Entry Scraps

I have a severe back log of entries I wanted to write, but no time. Life is kind of frantic and in the process of a lot of change. Change, maturation, escalation, transition, etc. When the backlog is humongous, I get a little intimidated about writing. I don’t want to skip through large swaths of my life, since I feel in some ways that I’m going more into the transition into “adulthood” (aka real life) more so 2 years out of college than immediately after graduation. I’m starting to travel for work again after 4 months working on a “local” project in Jersey (read: mostly at home, but sometimes making a 3 hour round trip trek to Basking Ridge, NJ), and will be flying to DC until November.

Going to thought dump my notes that I was keeping on iPhone for what I wanted to post in an entry, but couldn’t gather enough time and mental concentration to form into real sentences.

5/19/14: Back to NYC feeling super inspired from Alumni Weekend in Philly

• Felt a little in a slump going to Philly (what do I do with my life? need to introduce some forward momentum with my career, etc) and came back feeling so revitalized. Penn people are awesome
• Had brunch at Mike’s beautiful place at the Ritz Carlton residences near City Hall. I love his real world coffee maker!!! Everything in his apartment is so wonderful and well put together that it was a pleasing experience just being in his home. This really made me start thinking that it’s ok to spend on luxuries in life… I feel like I have this mentality of putting myself in more discomfort than I need to be out of some desire to keep my quality of life low so I won’t have to adjust, or maybe… just not take it for granted? But being in his home was seriously super nice. How do I get a million dollar property myself?
• I ran into Angel, who talked about her plans for a year long solo travel tour of the world! Her budget is nearly 3x what Andrew spent going around the world… haha
• I also met up Lum again for the first time! It’s funny that I’m posting this in September because I’ve seen him since then
• Heard from someone or another about Alice Lee’s decision to just pick up and go to Italy… talk about someone who has all of the resolve and talent I wish could be manifested. (I don’t know her personally, but she’s very talented and her name always comes up)
• Nancy is only shipping two boxes to California to start her life. That’s impressive!
• I heard a little more from Carlin about how Audrey and Henry are managing their shop, Henry’s day job, and running the Dragon Boat team — basically working 3 jobs. That’s so intense and impressive. I’m always impressed by people my age doing these things, but I don’t know why I am. People my age are doing tons of cool shit, I have no reason not to be as well
• Revisiting banana leaf was awesome and delicious
• Spent the night hanging around shawn’s room doing nothing, just like old times
• Margaret’s hair is so long and lovely! like a mermaid
• Chapterhouse is beautiful (a coffee shop in South Philly) — I went and got the Thai tea on Shiella’s recommendation
• I really like center city, it’s also so small to walk through
• Philly is a really mellow place to be. Like some of best and worst parts of NY put together. It’s a city you only grow to love more (maybe the opposite of new york)
• Ben was a little worried about connecting deeply emotionally with the person in his life, and while talking about it, Julie, Ben, and I found such value in these types of conversations. I don’t know if I’ve had them with non-penn people? (At the time of this writing) maybe only Kawin since for a while, he was the only non-Penn person I talked to that much, but these types of conversations are always really top of mind with Penn kids
• I need to come early next year to grab a wharton bag (didn’t get any freebies from this weekend!)
• Encouraged to see james liu’s blog
• This trip got me thinking about careers and switches and progression
• I’ve been thinking a lot about spending. I gchatted with kelvin about trips and finances while at Chapterhouse, and found out he was buying a place! I also talked to Shubha on gchat, and found out she had bought a car.
• I’ve been getting more introverted but that connection with people really gets my blood flowing (okay, so maybe I’m not introverted, ha). I’m so inspired by people at Penn and I think that enthusiastic, idealistic spark is probably in people everywhere, I just need to not be shy and get out there.
• Once again talking about someone I don’t know personally, but Bing Chen came up a lot. The moral of story is put yourself out there and talk to people. Almost nothing will go wrong out of it. And to make up for being more introverted, maybe I just need to block off more “me” time and then turn it on or off. and really turn it “on” when I’m on
• I love the girls group we started and getting their emails. This type of connection/rekindling should occur with all of my relationships. I need to treat them well. Dean is definitely rubbing off on me here, but I want to commit to this. This will be May’s project. [September Jenny: This was sort of May's project, but in general my annual project died.]
• I need to update my blog more regularly. Had been holding off on how to approach the dean post but I do want to make one.
• It’s so good to meet with friends and share good news. Love to hear it, too. Such happy lovely days.
• Ate too much sugar

8/27/14: A miscellaneous revelation in the CVS while walking home

My life is shockingly easy — I just spent only 30 minutes running all my errands, which included cashing a check from a trivial class action law suit (free money), picking up a box of hair dye (it’s so easy to change how you look these days), picking up meds, ordering good tasty food for cheap, calling people, inviting friends over on a Facebook event… I even got a sweet $100+ refund check from MTA for turning in an invalid card I found on the street that turned out to be a monthly unlimited. This is a really nice place to be in, where I’m just like, astounded at how easy it is to live. I call someone and an old Chinese guy comes and picks up my laundry and returns it for me all folded and cleaned for the price of a tub of guacamole at Whole Foods. (Ok, the guacamole’s extraordinary Whole Foods inflation is really the problem here. But so easy still.) I can treat health problems with some minor meds before it spirals into anything severe. As a freelancer, I’ve been getting some random checks coming in all this time. My life is astoundingly convenient and comfortable… I feel almost a little guilty. Not that I don’t appreciate it or love it, I just don’t want to take this for granted.

8/28/14: Where is the work, really?

I’ve been doing a lot of freelance jobs, although recently, I’ve been finding them more stressful than my day job. It’s almost always very time consuming, usually burning on time I don’t have, with strict clients and technical problems that I have a difficult time solving. I need to really evaluate the effort input/productivity output that’s going on here. I’m a little conflicted, since I do feel like I usually take away some valuable skills (or at least, life lessons) after projects, especially the bad ones. Also, after going through a slew of interviews and life evaluations, I’ve gone back to not being quite sure if UX is what I’m interested in doing in the long run (yes, after ALL of that). I definitely like it, but I’m drawn to design as a thinking practice/approach to life. But a “designed” life is really more how I like to think about any situation. That is, I’m starting to make the transition from being interested in design as a final product, but more so as a process/tool/strategy/framework that can be applied to anything. That’s how it should be, and that’s why it’s proliferating into so many different fields. Which now leads me to wonder, what is the final product that this tool (design) can be applied to, then? Maybe that’s what I’ll wonder about in this next three months.