wearing things, part ii /

I’ve returned this website to dark mode. I was reading a book about sustainable web design and realized that albeit small (relatively), certain decisions can make a big difference in terms of climate impact. Inverting my website colors is a very, very tiny act in the grand scheme of things, but still matters in terms of intention.

Intention is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Intention in communication, intention in time, intention in decisions, intention in design. Intention can really be applied to anything.

The intention of my blog is a transparent space where I share my reflections on a wide variety of different topics, for whoever wants to engage with it.

As reflected in my last post, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about the intention of the items that I own, how they serve my perception of myself and how I interact with the world. I’ve been on a half-year-long overhaul of my wardrobe to turn it from a random collection of individual items into something coherent.

The average woman has around 19 pairs of shoes, according to Google, which made me feel better about having 15, which I already felt like was a lot. I’ve struggled with finding comfortable shoes. Due to plantar fasciitis and flat feet, it is rare to find shoes flexible enough to not result in arch cramps but cushioned enough not to bruise my feet. I’ve gone through so many different kinds of shoes, but have finally arrived at a set of shoes that allows me to do what I enjoy, respect dress codes, and fit in with the intention of cohesion in my wardrobe.

Starter pack

These are the set of shoes that would get me through 80% of daily life. A pair of laced black chunky boots, Chuck Taylors, and Birkenstocks. It is basic AF, but I’m covered for all seasons and all casual use cases.

outdoor expansion

These are the shoes that enable me comfortably and safely take on various outdoor activities—hiking boots, basketball shoes, running shoes, and stiffer shoes for cycling. I’ve tried to minimize this before, using a single pair of cross-trainers to encompass all activities. While it satisfied the minimalist intention and they were decent all -around, they weren’t the “right” shoe for anything. I slipped on hikes, my soles would hurt after basketball and running, and they were not durable to the bike pedal pins. While I 4x’d the number of shoes to be able to fit my various use cases, I have more confidence in taking on each activity, which overall contributes quality of life.

social expansion

If I had it my way, I wouldn’t need fancy shoes, but I respect dress codes and want to look appropriately presentable in all contexts. My goal at fancy events is generally to blend in. I have a pair of loafers from my consulting days, one pair of open-toe heels, one pair of closed-toe heels, and leather sandals. These take me from business casual to semi-formal and I don’t expect to ever be invited to black-tie event.

aesthetic expansion

And finally, I have shoes that don’t serve a functional goal, but I really enjoy wearing for aesthetic and comfort purposes. I have a pair of Salomon lifestyle shoes that are very easy to take on and off and work across my wardrobe, my favorite Nike’s designed by Olivia Kim, and chunky black oxfords. I don’t “need” these shoes for anything specifically, but I wear them all the time.


I’ve been applying the same approach the rest of my wardrobe. I have a core wardrobe with different “expansions” based on outdoor activity and fancy dress codes, and items that I have that are for pure enjoyment and self-expression. Splitting the items into different groups helps provide clarity on which items I should expect to use more often than others. For example, at some point I thought about getting rid of my heels because I haven’t wore them in two years. After reflecting on it, I realized that I don’t own heels to wear them constantly, and that they’re for special events that were mostly cancelled during COVID. Likewise, I’ve made the mistake of getting rid of running shoes before because I was in a slump, and then, months later, used the lack of shoes as an excuse not to run. I try to remember now that material possessions can weigh me down mentally, but they are also what enables me to do activities that are rewarding. I’ve been socially anxious about going to events before because I didn’t have the right shoes, and while it’s easy to go overboard, I do realize now that having a intentional wardrobe is very liberating—I don’t have to panic buy a dress because I got invited to a wedding that I was unprepared for, only to never wear it again because I only bought it under time pressure.

