Growing up into Fate

Growing up.

I've been thinking that maybe "growing up" really just means working on and strengthening bits of our humanity. Growing up and staying grown up requires work. Week by week, I'm required to make little choices and perform small tasks in things such as emotional maturity, kindness, fiscal responsibility, and career progress.

I constantly make choices to sway me towards a certain direction. Whether it's accumulating experience, knowledge, or skills. I make a choice when I sit down and read a book or watch a youtube video. I make a choice when I go for a run or a bike ride.

I wish I had possessed an intuitive understanding of this in high school and college: how little things add up to larger things and how attention to the little things was your due diligence to a larger picture or goal.

But I'm glad I eventually came to this conclusion on my own and although I feel "behind" everyone else in success, I am content knowing I'm on the path to becoming my own person.

Fate. Destiny.

I actually believe that everything happens for a reason. I prefer beliefs in destiny, fate, and karma over chaos and randomness. Without such beliefs, it would be impossible for me to maintain a sense of sanity in this forever changing and dynamic world. The unexpected can always strike because it is impossible to see all of the seemingly infinite variables of life's equation. Making sense of the chaotic and seemingly random is why mathematicians work with summations and series and laplace transforms. In fact, laplace transforms are the reason I clutch onto fate and destiny.

If every action we take turns us into a certain person and leads us towards a certain path and towards certain places in life, spiting even the most difficult of circumstances, therein lies our fate/destiny. God plays a part but he gives us control and free will over what we do with our circumstances.

In many ways, I feel like I was destined to meet the people I have formed relationships with in my life. I ended up here in the Bay Area, despite my shortcomings as a young and naive soul with many imperfections. Looking back, I feel happy. But I continue to grow up and I strive to make my destiny even better.

2016 New Years Themes

TLDR: My New Years "resolution" is to maintain a compassionate and conscientious identity while learning how to disconnect from the clutter, focus on what's important, and work towards personal wealth.

This year, my resolutions are centered around themes:

1. Disconnect

While I in school, I became reliant on social media. But during work life, social media is growing less appealing when it feels like I have to put more and more effort into image crafting and caring about what people think. The pervasiveness of social media has become a nuisance to me. Every time I check my phone with no notifications, I go straight to Facebook or Instagram, and it's usually of no productive value to me but it's an addiction! It's become so much of an addiction that I check my phone while driving impulsively. And that's really unsafe.

So one major theme of 2016, starting now, is "disconnect." I'm not sure how I will achieve this and how I will measure any success tangibly. I've heard of people swearing that smart watches change their life and during the brief week I had a Garmin Vivoactive, I can see why. A phone is something that is fully engaging while a smart watch limits your interactions and lets you stay on task. Because I had the smart watch to keep me inconspicuously connected, I was satisfied with my "connectedness" and rarely felt the urge to check my phone. It was great. Unfortunately, the Garmin Vivoactive did not live up to my aesthetic preferences and was too bulky for comfort on my wrist. I will keep an eye out for newer models of this watch.

One positive action that I'll take towards this is to hike and backpack more. I love the outdoors and I love taking in the scenery and, once I'm out there, I love the fact that I'm disconnected from society and work and all my human burdens. I love coming back and reconnecting, too, and I think that's part of what I'll enjoy from this theme. Honestly, I sometimes think the fundamental idea behind both the engagement with internet/social media and the search for great outdoors... is really that search for connectivity. They feel very different ... but isn't it true that we need people to feel connected to humanity and that we, conversely, need nature to feel connected to our personal humanity?

I feel like I'm halfway there. But I'll need to make an everyday, conscious effort to win this game.

2. Focus

This seems like a similar concept to the first, but my goals are different. I want to disconnect because I want to free myself from the clutter of "information overload" and from the need to "image craft" on social media. Once free, I want to fill it in with new, resonant, and/or productive things. But in order to do that, I must obtain a skill I has been underdeveloped for many years now: focus.

--the ability to set my mind on a task without getting distracted or being pulled in different directions. I've set many goals and resolutions in life only to be lost because I did not have focus. I've even started many unpublished blog posts that were unfinished because I did not have focus. It has to do with self-discipline against distractions, daily dedication, and determination even when failures occur. So instead of having goals or resolutions, I am going to work on my "focus" this year. That will be what is on my mind every time I tackle a new task.

To work on this, I will start with 15-20 mins of yoga stretch every day and 5 minutes of meditation every other day. Baby steps for now.

3. Wealth

For me, this is a weird theme. Money has always been a central theme in my life because it has always been a huge area of stress. My family has always been barely afloat on the financial front. I may have studied abroad on a tuition scholarship, but I struggled to make ends meet, feed myself, and pay for room and board. I used my free time in tutoring for money (and sometimes food) and had many stressful, sleepless nights. I had enough mindset to stay afloat because my mother was always very frugal and handled her credit well so our family never went completely broke.

However, in the game of wealth, I don't feel that I grew up with any role models. Wealth to a comfortable degree, where I could spend wisely but comfortably enough to buy nice, durable things, did not seem attainable to me while I was growing up. It was really just about survival...

I have to realize now that I am approaching a position where I can turn up. I've never felt interested in this whole grown up world of investments, mortgages, interest... Looking back, it was either because I never gave it much thought or I was scared of reaching very high (the less wealth you have, the less risks you can take).

