I have to admit that I’ve always been kind of afraid of old people. Being Korean-American, I think that partially has to do with my natural deference for authority. I worry about self-censorship, about the role I’m expected to play, saying the right thing, relating to their life experiences. Maybe there’s something to the notion of being a bit closer to death too, but that might be a stretch. Continue reading Class of ’00 meets ’53
The night after the full moon, Sam picked me up in his fancy BMW motorcycle. We went to Griffith Observatory and then for Ethiopian food. As the wind rushed through my hair, I saw LA streets and neighborhoods connect together. I felt so close to the action and yet a bit numbed by it (or maybe the helmut squeezing my head), as we drove through Hollywood lights and then into the darkness of Beverly Hills, way up high into the hills. It was a chilly night, and the seat warmer wasn’t helping much, nor was the vice-grip helmut. I wondered if he had remembered how big my head was before deciding on getting me a size S.
I was grumpy and went home to sleep early. He tried to coax me into a morning ride as well before a brunch date. I said maybe, and then the next morning, it was so beautiful that I convinced myself to ride down to Hermosa Beach to get coffees and watch the surfers.
Sam reentered my life the day I moved to LA. He would be starting a consulting project and would be out here for a few months. After some coordination, he booked the same flight as me from NYC to LA and picked me up in an Uber. Just like that, he was back in my life. Was it a sign or was it a test? Continue reading Motorcycling the 101, 405, the hills
Eternal recurrence is the idea that the universe and all existence has been recurring and will continue to recur. I can’t claim to understand or even speculate on metaphysical properties of our universe – I mean, how would I know? I leave that to scientists with the brainpower and the equipment to measure and prove this theory.
What I can observe is that all of us do have recurring patterns in our lives. It can be almost pathological. Why is it that some people seem to lived mired in a string of tragedies while other seem to be stably gliding themselves through life? Why do some women end up in a series of abusive relationships while others have a queue of non-committal, wealthy men available to fly them all over the world?
I sometimes do think the universe does send you the same test over and over again in different contexts and forms until you’ve cleared that lesson.
Some solo eats (haven’t been snapping away while with friends!):
Some of my favorite restaurants so far:
More and more people are going remote or independent in work. Technology, budget cuts, the need for a more project- or capability-specific roles in our workforce are fueling this trend, and it will likely continue. I don’t know if it’s just me and my age bracket, but it also seems as though no one is happy at work anymore. I know only a handful of people who have true job satisfaction. Most of them are self-employed.
It’s a big leap to go from working for an organization to going independent. I remember when I was in college, someone once told me that everyone should try freelance at some point in their lives. That comment always intrigued me, as another life level and milestone I needed to hit.
When I left my job in May, I immediately filed for an LLC to start my own consulting practice. My plan was to work on strategy projects and help startups create and deliver on their growth strategies.
Here are a couple of things I am learning along the way. Continue reading Consulting
I don’t miss meat. The last meat item I ate was a chicken parmesan sandwich I ordered while drunk and crying at a Lower East Side deli. Even more pathetically, it was eaten, still drunk and crying (maybe even verging on sobbing), with only the street lights flickering through my apartment. I woke up the next day to 1/3 of a chicken parmesan sandwich on my couch throw pillow, crusty from the overnight exposure. And that’s the last time I ate meat.
I think it was December 2015 when I was at Kripalu, a retreat in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. I had taken my sister there for her birthday, and we rotated from class to class, from downward dog to mapping out our intentions for the year ahead. I was so stressed out that over the course of those 2 days, I had 5 massages in addition to the regularly scheduled programming.
There was an astrologer on site, and I booked an appointment hoping she would have some answers to help guide me out of my predicament. Predicaments, I suppose. It should have been plural. Continue reading Vegetarian, verging on vegan
Sometimes life themes find you. You are a mirror for the experiences you attract, so I guess you also find those themes.
Everything I’m doing right now seems oriented around finding and expressing my true authentic voice and self. Every Tuesday evening, I gather with a group of fellow writers, mostly women, to listen and critique each others’ assignments. By critique, I mean mostly compliment. It makes me realize what as asshole I was throughout all of school. I would not only debate everyone in the class. I would also tear the teacher down too. Healthy debate.
My first day felt like time travel. I walked into the little brick West Hollywood building and rounded the corner to enter a suite decorated with all sorts of art, writing posters, and an accumulation of artifacts probably dating back at least a decade or two. Eh, maybe three.
Jack Grapes the instructor was there to greet me. “Ah! You’ve been all around the world!” he boomed and welcomed me with an equally boisterous handshake. My email communications with him included him needing to mail and remail packets to places because I was no longer receiving mail at my apartment in NYC and a check sent by my friend because I was out of the country, wary of sending a check from Cambodia.
“Welcome to the Los Angeles Poets & Writers Collective,” said the TA, Lisa Segal. Continue reading Writing like you talk
Navigating what you’re going to do with your life sounds daunting. The reality is that the moves you make matter and sure, they sort of do determine the course of your life and all your future opportunities. Eh, but nothing is permanent.
Traveling is a great activity and mode for gaining perspective and finding the source of who you are. When you take yourself out of your usual role and context in the life you’ve carefully (or not so carefully) constructed, there is blankish slate for you to start to draw out some options. Traveling also makes you realize that all the minutiae you think matters doesn’t matter. Who cares who’s going to come out with the first driverless cars? Yes, these things can change our world pretty fundamentally, but I don’t know that they’re at the core of where meaning comes from. We don’t engage with that often enough. We are human beings, not just a string of technological events we create, engage in, or are excluded from that we like to label progress. All that is meaningful in that way seems relegated to our private lives rather than our collective sense of belonging. There are probably just too many of us out there. It’s hard to see that we’re all part of the same continuous blob if we zoom out far enough. Continue reading Shit might be getting real
A simple Google search could clear that up. I moved for the month of February to Silver Lake, the hipster artsy area of LA. Like much of the rest of LA, there is still significant sprawl. It has some elements of walkability, but it’s still mostly designed to be driven.
Cold, rainy LA and warm, sunny LA are two different places. It’s hard to compare geography without that layer.
My apartment is quiet, artsy. It has a hallowed feel about it. My friend Lily came to pick me up the other day, and I think she was scared. “I’m at the pink house,” she said. I ran out to Decanso and saw her Volvo parked in front of a gorgeous pink house. “Uh no, wrong pink house.” I redirected her to my alleyway entrance. And to be fair, it does have a creepy motel vibe about it. It’s Silver Lake, not Beverly Hills. The scene may suggest murder, but you’re probably going to be fine. Continue reading Silver Lake or is it Silverlake?
