welcome to my blog

or: Where are you really from?

My grandmother had remarkable, somehow ageless skin. Like she discovered the whole glass skin thing before glass skin had a name and was a beauty trend. She also had a perfect perm — the Asian grandma perm — for as long as I could remember. It always worked for her, and I never knew how.

I also never knew how to tell her any of this. She didn’t speak much English. I don’t speak Toisanese, or any Chinese dialect for that matter, besides what little Mandarin I struggled to learn in Chinese 101. So mostly what I did was sit across from her and smile and eat whatever appeared in front of me and hope the smiling and the eating said what I meant, which was: Thank you. Your cooking is incredible. You look incredible. You are incredible. I genuinely hope I got your genes.

This is, more or less, my experience of being Chinese-American.

I didn’t go to Chinese school on the weekends. I took exactly one piano lesson — because my cousins were taking lessons, and I showed up and assessed the situation and decided “nahhhh”. I did not attend an Ivy League university; I went to *gasp* a state school. I am not a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. I’ve definitely been the only Asian person in a meeting full of white men, and I always knew my shit — which, yes, is just who I am, but also: it was never not a choice. (Unless it was math. I am pretty bad at math.)

Not stereotypically Asian-American. In certain circles, this has been noted.

But I’m also not what *ahem* many Americans consider American. I look the way I look, and in certain rooms, that’s the thing that gets clocked first — before the New York-adjacent attitude, before anything else about me. 

Then there’s The Dreaded Question: “Where are you from?” (New York. Jersey City. Take your pick.) 

“No, but where are you really from?” (Did you not hear me the first time?) 

We do a few rounds until I get frustrated and say something resembling “I’m Chinese-American.”

My name is a case study. Amanda: after the Dynasty character, apparently; a few of my cousins also have Dynasty names. Jane: after Jane Pauley, of the Today show. Lee is the Chinese part, the one that arrives before I do. Primetime soap, network news anchor, Chinese surname… about as American a name as you can have.

I do have a Chinese name — it’s Toisanese, something to do with the moon. We think. Based on my best phonetic guess and a Gemini search, it might be “Ngut Vah” which means “Moon Flower”. But I’ll never know for sure, because the only person who knew for certain was my grandmother, and she’s gone. (P.S. Any Toisanese speakers here who can help me decipher my own name?)

So. Not Chinese enough. Not American enough. The in-between — which is a lot of us.

The label situation does not help. First generation or second generation — I have been trying to get a straight answer on this for a while. My parents immigrated here, which technically makes me first gen: first born in America, first to grow up here. My parents have referred to me as first gen my whole life. But there’s a whole discourse about whether claiming that for myself diminishes my parents, who are American, who are citizens, who have been building their lives here for decades. They are not less American because they were born somewhere else. The word “immigrant,” used a certain way, implies they never fully arrived. They were the first gen to build their lives in America; they just weren’t born here.

The labels are contested and probably always will be. I’ve started using “third culture kid” — a term that describes those raised in one culture, tethered to another, not fully fluent in either. American enough to feel out of place in China. Chinese enough that America occasionally reminds me I don’t always belong.

The third culture isn’t the absence of two others. It’s the thing that forms in between. 

Recently, on vacation, my husband looked at me — he’s Indian-American, his own flavor of third culture — and said, “I’m so glad I don’t have to explain myself to you.” Different Asian heritage, same general territory. 

I grew up desperately wanting Lunchables. Not my mai fun and soup — the actual good food my mom packed — but the little plastic trays with the crackers and questionable meat slices and artificial cheese. I wanted bologna and cheese on white bread. Something unremarkable, something that wouldn’t require explaining. I had to explain my mai fun and soup every time.

I am now an adult who is vocally, almost aggressively, proud of that same food. Who will argue about where to get the best dumplings and order whatever comes with the head still on and feel a specific territorial joy when someone discovers Chinese food and acts like they invented it. And who is, if I’m being honest, a little mortified that I ever wanted to trade any of it for a Lunchable. I can’t even think of Lunchables right now without gagging a little. (I did love those Kraft Handi-Snacks cheese and crackers though. The one with the plastic red stick.)

The third culture-ness is a low-grade ambient condition, mostly. Something you move through without naming, until something forces you to name it. A heritage month. A question that won’t take Jersey City for an answer.

My grandmother would be at family gatherings and we’d sit across from each other, smiling and eating. She would gesture for me to put food on my plate before I finished — the universal grandmother move, which requires no language and no explanation. I am not entirely sure what she thought of me; I don’t know if anything got lost when my mom or aunts acted as translator.

I’m still hoping I got her genes.

I learn through suffering.

I know how seatbelts and airbags work because I was in a car crash. 

We were driving out from New York to Colorado and had just left Kansas City, way early in the morning. I was snoozing in the passenger seat when I felt the car rapidly decelerating. I opened my eyes, and my little Honda Fit (RIP Blueberry) smacked right into a deer.

I felt the seatbelt yank my body so that I was pinned to my seat. The airbags didn’t deploy. We were shaken up, but unscathed. I learned later that the technology in cars is so advanced — it made a series of split-second decisions based on perceived impact. Blueberry detected it was a collision, so it wound the seatbelts back on their spools, and deployed the tiny explosive in them to lock them in place (this is why you need to replace seatbelts after a crash). It also decided that we didn’t need airbags in that particular crash, because of where and how we hit the deer.

I likely would have never looked any of this up if it hadn’t happened to me. The experience made me care enough to wonder. 

