I’m in a restaurant. Or people watch. Or talk to the waiter.

I was on a business trip this past week. There was two days there was no one around to grab dinner with. I’ve used the “alone” mantra to justify eating alone. It was a great experience because I got to talk with a sushi chef and an bar tender about their experiences. Also, there was a lot of people watching. So the big lesson learned is not every activity alone has to be depressive. Look past your ego, suck it up, and enjoy yourself alone.

Intro

The emotional mind is an elephant and the reasoning mind is the elephant rider. The rider has limited control over the elephant. The elephant is heavy and not always willing to listen to the rider. The rider might not listen to the elephant and demand the elephant follow orders by sheer will. The internal conflicts come when neither can work together.

When I was younger, I thought age tames emotion. But after years of watching my dad get angry at little things, I threw that assumption in the waste basket.

I have been misguided by my emotional mind. If I thought about death, my emotional side kicked in and took over reasoning.

Think about the people who will miss you. Think about your body decaying. Think about the future without you.

Even as I got older, those worries lingered. Depression set and anxiety attacks appeared.

Similar feelings arose when I received rejection letters from grad school, isolated myself from loved ones, and after nasty break-ups.

Meditation, Part 1

So, I tried meditation. I learned emotion can be examined and felt. My emotional side can overwhelm me, and I have fought the feeling head on. Instead, meditation says to examine the feeling and to let it happen. You achieve this through a non-judgment lens.

I witnessed the elephant the first few times I meditated. I approached meditation through a book I read. It stressed posture, breathing, and examination of the body. After the second week, my rational mind didn’t see the elephant. It imagined the daydream version of it. Unable to relax as I had with the previous week, I quit.

Seneca

I applied philosophical thought to the response of my elephant. Seneca, Roman philosopher from two millennia ago, taught his pupils to engage in a morning ritual of telling themselves what was the worst possible thing that could happen that day. Imagine it in detail, trying to put yourself in your own shoes. Imagine what you will be doing, how you’ll be feeling, etc. If the worst were to happen, you would be mentally prepared.

This exercise could be morbid, like imagining you or your significant other’s demise. This might be trivial, like getting angry at drivers who cut you off. Whichever end of the spectrum your imagination takes you, you are experiencing that feeling in a controlled dose.

I did this exercise a bunch at my last job. My manager pulled the rug from our projects a few too many times, and I kept feeling wrecked. In the parking lot before going in the building, I’d ask myself what’s the worst thing that could happen that day.

I could be fired. My project could be pulled. I could receive a demotion.

And after a few days of this exercise, imagining what it would feel like to be first, I wasn’t scared of that prospect any more. And I took that insight and wrote my resignation letter.

Meditation, Part 2

I revisited meditation last year when I got a guided meditation app. This was a lot more relaxing as I placed myself in the guide’s practice. I dedicated a chunk of time each morning to practice. If I couldn’t practice at home, I’d take the time on my train ride to work to do it. The app was more motivating, obtaining badges and tracking my progress.

My practice was less examination of emotion than it was a stress reliever. The rider was able to spend more time working with the elephant, and the elephant sensed the rider was less stressed.

After a long vacation, I stopped. I didn’t want to meditate around friends. When I came home, I dropped the practice. But now as I’m writing this, I may give it a 4th chance because I recognize the benefits.

Conclusion

The rider holds the reins of the elephant, but the elephant overpowers the rider. When the rider is too stubborn to acknowledge the elephant, the elephant dictates the outcome. Many times, this is the voice of instant gratification.

When the rider can notice the elephant’s resistance, the rider’s best option is to roll with it. Now, ask yourself, how can I work with the elephant, and not against it? As the rider, we have the ability to plan ahead and take lessons learned from past failures. Now apply that to your everyday conflicts.

Part of the series, “Admission Failure”

The Reaction Dilemma

I made a $400 mistake. I arrived at JFK 6

I asked the ticketing agent if I could grab an earlier flight. She told me it would cost an extra $400 with charges and fees for a flight that left in a few hours. To add salt to the wound, only middle seats were available.

My body said to stay put, but my mind said to go home. I bit the bullet and paid the extra amount. A few moments later, I regretted my decision. But I went through with it, and I cursed myself because it was the worst decision I made all year.

That was four years ago. Today, I wonder what prompted me to make such a mistake. Everything that ticket agent said was rational, yet my thoughts were caught in a sea of emotions. I was afraid I wasn’t going to make it to work the next day. In reality, I would have made it to work on time given there were no flight delays.

I was reacting to my situation without thinking about the long-term consequences. This feeling goes by many names, like fire-fighting, and if you are surrounded by this behavior, you are likely to adopt this frantic role. The behavior is anchored by the perception of time. “There’s not enough time to think” could be the slogan. And in this slip of time, I’m out of control.

Busy Mind

Growing up, I remember watching “The Price is Right”. Each contestant on the game show must make decisions within a short time frame.

Many can’t think straight with the flashing lights, the potential prizes they could have, and the emotional burst of being on television. They look out to the crowd and try to take the advice of other audience members, likely the ones they came with, in hopes their shouting could be the right answer.

This environment promotes a chaotic mind. How can you think straight with the noise? The show’s producers know this and tell the game developers to use common price biases to throw the contestant off.

For example, there’s a game where the contestant has four items to determine if the item is higher or lower than the tagged price. You can bet the game developers take advantage of anchoring, a bias where the contestant will be affected by the first price they see. When the contestant plays this game, the short decision window clouds their judgment, and that’s susceptible to anchoring.

Online shopping is a similar experience. I have many temptations to buy things I don’t need because of the convenient factor. For this reason, I’ve turned off one-click shopping on Amazon as a safe guard.

My weakness is making decisions around limited time deals, like flash sales, items at the checkout line, and Black Friday. If you’ve read my newsletter on catalogs, my seeds catalog was an instant buy.

The recurring solution I’ve found to all of these decisions is to bench the decision for a certain amount of time. For instant shopping, it’s 24 hours. For the flight change, it’s ten minutes. This time period is reserved for calming time — to get rid of extra baggage and emotion when making my decision.

We’ll explore more next week on anger and the calming down effect.

Part of the series, “Admission Failure”

I fail to look past how spotty my memory is. It’s embarrassing how often I give in to the temptation that I will always remember everything pertinent in the future.

While perusing the video store, a stranger walked up to me and asked for some movie recommendations. We got to chatting and it turns out we had similar tastes in movies and video games. I found out we were both around the same age. We were both teenagers; he was a year older. He told me he had moved to this area a month prior and was looking for new friends. I told him I’d be happy to be his friend, and he invited me to come to his place to play video games. Yet I had this tinge I was forgetting something. When I got home later that evening, my dad was furious I had missed my piano lesson.

Surely my memory should be better today. Nope. I’m still failing to remember meetings, engagements, and birthdays. There are some differences between my teenager self and how I operate today. I have a set of strategies to minimize these spots in my memory.

Using a Calendar

I’ve hated time-boxing when I was younger. Chunking time made me feel like I couldn’t have any unstructured time. But I’ve looked past it after I saw how much benefit I got out of it. The important thing is to have the calendar ubiquitous. For example, if I am planning to attend an event next month, I will put it on the calendar immediately.

There’s a major flaw. I forget to do mark my calendar every now and again, especially if I’m busy that moment. Take last weekend as an example. I scheduled to have brunch with some friends, but I forgot to mark it on the calendar. Another friend asked me to help him out around the same time. I agreed and put that in the calendar instead. It was the night before when I had my “a ha” moment.

Calendars don’t work for everyone. You will have to use the tool you feel most comfortable with. It could be a bullet journal, or a paper calendar, or a wad of post-it notes shoved in your pocket.

Delegate When You Can

I suck at the follow-up. I’ll be at a meet-up and forget reach back to people who gave me their card. Let me let you in on a secret about productive people. They are great at delegation. There’s not enough time throughout the day to do everything you can imagine. At most, I can reliably do one thing a day. Anything more is a godsend. So ask the other person to reach back instead. Or ask them to do something they can’t refuse for you. An example can be to make the other person text you when they get home so you don’t get worried about them.

Write Personal Messages

I love personal messages to myself. I have trouble listening to other people, so I listen to myself a lot better if I wrote them in a tone I’d listen to. Here’s a calendar event I set for Saturday, March 3rd, 2018.

Dear Jeremy,
I know you have a tendency to neglect your taxes until April. Don’t do that. Instead, this is a reminder for you to get started on them today.

By now, you should have all of your tax documented gathered. Most likely, you’ve piled them in the corner of your desk. Here’s a checklist of all of the documents you should have.

— List of Documents —

Next steps is to login to Turbo Tax and log in the data. You have kept your donation receipts in this folder.

In case you need it, here’s last year’s tax return.

Cheers, and happy tax filing,
Ghost of Past Jeremy

Automate When Possible

An extension of all three of these ideas culminate to a set it and forget it mindset. If I set the email for next year, why can’t I have it recurring every year?

Or automation could be behavioral. For example, if someone gives me a book recommendations, I have an automatic response to write it down. Developing routines saves us mental energy. Automated strategies are not always technological.

Final Thoughts

These strategies are guidelines, not a matter of fact. Adopt one or all if you so choose. Or modify them to fit your needs. The world’s too much for a one-size-fits-all approach.

I’ve gotten too cozy on the sidelines. Ive justified my position by lame excuses, like “I wouldn’t know how to help. A moment from middle school stands out.

Help to Acquaintances

On the journey to school, I noticed a group a guys harassing a girl from my school. They were across the street, so I stopped and stood there watching. I was one of many bystanders watching my fellow school-mate get angry at these boys. She was screaming at them to stop teasing and calling her name’s. I could have run across the street and intervened, but I didn’t, thinking one of the other kids would help. They didn’t either. After several minutes of heated escalation, a teacher intervened and had the crowd scramble.

Help to Family

These events of “should haves” and “could haves” filled me with regret. The most painful one happened a few months later. One night, as my grandmother was leaving my parent’s house, she fell down on our front porch steps. My parents rushed outside as I watched from the window. They carried her back in the house and my father called emergency services. My grandmother had lost some blood and was loopy.

During the brief time before the ambulance came, I sat in another room frozen. I didn’t offer to help; I was crying because I thought I was losing my grandmother. During the time leading up to this event, I was going through my first major depressive period.

The ambulance came and did some initial diagnosis. They determined my grandmother was fine. The EMT took her to the hospital just in case.

When the chaos subsided, my mom asked me why I didn’t help out. I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t sleep that night, wondering why I froze up. My belief was I couldn’t bear witness to someone dying. But my grandmother didn’t die that night.

It was after my depressive period that I could see more clearly the problem. My resolution to any similar situations would be to set aside emotions and focus on the task at hand. People involved in a crisis matter beyond my emotions. And I know that line’s not always clear, but let’s not open that set of moral ambiguities.

Help To Strangers

Two years ago, I was challenged with a different dilemma. I was with a date walking around at night when we met a beggar. The beggar was younger than us, a woman with disheveled hair and ragged clothes. She was begging for food for her daughter and her.

The fraud center of my brain began to whirl. My date looked at me to see what I would do. I decided to help this young woman, so we bought her a pizza at the restaurant nearby. As we were waiting, she told us about her money situation, how embarrassing it was to ask for help, and how many people ignored her. She thanked us profusely when the food arrived and we went on our separate ways.

Takeaways

I’m not going to talk about how to evaluate panhandlers and beggars. That’s its own article. Instead, here are two takeaways.

1

My college economics professor started each lecture with a simple saying. “Doing nothing is always an option.” At the time, he was explaining financial opportunity costs. I’m translating it to everyday decisions. If you are on the crossroads of sideline and intervention, choosing the sidelines is a choice. It is up to you to determine if it’s the right choice.

2

I was at the National Civic Day of Hacking event in San Francisco, and the organizer captain, Jesse Biroscak, delivered an outro. To paraphrasing a point I thought was important, “You are the only ones who can help. Look around the room. This is it. There is no one else.” I looked around the room and saw around 30 people.

“Oh my gosh,” I thought, “he’s right. If I want to see change, I’m going to need to start the campaign.”

Jesse was talking about projects for the SF Brigade. One can easily translate that to everyday situations. See debris in the middle of the road? Call highway patrol. A blind person is judging if they should cross the road? Tell them if the coast is clear. Have the skills to help out a non-profit? If you can make the time, do some pro-bono work.

My glasses were falling apart. I owned them for 4 years and couldn’t persuade myself to get a new pair. To obtain a new pair, I’d need a new prescription. And being sensitive about my eyesight and didn’t want to face the prospect of the optometrist diagnosing me a stronger prescription.

So I did the insensible. I neglected to replace the pair of glasses. And I had no excuse. I had health insurance. There was a hurdle in my mind I couldn’t jump over.

The hurdle started with facing the news I will have a stronger prescription. Which leads to being deemed legally blind because my eyesight had deteriorated. Which triggered my fear of being blind.

At that point, I’d think about something else. When the topic came up again, I’d repeat this cycle of worry, hesitation, and negligence.

I broke down when bad became worse. On of the nostril pads came off, so I needed a replacement. I came to my senses and figured out the first actionable step.

Breaking the Cycle

I went online to determine how to schedule an appointment with an optometrist. My hospital website had had online booking. Bingo.

I went in for the appointment and to my surprise, my eyes were the same as they were 4 years ago. By letting myself slip, I failed to see the absurdity of my own bias. All the moments of worry were for nothing. All the times I wondered what if, wasted.

An Introduction

We all make mistakes. We all fail to do, or sometimes not do, the important things in life. I want to raise the bar and stop this repetition.

The negligence problem is one of my failures. It’s one of many failures. Each week I’ll break down a different repeated mistake. My aim is to generalize failures common to everyone, although my intent is to write it for my future self if I were to relapse. If this model helps other people, that’s an added benefit.

Bookmark this for later. Re-read often. We’re going to have a fun two months exposing my weaknesses.

I left 2015 with optimism. I leave 2016 with mixed feelings. I slowed down my steam for writing. I ramped up with watching classic and contemporary films. We lost some world-changing people. Of course, this is inevitable.

To free me from the past, I must recognize the ups and downs of the year. Hence, the retrospective list.

Obligatory List

• I ran my second marathon in San Francisco. Under 6 hours.
• Revisited Thailand and Mexico. First-time to the UK.
• I wrote 12 letters, far less than the previous year.
• I meditated for 60 non-consecutive days. I stopped after traveling to Thailand.
• I read 26 books, or one every 2 weeks
• I participated in 4 hackathons - two corporate sponsored, the other two more hack for the sake of hacking. That’s how I’d have it. One continues to be a small project about the Zika Virus
• I am working on another side project that will not be named at this current time, but has been taking a lot of time
• Beginning of the year, I finished a course on The History of Classical Music, up to the beginning of the 20th Century.
• The rest of the year was spent learning the history of film. Kicked off by watching the 15 hour documentary, “The Story of Film”. Final tally: 129 films. This has been the highest the past decade. Large contrast to last year being the lowest in a decade.
• Continued to go to talks, topics ranging from Time Travel 101 to Gut Bacteria
• Add North and South Carolina to list of states visited. Total Count: 33.
• I started a papers reading club at work, inspired by “Papers We Love”
• Along with many, I helped raise over $1,000 for charity
  this holiday season
• Sent over 120 holiday cards

Links to previous years: 2015, 2014

My parents used to leave me at the public library for an hour. It was there I stared at a poster hung in the children’s section, showing what each hundred numbers meant. This was my introduction to the Dewey Decimal system. I was in awe at how every topic in life, the universe, and everything could fit within these 10 category brackets. But alas, they don’t. That was revealed when I asked, “Why are there books on suicide near language learning books?”. Much later, I discovered the field of library science, and I realized librarians curated non-fiction books to fit between 000 to 999.

I was fascinated with cataloging systems ever since. So it doesn’t come to anyone’s surprise at my obsession with the 358 page, encyclopedic catalog called “The Whole Seed Catalog from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.”

Each plant entry has a crips image, an item code, and a short description from the farmer on why you should grow this plant. Each image whispers in your ear, “this is what your garden can look like.” The curators determined the selection by the limited supply of Baker’s Creek, as well as compatibility with the North American climate. So even with the limited selection, it’s exhilarating to see what exotic or heirloom varietal lie with each page turn.

The catalog has a lot of character. There are photographs of strange vegetable sculptures and children that could be the poster child for “Future Farmers of America”. I love it when you have someone’s personality injected into these catalogs. Counter that with the department store’s 600+ page catalog of generic items.

This same elation came to me as I flipped through the Cool Tools Catalog. Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired, published this catalog and helps run the website by the same name along with and a slew of editors. Each page is full of interesting gems about topics I wouldn’t have thought about, like world traveling to cartoons that help you learn. For most items, the reviewer has used the item and shared what use they got out of it. For all other items, they are not vetted for, but the the reviewer describes why the item is cool and why they want to buy it at a future date.

The selection of oddities feel like the curators were scratching an informational rabbit hole. Why would I want books on beekeeping? Or tiny homes? Or astrology? Because alluring and voyeuristic, like looking through someone else’s grocery cart. It opens my curiosity and sometimes gets me to dig deeper.

Then there’s the catalog of mythic proportions to a machinist. The McMaster-Carr catalog. Every mechanical part you’d ever want appears in this tome. Over a thousand pages, this catalog has a limited print release. I found a copy at The Crucible in Oakland when I took a general machining class. Gears, nuts, bolts, screws, vinyl tubing, and much more. It has everything.

While that’s an incredible feat, McMaster-Carr has created an orderly website. While the website can’t show the catalog’s size and weight, it adds features to the website you can’t translate to a physical object. They share CAD files so you can integrate their products into your 3D models. They make ordering easy.

Instead of looking at an index in the back of a paper catalog, you can locate any item with the search bar. You lose the unintended discoveries if you were flipping through the catalog. Same same, but different. What you gain is order to their catalog without having to flip through unnecessary details of all possible selections of items you don’t care about.

I am concluding with Filmstruck, the new movie streaming service by TCM, in partnership with Criterion. One of Netflix’s challenges is providing the right content to an individual subscriber. Filmstruck’s solution is to catalog their films by curated themes, like “Classic Bollywood” and “A Smidgeon Of Religion”. And if those are not your flavor of curation, they also have typical genre categories. But you can spend more time viewing short movie descriptions than starting the movie, so let the cinephiles tell you what’s good.

Curation ties all of these catalogs together. Each catalog contextualizes and gives order to multitude of items. Thinking about this helps me think how to organize my work, from determining hierarchy in my code or organizing my thoughts in essays. Don’t think of catalogs are this passive thing we’re given. Think why they are being given to us.

Beyond the pagoda decorated with oriental lanterns and stone lions, is a center of Asian-American culture and identity. A common immigrant experience is to make the new home feel less foreign. For the Chinese and other Asian immigrants, that space is Chinatown.

Generations of Discrimination

My grandfather spent his early adulthood in San Francisco Chinatown. It was the 1930’s, and discrimination was rampant. My guess is he was assigned by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce his first job in San Francisco Chinatown. Or perhaps it was his father. Nevertheless, the chamber had their hand directly or indirectly because they helped find employment for most incoming immigrants. The Chamber acted as a gateway because new immigrants weren’t immersed in American culture or language, and during my grandfather’s time, there was rampant discrimination. 8 decades later, the Chamber remains to help. When founded, the Chamber was run by Chinese, for Chinese. Today, it’s expanded to more Asian communities.

While I’m hazy as to how my grandfather got his first job, I know his job was to help run a laundromat. He worked there until the war broke out. He did his duty and fought the Asian Pacific front. When he came back, he courted my grandmother and married her. With the help of the GI Bill, he was able to buy a house in Berkeley. They had four kids, all boys. One of them is my father. By all means, they made their American dream.

My dad and his siblings grew up in that Berkeley house. They grew up under the strict and regimented rule of my grandfather. My grandfather’s kids children weren’t quite keen on the rules. As children do, they rebelled, but not well. As much as my father wouldn’t want to be compared to his father’s flaws, I see this behavior passed on my dad. He gets anal about tiny details that I don’t think matter.

My dad still faced the discrimination in the 50’s and early 60’s. He recalled to me how the grocery store he stops at today didn’t allow him to enter when he was a kid. “No colors” a sign read marked at the front of the store. The tide changed in his early adulthood.

The dirty secret of immigrant communities is they discriminate. During my grandfather’s adulthood, the Chinese community discriminated against anyone who wasn’t Chinese. My grandfather rejected the idea he or any of his children would marry a Japanese woman. From the war, his discrimination grew larger. I’m sure he was livid when one of his sons married a Japanese woman. That was my parent’s generational divide with their parent’s generation. Today, my divide comes in other arenas, like sexual discrimination. I’m much more tolerant of the LGBT community than my parents. It’s not as harsh as my grandfather’s hatred towards the Japanese. Their discriminatory behavior comes from a lack of knowledge. And that becomes a learning opportunity when I speak to them about those things, if of course you can teach old people new tricks.

Chinese Yesterday, Muslims Today

Muslim communities are discriminated like the my grandfather’s Chinese community. Political tensions with China were high with the rise of Mao Zedong. Chinese restaurants were in the tank because the community marked them as a communist symbol. The community didn’t understand not all Chinese were communists. They failed to understand many of them were Nationals and pro-Capitalists. My grandfather was an anti-communist, and agreed with the economic beliefs of the community.Yet, like every other Chinese business, he was fighting to win the respect of his surrounding community.

