[mind scribble space..🧘🏻♀️]
Sunday 06.15.2025
My dad is a Virgo, and my rising sign is a Virgo. I don’t particularly believe in astrology, but I have to admit it makes a strange kind of sense. I look like my dad, always have. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized it’s not just the face, it’s the temperament too. Our stoicism. The way we are perfectionists. The way we both think we’re right, even when we know we’re not. I love and hate that I’m so much like my dad — comforted that there’s a blueprint for how I am, but frustrated that I’m still trying to break out of the mold he unknowingly built around me. On my 18th birthday, he wrote me a 12-page letter detailing the ways I fall short and his expectations for me as an adult. Other people might find that extreme, but I still reread it every year or so. It’s rigid and idealistic and laced with pressure, but it’s also deeply him. It keeps me humble and grounded.
Today marks exactly one year since my college graduation. In some ways, I still feel like a college student, but in others, I feel lightyears away. I get really nostalgic when I think about senior year, especially the last few months of it. There was a warmth and ease to that time that I don’t think I’ll find again in quite the same way. Yet, I’m so glad I’ve grown out of that environment, and I’ve come to really like the person I’m becoming. Still, I hear my dad’s voice in the back of my head, measuring and urging. A part of me will always want to make him proud, even in the moments I’m trying to carve out space for who I want to be on my own terms. But for now, New York summer is here. And my life is my life.
Monday 05.05.2025
I'm halfway done with my Master's program (what). The theme for these last few months has definitely been screwing my head back on -- slowly, stubbornly -- and learning to let go of things, ideas, dreams (and people) that just don't deserve my energy anymore. Not in a dramatic way, just quietly walking away, while still holding a strange tenderness for what they once meant to me. The start of 2025 was rough.. spending too much time dwelling on the wrong things, doubting if I made the right choice in going to grad school, feeling emotionally claustrophobic in the New York winter. But something shifted at the end of March. Like I came up for air.
April was so kind to me. I went to my first ever film premiere, and I also attended my first ever film festival (one that I helped program/curate, just a little). The weather's getting better, and I've caught this second wind of creativity that I don't want to let go of. Next week, I'm traveling around Asia with my mom for two weeks, and after watching When Life Gives You Tangerines, this trip feels even more like a gift. I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be living the kind of life my immigrant parents never dreamed of having, let alone the chance to live it themselves, and I want so badly to make it count. It used to be a pressure, but now it's motivation. And turns out, my kindness, my sensitivity, my intensity aren't weaknesses. They're why I'm still here, still trying, still soft.
Thursday 02.13.2025
I've been sitting on making a website/portfolio for my creative work for a better part of two years now, but never sat myself down to do it. I blamed it on being too much work, having to pay monthly and yearly for a domain, not knowing front-end web development (which I now do, yay!), etc. But deep down, it was always because I never saw my work as being good enough to spend this much time creating a space to show it off. Plus, as far as writing about me, I find other people far more interesting, and much rather spend time indulging in their stories. But alas, my work is a mirror of myself, and I'm really trying to work on this thing where I'm proud of what I've accomplished, idk, whatever that means... So here we are.