This is how I learn. 

You know the Trammps song “Disco Inferno”? Turns out “disco inferno” in Latin translates loosely to “I learn through suffering / hell.” Probably not what they had in mind — they were definitely talking about discotheque — but here we are.

I am a disco inferno learner. I don’t always heed warnings. I don’t always learn from other people’s mistakes. I learn from mine. I often don’t even care until there’s an inferno.

It’s not always the heavy stuff either.

I first drove stick shift in someone else’s Mini Cooper — I tried in a parking lot, but it wasn’t very big, or very empty. I stalled almost every time I tried to drive. I didn’t get out of first gear. Anyone backing out of a parking space freaked me out. I panicked. That very specific panic when the car jerks and you smell burning clutch and you hope no one is behind you. 

I know that life is short — really short, YOLO short — because I lost my dad and my in-laws. They all died relatively young, in their sixties and seventies, not from old age. I knew intellectually that people die young, that time is finite, that we should etc. etc. etc. I had heard the speeches. But I never truly understood it until my grief forced me to. We finally took the trip to Thailand last year — the one we’d been postponing for over a decade because “we’ll make it there eventually.”

I learned that I cannot give my entire self to a job because I’ve been laid off three times. I’m not telling you this for sympathy — I’ve written about it before, I’ve made my peace with most of it. I’m telling you because three times is a lot of times to learn the same lesson. The first time I thought it was a fluke. The second time, bad luck (the blow was softened by a generous severance, and I was there for only a few months anyway). The third time: OK… I see what’s happening here. The job was never going to love me back. Companies don’t, actually — they care about productivity, not people, and I had to get laid off three times to really believe it.I know this now. It’s lodged in my body in a way no career coach could have put it there.

There’s a part of this disco inferno realization that I keep wrestling with. 

I write. I write about the things I’ve lived through, the lessons that cost something, the patterns I finally saw after I’d already paid the tuition. I write hoping that someone reads it and maybe doesn’t have to learn it the hard way. Which is insane, right? Because I am Exhibit A of the person who needs to learn the hard way.

I spent years in program management doing the same thing professionally. Being the person who’d seen the pattern before, who’d watched a similar project collapse for the same reasons, who’d say — gently, then less gently, then really less gently — “I think we should think about XYZ”. And then watching the company have to live through XYZ anyway. And then being joylessly right about XYZ. There is no satisfaction in the “I told you so”… ok, maybe a tiny bit of satisfaction. But I would have rather they listened to me in the first place.

So what am I doing here?

I think — and I’m still working this out — I’m not actually writing so you won’t have to learn it the hard way. I’ve made my peace with the fact that you probably will. I think I’m writing so that when you’re in it — when the seatbelt catches, when the room gets quiet, when you’re shipping your company laptop back for the third time — you might remember: “someone was here before me. It was like this for them too.”

Not a warning. More like finding someone else’s handwriting in the margins.

Disco inferno. I learn through suffering. I write through the fire too, apparently. And maybe that’s the only honest thing I can offer — not the lesson in advance, but the proof that you can come out the other side of it and still think it was worth writing down… even if nobody learns a thing.

The exhausting business of performing in business

I have rehearsed the answer to “tell me about a time you navigated a difficult stakeholder relationship” more times than I have told the actual story to anyone who knows me.

I know my lines. I know where to pause for effect, when to laugh a little to signal that I have perspective on the hard thing, when to bring it back around to what I learned from the experience. I know when to say “I” and when to say “we” so it sounds like I’m owning it vs. throwing my team under the bus. I know which stories to keep in rotation and which ones — the more honest ones, the hot messes — to leave in the mental filing cabinet.

Every interview I’ve ever had has felt like opening night for a show I’ve been running for fifteen years. What is this, Cats on Broadway? (Which ran for 18 years, by the way. TIL.)

I hate it, but I’m not even that bad at it. That’s maybe the worst part. I’ve gotten good at the performance. I can be warm and competent and funny and curious and just self-deprecating enough to seem like I have healthy self-awareness without actually revealing anything that could be used against me. I can answer behavioral questions like I’m narrating a highlight reel. I can do the voice. You know the voice.

What no interview has ever actually asked me to do is the job.

The things I’m good at live in writing. In the space between the question and the response, where I can think. In a doc with comments and track changes and the ability to revise (and revise, and revise) before I hit send. In a Slack message I’ve rewritten at least three times before anyone sees it. In the slow, iterative, asynchronous way that most knowledge work actually happens. None of that is available to me in an interview. The interview is testing my ability to perform, live, under pressure, with no tools and no time — which is to say it’s testing almost the exact opposite of the skills required for the role.

What an interview is really measuring is your nervous system. How confident you can appear when you’re scared, how smoothly you can surface a prepared answer and deliver it like you just thought of it. Whether you’ve got enough stage presence (… “executive presence”? ugh) to make the panel feel like they’re getting the real deal, and the real deal is a good one.

Now that I think about it, this is exactly what first dates are testing. (I’ve been married for over ten years, so it’s been a minute — but I don’t think the audition has changed much.)

The whole first-date experience is not so different from an interview — the rehearsed lines, the careful revealing, the performance of your best, most dateable self. You wear the perfect outfit that says “I have my life together” but also “I’m not too high-maintenance” and you order something that says “I’m adventurous but not too adventurous if that scares you” and you laugh at the right moments and you don’t lead with the thing about your anxiety. You do your highlights reel. You do the voice.

