in conclusion, a year

December 31, 2025

Perhaps what I appreciate about years and year-ends are the natural yardstick and benchmark points for assessing and evaluating progress over a substantial but not eternal amount of time. This year was a particularly interesting one for many reasons. I made this blog in the aftermath of my first breakup and spent months in a state of disarray, months that coincided with several major life transitions including graduation, a painstakingly long job hunt, and a move to a rural Midwest town to initiate a year-long fellowship that would eventually pay my perceived debt of needing to leave Southern California for an extended period. I now see my future in Los Angeles, both for the community and the career, and although this prospect could very much change, I am content with returning to my hometown and building a life centered upon this aseasonal capital of entertainment. I see myself dating here, meeting with friends every weekend, living in an apartment on the west side, running clay workshops, volunteering at nonprofit indie theaters (Vidiots my beloved), applying for writing and artist grants, meeting filmmakers, so on and so much more.

Recently I read a Substack essay about what it means to live an Erotic life. Eroticism isn't just sex. It's the pursuit of aliveness and expansion -- a pursuit I have struggled to give language to besides the instinctual feeling that I should actively decide against anything that deadens me. It's not necessarily about pursuing risk or challenging convention and eschewing security, but more so evaluating whether a decision will allow my life to burgeon and flourish the way I dream of it growing. A few decisions in my past come to mind: going on a fellowship to Malaysia in 2023 (a completely unexpected yet unequivocally rewarding experience) and taking this fellowship in a place that's basically the diametric opposite of LA (cold, rural, nature-y, though still car-centric). Some other decisions exemplify the deadness -- in particular, taking a corporate internship at an electric utility company close to my home instead of interviewing for what potentially could have been an internship at a major entertainment company.

The relationship I had last year (2024) is a tough one to categorize. The fact that I pursued one and eventually entered it led to a memorable romantic experience I do not regret. I went on dates with the hope of getting into a relationship, again, to pay off that debt of never having had a relationship, and now I strangely feel a lot more comfortable by myself and being more picky with those I go out with. The relationship deteriorated, something I attribute to 1. my lack of dating experience, 2. my desperation and hunger for acceptance I frankly didn't have for myself, and 3. a partner who had different values than mine. It would have diminished me to remain with him if he didn't end things -- something I am grateful he did when he did. Yes, I spent this year paying the emotional price. Beating myself up when I shouldn't have, attaching my self-worth to whether he seemed to remember me or not. These negative feelings and lingering questions took seemingly ages to fizzle out, but it was a process that allowed me to accept myself for who I am. I'm okay with uncertainty about my career because I exist in the intersections between fields. I am an artist.

I found resolutions and closures for a number of things I struggled with this year. Anxiety about pursuing the uncertain yet exhilarating creative career I crave (oh the alliteration) found its end when I decided that creativity and authenticity are at the core of my values. The pressures surrounding money fizzled in the same vein, with a realization that maximizing my income isn't going to make me much happier. I am content with having just enough for the sustainable lifestyle I want. My beliefs of not being "good enough" for my ex died down when I started thinking about what's good for me. I'm no longer as afraid of job search; I'm much more self-compassionate and confident for interviews because I no longer hate myself and can therefore vouch for me and my abilities. Stress about not making money went away after realizing that I can (and will) supplement my income with community art workshops with by sharing a skill I have over 10 years of experience in. Though it's an ever-expanding process, even uncertainty regarding my career got knocked down a peg when I listened to a podcast of former Imagineer and creative director Margaret Kerrison talking about writing for immersive places and I realized that I want to be like her -- I want to write and bridge the gaps between disciplines and allow research to guide my voice and creative vision.

As I write this, I am remembering all of the thought processes that have run through my mind and plagued me for months. As I remember, I feel traces and hints of those narratives I have told myself. "I'll never make as much money as he does. I'll never feel the approval of being a doctor or lawyer. Who would want me? Who would hire me full-time? I'll never figure out what I want."

I'm still rewriting the narrative. It's still not rigidly grounded in me yet; reading my previous narrative still takes me back as I wonder how I climbed out of that dark hole. Nowadays it looks more like "I'm really happy that I took all those risks to get to where I am -- I reject the punitive emphasis on science and security that I faced in high school and am grateful that I spent four years building myself up from scratch. I have friends to confide in consistently and they will not leave me if I am sad. There is a career path that makes me excited and I write screenplays in my free time. I am allowed to choose my own path and I believe I can make it. Maybe I don't have to change who I am for the world to accept me."

Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings mentions the concept of "racial self-hatred" and the self-hating Asian "seeing yourself the way whites see you, which turns you into your own worst enemy." I am reminded of the self-hatred I carried for the majority of this year -- but it was not necessarily seeing myself the way whites might see me. It was seeing myself the way first-generation Asians might. To the tutors who insisted that I must become an engineer, I'm already a failure who has no life. To the ex who seemed to accept me but made it known that his Asian parents would never approve of him pursuing the path I'm taking, I'm "lucky" to be who I am. For the majority of this year, I was a lucky exception at best and a delusional failure, another statistic of "why you shouldn't take risks," at worst. How can I love myself, I thought, when I can't even stand up for myself? When someone whose life I intimately wrapped around was built on the past self I swore to renounce?

At some point I learned that it wasn't exactly self-love that I needed. Love of others is still an enigma to me, let alone love of myself. I just needed basic self-acceptance: some basic human decency from me, to me.

The essay on Eroticism as a way of living shifted my perspective in another direction. Part of what made this year so miserable was my realization, post-breakup, that I am a human of sexual desire, but I don't seek to satiate it with casual flings or rebounds. I am leaving the Midwest in 9 months and don't intend to date for a while. The essay showed me that what I craved wasn't necessarily sex; it's the aliveness of being human, of being me in the fullest capacity, and I can pursue it in other ways too.