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.

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).

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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

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

short truth

It's one of those new year posts! I'm not big on new year resolutions; I'm a pretty firm believer that if you want to make change in your life, it can start at any point in the year, week, or day. This will be more a reflection of what's happened this year, and what the next year will bring. 

I started off 2016 at my friend's house in South Pasadena, watching the delayed ball drop and drinking apple cider. Since then, I've moved to Irvine, and no longer have the luxury of being minutes away from my high school friends. I spent my January term interning at a software company in San Francisco as a user experience designer, and learned a bit about web design. Living in SF was an interesting experience, although I definitely cannot imagine living there for an extended amount of time. My spring semester of junior was a wreck both academically and emotionally. I felt suffocated by it all, but managed to land an internship in design consulting, which had been my dream since early sophomore year. I dragged myself through the semester, ending the year with sickness and a brutal cough. I made drastic changes in the beginning of summer, feeling alive again for the first time in months, and gaining further insight to what mattered to me in life - the most important being health. As a result, I spent the summer in Somerville enjoying life immensely. I learned how to play guitar, read often, cooked new foods, watched a lot of Planet Earth, and regained motivation as a photographer. I visited NYC a few times, and spent a lot of time with people that I truly value. I was involved in a crazy car accident and suffered a concussion, although luckily nothing worse than that. Fall semester of senior year was unexpectedly rewarding - I learned much about leadership, user research, writing, and medical anthropology. I made time for the relationships I valued, and felt consistently happy and healthy in my personal life, with some exceptions. The process and results of the presidential election (the first I was able to vote in) was incredibly draining, but I feel like I have a much better grasp of this country I live in. I have excitement and fear that will follow me into 2017, and confusion about how to deal with them. Despite these fears, I also carry a deeper appreciation for those in my life (which if you're reading this, is you). So thank you for being part of my 2016 journey!

Looking back, I've realized that a year is an incredibly long time, and I have no idea where I will be a year from now. As I stand in the face of graduation, there have never been so many unknowns. Where will I be living? Where will I be working? What will this country look like? What will I be doing to help? I cannot predict any of these things, but I know that I'll be making an active effort to improve what I can around me. Despite the chaos, 2016 has been a year of simplification for me, and I hope to continue distilling as we move into the new year. 

rising water

 It’s been quite a chaotic week, if not month, for the majority of this country. I have many feelings about the election, most of them along the lines of fear, confusion, and anger. This post won’t be about the election directly, but something I’ve been forced to think about even more as a result of the election. The future of our environment is more uncertain than ever with the impending changes in D.C., and I’m beginning to think more about the impact individuals can make to help our planet. If you’re thinking, I don’t want to read about this hippy stuff, or something like that… I’m not sure what to say to you, except that it’s the responsibility of each individual to think critically about challenging the status quo, especially living in this mind-bogglingly wasteful country. 
 
 I’m not preaching. This is as much a personal exploration for me as it is a way to share the information I already know. I’m wasteful in many ways, many of which I could be completely unaware of. I think that’s usually the main problem - we’re so accustomed to what we’ve grown up around that we don’t see anything wrong with what we’re doing. We proceed, believing that we’re all entitled to the same indulgences that we witness, not questioning where things come from, or where things go. Certain things are okay because “everyone else does it too”. We comfort ourselves by emphasizing that we are 1 in 7 billion, and nothing we do can possibly make a difference in relieving the planet of the pressure of human existence. Yet, most of us seek to make a difference in the world one day. To me, it only makes sense that this difference starts with our daily habits. I’m not the most sustainable person I know, nor necessarily the most environmentally aware, but I’ll outline some of the things I want to do or already actively do to reduce my own environmental impact.
 