The difference is that a date can go somewhere real. If it works out, the walls eventually come down. Not all at once, but you get there. Someone sees the version of you that exists on a Tuesday at 8pm when you’re tired and grumpy and out of witty remarks. Someone learns the stories you don’t tell in rotation. Someone knows which answers are the real ones. The performance ends, or at least softens, into something that’s actually you.

Corporate life doesn’t have that third act. You perform your way into the job. And then you perform on the job, while doing your job. You learn to narrate your mistakes correctly and frame your wins and calibrate your visible enthusiasm. Even your competence is a performance — you’re not just doing good work, you’re making sure the right people see you doing good work, making sure your brand, god help us, is being managed.

Here’s the part I don’t know what to do with: I got good at it. Good enough that I stopped noticing where the performance ended and I began. Good enough that I got promoted and praised and eventually laid off thrice with some kind of comment about how it wasn’t me, it was them. “It’s not you; it’s me.” Classic breakup line.

The last almost year and a half not working full time has been nice for many reasons, and one of the big ones was I didn’t have to perform full time. And one of the things that surprised me was how long it took to figure out what I actually thought about things when no one was assigning a grade to my answer. When I wasn’t framing my response for the room. When I could just, like, have an opinion. Without the voice.

I think the corporate world is the most sustained version of the performance. We perform. We’ve always performed. But most performances have an intermission, or a closing night, or some small window where you get to just be the person who’s tired and doesn’t have an answer for this one.

The career ladder doesn’t give you that window. And every few years you go back out for another run, rehearsing your lines again, performing your competence at a panel of strangers who are also performing, everyone pretending this is how you find out who someone actually is.

I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not sure I’m even making an argument. I’m just noticing that it’s exhausting to perform for that long, and a little lonely, and that somewhere in the middle of all those highlight reels there’s a person who does their best work slowly, in writing, with time to think… who has never once been asked to show up that way in an interview.

My fried rice is sometimes made with Costco chicken. It’s still real.

Whenever my mom tells me about a new Chinese restaurant she’s tried, she tells me how authentic (or not authentic) it is.

When she says a place is authentic, she means it as a compliment — this place is the real thing, you’d love it. And I believe her. But the word “authentic” makes me grimace; it doesn’t sit right with me. Authentic to whom, exactly? Authenticated by what? Is there a council? Do they have a stamp? (They do not have a stamp.)

The thing about “authentic” as a descriptor for food, especially Chinese food, especially Chinese food made in America, is it’s a word that sounds like a compliment and functions like a trap. When a reviewer calls a restaurant authentic, they mean it as high praise — “this is the real thing, this is legit, you can trust it.” But implicit in that praise is its shadow: the not-authentic, the lesser, the performed version of a cuisine that exists for people who don’t know any better.

And who decides? Usually not us.

My “inauthentic” dish, the one that’s most mine, the one I come back to, the one I make without a recipe, is fried rice. Whatever’s in the fridge. Sometimes leftover Costco rotisserie chicken, sometimes whatever orphaned veggies are in the crisper drawer, some frozen peas, an egg or two, some combination of soy sauces and sesame oil. It takes twenty minutes. It tastes exactly right.

Would a food critic call it authentic? Almost certainly not. It doesn’t follow any canonical regional recipe. It’s not from anywhere specific. It’s from my kitchen, on a Tuesday, with a $5 bird we picked up while bulk-purchasing gummy bears.

Is it less real because of that?

The word I actually want to use is “traditional”. When a stranger says something is authentic in a review, it just means “I have decided what the real version is, and this isn’t it.” Traditional means it follows a method, a lineage, a set of techniques passed down and replicated with intention. You can say a dish is traditional without implying that the chef’s grandmother’s version, or the version made with ingredients available in Colorado in 2026, or the version adapted for a dining room that is not in Toisan, is somehow a fraud.

“Traditional” acknowledges that food travels. “Authentic” pretends it doesn’t.

Chinese food has traveled. It traveled when my grandparents immigrated from Myanmar to New York City. It traveled through generations; I cook some of the things my Po Po used to cook. And it traveled when Chinese restaurant owners in America looked at their new customers, their new context, their new everything — and adapted. On purpose. With skill. The Chinese takeout menu is one of the great acts of culinary translation in American food history. General Tso’s chicken? Invented by a Hunanese chef in Taiwan in 1955, sweetened and deep-fried to American tastes by a New York chef in the 1970s, and so unknown in China that when the original chef tried to introduce it back home, nobody wanted it. The dish traveled so far it couldn’t go back. Crab rangoons? They were invented at Trader Vic’s, a tiki bar in San Francisco. (Yes, the tiki bar that claims to have invented the mai tai. lol.) Both now so embedded in the Chinese-American takeout canon that people order them as if they’ve existed for millennia. That’s not inauthenticity. That’s invention.

Every diaspora cuisine is a living document of that travel — what you kept, what you swapped out, what you invented because you missed something and had to approximate it with whatever ingredients were on hand. That improvisation isn’t inauthenticity. It’s history. And in the case of Chinese-American food, it’s also just good business sense dressed up as culinary instinct.

When a reviewer docks stars because the mapo tofu isn’t “authentic” enough, I want to ask: authentic to which decade? Which province? Which family? Sichuan cuisine has changed over centuries. It’ll keep changing. Every cook who makes it puts something of themselves into it.