I expect that this will mostly conclude my reflections on clothing and fashion for the year. When I started on my closet reorganization and overhaul, I did not expect it to take up so much active thought and energy (and also money). I felt guilt over the consumerist aspect while figuring it out, but ultimately, I think it was worth it to prevent the reactionary cycle of having a full closet but constantly feeling like nothing was right. It made me more susceptible to advertisement, which often preys on the feeling of a new item perfectly filling a gap (sometimes an invented gap). Anything felt like it could fit when I had no sense of what the gaps really were. Now, advertisements rarely trigger any kind of emotional response because I’m self-aware about the gaps and I know exactly what I would want to fill them. Overall, I’m eager to take the energy I’ve spent reading about fabric weight, cuts, color theory, thread count, shoe lasts, and insulation and apply it to other parts of life. But if anyone is looking for a wardrobe redesign, let me know. It was pretty fun.

extra career activities

Quick follow-up to my previous post about goals and “extra career” activities. I got a little overwhelmed by the daunting list of things I wanted to improve at, my existing hobbies, limited time, and limited money. This resulted in an attempted Venn diagram that turned into an Excel comparison chart.

My 3 factors of consideration were…

  1. How much do I enjoy this activity?

  2. How much money does this activity require?

  3. How often do I want to be doing this activity?

For each factor, I considered both short term and long term enjoyment, cost, and ideal time spent. I gave each category a value between 0 and 3 for my current and potential activities. It’s important to note that this is not necessarily a spectrum of worse to better. The idea wasn’t to pick the most enjoyable, cheapest, or least time-consuming hobbies. I wanted to lay it out all out to be more mindful that I wasn’t committing myself to activities that were too demanding in any specific category. Balance was the priority.

During the exercise, I realized that many of my existing hobbies have persisted because of their low-cost and high enjoyment ratios. Other than photography, most of my existing hobbies had relatively small startup costs and were free afterwards (they say 0 for short term cost now because I have already bought the instrument or equipment necessary). I’m generally cost-conscious, so this made sense to me, but I realized I wanted to make sure I didn’t rule out an activity that could potentially be very rewarding just because it had a monthly cost associated with it.

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I ended up with a variety of activities a little bit more clarity on what I wanted to spend my money and time on. Softgoods manufacturing and woodworking will probably be the most time and resource consuming, but I think the long-term enjoyment and skill-based nature of the activities will end up being rewarding. The results were pretty much what I expected, but it was helpful to go through the exercise and think everything through categorically. It gave me more confidence that I would be dedicating my time to the things that were meaningful to me in both the short and long-term, while not sacrificing either.

car camper

My first woodwork-y project is a bed for the back of my Honda Fit, which I’ve been designing / thinking about for a while now. Finally bought some wood and figured out some solid plans last weekend. Here’s a sketch of my current design — I took out my rear seats completely to maximize storage space for camping trips, although that may prove inconvenient at some point. I’m planning on using a foam mattress topper cut to size. The head to toe length will be about 70 inches.

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Gari loaded up with building materials!

Gari loaded up with building materials!

reflection question

What inspires you towards change and growth?

perspective shifts / (sweet music)

I started a new job last week. It's taken a lot of mental work for me to be comfortable talking about it.

I felt like a failure when I moved home. I felt ungrateful. I felt lost. But mostly, I felt like a failure. I had graduated from a top university, landed a decent job, rented my own apartment alone, and gained independence in every sense of the word. And yet, I was miserable through the core of my being in a way I'd never been before. I couldn't even identify it at the time. It is only in retrospect, now, when I am aware of the happiness and gratitude I can feel on a daily basis, when I notice how much more easily smiling comes to me, that I am aware of the darkness of the past year.

I've been reading a lot. Books are what I gravitate towards when I am lost. I seek guidance from authors whose words have the power to embrace and heal me. JB MacKinnon's The Once and Future World provided a healthy dose of optimism and perspective-shift about the changing planet. In They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib's exploration in music and culture gave me a deep appreciation for Carly Rae Jepsen and the power of essays. Both he and Michelle Obama (Becoming) revealed the deep confusion and uncertainty they felt in their 20s, and I've held onto their words with great hope. They made my confusion feel normal, maybe even positive. Ken Liu has inspired me to write, although my struggle with fiction seems eternal, as my own true stories constantly push themselves through.

