//\\// eDNA \\//\\

I hate being overly dramatic and ruminating in the past, but this really was a year of too many physical and mental injuries. Eventually, I was able to turn things around, though only after struggles on struggles. It was forced initially, like when when you force yourself to eat despite having no appetite.

Every year, reflections feel like a "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" conclusion, and this year I learned there is a lot more to this. I realized that to survive, I need to not care so much about external validation, to find my own silver linings, to have some self-compassion, to let go of what I don't believe in, to spread positive influences on others through genuine actions.

I rarely think about this Tumblr, but when I look back, it's fascinating to see my thoughts, worries, and aspirations captured and archived here.

My random rant that I had come here to post is the lack of emphasis on up-cycling. The holiday season actually really overwhelms me because I hate giving gifts just because (I need inspo... I don't like to throw random half-assed paraphernalia at friends). Shopping is obviously driven by economic incentives, but I realize I already own so much shit that I can very easily style into Pinterest aesthetics at my place.

Nothing angers you so easily.

You don't take criticism negatively.

You can normalize apology if needed.

You are willing to change when necessary.

You don't limit your thoughts; you adorn them with actions.

You rarely expect from others.

You are serious about your and others' boundaries.

You are open to helping others.

You have a balance between emotion and intelligence.

You are aware of your limitations.

Comfort zone doesn't limit you.

You are consistent in your actions.

You balance self-acceptance with self-improvement.

In this hidden blog that I've had ever since college, I think I've done a pretty good job of keeping up with my annual posts. Around 23:30 on 12/31 every year, I contemplate here everything about this past year as I wait for the countdown.

But I'm so tired lol.

2023 was an interesting year. On social media, my life this year looks very glossy. Travels, food, live music, workouts. Everything in excess. My motivation to live so hard was borne out of lots of turmoil in the recent past. Concerts, hiking, long runs, and solo trips were an outlet and an escape. As Tablo mentions in every Epik High concert I've been to, they can't make our problems in our daily lives go away, but they can help to lift our mood for at least one night during their show.

And it was during my very first time at barricade, when Epik High was giving the audience their all right in front of me, that I decided life is always worth living. It seems silly and childish that with all my complicated problems and responsibilities, everything felt lucid in that moment touching the cold metal barriers, standing on an uncomfortable platform, after a ~2h drive to Sacramento to see a concert (not to mention I saw the same show the night before in Oakland). The moment of light was literally under the bright lights of the stage. It was then I realized that despite the times when it feels like everything is fcked up to the point of absolute freefall, there will always be amazing experiences unknown, waiting to be lived.

I've also seen so many sad cases at work, with patients around my age. It's really made me appreciate life, in the sense of living it myself and to do whatever I can to positively impact the lives of others.

Just as every cloud has a silver lining, every ray of sunshine casts its shadow. There's a duality to everything. In 2023, I found lots of silver linings and confronted lots of shadows.

Goals for 2024? Sustainability. It's easier to build good habits and keep up, than to backtrack. And I've found that having strong feelings isn't ultimately sustainable, because it just makes me go rogue all the time.

Sometimes I feel like I always find things to complain about and freak out over. I hate being the person that ruins the vibe, but at the same time I feel a little jaded after repeatedly seeing very valid concerns being ignored.

I was wearing my UCSF School of Pharmacy hoodie as I was getting groceries after running, because it's worn out but keeps me warm when I work out. I was prepared for the usual cordial small-talk at check-out, although when the cashier asked me "are you going to become a pharmacist?", I wasn't prepared by her response that she is a retired nurse and really, really appreciates pharmacists.

We chatted a little and she asked me where I work, etc. after I told her I graduated from school a little while ago. She was so kind ("pharmacists are so smart!" ...and she seemed blown away when she found out my daily life about how I work in oncology and I go on inpatient rounds) I gave her my usual response to compliments, that health care is always a team effort.

She even told me, in a genuine and heartfelt demeanor, "remember, you make a difference in this world." I thought about it for a second and realized it's true. Even though supervisors don't seem to wrap their head around our value and how specialized the field is, I can't forget that what we do really is important, which is why I chose this path in the first place. So despite being stretched to my breakpoint, I must say that it is all worthwhile. Managing the residency program is a whole lot of work with its unique stresses and challenges, but at the end of the day, it is even more worthwhile when I think about all the residents I am able to teach, graduate, and send into the world to make a difference.