Today, political tensions are high in the Middle East. In the Midwest, non-Muslim mothers are scared to have their kid play in a playground because they don’t trust the muslims in their community. It was a point of contention in a recent episode of This American Life. Trump caught wind of this and blew it out of proportion, calling for a temporary ban on all Muslim immigrants. Trump undermines the real point. The issue has more to do with the divide between communities.

My grandfather opened his own laundromats after the war. He was able to sustain customers by doing business with everyone, even the people who didn’t like Chinese people. Tensions came down when they saw my grandfather as the average Joe trying to make a living. They connected with him by talking to him on a regular basis. And he did a damn fine job with their laundry.

I have this itch that we, as a collective, no longer talk with one another. The communities with such rising tension do not connect on empathetic levels. The headlines flood us with asserting blame on the growing immigrant population when really, we never took the time to interact. My call of action is to interact with people you don’t agree with. Try to understand where they are coming from, and understand circumstances are different.

Coda

I’m writing to you from London/Gatwick airport returning from holiday. From the last few days I was here, I noticed good portion of service-oriented business is run by immigrants. After a few conversations with locals about Brexit, I noticed some alarming parallels. Some politicians have convinced the country immigration is the issue rather than pointing out the harder question of the economy. My guess is it’s easier to scapegoat immigrants and play off this sentiment with the citizens. Again, my belief is communication is key for dissuading this argument.

Conclusion

My grandfather passed away before my first birthday. I wish I knew him more. I really want to have a conversation with him. Maybe about being an immigrant. More importantly, how he was able to convince people around him he was an American, assimilated. How he could operate a business with customers judging his allegiance to capitalism. But that won’t happen, and I can merely speculate. So the best I could do was scrap this together through second hand accounts, photographs, and letters.

I know a conversation is a start, and let’s continue this from now on. Tell me your immigrant story. Change my view on how I look at other cultures. The advice is concrete because the issues span generations.

Film Revisited

Beginning this year, I steered in a film adventure. It started with Mark Cousin’s documentary series, “The Story of Film”. It’s a 15 hour spectacle taking you around the world to learn about film history. Though there are sections where the focus is on Hollywood, it doesn’t linger there too long. Cousins talks about film as a global language. Starting from the beginning of film with the Lumière brothers, Cousins works his way through the silent era but relates it to modern day cinema. As a viewer, you’re taken back and forth through films of different eras, understanding how one generation of film makers borrows from the film language of a previous era.

The series had a profound effect on me. Being able to see people make film from a hundred years ago and more tells me there are commonalities in human behavior and events that cross generation and millennia. I had a similar revelation when studying art history, though that was not as profound because the interpretations of the art were typically from secondary or tertiary sources. In film, there are primary sources from documentarians interviewing directors and cast members. For example, MoMA exhibits Van Gogh paintings, but its descriptions are written by the art curator. As an extra on the Blu-ray of Stagecoach, you can watch an interview with John Ford talking about directing his film.

Aging Film Stock

Thanks to recommendations from some readers, I checked out the Stanford Theatre. I don’t know why I hadn’t gone sooner. I watched “The Blue Angel” from 1930. The film shows its age with the crackles and pops from the audio and dust and scratches on the film. I couldn’t care less. I was invested in the eventual downfall of the professor. I was taken aback by of Lola’s song as a harbinger. I witnessed a screening uncommon for today.

While the majority of this year has been watching restorations, original prints or something close to it is just as important. The Stanford Theatre showed me the value of old film. It’s the living print that has been stored for decades before and will continue to be our go-to until we can restore prints to the highest quality. That definition might be the highest pixel density you can get before there is no discernible detail in the film grain.

Thank goodness there are film preservationist keeping these films alive. Preserving the reels is a tough job. This is worse for film with ammonium nitrate that’s highly combustible, prevalent in film before the 1940s. Some films are lost forever because of neglect from the studios, archive fires, and other damage.

What’s Next for Film?

Despite digital taking over, film still has a place in our world. The latest Star Wars film was shot partially on film to give it the aesthetic of the original trilogy. Tarantino swears by it because he believes it gives that bit of authenticity to movies. Is it enough to keep this medium alive? I wouldn’t know. I’m not in that industry. But I will appreciate film for what it’s worth, if it means going to events at Stanford Theatre, SF MoMA, and Berkeley Art Music and Pacific Film Archive. I love this experience of film and would love if everyone could go watch.

The Short Version

I am coming forward; I glance at my phone during dinner conversations. I glance at my phone to check for notifications. I glance at my phone to check the time. I glance at my phone to preview a text.

Is it rude? Yes. However, I can argue that it depends on circumstance. If there’s a matter more pressing or urgent, the action is warranted. But try to be mindful by letting others know. I make the matter its own event and leave the conversation, i.e. a context switch. I don’t want someone to see me disconnected or disengaged in our conversation. An in-person conversation is dialog that belongs to the participants, not to the outside triggers of life.

I have been experimenting with myself by leaving my phone away from reach when I’m talking to someone. If I’m having a coffee shop chatting with a friend, I’ll leave the phone in my bag. If I have friends over for dinner, I leave it on a counter top where I won’t check it.

The exception is when the phone is the conversational centerpiece. If you want to show something on your phone, then it’s not rude.

The Longer Version

I have a tough time reflecting on ideas that I’ve read. It’s easy for me to read things to learn, but if I were to take a step further and apply what I’ve learned, I become stuck. That’s why this is the fifth time I started writing an essay about Sherry Turkle’s new book, “Reclaiming Compassion”. Each past reflection was a step closer to finding out how Mrs. Turkle’s book applied to my life. I identified the book applies to three areas of my life — my work, my relationships, and my personal life through notifications.

Let’s take a step back. Turkle’s book discusses the shortcomings of communication with our new technology. These shortcomings focus around modifying our behavior that ends up distancing us. The book uses case studies and interviews to demonstrate the main points.

Work

One case reviews new paralegals using email as a primary mode of communication. These employees prefer email over face to face interaction to their boss and the firm’s clients. Before, paralegals booked face-to-face meetings and talk about their client’s cases in person. After reviewing work performance of some NY firms, there were lots more miscommunication between firm and client. (need to review the effects). A few firms recognized this and forced their paralegals to make contact in person. Within a few months, these firms noticed an uptick with client satisfaction.

Thinking about my company, we use an IM service for work. I have found it far easier to IM my boss than to walk over to him and ask a question. The relationship was established prior that he can be asked questions in person, but for the first few months of my job, I preferred to ping him my questions. Then I realized there’s more to learn through a face-to-face interaction, so I’ve asked him more questions. When he’s busy on something else, he’ll let me know he needs a minute.

Further than that, if there are logistic issues between my co-worker and I, I will initiate a conversation in person or a video chat over resolving the issue over chat. When I’ve applied the latter, more effort is used to re-explain many times my point of view. If there’s a highly technical logical issue I know would be better through text, or more likely, images, then I’ll do that. Emails get flooded and many times, it’s hard to respond to everything. But more on that later.

Relationships

The book also examines texting in romantic relationships. Mrs. Turkle talks to a teenage boy about his first relationship. The teen wanted the appearance the relationship mattered, so when she texted him, he made sure he responded immediately. More than that, he would stare at his response for a while to make sure it sounded right. He took advantage of the editing capability of texting. However, when he met with her in real life, he was scared he might say the wrong thing. Sometimes, the girlfriend didn’t want to remarks of her admirable abilities the boy kept making. Because it’s hard to convey annoyance by texting, the girlfriend would respond negatively. This would devastate the teen, so he would text her non-stop trying to re-write his wrong. In the end, the relationship didn’t work. The teen was confused and hurt, unsure what he had done wrong. After examining this with Mrs. Turkle, he starts to see his errors, but he’s unsure if he can escape the anxiety of each texts on the next partner.

I can relate to this teenager. I have found myself editing my texts to my past partners to sound better than something I can come up with on the spot. I don’t have problems in conversation. I have an issue with flirting through texts than expending energy to quality time, the need I have the most in terms of the Five Love Languages. [1] My aim with my partner is to focus on that need and spend less time focusing on making myself sound more interesting through texts. Besides, I love flirting.

Notifications

Notifications pierce through our attention span and jump to the front of our todo list. Turkle’s book examines the consequences of constantly being bombarded by alerts. Her findings don’t look so good. When we get a text message, many of us will drop what we’re doing and read it. Of the many, the majority will respond to that text right away, even in midst of doing a different task. In other words, when we are talking to someone and receive a text message, few of us will stop that conversation and glance at our phone. Even fewer of us will respond to that text message than to continue to carry the conversation we are already having.

I get bombarded by emails, texts, and other phone notifications. Desktop notifications have slowly crept up too. I am okay with not responding to a notification at ping time, but I have a hard time forgetting about it when I’m notified. My solution is to silent those notifications, if not removing them entirely. I removed most of my app’s notifications except for texts. I will silence my texts during work hours and leave my phone away from me once I get home. I know for the rare chance there’s an emergency, there will be a phone call rather than a text. As for when I respond to texts, it’s whenever I have time to dedicate during the day to do it. Typically, that will be when I run out of steam at work and need a break, which is around 3pm. At home, I can check it after dinner. I have found I don’t sleep well if I text right before bed.

Attention

Turkle talks about this case between parent and child. A mother might be worried about how much time her daughter is spending on the phone. However, the mother takes emails and texts during dinner time, and the daughter tells the mother to get off her phone. Children emulate the behavior parents display. If parents don’t change their behavior, it’s hard to imagine this mother changing her daughter’s behavior.

I don’t have children, but I make it a point when I’m out with my friends to check my phone as little as possible. I recognize the moment I see the phone in sight, I have an uneasy feeling I am battling for their attention. Also, I recognize when I don’t know something that comes up during conversation, I should ask others and not try to check my phone. If all participants don’t know the answer, I still should not find the answer because I know I can’t control myself to continue to browse the Internet after I have found the answer. And I know the other person or persons in the conversation will feel left out, per the point I made in the beginning of this paragraph. Closing thoughts This week, I crossed my 50 day mark of meditation.[1] It isn’t 50 consecutive days, but I still see the effects it had on me. I feel closer to my body than I have before and I’ve reduced my general anxiety. One of the things therapy helped with in my past is recognizing when my body tenses u during stressful situations. I have not been practicing that behavior as much until I started meditating again, and now I recognize the internal battle I’ve been struggling with everyday. Mrs. Turkle’s book shined light on some other areas that weren’t apparent to me I might also be struggling with. Not every case she wrote about applies to my life, but of the number that did and wrote about here, I have some action steps I’d like to try out. I know I might not be successful with some of my initiatives, and that’s okay. If I didn’t try, that would result in how I’ve approached self-help books in the past. The advice is sound, but because I have no action in place to change my behavior, I continue to fall into my own traps.

[1] Since writing this piece, I have stopped meditating. I crossed 60 days and stopped when I went on my trip to Thailand.

People who run marathons are sadistic. The feet wear down after a dozen or two dozen miles. Full recovery takes a days. Mental capacity gets beat up. Hunger sets in. To say at the very least, this was my state on Sunday. And I’m saying I’m sadistic.

You think after my first marathon, I wouldn’t run again. Despite the critics, I threw myself back in the pool.

Critic: “Why would you pay to run?” The event is an incentive to get in shape. I dragged myself on extended runs because paid to participate.

Critic: “But why? You could run on your own?” I guess so, but I like running in large groups. Plus, I like being catered to by marathon volunteers. In this event, that includes the police.

After the run, I love getting small ego boosts when I tell someone I ran the San Francisco marathon. I get an extra boost when they told me how much of an accomplishment that is. I admit, I’m shallow.

Critic: “Are you crazy?” You should have asked me that the first time around.

The SF marathon is held annually. This year, 27,000 runners took the marathon challenge. I feel proud to have finished under the time limit. But I feel like crap that I made some rookie mistakes. Please don’t make these mistakes.

• Run faster than your training pace. I thought my pace was 11
  min per miles. It’s not. I found out my Fitbit can’t measure distance when my strike width is smaller than normal. That difference meant my time was longer than 11
  min per mile. Of course, if I only use my Fitbit to pace, that doesn’t matter because the references would be the same. But here’s the kicker; I was still running faster than my “training pace”. I screwed up big time and felt miserable by mile 11. Also, I was surprised I was only at mile 11 when I got to that mile marker.
• Run together, alone. Initially, I ran with my earbuds. For 13 miles, I thought I could drown the pain out with music. Not the case at all. I stopped more often with my earbuds in than without. After mile 15, I was about to find at least one chatting partner until the end of the race. I feel grateful to run into chatty folks. They helped me keep a running pace. Also, after I took off the earbuds, I heard a ringing in my ears after. Don’t listen to music too loud!
• Train on an irregular schedule. In addition to running, I was also doing gymnastics strength training. Instead of focusing on running a few miles a day, I took more time contorting myself in strange positions. I couldn’t keep a good routine going during my 2 and a half months of training. My legs paid the price.
• Run with worn out shoes. I used the same shoes from my first race. 8 months ago. Please don’t do that. My feet hurt unevenly. The right foot hurt more than the left. The traction was all gone. The padding was worn in. For a short distance, that’s fine. For a long distance, it can lead to terrible injuries.
• Don’t pack snacks. I needed an extra snack after my stomach gave way. I left an extra Clif bar in my car and completely regret it at the halfway point. The tail-gaters parked close to the finish line were terrible people. I could have slugged one of them in the face if I had the energy to do it. Take many caffeine shots. The gel packs are a great boost, but use them sparingly. It turns out they give me cramps. That’s extremely unforgiving when I need to sustain a steady pace. I had a really bad muscle cramp towards the 3rd quarter that I shook it off by running more. It came back in the end when I tried to sprint through the last 0.2 miles.

Now that it’s all said and done, I’m glad I ran again. I got to meet people from all over. I got to suffer with people from all over. I got a lot of cheers from all over.

Someone in the race told me, “Not everyone can do this, you know.” She’s right. Not everyone can run a full marathon. But, you’ll never know if you don’t try. I put myself in the arena, and I hope this is your invocation to begin.

Bride Never Be

The dark masks a new moon as we continue down the streets of Charleston. The tour guide walks us to the entrance of an alleyway. The iron-rot entrance gate is shut and pad-locked.

“Behind this gate is a narrow alleyway leading to the Utilitarian Church’s cemetery,” said the tour guide. “The church locks the gates in the evening to keep out trespassers. I’ll tell you why when we circle around the corner.”

We follow the guide to a small parking lot past an antiques store.

“Just over these walls is the aforementioned cemetery.” The guide points at the 8 foot high cobblestone wall. “Years ago, that gate was not locked and was opened to the public at all hours. That is, until the antiques dealer stumbled through it late one night. You see, he was working late, passed midnight. He didn’t notice the time pass, baffled when he locked at his watch. He gathered his things and decided the alleyway would be a faster route to his car. He had never walked in the alleyway this late at night before.

He locks up his shop and walks down this alleyway. About halfway, he notices a grave mistake. There are no lights; it’s pitch dark.”

The group looks around. There are street lights all around us illuminating the area.

“These lights you see today were installed a few years ago,” the guide continued. “This incident occurred two and a half decades ago. Folks, I assure you, the path was dark.

Not too sure where the dealer was going, he stumbled on a few headstones. Suddenly, he saw a lady in a wedding dress.

‘Excuse me,’ he says, ‘do you know a way out of here?’.

The lady gestures to follow her. Without giving it much thought, the dealer obliges. He thought this woman was peculiar with this eerie glowing presence. She walked into a tree and disappears. The dealer is in shock and runs back the way he came. He runs out of the gate and takes the longer route to his car, swearing never to go through the cemetery again.

The next day, he tells his friends about the encounter. Some people are intrigued by the ghost and try to retrace his steps in finding the woman in the wedding dress. After one too many trespassers, the church got annoyed by the attraction, so they decided to lock the gate. This barred people from entering. As you can see here, no one was going to go around and climb the 8 foot high cobblestone walls.

On one particular night, for whatever reason, the church forgets to lock the doors. A pedestrian decides to see what’s beyond the gate and discovers the woman in the white dress. He calls out to her, but she doesn’t respond. Like the antiques dealer, he sees her disappear into the tree.

The next morning, the man returned to the cemetery but found no grave near this tree. From the description these two men gave, we don’t think this is the ghost of the serial killer. We believe this was Miss Annabel Lee.

It’s the 1820’s. Annabel was a frail young woman who fell in love with a sailor. Because the parents disapproved of this courtship, they would meet every night in the cemetery under this tree. Before the sailor was sent off to duty, he promised he would marry her when he returned. Sadly, Annabel died of yellow fever. On her deathbed, she asked her parents to be buried in a wedding dress. They obliged and buried her somewhere. The area she was buried was never marked, so we don’t know where the grave is. It would take a few months later for the sailor to find out, and he was totally devastated.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote about Annabel in his last poem. He named it after her, “Annabel Lee”. A few months after publishing the poem, he died.”

Then, the guide tells us something unbelievable.

“The reason I think Edgar Allen Poe wrote about Annabel is he was the sailor. The timing checks out. He spent time in Charleston in the 1820’s. He was in the navy before he was married. And most evident was how grim he looked after his time in the Navy. Check out his before and after picture.”

The tour guide holds up his iPad and shows a side by side comparison of Edgar Allan Poe as a sailor and much later after becoming famous.

We left that spot and continued the tour, but I was left wondering if the legend is true. I did an Internet search last week with very inconclusive results. I don’t think the truth matters though. It got me to think about fabricating reason to the supernatural, and how it tells a compelling story. If the truth were uncovered, I think the story would be mundane and boring. At least this way, we can put a reason to Edgar Allan Poe’s grim face.

Alas, I’ll stop it with the ghost stories. If you enjoyed this, go check out Charleston or Savannah for yourself. Take the ghost tour and decide if the ghosts are real. Or just listen to some great stories about these city’s pasts. They have some great storytellers.

I went on a ghost tour in downtown Charleston where the tour guide told us real ghost stories. His stories were enlivened because we would bear witness to the sighting locations.

First, the tour guide introduced us to the ghost in the jail house. Over a century ago, a confederate prisoner occupied a prison cell in this jail house. One night, he heard footsteps down the hall. It was late so the prisoner thought it was a guard. When he looked up, he saw a woman in a white dress. He felt a chill as she walked passed his cell, laughing hysterically. Years later, the prisoner writes the experience was more horrifying than the dead bothers lost in battles.

The jail closed down and was abandoned for decades. In the early 90’s, a tour guide stumbled into the space and decided he should tell ghosts stories there. He started a ghost tour service and saw business boom. One late night, after telling his ghost story, he broke horror movie rule number 1: Don’t wander off alone. He walked down a long corridor saw a women in a white dress. He shined a light at her asking if she was lost. She smiled at him and walked into the wall. He was taken back and ran off. The next day he resigned from his tour business.

Who was this lady? The tour guide believes she was a serial killer from the colonial days. Her husband and she killed over 30 people. They were captured and sentenced to death. After the beheadings, her body mysteriously disappeared. Perhaps she’s haunting the jail house because no one knows where her body is.

In my quest in developing my data visualization skills, I’m finding validation to be a common interdisciplinary concept. For example, in music, you validate hitting the right notes, keeping beat, and listening to your pitch. In engineering problems, you validate theoretical calculations with empirical data. In business, you validate the business needs with return of investment calculations and customer satisfaction with surveys or field studies. In relationships, we’re validating our perception of the other person. Along the way, when we forget to validate our performance, assumptions, or perceptions, we falter. We play a terrible piano recital. We cause downstream problems in the production line. We take a loss in next quarter’s revenue. We begin to distance ourselves from who we love.

We can classify validation as passive and active. Passive validation is when we gain validation without expecting it. A core essential of validation is feedback loops. Feedback loops are outcomes of validations that when triggered, feed back to the process. Test driven development embraces this by having the developer write tests before code. The rule of thumb is “red, green, refactor”. Red refers to running the test and seeing it fail. Typically, when tests fail, the printed output is red. Green means to write code and see if the tests pass. Typically, passing tests are printed green. Refactor means trying to make that code you just wrote more robust. “Could this piece of code be written better.” Because you already wrote the test, and the code you wrote works, refactoring does not harm. In fact, if your refactored code does not work, the test will give you feedback, invalidating your new code. At that point, you can revert back to the old code.

Active validation requires an effort to test our perceptions. In my data visualization journey, I’m learning how validation works at each level of the process. At the top level, a visual designer asserts the problems of a target user and determines if this problem is best supported with a visualization tool. As a developer, I find myself missing this step of domain validation. Jumping straight to code before thinking about the end user is a smell of disaster. You may be solving the wrong problem or generating a new problem for the user. The old adage that more technology is better is not true. It reminds me of the film, “This Is Spinal Tap” where one of the band members shows the documentarian that his amp goes to 11. The documentarian asks, “Why don’t you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?” The band member replies, “These go to eleven.” Building tools for the tool’s sake is missing the mark.

