Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Where it all went

As a person who doesn’t typically do New Year’s Resolutions, I have but one in 2025: no buying new books until I’ve read all the ones I already bought. Tolstoy’s War and Peace will finally be devoured before I can clear off additional books on my Amazon cart. It’s the right thing to do. The least a book can do before becoming a gatherer of dusts on the shelf is to entertain me with its infilled information.

As 2025 gets underway, a good exercise to do is to take a look at your money in 2024. Credit cards make it super easy to gather and export all your purchases in an Excel file. The Chase cards that I predominantly use even categorizes the spending for me, and lets the user compare year to year. That’s how I was easily able to know that I successfully spent thousands less money (2024 compared to 2023) on Amazon.

I think it’s valuable to know the big picture of where my money went, so that I can intuitively plan for the new year. Performing the audit (if you will) was how I found out I only filled up my BMW M2 a total of twelve times. For a car that goes 200 miles before the gas light comes on (which is to say: pathetic), that means I did very little driving in 2024. I endeavor to accumulate a lot more miles in 2025. To pay for that extra gas, the amount of money not spent on books should cover a good chunk of it!

A surprise spend of last year was food delivery. How it can add up to so many hundreds of dollars, even though I’ve only ordered seven times. Those fees and tips really add up to already inflated food prices. This year there will be zero food delivery orders, unless I am so unfortunate to become incapacitated.

Spend wisely, my friends.

Never stop not stopping

Greetings to 2025!

Happy national start a gym membership day. I wish you folks the best in your health goals this year. Most of you will fizzle out by the time the calendar turns February, but not you. You are the warrior of consistency. You show up to gym even when you don’t feel like it. (Even those of us who like exercising have days of indifference.) You understand that doing at least something is what’s most important. Understand that getting healthy is a long process. The euphoric motivation of a new year is highly fleeting.

I don’t wait until gap between December and January to start something new. As a freshly turned 37 year old, I don’t have the luxury of time (tick tick). Any new ideas or inspirations need to be followed with action as soon as possible (monetarily allowing). I don’t even like bumping stuff at work off into the new year. The January me will hate the December me who did so. We’re adults: have some modicum of long-term thinking, please.

The week between Christmas and New Year’s was a supremely peaceful time. (I am of fortune to have that week off every year.) Not having to go to work just means more time to attend to extracurriculars. Instead of an hour to read, I had multiple hours in the day. I was able to write in the morning, which I greatly prefer to the usual post-dinner. I took long walks around the neighborhood during sunset (this is on my dating profile), which during this time of the year would still be work hours.

You know that universal basic income (UBI) thing that was a hot topic back in 2020 (Yang Gang)? What I described in the previous paragraph is exactly what I would be doing if I didn’t have to worrying about basic sustenance. It’s perhaps not very productive towards society at large, but that’s the wrong premise. All that matters is that it’s productive towards me. Surely there are others with a different predilection (someone with the free time to go find the cure for cancer), one that UBI would allow to foster.

Since UBI remains mathematically untenable, it’s back to work today for 2025.

Let's get it!

Hello! Welcome to 2024. That means the residential parking permit on my BMW M2 is due for renewal. (That’s right: pay to park in front of your own house.) And what the French? The price has jumped from $148 annually of last year, to now $170. I understand inflation is inevitable (Thanos style), but this is just plain greed. The city of San Francisco is collecting more money from us for parking simply because it can. You can’t possibly tell me that administrative costs for the program have risen 15%. They don’t even print out stickers anymore because license plates are scanned.

I’m still going to pay the new price like a chump, of course. Where else am I going to park my car?

The start of the new year also means increased traffic at your local gym. I wish all the New Year's resolutioners the very best. Consistent exercise is the most beneficial thing for the body and its longevity. I hope your gym visits also reach decent longevity. My advice? (Because, you know, as a person who works out three times a week every week, I am ultra qualified to give.) Don’t try to do a lot - or change a lot - at once. Stick with a certain program or routine for at least six weeks.

More importantly: embrace the suck. The days when you do go for that run - despite everything enticing you to not (warm bed, everything that’s in the iPhone) - are the true winning days. The freshness of New Year’s resolution wears off really quickly. That enthusiasm for change will only sustain you initially. If you don’t find another motive force to keep going - be it the carrot or the stick - then that is when people quit. I’ve certainly quit on things started on January 1st before.

Anything that is worthwhile takes time. A long time.

He’s sick of seeing. Yeah, that’s what it means.

Rejected too few

Getting rejected sucks. Even when the situation is one where I fully expect to get rejected. My particular human psychology just isn’t built-up to deal with this kind of failure. It’s as if each successive rejection is a direct reflection of my personhood, a character flaw. How can rejection affect me so adversely even with the proper amounts of anticipation? Perhaps I’m indeed too invested in what others think of me.

Yesterday I made an offer on a car at a local dealership. It was soundly rejected, obviously, which put me in a sort of funk the rest of the day. I can’t really explain it. It was textbook negotiation: two parties can only agree to move on from the table. But then why do I feel so bad? I don’t think I put undue anticipation, hopes and dreams, towards my offer being accepted. It was just taking a shot: the answer is always no if I don’t ask.