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I felt like a failure for moving home because I was afraid that it seemed like regression. More accurately, I felt like a failure because I thought of it as a regression. It took a few books, but I've finally realized that the decisions I've made in the last six months have led to more personal growth than I've experienced in years. I feel more open and vulnerable to the human experience, to questions of history, identity, and purpose. I feel compelled to learn about a variety of subjects, take on personal projects, write, exercise, and engage in my community. In the context of a logical career, perhaps I've regressed, but I've gained so much more.

I went from working at a design consultancy in Boston to working at as a film processing technician at a small photography lab in Irvine. The former required a degree from a top university, internship experience, and a significant amount of luck in timing. Landing that job was difficult, and for a few months, I felt spoiled and ungrateful for walking away. The job that I have now requires a high school diploma and a passion for film photography--both things that I had before I left for MIT more than five years ago. This fact alone makes it difficult for me to explain what I'm doing now to other people, particularly those who I don't believe will take the time to understand my decisions (or are unable to due to their own life experiences).

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For now, I've given up a nice salary, a sense of independence, a clear career trajectory, and the status of a steady corporate job. I've gained proximity to family and friends, knowledge about an aspect of photography that I'd otherwise never be exposed to, experience in a job that requires mostly physical capability, comfort of living at home, time to pursue my own hobbies and passions, and an increasing sense of clarity about what matters to me in the world. I've been able to spend time with friends, old and new, in ways that challenge my perceptions and intellect. I love being able to eat dinner with my mom on a daily basis, to see my grandma every weekend, and to hike in the mountains whenever I want to feel sunlight on my skin. Maybe it sounds like I'm running from real life. Maybe I am. But maybe I've just decided to choose a slightly different path than the one I thought I was meant to take, and maybe that's okay.

Mary Oliver wrote in Upstream: Selected Essays : "The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time." For the first time since high school (when I promptly squashed it), I feel the call to creative work, and for the first time in my life, I'm allowing myself to give it both power and time.

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what i need / nerd updates

New Ben Howard and this video made it hard to pick a song for this post, but this video gives me life and also this song is definite summer jams. Also it's Pride month, so this is more appropriate. 

And it's summer!! It's hard for me to fully grasp that the weather is actually consistently nice and my heating bills won't be more than $200 dollars anymore... This month has been pretty exciting overall. I finished my first project at work, which was generally rewarding. I definitely learned a lot about the design process and about my own working/learning style. I'm realizing more and more how much my personal passion matters to me in my daily work, which makes me feel like general design consulting might not be the place for me. I'm lucky to have incredibly supportive and caring coworkers though, so I'm still very much enjoying my current work environment.

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I went to New York City for Memorial Day weekend, which was a welcome escape from Boston. I always love visiting New York - everything feels so much more alive, and also the food is incredible (special note of love to Absolute Bagels and Buddha Bodai). It was nice to just walk around and feel life in the city, and also to catch up with some old friends. I finally went to the American Museum of Natural History as well, which made me think about my small existence in the universe. 

Other than that, I've been cleaning out my apartment a lot and really thinking about what I want to do this summer. I have a lot of film rolls that I'm excited to develop - I recently trialed a Bessa R3m, which is a M-mount rangefinder camera made by Voigtlander. I got it from KEH new in box, but the metal shutter was a huge turnoff and I found it very jarring to shoot. That was a shame, because the 1x viewfinder and other mechanics/feel were quite delightful. I ended up returning it and scoring a Leica M2 on eBay for $600 after some crazy discount codes and things. It's supposed to be in working condition, but even if I have to send it for some repairs, I'm pretty psyched about it. I've had a picture of a Leica M2 on my wall at home since 11th grade. I cannot really afford true Leica glass at this point, so I'm waiting on a 7Artisans 35mm f/2 to hold me out. 

I have been shooting digital a lot less, which may explain the lack of photos in this post. I ended up returning the 0.95 aperture lens I talked about in my post from March. My Fuji kit only contains the 18-55 and 23 at this point. It's very functional, but even after all this time, I recognize that my joy in photography mostly comes from shooting film. I've been using the Olympus XA4 extensively, which is by far my favorite point and shoot camera. The 28mm view, easy zone focusing, and tiny size make it the best everyday carry camera I've found (and I've tried too many to count).