I hate to admit it, but I find myself relying on intuition rather than verification. It takes energy to validate your intuition. But while this may be a short-term loss, it’s a long-term gain, and humans find it hard to perceive long-term gains. This is where awareness can come in handy. Without awareness, we can let confirmation bias get the better of us. Confirmation bias is the fallacy of using purely coincidental evidence to confirm our intuition. With a heightened awareness, we force ourselves to realize we’re making a confirmation bias, and we must validate what we are thinking. Here’s an example. Why do some voters want Trump to be the next president of the US? I find this question really difficult to answer. I’m not a Trump supporter, so I made my own hypotheses. But, I haven’t talked to a single Trump supporter, so my hypotheses will not get validated. Having awareness means while I think I know what’s going on, I don’t have the slightest clue, and I’m painfully aware of that fact. If I wanted to know, I’d go to a Trump rally, interview some of the supporters, look at polls and surveys on the demographics of the voters, and ask experts.

Validation applies to teams. In a production line, you want to decrease your batch size and intervals of work. At each stage, there are feedback loops that validate whether each batch is valid. The result is an increase flow in production. When I was manufacturing stents, each batch size was small enough where we would only sample 5 to 10 parts per each stage of the process. Of course, final quality assurance checks 100% at the very end. If the parts were invalid at a stage, the batch would be removed from the production line and another batch would be added to the production line. The outcome was a faster output and better worker satisfaction. When you don’t have checks at each stage, errors get downstream, meaning a bad batch would waste time in production because you wouldn’t find out until the final quality assurance checkpoint.

Here’s an action to takeaway. Find one problem you’re repeatedly doing. Propose a solution to that problem. Purposely try to make that problem happen again. If it doesn’t happen, you’ve properly validated your solution. If not, propose another solution and try again.

Footnotes

1. The Pragmatic Programmer is full of tips like “Coding ain’t done until all the tests run”. “Red, Green, Refactor” is a corollary to this.
2. Although I only brushed over the top level, there are three other levels. Tamara Munzner writes in her textbook, Visual Analysis and Design, about the four types of validation. They are domain validation, abstraction validation, idiom validation, and algorithm validation. Abstraction validation is testing the translation between domain terms and visual data terms. Idiom validation is testing the right tool for the right job. Algorithm validation is benchmarking the algorithms and determining if they’re performant.
3. The production line example is loosely taken from the three ways described in the book, “The Phoenix Project”, which describes software and dev-ops as a production line. It’s worth a read if you’re in software and you’re having issues in your team’s pipeline.

I repeat the same pattern every few months. I’ll stop being productive on personal projects. I’ll replace it with an obsession, and it takes over my life for the next few weeks. It’s great if the obsession promotes healthy living, like marathon training or yoga. But this past month, it was an obsession with film.

And I mixed this obsession with the feeling of guilt. Every week, I see the task of writing this newsletter. And every week, I follow the same routine. Monday comes and Monday goes. Tuesday morning, I feel guilty I let my readers down. Rinse and repeat the next week.

The obsession began when I started watching a documentary series called “The Story of Film: An Odyssey”. It was a 15 hour series chronicling world cinema since its inception to the early 2000s. About halfway through, I wanted to watch many of the films mentioned. That’s when I found the Criterion Collection. Or rather, re-discovered. I knew about Criterion through their collaboration with Hulu. I thought they were a collection of American films. But it’s much, much more. The Criterion Collection includes films from around the world that cover nearly all decades of film. I was determined to watch some of them and own a few.

On my little journey, I learned most physical Criterion discs include supplemental material, booklets, and books. I also learned about their restoration process for old films, learning there’s an art in film preservation and that we’ve lost many great films over the years. I also learned of their custom artwork for their covers. What I’m trying to say is, I learned about Criterion’s brand. I feel in love with their brand because of this attention to detail. Loyal fans of criterion will speak highly of these things. It almost feels like an Apple cult-like level. I was determined to buy one to see what the big hype was.

Not wanting to pay for such expensive media, I found my local used records and movie store. I hadn’t been there before. When I stepped in, I remembered why I like these stores. I lost myself in the sea of aisles scanning through albums I’ll never listen to. I get excited wondering why someone purchased this record in the first place. Nested behind the soundtracks were an entire section dedicated to Criterions. I was amazed at the selection. I walked away with “Spartacus” and “High and Low”, a Kubrick film and a Kurosawa film. I was not disappointed.

For the next few weeks, I found myself pouring through the collection, either renting some of the films from the library, watching them on Hulu, or binging on the sale from late last month. I found myself collecting films I wouldn’t have watched a few months ago. Silent films? Yes. Foreign Italian films from the neorealist era? Check. I now feel more adept at hearing film director’s names and reciting one of their films.

Tonight, I’m watching Persona from Bergman. 7 minutes in and I know I’m in for a treat. But I must still make time for writing. Writing grounds me not to stray too far away in this little obsessions of mine. The time I spend writing this newsletter has paid back in helping me understand myself better. Today, I feel more confident about writing again. The truth is I felt like I lost my way with writing during the end of January. I sunk myself in film, and now I feel refreshed, ready to talk about some pending items I have in store. In a way, film restored my writing. Watching these directors at the height of their craft really inspires me to lose myself in creativity. So, let us begin another few months of newsletter goodness. I know I’ll enjoy it.

Tonight was the end of my dodgeball season. Here’s a quick list of lessons learned. Some lessons translate to business. Some translate to personal progress.

1. It’s not about the individual effort, it’s about the team effort.
2. When you’re the lone dodger out there, you’re team will still be yelling at you.
3. The captain’s job is guide you, not manage you.
4. Speak up.
5. Bug your teammates about strategy.
6. Ask your teammates who they’re targeting.
7. Hold back when your teammate’s tell you to.
8. Go for it when your teammate’s tell you to.
9. Give it 100%. Don’t half-ass dodging.
10. Dodge, Dive, Dip, Duck and Dodge.

Stay warm!

Everybody gets critiqued. Great composers like Beethoven have been critiqued. In this review of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the London Symphony picked up this quote from a Rhode Island newspaper.

The whole orchestral part of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony I found very wearying indeed. Several times I had great difficulty in keeping awake … . It was a great relief when the choral part was arrived at, of which I had great expectations. It opened with eight bars of a common-place theme, very much like Yankee Doodle … . As for this part of the famous Symphony, I regret to say that it appeared to be made up of the strange, the ludicrous, the abrupt, the ferocious, and the screechy, with the slightest possible admixture, here and there, of an intelligible melody. As for following the words printed in the program, it was quite out of the question, and what all the noise was about, it was hard to form any idea. The general impression it left on me is that of a concert made up of Indian warwhoops and angry wildcats.

Some phrases pop out at me here.

• great relief
• made up of the strange, the ludicrous, the abrupt, the ferocious, and the screechy
• it was hard to form any idea
• Indian warwhoops and angry wildcats

What amazes me is easy it was for this critic to put down the famous symphony. The descriptions paint a very bleak picture of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, painting the part the critic can recognize, the choral part, as a great relief. Yet, the adjectives used for the rest of the piece draws the critic’s point overboard.

For this critic, Beethoven’s music did not try to copy his classical contemporaries like Mozart or Haydn. Instead, Beethoven injected his character in his music, heralding the sense of individualism felt amongst the contemporary thinkers of the time. It was the time of American and French revolution. It was the time of change. It was the time of new ideas and the tearing down of the old. Part of Beethoven’s character are the strange, the ferocious and the screechy. That’s what makes a Beethoven unique. This is the critic’s failings in understanding Beethoven’s music.

Portrait of Ludwig Van

When I’ve listened to the 9th Symphony, I think it’s a masterpiece. Indian warwhoops and angry wildcats do not come to mind. The good news is, the critic’s words haven’t carried over to this century. Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is still played around the world today. Negative criticism for the sake of bitching and moaning from purely subjective responses rarely get carried over as time passes.

If you though Beethoven’s criticism was bad, wait to you hear what this critic says about Anton Bruckner, a Austrian composer from the 19th century. This voiced his opinion to the public, hailing Bruckner as “the greatest living musical peril, a sort of tonal Anti-Christ.” Here’s his argument.

The violent nature of the man is not written on his face—for his expression indicates at most the small soul of the every-day Kapellmeister. Yet he composes nothing but high treason, revolution, and murder. His work is absolutely devoid of art or reason. Perhaps, some day, a devil and an angel will fight for his soul. His music has the fragrance of heavenly roses, but it is poisonous with the sulphurs of hell.

Holy christ! If you give Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 a listen, you wouldn’t think malice towards to composer who wrote this music. You’d probably shake his hand. Allowing time to pass, we see this critic for who he really is, a hater. It doesn’t matter which century you live in, these haters exist. The critic didn’t recognize the Romantic styling of that century. The sweeping melodies. The dramatic accents and motifs carried over by Beethoven. To Bruckner’s credit, he composed two more symphonies, the ninth unfinished, as well as a smaller pieces for another decade. Like Beethoven, Bruckner is still played today.

A picture of Anton Bruckner

As a side note, you may have already realized it. These two pieces were admired by Hitler. This was not intentional, and I would have missed this reference if it was not for Wikipedia. So, to leave this on a high note, Wikipedia says the adagio from Bruckner’s Symphony No. 7 was played on the official radio announcement of the German defeat at Stalingrad on the 31st of January, 1943. Karma, I guess.

Lastly, if you want a kick of more bad criticism, I would like to refer you to a book entitled “Lexicon of Music Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven’s Time.” It gave me inspiration to write about critics and how terrible wrong they can be after reading them again a century or two later.

The Event List

So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d run to the end of the town…
— Forrest Gump

• I ran across the Golden Gate Bridge, a half marathon, and a full marathon.
• Wrote 43 newsletters. Also, I have every one of you to thank to being readers, from the early readers or new subscribers.
• According to my calendar, I’ve had dinner with a new stranger, many turned friends, each week from January to June, on average. That means some weeks may be 2 while other weeks may be 0.
• Watched 29 movies I had not seen before. This is my lowest number in the last decade. Recommendations: Whiplash, Wolfpack, The Search for General Tso
• Read 45 books. See recommendations below.
• Went to a number of Maptime meetups and got my intro to map making. I took on my first freelance gig as a result.
• My friend took me on my first backpacking trip up in Castle Rock.
• Implemented inbox zero.
• A former friend broke up with me. Can’t be all shine in 2015.
• Counter to that, I made up with old friends. Yes, plural.
• Participated in a number hackathons. The exact number eludes me. Didn’t win any of them.
• As I flip through my journal, I’m reminded the first few months of 2015 were riddled with Caltrain suicides. I wrote a newsletter about it, and the death count doubled by the end of the year. Very, very sad.
• Went to Atlanta for the first time.
• My job survived an acquisition.
• A friend and I helped my trans friend through facial feminization surgery. In Chicago!
• Got to watch some excellent speakers. Highlights: Dr. Silvia Earle, Gavin Aung Than, Gretchen Rubin, Elizabeth Holmes, Nancy Duarte, & John Resig. Note to self: Reflection write-ups would be great journal entries.
• Wrote PHP code, released a Wordpress plugin.
• Really got into board games. Recommendations: Viceroy, Exploding Kittens, Sushi Go!
• Visited a few national parks. First time in Joshua Tree and Zion National Park. Obligatory photo at the end of the post.
• Toured the Pier 9 space Finished 3 large paintings, divided them up to 90 recipients, and included typed letters as Christmas cards

The Book List

• The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World. Thanks to Helin for the recommendation. Each chapter goes through a different aspect of gift giving, leading up to analysis on the poetry of Walt Whitman and Erza Pound. Perked my interests especially after writing the newsletter post on Nerina Pallot and creativity.
• The Crossroads of Should and Must: Find and Follow Your Passion. An extension of Elle Luna’s Medium post. Mixed with her drawings, it really inspires you to find your “must”. This was my first giveaway from the short-lived giveaways I was giving to the subscribers of this newsletter.
• 40 Days of Dating. I read through the blog. I still picked up this book. On my first read through, I realize this is why I love books. The detail in this book is stunning and it reminds me books are a different medium than the web. Plus, the experiment just draws you in. Two friends who decide to date for 40 days. You can’t stop wondering if they’ll make it past 40 days.
• Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA. Honestly, this isn’t fair to put this on my list. The print copy hasn’t come out in the US yet, so I read it through Audible. I’m a sucker for the history of science. I had no grounding for the pre-cursors to NASA, so this overview made me giddy.

The “Goal”

Last year, I wrote up a list called the “Fuck-it” list. It recognized all the things I didn’t want to do or care about. Instead of a list, I’m going to give myself one goal. Finish research and start writing a novel.

I gave myself this goal 6 years ago, and I accomplished my first novel in 2012. It was about 200 pages and will never see the light of day because of how bad it is. This novel I’m going to write should be publish-able. I’m staying hush-hush about what it will be about. Can’t spoil it for everyone this early on.

Errata

Enjoy this picture I took somewhere between Northern Arizona and Southern Utah.

A few years ago, Radiolab ran an episode called “Finding Emilie”. Emilie Gossiaux and her boyfriend, Alan, were art students in New York City and the story chronicles Emilie’s fatal accident and recovery, where her mother and Alan almost pulled the plug when all hope seemed lost for finding Emilie.

One tragic day, Emilie was hit by a vehicle and was rushed to a hospital. The doctors stabilized her condition, except there was too much damage to her optic nerve where even if she recovered, she would no longer be able to see. When her mother and boyfriend, Alan, made it to the hospital, Emilie was in a coma.

Emilie was partially deaf and had hearing aids. After the accident, the doctors didn’t put her hearing aids back, so for days, the doctors tried to talk to Emilie to see if she was out of her coma, but she did not respond. They did not know Emilie needed hearing aids, and because of this, the doctors thought there was no hope for Emilie. Needless to say, the doctors were wrong, and I won’t spoil the rest of the episode. I’ve placed the link conveniently at the end so you can go listen to it after reading the rest of this letter.

Back in October, Emilie had an art exhibit at the StoreFrontLab in San Francisco. The exhibit was part of a larger series celebrating the life and work of Oliver Sacks. Emilie hosted a spaghetti night where she served spaghetti on a ceramic bowl that wasn’t glazed, and gave out laser cut forks for everyone to twirl and eat their spaghetti with.

The sauce stained the bowl, placing a permanent mark that says, “someone ate spaghetti in me”. The permanent markings of the spaghetti stains reminds Emilie of her childhood. Taking a part of this experience forced me to think of the creativity of blind artists trying to represent what matters to them in a medium besides visuals. The feel of the bowl was raw and unfinished, much like the texture of stone. You can hear the spaghetti splash around as you dig into it. You can smell the generic Preggo sauce and all of its familiarity, even after the local season of tomatoes were on their way out.

The meal was frustrating. The fork was oddly shaped, and you could twirl the spaghetti with ease. And I imagine that’s the point. Stripped of your sense of sight, what are you left with? I’ll say it again, frustration. Yet, it exposes me another point of reflection about other’s experiences that I would otherwise not have experienced on my own. It showed me another layer of appreciating art, that it can expand beyond the visual aesthetic.

Radiolab Episode: “Finding Emilie”.

Have you ever felt like you’ve stalled in improving your skills? You reach 20,000 miles driving your car, and you think, “yeah, there’s nothing more I can do to improve my driving skills.” You feel comfortable clocking in at work, mindlessly going through the actions because you’ve done this work a thousand times before, and there’s absolutely nothing that will shock you. I’m not critiquing the boredom one could face droning through work. I’m making an observation that you don’t even notice when you’ve reached a peak in growth.

At First, How Much

This week, I read Scott H. Young’s article, “Failures of Intensity”. In the article, Scott argues for skill acquisition advice to be geared towards how much you should do rather than what you should do. Scott mentions there is lack of information about how much time it takes learning a new skill as well as frequency. Almost all advice columns out there are about what to do to learn a new skill.

If I open the top stories on Medium, you’ll find posts titled “These 12 Habits Are Killing Your Productivity”, “Building your design portfolio? Here are 8 things I wish I’d known”, and “How to be like Steve Ballmer”. The last article, it started with the word, “how”, but when you get to the meat of the article, you find out its telling you the “what”, as in “what do you need to do in order to achieve success like Steve Ballmer.” I’m not trashing these articles. I’m sure they’re all a perfectly good read, but Scott was right. They’re focused on telling people the “what” and not of “how much” and “how frequent”.

How much is enough to learn a skill? Last year, I read Josh Kaufman’s book, “The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything … Fast!” Like most books, Josh first breaks down the question of what. For this book, it’s the what of of skill acquisition. But unlike other books, the second half is Josh chronicling the first twenty hours of learning a new skill. He breaks down the first twenty hours of learning yoga, programming, touch typing, the game go, the ukulele, and windsurfing. He learned it wasn’t worth pursuing touch typing after twenty hours, but it was worth pursuing programming a bit further.

What we can learn from Josh is to give new skills a shot. Give yourself a goal or milestone to reach by twenty hours. At the end of the twenty hours, you take a moment of reflection. Do you continue to put more effort in this skill or let it go?

Reflection Points

If you decide to continue with your skill, place checkpoints to review the progress. All too often, we don’t reflect on where we are. If you check in with yourself at fixed time intervals, like every week or every month, you can review the progress you’ve made. Then, you can adjust the frequency of how much more practice you’ll need.

When you don’t have checkpoints for reflecting, you could be comfortable with mediocre skills and stop working on growth. This is especially harmful if you wish to continue growing. I have made this mistake repeatedly. Years into my piano lessons, I’d practice with an automated mind, letting myself play the music without thinking about timing, about playing the correct notes or keeping good form. Bad habits such as finger slip mistakes creeped in and stuck, in other words, I learned to adapt to hearing the bad note. Before I knew it, I wasted a good 100 hours practicing music that didn’t sound great. I stalled on my skills and wasn’t going to improve them with more time spent on practice. I had fallen pray to my autopilot mind.

Flow is the balance between doing a task that is challenging while having a high skill level in that task. Deliberate practice is being in that flow state. Regular practice regards all practice, whether deliberate or not. I won’t talk much about flow, as that was the topic of a previous post. If you find yourself in that stalled funk, here are a few tips to help you get out.

Work on something new. In piano practice, this is as easy as playing a new song in a new genre. Last month, I found my fingers tired and sore trying to play improv salsa. It was a genre I hadn’t tackled before, and by the end of my practice, I remembered what a beginner felt like.

Write about the process. This past week, I started using Vim as a text editor. After a year of using Sublime and Atom, I put those aside and took two hours to go through a tutorial called vimtutor. The tutorial taught me the basics of how to use Vim. At the end of the tutorial, I wrote up a piece about my experience with the tutorial, mainly to help myself with what I learned, but with a bonus side effect that it may help someone else just starting out with Vim.

Reflect with a teacher. Whenever I feel I’m not challenged enough, I talk to a teacher, a boss, or a mentor who has a higher skill level. Talking to someone with a higher skill level, you may be able to extract what you could do next. I was at a data visualization unconference two weekends ago and people I talked to pointed me to bunch of new programs to sharpen my toolset.

Be the teacher. If you know the skill well enough, you should be able to teach it to others. A lot of times, you won’t know there’s gaps in your knowledge or skill until you have to teach it to someone else. It makes you reflect on being the beginner again. During Thanksgiving, I tried to teach my 8 year old cousin how to play a 14 and up card game. When I was explaining the rules to my cousin, I used large words he couldn’t understand. Looking at my cousin’s dumbfounded face, I realized I’m still terrible throwing away large words in favor of shorter ones a 8 year old could understand. Reflecting on this situation, I need to work on communicating more clearly to children.

While I’ve recommended this book in the past, it’s a great book to recommend again. “Pragmatic Thinking & Learning. Refactor Your Wetware” by Andy Hunt has more tips about getting out of the rut.

Remember skill acquisition takes time, and you should focus on the journey rather than the destination. Perhaps twenty hours utilizing one of these tips might just be what you need to grow into the master you wish to become.

Dear Reader,

Let’s keep this a bit informal. I’m thankful for a year of newsletters, thankful for all of you reading, and thankful for all of the support y’all have given me. Without your support, I don’t know if I’d be writing essays every week. This weekly piece of writing is a way to bring together as well as synthesize what I’ve learned throughout the week. Now that it’s been a year, I wanted to look back at what I wrote and take a look at the journey.

The Numbers

Since last year, I’ve sent 45 letters. That tells me I’ve missed 8 letters. Back in October, I announced I would cut back on my load of work by publishing an essay once every other week. However, I want to challenge myself in the month of December to bring to you all original essays once a week again.

When I started, I had six subscribers. Today, as of November 29th at 8

Combined, the total word count for my letters is 48,476. Keep in mind I love to lift quotes, passages, and re-post other stories my friends have written. That’s pretty close to the NaNoWriMo goal of their 50k word count. To give some perspective, “The Great Gatsby” has a word count of 47,094. “Slaughterhouse-Five” has a word count of 49,4459. You can check out Commonplace Book’s website for more novel word counts.

Reflections

Between December to June, I was releasing these letters on Medium. I stopped posting in June because I wasn’t getting much readership on Medium. When I published on Medium, I hoped more strangers would read what I posted. I tried advertising on social media, but did not have much luck besides two posts, one in which was recommended by Dave Hoover and another which was following the Caltrain suicide news circus. With Tinyletter, it’s guaranteed these emails will reach my particular audience. I will only post to Medium today if I think the post has a clear message and should reach a wider audience. Most of my posts on Medium have on average 5 reads. It should be noted a read is when a user scrolls through the article from top to bottom counter to a page view which could also include a bounce behavior, i.e. a user clicks on the article and immediately goes to a different website or closes the tab or window of the browser.