There’s also something specifically uncomfortable about who tends to wield the word. When a non-Chinese reviewer calls a Chinese restaurant inauthentic, they’re implying they have a clearer idea of what Chinese food should taste like than the Chinese person who cooked it. That’s a sentence I could keep unpacking forever, but I’ll just leave it there and let it be weird.

I wrote this whole essay and I’m still not going to have this discussion with my mom. That feels like the most important thing I’ve said here, ha.

Driving a very big car and learning to take up space

We got a new car last summer. Well, a used car, but new to us. We traded in our zippy Audi A5 Sportback for a hulking Lexus GX460.

We had taken our A5 in for an oil change down the street, and they — of course — did a “complimentary check” and told us we needed new motor mounts. Sounded like a typical sus mechanic thing, because who ever needs new motor mounts? What did we even do to this car for it to need new motor mounts?

In any case, we said thank you, and we planned to get a second opinion. In parallel, we went down a path of “what if we do need to pay thousands of dollars to replace motor mounts? Is it even worth keeping this car?” The short answer: probably not. It was already six or seven years old, and German cars don’t have the best reputation for reliability. They do, however, have a reputation for being expensive to maintain. And so we did a little car shopping. Our next car would be our forever car. Without boring you with all the details of the thought process and the dealership experience, we handed over the keys to the A5 and suddenly were owners of a Lexus GX460. It has a red interior, and I referred to it as “cute” and “a cozy little boat” during the test drive.

It wasn’t meant to be a statement car. It was a practical decision. Reliable Lexus, more comfortable road trips, Colorado things, and hey I felt confident driving this giant car.

A good friend was visiting from out of town recently, and he asked me how I liked driving it. I told him the biggest adjustment wasn’t the size (surprisingly — also, heyo!), or the parking, or the turning radius, or the lack of Apple CarPlay. The biggest difference is that people drive differently around me now. They’re aware of my presence on the road in a way they never were when I was in my Audi. I’m not blending into traffic anymore. I am traffic.

He laughed and said: “Because they know you can end them.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot.

For most of my life, I’ve been pretty good at making myself small. Not in a self-deprecating way — more in an accommodating way that felt, at the time, like being easy to be around. I was agreeable. I took up only the space I was given. I moved out of the way. I apologized preemptively. I shrank so other people could feel more comfortable, which I told myself was just being polite or considerate, but was probably something else.

A lot of it is my Asian-American upbringing: don’t make waves, don’t rock the boat. That instinct followed me into my career. Early on, I did what I was told. I rarely pushed back. I made sure other voices were heard in meetings without trying to amplify my own — not until later, when I had enough experience and clout to start making waves. But even then, it cost something to get there. I didn’t realize how practiced I had become at disappearing until I had a year to stop and actually look at myself.

This past year — the year of not working full time, the year of pottery and writing and record players and learning how to taste wine with intention — has been a slow process of remembering who I actually am. I’ve written about that in various ways. But I’ve been slower to name the thing underneath it all, the thread that runs through every rediscovery:

I’m learning to take up space.

Not space as in being loud or demanding or difficult. Space as in: my presence is allowed to be felt. My opinions don’t need to be softened before I offer them. My needs don’t need to be minimized to protect someone else’s comfort. I get to exist fully, not just on the sidelines.

And then I look at what I’m driving around in — this big, 5,000-pound, not-subtle SUV — and I think: huh, maybe I already knew that, even before I knew it.

When I drove the A5, I was fast. Nimble. I blended into traffic and drove around my obstacles. When I drive the GX, I am on. the. road. I am aware of how much space I take up, and others are aware too. They move around me. They stop for me. I now fully understand why you see the smallest women climb out of the biggest SUVs. There’s a feeling of presence and power. And safety, honestly. Because they know you can end them.

There’s something interesting about a car as a mirror for identity. We don’t usually think of it that way — a car is a practical object — but we’re aware of what our cars say about us. The stereotypes exist for a reason. When I drove a Honda Fit, I felt practical but cool. When I drove a Subaru Outback, I felt practical and uncool (I hated that car; it was zero joy to drive). When I drove my A5, I felt impractical and very cool, and had a lot of fun.

The GX doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t try to fit in. It’s not sleek or subtle. It rolls up and is unapologetically there. People see it. People accommodate. Not because it’s threatening, but because it’s present.

I want to move through the world like that.

I think I’m somewhere in the middle of a longer recalibration, figuring out what it looks like to take up space without overcorrecting into something that doesn’t feel like me either. It’s a balance I’m still finding.

But I keep coming back to that moment: a friend, a joke, a throwaway line about physics and vehicle mass. What I’m now hearing underneath is something else — an instruction, almost. Exist in a way that can’t be easily overlooked. Take up exactly the amount of space you’re entitled to, and stop apologizing for it.

I called it a cute and cozy little boat on the test drive. But did I really buy something I’d been working toward my whole life?

I’m becoming more like my parents each day

I don’t know if it’s because I suddenly have more “free time,” or if I’m just more present these days — more aware of everything, including myself — but I’ve started to notice something a bit unsettling: I’m becoming just like my parents.

There wasn’t a singular moment where I thought, “oh, this is it.” It’s more that I catch myself in the act, in these small, specific ways, and think something like, “oh my god, I’m becoming my mother.”

Horrifying, I know. Not unexpected, but still.

It wasn’t one big transformation (for some reason I picture a werewolf — unclear what that says about me or how I view my parents). It’s a collection of preferences, habits, and reactions that I used to question or ignore, and now… they just make sense.