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I've picked up (or continued, I guess) more nerd hobbies and acquired a new mechanical keyboard. I got a cheap blue switch 60% keyboard (MagicForce 68) a few years ago because I'm all about the tactile things, but that thing is super loud and I wanted something I could potentially take to work or use in a busier environment. Since I'm all about compactness and efficiency, I opted for a 40% ortholinear keyboard. As you can see from the picture, this means the keys aren't staggered. I was a bit worried about typing ability, but I've had about a week to practice and am pretty much at my normal typing speed. It takes a few minutes to adjust when I go back to my work laptop, but it's been really fun programming specific keys and making new short cuts and things. This will probably make zero sense to the majority of people reading my blog, so I'll stop now. Brown switches are way nicer than blues though, fyi. 

Looking forward to...

  1. Haux concert! (Thursday)

  2. Colorado trip with family (Starting next Sunday)

  3. Summer nights and bike rides (ALL SUMMER)

  4. Leica repairing and refurbishing (Probably right before Colorado)

  5. Vegan sushi in Montreal (mid July)

  6. Visiting Grandma in Ireland (October?)

  7. Moving closer to home (Late October???)

thin, lady bird, crippling self-doubt

It's probably posts like these that will one day convince me to make my blog more private, but I'm pretty sure I know the few people who actually keep up with this regularly (love you all), so I'll just go with it. 

I've been thinking a lot about life lately. It's a very normal thing, I'm told. So much of life has been spent going through school, with little time to think about much else. Graduation felt like being fired out of a canon, the summer a blissful freefall. And now I feel like I've landed in an empty field. The dust has slowly settled, and I am lost.

Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I'm brought back to a room. My old room at 1425 Lyndon St, in South Pasadena. This, as I am realizing, was such a defining space for me. It was here that my various dreams were both hatched and buried, where broken hearts were mended, and where I slowly began to learn who I am. 

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I've been feeling so indescribably lost lately, and it took a movie for me to find the words. I watched Lady Bird back in November, mostly due to excitement about a few of the scenes being filmed at my high school and the local coffee shop where I went often (and where I had my MIT interview). Leaving the theater, I didn't really think that much of the movie. It was definitely good, but I focused a lot on the embodiment of the characters and setting, not about the emotional responses, which were the heart of the whole film. I joked that it was a really "white" movie. And that was it for a while. 

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I got incredibly homesick in January. I sort of expected it, with the miserable Boston winters, lack of sunlight and all. I missed the sunshine, the beach, the moonlit drives, the feel of a longboard on smooth concrete. I missed the warmth of friendships, the exquisite pain that comes from laughing too much, and the feeling of wanting to bottle up beautiful moments to save for later, and for forever. 

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I see my past so visually and so vividly. It's painful and lovely at the same time. Memory and photography are so inherently tied for me that it's hard for me to explain the difference at all. I guess the major difference is that I press a shutter to take a picture, but there exists thousands of clips in my head that never make it onto a film strip or sensor, whether real or imagined - strangers' smiles, sunlight reflecting off buildings, ocean waves, drifting snow. 

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In 9th grade, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to make movies. I spent the majority of my free time reading about screenwriting techniques and watching cinematography reels on Vimeo. I dreamt about going to USC film school and becoming a DP - making the visual nuances that make me so happy come to life for everyone. I made a few random videos on my own or for school projects, but I never allowed myself to fully immerse in a world where this dream seemed like a feasible reality. I started taking photos as a less serious alternative, deleted my video editing software, and went on to search for new dreams. Did I want to be a dentist? Yes, until I had to wash people's mouths for 8 hours a day. A biologist? Oh, I never took biology. I went to an MIT summer camp, became interested in mechanical engineering (because I started fixing cameras), and the rest happened how it happened. 

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MIT was an incredible place, for many, many reasons, but it's also the place where I felt like I lost myself the most. I made some truly wonderful memories and met some of my favorite people in my life, but in retrospect, I felt forced to believe that I wanted something I didn't. I feel horrible writing this because I know that MIT is a lifelong dream for so many people. I really wanted it, too, and I was lucky to have genes from incredibly smart parents and also parents that created an environment for me to build a strong work ethic and intense self-discipline. I wasn't sure about engineering when I went to MIT, but I wanted to be sure about it. I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps, to show him how well I turned out, and to prove my own value to myself. I wasn't sure about engineering when I was at MIT, but I didn't have anything that I really liked that much more, until I started taking more social science classes towards the end of my time there. I got into product design, which was something I liked because I could use the engineering I didn't really want to do, and combine it with the social science parts that I did enjoy.

