things i…
did:
went to one of my favorite dance classes in South Bay at Enjoy Dance Studio by Nate Souryasack
I could write an entire article about my relationship with dance, but what I’ll say now is that for the past few years it’s felt like a perpetual chase for some semblance of the immersive catharsis I felt back when I was dancing more seriously. This class has been one such source - and so I keep going back.
created an acai bowl rating Notion page
Back when I was in Hawai’i over holiday break, I very randomly started going slightly viral for reviewing acai bowl places and got tons of recommendations. Even though I had to leave Hawai’i, I didn’t want those recommendations to go to waste so I made this website to share the crowd-sourced recommendations (and to yap some more about the places I did try 🤭)
had an energizing conversation with my co-worker
People are so cool man, and the influence the right people can have on you is immeasurable. I was having a pretty low energy day the other day, but I remembered I had been meaning to ask my co-worker about her personal website/blog because I had also been toying with the idea of getting back into writing. What began with questions about React components turned into a philosophical discussion about soul friends and authenticity. I left absolutely invigorated. The universe is so kind and the world is my oyster!
stumbled upon the best broccoli I’ve ever made and went viral for it
I always considered myself a good cook, but I came to the humbling realization that actually I’m extremely uncreative when it comes to my day-to-day cooking. How could I call myself a good cook if my typical dinner consisted of a yogurt bowl and a Persian cucumber I wrapped in turkey deli meat? (I’m not making this up)
Anyway, this night I found myself severely fiber deficient and wanting to use up the head of broccoli sitting in my fridge, so I found this smashed broccoli recipe on TikTok to try out. I didn’t have the same ingredients, but I had tangential ingredients and let creativity take over. My thought process was mostly:
- I don’t have parmesan, but I have feta. That’s cheese.
- These recipes usually come with a dipping sauce, but their flavor profile is all wrong for my application. Well feta is mediterranean and I made this really tasty garlic yogurt sauce last week for Turkish pasta. I’ll also add cumin for fun because I like cumin.
- Holy shit this is delicious.
I got so excited about how delicious it was that I ate the entire head of broccoli in one sitting, immediately produced a TikTok at record speed because the world needed to know how delicious it was, and spent the rest of the night regretting eating all that broccoli (too much fiber…)
thought about:
to hell with should
I’ve decided to remove the term should from my personal vocabulary. Should has functioned as a heuristic in my life, short-circuiting judgements on my current state and future direction. But I’ve increasingly noticed it to be noisy and inaccurate, making 2 fundamental flaws:
- It assumes dissatisfaction with the current state. This ends up being the most harmful when I habitually apply it to my feelings. I have an internal rulebook on what are acceptable emotions or beliefs to hold, and those outside of it should be eliminated or changed. But what if it was okay to be sad sometimes or it was okay to disagree with people I cared about? There’s no should to any of that, I just am.
- It assumes what state would be better. I find that the short-circuit ends up skipping over things I’m naturally drawn to for the sake of some applied sense of responsibility. There’s always a reason for why I do something, and those reasons can usually be distilled down to an extrinsic should or an intrinsic want (even when it’s not obvious). So then why would I ever do anything I didn’t feel intrinsically aligned with? And if I am intrinsically aligned, why would I ever frame it in a way as if I’m being extrinsically made to do it?
I once heard that as we get older, the challenge becomes not learning, but unlearning, and this has felt very true in this case. In unlearning the should, I leave space to accept what I am and what I want.
other thoughts
- I’m so in love with creativity as the process of turning an idea into a tangible thing. I suspected I’d love it last year when I committed myself to exploring it more in 2024, and I fall more in love with it with every thing I create.
- Interesting how after I graduated, there’s so much more time and mental space to listen to myself. School was an environment that waterboarded me with shoulds (especially at Berkeley), but now that the noise has dissipated, I can finally hear the whispers of my inner child.
- Have black sesame seeds ever been used in a savory context? I only ever see it in sweet contexts, but surely it’s not that different from its white counterpart? How come only white sesame seeds get to be savory?
learned:
- How to use Quartz - but also I’d hardly say I’ve learned. I’m more so learning because I really have no idea what I’m doing. It’s a really cool platform for publishing Obsidian-like notes, but with ultimate customization since you get access to the codebase.
- What digital gardening is - wow this is so similar to what I want to do with my online presence (fun fact: Quartz was built initially for digital gardening). Personally, I would like to be slightly more curated and presented than a true digital garden, but it’s captured what I want to do better than a “blog” would.
consumed:
Book: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
Blogs:
Other interesting stuff: