Half Year Resolutions
The New Year holiday is fairly arbitrary (when our planet’s been doing circles around the sun since before life existed, who are we to define the start/end of such a thing?), but at the same time it’s a great opportunity to reflect on the previous year and think about goals and hopes for the coming year. I’m usually pretty ambitious with my New Year’s Resolutions, often setting multiple goals that are each challenging in their own way. But usually I end up working a bit on those goals for the first few weeks of the year, but then Life responsibilities would inevitably take priority (since there’s a whole year ahead to accomplish things, what’s the rush?). It would only be until the last few months of the year when I would suddenly realize, “Uh oh, the year’s almost over, and I’ve barely done anything!”. In a frenzy, I would end up squeezing out some measly progress towards my goals, but it always felt very unsatisfying.
But what if we set goals on a shorter timescale? The main problem is that we can’t really process things on such a long timescale – in January, December seems so far away that it may as well be 10 years in the future. This is analogous to how we can’t process length scales or large numbers way beyond our everyday experience. For example, the number of atoms in the universe vs the number of possible chess matches – one is way bigger than the other (by about 1040 times!) but to us they both feel similarly too big to comprehend. Instead of setting resolutions for a year in the future, what if we tried setting goals for each 6 month period? This way, only three months uses up half of the time that we have to accomplish our goals. Now that’s a timescale that feels way more immediate.
Number of atoms in the universe, or number of possible chess matches: which one is bigger?
- Website: finally built this website and made a bunch of posts
- Dance: taking Hip Hop and African dance classes each week
- Poetry: wrote an original poem and performed it at a local Open Mic Poetry event
- Cooking: signed up for a Meal Kit service and have cooked several delicious meals
- Collective Sensemaking: hosted our first gathering of Collective Sensemaking and are planning the next one
- Reading: joined a monthly Mindfulness Book Group and have read a few books for that
- Left Undone: Piano and Youtube Teaching Videos
- Next Half Year: will develop depth in skills by committing to learn/practice a different skill each month, dedicating time each day of the month
I was stuck for more than 3 years at this intersection before making progress on this website!
But even with the meager website framework I had assembled, I still hadn’t written very much content (I still hadn’t finished the other half of my first two posts, which were becoming decreasingly relevant). I was clearly hesitating, probably because I was worried that I wouldn’t be satisfied with the quality of whatever I wrote – it would never be good enough for the ideal website I had pictured in my head. But a friend of mine who had written a travel blog in the past mentioned that even though she acknowledged that the quality of her writing back then wasn’t nearly as good as her writing now, she still treasures those posts because they were very true to who she was back then. To that end, I realized that I need to overcome my perfectionist tendencies when it comes to writing, since each piece I write will improve my writing skills and could even be precious in its imperfection at some point in the future.
So in order to kickstart my personal website, I resolved for the past half year to not only finish building the framework of the website, but also to post content, knowing that it won’t be perfect, but it will be who I am right now. After a lot of time spent on Youtube tutorials, I was finally able to get a basic website up and running. I now have a pretty good idea of how to tweak the design, so generating new posts or sections is much easier. I finally posted a few articles I had planned to write, and even shared some pieces I never thought I’d be brave enough to share – basically the entire Poetry section!
I absolutely love to dance. It’s hard to put it into words, but dance somehow allows me to express and experience emotions in a very physical way that language and thoughts don’t allow. And every time I let loose on the dance floor, it brings me a ton of joy. Yet I find myself always talking about dancing, but never actually doing any dancing. I desperately grasp onto random opportunities to dance that come my way, and when I finally get the chance, it feels like pent up energy being released. But then in the time between these serendipitous moments, it feels like the energy gradually builds inside me, waiting for the next release. Despite all of this, I gladly accept opportunities to dance, but I don’t actively make opportunities.
On a related note, one of my many lofty dreams is to learn a dance style from every culture of the world. Luckily, there is a place across the street from my office that offers dance classes in every style imaginable. And the great thing is that most of the classes are designed to be standalone lessons, rather than a series of classes that build upon each other. I’ve had issues in the past with taking salsa lessons and missing a lesson or two – it was hard to get caught up without paying extra for expensive private lessons. Since my work schedule can be hectic and unpredictable, I wanted something where I could skip a week or two without worrying if something unexpected came up.