And it should be noted I’m not trying to write for an unknown audience. I’m writing for my friends and whoever wants to join in on my essays. I’ve stated on the Tinyletter landing page that I’m not going to social media to post a longform essay, because no one will read it there either. On Facebook, we are inundated by the endless scrolling content where a wall of text would not appeal to anyone’s eyes. That post would be surrounded by an environment of short, multimedia content that shouts, click on me, and has a shelf life of two seconds.

The last thing I will say about writing this piece every week is I really enjoy the writing process. I’m selecting my words carefully, trying not to use too many adverbs and quips that add no value to the writing. One of my friend’s pet peeves is the world albeit. “We can go to the store, albeit by the time I get there, I may have to use the restroom.” In this context, albeit was not necessary to get the point across. On that same thought, I try not to use words like “just”, “finally”, and “definitely”, which are overused in my writing.

Again, thanks for all of you for reading my posts. One year goes by so fast, I forget easily how much I’ve written. I hope you continue to join me for the next year as I have more to share with y’all.

Best,

Jeremy Wong

“Impostor syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true. It is experienced internally as chronic self-doubt, and feelings of intellectual fraudulence.”

— Taken from Caltech Counseling Center

It’s easy to latch on to a concept to answer the question, “What’s wrong with me?” I asked that question about a year into my last job. I knew the ins and outs of laser cutting metal rods. I knew the basics in making jigs and fixtures for manufacturing custom parts. I knew how to break down problems using the scientific method. But my work project was ten weeks late, and I was feeling quite defeated that I wasn’t the right person to do this job, which was a slippery slope in thinking I wasn’t cut out to be in this line of work. I didn’t know it at the time, but I thought what was wrong with me was I had imposter syndrome.

To add insult to injury, it was revealed in my performance review that my boss had given me low marks on competence. Their feedback was unhelpful in giving actionable steps in how to perform better, and I was left with low self-esteem. I thought I didn’t have what it takes to be an engineer, that I was a fraud, and at some point I was going to be fired. It was at that point where I started to really slip up, not making any progress on the project I was working on. My boss, sensing my discomfort, pulled me in a meeting with the CEO and a co-worker and told me to pair up on this project, because two heads are better than one.

But the plan backfired. Three more weeks past by, and neither my co-worker nor I could figure out how to complete the project. Initially on the project, I didn’t ask for much help, so we decided it might be best to get the CTO to help us. But his practice of teaching us in a yoga-like manner did not help either of us in creating a viable solution. We had many false breakthroughs, eventually resulting in my resignation. It would take the company the next year and different engineers to complete the project.

Reflecting back on it, I realized that it wasn’t just my mental performance that was bleak, but also the fact that it really was an incredibly difficult project. This experience wasn’t an attack on my competence, nor is it a tale of imposter syndrome. It is an example of believing self-doubt was a bad attribute to have. This week, I read Alicia Liu’s post on “Imposter Syndrome Is Not Just A Confidence Problem”, which I took away that I need a healthy dose of self-doubt. I’m unable to know everything, so not knowing something is a gut feeling that I should pursue other avenues of exploration rather than just seek within. This could be asking for help, doing research on what other’s have done in the past, or talking to a rubber duck to re-access the problem. And it turns out, experts and masters of their own field can have moments or large lapses of time of self-doubt. That’s when you’re supposed to put on the kettle and think.

For nearly three months, there has been talk about when the rain will come in California. We have started to treat El Niño as the second coming of Christ where nature will save us all. I know those conversations are in the context of the drought, but taking a step back, they sound spiritual, as if nature is our savior. And yet, we don’t know this to be the case. We’re unable to predict the future, especially since nature tends to work in mysterious ways. We call our models predictive because they’re just that, a prediction.

This morning, it started raining for what seems like the first time in a very long time. It rained earlier this year with the same intensity, but it felt like eons ago. I woke up early since I have a hard time adjusting to Daylight Savings Time, and it was dark all around me. I could hear the pitter patter of the raindrops on the roof, and I was shaken up, unable to get a good night’s rest. I find it peculiar yet fascinating how my body can forget how to sleep in a loud environment.

I’m not going to hail this as, “El Niño is here! Let’s praise nature our drought is over!” One downpour can not make up for years of no downpour. Perhaps I’m being a pessimist because I don’t want to believe in one grand event solving everything, a deus ex machina. I guess this is to say I have optimism from the success of small wins rather than one large miracle. You decide what this rain means.

However, I’ll embrace this event. It’s a good shake up to the monotonous routine and the banalities of everyday life. At least, that’s the feeling I got when I woke up today.

I was turned on to audiobooks by accident. I had a free half hour of commuting and didn’t want to waste it staring out the window or listening to the same people on podcasts. I was commuting to and from school at the time, and I kept hearing the same Audible ads on TWiT, a weekly podcast about tech. I decided to give the free subscription a try on Audible and give an audiobook a chance. While the first book I read didn’t change my life, I understood the medium a lot better. I could commute and listen to an audiobook and be excited to continue a story I had left off the day before. It’s a lot like a TV show, and the format is different than what you would find on a podcast, e.g. interviews, round table discussions, and reporter segments.

Some 100 audiobooks later, I owe it to audiobooks to introducing me to authors I now adore and giving me an opportunity to learn something new. On my road trip last year from Dallas to San Jose, I finished reading “The Goldfinch”. I’m in the camp of people who didn’t care too much about the second act of the book as I felt it could’ve been trimmed down from it’s mostly mundane descriptions that parallels a Dickinson novel. During these long and arduous reads, I was glad someone else was reading them to me as I was yelling expletives in the car at how much the main character was an idiot. But that’s the beauty of audiobooks. The reader keeps reading through the audiobook even if you’re excited, in tears, or just plain bored. If it wasn’t for the audiobook version of “A Storm of Swords”, the third book of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, I don’t know how I could’ve mustered to read through the red wedding.

When I talk to a non-audiobook reader, they have a hard time understanding the value of an audiobook. When someone tells me listening to an audiobook is not reading, I ask them whether they used to listen to their teacher read to them, or their parents, or whether they read to their kids. Many famous works came from oral tradition, like the Greek epics “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”. “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was a radio program before it was in print form. When someone tells me they couldn’t sit an hour listening to a book, I ask them how long they commute for or how long a day they sit at a desk. When someone tells me they can’t bear the narrator’s voice, I ask them to try another audiobook. Stephen Fry does great narration in the Harry Potter series, giving each character a unique voice. Granted, non-fiction can be very dry if the narrator’s voice is dry and not vivacious.

When I talk to an audiobook reader, we tend to hit it off about what we enjoy reading, who’s our favorite narrator, what we’re looking forward to read next. If nothing else, you should listen to audiobooks too as a conversation piece at your next dinner party. Entertain your guests with the lore of “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Tell them about your foray into the bibliography of Einstein. Recite what you learned about empathy from Brené Brown. And, if audiobooks don’t work, why not pick up a book?

This past Saturday, I finished my first marathon. To add difficulty to my challenge, it was a trail run marathon. I didn’t realize this detail when I registered. But coming in faster than expected blew me away. I’d like to acknowledge the people that helped me and try to point out it wasn’t a journey done on my own.

Thanks to Megan who started me on a regimented running routine earlier last year. By motivating me to help her running journey by doing couch to 5k, I learned the value in pacing and intervals.

Thanks to Simon for repeated using the phrase, “The Obstacle is the Way.” I chanted that mantra throughout the run, and it helped my inner game by focusing on the run rather than the finish. Conveniently, I read Ryan Holiday’s book by the same name earlier this year. If you want a taste of stoic philosophy, I’d recommend the book.

Thanks to Christin for introducing me to trail running. I found out I get an adrenaline rush running up and down mountains. She also helped pick me up from my half marathon, which I completed earlier this year.

Thanks to Carlos for letting me know about this marathon. He didn’t participate, but is egging me on to do the LA marathon next year. I haven’t made up my mind about that one yet.

Thanks to Victor for helping me train in Arizona. Nothing can capture those four days of wild and crazy trail runs through different terrain.

Thanks to Teagan for taking me to my marathon. Thanks to my dad for picking me up.

And lastly, thanks to the countless people who have given me support on my journey. I really couldn’t have made it without you.

I’m still exhausted and stiff from my run, and I hope to come up with a longer, more cohesive essay next week.

Keeping Traditions

Before I started sending Christmas Cards, I didn’t get the point of sending cards. The only times I sent cards were if I found them funny or I was told to send one. In late 2011, my roommate Teagan asked if I could help her make a Christmas Card to send to her family and close friends. She wanted to show her parents the friends that she lived with. I accepted her task, which started the Christmas Card tradition.

Teagan grew up with them. She told me her parents got all six siblings and her together for one shot. She missed that tradition, being away from family for the four years she had been in college, and really wanted to participate in her family’s tradition. I didn’t grow up with them. My family had a one-way gift exchange, receiving a card from other family or friends.

Teagan and I decided to mock the generic format of the Christmas Card. The card had individual pictures of each roommate in the background followed by a center picture of everyone together. The generic heading, “Merry Christmas”, curved it’s way in on the bottom. I was glad our roommates participated in our absurd card, and I printed enough for each roommate to distribute 6 copies of the card. When I gave it to my family, there had a hoot. I remember they laughed so hard, and I wanted to cherish that moment. However, I was disappointed I didn’t have more to give.

The next year, I wanted to continue this gift. I decided this should be a running tradition. I created another card of just myself. On it, there are three panels. In the first panel, I dressed up like Santa Claus, the next panel, I was taking off the costume, and the third panel, I made a “ta-da” pose. Laughing at it for a minute, I thought this would be perfect. With the disappointment of having only 6 cards to distribute last year, I preemptively ordered a hundred copies. To my dismay, only 30 people replied, leaving me with 70 unusable Christmas Cards. But, I shouldn’t say it wasn’t worth it because those who were sent the card gave me their gratitude.

Instead of keeping to the same format year after year, the following year, I went all out. Recognizing I probably wouldn’t need to send too many out, I sent out invitations telling everyone I would send pictures of us together on the postcard. By making this simple change, my number of recipients grew by over two-fold. This time, everyone was elated when they received my card and saw their own face on it. I learned personalization is key to making a better Christmas Card with greater emotional weight.

Last year was quite wonderful. I changed it up again, creating hand-drawn card of something that reminded me of them. For one of my friends, I drew a rock climber because I knew that’s an activity she enjoyed. On another card was a petri dish because my friend worked in a lab at UCSF. However, I was worn out when I found out I had to create 140 of these cards. I had just graduated from Dev Bootcamp and wanted to keep in touch with everyone I had met.

Despite feeling worn out, this has been a high point each year. Being able to reach out to people I haven’t talked to in a year and making something meaningful for them. It’s a great feeling, and I wish everyone had the time to do this. I’ve changed my position about gift-giving, and I really want the people I know I am thinking about them.

The Idea

This holiday season, I want to do something new and fresh. Different ideas floated around my head, and I settled on an idea that I think will be really fun and therapeutic. I would like to give every a piece of a large art piece and type-written letters from an old typewriter.

I started water coloring this year, and think it would be really neat to do a few large canvases. I’ll take those canvases and cut them up in card sized squares. The idea is the gift recipient gets a part of a larger masterpiece. I stole the idea from Nerina Pallot who did this as prizes for supporting her new album.

Last year, I learned hand writing 140 letters may result in minor forearm muscle cramps. Instead of hand writing, I wanted some way of showing I wrote the letter with meaningful though. Enter a typewriter. I’m using an Olivetti Praxis 48, an electric typewriter from the late 1960’s. Some of the relic’s buttons don’t function. I’m looking at you, letter z, 2 and shift key! I’ve chosen to use plain dot matrix printer paper with the side perforations. These two items pair well as it shows a world we’ve left behind.

Now I know I could send this all digitally. But, there’s something about the physical medium that changes the perception of a gift. An email can whiz by you without a moment’s notice. A physical card is something you must take the time and look at. Instead of that 6 second email interaction, you may take up to a few minutes looking at my Christmas Card. Some websites have caught on to this, such as Reddit Gifts or Metafilter’s CD swap.

Some of you may be wondering why am I starting in October? To be honest, I’m lazy. The administrative tasks, such as asking everyone for their mailing address, filling out each envelope, putting the stamps on it, going to the post office, obtain postage for international letters, and physically mailing them, are boring. Plus, last year, I was late, so I’m hoping that proverb, “The early bird gets the worm,” actually works as implied.

The Value of a Gift

On my friend, Helin, recommendation, I read a book called “The Gift” a few months back. The book has this sector about monetary gifts versus gifts with no inherent price tag. A takeaway I learned was how I should continue this gift giving process without thought about receiving something back. There’s an implicit value that is reciprocated that may not take the form of a tangible gift, like writing a letter of recommendation when asked. The moment the gift has a price tag, the monetary value distracts from the emotional pull of a gift, and the gift recipient use the monetary value of the gift as an indication of the value of the relationship, e.g. a cheap gift means a poor relationship.

In addition to the benefits to the gift recipient, the cards have a major benefit to the gift giver. These Christmas cards are a gift for me to initiate a conversation to my contacts. It’s my lazy excuse to talk to someone I may have not reached out to for a year. It bugs me that people enter and exit your life, while the only thing keeping you from reaching out with a simple phone call, text, or email. I’m reminded of the poem by writer Charles Hanson Towne.

Around the corner I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end;
Yet the days go by, and weeks rush on,
And before I know it a year is gone,
And I never see my old friend’s face,
For Life is a swift and terrible race.
He knows I like him just as well,
As in the days when I rang his bell,
And he rang mine. We were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men:
Tired with playing a foolish game,
Tired with trying to make a name.
”To-morrow,” I say, “I will call on Jim
”Just to show that I’m thinking of him.”
But to-morrow comes — and to-morrow goes,
And distance between us grows and grows.
Around the corner — yet miles away,…
”Here’s a telegram sir,…"
"Jim died today.”
And that’s what we get, and deserve in the end:
Around the corner, a vanished friend.
— Charles Hanson Towne

I never expected this ritual to occupy so much time. But I think of the benefits make it worthwhile, of catching up with old friends, of being able to go beyond normal gifts, of being creative. I absolutely love doing this, too much to the point this is what I think about on my free time.

“Thats morbid,” everyone responded when I tell them I’ve been reading the New York Times collection of obituaries. I disagree. I read an obituary a day to test a practice I read about from Austin Kleon from his book, “Show Your Work.” Mr. Kleon states it simulates the feeling about being hit with a life altering event. My expectation was I would be grounded in the reality, being reminded of my inevitable death if I read them. This is to simulate the feeling that you know your end will come some day without having to go through a life altering event. At least, that’s the theory.

The sum of every obituary is how heroic people are, and how noble.
— Maira Kalman

A few years back, I read Gretchen Rubin’s “The Happiness Project” where she concluded she had a deeper contemplation of life after reading memoirs with catastrophe. I’m reminded of similar consensus of feeling uplifted and reflective after I read Victor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” and Primo Levi’s “If This Is A Man”. Both are about the concentration camps and neither dwell on the gross detail nor have a negative outlook on life.

The obituaries writers spotlight the recently deceased accomplishments, major struggles, and the family survivors. There’s some vesiage of their personality with a mixture of their accounts through a one liner quote with several second or third person views of how they made then feel. For example, Patricia O’Neal’s obituary included an annodote from people who worked with her on set. However, there are major shortcomings of an obituary as it does not capture the small moments, the cumulative effect they had to the community, all the short stories of their experiences. It’s highly condensed writing to laud their efforts in life. And that’s okay, because that’s the format of an obituary. This is unlike biographies like that of Peter Barton, Steve Jobs, and Oliver Sacks. Those have little gems of knowledge that one can use in their everyday lives. Obituaries try to tie things up with a knot of someone’s passing.

After reading one a day for the past two weeks, I don’t feel life altering different. I’m a little more aware of myself, of the small things I do that I can change like being gratuitous to friends, family, and strangers, going out of my way to put that extra effort in my work, and learning to slow down. Actually, that last one is something I struggle with on a daily basis, but more of that in a future post. If that’s the kind of kick you want in your daily routine, open a newspaper or buy a collection of obituaries and read one a day. And don’t let anyone tell you that’s morbid because the effect is quite the contrary; obituaries celebrate life.

Obituaries are like near-death experiences for cowards. Reading them is a way for me to think about death while also keeping it at arm’s length. Obituaries aren’t really about death; they’re about life… . Reading about people who are dead now and did things with their lives makes me want to get up and do something decent with mine. Thinking about death every morning makes me want to live.
— Austin Kleon

Annotations

1. The collection of obituaries is called The Obits: The New York Times Annual 2012.

   Sometimes the best part of a show is the curtain call, when the job is done and the actors bask in their well-deserved accolades. Here is a wonderful book filled with curtain calls. Count me among those on my feet and applauding like mad. —Stephen King

2. Austin Kleon’s book, Show Your Work, references the practice of reading obituaries in Chapter 1, “You Don’t Have To Be A Genius”. He also writes about this in a blog post after being inspired by Maira Kalman.
3. Gretchen Rubin’s book, The Happiness Project, read memoirs with catastrophes in Chapter 8, “August”
4. If you haven’t read Victor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, it has sound advice even though it’s over a half century old. Same with Primo Levi’s book, If This Is A Man.
5. I wrote about Peter Barton a while ago. His memoir is called Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived. The Steve Jobs biography I refer to is by Walter Isaacson under the same name. I also wrote about Oliver Sacks last month about his biography, On The Move: A Life. Dr. Sacks died last month. Yes, you bet I read his obituary.
6. I have two Ted Talks that share the same vein as this essay. One is by Ric Elias about how he thought he was going to die on a plane during the Hudson River plane landing incident, and what he changed in his life after. The other is by Sam Berns, who proves he can do anything even with his genetic disorder, progeria. He died in early 2014.

Cross Mentions

You can find this piece on Medium and Buttondown.

On the fourth day of my trail running adventure last week, I was a torn mess. My left calf was aching, my joints were abused, my willpower depleted. And yet, I continued, with the sun beating down at 104 degree Fahrenheit weather. I rab on the golf concourse in the middle of Death Valley, possible the lowest point of the world. The concourse was covered with salt, reflecting the sun’s radiant light and adding an extra source of irritation.

At this particular point of my journey, I was slowly losing the inner game. My conscious self got defensive, shouting “you’ll pass out before you get to the finish line.” I felt faint for being outside for a half an hour, and water was a short lived refresher. It’s the last quarter-mile stretch, and all I wanted was an ice tea by a cool, ocean breeze.

This happened the first day too. It was at Joshua Tree, and I had a low reserve of willpower from a lack of sleep the night before. I wanted to stop running; my mind was the greatest obstacle. I tried the strategies I picked up from marathon training to stop thinking by placing focus on breathe. In the back of my head, Simon was telling me “the obstacle is the way.” My travel campanion was running beside me shouting words of encouragement. I try to listen and not let my mind get the better of me.

Death Valley in the summer is miserable as people say. It’s dry, you can faint by heat stroke, and you can’t imagine how there’s life in the desert. But glancing around, there were bushes, ants and other inserts around. I’m unsure if life was giving me a sign, but I was going to make it. At least, that’s the mantra I decided to use.

At the finish line, I panted heavily. “I made it,” I thought, but it was a large mental struggle. I found it hard to explain this to my travel friend as we packed up out gear to leave. My head throbbed from the lack of proper sleep. I wanted to leave the desert, go to a cooler place. I wanted to let my aching left calf rest.

That’s the inner game. An internal struggle to bypass the thoughts of quitting, of giving into the temptation that what you’re doing is not worth it, of letting your body do the last 10%. I look back at the situation now and realize those efforts were crucial. We may not understand why, but we need to rely on our gut feeling and stop listening to our head.

I came across this sentence when I was reading through the book, “40 Days of Dating”. “I think whatever you do, just make sure you’re responding and not reacting. It’s easy to get comfortable. Take your time, please.” Timothy Goodman, graphic designer and one half of the “40 Days of Dating” project, was responding to a fan of the project on Facebook, and he decided to give the fan some advice about failed relationships. He is trying to tell this fan to be more mindful in her relationships by sliding back into an abusive relationship. Reacting is allowing the emotions to come out. Responding is allowing the mind to analyze the consequences of what those emotions will produce. “I don’t want to be one of those people who just gets sucked back into a relationship because it’s more comfortable than having to start over,” says the fan.

I’ve written about feeling uncomfortable in the past, and it has an questionable counterpart, comfort. I remember I had this habit of venting to my co-worker on how terrible my life was when she asked me how my day was. She would feed off of that energy and tell me everything that was wrong with her. It was doing me harm because it would leave a bad aftertaste for the rest of my day. Instead of thinking about what my words meant, I allowed my mind to react to this moment as a time to unload all of my problems. It would have been better to avoid those conversations and talk about those things that were bothering me in a safe place.

It’s not enough to identify this problem areas once. Dealing with uncomfortable situations should be a daily habit. There are plenty of moments throughout my day to practice responding to situations rather than reacting. I was on the road earlier today and someone cut me off. Instead of acting out and honking my horn, I listened to my body’s emotional reaction and let it go. The process of letting go is different for person to person. I try to find my non-judgement headspace. If that doesn’t work, I try to take a stab at rational thought, like “I have the ability to control my behavior, and honking the horn doesn’t solve the problem.”