 I’ll talk about diet first because that’s what I’m most familiar with. I have been vegan since I was 8 years old for health reasons, that have also accumulated environmental reasons in recent years. Livestock is responsible for 7.2 gigatons of CO2 emissions each year, which is nearly 15% of all human greenhouse gas emissions. For each kilogram of beef protein, 300 kg of CO2 is released. Additionally, cows produce 44% of human methane emissions, and methane can warm the planet about 86 times more than CO2 while it’s in the atmosphere. Pigs and chicken have less impact, but still require about 100 kg of CO2 per kg of protein. For comparison, tofu requires about 16 kg CO2 per kg of protein. There’s people out there who blame vegetarians/vegans for the deforestation in South America to make land for soy production… what they may not realize, however, is that 75% of the soy grown (in 2011) was used for animal feed, and 6% is used for human food. Instead of eating the animals that consume the soy for protein, we can eat the plant protein directly. 
 
 In addition to eating a plant based diet, trying to purchase locally grown produce is beneficial to the environment because it reduces transportation cost and energy to move the produce. Eating organic reduces toxic chemical waste from pesticides and fertilizer.   
  
Eliminating food waste, composting, bringing your own bags to the grocery store, using a reusable water bottle (+ BPA free), and buying foods with less packaging can also help. In terms of daily habits, choosing to walk/bike instead of taking a car, taking shorter showers, turning off lights when you’re not using them, and recycling when possible are all beneficial. 

Speaking of recycling - while it is definitely good to reuse and recycle, recycling is also an energy intensive process. Instead of using products (plastic water bottles, paper, disposable items) and assuming it is fine because those items will be recycled, it can be valuable to think about how to not use these products at all. Most actions that are done out of convenience can be easily altered to include reusable items. 

Speaking of disposable items, I’ve recently started thinking about the environmental impact of feminine hygiene products. While these products are mostly cotton/rayon based, the disposable plastic packaging can definitely take a toll. The aversion to talking about periods may be part of the reason why disposable products are the standard - people want to just be able to throw them away and not think about it ever again, which makes sense. It’s a bit weird considering this is something half the globe has to deal with, which makes me think that reusable options, such as menstrual cups or reusable pads actually make a lot more sense. 

I read a book called Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion by Elizabeth Cline this past week, which presented unbelievable data about how much global impact our clothing has. When this book was written (2012), the US consumed 20 billion garments a year, which is 64 items per person - more than 1 piece of clothing per week. It’s the second largest consumer sector, right behind food. As a result, Americans throw away 12.7 million tons of textiles per year, which is 68 lbs per person. In 1950, the world made 10 million tons of fiber a year. In 2012 - 82 million tons. That requires 125 million tons of coal and about 2 trillion gallons of water. Zara alone produces 1 million garments per day, and the customers there shop an average of 17 times per year. While it might sound insane on paper, the rate at which we’re capable at consuming clothing is incredible. There is a focus on cheap clothing - H&M, Target, Forever21 - and these companies can afford to make clothes cheap because they’re making small profit margins on huge numbers. They thrive on making cheap, poor-quality clothes with factories that pay workers minimum wage, which is lower than living wage (cost to survive) in many countries. The book also describes a “clothing deficit myth”, which is the idea that all of our clothes, when donated, goes to some poor person who really needs it. In reality, 20% of post-consumer clothing becomes fiber for building materials, 30% for industrial rags, and 5% is thrown away. There’s not really a need for clothing in the world anymore, and if there is, it isn’t for the poor quality clothes that we’re burning through. To address this problem, we need to stop believing that all the clothes we purchase is put to effective use after get rid of it. 

Even as someone who consumes relatively little clothing, this book still shook me. Clothing is not something we can just ignore, so I began looking into more sustainable clothing brands. Yes, many of them are more expensive, but when I consider the workers that made it, quality of the item, and decreased environmental impact, I find it justifiable, if possible. If not, trying to find higher quality cheap clothing and making it last as long as possible by taking good care of it and purchasing versatile pieces that will be worn often is another way of addressing this problem. A few brands that I have looked at and find admirable include Patagonia, United by Blue, and Cotopaxi. There are other companies that aren’t as charitable as those ones, but still sell high quality, long lasting, or ethically produced clothes - American Giant, DL1961, PACT, prAna, etc. 