From African dance, I experience emotional release. From Hip Hop, I learn to rapidly absorb and retain choreography.
To that end, I started taking two different dance classes: African dance and Hip Hop. Interestingly enough, I get very different things out of these styles. With African dance, I’ve always admired the powerful movements and raw physicality of it. And since the dance is always done with live drumming, it has a very different character – much more centered on rhythm than on musicality. When dancing this style, my experience is of emotional release. The movements are fairly simple and repetitive, so once I get the hang of a new step, I can put whatever I’m feeling in that moment into it. I can also look around at other dancers in the room and see how they are putting what they are feeling into their movements, and then try to incorporate that into my own movements. It’s been pretty surprising how many different ways the same move can be expressed, and how differently it feels. Unfortunately, I expressed more than my body could handle at one point, and I’ve been waiting for a shoulder injury to heal before getting back into class again.
I get a very different experience from Hip Hop dance class. Since I grew up watching hip hop dancing and was even part of a bboy crew for a short stint in undergrad, I feel much more in my element with the dance movements. However, something I’ve always struggled with (for any dance style) is learning choreography quickly. I have a terrible memory, so even if I can learn most of the individual dance steps as soon as I see them, I struggle with remembering the sequence of steps. This has held me back when trying to learn many different dance styles. I am great at dancing in the moment, but I always struggle at remembering the step sequence from the previous class. This is especially problematic on partner dances where the male leads, since without giving the proper cues to my partner, it can lead to miscommunication and clashing with other couples on the dance floor. However, with Hip Hop dance class, because the moves come easy to me, I can focus on developing the ability to rapidly learn and retain choreography. I’ve already seen a drastic improvement in my ability to handle longer and longer sequences of steps. Now by the end of each class, I don’t have to worry about remembering the sequence and can enjoy expressing myself in the movements.
At one point in my life, I was really into poetry. I even hosted a monthly Open Mic Poetry event at a local coffee shop during grad school. At that point, my poetry objectively sucked (from a technical point of view) but it was very cathartic to express things without being constrained to prose. But eventually, as I became more self-aware through my meditation practice, I didn’t need poetry anymore to process my emotions. My interest in poetry naturally faded for a while, but eventually it resurged when I decided to jump into a course in Intermediate Verse Writing (I was barely Beginner level on my best day at that point). This course really challenged my writing and exposed me to a lot more styles and poetic tools. However, this was towards the end of grad school, and as I became busy wrapping up my dissertation and then traveling, poetry’s place in my life faded once again. Once I moved up to Boston, I looked up all of the Open Mic Poetry events in the area. I attended several of them on and off, but hadn’t written anything of my own since moving here.
But for this half-year, I wanted to explore poetry anew. During the Verse Writing course, I had developed a deeper appreciation of poetry, but had never taken the opportunity to apply it to my own writing. And although I still have my meditation practice as my primary way of processing emotions, I wanted to explore new ways of processing through poetry. In particular, I wanted to see how it felt to process something by reading it aloud to strangers. It’s one thing to write in my isolated room; it’s a completely different thing to share it by reading it aloud at a public Open Mic event.
To that end, my half-year goal was to write an original poem and perform it an Open Mic event. I started out the year mostly by attending Open Mic events more regularly in order to fuel my motivation and find some inspiration. As the weeks went on, I would even take notes on particular phrases that caught my ear, or interesting perspectives that resonated with me or warranted further exploration. I was trying to build a bank of ideas from which to draw inspiration.
This had been a source of inspiration, but when it was time to perform, it became a source of terror!
After a few months, I finally wrote an original piece of poetry that helped me process some difficult emotions. When I first started writing it, I was so disgusted with the quality and how poorly it captured how I was feeling. But as I stuck with it, I started to explore how I could explain certain parts with imagery rather than explanation, and how to tie everything together with a consistent metaphor. After some reworking, I was quite pleased with what I had written, and I was surprised how far it had come from where it had started!
I eventually felt comfortable and confident enough to perform the piece, but for many weeks I kept arriving at the Open Mic too late to sign up (the list fills up quite quickly!). But I finally ended up managing to get on the wait list and then unexpectedly performing! (Although it was technically a week too late for the last Half-Year). It was a nerve wracking but incredible experience, and the crowd was warm and super supportive. It’s one thing when the poem lives in my head or on a piece of paper, but the poem feels very different once it becomes let loose into the world. It feels more real, more raw, and more than just myself.
