uncertainty

it really is funny how life is truly about the journey. and before anyone gets on me for saying cliche things, well sometimes there is always some kind of truth in these things. achieving something is only as worthwhile as a stepping stone. once you have accomplished your set goal, you find yourself looking around and wondering what is next. whether it is a relationship, or marriage, or finishing board exams, or residency, or buying a house, a fitness goal, or whatever - the importance is not the achievement of these things - but rather the maintenance of these good things in your life - and about setting the next goal. 

i used to think to myself, oh i could deal with everything else wrong in my life as long as i made it through med school and residency and passed my boards and found a job. or that life would be complete with a romantic relationship. or the millennial dream of buying a house. and i guess, in hopefully a relatively matter of fact voice, i have achieved those set goals. 

and yet i am still not satisfied. this is privilege speaking, of course. a person without the necessities would probably shake me. but don't get me wrong, i am sincerely grateful and appropriately understanding of my life.

but ultimately it isn't enough to achieve those things - it must be continually worked upon and maintained and used for it to be any good. what good is getting married and not pouring into it to make sure it is a good marriage? 

i think what i'm trying to say is two points.

first, i think that humans (i) will never be satisfied by anything in this world. achievement is transient and fleeting, i will always be looking for the next thing. only God can satisfy, right?

two, good things in life are not just a point in time. a wedding day is lovely, but it is not what is important in my relationship. passing boards is vice grippingly relieving, but being a continual learner and a good physician is more important. buying a house is nice, but the maintenance while i live in it is more important than the day i got keys to the house.  

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i struggle a lot with uncertainty and probably even more with failure. but failure is a therapy session in and of itself, haha. probably some asian culture issues with face concept mixed with being a high achieving but low effort personality, surrounded in a culture and friends that are also high achieving. i worry a lot about applying for fellowship again. sometimes it feels like a lose-lose even though i always verbally word it as a win-win when i talk to people. i joke, well either i get the fellowship or i make money! how can i lose? but not getting in would feel like a failure. sigh. 

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technically it is my birthday today. i actually forgot while writing the previous parts of this post, even though i got cake and gifts from steph and stephen. idk this probably should have been a happier post on looking back of last year (which actually is chock full of positive life milestones: passing boards, finishing residency and chief year, getting a job, buying a house, getting a dog, getting married, able to hold a headstand haha). i'm just in a pensive/depressive mood i suppose. i did have a wonderful year as a thirty year old woman. i am looking forward to see what thirty one brings. maybe just maintenance of all the good things that happened this year. maybe a fellowship. who knows?  

Post Wedding

 We finally did it. After basically a year, we finally did it. It was lovely and beautiful and basically perfect. I am so lucky to have such wonderful friends stand by me. S flying all the way from Hawaii and lifting sand bags, S from Cali post partum!!, and N even though she was worried about COVID. I am really so lucky. My family, my friends, his family and friends, good food (best thing was the salmon and the mashed potatoes), a fun time, a beautiful dress, a beautiful venue, a hot but sunny day, and all the vendors who made the day easy. 

I do wish I could have tried the hor doerves, but ah well haha.

And also precious was just the time my bridesmaids came to just sit and talk with me at home after the ceremony. I wish I had so many more days just to hang out with everyone.  

I do think I regret just a little bit of not writing our own personal vows. But I might just make us do that for an anniversary or something.

Stephen is not someone I dreamed of marrying when I was younger and making up characteristics of my future husband as a lark. But he is what I didn't know I needed. To accept me as I am no matter how stressed out or cranky I get, teases me out of a bad mood, lifts me up (literally, a lot of the time), clever and witty - he keeps life interesting; for me, who finds life boring so many times. Pushes me to stop procrastinating, to go to the gym, to pursue the things I want to pursue. He wants me to succeed and accomplish my goals. He loves deeply. I never doubt him or his sincerity. He is not afraid to speak his mind, even if it is unpleasant or controversial; and I admire that. I love his loyalty to his friends and family. He is competent, takes care of problems, a source of stability. He is not perfect. He has lots of flaws. We disagree on things. I am not perfect. I have lots of flaws. And I can't imagine life without him anymore. Or if I could, it would be very, very hard. 

