Depth Month
Resolutions
I was able to accomplish a lot in the last six months because of my Half Year Resolutions, but I felt like my progress was still just scratching the surface. I was craving depth in these skills and activities. In general, I’ve always usually gone for breadth: learning a new skill rapidly, and then jumping to the next new thing to learn once I’ve gotten the hang of things. But a good friend of mine who spent a large amount of his life dedicated to a martial arts form called Combat Tai Chi (very different from the typical Tai Chi we associate with old people) brought up the idea that a master of a skill experiences the skill fundamentally differently from the normal practitioner. I’ve definitely experienced something like this with meditation. When I first started meditating, I mostly found it calming and relaxing. But the way I experience meditation now transforms how I experience and relate to the world around me – it’s worlds apart from how it felt just a few years ago!
For the next Half Year, I want to see what it’s like to actually put in that extra effort to master (although I doubt a month will be enough time to master anything) a skill and see what new depths of appreciation and understanding develop. But when it comes to putting in the time and effort to develop depth in a skill, it usually sucks in the beginning. For example, starting a running habit every morning really sucks for the first week or so. But over time, it sucks less and less, and some friends have told me that eventually it feels weird for them not to run in the morning.
Some habits get easier the more you do them. Image 1: Day 1 of running. Image 2: Day ꚙ of running.
I’ve had a similar experience with meditation. I used to be limited to about 20 minutes per day, maybe 30 minutes on a good day. But after more than that, I would start feeling too drowsy or my mind would start to get restless again. But after attending a few 10-day Vipassana meditation retreats (meditating 10 hours total per day), I can now easily meditate for 2 hours, no problem. Even my morning 1 hour meditations feel too short. According to vague and mostly unsubstantiated reports on the internet, it takes about 21 days to form a habit. So I’m hoping that if I can commit to a task or routine for a sufficient amount of time, similar to my meditation, it should eventually become easier to do.
But we don’t have the time or energy to master every skill, so we usually pick and choose our battles. In the past, this is what has always made me choose breadth over depth. So as a compromise, I decided I would focus on a skill and jump to something new only after dedicating a significant amount of time to developing the skill. How long is a significant amount of time? Well, I’ll admit that it’s rather arbitrary and depends on the skill, but given the 21-day rule, I thought a month for each skill would be a sufficient amount of time to learn some depth in the skill, and then also have some time to enjoy and appreciate that newfound depth.
Since I was able to accomplish a lot in the past six months because of my Half Year Resolutions, I decided to do it again for the second half of the year, but with a twist. For the next six months, each month I will dedicate time every single day (with exception of skills that explicitly require rest days) to developing depth in a skill. Below, I go into more detail about why I chose each skill and what I’m hoping to get out of it, but here is my overall plan for my coming Depth Months:
One of my resolutions in the last six months was to write and perform a piece of poetry. It was an amazing experience to write again after such a long time, and then even more fulfilling to perform it and allow it to live in the world. But still, it felt like I was only scratching the surface of my poetry. While writing, it felt like I was exploring thoughts and emotions in a very different way, and although I was satisfied with the poem I had written, it felt like an incomplete exploration. It wasn’t necessarily that the poem was missing something (although there is always room for improvement), but it felt like there were many more things left unexplored through my poetry.
But I knew it would be difficult to continue this exploration if I just waited for inspiration to strike. Although I enjoyed writing poetry, I couldn’t just write whenever I felt like it. It was as if I had to wait for several things to spontaneously come together: inspiration, free time, and my hands free. Even though I would make quick notes about interesting visuals or feelings that came to me, by the time I could write about it later, I had already lost momentum and no longer felt inspired to write about it.
I want to overcome this need to wait for inspiration; I want to write on my own terms. And I suspect that many professional writers must have figured out ways to continue writing when they were less inspired, or struggling with writer’s block. Jack London, most famous for his book Call of the Wild, was so disciplined that he wrote nearly 1,000 words per day for almost his entire adult life. I’m sure he wasn’t inspired every time he wrote, but he stuck with it. In the same way, I’m hoping that if I stick with writing poetry on a daily basis, I can develop the ability to write poetry at will, and I won’t be beholden to the unpredictable moments of inspiration (although I gladly welcome them!).
How to get over a dry spell of inspiration or a bad case of writer’s block? Just follow Jack London’s lead and keep writing. He wrote at least 1,000 words per day for most of his adult life!
