In 13 days I will turn 31 years old. With so much going on at the turn of the decade last year, I never got around to publishing a reflection on 30 years, so I hope to do that today.
Journaling has been a cornerstone of my mental health. It has helped me organize the mess in my mind and narrate the story of my life. In these journals is a collection of just about everything. Task lists, daily reflections, prayers to God, and outpourings of my deepest thoughts. In the spirit of paying homage, I figured that this reflection on 30 years should share some semblance to the stacks of paper that tell the story of me.
A reflection (day, month, year, decade)
day - Waking up to the sound of rain is such a simple yet joyful thing in my life. Sitting down and collecting my thoughts to write this is incredibly difficult, yet rewarding. Most days I wish for nothing more than to have peace, a pen, and some paper. The pen and paper are plentiful, the peace is hard to come by.
month - I recently shared with my friend that I think this is the first time in my life where everything is okay. I noticed this only when I was writing in my journal and realized… I’ve run out of problems to solve. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t worried, stressed, or upset about something in my life. I’m so used to waiting for the other shoe to drop and there is none. This is going to take some getting used to.
year - In 2020, my friend Mark recruited me to his product team and I decided then that I would pursue product management as a career. It took me 3 years (April 2023) to get back on my feet and in the mix, but I consider that a testament to the perseverance I have in everything I do. I couldn’t be any more satisfied with the result. I held out until I found a role that inspired me, and this past year has been the greatest blessing of my life.
decade - Give yourself grace. That is the lesson that defines the decade. Be gentle with yourself. Everything you do is from a place of everything you know at that moment in time. You know all the lessons - it’s about making a plan, taking action, and having patience. You are tough on others because you are tough on yourself. Give yourself grace, and you will know how to give it to others.
A list (of floating thoughts)
I can’t stop listening to Maggie Rogers (Don’t Forget Me)
I’m excited for Sarah’s long awaited return (briefly) to California in April
When can I go back to Japan?
This bulging disk is really getting in the way of my running aspirations
Membership at The Huntington Library was a great idea
An outpouring of my deepest thoughts
At 30 years old, I am just now starting to feel like I am in control of my emotions. It’s something I never really learned to do as a kid and it took a tremendous amount of work to even wrap my head around how to go about this. Something I realized about myself once I got older is that I was a kid with really big emotions. This part hasn’t changed. I still feel things deeply and I am grateful that I do - I feel like my life is incredibly rich for having felt things so passionately. But as a kid, when I felt strong emotions, I didn’t know to process them.
The strongest emotions I felt were fear and rejection. In some way, I always felt like an outsider everywhere I went. These were such painful emotions to experience as a kid and I had no idea that nearly everything I did in life could be traced back to these experiences. In one aspect, I am incredibly proud of myself - I turned every sour lemon in my life into something sweet and amazing. I was driven to succeed in everything I did. I learned how to be strong on my own and build a life full of things I could lean on when life got tough.
In another aspect, my heart aches for the child in me. My eyes well up with tears when I think of how tough that must have been to be scared and to feel unwanted as a kid. All the coping mechanisms are clear - the things I did to fit in, the things I did to go my own way, and the things I did when it was all just too much. To say that who I am today is a person that was driven by fear and rejection, amongst other emotions, is not how I want to tell the story of my life. But, it’s also fairly accurate.
In some ways, my life unfolded beautifully - I have a soft spot for people at the margins of life. I feel obligated to protect people and I am extremely conscientious in everything I do. In many other ways, I’ve felt the crushing weight of unresolved emotions. Poor relationship management, closing myself off from the world, and the general malaise of psychosomatic pain are all too familiar feelings of the past decade.
I’ve spent an incredible amount of resources trying to resolve the knots in my heart and I’m proud to say that I’ve made tremendous progress. I deal with most of my emotions the way the best version of myself would. It’s tough to say that I would do anything differently, because at every stage of my life, I did everything I could to find the thorn and pull it out. The only advice I have for myself moving forward is to feel the pain. Feel the pain, don’t numb it. As I say this, I recognize that addiction is incredibly difficult and the most reasonable outcome when we have nowhere else to go. Sometimes, numbing the pain and succumbing to addictive behaviors felt like a reasonable sacrifice given the circumstances. What I didn’t realize was that I was also sacrificing all the love, joy, and growth that was on the other side.
A prayer
One constant in my life has been - everything will be okay. Ironically, as a person of faith, the hardest part about life seems to be trusting that things will turn out okay. My mother is the strongest believer in our family, yet, she constantly worries about my sister. I told her one day, “What’s the point of being a Christian and having faith in God, if you’re just going to worry all the time?” I should definitely take my own advice.
Behind the smoke and mirrors of seemingly important things in life, spirituality feels like the most important variable I can leverage. When I am spiritually aligned, I feel like my life has meaning. I am reminded of God’s sovereign domain over humanity, of all the promises he has kept in my life, and I have peace.
I pray that in this new decade of life that I constantly seek re-alignment. That I never stray too far from God that I find myself serving my own ego and desires. That I am constantly reminded of my purpose in this world, which is to give unto others the love I have received in my life.