I absolutely love this story by Maurice Rabb, instructor at Dev Bootcamp, that he shared on Facebook.

I had an odd experience today. This morning I was hurrying to meet Audrey and Ella in the Loop. I hate paying for downtown parking, so I was doing my usual trick of parking south of 16th St and riding my folding bike north to the Loop. As I was preparing to pull into a small spot, I noticed that there was someone in the driver’s seat of the car in front of the space. I pulled up and asked > the woman, Excuse me, are you leaving?”

Lady: “No.”

Me (Seeing that no one was parked ahead of her): “Can you give me a foot?”

Lady: “Huh?” Turning towards me looking confused and annoyed.

Me: “Can you move up a bit so that I can get in the spot?”

Lady (Turning fully towards me and glaring.): “If you can’t get that little car > in there, YOU DON”T DESERVE THE SPACE!”

Me (taken aback and shocked by her profound stanktitudes): “Do you need to be > so FUCKING RUDE?!?”

I slid into the spot in one fell swoop. (In your face, asshole!) I hop out of the car and made my way around to the back. As I’m unloading my bike, I hear muffled Charlie Brown teacher style chatter from the woman - she’s unintelligibly and angrily loud talking me from her car. I immediately regret cursing at her and escalating the situation. As mean and ignorant as her > comment was, I’m concerned she might key my car when I leave.

As a defensive move, I take a picture of her car to capture her license plate. As I’m unfolding my bike, she gets out her car yelling at me. She’s a > 60/70-something black woman. She’s now taking photos of my car.

Lady: “Look at all these scratches on your bumper. You obviously don’t know how > to park!”

I ignore her. (Dummy, didn’t you just see that pro valet parking attendant move > I just pulled? You better recognize, fool!)

She walks closer: “Look at all these scratches on the side of you car. You > clearly don’t know how to drive!”

I glare at her. Now she’s taking pictures of me. Now I’m livid. I step to her. > I’m right in her face, eye to eye.

Me: “You are rude!!” (Barely containing all the foul stuff I wanted to spit in > her face.)

Lady: “Don’t touch me! Don’t you think of touching me!!”

Me: “I’m not going to touch you!”

Lady: “You’re rude for cursing at me! I didn’t curse at you. Not all black > people are like that.”

Me: “You know. You are right!” (Still in angry yelling mode.)

“I shouldn’t have used profanity at you. I’m sorry.” (My face softening but > cheeks still tight.)

She takes two quick steps back in retreat. Her mouth opens to say something but > nothing comes out. She looks stunned. Finally, she speaks.

Lady: “I’m sorry, too.”

Awkward silence.

Me: “I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

I extend my hand. We shake hands.

Lady: “I’m glad we resolved this this way.”

Me: “Me too.”

We both smile a barely detectable smile.

Me: “I hope you have an easier day.”

Lady: “You too.”

I hopped on my bike.

Me: “Again, I’m sorry for losing my temper.”

She nods.

When I returned hours later, her car was gone. My car was unmolested. I wonder > what story (if any) she tells tonight.

I love this story so much because there’s mutual understanding between both parties responding in rational behavior, not allowing their heavy-handed emotional side get the better of them. It shows that even when we are at fault for our words, we can still act with dignity and respect if we look inward and reflect.

I will close with this. Identify one thing a day where you find yourself reacting instead of responding. When you’re in that situation again, stop for a second, it could go longer, and think about the consequences before you proceed with that action. You may be surprised by your behavior.

Last October, Carlos Bueno gave a lightning talk called “Science Education: Refactoring Computer Science.” In that talk, he talked about writing “Lauren Ipsum” and how it was easier to teach children about recursion than binary numbers. Recursion is the event when a function calls itself, creating a new stack. Binary numbers are a base two number system, primarily used by computers by way of electrical signals between relays and switches. Recursion is easier to explain to children because the concept of stacks are a lot easier to comprehend than the abstract world of counting by base two. As adults, it feels like it is easier to learn the binary number system because the idea of counting is relatively easy. When Bueno explained this to us, I was pleasantly surprised and it started me thinking about how we can teach the next generation about other ideas.

When I read Oliver Sack’s new autobiography, “On The Move: A Life”, that idea came back to me. Somewhere in the book, I really wish I could find the quote, Sacks writes about a colleague who died young and had a profound effect on Sacks that he must continue his life by writing about his work. I realized we continue to work through what others had to leave behind under unfortunate circumstance, whether it be circumstance or death. It is our duty to teach the next generation the ideas and worldview of the world so that they could carry them on and continue to improve them. Also, we don’t want the next generation to make the same mistakes as we do.

“When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.” — Oliver Sacks, op-ed in The New York Times on learning he has terminal cancer

When I read this quote, I think of what the holes mean. The holes are the missing pieces, the partial pictures, a sliver of the what the dead thought. I believe poetry is a fitting analogy for what is left behind. Poetry is open-ended, goes into much interpretation, yet it is condensed and full of meaning. Homer, and perhaps those before him, distilled down the Trojan War epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey into lyrical language. I believe the descriptors of the characters was to help abide the memories of the audience so they can pass these stories down orally. We see this in other literature and famous folks with King Arthur of Camelot, Alexander the Great, Joan of Arc and countless others.

Two weeks ago, I met someone who was heavily influenced by Buckminster Fuller. He met Fuller when he was a kid and wished he could ask him a question about his work. But as he was too young, he didn’t get to read about Fuller’s concepts and ideas until he was a teenager, after Fuller’s death. Even with a partial understanding of Fuller’s ideas, he took them to heart and worked in the forestry department. He tells me he tries to apply Fuller’s ideas about nature to his everyday work. I love this story because it is metaphorically passing the torch. It should be noted that there’s a book about Buckminster Fuller entitled “Fuller’s Earth: A Day With Buckminster Fuller and the Kids” where Fuller literally gives children his philosophy in words the children can understand.

I’ll leave you with this. Uncork your mind from its secrets and spill out the good ideas. Help people around you, and those after you, understand why you made certain decisions, your struggles and forays into problems, and help us all collectively understand the world a little more.

I’ve been journaling more four years, one entry a day. I’ve skipped a few days here or there, but I go back and fill them in. The entries capture my daily mood, or current obsession, or the thing that’s been worrying me. Sometimes, I go back to some old entries and reflect upon myself of where I was a year ago, two years ago, or perhaps just last week. That window is a primary source of information, and not jumbled by my own bias of how I want to reconstruct the past. I’ve surprised myself many times before when I read these entries because I’ve reconstructed my memories of how I’ve felt, like we all do, glamorizing the pleasurable moments and hiding from our darkness.

These entries were always free form, sometimes filled with art, or rants about politics, or quotes I really like from a book I’m reading. Two weeks ago, I decided to take a break from this free form method and experiment with a Q&A format where I would ask myself a series of questions, like “What are you grateful for?”, “What would you do differently?”, and “What do you anticipate for today?”. Here’s a glimpse into some of those entries.

July 27th, 2015

What am I grateful for?

I’m grateful I was able to exercise this morning and that I remembered, even though I was late, to text my cousin “Happy Birthday”.

For those who really matter to me in life, I’ve tried to reach out to them on their birthday. It’s these little things in life that I cherish the most.

July 30th, 2015

Anything you’d do differently?

Don’t drunk order chicken wings at my local pizza restaurant — terrible wings. Also, don’t hesitate to go to the waiter and ask where your order is.

First, don’t get drunk on a Wednesday night. I was working the next day and had regrets the next morning. Secondly, the drunk mindset makes things up, like thinking the the food staff takes thirty minutes to make six chicken wings when in fact, the order was up and I just didn’t pester the waiter about where my food was.

August 6th, 2015

What could you take what you learned this week and apply it to the next week?

Start writing earlier and not be so hung up by the menial things. The little concerns I have throughout the day doesn’t mean much, so I should take the time to practice mindfulness.

That’s well said. Although contrary to the initial piece of advice, I’m writing this after work on Monday night when I should have finished this piece of writing the night before. But, as the second sentence says, I’m not sweating it.

Looking back at these entries, they’re more legible and start to tell a story about the day and sets the mood for what I was feeling. Over the years, I’ve learned that’s what I gain from writing everyday, an insight into my past behaviors, connecting dots of how the larger picture looks.

Do you keep a journal? Do you write everyday? Do you ever go back and read what you wrote?

The Solano Stroll in Berkeley is an annual event where the entire stretch of Solano Street is closed. Local businesses and residents would participate in turning the street into a street festival. The firefighter departments of Berkeley and Albany would come with a fire truck where kids could sit in the driver seat and understand what it could feel like to be the firefighter driver. Restaurants would bring out their grills and serve some street food. Clothing stores would try to give discounts for their end of season sales.

It was there, over fifteen years ago, where I started a collection of business cards. At the stroll, the street is littered with booths from local businesses, artists, specialists, and because it’s Berkeley, radicals. Each one of these booths had business cards there for the taking, so I ran up and down the two and half mile stretch to collect them all. Besides the booths, there were people on the streets handing out their own personal business cards next to their signs. One guy in particular was an artist trying to sell his ceramic pieces and made custom jewelry.

A normal response when someone receives a business card would be to commit to an action to it or, more likely, throw it away in the trash. I decided to keep the cards in a box, serving as a container for the Solano Stroll experience. But it expanded beyond the event. I found myself taking business cards from restaurants, gift shops, travel agencies, community boards, and other businesses. I collected the punch cards you would receive at sandwich shops. I collected the strange, square shaped ones. I collected the last one on the business card tray. One time, I entered a photo store, and as I was taking a card next to the register, the store clerk looked at me sternly and asked, “Why are you taking a business card?” Flustered, I scurried off, clenching the business card in hand.

On family vacations, I would fill the pocket of my suitcases with business cards from the various places we went. The cards transformed from words with contact information to personal stored memories. I have this particularly strange one from Taiwan that introduced me to their calendar system. 93? Whoa! Sometimes other paraphernalia would find its way into my collection, like tickets from the movies, plane rides, and the theater. One in particular comes in recent memory. I have this ticket stub from the Alcazar, a theater in Pattaya, Thailand that ran shows every night of their most beautiful lady boys.

Over the years, I’ve asked the central question to this collection. Why keep this up? As I said, most sane people would throw them away. A day before the planes hit 9/11, my grandmother visited the World Trade Center. She bought a bouncy ball from the gift shop that glowed after impact. When she came home, she gave this to me as a gift. I couldn’t see the ball more than just a reminder of the tragedy that hit this nation. A month or two after she gave me the gift, I lost it as I threw it on the school grounds. It rolled underneath the bungalow of my classroom and I felt devastated. The ball had this history I only knew about. That’s what these cards mean to me now, memories that remind me of specific moments of my life.

At a recent meet-up I attended, I was introduced to the concept of perceived distance. Perceived distance is the mind’s perception of how far you have traveled while absolute distance is the distance actually traveled. Obstacles could increase the perceived distance, like road blocks, traffic, rough terrain, and changes in elevation. At the meet-up, the speaker used the example of bicycling on the same lane as fast driving cars. Here in Silicon Valley, we have expressways connecting different cities where cars could drive easily 50 to 60 mph (that’s roughly 80 to 96 km/h for you non-Americans). When a bike has to share that same road, the biker will perceived the distance to be longer because of the stress of getting hit by a car.

This made me think about how similar the concept of perceived distance is to perceived difficulty. Sometimes I can be quite stubborn and refuse to do something because the initial action is cumbersome. I held off on writing an email for a whole month because I thought the writing would take an hour. In my mind, I place a 1 to 1 ratio between time and difficulty, meaning the more time it takes, the more difficult it becomes. In reality, the email took me 5 minutes to write and one click to send.

David Allen, author of “Getting Things Done”, talks about how to get incoming work done. If the activity takes two minutes or less, do it now. If it doesn’t, figure out the next action that must be taken, whether that is blocking off a part of your schedule to do it, defer it to someone else, or figure out an action at a later date. However, in my implementation of his system, that last part about taking the action at a later date never comes. I’ll have my inbox stack up and be left with an overwhelming number of 10, 20, or 30 minute activities.

When I read Kelly McGonigal’s book, “The Willpower Instinct”, I learned about willpower depletion and how easily we can be susceptible to wasting our time when in that state. To diverge from this path, I’ve been reduced to doing things while I have the self-control and drive to do them. But with a large stack of todo items that take longer than 2 minutes, there’s no possible way I can do that in the allotted time when I have the willpower to do them. This leads me to an unfortunate conclusion; I don’t know how to lower the perceived difficulty and stop overloading my schedule. I would actually like to hear how others deal with perceived difficulty and getting things done. What are some techniques you use to get things done?

Before I went to Iowa, fireflies were meaningless to me. Early last spring, my roommate bought a string of solar green LED lights and hung them on a tree. At night, they would glow in and out, simulating the fireflies lights. Living in Northern California for most of my life, it was easy for me to overlook this as a cheap gimmick. When my roommate installed them, I had a hard time finding the emotional pull they had for my roommate.

On my cross-country road trip last summer, I stopped for the night in Omaha. One of the locals invited me to a weekly Taco Tuesday event. The major difference in this event than others I’ve been to is the locals really make you work for the tacos. Locals ride their bikes on an old railroad tracks path paved into a bike path for ten miles ending in a outdoor seating restaurant that served cheap tacos. Luckily, at the half way point, there’s an oasis of booze called Margaritaville where you can stop, talk, and drink. I drove across the Mississippi River to Iowa stateside in awe of the flat landscape. By the time I got to the trail head, the sun was just starting to set and I was a bit worried I was going to have to ride in the dark. Much to my chagrin, the path was illuminated by fireflies. I gazed at the bugs, awed by their bright glow of hope. They seem to say, “winter has past, you can come out now”. Their presence allowed me to finally understand what many writers were talking about in those children books — a glow of summer.

I thought back to my roommate’s fake firefly lights hanging in our backyard tree. It was a representation of this kind of emotion where he would be taken back to his summers in Boston trying to catch them. I stopped my bike and tried to catch one. Although I didn’t have much success, I felt like a kid. I realized adults can have the empathy and nostalgia for a past childhood they never had.

And yet, I don’t understand how something as simple as a glowing green light could make me feel so happy. It set the setting, and for the rest of that night; they were the entertainment. It was more entertainment than any manufactured, designed, or advertised piece of media humans had developed. It felt pure, and in a way, the path I was taking was this magical journey down the rabbit hole. And appreciating these tiny things are why we live life, right?

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies,
And here on earth come emulating flies,
That though they never equal stars in size,
(And they were never really stars at heart)
Achieve at times a very star-like start.
Only, of course, they can’t sustain the part.”
― Robert Frost

With over half a year of writing these letters, I am taking the time to review the differences in my writing between the past and present. I haven’t noticed a difference in writing quality, to my dismay, but I’ve learned something much more valuable. I’ve learned the value of editing. Before, I thought editing was a cumbersome and not necessary. “Shouldn’t everyone understand my stream of consciousness?” It turns out, no, the reader cannot. When I went back to re-read my writing, I realized I couldn’t read it. I had to think of the context in which I wrote it in to determine what I was trying to say.

Programming helped build part of this muscle. For over a year, I’ve been reading and reviewing my code, and I’ve noticed holes everywhere. As I learn how to become a pragmatic developer, I notice the code I wrote in the past just isn’t up to my standards today. And the code I write today won’t be at the standards that I hope for tomorrow. With writing, I strive for the same things. I want it to be legible for the intended audience with hopes that they will understand my point of view.

It felt embarrassing having my audience read such verbose verbiage. For the past month, I’ve tried to cut back on using adverbs and other modifiers. I’ve scrutinized words such as “only”, “very”, and “just” and tried to cut them out. Now when I read through my writing, I immediately cut those things out as soon as I can.

I pass my essays through the Hemingway App to detect awkward sentences. For example, the app can detect passive voice and difficult to read sentences. In grade school, most of us learned to avoid these techniques. I didn’t comprehend these things until I started recognizing them as mistakes. When I had a friend edit my writing, I learned that it’s hard to recognize these things on your own. Speaking of editors, if you would like to help edit these in the future, reach out to me.

When I read writing from some of my favorite authors, I’m awed by their clarity and narration. I aim myself for that target, but I’m not quite there yet. I will need to deliberately practice more, but I recognize that I’m making progress. Also, I still loads to say, so I’m not going to quit writing anytime soon.

I’ve been experiencing heavy burnout over the past few weeks. I didn’t spare myself much time besides work, scheduled play, travel, and sleep. I’ve even deferred to eating out rather than cooking. The lifestyle, quite an unsustainable one, started to take a toll on my health. I took a run through Big Basin last weekend and was almost wiped out. I looked in the mirror at my pecks two days ago and saw sagging breasts and a round, bulging stomach. It was a pitiful sight since I use one visual metric as an indicator if I’m healthy, that of looking good naked. Some of those armpit wrinkles had their own wrinkles.

I took this time and started to reflect what was stressing me out. I stayed up later on nights where I should have gone to sleep earlier. I stopped exercising as much since late-April after coming back from Chicago, using travel as an excuse that threw off my exercise regime. I’ve been eating out when I have been used to home cooked meals. All of this sums up to looking at myself in the fitting room mirror at the mall staring at my own man boobs.

While a funny recollection, it scared the crap out of my. I have insecurities with my body shape, wearing loose clothing to hide some of those imperfections, and not doing anything about it. I know I could make the time, but with burnout, it is hard to feel elated to go for a run after work. I’m going back to basics, some may call it common sense, and work on the fundamentals again.

Don’t overload yourself

I switched over to the Todoist app, that worked quite well for a few months, but slowly piled up into ten daily tasks. I’m scrapping that out and re-doing my schedule to only handle one important task per day. Anything more that I accomplish will be a fun for the future.

The other thing is I’ve been overloaded with going back and forth between San Francisco and Palo Alto to go to events. I have to have a better, clear mission to do those things and know what events I can skip and which ones I should actually go to. It got bad over the past few weeks when I was going to an event every work day, which means more travel time.

Health Comes Primarily From Diet

In college, my big revelation was diet, not exercise, makes up most of the work needed to stay healthy. To stay fit, that’s where you introduce exercise. When I cut most sugar out of my diet, meaning no soda or juice, I saw results in my body. There were some side-effects, like getting these strange headaches along with sugar cravings, but after pushing through that hump, I have no regrets about that decision.

However, in most recent years, I’ve replaced those things with wine, which is a lot worse, especially when not in moderation. I will enact a limit of one glass if I do drink.

Listen To Your Body

Your body is quite acute to stress if you listen to it. I’ve had an issue with going to lunch, making terrible decisions listening to my body’s hunger pains. Instead, I’ll try to continue working, but my productivity has tanked. When I get lunch, I’ll buy too much food, get stuffed, and collapse with a food coma, ruining more work productivity. If I actually listened to my body initially, I would have had some willpower to tell myself to get a small salad and to stop eating when I feel full.

Caffeine, Or Your Drug of Choice, Is Not A Panacea

Last week, without much sleep the night before, I thought it would be a good idea to buy cup of coffee to get me through the day. If you don’t know me well, you’ll find out I rarely have caffeine. A cup of coffee for me it’s like crack, used sparingly for those rare, tired occasions. One this particular day, I was a bit hungover. I finished my coffee, and within minutes, felt that body ache.

I’m not giving caffeine a bad name, but I understand people hold on to it as a crutch, because it’s become their addiction. They can’t function without it, as witnessed through my roommates. When I use it as a quick solution, it’s never full proof and there’s always side-effects.

All of these things are measures and habits that I used to use as a basis for a clean, healthy way of living. It’s been hard to maintain balance, but there needs to be recognition that I’m going through this along with some reflection about how to take counter measures. And by relaxing this weekend and taking the time to write this out, I feel one step closer to that goal.

Last night, I celebrated Father’s Day by taking my father out to the restaurant of his choice. He decided to go to Tomei’s, a Japanese/Chinese open buffet serving a wide spread of options. I don’t typically eat at places like this because I know they will be packed, the quality of food will be subpar, and I come out stuffed because I don’t have a gauge of how much food I actually ate. But being a good son, I obliged to take him out there.

When we were seated, I looked around at the crowd. There were tables and seats packed in a large, dimly lit room full of families. The buffet line was barely tolerable with long waits and impatient people who cut in line in order to satisfy their cravings rather than abide to the unspoken rule of lines. It’s as if respect were thrown out the door and indecency was invited in.

I finished my third half-plate of food and stopped myself from eating more. There was no point in over-stuffing myself with previously frozen crab legs, under appreciated sea urchin, or under ripe watermelon. What’s the use of trying to stuff myself to the brim? I try to stick with the 60% rule of eating to 60% satiety, or at least the perception of it. I look at those around me, and I see they’ve lost control, allowing their cravings to dictate their actions. Thoughtless actions lead to lower empathy with the people around us. I remember a buffet I was at in Thailand, most of the customers went over to the buffet serving station with no care about shoving other people out of the way to fill their plate. It was rude and disheartening because I felt like I was being treated as an obstacle in their way.