I am also hoping to see what it’s like to write when I’m uninspired. One of my fears of writing when uninspired is that my poetry will suck. But forcing myself to write something, even knowing that it sucks, is a necessary step to allowing myself to make mistakes with my poetry. I’ve found that poems often meander in their own way, often evolving and ending in unexpected ways. So if I never give myself the freedom to start that crappy poem, I’ll never be able see where it could have gone.
For this month, I’ll be writing a poem each day, come what may. Even if I’m tired, or busy, or uninspired, at least for this month I’ll push through and make sure I write a poem or (in the worst case) spend at least 30 minutes trying. And to keep myself inspired and give myself some accountability, I’m planning to attend and maybe even read some of my new poetry at my local Open Mic Poetry. I’m excited to see how my poetry evolves in the coming weeks, and how I come to understand poetry differently!
Yoga has come and gone in many different forms in my life. I was first introduced to yoga during grad school, when a friend found a killer Groupon deal (I was a bit of a Groupon junky back then). We went to some Hot Yoga classes, where they heat up the room and you sweat like crazy during the session. I wasn’t really interested in the sweating aspect of yoga, but I definitely loved the way my body would feel after a yoga class: supple and loosened, in a way where my body felt open and released. It was surprising how much my yoga experience depended on the instructor. I didn’t really like the workout-focused style of yoga, but there was one instructor I really liked who focused more on the spiritual aspect of yoga.
But eventually the Groupon expired, and I didn’t do much yoga again until a year or two later. After exploring meditation on my own for a while, I became involved in Art of Living, a spiritual organization that teaches meditation, yoga, and breathing techniques. During this time, I learned how yoga could also benefit related practices like meditation and breathing techniques. I began to see yoga as less of a physical activity, and more as an opportunity to explore the connection between the mind and the body. I began to incorporate yoga into a morning routine that also involved a breathing technique and meditation. I was able to uphold this routine for a few months, but then as I became super busy wrapping up grad school, I didn’t have time for such an extensive morning routine, since it would take almost two hours each morning. At the time, meditation seemed like a more direct path to self-understanding, so I decided to focus more on meditation. Since then, I’ve done yoga sporadically, but haven’t really explored it further.
At one point I had to choose which to focus on: meditation, breathing techniques, or yoga. In the end, I decided to focus on meditation.
I’ve been seeking something to reinvigorate my meditation practice and restore my peace of mind, and I think yoga may be part of what I’m looking for. During my two years of traveling, I did some intensive 10-day meditation retreats, which instilled in me a deep sense of calm. Even though traveling itself could be stressful because of the constant decision making and logistical difficulties, it was also stress-free in the sense that I had no responsibilities and had full control over my time. So even though there were many sources of stress during my travels, I still felt at peace internally. However, after returning from traveling and moving to Boston to join an early stage startup, I found my mind gradually losing the peacefulness I had enjoyed during my travels. And this made sense; I now had many new things to learn/do under time constraints, and was also responsible for a core part of the startup’s technology.
Since then, many other big life situations have continued to unsettle my peace of mind: making new friends in a new place, building relationships with people, exploring activities I enjoy, leaving a startup, joining a new startup, and changing apartments/roommates. Along with these changes, I’ve also noticed that I’ve been much more reactive to situations. Rather than observing a situation, thinking about it, and then responding appropriately, I’ve seen myself reacting without thinking much more often than I used to. At best, this leads to making careless mistakes or accomplishing tasks inefficiently. But at worst, it leads to reacting to people in ways that lack compassion and are potentially harmful to myself and others. Although meditation has been an incredible tool to maintain awareness of my state of mind and to train myself to respond rather than react, it hasn’t been enough.
We can learn to respond rather than react. For example, we can react to hunger, which can sometimes be messy. But if we instead respond, we can enjoy our food or drink peacefully – without the mess!
From a practical aspect, yoga also makes sense for the month of August. I noticed that my body hasn’t been able to keep up with activities that I love to explore, dance in particular. At an early morning rave, I hurt my back when spontaneous Limbo appeared on the dance floor, and during an African Dance class I threw my arms too recklessly into the move and injured my shoulder. But if I had been more limber, perhaps I could have avoided these injuries. Looking ahead, I also want to prepare myself for the training I will do in September for a half marathon. Ideally, yoga would be a great way to prepare my body for these physically intensive activities.
