I managed to meet almost 14 people today, and didn’t leave my house. I gave away a few things on Buy Nothing, Irene Solaiman came over, and then I hosted an impromptu Book Club session for Ken Liu’s Hidden Girl.
Irene can be hard to talk to because it often feels like she is putting on a front and either self-deprecating in a fake way or humble bragging (although she also balances that with praising her friends quite widely), but after talking to her for some time about self love and the past two years, she did have a good point. I need to find a way to talk about my accomplishments in a way that recognizes the incredible magnitude of what I’ve done, whether it’s joining an elite fellowship like Assembly or renovating and decorating my apartment by myself. I’m often very cautious of bragging about my accomplishments, but it can also be frustrating for people around me to not see me recognize my own greatness and be a negative, glass half-empty kind of person.
I think this realization is the new “imposter syndrome” for me. Rather than feeling like I am somewhere I don’t deserve to be, I’ve actually done a LOT. Like, incredible amounts of things! And I am afraid of stepping up and taking the total amount of credit that I am deserved because I am afraid of being seen as being too conniving or Wharton-y or… I don’t know what, maybe like one of those “sharks” who excessively brags about their career. I need to demonstrate expertise, confidence, and claim the credit I am earned before I can be so outsize in my accomplishments that it is not even within question. I am used to being so great that it is obvious and my reputation needs no introduction. But as I am still in the middle parts of my career, I need to master the art of taking credit.
Today I also discovered that Bernie from Bombfell is now the Chief of Staff at Bowery Farming! This feels like the universe throwing me a sign. I was so interested in Bowery Farming before as the largest player in the vertical farming space, but struggled to identify what job I could even do there. I emailed him to hopefully ask him for advice and help strategize. Specifically: What does the company do, what roles are needed, and what roles could I potentially help for? After doing design for a number of years, I am still in love with it but I feel like I am neglecting the other skills I am good at — strategy, research, quantitative analysis, and operational logistics. I would love to get involved in a vertical farming company to understand their product needs and work with actual hardware and actual plants, and just really dive in deep and understand the economics of agriculture. He hasn’t responded yet, but I hope he does as this is the first role I’ve really been interested in since getting the very lukewarm response from Graphika (and now hearing that Camille Francois is leaving for Niantic). The information disorder space is fascinating and I feel like I could get a job in the top tiers of this space, and in many ways, that would make much more sense as a life path than diving into vertical farming. But something about this step feels right, like all of the reading I’ve done on ecology and permaculture somehow is pointing me in this way. Here’s to hoping.
As for Hidden Girl, the book was fantastic on so many fronts. I couldn’t get into Dandelion Dynasty, so I was surprised how much I loved his sci-fi influenced short stories about technology, humanity, art, aesthetics, memory, motherhood, heritage, history, and what it meant to remember and honor the past and protect the future. There were so many beautiful running themes throughout the book that makes it easily one of my favorite fiction books (very high praise). The benefits of having a Chinese American author are immediately felt in the way the book mixes spirituality and science fiction, the question of heritage across species as a constant yearning question that so many second generation immigrants have, and the influences of eastern vs. western civilizations that makes the universe so much richer. His clear understanding of technical concepts makes the ideas provoking and rich, like the types of speculative fiction we did in design school except actually written with strong characters, plot development, and world building. Reading the futures that he imagined felt at once uncanny, sweet, horrendous, magical, and in many ways, inevitable. I’m going to read Paper Menagerie now as I try to get through my ever growing queue.
