Craft By Zen by Jeremy Wong

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.

Vim tutor is a great guide to get you started with vim.

Getting Started

To start with Vim Tutor, simply type vimtutor in your terminal.

The tutorial says it should take about 25 to 30 minutes, but because I was also messing around with writing up this post and including their lesson summaries, all trying to use vim, I spend a bit longer with it.

If you’re running low on time, I’d say do each lesson in a 5 to 10 minute window span each day. You’re allowed to take it slow.

I learned it’s about the journey, not about the speed in which it takes for you to pick it up. It’s there where you can start nitpicking on how to do “x” or “y”.

The next following sections are summaries of what vim tutor teaches you. I modified some of the summaries to best fit markdown format.

Lesson 1 Summary

1. The cursor is moved using either the arrow keys or the hjkl keys.

• h (left)
• j (down)
• k (up)
• l (right)

2. To start Vim from the shell prompt type: vim FILENAME <ENTER>

3. To exit Vim type: <ESC> :q! <ENTER> to trash all changes. OR type: <ESC> :wq <ENTER> to save the changes.

4. To delete the character at the cursor type: x

5. To insert or append text type: i type inserted text <ESC> insert before the cursor A type appended text <ESC> append after the line

NOTE: Pressing <ESC> will place you in Normal mode or will cancel an unwanted and partially completed command.

Lesson 2 Summary

1. To delete from the cursor up to the next word type: dw

2. To delete from the cursor to the end of a line type: d$

3. To delete a whole line type: dd

4. To repeat a motion prepend it with a number: 2w

5. The format for a change command is:

operator [number] motion

where:

- **operator** - is what to do, such as  d  for delete
- **[number]** - is an optional count to repeat the motion
- **motion**   - moves over the text to operate on, such as  w (word), (to the end of line), etc.

6. To move to the start of the line use a zero: 0

7. Undo & redo actions

• To undo previous actions, type: u (lowercase u)
• To undo all the changes on a line, type: U (capital U)
• To undo the undo’s, type: CTRL-R

Lesson 3 Summary

1. To put back text that has just been deleted, type p . This puts the deleted text AFTER the cursor (if a line was deleted it will go on the line below the cursor).

2. To replace the character under the cursor, type r and then the character you want to have there.

3. The change operator allows you to change from the cursor to where the motion takes you. eg. Type ce to change from the cursor to the end of the word, c$ to change to the end of a line.

4. The format for change is:

c [number] motion

Lesson 4 Summary

1. CTRL-G displays your location in the file and the file status.

• G moves to the end of the file.
• [number] G moves to that line number.
• gg moves to the first line.

2. Find command

• Typing / followed by a phrase searches FORWARD for the phrase.
• Typing ? followed by a phrase searches BACKWARD for the phrase.
• After a search type n to find the next occurrence in the same direction
• or N to search in the opposite direction.
• CTRL-O takes you back to older positions, CTRL-I to newer positions.

3. Typing % while the cursor is on a ( , ), [, ], {, or } goes to its match.

4. Substitute command

• To substitute new for the first old in a line type :s/old/new
• To substitute new for all ‘old’s on a line type :s/old/new/g
• To substitute phrases between two line #‘s type :#,#s/old/new/g
• To substitute all occurrences in the file type :%s/old/new/g
• To ask for confirmation each time add c :%s/old/new/gc

Lesson 5 Summary

1. :!command executes an external command.

Some useful examples are:

2. :w FILENAME writes the current Vim file to disk with name FILENAME.

3. v motion :w FILENAME saves the Visually selected lines in file FILENAME.

4. :r FILENAME retrieves disk file FILENAME and puts it below the cursor position.

5. :r !dir reads the output of the dir command and puts it below the cursor position.

Lesson 6 Summary

1. Open a line in insert mode

• Type o to open a line BELOW the cursor and start Insert mode.
• Type O to open a line ABOVE the cursor.

2. Append text

• Type a to insert text AFTER the cursor.
• Type A to insert text after the end of the line.

3. The e command moves to the end of a word.

4. The y operator yanks (copies) text, p puts (pastes) it.

5. Typing a capital R enters Replace mode until <ESC> is pressed.

6. Typing :set xxx sets the option xxx. Some options are:

• ic ignorecase ignore upper/lower case when searching
• is incsearch show partial matches for a search phrase
• hls hlsearch highlight all matching phrases

You can either use the long or the short option name.

7. Prepend no to switch an option off: :set noic

Lesson 7 Summary

1. Type :help or press <F1> or <Help> to open a help window.

2. Type :help cmd to find help on cmd.

3. Type CTRL-W CTRL-W to jump to another window

4. Type :q to close the help window

5. Create a vimrc startup script to keep your preferred settings.

6. When typing a : command, press CTRL-D to see possible completions. Press <TAB> to use one completion.

Post Tutorial Reflection

The tutorial got me through the basics, and only scraps the surface of what you can do with vim. One of the things I found useful after going through this tutorial was saying out loud what the command I was using does.