For the month of August, I will be doing yoga every single day, mostly through yoga studios. I hope to supplement my meditation practice by exploring the connection between the mind and the body through yoga. It may take time to find the right studio and teacher that fits this (most of the ones I’ve looked into are more workout or physically oriented), but hopefully by trying out different instructors and studios each day, I’ll find a class that fits my style. I’ve been looking forward to diving into the world of yoga for a while, and I’m hoping to find a practice that I can continue well beyond the month!
For the first time ever, I saw a marathon this year. And not just any marathon: the Boston Marathon. I found spot to view the end of the race near the finish line, and I was astounded. The crowd showed unrelenting support for the runners, so loud that it sounded like the screaming you would hear at a concert. I was especially moved by the range and depth of emotions I could see on the runners’ faces: pain, frustration, anguish. Those were the emotions on the surface, but underneath, I could also see rays of light: determination, hope, and a deep fulfillment. I was so inspired by what I witnessed, that I decided to see for myself what that experience would feel like.
At the Boston Marathon, I saw such a wide range of emotions on the runners’ faces: pain, frustration, anguish, but also determination, hope, and fulfillment.
I also became interested in running a marathon because of the sense of accomplishment. It must require a ton of discipline and sacrifice in order to train consistently for a marathon. I wanted to see what it would be like to put in that kind of effort towards a specific goal, and then eventually accomplish that goal. Although I had experienced something similar in the process of getting my doctorate degree, there was never a clear set of tasks or criteria for accomplishing that goal. I wanted to see if running a marathon, where the training and final goal are very clear, would give a very different sense of accomplishment.
On a separate note, I’ve also always wondered what it’s like to experience “runner’s high”. I remember in undergrad, there was a girl who would exercise obsessively, chasing that runner’s high. She would even make sure to run before an exam, rather than putting in a few extra hours of studying. At one point, she injured her leg and couldn’t run anymore. Unsure of how to cope without her runner’s high, she eventually replaced running with swimming (the doctor signed off on it because it’s lower impact on the legs). The way another friend of mine described runner’s high sounded almost like a drug: it felt like blissful sensations spreading all over his body, and he became so drawn into the moment that his worries disappeared. Now, I’m not looking to get addicted to anything, but I would like to feel what this experience is like so that I can better relate to my religiously athletic friends.
Running, swimming, and bicycling – these are all activities that have given people I’ve known the elusive “runner’s high”.
After deciding to run a marathon, I asked some friends for advice, and discovered that a half marathon is more appropriate for me. First of all, a full marathon would require several months of training, whereas a half marathon can be done with at least six weeks of training (although that’s actually a pretty aggressive timeline). Not only that, but a full marathon puts a lot of stress on the body and has a much higher risk of injury, especially without a long enough training period. With that in mind, a half marathon would give me a really solid sense of accomplishment, and it would help me gauge whether I want to invest the time and effort into running a full marathon at some point in the future.
Once I had decided to run a half marathon, I looked up marathons in my area. A friend recommended choosing one in October or November since the weather is cooler. Personally, I prefer October because at that time the autumn foliage will look absolutely beautiful in the Boston area. My favorite aspect of running has always been the beautiful scenery. Every time I’ve gone for a run in the past, it started with a craving for natural beauty, and running was just a means to that end. I’m currently registered for the B.A.A. Half Marathon on October 13, and have a six week training plan picked out. I’m hoping to finish the half marathon within two hours, but ideally I want to finish with less than 8 minute miles. Although it won’t be until I start training that I’ll know how realistic that goal is!
For most of my life, I hated photography. While growing up, I found it really annoying when people would interrupt a good time just to take a photo. The worst was when we weren’t actually having that much fun, and then suddenly everyone would pretend to be having the time of their life for the photo. Over time, I associated photography with taking people out of the moment.
But this all changed when I had a serendipitous encounter with Mark while hiking on a magma lake in Hawaii. I’ll save the details for another post, but in short, I had a bad slip during the hike and Mark was the only person who cared to stop and help. Even though I was bleeding all over, we ended up talking there, in the middle of the magma lake, for more than two hours! He was actually a professional photographer, and he completely changed my perspective on photography. For Mark, photography actually brings him more into the moment, since it forces him to think more critically about what he’s seeing, how he’s feeling, and how he would like things to look. After we parted ways, I used some of the tips he gave me to take some photos of the magma lake. I was surprised with how quickly it changed the way I experienced what I was seeing!