In the end, not only did I successfully write and perform something new, but the entire process unexpectedly inspired new creative endeavors. As I became interested in performing my piece, I found a piece of Spoken Word poetry that is one of the most sensual things I’ve ever heard – I want to try performing it with my own twist, exploring what masculine sensuality might look like. The other unexpected outcome was in exploring the connection between music and poetry. I am working with some friends who play musical instruments, hoping to try to find a way to work a poem around their music or vice versa. I believe poetry and music can work together synergistically to express more than they would separately!
I didn’t grow up with any fancy food. As an immigrant family, both of my parents worked really hard, and so there wasn’t much time for elaborate home cooked meals. Fine dining was well beyond my world; Pizza Hut was how we celebrated special occasions. Plus, when my parents weren’t around I was mostly microwaving cheap frozen food for lunch or breakfast. There are probably still traces of Eggo waffles and Hot Pockets in my bloodstream. Because of this simple but salt/sugar heavy diet, I never really developed appreciation for subtle flavors.
I grew up on Eggo waffles and Hot Pockets; there are probably still traces of them in my bloodstream.
So when I got to college, it was really bizarre for me to see friends really going out of their way for good food. And not just that, while they were eating, I could see a joy on their face that I couldn’t relate to. It wasn’t until grad school, when friends would discuss in detail the different spices or herbs they could taste in their meals, that I realized that I had never developed a sensitivity to flavors.
I tried a lot of things to “train” my taste buds. At one point I bought a spice rack of 20 different spices, and each day I would sprinkle a different spice into my hand, sniff it a few times, recite the spice’s name in my head a few times, and then chew it a bit while contemplating the flavor. After about a month of this, when I told my friends that most of these spices tasted like dirt, I learned that a lot of flavors will only be released when cooking them. At this point I started incorporating different spices whenever I made scrambled eggs on the weekends (eggs have enough heat to bring out the flavor of spices, but are relatively neutral in flavor so as not to dominate the taste). But the free weekends were too few and far between, and as I got busy wrapping up grad school, I didn’t have enough time to really explore the world of flavors.
It turns out that you can’t just eat raw spices – but cooking eggs with them brings out the flavor. I just wish it hadn’t taken me a whole month to learn that..
Around the same time, I also became interested in exploring cooking because of my meditation practice. Most meditation practices require meditators to give up eating meat, for a variety of reasons. I’ve been thinking about becoming vegetarian for a long time, but the major thing holding me back is FOMO: every time I have to choose between meat and vegetarian options, usually the specialty is a meat dish. But I believed that if I learned to appreciate food better, this FOMO wouldn’t be nearly as strong (with the exception of fine dining, then it might actually be stronger!). Plus, most of the vegetarians that I know tend to cook a lot, since they often can’t find enough variety of food choices when eating out.
So in hopes of developing my appreciation for food and enabling a more vegetarian lifestyle, for this Half-Year, I resolved to learn some cooking. Because I don’t have too much free time and am a total novice in the kitchen (I need Youtube basic things like peeling potatoes), I decided to try a Meal Kit service. With these services, you can choose from a rotating selection of dishes each week, and they will mail you all of the ingredients in the correct proportions, along with the recipe. I thought this would be a great way to start learning, since I wouldn’t need to invest too much time in researching recipes, shopping for ingredients, or measuring appropriate quantities. Instead, I could jump right into the part where I felt that I had the most to learn – the cooking itself! After researching the main options available, I went with Hello Fresh, mostly because it offered the largest selection of meals and had the biggest new customer discount.
Even with all of the shortcuts that come with the Meal Kit, it still took a long time in the beginning. They try to fit all of the instructions onto a single page with pictures, so there’s only a limited amount of detail that the instructions will go into. For example, when it says to “trim the vegetable”, I have to Youtube how that’s done. But over time, I started figuring out some of the basics and recognizing some patterns in cooking. I’ve also gotten a better sense of which steps are really sensitive, and which steps I can multitask. It still takes me a lot longer than the recipe card says (there’s no way anyone preps all the vegetables in 10 minutes!), but I’ve stuck with it and cooking is becoming (gradually) faster!
Actual pictures of some of the meals I’ve cooked. I know the photos aren’t great, but they tasted way better than they look!