And now here I am. 

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I went home last weekend since I was out in Palm Springs for a work trip anyway. I rented a car and drove back on Friday, right through sunset. The shades of pink, yellow, blue, and purple in front of the sandy mountains was more than my heart could really bear. I smiled the entire way home. I suddenly thought of Lady Bird - the last scene, where she calls home and asks her mom whether she got emotional the first time driving through Sacramento. The memory of that scene just hit me so hard. 

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I got home, and was able to spend a few days in Irvine and around South Pasadena. I saw the aforementioned coffee shop, and scenes from the movie came back to me again. It was weird, because the locations were just triggers - I started identifying with the subtle emotional trajectories of the characters, months after I had seen the movie. And then I would recall the way it was filmed - the colors, the sunflares, the tonal quality - and it reminded me of the ways I construct my own memories. 

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There's another scene that hits me really hard from the movie (sorry for anyone who hasn't seen this movie, it's hard to explain how the delivery changes the meaning, or how spectacular Saoirse Ronan is): 

Mom: I want you to be the very best version of yourself that you can be.
’Lady Bird’: What if this is the best version?

This scene kills me. I've never had this sort of conversation with my mom, but this sentiment is something I struggle with internally on a daily basis. Not the idea that I won't be better, but the sense of crippling self-doubt. 

I've always prided myself on being able to go for things that I want, and my ability to be willing to pick up new skills and try new things. While I still think those things are true, I'm coming to terms with the fact that I've never actually tried that hard for the things that I genuinely love doing with all of my heart. I'm actually really scared of putting my all into something and realizing that I'm not that good at it, or that I'll never make a difference with it. Since college, I've been working towards things that provide stability. Job security, good income, ability to support myself, insurance, etc. I was convinced  that once I had those things, happiness would follow, but...

Money is not life’s report card. Being successful doesn’t mean anything in and of itself. It just means that you’re successful. But that doesn’t mean that you’re happy.
— Marion McPherson, Lady Bird

It's weird - I never really understood people that loved their jobs, or wanted to work more than they had to. This judgement, I've realized, comes from a bitterness within myself. I think, deep down, I just really envy people who work just because they love it. This doesn't apply to people who have to work for financial stability or people who attach their self-worth to a paycheck or external validation - I feel for those people. But working for enjoyment? That's completely foreign to me, and it's only now that I realize that it's because I've never let myself even try to turn something I love into a job. Yes, I've done some freelance photography, but not before I grossly undercharge to eliminate any real expectations from me, and this just worsened during my time in college. I'm so terrified of disappointing myself by trying too hard and failing that I've built an entire separate track of my life that walls off life productivity from personal happiness. As a result, I'm judged for things that I don't feel that strongly about, so if I fail, it's easier to move on from. It's easier to pursue the things I love in my free time, away from any actual responsibilities or ability to make a real impact, and that's sort of cowardly. And I convinced myself that this was desirable. 

We’re afraid that we will never escape our past. We’re afraid of what the future will bring. We’re afraid we won’t be loved, we won’t be liked. And we won’t succeed.
— Parish Priest, Lady Bird

To be honest, I don't really know where to go from this realization. I'm proud that I'm able to support myself with my education and skillset that I built for my career, but I want to push myself to take more risks, expressively. I'm working on my photography a lot more now, and eventually do want to become a well-established photographer. Shooting for a magazine or a website would be really cool. I want to make a documentary one day. Maybe even work on a film. I want to use the food knowledge that I'm gaining to make systematic change. Most of all, I want to empower people through the way I see the world. And one of these days, I want to be able to let go of an expected 9-5 job to pursue, in full force, something that doesn't have me checking the time every half an hour. I want to be someone who gets up excited to do something with their day, even if that day is challenging as hell. I want to think about something 24/7, not because it's stressful, but because I know that it truly matters to me. To be honest, I just want to feel some of the fearlessness I used to feel, before logic, fear, and an expectation of what my life should be led me to a very stable emptiness. 