How do you even know someone is the right person for you? I've thought about that so many times before him. I still don't have a good answer. Questions like, what does love feel like? I still don't know how to answer that. Love and marriage is such a weird thing. This is the person you choose. For the rest of your life, hopefully. How do you know? As someone who likes concrete answers and actionable items... this is an impossible questions because there is literally no right answer. 

 And yet... I still got married. 

Love is a mysterious thing.  

Just ramblings

 I have had a lot of thoughts in the last few months, heck even years. I have been neglecting blogging these days, mostly from lack of motivation. And with that, lost some of my reflections on going ons. I have had a lot of big life changes recently. Gotten engaged, then courthouse married, and now ceremony married. I bought a house, got a dog, passed my boards, found a new job, am now in my thirties. I technically hit a lot of "life milestones". Of course yes I am happy, I am content. But the predominant feeling is a sense that - life goes on. No matter the decisions you make, life keeps going along and we all get older. Time stops for no one and we must make the most of the short time we have on earth. 

Relationships has been the area of biggest growth for me, for obvious reasons. And I have come to the realization that truly my upbringing has stunted me emotionally romantically. Stephen had to break down all my walls and conservation about dating, he waited patiently for me to accept that we were even dating, he gave me space but was intentional about meeting. He pursued, he waited, he was certain about his own feelings. And I think that if left to my own thoughts and devices, I might never have found or dated anyone. I am lucky he waited for me. But yeah, he's lucky he found me too ha. 

I don't think marriage changes anything big. It simply announces and confirms what is already there and places a label on it for the rest of the world to understand. But the day to day? Exactly the same. I wonder what the future holds.   

Children

 Stephen's niece came to stay with us for a week and it was interesting... I have firmly realized that I am not very good with children. I think it stems from a lack of being around them in general. I just don't really know what to do with them. Rachael is a sweet girl and I think there is some lingering... trauma? or slight hole in her heart from having divorced parents and really never seeing her mom except for maybe 1 week of the year. And I, the now designated Aunt Rainbow Pancakes (a nickname I don't quite understand), am somehow one of the few older female figures she has in her life. It's unsettling. 

I had a lot of thoughts this week. Ranging from how spoiled would my kids be. How hard it is to say no. How I can worry about a kid's future that isn't technically mine. How Stephen is with kids. How to get a picky kid to eat different foods. How to entertain an 11 yo. How much technology is okay - and also how to model good behavior with technology.... I think, in the end, I do pretty well with responsibility. If there's something that needs to be done and I can do it, I generally can fulfill that role. But sometimes that role is a little ambiguous when it comes to kids.

I hope it really is different with my own kids in the future. I hope it gets more natural. 

blogging

out of nostalgia, I spent the last 30 min or so just rereading my blog. And I haven't even gotten to the end of all the words I've written. Accumulated over years (actually now I think it's officially at least a decade) of my life. And I am transported back to those memories. 

And the strangest, strangest thing is that rereading the words that I've written.... I've forgotten that I wrote some of those posts. And reading those words that I've written, it feels like my past self knew me more than I know myself sometimes. Those odd musings, those random thoughts, the strange epiphanies, they all become fleeting memories when the humdrum of life floods my brain and erases those moments. 

Perhaps I used to be more thoughtful back then. 

Do you ever feel like you change so much and so little all at the same time?

time of year

it's getting to that time of year where i have to start wondering about my future again.

where am i going to go
what am i going to do

but if i really look back on the past (omg) 7 years, i could never have predicted i would end up here.

it's all in God's hands.

and yet i worry. anxiously wondering what the future holds.

Choice

Do you believe faith and belief is a choice? Or is it something that is?

Is it like love, where some say it is a choice to go through with the actions of love even though you may not feel the neurons firing and the “feeling” of love?

Is attraction a choice? I don’t think so. Attraction and sexuality are things that simply are.
Someone that says I just don’t find so and so attractive has every right to say that.
But can you say I just don’t believe and that’s how it is. Or I just don’t love them, and that’s how it is.