For example, if I was using the w command, I would say “word”. If I was going to the word, and I was using the diw command, I would say “delete instance word”. Using words instead of letters helps with getting the commands down. It’s the same technique I used when learning the bash terminal, e.g. with pwd, I would say in my head, “print working directory”.

I wrote up a much longer post about vim that I will publish soon.

Initial Setup

I got into vim from a co-worker. I thought it’s that clunky text editor in your terminal you must use when you have ssh into the linux server. However, I’ve grown to understand vim is much more than a text editor. It can also be an IDE.

When I first used vim, it just looked plain an boring. The black screen with hard to understand shortcuts. There weren’t any line numbers. I didn’t even know how to exit the damn program for a good 5 minutes.

Then I started figuring it out slowly. Vim has different modes. Vim can do macros. Vim can find things with the same grep commands. And it’s quite expandable with the limitless plugins. Vim is an endless rabbithole where you will get sucked in hours just setting it up. But it’s your customization. And that’s the beauty of vim.

Best advice - configure vim, and for that matter dotfiles, on your own. Don’t blindly copy and paste configurations, because you’ll never understand them all.

Modal Editing

Quoted from Nick Nisi

Change the meaning of the keys in each mode of operation

• Normal mode - navigate the structure of the file
• Insert Mode - editing the file
• Visual mode - highlighting portions of the file to manipulate at once
• Ex mode - command mode

Line Numbers

Where are my line numbers? Simply type the following.

:set number

To remove the numbers, you can use this command.

:set nonumber

Configuration

If you’re sick and tired of setting everything up every time you boot up vim, simply place the configuration in your configuration file. You can find the configuration file at this location. ~/.vimrc

Here’s a truncated version of my general settings.

syntax enable     " Enable syntax highlighting
set tabstop=2     " set the tab stop at 2 spaces
set shiftwidth=2  " set the shift width by 2 spaces
set noexpandtab   " do not expand tab
set number        " show line numbers

For all of my settings, please view my dotfiles.

Useful Shortcuts

All of the shortcuts can be found on the Vim Wiki Website

Navigation

• h for left
• l for right
• j for down
• k for up
• gg top of the file
• H top of the window
• ctrl + e move window down one line
• ctrl + y move window up one line

Word Manipulation

• w to go forward to the beginning of next word
• b to go backward to the beginning of previous word
• e to go forward to the end of the next word
• dw delete word up to the cursor including space between next word
• diw delete word on cursor

Yanking Words

• yiw yank in word

Line Manipulation

• 0 or ^ for beginning of line
• shift + i go to the beginning of line and insert
• $ go to end of line
• shift + a go to end of line and insert
• dd for delete line where cursor is on

Moving lines

• :m <line number> move to after the line number
• [selected_line_num]m <line_number> moves the line to after the line number
• [from_line_num,to_line_num]m <line_number> moves the selected lines to after the line number

Vim as a Language

Operations and thing you want to do the operation to. :

Editing

• u for undo

Many times, you’ll want to know how to copy and paste.

• TODO https://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Mac_OS_X_clipboard_sharing

Colon Commands

• :help <command> for help on any command

Plugins

Vim, like other text editors, has an ecosystem of plugins.

• vundle - plugin manager
• nerdtree - file tree
• ctrlp - Fuzzy file finder
• fugitive - git tool
• syntastic - syntax checker/linter
• vim-markdown - markdown syntax, matching rules and mappings, and extensions

Packages

• Sparkup - For html tag completion

Colorize

I’m currently using Monokai, mainly because it was a default I had with Ruby on sublime. I set it up using vim-monokai, which I actually want to go back and figure out how to hook it up with vundle and have it linked to the repo.

I want to figure out how to do this better, so I placed a todo with the wiki from the vim wikia.

• Todo: https://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Turn_on_syntax_coloring_in_Mac_OS_X
• Todo: talk about colorschemes package

You can change the color scheme within normal mode. Heres how.

:colorscheme <name>
" short version
:colo <name>
" autocomplete
:colo <press tab>

Macros

Repeat last change

. command repeats the last change made in normal mode. It’s like oh my gosh amaze balls.

• TODO https://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Repeat_last_change
• TODO Show an example

Recording

q{register} (do the things) q

Registers

WIP

More Research to go through

• https://yannesposito.com/Scratch/en/blog/Vim-as-IDE/
• coloring vim (as stated above)
• adding more language support
• adding line numbers
• go to top of file (shortcut)
• go to bottom of file (shortcut)
• how to find
• Macros: q command, recording so you don’t repeat yourself
• Surround.vim
• mapping escape key to caps lock
• relative numbering
• commenting
• copying and pasting that doesn’t get ruined with crazy indents
• Snippets

Helpful Resources

• vim + tmux - Talk at OMG!Code given by Nick Nisi

• vimtutor - type vimtutor in your terminal. Quick lessons summaries can be found on this post.

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.