Hello From My Saturn Return

Well, here we are. Deep in the midst of my Saturn Return.

Today as I enter the last year of my 20s, I can't help but think about how my entire life turned over in the past year. A lot has changed.

I left my cushy job of 5.5 years and was happily, terrifyingly unemployed for 10 months. I went through two breakups and cried harder and more frequently than I have in a very long time. I learned how to cook, dropped down to my college weight, took my yoga practice to the next level, cultivated deeper friendships, and most importantly, I invested a lot of time re-learning who I am and finding peace with myself. 

I've spent most of my adult life being defined by things outside of me - my 9-year relationship, my job, my tendency for indulgence - and with all of those things stripped away at roughly the same time, I was forced to face what was left behind. Who am I apart from this person with whom I shared so much of my adulthood? How valuable are my skills outside of a company that had groomed me for leadership within its walls? In a very brief window of time, I walked away from the safe spaces I'd built over the years, areas I could count on for love and validation, in search of something different.

If I'm being totally honest, I've been feeling antsy for a few years now. But it's been an elusive, inexplicable feeling, too difficult to really name or to put into words - just this amorphous, floating suspicion that something's missing from my life. Looking back, even while living in San Francisco I questioned whether I was doing enough, or if I was just settling into an existence that was easy and comfortable. I was so anxious for change that not even moving to a new city could sate this hunger for something new. 

While I've always carried a few identities - yogi, foodie, writer, leader - I've never felt one more strongly than the others. I thought being unemployed would give me the space to pursue my passions and crystallize a stronger identity, that I would wake up one day and suddenly know who I'm supposed to be for the rest of my life. Instead, having an abundance of uninterrupted free time led to more questions than answers - what the fuck am I doing with my life? What do I want to do? What do I have to offer to the world? To my relationships? 

It's strange to admit, but dating and interviewing had the unintended effect of helping me reclaim my sense of self. Going through the exercise of developing my elevator pitch and speaking confidently about where I've been, what I've done, and what I'm interested in helped me zero in on the parts of myself that are most important to me, and I've learned how to lean into all of these parts - the good, the terrible, the weird.

I like the color black, reading about serial murders, and if my soul made a sound, it would probably sound a lot like Massive Attack's 1998 Mezzanine album. I practice yoga, eat at Michelin starred restaurants, write about myself daily, stalk everyone I meet, wear revealing clothing, send mean text messages when I'm upset, get ratchet to hip-hop music, and try to charm everyone into falling in love with me. I am the sum of all my strange, wonderful, disparate parts, and I no longer shrink myself to make others feel comfortable with the space I inhabit. Gaining this confidence has also helped me be more direct in all of my interactions - asking for what I want, being honest about my intentions, allowing myself to be vulnerable and accessible. 

Not a day goes by that I don't think about how incredibly lucky I've been the last few months since my last shitstorm of depression. I have a crazy amazing new job at one of the most widely respected agencies in the world. I feel closer and more connected to the people in my life. I'm dating, but not actively, and I've reached a pleasant place where I'm no longer chasing definition. I'm no longer uncomfortable. I smile more and feel more at home in my skin, settling easily into this new life I've built for myself - a life shaped by hard work, constant reflection, and happy circumstance. 

I'd like to give myself all of the credit for the growth I've achieved, but I owe a lot to the people around me - those who reached out and comforted me when I was feeling low, those who supported me during my job hunt, even those who hurt me, because without the hurt I wouldn't have forged the emotional resilience I have today. I don't think I'm over feeling depressed forever. As with any strong emotion or feeling it has its peaks and valleys, it ebbs and flows in and out of my life. But I can honestly say that this is the happiest and most settled I've felt in a really long time, and I've stopped questioning who I am or what I want or what I'm missing. Not that I have the answers, but I have an idea, which is more than I could say a few months ago. 

Today I'm 29 and feel more myself than ever before. 

Good News! I'm No Longer Pre-Diabetic!

Last year I read a pretty harrowing article in the L.A. Times about how Asian Americans, and especially Filipinos, have a disproportionately higher risk of getting diabetes at younger ages and lower weights than other ethnicities. 

My dad has diabetes. My mom had gestational diabetes. My grandfather died of diabetes. Diabetes runs on both sides of my family, so I know that I have a high risk of getting it too, especially when you consider my diet (I eat a shit ton of white rice, I love dessert, and I didn't start eating vegetables or drinking water until college). 

So, I got tested last year during my annual, and sure enough, my A1C tested at 5.8 - lower on the diagnosis spectrum, but nevertheless a positive test result for pre-diabetes. 