Percolate

Sitting in a call room, kinda just waiting. Overnight in the hospital is a strange thing. Where nurses are still up, patients are still sick, but trying to sleep. I’m just waiting. Waiting for a patient to be transferred out the ED, waiting for a possible code blue, waiting for an admission. Waiting for my birthday too, I guess. Time passes by too fast. A year has already gone by. New faces in the hospital, people that I have spent so much time with and greatly enjoyed their company... now gone. It’s another year and I’m three parts tired and one part anxious.

I’ve been so busy with hospital and step and bf that I feel like I’ve missed talking to people. I miss my old small group. I miss genuine deep conversations about the meaning of actions and other strange considerations and pseudo analysis of people. Or maybe I miss God. It’s hard to tell these days. Or maybe  now is the time where I have realized that I am no longer drowning and just trying to survive and am looking around for something more. I’ve not been completely antisocial. But dinner parties and fun events are in no way a replacement for those conversations of knowing one another. If anything, only a bandaid.

What is that quote... do not let what is urgent keep you from what is important.
And I definitely have. Because so many things are more urgent than spending time to meditate and think on the trajectory of my life. Work and studying and tests and attempting to find happiness and investing time in people. But none of those things are as important.

It’s funny how often I pray for clarity, when I pray these days, because I just want to know. To know what happens, to know what’s right, or what to do, to be able to plan for things. But that never really happens, does it. I am envious of the ones who know their path so clearly. Or have greater determination than I to forge their desires into reality. But for that to happen, you know to know yourself and your desires intimately.

I’ve realized, in the past few months, just how many more flaws I have.
Indecision, fear, anxiety about everything, worry about the future, poor communication skills, a laziness that I battle every day, a tendency towards the familiar and easy.

I think for so many months, I’ve foregone all self growth for increasing medical knowledge and just superficial enjoyment of life.
Well. Saying my enjoyment of life is “superficial” may be too demeaning. More like worldly enjoyments of life? But even that is a little condescending.
Regardless, as my next year approaches, I hope there will be growth.

I pray for the Spirit to fill my life. And yours.

Mortality

It's no surprise that I'm around sick people because I'm obviously working in a hospital.

But two days ago, I heard one of my co-resident/friend was in the ED. Jokingly, I texted him, hey, you dying? heard you were in the ED. hope you're ok. 

He texted back, haha, not dying, but i'm still waiting for a lot of tests to be run. i'll update you more when i know more.

And I didn't think too much more of it. Until later when I hear he actually went to the ED for a partial seizure, and the CT head images showed a large brain tumor. And now he was admitted to the University hospital and waiting for a brain biopsy. 

He's not even 30, he's almost done with his intern year, and then he should've gone into ophthalmology. He's pretty much done with all of the bs hoop jumping to make it where he actually wants to be. And then boom, this happens. A freaking brain tumor. A tumor in your freaking brain. 

A couple of us residents visited him and he was laughing and joking and pretty honest. But underneath it all, you could hear his fear and worry. His life has been turned around. And one of the neurosurgery residents told him the prognosis was maybe 10-15 years. Like... fuck. It's not 1-2 years, but still. But still. 

And it's so unfair. It's so unfair. This always positive, so much fun, always has a joke, hard working person that has made it through medical school and intern year and is set to be an ophthalmologist... he is so young. He is my age.  I think it's hit my entire class hard because we all think about how completely horrible it is. You make it through all this trial with the thought that this delayed gratification will pay off. We don't go through all this training and studying because it's enjoyable - but because we want to make it to the end. And with all of this... what if he can't? 

What if his tumor is unresectable? What if he loses his vision? Or his motor function? What if he needs chemo and/or radiation and it's so debilitating that he can't go further. What if he literally cannot be an ophthalmologist? Would you even keep going if you only have so many years left? What is worth it? But then what would you do with your time? 

I told him I would pray for him - and he replied, I believe in the power of prayer and I think it matters more than people think. So thank you.