This one was probably always true, but feels especially true now: I dress almost exclusively for function. There’s a joke that everyone in Colorado dresses like they’re always prepared in case a spontaneous hike breaks out, and my environment has likely pushed me further in that direction. Post-Covid fashion hasn’t exactly helped. Comfort wins every time — I can count on one hand how many times I’ve worn “hard pants” since 2020 — which feels like something I used to judge and now can’t imagine arguing with.

And everything is so loud. Places that used to feel normal now feel overstimulating in a way I don’t remember, and I find myself getting irrationally annoyed by background noise that, objectively, is probably fine. And I always find myself extra sensitive to the cold, when it’s supposedly 65 and perfect outside. Maybe this isn’t becoming my parents specifically, but just becoming an old person in general.

I adjust the thermostat to save energy… and money. I’ll turn down the heat and just put on a sweatshirt and a hat. Same with lights. I mean, I do prefer sitting in the dark, but I also like to conserve electricity. Now that I pay my own bills, I understand why my parents scolded us about it.

Every once in a while, something comes out of my mouth and catches me off guard. I’ll ask Kona, “you got out of bed only to lie down on the couch?” which is something I heard constantly as a kid, because I did exactly that while getting ready for school.

“You smell like the sun” is another one. I remember hearing that as a kid and accepting it without question. Now I understand what it means, and I’m the one saying it, as if it’s a completely normal observation to make. Same with describing any dessert I like as “not too sweet.”

I sneeze with my entire body now, like an old Chinese man. To be fair, there are days I feel like an old Chinese man — the whole exercising thing is still a work in progress.

I get excited about buying things in bulk at Costco. There is something satisfying about knowing you’ve made a practical, long-term decision. I eat and drink things not because they’re enjoyable, but because they’re “good for me,” which feels like a personality shift I never saw coming.

And then there are the things that feel more specific, harder to explain unless you already understand them. I think about the Traditional Chinese Medicine concept of ngit hee / yeet hay more seriously now, when I mostly dismissed it as a kid. It’s not just a concept anymore; it’s a consequence. If I’m breaking out, it must be because I ate too many fried foods. Gotta drink some chrysanthemum tea. Or beer. Or eat some watermelon.

I reuse glass jars and takeout containers. After our New Year party, I sent people home with leftovers, and multiple people asked why I have so many plastic deli containers on hand. I save plastic bags — not just shopping bags, but the small produce ones too. I’ve caught myself saying “we have food at home,” sometimes out loud, sometimes just in my head.

I check the weather before I make plans now, because it actually affects what I’ll do and how I’ll feel (why is this such an old person thing?). I’ve also become skeptical of trends — not loudly, just a hesitation that makes me want to wait and see how things play out before buying in.

And there’s this saying: “You’ll understand when you’re older.” 

I used to hate that. It felt like a dismissal, like a way of ending a conversation without really answering the question. But now I understand what they meant, which is not the same as agreeing with it.

It’s not just that I’m picking up their habits, it’s that their reasoning is starting to make sense in a way it never did before. The decisions, the things that felt unnecessary or overly cautious at the time… they weren’t random. They were just based on information I didn’t have yet.

I don’t love that I get it now. That things I used to question are actually kind of reasonable. That if I follow the logic all the way through, it mostly checks out. Which is annoying, because I used to be very confident they were wrong. Ah, youth.

But I can see it now. And I can’t unsee it.

It’s a good thing my husband likes my mother.

One story about two people navigating three surgeries in four months

[Note: If you’re squeamish about eye stuff, maybe skip this one? I don’t get into too much detail, but there are some details about eye surgery.]

I now know too much about eyes and eye surgery. But hey, at least I don’t make as many disgusted faces about it anymore.

The Saturday before Thanksgiving, R’s eye was, in his words, “buggin’ out”. He figured he was tired or the Colorado sunshine was messing with his vision, so he shook it off. But there was no improvement Sunday… and we said if he was still seeing funny, he’d try to get seen on Monday.

Well, it was no better on Monday. Our eye doctor was fully booked, surely with the end-of-year-before-my-benefits-reset appointments, but they referred us to a sister office who was able to see R that afternoon. Great! I dropped him off at the doctor’s office and was off to run some errands. After I checked off my to-do list, I called and asked if he was ready to be picked up.

“Uh, I think you should come here and come in. The doc is on the phone with a retina specialist now.” 

Without getting into too much detail, he had two retinal tears that was causing the “buggin’ out” with his vision, and was referred to a retina specialist who recommended surgery. ASAP. (The cause? Likely bad genetics, and it was just time.)

And so the day before Thanksgiving: surgery.

Or as it would turn out to be: the first surgery of many.

He was almost in the clear, after two months of eye drops and pirate jokes. And at his Valentine’s weekend appointment, they discovered his healing process produced too much scar tissue, which was causing new issues, including distorting his lens. Cool. (It happens about 10% of the time, and being younger is a risk factor. Cool cool.)

The last week of February: surgery #2. This one came with an annoying recovery process that required him to be positioned face down for a week. This was because a gas bubble was inserted in his eye to act as a splint holding everything in place, and it needed to remain in a certain place initially. I explained it to people like an air bubble in a snow globe, where in order to move the bubble, you had to rotate the globe. Oh, and changes in altitude could cause it to explode, leading to blindness. Yup.

First follow-up appointment went well. Everything was healing well and looking like it should, after his week of face-down time. The doctor would like to see him again in two weeks to ensure everything was still progressing nicely.

Welp.