Image 1: A photo I took of the magma lake after meeting Mark the photographer (admittedly, lighting wasn’t great). Notice the line formed one third from the top, and how the hiking trail leads into the bottom left corner of the photo. Image 2: I asked Mark to take a picture of me. By this time we had cleaned up my cuts, but when he met me, I was a bloody mess. I still have the scars on my arm.
I continued to keep in mind the Mark’s photography tips, but I only had my smartphone camera at the time. I considered investing in some basic photography equipment, but I didn’t have the financial means at the time to afford such a large expenditure for a hobby I was still feeling out. At one point, I borrowed a photographer friend’s really nice camera for a month or so, and each weekend I would head into the nearby gorge trails to take some pictures. I also borrowed another friend’s book about photography. From reading, talking to people, and taking pictures on my own, I realized that the main things I enjoy about photography don’t require any expensive equipment. There many aspects to photography, but the one that I enjoy the most is composition: how to choose what/how objects are placed in the frame of the picture, and what kind of patterns and relationships those objects form with each other. In the end, I realized that I could actually do 90% of what I enjoy about photography with my smartphone!
For a long time, my smartphone was sufficient, but now I’m interested in going more in depth with photography. Especially after returning home from my two years of traveling, I realized that a lot of the beautiful pictures I took were slightly out of focus in areas, or not high enough resolution when I tried to zoom in or expand the photo. Not only do I want to capture better quality photos, but I also want to understand and play with other dimensions of photography: tailoring focus, using different lenses, and experimenting with lighting, just to name a few. But most importantly, through this process, I want to see the world a bit differently, perhaps more fully.
I’ve mostly thought about composition when taking photos, but I would like to start playing with other dimensions of photography: focus, lenses, lighting, etc.
So for the month of October, I’m planning to buy (or borrow) a bunch of basic camera equipment and go out (or stay in) and take a photo every single day. It’s not an accident that I’m doing this in October – I planned for that month because the autumn foliage should look its best in the Boston area. I’m also hoping to do some more outdoor hiking in that month (my roommate is interested and actually has a car!), which will offer many more opportunities to take beautiful photos. And because that month will overlap with my half marathon training, photography is something I can do without overexerting my body. I’m looking forward to exploring how photography will expand my perspective!
The earliest memory I have of piano is of a weird cat lady. When I was a kid, my parents thought it would be a good idea for me to take piano lessons (I think they heard it was good for college applications, even though I was still only in elementary school). But they didn’t want to actually shell out for decent lessons, so they found the cheapest option they could find: a random woman who taught piano from her home. And yes, she had an overweight cat, which left hairs in random places and gave the house a peculiar odor. I only did it for a year or so, but I remember the classes moving very slowly and feeling frustrated with not being challenged or progressing.
What do a piano and a cat have in common? They were both part of my first piano lessons. It’s a weird association that can’t be undone..
Eventually, in school we had the option to learn musical instruments and join the school orchestra. I didn’t really have much preference, so I chose drums on a whim (probably because it was the cheapest – at the time it only required drumsticks and a small drum pad). At first it was fun learning the different drum rudiments (specific drumming sequences) and seeing how fast I could go. Then, as we moved to drumset, I was fascinated with how each limb had to follow an independent rhythm – like a timing puzzle that my body had to put together. But as I became good enough on drums to play with the school orchestra, I started getting bored with playing the same beat over and over, while every other instrument got to play different notes all the time! And because of changes in the teaching staff, the music teacher didn’t know much about drums, so she couldn’t teach me anything new.
At some point, I got so bored with drums that I switched over to saxophone. That was a lot more fun, and it was exciting to finally be able to create new music. But because I only started learning in my last year of elementary school, I was still behind the rest of the class, and I knew that I would struggle in the orchestra if I wanted to continue with sax in middle school. Also, since my old music teacher would be teaching in the middle school, I decided to switch back to drums since I might have a lot more to learn. Eventually, my parents invested in buying me a drumset (even though I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep playing drums), and then I felt guilty not putting the drumset to use. I ended up sticking with drums through the end of high school.
From drums, I developed an intuitive understanding of rhythm. From saxophone, I got a glimpse of musicality.
Because of my long history with drums, I developed an in depth and intuitive understanding of rhythm. I think this is partly why I pick up dance moves very quickly – I almost immediately break down and synchronize the movements to the underlying rhythm of the music. This is also why it’s very difficult for me to learn dance without music (as it’s often taught in dance classes), since without the music, the dance moves don’t really make sense to me. But rhythm isn’t everything, and from my few years of dabbling in piano and saxophone, I realized that there is a whole world of sound that I never fully explored. And although I can listen to music and appreciate it, I don’t think I will appreciate it in depth until I can actually play a musical instrument.