I'm not a "dieting" kind of person, mostly because I love food and all the best kinds tend to be fried or comprised largely of fat or sugar or carbs. But I'm also not stupid, so over the past year I've been making small dietary changes wherever I can. I stopped eating dessert everyday/after every meal. I stopped drinking boba and soda and sneak leafy greens into my daily diet by blending them into smoothies. I learned how to cook some staple healthy recipes, lessened the amount of white rice I eat on a weekly basis, and started eating more vegetables by roasting them into submission. I also worked out with a personal trainer for a couple months and learned how to lift weights and get some light cardio in without having to mindlessly run on a treadmill (which I fucking hate). 

Since I got tested last year, I'm happy to say that I've lost 10 lbs, dropped my percentage of body fat from 29% to 19%, and my A1C has dropped to 5.5! A modest dip, sure, but it means I'm no longer pre-diabetic, so I'm still counting it as a win. I know I could probably cut my sugar and white rice intake further, but really the most valuable lesson I've taken away from this experience is how to make small changes here and there to pave a path towards a sustainable, healthier lifestyle. 

I'm sharing my story not to gloat, but to encourage my other Asian American, and especially Filipino friends, to get tested for diabetes if you haven't already. I have a small frame - being 4"11 and weighing 100-ish lbs, I appear to be a skinny, healthy person, but that hasn't always been the case. I'm a great example that you can be young and petite and still have shitty, mushy insides that are prone to diabetes.

So get tested! And let me know how it goes.* 

_{*or don't, we don't need to be on the level of sharing our medical histories, it's cool}

Living Outside Your Comfort Zone

I'm back in LA after a quick 10-day jaunt around Europe. We had a 2-day stint in Berlin, and on my return trip I had a 12-hour layover in Stockholm, but for the most part we wiled away the hours exploring and eating our way through Paris. 

Paris was just as I remember it - picturesque and scenic, a city whose skyline looks stunning from any angle. It's a city that's difficult not to romanticize. When I think of Paris, I think of couples strolling hand-in-hand along cobblestone streets at night, white shuttered windows leading out to wrought iron balconies, and picnic blankets covered in charcuterie, cheese, and wine. On the RER train from Charles de Gaulle Airport into the city, an accordion player boarded and performed a song from Amélie's soundtrack, a quintessential welcome to Paris if there ever was one. 

I'll admit though - while I love to travel, traveling internationally always gives me a little anxiety. Fear creeps into my thoughts before I step foot into any new city - what if I get lost? What if I can't communicate with the locals? What if I'm an easy target, an obvious outsider and fumbling tourist? On my first trip to Paris I didn't even go out late at night, because I was young and alone and afraid that I wouldn't be able to get home safely if I wandered too far and stayed out too late. 

But this is the beauty and the importance of traveling, for it's when we are removed from our comfort zones and placed into unfamiliar situations that our true characters are revealed. And it's through how we choose to deal with these situations that our characters are built. 

After taking a day to get over my initial discomfort, we settled easily into life in Paris. We drank wine with every meal, had our fill of steak frites, picnicked along the Seine while watching the sunset sink into the horizon, and spent hours wandering through narrow alleyways, soaking up the sights and sounds of Paris at night. I can appreciate the slow satisfaction of life in Paris, the way Parisians take the time to enjoy each other's company, to admire the beauty around them, and to savor every morsel of food, every drop of wine. I can still feel the crunch of buttery croissants between my fingers, can still taste the sticky sweetness of Ladurée cakes and pastries on my tongue. 

One night we took a cab from Le Relais de l'Entrecôte to Le Comptoir Général, a bar / restaurant / club / living museum with French African influences. We arrived around 12:30am and they were closing up the line for the night, but a Frenchman took notice of us, three confused looking Asian girls and their Chilean companion, and claimed us as his friends so the doorman would let us in. Inside the air was thick with the heat of bodies pressed against other bodies. We enjoyed the music, let our bodies sway to the beat, and threw back some very stiff cocktails as 90s hip-hop blared on the speakers.

We wandered home sometime after 2am, my feet sore from a full day of walking, and in my drunken stupor I distinctly remember thinking - god this city is so fucking beautiful, how could I have ever been anxious about coming here? How could I have risked letting fear get in the way of this experience? Of any experience? 

Now that I'm back home I'm back to the grind, settling into a place in my life I've never quite been before. I'm single - like, really single - for the first time in 10 years, and I'm exploring new career opportunities. It's scary and sometimes daunting - the prospect of navigating uncharted life territories - but I'm leaning into the discomfort, because I know that right now I'm laying the groundwork for what the rest of my life will look like. I know I'll fall in love again. I know that I'm working towards a career that's more in line with my passions and interests. And the discomfort I feel now, faced with the unknown trajectory of the life that lies ahead of me, will dissipate and make room for more personal growth. 