Service workers are also have less empathy to those around them. Since the customers don’t serve as good examples of how to behave, it affects how the service workers behaves, and vice versa. This can be reflected in the care and attention given to the food. At Tomei’s, I thought the quality could have been better. And that’s not saying I want something top-class; I want the people preparing and cooking my food to have the care and attention they would give feeding their own children. I tip a barista something large when they take the time and actually brew a nice cup of tea or coffee. One of my favorite restaurants from the past year is a Guatemalan restaurant that serves hand-made tortillas, and you can buy them at an affordable price, i.e one dollar sign on Yelp. They knew quality, and their customers respected that. Couldn’t Tomei’s have that?

Let’s be clear. I’m not chastising buffets. I think there are some great buffets out there. I live by an extraordinary Indian lunch buffet that serves some of the best tandoori I’ve ever had. The cooks stick with the few dishes they know how to make best and make a lot of it. You can tell the cashier genuinely cares about your experience at the restaurant. At Tomei’s, I found myself rejecting most of the food because I knew it wasn’t going to be worth it. How could you mix dim sum with sushi? They just don’t go together and they’re two different disciplines.

Maybe I’m tooting my own horn because I have these cuisines on separate occasions and maybe I’m the wrong audience for this place. And if that’s the case, that’s fine. This buffet doesn’t need my business in order to survive. Last month, on Mother’s day, they had a three hour wait for those arriving ten minutes after opening time. I’d like to think that buffets like this are a gateway drug, and eventually the customers find something they really like and go out to find a restaurant that specializes in that thing. To those people, I am delighted to open up my own culture’s food to them. But I draw the line in the inexcusable behavior of thoughtless actions that negatively effect the experience of other customers. What’s the point when you’re trying to eat your food while being angry at the person seated next to you?

Fireflies are the signs of summer. They are this bright glow of hope. They seem to say, “winter has past, you can come out now”. Their green ominous glow like magic as you walk down the road. At least, this is what I would tell you if I hadn’t grown up in California. As a Californian, I can tell you there were no fireflies, no glimmer signaling the start of summer. When I read about fireflies in grade school, I would wonder what was so special about them. They were the mythical unicorns of my childhood.

It wasn’t until an adult when I first encountered a firefly. It was in the midwest, Iowa, biking through the woods. The sun was hanging low and there they were. Glowing in short spurts luminance, shining the path for my bike to head towards. They made me smile, and I wondered if I should be a kid at that moment, drop my bike, and try to catch them. Their presence allowed me to finally understand what many writers were talking about in those children books - a glow to the summer.

I don’t understand how something as simple as a glowing green light could make me feel so happy. It set the setting, and for the rest of that night, they were the entertainment. It was more entertainment than any manufactured, designed, or advertised piece of media humans had developed, at least for my tastes. It felt pure, and in a way, the path I was taking was this magical journey down the rabbit hole. And appreciating these tiny things are why we live life, right?

I’ve found the answer I’ve been looking for. I already found the answer years ago, but I’ve got to dig it up every now and again. The question: What’s the meaning of life? The answer: It’s different for everyone, so you’ve got to figure it out. This time, I’m revisiting it in a different context. I’m reading “Not Fade Away: A Short Life Well Lived” by Peter Barton & Laurence Shames and I’ve been tying it with conversations I’ve had with my roommates about a recent death of a former co-worker. In “Not Fade Away”, Peter, who had terminal cancer, writes about coming to terms with his impending death and trying to help everyone’s struggle with their eventual end. In this short excerpt, Peter is suffering through the side-effects of chemotherapy, and he’s complaining to his wife.

One day, when my body was wracked and my head ached and my spirits were at their lowest, I said to my wife: “I just don’t see the point.”

Now, my wife Laura is as supportive and kind as a person could possibly be. I’m in awe of her gentleness. But in that moment she was something other than tender; she was absolutely fierce.

Fierce on my behalf — and, I think, on her own. She still had the determination that I was having such a hard time mustering. She still saw value in the struggle. She wasn’t about to let me wallow. She already had enough burdens; she didn’t want to cater to someone who had given up.

“So find one!” she declared.

I was so surprised by her vehemence that I lost my train of thought. I said, “Huh?”

“You don’t see the point?” she said. “Find a point!”

Looking back, I realize just how important that brief but intense conversation was.

— Peter Barton, Not Fade Away, pages 83 - 84

Peter’s revelation after this incident was there is a separation of the body and mind, something he eventually considers the soul. The body is the physical attachment, one bound by nature to decay and fall apart. The mind can take the role of the body and do the same. However, if we have control over our mind, we don’t have to allow it to decay and rot. We have the ability to not allow it to taint everyone else.

My roommate Mark keeps asking the question, “What’s the point?” while we were all sitting around the backyard fire pit. He follows up with his explanation for why the elderly tend to be mean and grumpy. “They’re in pain all of the time.” While true, the bodies of many elderly people are in pain, many of them allow the pain to get the better of them. When we don’t make this separation of mind and body, we can get terribly depressed.

The best counter example I know of for someone who didn’t let their body’s pain get to their mind was Stuart Scott, ESPN anchor. In the following video, Scott talks about his struggle with cancer and shows us what’s possible when faced with death.

Reading this book, I couldn’t help but well up and cry, get depressed, get overwhelmed by the emotions Peter was going through. And then, it’s followed by hope, knowing that I can make the most out of life. My biggest take-away is not to let this moment slip again and really determine what my own purpose is for my life.

I wrote two separate pieces that I thought would become this week’s letter, but I scrapped them before I was finished. Each of these pieces devolved into a rant about what was going wrong with a painful decision point I had at the beginning of the week. This frustration became my creative rut. It’s a series of second guesses given by a very harsh, inner voice.

I started writing the first paragraph of the first draft, and really hated it. I deleted the paragraph and started over, but the writing sounded worse. The thing I’ve come to compromise about longer format writing in the past few months is that deleting a whole paragraph, paragraphs, or almost the entire piece is okay. In fact, I encourage it because it allows you to go back, read the piece with the deleted text and recognize what’s missing from it. Also, since you’re not looking at that bad paragraph, you’re not going to use that as a reference. As the saying goes, out of sight, out of mind.

I learned from this first draft that I shouldn’t try and shape writing around a quote. I included a stanza from a song and tried to tie it together. But I re-read the quote and I re-read the subsequent paragraph; they were not saying the same things. That made me feel like the core idea was jumbled and I really don’t know what I’m supposed to say.

The placeholder title didn’t help either. In school, they teach you how to write a generic thesis before your write your essay. However, in practice, my thesis usually emerges after writing for a bit and trying to recognize what my piece is about. For example, in this piece, the thesis is trying to dissect what is so difficult about writing. In my first draft, it started as how to tear down barriers, and slowly turned into a piece about how to come to grips that one day, you’re going to die, so you should use that to stop fearing things you have no control over. Eventually, the piece started ranting about the issues in my personal life, and I know how no one wants to hear someone bitch in a longford essay. That’s when I decided to scrap it and start over.

I know I’ve written about this before, but I love revisiting this concept of shitty first drafts. Anne Lamott introduced it in her book, “Bird by Bird”, an excellent guide to writing that I’ve read at least twice. The problem that I encountered with this first draft was sheer frustration that I wanted to write something meaningful and beautiful, but turds kept coming out no matter how I tried to edit the piece. The second draft was getting better. Initially, it sounded great. I trudged along, knowing my writing was a work in progress and would need severe editing, but it didn’t matter because I was churning paragraph after paragraph. When I would finish the piece, I would go back and edit those sections. And then, nearly finished with the piece, I start ranting about the discomfort of this week’s events again. It was supposed to be about networking, which quickly turned into how to build meaningful relationships, which quickly turned into why a personal relationship of mine went south.

In hindsight, prep work may have helped with these pieces. However, I recognize if I put too much time in prepping a piece, like making outlines or brainstorming ideas, the less I would actually want to write about that topic. I start drafts because I know they would at least give me a prototype of what the piece could be. In Robin Sloan’s last newsletter, “Primes”, in late March, he showed a screenshot of all the drafts that he had for that piece. His Gmail inbox, shown below, has at least 20 ideas for the drafts or things he wanted to share, but didn’t make the cut. When I saw that, I was amazed that I’m not the only one who has a troubled time sticking to one topic. The drafts aren’t all bad news or failed starts. They also have some idea that I cannot yet figure out, and when I do, it will be addressed in a later letter.

I write all of my letters in Evernote which has this feature to look at past revisions of a note. If I ever wanted to, I can re-read a draft and see all of my deleted sentences and paragraphs. All of this data is saved upon future investigation on the topic.

Looking at my the sidebar where all the notes live in my “Drafts” folder, and there are at least half of the notes that will never see the light of day. They’re a constant reminder to tell me writing drafts and crafting ideas don’t get much easier. In a way, I want it to be like that because if it was easy, I wouldn’t really enjoy the activity. It calms my mind knowing frustration is part of the process because I know there’s always something I need to improve.

“How come it’s easier to make friends as a kid than it is as an adult?” asked several acquaintances of mine.

I think the more relevant question is, how does one go about making friends? How about going on friend-dates?

No, no, no. It’s not like going on online dating services like Okcupid and trying to message women in an attempt at being impressive enough to go on a date. And it’s not like Tinder where you determine a friendship by the way they look (swipe right to ignore).

During the activities you do outside of work, take the time to get to know the people around you. Perhaps ask one of them to coffee, lunch or dinner. If you feel too vulnerable about asking someone to go on a friend-date, take the advice from Kelly Williams Brown, author of “Adulting”.

“Anytime you say to someone, even in a very veiled way, I care about you. Do you care about me? it’s scary.

But almost everyone will be pleased that you took the initiative. And if they’re not delighted by your straightforward friendliness, there you go! That is a bad friend candidate, and it’s good you won’t be wasting any more time.”

— Kelly Williams Brown, “Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps”

Be personable and presentable to your new fellow friend. Just like dates, the best way I’ve found to get the ball rolling is to talk about something you’re passionate about. For me, it’s traveling. I go to weekly meet-ups with other like-minded world travelers. We talk about the adventure, the excitement, and the places we’re going to go next.

To finish off the friend date, remember to follow-up. When I get a follow-up email, phone call, or a physical card from someone else, it really shows that they care. Congratulations on your first successful friend-date!

I had a profound thought to myself this past weekend while watching the new Avengers movie. There were a series of scenes in which the superheroes were shown what they were most afraid of. In the middle of watching this, I had an nasty thought that came back, one that should’ve been settled years ago. It was the thought of living to the fullest and being able to express myself fully, something I struggle with on a consistent basis and it came back to haunt me sitting there in the theater.

After the movie ended, walking down the long corridor of the movie theater, I was lost in thought. I tried to brush it off. I hate confronting this issue in me. My usual reaction is to let it subside and move on with my life. But it followed me over the next few days.

I was listening to the Design Matters podcast where Debbie Millman interviewed Elle Luna. Elle wrote this piece on Medium called “The Crossroads of Should and Must”, which summarizes a portion of the interview when she’s describing the dream she had. In her recurring dream, Elle is standing in front of a white room with a concrete floor and high windows. She decided to go out and look for it in real life. After searching for days or weeks on Craigslist, she found it.

Dusk was falling as I arrived at the white room from my dreams. It was stark, absolute, white, and a symbol of something new, of beginnings. As I looked around, I thought, “What on earth have I done? Why am I here?” And as clear as day, I heard a voice say, “It’s time to paint.”
— Elle Luna, “The Crossroads of Should and Must”

Elle calls this her calling, and a decision she must do. She quit her job and started painting for the first time in ten years. She was able to express herself, or be true to herself, in a way she wasn’t able to do before as a designer.

The story shook me. I know there are some fears I pretend to not be ready to face. Thinking about the fear in the theater, I asked myself the question, “Am I lying to myself? Am I living the way I want to, being true to myself?”

In my career, I haven’t made the best decisions, and I’m not totally committed in the job I’m currently in. The crossroads of should and must are blurred, and I can’t think if I’m working in the industry I’m in because I should do it or I must do it.

In the process of thinking about this, I broke down my worries to some actionable steps. The first is to recognize myself. In the middle of Elle’s article, she asks the reader to make a list of top ten things I’m most afraid of. This is what I came up with in an allotted ten minutes:

I’m afraid…

1. Of being able to dance in front of strangers in public transportation. One stupid question that I ask myself is, is it illegal to do street performance on a moving train?
2. Of eavesdropping and joining in on the conversation.
3. Of starting a conversation with a complete stranger on the train. Especially of the opposite gender. My brain goes into overdrive and analyzes angles of how I would end up being a creeper or realize I may not have good social skills. I don’t think I have bad social skills in other settings.
4. I don’t have what it takes to take a leap of faith without sliding back into old routines right after. Elle Luna talks about choosing “Must” isn’t a one time decision. It’s a continual decision you have to keep on making daily to yourself.
5. Of the guy in the head. The one that tells you how much of a piece of shit you are. I used to have severe imposter syndrome, and still beat myself up for making bad choices and decisions.
6. Of being penniless and broke. That I have no solid financial plan. Of talking financials with others.
7. Of having no one to talk to and that I’m cooped up in my room or brain too long. I’m doing better at this, now that I rotate between different friends during different times of the week or month.
8. I will be alone. Like the last one, but in terms of a personal relationship. I felt bad when I abandoned all hope while working late nights because it felt impossible to put myself out there.
9. I will make the people around me feel bad. I don’t like being the bearer of bad news, and I hate shaking up the pot. I’ve been relatively non-confrontational my whole life, but I’m working on this.
10. Of dying and having an obituary I wouldn’t want to read.

What are you afraid of? Are there things in your life that are blocking you from doing what you want to do? Take 10 minutes and write your own list.

On top of reading Elle’s article this week, I finished listening to a recent episode of Triangulation with Luria Petrucci, AKA Cali Lewis, who opened up about her past failures and being able to be true to yourself and to the rest of the world. It hit more emotional strings to the same tune of taking the reins of your life and live it to the full extent.

I’ve made my list, and now I can slowly tackle them, one day at a time. And I’m more aware that I have the choice to work on it or not, of asking “should I do it” to taking action and saying “I must do it”.

And that the battle is never won; the crossroads of should and must are always there, continuously testing us. Figuring out how to stay strong and fighting for what you believe in is the harder part. Updates later once I’ve figured that out. There’s work to be done.

Side Note:
Elle Luna wrote a book after her Medium article went viral. I bought her book and am in the middle of devouring its contents. I’ll give a short update later of what I think about it.

Kids and Boredom

The other day, during dinner with my friend Jon, we were discussing what is the most negative thing brought about by technology today. Hands down, I said the use of technology in conditioning our children to form bad habits. Coincidentally, after dinner, we were walking to the car and saw a mother and a child. The child, maybe 5 years old, was whining and crying in public. The mother reached into her bag, pulled out an iPad, and gave it to her child. Immediately, he shut up and was mesmerized by the screen in front of him. I said, “Darn it, I wish that didn’t just happen.”

I’m not going to decree that technology is the problem here. You can see through history about the negativity we assign to technology, like John Philip Sousa talking about “a marked deterioration in American music and musical taste, an interruption in the musical development of the country, and a host of other injuries to music in its artistic manifestations, by virtue – or rather by vice – of the multiplication of the various music-reproducing machines.” He was referring to the gramophone. Every recent generation has something new to distract their attention, from radio to televisions to computers to tablet and phone devices. It’s more important to remember technology is just a tool, and we determine how we use this tool.

In my dinner discussion with Jon, he remarked how kids don’t know how to feel bored anymore. The wonders of using Lego’s or playing with physical objects, or just having absolutely nothing to play with makes the mind wander. Perhaps we are stripping children of this ability by being wired 24/7. Being wired has this loss of sense of self. Taking television as an example, we’re being sponges absorbing what comes at us in a one-way communication channel. And when we think we’re learning, we only grasp the moments most memorable by design. By writers and advertisers who are seeking your attention in this attention economy. Our brains are looking for something to stimulate our brains. We forget being bored forces our brain to find an external stimuli in other places, perhaps in the depths of our creativity or a sense of mindfulness.

Present Mind

Mundane tasks like cooking, showering, or driving can stimulate day dreaming. And the state of day dreaming may be more beneficial than conventional wisdom. From an article from WIRED, the author describes one study in which mind wandering has shown to exhibit executive and default regions working in conjunction with one another. This means the mind wandering state may not be as mindless as we all think it is.

Imagine a scenario where we are waiting for our triple shot expresso to be made at Starbucks. The barista is having complications with the espresso machine and you’re waiting there for ten minutes. And in this ten minutes, you do something profound; you do nothing. With that nothing, the brain wanders, wondering about the tiles on the floor, how many chores you have when you go home. The void of empty is filled by a stream of consciousness. But the moment you grab your phone turn it on, you’re sucked into a different world, one that has intended designs and patterns of habit.

And that’s what we do; we condition ourselves to lose the present mind. We have the decision whether to wait there staring at the barista or reach into your pocket or purse for your phone and divert your attention from the situation to something more productive, like Candy Crush. Hanging out with a friend the other day, we went out for some tapioca drinks, and while waiting for my order, she sat down at a table and whipped out her phone and started to play a game. This annoyed me, because I thought we were two very present people, but at the moment of pure boredom, she resorted to a quick, cheap attention grabber. I’m not against phone games, but there’s a disconnect when you’re hanging out with someone and one or both of your escape to the virtual world instead of sharing what you have in the present. I try my best not to use my phone as I’m hanging out with someone else. I’ll admit I whip out my phone from time to time, but I recognize how that affects the other party.

Boredom in Cooking

In an interview with Jon Favreau, he talks about mundane tasks while training with a chef for researching his movie, “Chef”. He mentions that during the mundane chore of chopping mis en place, he had a disconnect in chefs doing this laborious work when it could be done by the line cooks. But after all of the prep, using the prepped ingredients for cooking made him much more self aware of the process. He had a deeper appreciation for the food that comes out and about the story of the meal rather than be the passive participant.

When I’m cooking, I find myself in an elated state of mind, functioning almost seamlessly, handling multiple tasks with relative ease. Typically, this is in the form of going from chopping vegetables, heating the pan, and cleaning my dishes. I know exactly where I left off from one activity to another, and the brain feels very mindless. But this sparks immense creativity. If I’m missing or don’t have enough of an ingredient, I’ll improvise, figuring out alternatives. I take a holistic view of what I’m cooking and try to find a substitute ingredient to accomplish the same thing, like using lime juice instead of fresh lemon, or paprika instead of cayenne pepper. I get fairly bored following recipes because I was to push myself outside of the box and add or remove ingredients, or try some other form of heating instead of the method provided. It’s cooking sessions like this where I wonder why more people aren’t cooking.

Mindfulness in Jazz

In the 9th grade, I joined the school’s jazz band. It was my first jazz class, and I was failing to grasp the concept of improvisation. My area of expertise was conservatory classical music, and I simply looked at the sheet music as scripture. When I looked at the dashed out measures with a scale key on the top, I was afraid. I didn’t know all of these scales by heart, let alone follow it with no notes. I was dumbfounded and kept to myself, pretending to know what the lines of music meant. The jazz instructor came in, and we played Take Five right off the bat. I was introduced to strange sounds all around me, listening to students improvise sound during the solo section, and I thought it was pure magic. I tried to mimic their sounds after class, but it sounded like rubbish. My band teacher instructed us to listen to the greats. Other students informed me to follow the scales as reference points, use existing bits of the rhythm, and combine a bunch of riffs together. Climbing up and down octaves gives more variety, and don’t worry too much about playing fast.

For some of my off time, I was attempting to learn about music theory and why a combination of notes or in sequence could have a consonance or dissonance sound, i.e. sound pleasing or destructive. I obsessed with figuring out how to improvise with an analytical mind. But reading through snippets of autobiographies of Miles Davis and John Coltrain, it painted a different picture. The analytical mind shuts down and brings about this sense of mindlessness. It become music played through feeling or emotion rather than thinking of what note to press next. The musician will think of things in sounds rather than the notes in letters, i.e. play “A” next.

In the band’s end-of-year performance, I was informed that I would get to improvise. I was nervous as hell during the practices leading up to the performance. It was about a one and a half minutes, attempting to solo during Miles Davis’ “Freddy Freeloader”. I spent time memorizing the F scale, thinking less about the notes and more about the sound. During the performance, you could hear my solo had elements of the main melody with traversals on the blues scale. I failed at utilizing more than one octave, but it didn’t matter. The nervousness subsided midway during the solo and I entered a mindful state. I stopped thinking about psyching myself out and corrected any dissonance I heard. After the solo, a second sense of relief overcame me and I looked at the crowd. I received applause and I probably could’ve cried at that point.

Today, I’ll occasionally listen to “Kind of Blue” for the 50th time, and just become so entranced by Davis’ solos. I often think of what must be going through Davis’ mind as he’s playing the music. And then I’ll listen to one of his acid jazz works, and become overwhelmed by the insanity of the sound. The pick-up in speed, the downbeats, the intricacies of melody that seem to come from randomness, Davis’ improvisation skills sound like no one else in the world. And he does one-take, live in front of an audience. One has to wonder if this was his nirvana.

Take-aways

I feel the toll constant attention takes. I have lower desires to reach out to others, feel awkward trying to talk with people when I do, and create dark places for myself if I’m alone. When I come up for air, letting nothing happen around me, meditate, or find a space to be mindful of my breathing, all of the prior described situations are flipped. I’m eager to talk with others, I feel less awkward in talking, and I create a happy place when I’m alone. Next time you find yourself impulsively rushing for your phone, don’t satisfy the impulse and give boredom a chance. You may find rewarding outcomes.