There are some things that are only appreciated by doing – I know this firsthand from tennis. Before learning how to play tennis, it was the most boring sport to watch on TV (except for golf and baseball). Watch tennis felt a lot like watching someone play the arcade game Pong. I would just watch the ball go back and forth, back and forth, until someone couldn’t hit it back (or forth). But once I start playing tennis myself, I began to see the game very differently. There were new elements and challenges that I couldn’t see before: dealing with spin, reacting to fast serves, positioning your opponent, and deciding when to come up to the net. Now when I watch tennis, it feels like a chess match, with lots of technical difficulty involved in moving each chess piece.
Before I played tennis myself, it felt like watching the arcade game Pong. But after learning how to play, I appreciate the skill, technique, and strategy that I couldn’t see before!
While I want to develop a similar appreciation for music by learning piano, I learned in my last Half Year that piano is not the kind of thing I can easily pick up by playing every few weeks. It requires consistent practice in order to build on skills as well as develop muscle memory. It also helps to reinforce music theory lessons by applying it on the keys. Ideally, I eventually want to get to a point where I can begin to improvise a bit and create my own music. Sometimes I imagine new music in my head when I’m feeling a strong or unusual emotion, but I currently don’t have any good way to express it (I can hum a bit, but the music I’m imagining is too complicated for a single string of notes). I’m not sure if a month will be enough time to get my skill level to the point of new music creation, but at least I will have a better sense of what kind of work I’ll have to put in after a month of learning!
I feel like I had never really seen a flower until I tried to draw one. At one point in grad school, I started dabbling in drawing. I even bought a proper set of pencils and watched a few Youtube videos. Every now and then, I would try to sketch still objects in my room. After successfully copying some basic forms, I decided to challenge myself a bit more. Since it was springtime, I went to a beautiful part of campus with big flowering trees, and found a large white magnolia. Over the next several hours, I sat and tried to copy every detail I could see in it. Once I got the basic shape figured out, my eyes went to the finer details I had never noticed before: the light lines of color in the center of each petal, the gentle curves and folds, the unusual way the texture captured the light, and the interesting transition from the base to the petal. After analyzing a flower in so much detail, I’ve never been able to look at another flower in the simplistic way I used to. And this was only after drawing in black and white – imagine if I had tried using color!
I first learned enough to copy some basic objects (no, that’s not a blunt, it’s blending stump). Then I went out and sketched a flower. I’ve never looked at a flower the same way since!
On a more practical note, I would love to be surrounded by beautiful art, but it’s difficult to find a piece that really resonates with me. And the few times that I do find something special, it’s usually super expensive (often because it’s huge). But one time I was over a friend’s house, the kind of house that has tons of interesting and beautiful things: katanas, driftwood furniture, unusual light fixtures, and of course, large abstract paintings in every room. I asked him where he finds such huge paintings for cheap, since I love that kind of stuff but it’s unaffordable. He looked at me blankly and said “Just make it”. Something clicked for me in that moment, and that’s when I was finally all in on learning and exploring how to paint.
In exploring painting, I hope to transform the way I see things. And I don’t want to just be limited to copying realistic objects; I want to explore abstract painting that can express intangible things like emotions or concepts. In the same way that poetry allows me to express with nonrational language, and dance allows me to express with my body, I wonder if painting can teach me to express through visuals.
Looking Ahead
I don’t have any specific plans for the following year, mostly because I want to see how these next six months go. While I’m sure I will learn and grow a lot by diving into a skill each month, nothing ever comes for free. I’m already mostly through my Poetry Month, and I already feel like I have barely any spare time – between running a young startup company, my existing hobbies, and maintaining something of a social life, whatever free time remains is usually spent trying to catch up on sleep. I also don’t want to plan too far ahead because I could see myself wanting to follow up on some of these monthly skills and develop them more in depth on a longer timescale, perhaps a few months or half a year. But there are definitely many other skills that I had in mind to learn but didn’t have time to tackle this year: pottery, glass blowing, learning another language (probably Chinese), cooking, rock climbing.. If I’m not too exhausted by the time next year arrives, I’ll have plenty of more Depth Months in store!
I still have plenty of other Depth Months in mind for next year: pottery, glass blowing, learning Chinese, and rock climbing.. just to name a few!