College/pharmacy school/residency made me think that I could handle stress well.

Then sh!tshows happened in real life. I got through it, despite a long healing process, and that made me think I was still capable of stress.

But sometimes life feels like whack-a-mole: stress, politics, drama, frustrations, misunderstandings, misfortune will always occur. Even with your best, genuine, pure intentions, things can take horribly wrong turns.

Everything has a silver lining.

Future's gonna be okay.

For a long time, I had wanted to read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, but it's always checked out at the library. I read the author's other book which also has good reviews.

I've heard of the concept of "caring too much". It sounds narcissistic, but I feel like my perfectionist mindset makes me OCD and uselessly stress over the tiniest details. I thought this would be a good read for myself.

I read ~3/4. It was the only entertainment I brought while waiting all day for a concert, but still, I got bored and couldn't really bring myself to finish it. While some parts were interesting, most of it either felt like it was rambling or got too philosophical.

The basic premise of the book is that, realistically speaking, problems are inevitable.

"Hope doesn't care about the problems that have already been solved. Hope cares only about the problems that still need to be solved. Because the better the world gets, the more we have to lose."

"You blame yourself for failing to live up to your God Value, regardless of how ill-advised that God Value is. You can see this same cycle of desperation play out in all sorts of other areas. Fitness and diet plans, political activism, self-help seminars… the message is always the same: the more you do it, the more you're told you need to do it to finally experience the satisfaction you've been promised. Yet that satisfaction never comes."

"Human pain is like a game of Whac-A-Mole. Every time you knock down one kind of pain, another one pops up. And the faster you whack them, the faster they come back."

It delves into why and how we feel hope.

"To build and maintain hope, we need three things: a sense of control, a belief in the value of something, and a community. 'Control' means we feel as though we're in control of our own life, that can affect our fate. 'Values' means we find something important enough to work toward, something better that's worth striving for. And 'community' means we are part of a group that values the same things we do and is working on achieving those things."

"Here's the funny thing about value hierarchies: when they change, you don't actually lose anything… That's because 'fun' is the product of our value hierarchies. When we stop valuing something, it ceases to be fun or interesting to us. Therefore, there is no sense of loss, no sense of missing out when we stop doing it it. On the contrary, we look back and wonder how we ever so much time caring about such a silly, trivial thing, why we wasted so much energy on issues and causes that didn't matter. These pangs of regret or embarrassment are good; they signify growth. They are the product of our achieving our hopes."

"Experiences generate emotions. Emotions generate values. Values generate narratives of meaning. And people who share similar narratives of meaning come together."

It also explores feelings from a psychological angle.

"Some people's Thinking Brains have ignored their Feeling Brains for so long that it takes them a while to learn how to listen again."

"This whole 'teach your Thinking Brain to decipher and cooperate with your Feeling Brain instead of judging him and thinking he's an evil piece of shit' is the basis for CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy and ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy)."

"Equalization is present in every experience because the drive to equalize is emotion itself. Sadness is a feeling of powerlessness to make up for a perceived loss. Anger is the desire to equalize through force and aggression. Happiness is feeling liberated from pain, while guilt is the feeling that you deserve some pain that never arrived."

More specifically, it analyzes how your upbringing affects your outlook on life.

"Our identities snowball through our lives, accumulating more and more values and meaning as they tumble along... The longer we've held a value, the deeper inside the snowball it is and the more fundamental it is to how we see ourselves and how we see the world. Like interest on a bank loan, our values compound compound over time, growing stronger and coloring future experiences. It's not just the bullying from when you were in grade school that fucks you up. It's the bullying plus all the self-loathing and narcissism you brought to decades worth of future relationships, causing them all to fail, that adds up over time."

"...the longer we've held onto these narratives, the less aware we are that we have them... Despite being arbitrary and completely made up, they seem not only natural but inevitable."

"The only way to change our values is to have experiences contrary to our values. And any attempt to break free from these values through new or contrary experiences will inevitably be met with pain and discomfort. It's why it is impossible to become someone new without first grieving the loss of who you used to be."

