Weekly Update 3
Things that happened
I watched “to be loved, but to be human is to change” by Olivia Sun. She says a lot of things about love. My main takeaway is, our understanding of what love is changes over time. Right now, understanding seems to be in short supply in our society. We crave the sense of being understood and seen in an intimate way, therefore love and understanding can be deeply intertwined. In the past, in different conditions, people have compared love to different things. People have said it is better to be respected than loved. Machiavelli said it is better to be feared than loved. Love does not exist in a vacuum. Love exists in the context of our environments, understanding is something we seem to be craving more in this age. I want to be understood. I spent my entire childhood feeling understood. I have put in a lot of work to feel more understood as an adult. I believe I am more understood now than as a child. This weekly blog and my other blog is an example of the effort I am putting in to be more understood.
Hosting dinner was good. Roy didn’t make it. That’s too bad. He would have fit in well. He is one of us, just younger. Nick did make it. Nick is great. I wish I had a cousin like Nick. Pharmacist, generally capable, generally willing to help, someone I grew up alongside of, with overlapping friend circles and interests. My older cousins are so detached from the extended family. They are only physically present, not emotionally present, along with a value system I don’t understand. My younger cousins still have not grow into capable, independent adults. I hope that in the near future, they will have grown up enough, and put in enough work to become adults with excess capacity and ability to also enrich the lives of others. I will do as much as I can to ensure that happens.
Chelsea says we can’t do any more dinner parties for a few months. I’m not sure how to interpret this. She won’t elaborate what parts of it specifically makes her want to pause. I am not entirely sure how much of this request I should respect. She is very territorial with the house. Anyways, for now, I guess I’ll just host on Fridays. I don’t even have “dinner parties.” I just have people over for dinner.
I talked to ccao about medical stuff. Idk what to say about this. Its good to talk to people who are knowledgeable about your life about issues. Service providers, lawyers, accountants, etc are not the best because they are specialized in one specific area and are not comfortable giving advice in any holistic capacity. There should be some asian people in SGV that specialize in helping old asian people navigate medical when they’re older. Just need to look for them.
When we were younger, we were taught a small number of things were important, and were implicitly taught that anything else was superfluous, or at least much less important. School, and possibly some extracurriculars were the most important. Job/career/income likewise are equally important. Everything else can, and possibly should be neglected in pursuit of these top priorities. I can’t be entirely sure if that’s correct, particularly because life kinda sucks if you are supremely unsuccessful in those “top priorities.” But likewise, life can suck if you have only worked on those “top priorities” while neglecting everything else. Everything else is the full assortment of skills in your day to day life. Cooking, cleaning, making friends, fashion, driving, etc. These skills have a major, tangible impact on my life now. Being good at cooking, being good at socializing with people, being perceived as “cool” by my younger cousins have had such a massive positive impact on my life and the lives of others. Make yourself an asset to yourself and others. Be as good at as many things as possible.
Being physically fit is really facilitating my social life. I try to do active things with people as often as I can. fitness as a social activity is great. But on top of that, I just have the energy to do things like have a packed schedule, drive long distances, forgo some sleep, and still have the energy to keep going. If I was less physically fit, I would be less social, I would have to cancel some plans or be tired and cranky.
On the flipside, I am so physically fit, sometimes its hard to find people to do stuff I really like to do. Its hard to find people to do stuff like hike 13 miles with me. Sometimes it’s lonely at the top lol
New Years was great. The night before at ccao’s mom’s salon. We played codenames and ate pizza. Normally I spend so much energy talking about big things, because there are so many big things to discuss and digest in all of our lives now. But to just play games and eat pizza was nice. Like we were kids again. Furthermore, codenames can be played online, digitally. This is big. We are always on the lookout for group activities to do that isn’t just eating and talking. it can also be played online. It is a great activity to add to the repertoire. There will be times when we cannot physically gather for whatever reason. Codenames will be so helpful in that case. Thanks ccao.