I don't even know. I am surrounded by mortality in the hospital. I don't even bat an eye when a code blue is called. This is a hospital, there are deaths. But we are on the other side of the hospital care - and I forget that our best laid plans are futile. We cannot predict the future. I forget that there is always something more important, something greater than just the time we spend here. It is so easy, it is so freaking easy to let time whittle away at my life. To get the urgent and emergent and fun things done. To live life in a breeze, to live in a way where there are only earthly cares. What to eat, who to hang out with, work thoughts, studying. It is so easy to let time pass, minute by minute, months by years. But oh, when faced with these kinds of questions... what is truly important? How can I live this life in a manner that I don't regret. What would I do if I only had 10 years? Are the things I do right now worth it? Is it worth worrying about these things in light of all of it? 

What is my purpose here?

Striving

This last Friday, I think I had one of my more emotional days in the hospital just from patients and their lives.

A lady who has had 7 kids and is pregnant again. And all 7 of her kids have been taken by DHR because they were all positive for cocaine. And she is positive for cocaine again while she is pregnant. My heart breaks for those babies. And everyone of us unequivocally said, she needs to be sterilized because she is hurting so many children. And generally I am one who says that childbirth cannot be limited by legalization (who decides who gets to have kids, questions if people are trying to do a poverty sterilization, a genocide of a kind. You cannot force sterilization on someone because you think they are too stupid, too poor, too incompetent. Except maybe we do? For those with diagnosed intellectual disabilities - they are frequently put on continuous birth control.) But this is not okay. And I kept thinking.... who has the authority to tell her to stop having children? And I do think it is the place of a physician to say stop.

Two patients who were brain dead. The first was a man, a chronic smoker, a husband, a very sick patient. And he was doing just fine until he couldn't breathe anymore. So he was put on an oxygen mask and doing fine. Until he took it off to go outside to smoke outside of the hospital. Where he went into respiratory distress and lost a pulse and needed CPR. And now he is brain dead, left in the ICU with a ventilator and tubes. And the wife sits in the room, thinking that he might be able to get better. Until our team tells her he is not getting better.

The second, a woman, a wife, a mother, a sister. She fell down and now has blood pushing on her brain. The family is gathered around her. And when my attending says clearly that she is dead, she is not coming back, and the only thing keeping her from passing are the machines... the husband clenches his fist and turns away from us, and his cheeks are wet when he turns back to us.

A chronically ill patient comes back from a nursing home to the hospital after having already been here 2 weeks ago. But his son says, full code. We want everything. But he never visits the patient. And he is a heart wrenching picture of just wasting away muscles, eyes staring off, breathing shallowly, sick as can be. And it's just impossible for him to get much better than that because of his mental status, because of the status of his lungs already. So we'll fix him up, send him back to the nursing home, and he'll come back. Again and again. Because that's what we have to do. There are so many times I hate this end-of-life culture of "never giving up".

A patient that I admitted into the MICU. Initially doing alright, not great, but okay enough that I thought he could make it out of the ICU and home. And then days later, his kidneys tank and his lungs are worse, and he's going to need dialysis and chronic vent. And the family said he never wanted constant vents or machines to keep him alive - only keep him on it if there's a chance to get off of it. And that day.... our attending tells the family, this is the time because he won't get off any of it very likely. And today they will take the tube out of his throat and wait for him to pass. And I wonder, I admitted him, could I have done anything different? Could I have prevented him from decompensating somehow? Did I accidentally make his kidneys worse beyond repair when I gave him lasix before they were so bad? Did I spend enough time there?

A lady in the CICU after her surgery suddenly starts putting out blood from her chest tube and looks blue. CPR started as the CV surgery team is called emergently at 6 pm. Nurses are rushing around, blood bank is called for as many units of blood and platelets as possible, the crash cart is wheeled in, hands are busy. And 15 minutes later when she is being rolled off to surgery, the attending looks at me and says, she's not going to make it, but they still have to try.

And that was how my last day of critical care month went. All of that in one day.
None of it is about me, except that I feel so emotional about it all. Sad, furious, conflicted, inadequate, frustrated, sad, and just sad.

Quick airport post

sittinn at the gate right now, ready to go back to Plano. Going to Dallas will always be “going back home”. But when I leave Dallas to come back to my usual humdrum life of intern year, that is also going back home.