I have definitely noticed a difference in the way I appreciate food, and I can recognize subtle flavors that I couldn’t before. This is mostly because when I’ve cooked a meal and have been involved in all aspects that produced the flavor, I’m much more aware of the effects of the different spices and ingredients I’ve added. One unexpected joy that I’ve discovered is after I’ve cooked a meal and it takes spectacular, I look at the dish and think “Wow, I made that?!”
A friend of mine used to organize monthly potluck gatherings that she called Collective Sensemaking. The idea behind it was to have an open discussion on a predetermined topic, with the intention to try to make sense of the world together with other people by sharing different insights and perspectives. This involved being open, vulnerable, and curious about how others think about things. These gatherings were great ways of building a sense of community and of connecting with other people on a deeper level by “skipping the small talk”. Unfortunately, my friend moved away from town, and without a lead organizer, Collective Sensemaking eventually faded.
My friend and I have been interested in restarting Collective Sensemaking, but we’ve both been busy, and several of the previous participants have also moved away. But for this Half-Year, I resolved to get it running again. My friend and I wanted to tweak the original format of the gatherings, so it took a while for us to write a new description and design a new format. After a lot of brainstorming, we settled on this topic: Leaving Our Comfort Zone – When, How, and Why. After inviting people we thought might be interested and arranging a time and date that worked for the few people who responded, people still cancelled last minute! In the end, on the day of the gathering, it was only me, my friend, and one other person.
Collective Sensemaking: coming together to have honest, vulnerable, and meaningful conversations.
But despite the lackluster start, our three-person inaugural Collective Sensemaking felt like a success! Even with the low turnout, we were still able to have interesting, meaningful conversation on a very personal level. As for myself, I gained a deep appreciation for coming back to our comfort zone at times, in order to integrate new experiences into our personalities and world views. Because if we are constantly exploring outside of our comfort zones, we never get a chance to process those experiences – it’s like playing hot potato with experiences without ever really holding onto any of the insights that come from those experiences. Similarly, the other two participants also really enjoyed the gathering and felt like they had learned and explored new perspectives as well.
We are currently in the process of planning our next Collective Sensemaking gathering. It’s a bit more difficult logistically in the summer because people have been traveling, and I’ve also had some sporadic travel myself. But we’re glad that we followed through on the first gathering, since we learned that we really only need one more person to make it success, which takes a lot of the pressure off. We are hoping to host our second Collective Sensemaking gathering in the next month!
Reading
When I was a kid, I was addicted to reading. I loved getting lost in another world. It was so captivating that my mom could feed me stuff I wouldn’t normally eat if I had my book at the table (which is saying a lot – I was a really picky eater as a kid). During car rides, even if it was only 10 minutes, I would step into the car, enter the world of my book, and then step out of the car when we arrived. This habit contributed to both my terrible sense of direction (I got lost in a Walmart) and to my extreme resistance to car sickness (I could read on my phone during a 36 hour bus ride in rural Myanmar, while half the locals were puking). But as homework reading took up a larger proportion of my free time, I stopped making extra time for leisure reading.
For this Half-Year, I resolved to read more. There seems to be a lot of wisdom out there, and I felt that reading more would help me tap into that. Especially when it comes to building a startup company, a lot of the skills seem to be learned through experience and making mistakes. So I thought, instead of making all of the mistakes myself, I can at least try to learn as much as I can from the mistakes of others. In this way, equipping myself with the knowledge gained from reading would give me a head start.
Being accountable to others made it much easier to motivate myself to read.
I originally thought I would be reading mostly books about startups. But without a clear deadline or specific need, it was hard to prioritize reading above all of the other things I was doing. So, when I happened across a flyer for a monthly Mindfulness Book Club at my local library, I thought that would be a great way to motivate reading at least one book per month. In the end, this was exactly the motivation I needed, because in order to understand and contribute meaningfully to the monthly discussions, I had to finish (or mostly finish, as ended up being the case more often) the book before the club meeting.
Although the books haven’t been as spiritually minded (they are mostly self-help style books), the discussions have been delightful. Since most of the attendees are older, they come with a very different perspective that I don’t get exposed to very often, but have come to treasure! I’ve always respected older people, mostly because they have so many more years of experience on this planet than I do, so I have a lot to learn from them. I wish there were more opportunities for them to share their wisdom!