Everything was still progressing nicely where the operation was… but the other side of that same eye was showing signs of detachment. So he now needs a third surgery. 

We added a third surgery to the calendar the same way we added the first two. Another mound of e-paperwork, even though nothing significant has changed in four months, besides the surgeries. Another frustrating anticipation period, counting down the days until surgery day. Another stretch of time shaped around waiting rooms and follow-ups and recovery. Another medical bill. And another. It feels almost… routine? Which feels absurd, considering it’s EYE SURGERY.

The good(?) news is, for surgery #3, they’ll be inserting an oil layer to act as a splint, and there will be no face-down positioning, and he’ll be able to see through it. The bad news is oil doesn’t dissipate on its own like gas does, so there will be a fourth surgery sometime in the future. Woof.

I think part of what makes this — for lack of a better word — annoying is the constant recalibration. Each time, we believe we understand the scope of it. We’ve set our expectations. We ask questions. We prepare, mentally and practically, for what’s ahead. Then the scope keeps changing, right when we think we’re in the clear. 

This feels ongoing, without a clear end in sight (ha, sight. See what eye did there? I need this to end). 

What’s weird is I think I’m more upset about the whole situation than he is, considering he’s the one going through it. He’s accepted that this is just something that has to happen, and is for the best, and that eye surgeries are now part of routine health maintenance. Which is probably the right attitude to have.

What isn’t obvious is the in-between, the part where nothing is actively wrong, but nothing feels fully settled either. The waiting. The wondering if this is the last thing or just the most recent thing. The mental math of best-and-worst case timelines and recovery logistics and what-ifs. The having to update our friends and family AGAIN. Have I mentioned all the eye drops?

It’s the ongoing-ness of it that is unsettling. The way this timeline stretches. The way we think we’re at the end of something, and then the rug gets pulled out from under us.

I will say: I am grateful that I have enough flexibility in my schedule to show up for him. To drive him to and from surgeries, to take him to all the follow-up appointments. To sit in the waiting rooms. To not have to constantly choose between being a supportive partner and being responsible at work. Because there is so much life and responsibility outside of work. I digress.

Because this isn’t a one-time thing. It just… keeps going. (Yes, I’m talking about eye surgeries, but also not.)

And for now, that mostly looks like more appointments, more eye drops, more patience, and us getting a little better at dealing with all of it.

Small details very often feel grand.

We often leave our front door open (but our storm door closed) so that Kona can sunbathe and fulfill her neighborhood watch responsibilities — her paw patrol shift, if you will. She huffs at any cars parking in front of our house and barks at anyone approaching our door, defending her post like she isn’t a scaredy cat in a dog’s body.

Of course, that includes our mailman, if she happens to be on duty when he arrives.

The other day, he came while Kona was sitting by the door, and despite (or because of?) her enthusiastic defense, he slid a Milk Bone through our mail slot along with the usual stack of junk mail. I happened to catch him doing it, and I smiled and thanked him as he left. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

Mail carriers are not required to carry dog treats. I know he bought those treats with his own money, and he carries them in an already heavy mail bag. There’s no post office KPI for canine satisfaction, no training module on dog treat distribution. He just decided to bring joy and sweetness to his job. Maybe it’s partly strategic, to earn goodwill from the neighborhood doggos. In any case, he makes someone’s — or some dog’s — day with his act of kindness.

I often think about the idea of unreasonable hospitality. It’s a concept I first heard at Eleven Madison Park, where they have a role literally called the Dream Weaver: someone whose job is to notice and find ways to surprise and delight guests. (Side note: Unreasonable Hospitality is a book I always recommend when someone asks for one.) Sometimes the gesture is grand — like arranging a sledding trip in Central Park, for the family who had never seen snow — but sometimes the joy lives in the smaller details. For example, they knew we had just returned from a vacation, and they printed out and framed a “Welcome home” sign for our table. So small, but so personal and special. We still display that frame in our home today.

To me, even outside of the context of fine dining, those small details very often feel grand.

A handwritten note tucked into the ceramic mug I bought. A barista remembering my annoying order of a half-caf cortado and checking if I’m down for dairy today. A server including a new side of plain noodles with my leftover ramen broth. A restaurant owner applying a friends-and-family discount to my check, just because. A stranger offering to take our photo when I’m clearly struggling to fit everyone in the frame. A bakery slipping an extra cookie into my bag at closing time.

When I think of small gestures that feel grand, a memory that comes to mind is one set in Florence. I asked our hotel concierge, Matteo, where he recommended we grab lunch. He suggested a popular sandwich — sorry, panini — shop nearby. Then he pulled out a little notepad, scribbled something, and handed it to us. “Give this to Tonny,” he said. 

Tonny per favore

Trattani Mrs Lee con i guanti bianchi

-Matteo

“Tonny, please treat Mrs. Lee with white gloves.” 

We wandered over to the shop, note in hand. I don’t remember if we found Tonny on the first try, but the note eventually made its way to him. Tonny read it and grinned, in a very Italian hospitality kind of way. Suddenly we weren’t just tourists ordering lunch; we were special guests. I can’t even remember what panini he gave us, but I do remember it was delicious and how that whole experience made us feel. All because of a handwritten note from a friend.

None of these gestures are required. They could be skipped entirely, and the world would still turn. Yet someone chooses to do them. Someone takes the time and the effort to make the moment better than it needed to be.

I notice these gestures, remember them, and carry them with me because they are part of a generous human experience. They are proof that the world is still run, at least in part, by people paying attention. By people who care. Not by automated, soulless systems.