I am so ready to have a break and just not think too much.

I have not even really realized it’s christmas time. I was more focused on having a break. Days blur together and the mess in the apartment accumulates.

Rest for the body. Rest for the mind. Rest for soul.

chance to breathe

i have been doing a poor job with writing as consistently as i wanted to, but overall it is still better than if i hadn't done this challenge. so i will still consider it a mild success at this time.

some things that happened of note this week,

- i am cat sitting for a friend. and i have overall decided that despite that it is quite nice to have something living moving around in my house at night (not cockroaches or insects), i'd probably still choose to not have a pet. maybe it would be different if she were a cuddly kind of kitty, but she's really quite aloof. or maybe it'd be different if she's a dog. hard to say at this point.

- tried to do a central line the other day, did not go as planned - had to call surgery in to help. it's a little annoying and frustrating to feel like you have to ask for help - but overall, patient safety is more important.

- i had a very nice weekend with doing nails and facemasks and felt extremely pampered. it feels quite nice. my face feels extraordinarily plump haha.

- i think the strangest thing of this year is realizing that medicine is not as straightforward as it seems. there are some people that you know are slackers and others that really care for their patients. it's not so much the slackers that i'm talking about as the group that actually put in full forth effort. in this group, there is still differences in what each person deems as "putting in full forth". for some, it's talking for hours to the patients to get a proper history - others, it's delving into the depths of uptodate to read up on treatment options - others still, it's looking at their full medication list. with such limited time, the question always remains of how can we best utilize it to give the best care? nobody wants to miss anything. but you also don't want to stay till midnight every day. it's a tricky line.

- i told steph that i felt myself changing - and i didn't know how.... and i still don't. and i wonder if some of that not knowing is because i don't have as many deep talks with friends anymore

- i was having a discussion with a friend today about knowing someone. and i feel like it boils down to two things: one - the knowing that comes from conversation, of deep talks and knowing how someone thinks and their history and their thoughts about life and politics and love and dreams and aspirations. and the second - a knowing that comes from being around someone physically, their mannerisms and the way they respond to things, the timing and cadence of their words, how quietly they walk or how loudly they sneeze.

i'd argue that the first is more important. probably because i have more friendships based on that alone. what with everyone so spread out these days. but the second... i am learning more with my co residents. that i spend so much time with them, i sometimes feel like i do know them. even without knowing their deep conversation thoughts. and that, too, is interesting.

kindness

i am thankful
for warmth in the apartment.
for friends that text me.
for a family that loves me.
for a job that can help people.
for body that functions.

i am afraid
of not knowing enough
of making decisions that might hurt someone
of my future
of who i feel like i am becoming

i think humans are semi-permeable, and sometimes we passively let in things in our surroundings into our bodies and souls more so than expected. i expected myself to be impenetrable, but i think the world is leaking into me.

what i want is to be
smarter
prettier
more extroverted and charismatic
adventurous
kinder
better

instead i can't really do much but be tired every day after work. i need to do more probably.
i'm too tired to write well. these thoughts will be continued later maybe.

fill your cup

it's been a long week - more so of my own making, but that's generally how things go. I didn't really want to write this blog post because I feel like nothing of note has happened lately. And maybe that should concern me.

It is definitely in my nature to think too much. But I remember back in college when I had more time that I'd be meditating on the nature of God, love, truth, the importance of being not of this world, friendship, what it means to have hope, how to show grace, thinking and thinking about how to be a person closer to the image of Christ. A better person.

These days I'm just too tired to think at all. Or is that an excuse?
Even today - my only day off in this week, bracketed by call days on Saturday and Monday - I don't want to do anything but eat and sleep and indulge in hobbies. And even those hobbies are mindless. I wanted to bake cookies in Christmas shapes, maybe get a Christmas tree and decorate, go to another park, try out something new in the city, go dancing, go volunteer, study up on medicine that i don't know, write up that stupid case report, who knows. Instead I stayed on my couch and drank tea and read easy books.

Time passes by too fast these days. 