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terraform / frustrations, questions

I feel like every blog post starts with a realization of how much time has gone by since I last posted. I've been trying to write for a while now, but life can be...overwhelming, and I find it difficult to write unless I have a clear direction. 

I've been working full-time for more than 2 months now. I like my job, so it's actually what happens after work that stresses me out more than my 9-5. 

As I mentioned in my previous post, I started a personal learning project about food. As someone who grew up vegan for health reasons, awareness of food was necessary. I was often on the outskirts of food culture, and was able to observe habits that were so drastically different than mine. My mom conducted a lot of research about diet and health as I was growing up, and, whether intentionally or not, also developed more sustainable living habits that I accepted as standard (ie. eating local/organic food, avoiding plastic waste, recycling carefully, reducing material consumption). I never thought I was "environmentally friendly" - I took AP Environmental Science in high school and enjoyed it thoroughly, but it was really just another class to me. I don't think, in retrospect, I became passionate about the environment at all until I was confronted with a staggering amount of apathy and willful ignorance when I started college. 

I've been reading about fishing for the past five weeks. I don't eat fish, didn't know anything about fish, have never been fishing in my life, hate boats, and get really seasick. I have no direct interest in the ocean, but I wanted to learn more about the impact humans were having on the world. I learned a lot of fascinating things about the ocean, but my main takeaway was...how come I didn't know any of this earlier? And in general, how come I only know a small handful of people that are even interested in talking about pressing environmental issues? Why is caring about the environment an "interest" or "hobby", as if being invested in what is going to inevitably devastate the following generations of life on earth is the same as playing basketball or watching a new TV show? 

I want to blame individuals, but I can't. The societal baseline for caring is just too low. We pat ourselves on the back for everything, even actions that should really be the baseline. We refill our water bottles at the water fountain, where it kindly reminds us of the number of bottles "saved" from the landfills. Yes, refilling that bottle does replace a disposable plastic bottle, but why doesn't every bottle say "one more piece of plastic added to the landfill"? Why do we give out plastic bottles, straws, and cups in absurd amounts at every social event? And what's the difference if we collect reusable water bottles like they're disposable, anyway? Why do we feel good when we recycle, but don't really notice when we toss plastic into a trash bin just because it was closer? Society doesn't lead us to actually make a difference, it just wants us to feel like we're making a difference. 

I'm surrounded by amazing people who care greatly about an impressive variety of things. I went to school with people who were incredibly hardworking, passionate about technology, and left with dreams of making the world a "better place" (I use quotes here just because I think every person has a different definition of better). For many, that meant newer, faster, more reliable, more advanced technology. More innovation. I share many of my peers' passion for technology, and ways it can be harnessed to  better the lives of humans. I love well-designed products, cool tech, and I am constantly in awe of what humans are capable of creating and understanding. And yet, I'm also constantly frustrated, because in tech, sustainability is often a buzzword, used vaguely on websites to check a box and move on with it. Actually caring about the environment is delegated to hipsters and crunchy granola types (ie. Patagonia), or so my experiences have led me to believe. But the environment is the one thing that will affect all of us. No matter where you live, how much money you make, what you studied, or how many cars you own, whether you are religious or not... what happens with our environment will affect all of us. 

We are imagining and building the future, but blissfully ignoring it at the same time. I'm not asking for everyone to drop their jobs or personal passions and dedicate their lives to environmental causes - that would be hypocritical of me. However, I do believe that we can all spend a little bit more time thinking about the less glamorous parts of our future - pollution, climate change, ocean resource management, sustainable agricultural production, trash... We don't think about it because we're taught that humans are incredible, adaptive beings that can use our big brains to solve any problem we're encountered with. I think that's quite egotistical, but I can put some trust in it. Yet, I can no longer maintain comfort in that thought, because around me, there are very few big brains that I see working on these issues. 