Thinking back, I’ve always had this neuroticism. Back in my schooling days, I would dread getting English papers back from the teachers. Invariably their remarks and criticism would hurt me to the core. I was rather happy to be done with English classes after freshman year of college. Instead, I do my writing here in this blog. Where it’s safe from criticism (readership is minuscule, no one comments!), and I can commit all the subject-verb tense error I am wont to do.

Moving forward I think it’s helpful to get rejected. It’s good practice, and unless I plan to stay in my hole for the rest of time, it’s going to happen anyways. I need to learn to handle the afterwards better, to be able to move on quickly. It’s a part of what I’m trying to do in 2023: live authentically, and not care about what other people think.

Starting off correctly

It was a glorious New Year’s Eve watching the annual fireworks show with friends. Naturally that meant I did not get to bed until well into New Year’s Day. No big deal, right? What better way to celebrate switching out the calendars than sleeping in on a Sunday morning. Well-earned rest after some appropriate revels (read: no alcohol involved).

Sadly my mom called me right at 9:00 AM - waking me up unceremoniously - asking why I have not come home for my weekly visit. This, after confirming with her a week ago that I will not be arriving in the usual morning - for the obvious aforementioned reasons. There goes my plan of sleeping well into the morning. A few minutes later after the uninvited wake-up call, a friend’s text came in asking if I would like to run the lake in about two hours’ time.

Since I was not about to go back to sleep - because I likely could not fall asleep again - I agreed to some exercising. Seems applicable, being that January 1st is de-facto national sign up for a gym membership day. I join my fellow citizens on their newfound rigor in hopes of a better and fitter body. Only difference is I’ve been on a fitness bend since my early 20s. I wish the newcomers, fresh from their New Year’s resolution, can sustain their new habit for the very long term.

My own wish for 2023 is one simple thing: live authentically. I endeavor to stop worrying about what others think, and to stop tailoring my actions towards the whims of others. Because 99% of the time, people aren't thinking about me at all. Therefore the problem is only in my head, and highly irrational. I’m going to make mistakes, sure, but whatever I do and whatever I say will be absolutely as I want it to be. I rather hurt your feelings then apologize later, than censoring myself to begin with.

Good luck to us all in 2023.

I don't know about you

Hello there! It sure is wonderful to see the dawn of another day and a new year. The COVID pandemic rages on, but I’m rather optimistic about 2022. I really wish to be able to travel to my beloved Asia again - sans the need to quarantine. We shall see. For now, the cold and rain of winter is the reality, and the routine of every day life.

It was nice to not have a routine from Christmas Eve onwards until New Year’s Day. Working in higher education grants me the privilege of having that week off every single year. My last day of work in 2021 was the 22nd of December, which is something to be smug about, honestly. I don’t have to work in tech-bro land to have this perk! Granted, I don’t get paid like I would be if I worked in tech.

So it was a splendid week of rest and relaxation. I slept about 10 hours every day, and then went about my business as slowly as possible. I spent an hour just to eat dinner! It’s incredibly nice to not have to rush through things or treat the mundane stuff as mere obstacles to get onto the fun stuff. Taking my sweet time to perform my morning grooming because I don’t have to rush to get to work on time is a small joy.

The Hawaiians and their “island time” are kind of geniuses.

Anyways, I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions because any changes I want to do, I don’t wait until the calendar flips to a new one. However, I did make one tiny but significant change to start 2022: I deleted twitter off my iPhone. I now have zero social media apps. No longer will I waste half an hour (at least) each morning and each night browsing through the feed in bed. It’s not a good use of time, and it’s not healthy towards my quality of sleep.

I wish us all a great 2022. Let’s get after it.

First

Hello, friends. Welcome to this side of 2021. Consider yourself lucky - as I do - if you’ve made it through the pandemic 2020 with your health and job intact. The onus is on us to give those that have lost plenty a helping hand. For example: those in a position to not really need the $600 stimulus check should donate it to a charity. Consider a local food bank, or the Barstool Fund.

Because I work in education, I got the week and a half between Christmas Eve and New Years Day off. The white-collar winter break, if you will. While it sucked that I couldn’t travel back home to China as it’s my usual during this time, it was still nice to have some solitude at home. The weather was rainy for the most part as well, which is just about the perfect backdrop for some quiet contemplation.

Of course, it seems to be impossible for me to do absolute nothing, even when I’m on vacation. I feel best when I’m productive, so over the winter break I kept on reading books and studying Korean for a few hours per day. I also wrote a personal reflection piece on 2020, and a December update to owning my BMW M2 Competition. Please kindly give those a read.

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions anymore, preferring consistent processes and habits. Sometimes the end goal can overwhelm the brain into failed submission. A small daily habit is much more palatable. Read 100 books for the year seems like climbing Everest; read for a half hour every day is infinitely more doable. Let your daily habits compound, and by the end the year you might as well end up reading 100 books.

I have no new habits to make for 2021; not yet, anyways. One mental goal I am working on this year is to truly ignore the opinion of others, to not give a crap what other people think. Too often I’ve let how I think others will react dictate my actions. This doesn’t mean I’m going to be a narcissistic asshole to people; the point is to be completely myself. I’m not going to restrict who am I and what I do just because I’m afraid what people will say.