Traveling, like yoga, allows me to recenter myself and find focus on what's truly important to me. To be honest, I needed to escape my life a little bit after my last breakup - eat, pray, love and all that - but I've been doing well recently. I'm reminding myself that it's ok to be afraid of the unknown, and to be alone, to have only myself to lean on. For years I've held space for someone else, making life decisions in consideration of how someone else's life would fit into those decisions, but I'm now at a point where any decision I make is for me, just me. 

I welcome these new challenges with the same confidence I carry with me elsewhere in my life - the same self-assuredness that everything will turn out as they should in the end. 

Practicing "Yes"

I consider myself a pretty controlled and calculating person. There's very little that I do or say without a shit ton of research and thoughtful planning in advance. This behavior bleeds into the way I perceive and react to everything - like if I'm frustrated about something or feel that someone's slighted me, I'll sit down and write out every possible angle that could explain why I'm having such a strong emotional reaction or that analyzes what the other person's perspective in the situation could be. Basically what I'm saying is I overthink fucking everything. 

But there have been several times in my life where I've felt unsteady or in flux where I've thought - fuck it - and spontaneously said "yes" to invitations without much extra thought or planning. These invitations have led to some of my most memorable experiences. 

When I studied abroad in Spain, I said "yes" when my friends decided to go to the apartment of a group of young Italians we'd met that night at a club, and though none of them spoke English, we bonded over our shared interests in alcohol and dancing. Back in 2010 after a Fake Blood show in SF, I said "yes" when another group of friends decided to hop in a stranger's limo and head to a mansion in Pac Heights owned by one of the cofounders of PayPal, where we saw the beginnings of an orgy before deciding to make a very well-timed exit. Saying "yes" led me to adopting Jojo without even meeting him, and in the past year, saying "yes" has taken me on a date with a 47-year old to an underground salsa club, to my first dance hall class, to Austin, to another memorable first date at the free concert series at Santa Monica Pier, and now, to Paris and Berlin, a trip I booked less than a month in advance and which I leave for in a few hours.

I know I've basically been this emoji --> 😩  in recent entries, but the reason I haven't written in two weeks is because I've been busy not being depressed and living my life and shit, and I've actually been doing well. Writing, for me, is like vomiting after drinking - once I get it out of my system, I immediately feel better. I've also been doing a lot of yoga, taking daily meditative walks, and telling my life story to anyone with the patience to listen to it (thanks, friends!), and all of this has helped me recenter myself and find perspective/peace when it comes to the variety of shit that's been stressing me recently.

I still have moments where I question what the fuck I'm doing, but the good news is that I feel like I've had a productive last few weeks crystallizing an idea of who I want to be and what I want my future to look like. It won't be easy - of course it won't - but I at least now have a renewed enthusiasm to embrace the unknown and to settle into the uncomfortable, despite how much doing so goes against my nature. 

I just don't have time to be scared or to feel unsure of myself. Who does? Saying "yes" has gotten me this far, and so far I've enjoyed a pretty successful career, long, loving relationships, and enough memories to fill hundreds of pages.

I'm looking forward to more "yes" experiences. 

Special Thanks to My Badass Network of Friends

I had a whole blog here and it was almost done, twice, and then the copy was inexplicably deleted, twice, as I was writing it, so now I just fucking give up. 

Basically what it said was thank you to everyone who's reached out to me over the past couple of weeks - family members, close friends, friends I used to be close to but fell out of touch with, friends I never talk to but always have a blast with whenever we happen to be drinking at the same place, friends I met once, like, 7 years ago and haven't spoken to since, and everyone in between. Not sure what I did to deserve such beautiful people in my life, but I appreciate the fact that you're in it. 

And if you ever need someone to talk to - you, whoever's reading this - I'd love to return the favor. If you feel like shit and need someone to talk to, I'm your girl. If you want to rant about an ex, I live for that shit. Or if you just feel weird and unhappy and don't really know why and don't know how to talk about it but feel like you should do something about it but don't really know what, hit me up. We don't even have to know each other that well. Because there's nothing I love more than asking people uncomfortable questions and prying into their histories and getting them to tell me all of their secrets. It sounds creepy, but trust me, you want to get that shit out and you'll find no judgment here. Because I'm a fucking weirdo and absolutely nothing phases me. 

So yeah, thanks. Thanks for your kindness, for letting me sob into your ear, and for helping me avoid paying for therapy. Because I'm on Obamacare and I'm not 100% that shit is even covered.

You guys are great, A+ human beings and I love you.