These are issues that will (and already are) affecting our lives. These are issues that will burden the lives of humans for generations to come (if nuclear war doesn't kill us all by then). We imagine the future as such a colorful world filled with wonderful technology - we have no trouble talking about self-driving cars and fearing about the implications of AI, but we cannot forget about our physical planet. We cannot forget that there will soon be 8 billion people on this planet, each one fighting for food, water, infrastructure, and energy (and scrambling for the quality of living and rate of consumption that Americans have taken completely for granted). 

I think it's easy to think about the future and dismiss it as something to deal with later on, but it's important to realize how much can be at stake if we don't find viable solutions. If you love sushi, think about what it would be like if your favorite sushi no longer existed in the world, because the fish it came from went extinct due to poor fishery management. If you get really bad seasonal allergies, think about what it would be like when year after year, increased CO2 and longer spring seasons make allergies even worse.  What would it be like if our drinking water became a significant health risk? What would it be like if droughts led to a severe scarcity of water, let alone clean water? What would it be like to fear "once in a lifetime" type of hurricanes every year?

The future scares me. It's not really these "what if" questions that scare me, but the lack of people who are willing to think critically about these questions. I really don't know how to get people to care about these questions. We can talk about our future homes, how many kids we're going to have, where we want to travel, what kind of pets we want, our career trajectories, our retirement plans, but we don't talk about what we can do to make sure the world we're retiring in is the one we imagine. Why?

Maybe I'm being too pessimistic, too critical. I don't know. I would love to talk about this - please comment or email me if you have thoughts. 

brand new colony

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This post will probably be a mess of things. The past few months have been insane. I tried to sort out my thoughts in an earlier blog post, right after the election. I've tried endlessly to make sense of the results, the implications, and to determine a reasonable personal course of action. I've read a lot more, in an attempt to understand even a small percentage of this incredibly complex world. Most recently, I read Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. This book describes cases of science denial and how keeping controversy alive is a method used by contrarian scientists, private corporations, and conservative think thanks to achieve their economic and political goals. Essentially, it outlines people that actively and willingly harm other humans for economic gain. And it terrified me, not because I didn't know that this was occurring, but because this book was written in 2010, and now seven years later, it is more relevant than ever. It baffles me that science has become something you can just "not believe" in, as if that means it doesn't exist. Science is not religion. Whether you pray to God or follow the teachings of Buddha, and if you're not part of an extremist religion, the impact of those actions is mostly confined to yourself (and those of your religious community). I am not diminishing the worth of religion, but believing or not believing in a certain religion will not actively harm anyone. Science is not something you can choose not to believe in. If you jump out of a plane because you don't believe in gravity, it doesn't mean your body will not smash into the concrete. And just because it takes you a few minutes to hit the ground and feel the consequence, doesn't mean that gravity isn't acting during that time. Right now, the world is in free fall from the choices we've made in the name of advancement, and certain people believe that gravity doesn't exist because we haven't splattered on the concrete yet. But we will, and by the time that happens, it'll be too late to eject a parachute. 

The future of the environment terrifies me, as does the future of healthcare, education, and all types of human rights. And now, in my fourth year of college and the brink of determining how my future will intersect with this country's, I'm quite confused. It's always bothered me how my personal interests and hobbies never quite aligned with my larger goals as well as I would've liked. I'm passionate about the environment, but my personal interests and skills didn't align well with environmental engineering. I am deeply interested in personal and global health, but biology and chemistry constantly went over my head. The things that I have been moderately successful in - product design, UX, photography - are infrequently connected to the issues I'm truly passionate about. They exist, certainly, but are pretty niche. Instead, I find myself skimming through the jobs for which I have relevant skills, which include designing new consumer products that require more of earth's resources to manufacture for those with dispensable income, testing random fun mobile applications, improving business strategy for companies to make even more exuberant amounts of money, etc. The intersection of design with healthcare or the environment is quite small, and I'm trying my best to find it. The desire to contribute to something that will genuinely improve the lives of people, when combined with the functional need of having a job, makes this process pretty stressful. 

For now, I will continue reading to educate myself on the issues I hope one day to be able to address. I will continue modifying my personal habits and choices to reduce my negative impact, and I will continue documenting this beautiful world that is a privilege to see every single day.  

Women's March in Boston

Women's March in Boston