I’ve talked a lot about all of the things that I did this past Half-Year, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all of the things that I didn’t do. Part of the reason I started making this website was because I didn’t like the way social media encourages people to show off the shiny highlights of their lives while hiding the less glamorous, but more real, challenges and difficulties. And the more we see other people’s highlights, the less we want to reveal our own shortcomings. So I wanted to be honest and share the things that I also failed to accomplish this Half-Year.
I’ve been wanting to appreciate music more, for similar reasons to cooking: there is a unique joy and beauty that comes from enjoying music on a deep level. I played drums growing up (and saxophone, but only for a year before switching back to drums), so I have a really fine appreciation and intuitive understanding of rhythm. This is part of the reason I can pick up dance moves quickly, since I can quickly relate the movements to the underlying rhythm (which is also why learning dance choreography without music is really difficult for me, but once the music is added it makes so much more sense). But when it comes to tone, I have a very poor understanding of music. When I listen to music, I’m in the moment, listening to the notes as they happen. But that also prevents me from understanding the progression or story that is being told.
From drumset, I developed I deep understanding of rhythm. From piano, I hope to develop a deeper understanding of musicality.
After asking musical friends for advice, I decided that learning to play piano would be a good place to start. Because it visually maps out the notes in the layout of the keys (as opposed to guitar, where you need to change the finger positions when you want to play adjacent notes) and it is featured in almost every style of music, it’s a good starting point to learn the fundamentals. I actually bought a keyboard almost a year ago and started following a Youtube tutorial, but then I returned the keyboard to use my friend’s much better keyboard, then my friend needed it back for a few months, and by the time I eventually got it back, I had lost momentum and stopped teaching myself. And because learning piano requires a degree of consistency, I decided to hold off until by Depth Half-Year (more on that in my next post) to focus on piano.
Left Undone: Youtube Teaching Videos
I have a lot of issues with the way things are taught in schools. In particular, students are often taught to memorize facts and procedures without understanding the underlying reasons. For example, in Physics there are many formulas that students memorize without understanding why the formula is the way it is. For example, consider the classic equation of:
F = m ∙ a
Most of us just memorized these three letters, but never really considered what this equation is really saying. Imagine we are pushing a shopping cart. The main messages in the equation are that to make the cart speed up faster, we need to push harder. But if the cart is heavier, then it won’t speed up as quickly, unless we push harder. That’s it. When explained in this way, it seems like common sense. But having the equation helps us understand the relationships between things. For example, if I’m now suddenly pushing a cart that’s twice as heavy, I either need to push twice as hard, or expect it to speed up half as fast.
Physics can be as easy as pushing a shopping cart.
I wanted to provide some way students could understand the reasoning behind the things they are learning – the kind of things that teachers don’t have time for in class or themselves may not understand. Since I had to do a lot of pondering on my own in order to understand these things as a student, I thought a lot about how to deliver these kinds of lessons in ways that are both engaging and accessible to anyone. There wasn’t a clear solution, so I thought I would start with making a series of Youtube videos where I explain things with voice over and use diagrams and visual demonstrations to reinforce my points.
Unfortunately, other than generating a list of concepts I would like to explain, I made zero progress on this front. I looked into how to create Youtube videos, and even some video editing softwares, but didn’t end up taking any steps towards creating content. Unfortunately, similar to writing for this website, I think I need to invest a lot of time upfront in order to get the basic tools and framework up and running, and then I can focus on generating content. These Youtube videos have been a lower priority up to this point, but I do hope to make some progress on this front next year.
Looking ahead, I’ve been thinking a lot about developing depth in skills. This past Half Year, although I had many Resolutions, I feel like I only scratched the surface of most of them. Rather than being spread thin on many different projects, I want to see what it’s like to commit to a consistent practice or activity. So for the next Half Year, each month I’m planning to dive into a different skill that I’ve been wanting to explore, and dedicate myself to working on that skill every day for that month. I’m currently in the middle of my Poetry Month, writing a poem each day (which was particularly tricky during some international travels I had!). Keep an eye out for more details on my coming Depth Half Year in my next post! If you would like to be alerted when I post it, feel free to Subscribe below.
For the next few months, I’ll dedicate each month to developing a different skill. Here are just a few of them: poetry, yoga, running, and photography. More about these in my next post!