Unreasonable hospitality doesn’t need a restaurant or a formal title. It can appear anywhere: a mailbox, a sidewalk, a coffee shop counter, the checkout line at a store, a park bench. A sprinkle of human touch makes the experience feel real, deliberate, and a little special. At this point, it doesn’t even have to be unreasonable — just hospitality.

A Milk Bone in the mail slot. A small discount at the register. A barista remembering exactly how you take your coffee. A handwritten note. These are tiny gestures that cost someone time, effort, or a little money. They are unnecessary. They are fleeting. And they exist and persist, every day.

Most systems we live in are designed to be efficient, transactional, even sterile. And yet people keep sneaking humanity back into them. They remind you that life doesn’t have to be purely functional. It can be — and I say this with the risk of sounding cliche or cheesy — whimsical. Things can be better than what is required or expected.

Sometimes you notice it. Sometimes you don’t. But when you do, the world feels lighter. More human. A little brighter. And for a few seconds, it makes you realize someone is weaving a little dream of kindness into the day.

and how small things can completely change how we experience something unpleasant

I went to the dentist last week for a routine cleaning.

The whole time I was in the chair, I closed my eyes behind the office-issued sunglasses and was trying very hard to focus on literally anything other than the fact that someone was scraping around inside my mouth. When you’re stuck like that — staring at the bright ceiling lights, unable to talk, slightly dissociating — you have a lot of time to think.

I’ve been trying to be more intentional about capturing my thoughts. The challenge for me is I have the best thoughts at the most random and inconvenient times. Even when I physically can “write it down”, pulling out my phone to type into my Notes app is often too much of a chore in the moment. I’ve been playing with the idea of leaving myself voice notes, but that has felt awkward and inconvenient for different reasons. I gave it another shot though. When I got in my car, I ramble-recorded whatever thoughts I could remember during my drive home.

I ended up recording three separate thoughts. On the surface, they were about completely different things: burnout, dentist office playlists, and my dental hygienist Shelby. But I think they were actually about the same thing: how small things can completely change how we experience something unpleasant.

—

The right perspective

There was a time when I used to think going to the dentist was a break. And back then, I was getting a lot of intense dental work done: deep cleanings, the kind where they numb half your mouth and spend an hour poking and scraping and doing things that feel like medieval torture methods.

And during those appointments I would think, “At least I’m not at work.” Which, in hindsight, should have been a sign. A bright red flag.

Because if you would rather be lying in a dentist chair, your mouth being prodded by sharp instruments, than sitting at your desk… something might be wrong.

But I didn’t question it at the time. I just assumed that was part of life. Work sucks. Everyone complains about it. Sometimes you’d rather be anywhere else. Even if that anywhere is the dentist.

Last week, I didn’t feel that same sense of relief in the dentist chair. I wasn’t secretly grateful for the forced hour away from my Slack notifications. It was just the dentist, not a break from the stress of work bullshit. 

I realized this might actually be a decent barometer. If the next time you’re at the dentist you find yourself thinking, “this is better than being at my shitty job,” it might be time to rethink your shitty job. Because the dentist should not be the highlight of your day.

The right playlist

The playlist at my dentist office is pretty incredible. I’m not sure if this is the case at all dentist offices, but I distinctly remember thinking how great the playlist is, every time I’m at the dentist.

I don’t know how to describe the exact vibe. It’s not Top 40, but it might be Top 40 from yesteryear (but not too far into yesteryear), mixed in with some recent stuff? And it wasn’t too poppy and upbeat, but wasn’t too indie or melancholy either.

The only one I could remember when I recorded my voice note was “Lose Control” by Teddy Swims. At the time of this writing, I remembered “Waves” by Mr. Probz (I had to google the lyrics I knew to find the title and artist, because I don’t think I ever knew this artist’s name??). I knew most, if not all, the words to every song I heard that day. 

I should have asked if someone curated that playlist or if it was an algorithmically selected “radio station”. Next time. But if the playlist was curated by a human, bravo. They hit the mark. Because if you’re mentally belting out the chorus, you’re probably thinking less about the metal instrument picking at your gum line.

Maybe dentist playlists are actually a carefully engineered distraction system. If so, I respect the craft.

If you’ve been here for a bit, you already know how important the right soundtrack is to me. 

The right people

About halfway through the appointment I told Shelby, my new dental hygienist, that she was doing a great job, just in case nobody had told her that lately. Going to the dentist kinda sucks, and the people who work there are the ones making it suck less. 

Shelby was particularly good at it. She gave really clear instructions — which way to turn my head, when to close, when to rinse. It sounds small, but in a particularly unpleasant situation, clarity helps.

She also explained what she was seeing as she went. “There’s a little pocket there, that spot might feel a bit sensitive.” And that clarity helped too. If I felt a little twinge of pain and she immediately explained why, it made the whole experience feel less mysterious. It was weirdly validating.

The attention to detail and explanation made the whole thing easier and more tolerable.

I think my compliment made her day suck less too. She agreed — not many people compliment the job their dental hygienist is doing. And she really appreciated being validated herself. (Not to sound preachy, but if you have something nice to say, say it!)

—

Nothing about the routine dental cleaning itself had really changed. It was still the same chair, the same bright lights (and sunglasses!), the same water flosser thingy and sharp tools.

But the experience this time felt different.