In practice, tax season is coming up; time to really understand what I'm doing when I fill in those boxes! To start, I resolve to read more about how to manage my money, my wealth, and how to achieve enough to live comfortably and give back to my community. (Now taking book suggestions!)

P.S. Obviously this theme does not just apply to monetary wealth. :)

What I Learned from Dogsitting

Thoughts on Responsible Dog Ownership and Pet Obsession

If you know me well, you know I will often joke about how small dogs are not "real" dogs. It's not that I really think that they are a separate species (I go so far as to to joke chihuahuas and pompoms are big rats). I despise the idea that they were bred to look like permanent puppies that irresponsible dog owners can baby. Because they are smaller and and so "cute" and easier to handle and dominate, they are often irresponsibly bred, which I believe is the reason for the "chihuahua mix epidemic" in adoption shelters and kennels. Small dogs and dogs bred just for cuteness reflect human pet obsession and babying.

Larger dogs tend to encourage a more rewarding companionship since they cannot be treated like babies all their life. There's the puppy phase and then it's over after a year or so. However, they are likely to become abandoned dogs if they are not socialized properly or not given the proper love. They end up misunderstood when they develop aggression or uncontrollable behaviors as adults. Because of this, I despise the notion that pets are just pets. Do NOT bring a "just a pet" mentality to large breed puppies. Why do you think there are so many German Shepherd mixes and Husky mixes in the shelters?! </endrant>

The first domesticated wolves were allies to humans. We made it each other better and helped each other survive. Since the first alliance, dogs have evolved together with us. But in a modern, pet-obsessed culture, it's so easy to forget that these souls can form real, meaningful bonds with us that are forged out of respect.

The Adorable Toasted Marshmallow (Dogsitting)

Last month, I had the opportunity to dogsit our new family pup, a 10-month-old Japanese Akita, for a short span of 10 days. The Akita breed is a large breed of dog and it is classified among the most dangerous dog breeds, next to the Husky and the German Shepherd. Knowing this, responsible dog ownership over Mashi was very important to me.

In sum total, she gave me something to live for--outside of my work, my boyfriend, and my friends and family. She gave me a glimpse of what it took to really, truly be responsible for another soul: self-awareness, dedication, and time.

You have to be self-aware in everything you do with and around a puppy. In developmental psychology, the brain is constantly making positive or negative associations with events so every little action can affect their development. Associative learning is at the crux of caring for a young life. For example, one day Mashi ran out of the house while my landlord had the garage open. In my many years of dog ownership, I'd learned that chasing after a dog will only make the dog run away. So I slowly approached her and to my pleasant surprise she did not run away as I took hold of her collar. This was a key breakthrough because I wanted her to learn that being offleash was okay as long as she let me approach her and take her collar. If I brought her inside the house at that moment, I would end up letting her associate "the collar grab" with "ruining the fun of being offleash." So instead, I put her training leash (15 ft) on and had Marvin take her for a walk in the park. In contrast, many dogs associate the collar grab with being dragged somewhere they don't want to go. I was always on thinking about my actions, even the tiniest of ones, and trying to remain self-aware.  Most importantly, my self-awareness helped me communicate with the dog because it made me aware of how I was communicating with her and how she might communicate back.

Self-awareness also helps a lot with dedication. In my last microblog, I brought out the quote "being awesome requires constant vigilance." Nothing is truer when you care for another being. Consistency is a key principle of associative learning but it takes a great deal of patience and discipline to do the right thing the large majority of the time. While laziness is the great bane of consistency, I found that when there was another life on the line, I was less likely to be lazy. I got out of the house to walk her in the cold mornings and evenings. I made sure she made positive social contact with dogs at the dog park. And I made sure she was fed and exercised. With dedication and self-awareness, I ended up exercising awareness over Mashi's needs. (It wasn't all perfect. One morning I failed to exercise her adequately because I had an early work meeting... and she ended up chewing up my roommate's slipper.) But even though it was a demanding "job" to care for her needs, I really think the love I developed for Mashi and time I invested in her over the short 10 days made me a better person. It put things in perspective and got me out of my own head and that is a huge thing for me.

Last but not least, the most difficult requirement of all when caring for another soul: time. My demographic profile (female, mid-twenties in the Bay Area) is not something to take lightly. It's an age when time is limited, careers are mobile, relationships volatile. In the fray of it all, taking care of a dog seems like something that could disrupt my current set of priorities (skill/knowledge acquisition, career, social life, relationships). Don't get me wrong--I know that in the future, the honor of forming a lasting bond with "man's best friend" will be high on my priority list. That bond in itself is a huge, irreplaceable reward--not to mention the endless warm and fuzzy instagram-worthy pictures, loving cuddles, crowd-pleasing adorableness, and cuteness overloads. However, unless I had adequate financial resources and could tag team with someone or have reliable dogsitters of my own, I would not risk adopting a puppy or a young adult dog.

What I learned from dogsitting is that I'm not ready to responsibly own a dog yet. It was a relief to bring Mashi back to my home in SoCal so I could "live my own life." But in the near future, who knows?

I still want to adopt a border collie and name him Spock.

But I want to earn that dream.