Roy came to LA/SGV. We ate a lot. There’s some friction when I go out to eat with Leilani. She likes what she likes (and it can occasionally be hard to understand why she likes or dislikes a certain thing, her likes are not easy to predict), and has low tolerance for what she doesn’t like. She doesn’t eat pork, and is less comfortable with exploring Asian food. For an extended duration, and with multiple people with different preferences, this makes it exhausting to me. Also, the funds are running low lol, so more friction when I eat somewhere I don’t like. “why did I spend this much money on something I don’t like??.” And I get nervous about her finances. Why are we going out to eat if you don’t have any money?
Diet has been shit, gained some pounds, back to the diet grind. lose weight. I’m too big, the knees are getting tired.
Chelsea and danny are a thing now. They cuddle a lot. Idk, i’m not thinking too much about this right now.
Things I am thinking about
I wanna go to yuccaipa with clin. It is important to go and see things with your own eyes. Also, its on the way to joshua tree, and fulfills my need for novelty and new things.
I am so lucky to have friends who make self growth such a priority. We embrace change. We don’t fear that change might alter our relationships to eachother, in fact we might even expect change, and embrace the change in our relationships as a consequence. Similarly, I am lycky to have friends who want to, are in a position to, and have the capacity to make positive change in something greater than themselves in a very deliberate, long term way. This is a shockingly uncommon trait. Too many people are preoccupied with themselves (which is not a bad thing! Take care of yourself first!!), or take care of other things at great expense to themselves, to the degree that their capacity overall is degraded.
I’m getting better at not overextending my emotional capacity, and dealing with it when I am overwhelmed. I can be better, but it has been acceptable. I am getting better at doing things for other people, to help them, but with less emotional baggage tied to those actions. Less stressing about the situation, and simply focusing on carrying out the task.
About this post, 3 ways to make your team better, in the context of family, I am seeing that me, and others are taking on more leadership roles. Why? We can only control so much. We of course work a lot on self improvement, on making our individual abilities better. What else can we control? To some extent we can nudge teamwork in a positive direction. We don’t have too much control over bringing new people into the team, even marriage doesn’t mean there is someone new to the team. It can take years to earn the privilege of being a full fledged family member after marriage. So the only thing left is leadership. If leadership is lacking, then stepping up to a leadership position can improve your team. It comes with a lot of work, a lot of friction stepping up, but it is one of very few ways we can make our “team” better.
GPS and google maps is atrophying my ability to use a map and navigate. I need to recover my original abilities. This is what is happening to people who use AI too much. Thank god map reading isn’t as important as reading or writing or math.
Monk mode, Dagestan. Right of passage. I have talked about monk mode before, and the right of passage. Where someone (usually a man) works in mostly solitude for some time, working on themselves, growing, proving their independence, wrestling with their thoughts and emotions on their own. About the Dagestan meme, there was a famous Dagestani MMA fighter, and when asked how someone should train a boy to be an elite fighter, he said in his heavy accent, “Send him 2-3 years to Dagestan and forget.” (Dagestan is a remote part of Russia, where they have a rich history of wrestling and tons of camps to produce world class wrestlers/MMA fighters). Dagestan is also another right of passage, Dagestand is monk mode. I don’t know of any other way that men of our generation have grown into independent, capable men. I am unsure of why it works, I am unsure of any alternatives. But I have one theory about how it works. Change is so hard. Change requires you to leave yourself and occasionally even old relationships behind. There is judgement and criticism. People will have opinions when you change, and you won’t like that. All of these things add friction to an already difficult process. Going monk mode, going to Dagestan, moving to a new city, Connecticut, Arkansas, Albuquerque, it is the cocoon in which you evolve in solitude. You cannot be afraid of leaving yourself and your old relationships behind, you have already did that when you left your hometown.
I can’t let this weekly update distract me from actual blog writing. It is still writing, but thats why its dangerous. I can feel like I’m being very productive without actually working on the blog.