Part of that was perspective. I wasn’t using the dentist as an escape from a job I hated. Part of it was the music, giving my brain something to grab onto (ok, that part was the same as usual). And part of it was Shelby, calmly explaining what was happening so it didn’t feel strange or alarming.

The procedure was the same, but the difference was the details around it. It made me wonder how many other things in life are like that. The “thing” itself doesn’t change, but the experience does — because of the people, the music, and whether or not you’re secretly wishing you were somewhere else.

Finally got around to my (Chinese) new year’s reflection

We threw a new year’s party to ring in the Year of the Fire Horse. We invited a mishmash of people, and most of them came! There were about 40 people roaming around our house. The organized chaos of adults balancing eating and drinking and socializing. Kids playing Mario Kart and coloring in the basement. Shoes piled up at the door (I wish I took a photo!). 

We held our party on New Year’s Eve, which is the traditional family reunion night. It’s the evening meant for family, for returning home, for starting the year together instead of alone.

Growing up, New Year was food. Family. Noise. Obligation. Elders at the table. More food. Respect. Abundance. 

Now, in my own home, hosting 40 people — friends, family, neighbors, kids, dogs — it felt different. It felt chosen, not like an obligation. It was rooted in tradition, yes, but we chose to make it a big deal this year. It finally felt right. Aside from kicking off the new year with community and abundance and celebration, I reflected on what I’m bringing into this year. I don’t really do new year’s resolutions, but this is pretty close.

—

Clearing the old energy

Before new year, we cleaned. Not just the surface-level, “shove our mess in the closet” kind of cleaning, but a thorough cleaning and purging. It’s tradition to clean and get your house in order to welcome in the new year, but we took it to another level this year. Not only because we were hosting our first big party ever, but because — two years into living here — we finally feel settled in our home. And maybe because, symbolically, I knew this year especially needed it.

Last year, the Year of the Wood Snake was about shedding. Closing things out, old skins falling away. Snakes molt in private, and it feels like an introspective type of energy.

In contrast, this year is the Year of the Fire Horse, and nothing feels private and introspective about that. Fire doesn’t shed; it consumes. A horse doesn’t coil inward; it runs.

The Fire Horse is momentum, and momentum can be dangerous if you haven’t cleared the path. The mental image of a fire horse screams swiftness and acceleration, and whatever is in place before the sprint is what’s getting pulled forward. Whether it’s aligned or not, positive or not, self-serving or not.

So we cleared the house, which included clearing some emotional baggage — weird how physical stuff can carry so much energy, right? Not just to have a clean and presentable house for guests, but to prepare for the velocity of whatever is next (good fortune!). I didn’t want to carry last year’s clutter into a year that moves fast. And now that the path is clear, my intention this year is to maintain it.

Taking care of my body

I’ve made this “resolution” before, many times. And historically, once I fall off the workout wagon, I don’t climb back on. Well, here I am, trying once again. And it feels like I’ve never exercised a day in my life.

I regret to inform everyone that the workout people are right: I do feel better after I move my body. So I’ve been doing it, even when I don’t want to (which is almost always), even when it’s short (ten minutes of light weights absolutely counts), even when I’m embarrassingly winded (I live at altitude; that’s my story and I’m sticking to it).

But the real reason I’m trying again, now, is this: It feels wrong to ask for momentum and ignore the body carrying it. The Fire Horse is physical energy. It’s movement, stamina, force, long flowing locks gracefully bouncing in the wind. I can’t ask for speed in my work, expansion in my creativity, and boldness in my life… and then neglect the body expected to sustain it.

Strength isn’t aesthetic (I mean, the look of nice toned arms certainly don’t hurt). It’s capacity to carry more and recover faster. Wanting to carry more sounds counter-intuitive to how I’ve been trying to live lately, but the distinction is I want to carry more of what fills me up.

My Peloton instructors have become part of this ritual of letting go of everything that doesn’t serve me. There is something disarming about a stranger on a screen enthusiastically celebrating you for “just showing up.” It has softened the self-sabotaging beliefs I didn’t realize I was carrying — that if it’s not impressive, it doesn’t count; if it’s not consistent, it doesn’t matter; if it’s not perfect, I’ve already failed.

I think that’s the practice this year. It’s not about intensity, or punishment, or proving anything, but just showing up authentically and letting the world meet me where I am.

Setting the pace

For a long time, I’ve been very good at responding — responding to what’s needed, to what’s urgent, to who expects what from me. That’s created a dependability I’m proud of. (Culturally, too, there’s something familiar in that, and it’s sooooo much to unpack. For another time.)

But it’s still reactive. I no longer want to live at the speed of other people’s expectations. I want to set the pace and rhythm myself. That might mean saying no sooner, letting something be uncomfortable or letting it fail, choosing myself instead of obligation. Sure, horses can sprint, but they can also run far when they manage their energy and pacing. I need to do that in my own life to prevent another burnout episode, because I never want to burn out again.

Focusing on what matters

If last year was about shedding what no longer serves me, this year is about focusing on the things that made the cut. 

The Fire Horse runs with purpose and determination. But speed without focus is just noise. So this year isn’t about adding more lanes: it’s about choosing depth. I’m choosing the few things that truly light me up and running toward them unapologetically. It’s about letting the rest fall away instead of clutter the runway. 

—

If the Fire Horse is momentum, this was our starting line. And I’m really happy with our baseline! A house cleared of clutter, a body being asked to carry more (but only what fills it up), a conscious decision to set the pace, and a commitment to spend my energy on what matters.

The path is clear, and the pace is mine to set. Let’s run.