When Tech TV when bankrupt in 2004, Leo Laporte and the crew of the cable network were out of jobs. Some were offered to work for G4TV, who took over Tech TV’s assets, while others were laid off. The team who worked for this channel had immense creative control over the content of the channel and didn’t try to dumb down for their audience. With Tech TV’s end, Mr. Laporte was a bit lost, confused, and unsure what to do next. Although he picked up a radio gig a few weeks prior, he had a lot more free time. He invited a bunch of his ex-co-workers to a roundtable discussion at a bar where he recorded their conversation. He put up the conversation online for his fans. The fans loved it so much, they wanted to hear more episodes. Mr. Laporte decided to try to make it into a weekly show, eventually called This Week in Tech (or TWiT). Very quickly, the operations cost were starting to cut into Mr. Laporte’s expenses, so he asked for donations. The fans donated money and Mr. Laporte was allowed to pay for staff like editors and web masters. Eventually, TWiT became a business, creating high quality “netcasts” he thought people would listen to. Using the same tactic he had at Tech TV, not allowing the content to be dumbed down for the general masses, the shows had a niche following. For example, there’s Security Now, a netcast tailored for security professionals, cohosted by Steve Gibson.

Today, the TWiT podcast remains one of the most popular on the iTunes store with over 500 episodes. These “netcasts” are all filmed live where you can stream it on their channel, at twit.tv. I started listening, and then viewing, non-stop for years. It got me very interested in the technology scene, and although I don’t listen to that show as much today, I still listen to one of their other shows, Triangulation, a show where the TWiT network brings in someone from technology (or just someone really cool) to interview for an hour.

Looking back at the ending of Tech TV, there was a need to continue doing the work in other forms. Just because the cable channel died doesn’t mean the content had to either. The cable model didn’t fit the bill anyways. TWiT thrived on Tech TV’s fans who still wanted content like the Tech TV shows, and not a dumbed down version on G4 TV’s programming. Mr. Laporte gave the fans what they wanted and were very supportive of his endeavors. And it paid off. Today, TWiT is very profitable, supported by fans and advertisers, and still delivers quality programming. TWiT went from Mr. Laporte’s home office, to a nice cottage, to a large building in downtown Petaluma, California. I should know because I’ve been both to the cottage and “brick house”.

Leo didn’t know that this beginning was going to be a good beginning at all. In fact, he was a bit neutral about it until he saw the fans were receptive to his podcast. In my own ending and beginning story, I had a false start, making choices where clearly I was going to head down the wrong path. After seeing some hazardous signs, I was able to make some better, smart decisions and creating a better beginning.

Last year, after the chaos of going through Dev Bootcamp and subsequent traveling, my life went from 80 mph to a screeching halt. I was finally home a month after my bootcamp graduation and had to start looking for a job. Except, for three weeks, I didn’t do anything. I was burnt out and reverted to lazy behavior, showering less, not exercising, and watching TV. I was supposed to do a bunch of job searching, but I found excuses to do other things to pass the time. After those three weeks, I stopped making excuses and started actively looking for a job. I used the skills I learned to reach out to potential employers, to employees of the companies of interest, and eventually landed my first interviews. I had to accept that this was a new game I was playing, and the familiarity of being somewhere different everyday was gone. In a way, I realized that there’s this transitionary phase between ending and beginning everyone goes through. Mine lasted much longer than it should have, but it is a necessary component in the journey.

This week, being in Chicago, I got to watch another cohort from Dev Bootcamp graduate. All of the fears of job hunting and the confusion of where you stand after graduation came back to me. Except in the 8 months since I graduated, I have a lot more insight into what all of that meant. It meant having a deep realization of that ending, and a contemplation period during that transitionary phase. It meant having my life change once again, but this time, something was slightly different. I knew how to program, albeit not very well, but enough to prototype and hack at making software work as intended.

Today, I work at a small start-up that teaches me so much about programming, soft skills, and business. I’m financially independent and absolutely love having spare time to work on side projects. I wouldn’t have expected to be in this place of my life a year ago, and it shows we aren’t great predictors of our futures. I had a goal though to be at a point like where I am today, and I realize it’s a continuous journey. Even if my job would end tomorrow, it would be a new beginning. And I can shape that beginning however I would like, because I recognize I have the choice to change it.

I’ve been fascinated by cryptography ever since I was a kid. I remember briefly when my parents got a free subscription to the SF Chronicle and skipping straight to the comics and puzzles. One puzzle in particular, the cryptogram puzzles, got me to take my pen out and try to decode the message. It’s a simple monoalphabetic cipher where one letter maps to another letter, but the letter can never map to itself.

The simplest monoalphabetic cipher is called a Caesar Cipher, where you simply shift the alphabet by a certain amount. If you and the key party you are trying to encrypt the message to knows the shift amount, you can easily decode the message. So if we shifted the alphabet by 10 letters, letting “K” represent “A”, we could decode the word “JUMP” as “TEWZ”. The limitation of the Caesar shift is that there are only 26 configurations, so one could easily go through each letter until they figure out what the encoded message says.

Message Alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Encoded Alphabet: KLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJ

A slightly strong encryption is one where each letter maps to another letter in a random order. For example, if you had the word “JEAR BEAR”, it could be substituted as “FIPH DIPH” given the following key map.

Key Map:

F -> J
I -> E
P -> A
H -> R
D -> B

Both parties would have to agree to a certain key map. The biggest flaw of this monoalphabetic cipher is the frequency to which we use the letters. For example, the letter “E” is the most common letter found in writing versus the letter “Q”. The Arabs back in the 9th century were the first to figure this out and developed this practice we know now as frequency analysis. For the Chronicle’s puzzles, you could tell there were going to to be certain repeated words, like single letter words like “a” and “I” are bound to be in the puzzle, so you can fill those out first. Also, “the” and “and” are two most frequently used three-letter words, so you can start filling those out too, and figure out the message by trial and error. Of course, you could just send the text in one long string, like this, “Afellowofficerlosthislifeinthelineofduty”.

Frequency analysis allows us to break down how often each letter is used and map it to a known frequency index, like looking at all english words and breaking down how often each letter is used, and figure out with high accuracy which letters map to which encrypted letter. Frequency analysis gets stronger the longer the message is. If it helps, you can think of the ratios for frequency analysis with Scrabble letter points. The lower the score, the higher the frequency.

In looking for a stronger encryption, polyalphabetic ciphers were created to make sure letters would be encoded with different letters each time. One form, called the Vigenère cipher, utilizes different monoalphabetic ciphers to encode a message. Each letter would map to a different shifted alphabet based on a key, and the key itself would map to different shifted alphabets. Let’s give an example. If we used the word “KING” as a key, and we wanted to decode the message, “A little boy and his fox,” we would first go to the letter “A” and map it to where “A” is in the shifted alphabet where “K”, from the key “KING”, is the first letter of the alphabet. In this case, it is easy. “A” maps to “K”.

Message Alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Encoded Alphabet: KLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGHIJ

The next letter from the text, “L”, would map to the shifted alphabet where “I” is the first letter, where “I” is the next letter in the key, “KING”. In this case, we would encode “L” with “S”.

Message Alphabet: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
Encoded Alphabet: IJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZABCDEFGH

We continue to encode the next letter with the shifted alphabet starting with “N”, and then the next letter after that with the shifted alphabet starting with “G”, and then we repeat the key and start again with the shifted alphabet starting with “K” for the next letter of the text, and repeat for the entire sequence until the entire message is encoded. In its entirety, the message reads “KTVZDTRHYGNTNPVYPWK”. You will notice that the fourth and fifth letter from the text are the same, “TT”, but in the encoded text, they are different letters, “ZD”. Now each letter does not necessarily map to each letter. For hundreds of years, it appeared that this encryption was impossible to break and was known as “Le Chiffre Indèchiffrable”, French for the indecipherable cipher.

In the mid-1800’s, Charles Babbage was the first person to figure out how to decipher the Vigenère cipher decryption technique without prior knowledge of the key. There had been others who deciphered messages before, but Babbage’s technique ensured repeatability. Babbage never went public with this discovery, and for quite some time, the discovery went to a French codebreaker Friedrich Kasiski, who published a paper on breaking the cipher. What they found was a flaw in the cipher. The flaw in this case is the repeatability of the key. If the shared key is short enough, like “KING”, and if the text is long enough, you’ll start to see repeated patterns. For example, the word “and” could appear in 4 different ways using “KING” as a key. You could look for those exact phrases to piece together where you see repeated instances of the word. By process of elimination, you could look through the text and start to piece together what the key might be. Like in the cryptogram puzzles, you start figuring out what the message of the text. With these and possibly other letters decoded, you can work backwards and figure out what the shifted alphabet was that was used, grab the first letter in that alphabet, and determine what the key could be.

This was a huge blow to people creating encryptions. Suddenly, Le Chiffre Indèchiffrable became vulnerable. Cryptographers up to the early 1920’s were creating encryptions in the variation of the Vigenère cipher. In WWI, the British intercepted German messages and decrypted them with relative “ease”. This was a heavy advantage for the British and Allied forces, and was a major factor in helping them win the war. Come WWII, the Germans had a much more powerful encryption machine that helped power an effort to decrypt its messages.

I watched “The Imitation Game” a few weeks ago, and was fascinated to known how they would depict the Enigma machine, the German encryption machine. The Enigma machine is a mechanized way of encoding and decoding messages utilizing polyalphabetic ciphers. I won’t go over the intricacy of the machine as you could read many articles about it on Wikipedia, watch the film, or read “The Code Book,” where I gathered most of the information about mono- and polyalphabetic ciphers. The British set up grounds at Bletchley Park dedicated to decoding German messages during WWII. I want to shift focus of this essay to explore the differences between the movie and reality.

First, I really wanted to know what Alan Turing’s role was in creating “Christopher”. In the film, “Christopher” was the codename for the machine Turing built in order to decode Enigma’s messages. But I couldn’t find out if Turing ever called it “Christopher. In reality, the machines were called bombes, machines that would loop through every combination that would short circuit if the right combination was found. Understanding from some decoded messages that there were common words in almost every message, like “weather” in the first message at 6 in the morning, or “hail hitler” at the end of the message, cryptographers would try to find a chain of encrypted letters that would loop back to itself. The German word for “weather”, “witter”, would be mapped to the first 6 letters of the message. With those letters, and perhaps other common German words known to exist in the text, the cryptographers would try to find specific patterns, or instructions, to give the bombe. There was a great amount of human error that could have happened before telling the bombe what to look for in order to short circuit the machine. Multiple bombes were used in order to test all of their theories. 19 were used in its first year of development.

The bombe itself was a Polish creation when Poland was trying to decipher the Enigma machine during the 1930’s. There’s an entire neglected story there that is understandable the film glossed over. The Polish, paranoid of the growing power of Germany, obtained one of these Enigma machines. It was later smuggled to Bletchley Park, mentioned briefly in the movie’s beginning when Commander Denniston shows Turing the Enigma machine for the first time. Also untold is the story of the Polish mathematician Marian Rejewski and his decade of work trying to find weaknesses within Enigma. The Polish, knowing that their research might help the Allies in breaking Enigma, gave the intelligence to the British. Turing built on top of Rejewski’s work when he started building the bombes. The film poorly looks at the past achievements and puts Turing on a pedestal of being the radical of making a machine that could decode the key. In the film, almost everyone he’s working with doesn’t take his idea serious enough and Turing goes out of his way to convince Churchill to put him in charge. It is true the British funded around £100,000 to help build the bombes, but the drama surrounding the shutdown of these machines were not really mentioned in any literature I could find.

The Germans upgraded the number of combinations possible for their Enigma machine later in the war. More bombes were created in order to cut down the time to find the combinations. Plus, Enigma was not the only machine used to encrypt messages. For example, between Hitler and his main generals, they used an even larger encoding device with much more complexity. The film failed to mention Colossus, the machine that tried to decrypt this machine, that built off of the mechanisms in Turing’s bombes. Some proclaim Colossus was the first programmable computer even though it had to be dismantled after the war.

The film disturbed me in how easily it looked for Turing’s machine to decode the key. Knowing what I know now of what Turing’s machines actually did, the whole plot after of trying to determine what was statistically significant in delivering information after it was obtained did not seem to solely rest upon the cryptographers, in my opinion. It was the film’s opportunity to utilize a Machiavellian perspective of warfare, of which we saw very little of.

All that I’ve said though doesn’t mean I didn’t like the film. I actually thought it was an enjoyable movie with questionable drama, like the marriage subplot between Turing and Kiera Knightley’s character. I really liked how the film portrayed Turing’s eventual downfall after the war and the injustice brought to him because he was gay. But at the same time, I write this because I have a love for cryptography, and I needed to scratch this itchy spot of curiosity.

We shouldn’t be using weight as a metric for healthiness. Weight measures primarily subcutaneous fat, visceral fat, water and muscle weight (yes, we’re composed of more things). The weight value can not tell the composition make-up of that person. For example, someone could have a large build, but sound overweight according to their BMI, yet just have most of their weight in muscle. Or, someone could be petite, yet have a lot of visceral fat. There’s no inherent evil in any single factor. You need each of these things to survive, and there are trade-offs to having too little or too much of any single thing.

Working Out

If you start working out for the first time in a long time, you’ll see a net gain in weight because you’ll start gaining muscle before you see an equal loss in fat. That’s why some people get discouraged from working out for the first week because they think it’s not working.

My roommate’s friend was aiming for a target weight to fit her wedding gown and set out a weekly target weight to aim for. She decided to start working out everyday. To her dismay, she gained 3 lbs (or 1.4 kg) after the first week. When she told me about this, I gave her a quick primer about weight. The change in fat loss is much smaller than the change in muscle gain. For her overall health, this was a great with long-term benefits like increased cardiac output (CO). I also told her the biggest changes you can make for immediate effect of weight is change in eating habits.

Looks Naked

I don’t use the weight metric for myself. I believe the underlying desire we want from the weight is the indication that we look good. Because I understand this superficial ideal, I’ve adopted a concept from Darya Pino Rose’s book, “Foodist.” “Do I look good naked?” If the answer is yes, I’ll continue to maintain my lifestyle. If not, I’ll have to make some intervening habits. When we find ourselves in vain about our looks, it’s almost always the subcutaneous, or visible, fat.

Target Weight

With the same explanation of what weight is, target weight is a complete farce. The true answer to the question, “What is my target weight” should really be rephrased as “What is the most impactful thing I can do for my health?” Because weight tells nothing about composition, we’re terrible at guessing the best target weight for being healthiest. The truth is, there is no target weight we know of that is healthiest. Mrs. Rose talks in “Foodist” that she had a target weight to aim for, but when she took her focus away from the scale and onto food, she found out she felt better 20 lbs heavier than her target weight.

Be wary of your individual BMI score. BMI data is great for population statistics, but terrible for an individual. BMI is equal to your height squared divided by weight (h^2 / w). The score is basically meaningless because it scores the large-build, muscular person as overweight weight, or a skinny-fat sedentary person as underweight. Neither are good indications, as an individual, that they are leading healthy lifestyles. And on top of that, doctors and nurses use BMI to rank us with our peers if we should gain or lose weight. My most recent trip to the doctors alarmed me when they told me they used BMI. Even though they told me I’m at prime weight and I shouldn’t lose or gain weight, I was befuddled they would use such an archaic scale.

Obesity

Yes, if you’re morbidly obese crowd, or the high percentile of the population in terms of weight, weight will indicate with higher accuracy the longevity of your life. Sorry.

Other Points of Interest

I’ve mentioned the naked thing, but I know that’s not the best strategy for everyone. Here’s a list of other things to consider:

• Mood
• Body Fat Percentage
• Breathing Rate
• Breathing Volume
• Resting Heart Rate

It is not an exhaustive list, but it’s a start. Sometime in the near future, I’ll write-up part two about food because that’s the key in weight loss and general fitness.

I read this delightful children’s book called “Lauren Ipsum” by Carlos Bueno and Ytaelena López about a girl named Lauren who journeys through Userland trying to find her way back home. It utilizes Computer Science topics weaved into Lauren’s story. One of the delightful characters she meets is Eponymous Bach, a woman who composes ideas and puts her name on them. “Eponymous” is an actual word that means giving a name to things. For a name to be eponymous, it must use someone’s name behind the thing or idea. The Eponymous Bach character made me think about the power of names.

You can go on Wikipedia and find an article about Eponymous laws. These are laws named after people, like Moore’s law, the observation that the complexity of integrated circuits doubles every 2 years, or my personal favorite, Murphy’s law, which states anything that can go wrong will go wrong. To fall into the Wikipedia trap, you can search for Eponym to find a whole list of other eponymous things.

Names allow us to put into words complex ideas. I’ve been coding on a daily basis for a little over a year now, and I’ve started to recognize design anti-patterns, or the ways not to design a piece of code. For example, when a piece of code becomes too long to do what you thought was a simple task, we call that a “code smell”. Typically, if that occurs, you scrap that piece of code and start over because the resulting code become hard to maintain in the future.

Another anti-pattern, called the “Big Ball of Mud”, is when a software project is strung together with little or no architecture. This results in code that is sloppy, duct-taped, and difficult to maintain. This is common when there are poor business practices, huge developer turnover, and code entropy. A friend who works at a large, public company told me the engineers who initially wrote the code for their product took many shortcuts to meet release dates, which was in conjunction with their IPO. After becoming public, many of these engineers sold their stock and left the company, leaving code that was hard to maintain and close to being useless. The result is a system that may be prone to errors and difficult to scale up and add more features.

Giving names to ideas makes those ideas more comprehensible and cohesive or “sticky”. For example, my roommate uses the horoscope as a heuristic to quickly judge someone’s character. The horoscope provides a quick framework for personality types. It plays off the elements, earth, wind, fire and water, and uses it to describe behavior and traits. For example, Capricorns, who are Earth signs, are more grounded and set in their ways. She will use that to categorize the Capricorns she meets. Of course, we may not really fall into these buckets or groups, and my roommate takes this with a grain of salt, but it’s just a guide to aid with understanding personality. The same goes for the different Myer-Brigg’s types.

Names act as a heuristic, or shortcuts, for our brains. As an example, if we know people with the same name, in my case, I know a few people with the name Michael, Nick, and Chris, I’ll give each one a nickname. And my friends will typically give me a nickname back. In fact, the name of this newsletter is the “Jear-Bear Letters” because some fine folk over the past summer started calling me “Jer-Bear”.

In olden times, names would include titles. Alexander the Great, Pliney the Elder, Joan of Arc. These would help with passing down stories through oral tradition. Saying Alexander doesn’t have the same ring as Alexander the Great. If you’re going to tell someone a story by word of mouth, their more likely to remember it if you put a descriptor title to it. If you’ve read Lord of the Rings, or A Song of Ice and Fire (the book series for the TV Show, Game of Thrones), you will recognize your character immediately given the character’s title.

Sometimes, in fantasy tales, names have a literal power. For example, in “The Name of the Wind”, by Patrick Rothfuss, you can summon the wind by bellowing its name. In the Harry Potter series, Lord Voldemort is the household name everyone fears to the point where not many will utter his name. The words we use to call each other or ideas have a profound effect. When you become a household name, people will stick your name to your face, your brand, and your life’s work. Take Madonna for example. When you bring her up in conversation, we are ignited with thoughts about Material Girl, Evita, or that recent song “4 Minutes” whom she has a duet with Justin Timberlake.

When you can put a name to an acronym, you make it into a mnemonic acronyms in which you can use to your advantage in everyday work. For example, I’ve been designing websites, and I use Robin Williams’ graphic design principles in her book, “The Non-Designer’s Design Book”, known as “CRAP” (Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity). When I’m coding, I use the SOLID principles for good practices in object-oriented design.

Next time you start learning something new, learn the concepts by associating them with names. If they don’t have names, give them one. If you don’t have a name, give yourself one.

On International Women’s Day, my former hack-mate from Science Hack Day tweeted out female scientists that are inspiring to her. You can read her full article here. In that spirit, I wanted to talk about meeting someone who inspired me.

Ze Frank

Ze Frank is an Internet sensation primarily known for his Internet show back in 2006 entitled “The Show”. In 2012, he released a new show with the help of Kickstarter backers called “A Show”. It also became a hit for its run during its first year.

If you haven’t watched any of his videos, you should begin with “An Invocation for Beginnings,” his first episode for “A Show”. He talks about the fear of beginning and calls out people to join him in beginning something.

This is an invocation for anyone who hasn’t begun! Who’s stuck in a terrible place between zero and one.

— Ze Frank, “An Invocation for Beginnings”

Or this video on “Crushing Words,” where Ze just talks about words that have had a crushing impact on his life. Ze is able to present his vulnerabilities, creating an atmosphere of authenticity, human emotion, fun and play in his videos. In a lot of ways, these essays echo what his videos convey, a place where we can actually talk about insecurities and vulnerabilities.

The Exhibition & Showcase

In “A Show”, Ze held a bunch of different “missions” where artists and fans would collaborate to create pieces of art, like a jacket made of pages from diary entries submitted by the fans. In 2013, Ze created an art exhibition using the pieces created in the missions. The exhibition was held at The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History where the public was invited to come to the exhibition and participate in the workshops. At the end of the exhibition, the public could watch Ze and Stefan Bucher present their work in an interactive showcase. Being a fan, I was a bit giddy to finally meet him in person, so I drove down to go see this exhibit.