They say for languages - if you don't use it, you lose it.
Isn't that the same for being Christ-like?
How can I better demonstrate a love for people?
How selfish can I be?

Work

Super short post because I am post call and got home at nine and I really want to sleep soon.
Well. My upper level is a black cloud. But I think I’m a white cloud.

I’ve been thinking that the reward for good work is more work. If you are efficient and reliable and nice and go beyond what people expect. Well then, people give you more work to do. Or you find out more problems that you normally wouldn’t have even had to hear about. And that’s just so frustrating sometimes because honestly the easiest thing to do would be just to care less and do less.

Case in point. I make it a habit to pm round on my patients. Just to check up on them and see how things are going, talk a little and get to know them, updates, plans, whatever. But really, I feel like all I get back are mainly complaints. Today I spent over 30 minutes talking with family who started complaining about the medical system and how redudant we are. Dude. I didn’t have to come and talk to you. Some residents wouldn’t have. They’d already be gone. I feel like I’m just making more work for myself by trying to be thorough. If I just let it be, I’d only have to deal with this stuff when someone forces me to go down and do it. But. That’s not the right thing to do. But it just sucks so much. It’s like customer service where they literally exist for customers to yell at them to vent anger at the overall company. It’s thankless. And I thought I signed up for the medicine. Not the customer service part. But there’s still the overwhelming part of me that thinks That if I were the patient, I’d want to see the people taking care of me more than once a day. More than 5 minutes. Sigh.

I am a little tired of people.

Restarting

Blogging challenge to remind myself to write a little more. Which is actually strange because I think that I have put writing on the back burner in the past few months; and (subsequently?) have also found myself feeling as if I had unresolved thoughts that have just never been settled and filed properly.

I think I've not been writing as often because I feel as if there's not much to say here. It's just mundane days of residency and trying to survive and live life and think about the future. I foresee this blogging challenge resulting in blogs of very random topics.

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I think my mentality of relationships is becoming skewed and twisted from going on so many dating app dates. i started going mostly because it was a direct, actionable response for whenever i think, it would be nice to have a significant other. especially in the south, where more than half my co-interns are seriously dating, engaged, married, or married with kids. and i really don't like not trying to fix my problems - because if you don't actively try to do something, then i really don't believe you have any right to complain about it. because obviously you aren't bothered by it enough to change your actions/life. so i go on stranger dates.

and they're all... strangers. it's easy because talking to a stranger is just asking questions. but really what i'm trying to say is that - i think i discard people too easily now. maybe there is something wrong with my brain. unless they are my friend (established and defined), i just feel like i really don't owe them anything. which is fairly callous.

maybe something is wrong with me emotionally. that i can leave people too easily.

different

there are emotions that fill up your lungs
like a gasp of breath after drowning
the loneliness and uncertainty
feeling like a stranger in this strange, strange world
the tiredness and the exhaustion
of reaching upwards and forwards
wondering what is beyond the solidity of today
and if tomorrow really will
be better.

Like Liquid

I've been having a lot of thoughts about money this week. 

Mostly because I've been spending as if I thought money grew on trees. 

I'm a little weirded out by my level of want/need these days. Before I lived with med school roommates, I really did live the minimalist life. That frugal college life that was also impacted by frugal Asian parents that persistently told me to turn off the lights if we left the house to save energy; to keep the temperature high in the summer and low in the winter to keep bills low; to only buy only if you needed it. Did you actually need a toaster? No, you can use your skillet to heat up your bread. Do you need to decorate your room? Nah, you're moving in a year anyway. 

But it's like that transition from stupid flip phones to smart phones. It's really, really, really hard to go back. Almost nigh impossible. I have yet to hear of a person who went back to non-smart phones willingly.

And when you "upgrade" your life, it's really hard to go back. I'm used to a lot of house luxuries that apartments may or may not have. And I really don't want to go without.

And I can't tell if that's because I'm spoiled now or because that's a new normal.

And that's the weird, weird thing that I consistently realize. That everyone's normals are completely different. What was my normal five years ago is not my normal now.

But then again, I am no longer in Texas. So of course nothing is completely normal. 