That's all I have for now, although I expect the themes of sustainability and consumption will continue to come up for me as I continue to examine the impact our daily choices can make. 

If you're wondering about the title of this post, I saw James Vincent McMorrow this week, and "Rising Water" reminds me of climate change.

the list goes on

I don’t pretend to know more about current events than I do, and I definitely don’t know as much as I should. I struggle to keep up, and admittedly, sometimes I turn a blind eye to avoid thinking about the cold hard facts. This is a privilege I have, and a privilege I recognize. 

Attacks in Baghdad, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Turkey, and France in July alone should convey the chaos of the world, but do not even begin to scratch the surface of everything that is wrong. Social equality, racial tensions, poverty, terrorism—these terms do not convey the sense of hopelessness felt by people everywhere, nor do these terms come close to covering the plethora of issues prevalent on this planet. I’m not the best source of this type of information, and I don’t claim to be, so I’ll leave this as it is. 

This weekend, my classmate, Drew Esquivel, was killed on the street by a drunk driving NYPD officer. I didn’t know Drew well, but I had been around him long enough to put a personality to the name, and I cannot shake the sense of loss. This was the same feeling I had when my multivariable calculus classmate, Phoebe Wang, lost her life during the first semester of sophomore year. This was how I felt freshman year of high school, when a senior, Aydin Salek, lost his life. These names haunt me, because glimmers of their personalities are etched into my brain. Like many others who have had their lives even briefly scraped by these individuals (and countless others), I can only wish I had the privilege of knowing them more—to wonder about their lives, their interests, their deepest thoughts, their biggest dreams. 

Maybe it is the location, the social proximity, the timing, or the fact that it was completely driven by another individual’s blind stupidity, but I cannot get the incident out of my head. I’ve had important lives taken from me “before their time.” I grew up immersed in loss, yet this seems so different. I’ve always tried to live by the philosophy to never save things for the “right” moment, to never take things for granted, to never miss an opportunity to show people how much they mean to me, to be kind to people even if there isn’t a “reason” to be. And although I’ve been able to do all of these things to an extent, they now seem so inadequate. I’ve never lived in a time when a missed call or slow text responses send me into slight panicked thoughts. I’ve never dreaded the loading of the news page or worried so much about people not immediately in my proximity. I’m a believer that positive thoughts hold some sort of power, but it’s becoming harder and harder to maintain these thoughts with everything that is happening. Sometimes I just have to stop and take deep breaths (and splurge my thoughts of how much people mean to me at them, hoping that they’ll realize even a fraction of what I feel). 

The most overwhelming part of this is that this was one incident that affected me so much because it was too close for comfort. However, there are incidents every day, all over the world. Some of them undocumented, some of them lost in flurry of what media deems most important, some of them completely overlooked. There are shootings, bombings, murders, and these are only the issues that remove lives from earth. There are diseases, gross inequalities, hateful attacks, poverty issues, environmental issues, structural issues…the list goes on. The list goes on. And that’s what feels the most helpless. No matter what issues we decide to focus on or put on efforts towards or even spend a moment of our days thinking about, there is always more. The list goes on. 

I didn’t write this to find solace, although I was hoping it would sort out some of my relentless stream of thoughts. I don’t think it did, but that’s okay. I am not looking away from the cold hard facts right now. 

For now, all I can do is truly cherish every moment of the people around me. To take the time and effort to really get to know people as individuals, to see what makes each person unique, and to truly sense how much the world would lose without them here. 

So to the people reading this, and I know who you are, I love you. You are each meaningful to me in drastically different ways, but each of you have supported me, believed in me, loved me, and had some part in getting me to where I am today. I can only hope to have done (and continue to do the same) for each of you.