Nina Simon, the museum’s curator, spent years creating this museum interactive space where each exhibit is a participatory art piece. It was no coincidence Ze chose this museum. Within Ze’s exhibition were different workshops where you can make your own finishing stamp, look at some of the projects made by the artists on his show, and write comforting messages to stuff into a teddy bear, known as the “Comfort Bear.”

Before the showcase began, Ze addressed the crowd who was lined up to go into the auditorium. He asked everyone to disperse and talk to strangers you’ve never met. It was the first in a string of social experiments he asked us to participate in. I walked around the room meeting people of different backgrounds, like students at UC Santa Cruz, NASA Ames employees, and Youtube Stars from the UK. After a few minutes, he told us to gather back together and asked us to make a laughing circle. To create a laughing circle, you have someone would lay down and start laughing. Another person would lay down, rest their head on the first person’s belly, and then commence laughing. This would repeat until a circle is formed. A few people participated in this activity, including myself.

Our superego holds us back from saying things that might be too offensive, too brazen, or too radical. It may stop us from participating in activities that might make us embarrassed. But this activity of resting our heads on someone’s laughing belly tricks our superego from telling us this is an awkward situation because it’s never encountered such action before. As my head was bouncing up and down, my mind stopped rationalizing what was going on. I just laid there laughing at the absurdity that was unfolding. Heads around me in similar bouncing fashion, bobbing up and down laughing.

Other activities followed along the same thread as thing one. Feeling oddly elated, we all sat down in the auditorium. I had this sense of play and joy, as I listened to him talk about the process of creation and how participatory activities brings about conversations. He made me think about, and eventually write about, how to get others to interact with me on an empathetic level. It goes past the level of acquaintance and to a level of real human emotional feelings. We take off this mask and actually show ourselves raw.

The physical realm is full of strange and awkward emotions because we have to deal with each other. The internet masks us with anonymity. So how do we get to the important conversations?

— My journal entry from that day in reflection to the talk

Continuing The Dialogue

After the talk, I lined with with the rest of the fans to meet Ze. Watching his videos is an intimate one-on-one experience. You open your laptop, go to his website, and click play to start watching his latest video. He talks about something to a camera, and you view the final, edited version. And a lot of times, you watch it alone.

Here was a chance to finally bridge that digital experience into the physical world. Except, the exhibition, the silly activities, and his talk made me realize I’m not the only one who has this experience. I get to share it with the fans. We get to continue this conversation, through the medium of video comments, the missions, or this live event. And through this live event, I was finally able to talk to people about the important things, like how to be yourself, how to deal with bad news from the doctor’s office, and how to determine who is a friend versus an acquaintance.

When it was my turn, I thanked him for the participatory experiences of the event. He signed my poster and probably doesn’t remember this brief encounter. And to be honest, I don’t really either. He brought himself to the level of the fans, not as an apotheosis. He was the instigator, the person who started the ball rolling. The fans are there to continue to roll the ball and perhaps crack it open to find something magical inside, like raw emotion, solutions to our everyday problems, or how to cope. Ze was make the event more than just himself. In true spirit to his attitude in his videos, he made this event about the fans.

Ze opened my mind to think about how to live and cope with awkward emotions. They’re of human construct, and the only way to really deal with it is to open a dialogue. It’s not to comment on a video, give our ten cents, and leave it at that. It’s to draw out someone else who shares similar perspective and figure out what makes us human.

My friend, Miss Keegan, is the bravest person I know. She’s my best friend and someone I truly care about, sometimes even more than family. Two years ago, she wrote me a very long letter. It took her months of writing and re-writing to ultimately tell me she was transgender. Deep down, she was asking for acceptance. She was also worried that if she sent this letter, there would be a slim chance that I wasn’t going to accept her for who she is. Despite being risk-averse, she took that leap of faith, risking our friendship. When I received the letter, I took some time to really read it, then called her. I told her I accepted her for who she is and there would be no way in hell I was going to react negatively.

We had been friends since our freshman year of college. We met at this club event right outside of the university our first weekend before classes started. However, it was only brief, and all we did was introduce ourselves with a handshake. The second time I met her, I stumbled into her dorm room drunk while she was trying to have a good time hanging out with her friends from back home. She held no angst towards me, but showed me out of the room. Despite my rude behavior, she was drawn to me and we started hanging out more often. Eventually, she became one of my first true friends in college.

One of the things we wanted to do was travel up the west coast to Canada. In my car, we drove a thousand miles up and down the coast seeing the beautiful and gorgeous Pacific Ocean. But we also had a lot of time on our hands. We each created a playlist that we thought would reflect our lives. That’s where I learned Miss Keegan was into scream-o music once upon a time ago. Eventually, we ran out of music, and we talked for a long time. I felt comfortable enough talking about myself. I told her about an old High School crush I never got over, of parental expectations, of where I thought my life was headed. She drove, listening to my stories, soaking it in. Miss Keegan only talked briefly about her past, and I could tell she was holding something back. Something deep and dark, and I was worried she didn’t trust me. I didn’t press her on it and felt that if she was ready to tell me, she would.

We took a class together in our junior year on LGBT media studies. In that class, we discussed topical LGBT issues and read one or two books a week. Because of high textbook costs, we decided to split the cost of the books. However, one of the books I bought was incorrect. I bought Kate Bernstein’s “Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation” when I was supposed to buy her first book, “Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us.” Miss Keegan bought the book off my hands and read it religiously for a week.

I didn’t feel surprised when she wrote to me she was transgender. I received the letter on my birthday the year after I graduated college. In addition to coming out, she also told me for the past year, she was taking hormones without prescription. She talked of depression and of finding herself lost and confused, crying in her room. Reading that reminded me of specific incidents where she would just disappear during social events.

Miss Keegan and I were at a party held by a mutual friend about a half a year before I received the letter. She left the party after feeling dismayed because some of the guests talked about gender binary norms. She had taken a walk without telling anyone, and no one noticed until I was finally ready to leave the party. We had drove together, and since we lived together, I assumed I was also driving her home, but Miss Keegan was no where to be found. Another friend accompanied me as I drove around looking for her. After a half an hour without finding her, we decided to swing around my place hoping she found her way back with someone else. I got back and she wasn’t there. I asked my roommates if they had seen her, but they didn’t know. Before I called the police, she came back, safely. She was dumbfounded by my distress and told me she just needed to take a walk to clear her thoughts. I sighed a huge relief, but was worried by Miss Keegan’s need to clear her thoughts.

Shortly after I received the letter, I called her and told her I was totally supportive of her and willing to help her if she ever needed it. I also asked if this was why she had left the party I mentioned in the previous paragraph. She said it was distressing that nobody understood her perspective and scared that if she brought it up, she would be rejected. She felt like she was in a hopeless place, trapped in a dark room when people make such off-handed comments.

One of the first things I did right after college was write to Miss Keegan letters. Snail mail, not email. It was refreshing. I was able to write these longform essays, much like what you’re reading now. Sometimes she would respond. Sometimes she didn’t. It didn’t matter. I was able to get something off my chest because I knew she could read the things that were hard to talk about. After I received her long coming-out letter, the letters meant even more because she was also willing to talk about the hard things as well. When I received one of her letters, I knew they were precious because there is limited space on paper. You have to be extremely thoughtful of what you’re going to put in that space.

Writing these letters reminds me of that time I was writing letters to Miss Keegan. I’m writing about the hard things to talk about, except now, there are more people reading. I feel very vulnerable, scared I’m going to be judged by every set of eyes that read this. But what really helps is when I get responses back. They’re not like a reply on a Youtube video, they’re replies of empathy. I get really cheery when someone responds back with, “I felt the same way” or “This really touched me.” It makes me feel less alone and lights up that dark room within me. I don’t have an intention to write these letters in hopes they will make me famous, because they will certainly not. I write these because it’s the thing keeping me sane and happiest. I love you Miss Keegan. Thanks for being there.

Losing The Soccer Game

There’s this story I heard where parents convinced a pee-wee soccer referee not to count points for their kids’ game. This pee-wee soccer game would have no winners or losers and the parents wouldn’t have to worry that their kids would be devastated if they lost. However, what I believe that does is the kid will lose out on essential character building. As Calvin’s dad says in the comic strip, “Calvin and Hobbes”, everything not worth doing is an experience to build character. This trait goes by other words, perseverance and grit, and it’s one of the most important life lessons. Things may not go our way, but we have the choice to continue to push on or fail to recover. The reassuring thing about the pee-wee soccer match was the referee noticed the kids were keeping track of the score in their heads, so at the end of the game, they knew who won and who lost.

Trading Spaces

In the film, “Trading Spaces”, Dan Aykroyd’s character is this rich stock broker who has everything going for him — a good career, a smoking hot fiancée, and a large home with his own butler. Being white and privileged, he had never faced much hardship in life. He went to an Ivy League college, has a group of posh friends, and never had to beg. The word “suffer” doesn’t seem to be in his vocabulary.

His counterpart, played by Eddie Murphy, is at the absolute bottom. He’s poor, had to fight his way in the hood, and a scam artist. At the beginning of the movie, he pretends to be a war veteran with no legs panhandling. The difference between these two characters is Eddie Murphy’s character has faced a lot of rejection in his life and had to live with it. Dan Aykroyd’s character didn’t.

As the movie progresses, Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy swap places and Aykroyd finds himself at the bottom. Everything is taken from him — his job, his fiancée, and his home. When he finds out that none of those thing will come back to him, he hits rock bottom.

This film might be the worst case scenario of losing everything, but it provides a wonderful lesson. Despite hardship, we can choose to process through that and work past it. Dan Aykroyd almost that rejection overcome him, nearly meeting his end from a suicide attempt. Throughout this portion of the movie, I was thinking, “pull yourself together. You can get through this.” But I understand his behavior. It’s that resistance we have built up because we can’t process the rejection. In the end, he did pull through and eventually getting even with the people who wronged him.

The Break-up

Take a recent break-up from a close friend as an example for the denial of recognizing rejection. In this break-up, my close friend delivered the blow to her boyfriend for the fourth and final time. A few hours after, the boyfriend reached out to me to meet up with him later that week. I was hesitant at first, but eventually agreed, despite knowing he doesn’t like me. I had been talking to my close friend about her relationship more deeply than he was, and it angered him.

We met up at a local library where he showed up drunk. He was stammering through some of his sentences as he spoke. At first, he tried to ask me what he needed to do to get his life on track. I tried to give him some sort of advice, but he ended up taking over the conversation. He rambled for a good hour about his problems, where he thought the relationship went wrong, and how he planned to win her back. I tried to give him the bad news; he needed to take care of himself first. He was a mess, and despite how much we want to help with someone else’s life, we have to be selfish and take care of ourselves first.

One of the reasons the relationship went sour was the boyfriend was trying to accommodate for his partner by trying to provide her with rich, material goods. But the thing he couldn’t provide her with, the thing that mattered more, was the ability to socialize with her. When she asked him how his day was, he would give a one word answer. When she pressed him for an opinion, he gave her nothing. When they were hanging out, he would rather be on his phone playing games instead of being present with her. When things went south for him, like losing his job and facing family crises, he let that overwhelm his life. He blamed her for a lot of the downturns, even to go as far as saying she was the reason he lost his job. He resorted to cursing at her when she did made a mistake. He couldn’t blame himself for these actions until it was too late, after they were broken up.

After the end of our conversation, I thought about what he said, and I realized he didn’t get it. He was in complete denial and didn’t admit that she was not coming back. During the conversation, he talked about scenarios in which she would get back with him if he won her back. He did try to fathom she would never get back with him, exclaiming, “I’ll be happy as long as she’s happy.” However, that was followed with, “I will never love anyone else except her.” It made me think about my abysmal dating life, and how much rejection I’ve faced over the past few years. My difference is, when someone tells me they don’t want to see me anymore, I respect that and try to live on without them in my life. Of course, there’s a lot of sulking, ice cream, and hours of mindless reality television, but after that phase, I bounced back and put myself back out there.

Before we parted, he asked me if I could be his friend. I said, “it depends.” I place a no tolerance rule in my friend group for people who have to spotlight their baggage. They go into my “acquaintance” bucket. My roommate calls them the “woe is me” people. They’re like a vampire trying to leech you of all your positive energy, and when you’re done talking to them, you feel overwhelmed and can’t do much else. In the past, those friends take my advice, but never give any back. As soon as I bring up my own issues, they’re not willing to help. When I invite them to group events, they tend to bring the whole group down. I quietly ignore their pleas to grab my attention until they stop reaching out. My life is typically a lot quieter and goes back to emotional equilibrium.

Since our meet-up, he’s reached out to me a few times. Each time, he has tried to ask the world of me where he tries to force me to sympathize for his baggage. He’s going into the acquaintance bucket.

“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”

— Steven Pressfield, “The War of Art”

Originally from SFGate. Photo: Courtesy / Lauren Colman

Crossing the River Styx

Around 5pm this past Monday, Caltrain hit a car that was stopped on the tracks. Tragically, a female driver who remained in this car during the collision died. This and subsequent trains were stalled for hours as the police and train operators ran through, sadly, a very common procedure. As if that wasn’t enough, a few hours later that night, there was another fatality. Caltrain had hit a pedestrian.

I was rather deterred from writing about these fatalities the last time it happened a month ago. It seemed a bit morbid to write about because of their recency. But because they seem to happen at least once a month, I think it’s time to re-think the way we think about these events.

I wrote an essay earlier last month about my personal journey through anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. I feel like I can relate a little to the mindset of what may be running through the mind of a person who is on the train tracks, crossing the river styx from life to death. While life may be in a cloud of uncertainty for the suicidal person, knowing there is certainty of death from a head-on train collision could be solace. There’s no claim that either of these two incidents were successful suicide attempts, but I’ll still take this as an opportunity to think about suicide prevention.

“In the last five years, there has been an average of 14 fatalities a year on the Caltrain right of way. Of these, 90 percent were caused by suicide.”

— Official Caltrain PR

An Invocation For Awareness

In the past, I felt insensitive to these events; conditioned to think this is commonplace. There’s an awful joke that I seem to hear myself saying, “Why couldn’t they do it on off hours when I’m not on the train?”. My brain used to filter these stories into soundbites, forgetting that each one of these people had life-long stories with a tragic ending. It doesn’t help that the media reporting these stories only give us soundbites of the reaction from close friends and family spliced in between the press conference from the Palo Alto Police Department and Caltrain officials. There’s much heart in the souls that were lost. I’m reminded of prison inmates who wear numbers, who have lost their identity to this boundless, intangible symbol.

Perhaps I should construct an identity to this woman and all other fatalities. The gravity and weight would be better felt. It’s a thought exercise to remember if I encounter someone displaying suicidal patterns, I should intervene.

The Proactive Good Samaritan

With mental disorders, depression, and people on the verge of suicide on the minds of most Americans, we forget how to intervene when given the opportunity. And suicide prevention isn’t something you’re supposed to learn and shelf. This is a constant reminder there is more than can be done for those still around. Perhaps you know there’s a person behind a mask ready to give up. You have a voice and the power of presence. I may not know this woman, but I sure know that she’s a reminder that I will act more aware of these situations if they should arise amongst my friends. The experience brings back our awareness and we need it most when we have our guards down. Armor up and become the proactive good samaritan.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: (800) 273–8255

National Suicide Prevention Website

Update: 3/20/2015

Caltrain has come out with a response to the recent suicides. You can read it here. I’m going to quote two points that I agree with Caltrain’s proposal for truly making an impact to these tragic events. Thanks to @MarkSimon24 for writing a response I’ve been waiting to read.

Point 4

Engage in a community-wide effort to address underlying mental health issues, suicide prevention and lifting the stigma of seeking help. This is the long solution — it can take decades to change community attitudes about mental health to the point where a troubled individual can openly admit that he or she needs help. And even if, together, we did everything we could and transformed our community, there is no guarantee it will work. Some of the recent cases have involved people who had sought help and had been identified as struggling with mental health issues. To the credit of our community, this mental health/suicide prevention effort is underway and has been for years. There are a number of government-, community-, and school-based organizations throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara counties that are working hard to improve the availability of services and to help guide all of us on how we can work together to reduce the risk and to reach out to one another. That is commendable and we need to consider how we can redouble our efforts, together.

Point 5

Reduce the harmful news media attention to these deaths. There is ample science to establish that giving high profile coverage to these incidents makes the problem worse. There are many professional journalism organizations that actively assert coverage of suicides should be minimal and non-sensational. Every leading suicide-prevention organization issues media guidelines that beg news organizations not to describe the means of the suicides in detail. And yet, as recently as Tuesday’s tragedy, every news story described exactly how the death occurred. The news media has to take some responsibility for the story it is creating, not just covering. This makes some journalists angry. A recent social media assertion along these lines provoked a very angry response from one local news organization. They defend their coverage as newsworthy because of the disruption to the daily commute. Or because the deaths themselves have become newsworthy. But this is something that can be done right now and, evidence suggests, can have a positive impact.

Update: 5/20/2015

KQED wrote an article about suicide prevention on Caltrain Tracks.

Stephanie Weisner runs Wellness and Recovery Services at StarVista, a San Mateo County nonprofit. Weisner credits Caltrain with sending its employees into the community to participate on boards and committees focused on suicide intervention.

“We have monthly meetings,” Weisner explains, “where we all sit around and brainstorm, and we work closely with other counties, including Santa Clara County.”

Does she want more fencing and security cameras? Yes, she says. But she adds that none of that frees the rest of us from having to pay more attention to the people around us: in school, at work, at home.

Weisner says, “People often give out signs that they’re thinking of really hurting themselves, or taking their lives, and there’s things that we can do — reducing the stigma around getting mental health services, and encouraging people to reach out for that.”

I’m not smart enough.
I know those watching me
With vindictive eyes
Are judging my wits.

I’ll stumble on something I don’t know
Stuck in an inner maelstrom.
Do I try to figure this out,
Or blame my lack of knowing?

I’m not pretty enough.
My mom told me that.
She believed it,
And it hurt when I believed it

I shy away from woman,
Thinking I’m the beast outside.
But then a compliment.
Am I really ugly?

I’m not rich enough.
I couldn’t buy the next must have.
Wishing I owned more
Wondering the price tag of a new life.

Old Joe’s living paycheck by paycheck
And I’ve got more.
Would it be crazy
To give him a helping hand?

I’m not social enough.
I put on an armor against being vulnerable
And I’m left to my own devices,
But I can’t bare to listen to myself.

Then I wonder why no one will talk to me
Initiate a conversation
Counsel me when I need them the most.
I am alone.

I’m not good enough.
I never was good enough.
This voice inside my head
told me I’m not good enough.

I’m afraid everything given to me
Will be taken away in a heartbeat
And I would’ve wished I could’ve appreciated it
When I still had it.

I’m not available enough.
Family and friends wonder
If I’ll ever make it out.
I wonder too.

I can’t bare to make the time
Because there’s always fires around.
There’s always drama
And there’s just no way I can move things around.

I’m not fit enough.
My belly is too big,
I run out of energy too soon,
And the gym is intimidating.

How could I muster
Bringing myself on the treadmill?
Exercise wasn’t made for me
I’m fat because of genetics.

I’m not happy enough.
All the world is suffering,
So I must also suffer,
Because it’s the proper thing to do.

Satisfaction is for losers
Who don’t know the doom that’s coming.
Woe is me,
Why can’t I just be happy?

I’m not enough.
Given my circumstances,
You can see I’m not enough
You can feel I’m not enough.

I’m told I’m wrong.
How can I believe that
When I can’t feel it inside?
Just believe?

I’m enough

I have enough time
To sit and chat with a dear old friend
Reminiscing about the good old days
And talking optimistically about the future.

I created a space
Where people can come in and out of my life
Whom I can be genuine with
And be amiable.

I am happy enough.
I’ve given myself enough time in the day to meditate,
Joke around with the people I work with,
And I don’t get angry over the little things.

I’ve made peace with God.
There’s a spot for spirituality
And for wholeheartedness
And soft-serve.

I’m content enough with my wisdom.
I know there’s so much I will never understand in the world
And I know there will be those who carve a very selective niche
To study those things.

What matters more is the people
You can share your experiences with
And pass down
From one generation to the next.

I’m rich enough.
In fact, I give back most of what I earned.
Because what’s more important than money or things
Are the experiences we have on this Earth.

I am delighted to have the things in my life
That can draw me closer to those I can’t see everyday.
But I don’t hold on to items like a crutch
Because they are only tools.

I’m healthy enough.
A wise man once said
”What the point of being ultra-healthy
When you can’t even enjoy the time you have here?”

There is no excuse to find time for exercise
When you’ve already incorporated it into your life.
Habits are the foundation
To creating a worry-free life.

I’m pretty enough.
I don’t need to look like a million dollars
And then some
Because I can stare at myself naked in the mirror.

I feel great in this skin
And all of the blemishes it has.
All those blemishes have stories
That I get to share.

I’m enough.
I’ve surrounded my life with family and friends,
Who all encourage me in my endeavors
And make my life rich.

Enough is the baseline
Not a static comfortable point.
We have accepted who we are
And are not afraid to change.

I’ve writing down what I’m grateful for
My life, my health, my family and friends,
The abundance, the emotions, the creativity
And a chance to share it all with the world.