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I am not really homesick. 

But more thoughts on that later.

Poetry

Unsettled

Your words are like stones

on the river of my heart,

remembered until the ripples fade

and the edges worn smooth

from the number of times

they turn over in my head.

travel

there are times where so much has happened that it becomes vaguely overwhelming to even think about writing it all down in a post. whether for documentation purposes or general memory or sharing or whatever. there is always something lost. experiences get pared down into simple paragraphs, emotions are left unsaid, conversations are skipped over entirely.

nevertheless, i am glad.
i hadn't been back to taiwan in approximately 12 years.
i had a lot of thoughts going back - who wouldn't?

1. it is a bit of an odd feeling to realize that i am simply playing tourist in a place where i have so many family ties. despite going around with my cousins and talking to all my relatives, despite knowing (mostly) knowing the language, i really am american. i really am asian-american. and that combination is whole different thing entirely.

2. it was so, so strange to be around extended family. in america, my family is my nuclear family. i might see second cousins or whatnot, but their presence in my life is fairly fleeting. but in taiwan, hanging around cousins for days made me wonder what it would be like to have a bigger family.

3. and tying into that thought above, this is the first time i realized how much of a decision my parents made to stay in america. they've been here for more than 30 years. longer time than they lived in taiwan. but talking to my uncle, he made a passing comment about how having my dad, his younger brother, leave to america and not return was like losing a right arm (mostly with regards to the family company). and in light of me leaving out of state, my parents have made a much larger move than i ever, ever will. but also. it's one of those perspective moments where i think it must have been very, very hard for them when they first came.

4. taiwan was hot and humid. and it had the most delicious mangoes. i ate mangoes every moment i could. and here's the thing. the food is still like homestyle to me. even though i wrote that i was playing tourist and i don't really belong in taiwan (i don't), the food is comfort food. even going to places like din tai fong or rou xao, all this food is familiar. as if i could belong here if i wanted to. and while my chinese is not great, even in the two weeks, i sometimes had the inkling that maybe i could make it here if i wanted. and of course my uncle continually told my brother and i that we would always have a place to live if we wanted to stay and learn taiwan. it's just one of those things that makes you wonder how much more different your life would be if one thing changed.

5. but then.... there's some family drama around my dad's side of the family company. but as the "american family", we have exactly zero interest in it and completely don't care. so maybe it's better to not have those specific family problems.

6. it was weird how i could see such similarities through my family. the way my dad and uncle are so similarly stubborn about arguments, the ways eyes are shaped. the physical and the non-physical. i hadn't had a chance to realize the ways families can be similar.

7. traveling through taiwan with my cousins was beautiful and lovely and wonderful. we climbed mountains, ate so much food, went bicycling next to the shore, roamed through night markets, went up to taipei 101, drank so much tea, ate desserts, took a ferry, watched the sunset with a huge shaved ice the size of my head. we went to tai chong with my mom's side uncle and walked more mountains, ate the most delicious dessert, had a taste test o the dessert, made the jellies, walked a shore, saw crabs, went to the Sun Moon Lake, watched the sun turn the world into a beautiful painting, shopped. these are the days that i want to remember.

8. japan was..... shrug. i need to go back to experience it differently.

9. i sometimes think that i have not experienced enough. i have not gone to enough countries. i have not traveled enough. i have not seen enough.

9.5 and interlude thought: sometimes i wonder if it's fomo. when i see other people traveling, i feel like i am missing out on life experiences. and then i wonder if i am stagnant as a person if i have not pushed myself to explore and try new things. but then talking to a friend who has the most beautiful instagram photos, she laughing told me how her utterly professionally looking beautiful cake (made of dragonfruit powder for a purple-jellied top over a mango mousse) tasted horrible - but the picture was incredible. so the obvious answer is that photos are hardly representative of true life. and fomo is just made up in your head.

9.7 but i just don't know if i believe it because i do think there is value in experience new things. whether the cake tastes like crap or not, she still made it. whether the trip to ireland or new zealand or thailand or peru was crap, you still went.

10. i am glad to be home. but even coming home is only a temporary transition before my next move.