"Ideologies, because they're constantly challenged, changed, proven, and then disprove, offer scant psychological stability upon which to build one's hope."

It goes further into different stages in life, how experiences are processed, and how that leads to frustration or satisfaction. It's simplified in a diagram: Child -> pleasure. Adolescent -> principles -> pleasure. Adult -> principles

Children who are abused or coddled often end up stuck in their childhood value system. "Instead of predictable failures, his experience is just random and cruel… Therefore, no lesson is learned. No higher values are produced. No development takes place. The child never learns to control his own behavior and develops coping mechanisms to deal with the incessant pain." "People get stuck in the adolescent stage of values for similar reasons that they get stuck with childish values: trauma and/or neglect… A person who has been bullied in his younger years will move through the world with an assumed understanding that no one will ever like or respect him unconditionally, that all affection must be hard-won through a series of practiced conversation and canned actions."

"Adolescents need to be shown that bargaining is a never-ending treadmill, that the only things in life of real value and meaning are achieved without conditions, without transactions.

"Making the leap of faith into a virtuous adulthood requires not just an ability to endure pain, but also the courage to abandon hope, to let go of the desire for things always to be better or more pleasant or a ton of fun. Your Thinking Brain will tell you that this is illogical, that your assumptions must inevitably be wrong in some way. Yet, you do it anyway. Your Feeling Brain will procrastinate and freak out about the pain of brutal honesty, the vulnerability that comes with loving someone, the fear that comes from humility. Yet, you do it anyway."

And this random witty quote that I have mentally bookmarked in case I ever need a catchy snappy comeback phrase.

"I think your mind is so open your brain fell out." --Carl Sagan

I think the biggest takeaway was the concept of amor fati (This is also the name of an Epik High song; now I'm curious to look more into the lyrics).

Amor fati is "love of one's fate". "Amor fati... meant the unconditional acceptance of all life and experience: the highs and the lows, the meaning and the meaninglessness. It meant loving one's pain, embracing one's suffering. It meant closing the separation between one's desires and reality not striving for more desires, but by simply desiring reality."

"Hope for nothing... Hope for this. Hope for the infinite opportunity and oppression present in every single moment. Hope for the suffering that comes with freedom. For the pain that comes from happiness. For the wisdom that comes from ignorance. For the power that comes from surrender. And then act despite it.

"To act without hope. To not hope for better. To be better."

In a sequel to my Oregon adventures, I made a similar hiking-focused solo trip in Washington. I was initially planning to do drive up to Vancouver and do touristy city things, but I had bought an annual Northwest Forest Pass that unlocks a slew of hikes in the PNW.

I remember feeling completely recharged after my 4-day Oregon trip. It was only 2 months ago; why do I feel so stressed already? I wonder if I’m really that behind on everything, if I’m really that inefficient, if I’m really that bad at handling pressure. 

I recently read a friend’s blog post about trauma and anxiety precipitated by caring too much, and overcoming this by choosing to be intentional about who and what to care about. I don’t know if it’s pretentious to say that I think I also care too much, but I think that’s what got to me in recent times. Perfectionism, combined with a strong believe in values and how I think things should be has made me unravel. When something bothers me, I tend to process everything in an increasingly cynical and negative mindset. Everything just spirals. Even walking behind someone slow can send me into a rage. 

At the beginning of this trip, I was so done with life. I almost wished I would get eaten by a bear so I wouldn’t have to deal with all the issues I was facing. My flight was delayed nearly 2 hours (it’s only 1.5 hour flight time lol) and I was running on less than 4 hours of sleep after working evening shift the day before. I was deathly tired but decided to go ahead with my itinerary. 

Even after just one day, I felt refreshed. There’s something about being in the forest that clears my mind. There’s something therapeutic about stomping through the trail, immersing myself in nature, forcing myself to unplug, and allowing my mind to wander. 

Sometimes I think about productive things like plans with work, other times I think about music, yet other times I think about what I should do with my life, or I just focus on my steps and footwork through the rocks. And sometimes I have to run hard, physically fall, and pick myself up before I can get things off my mind. 

This time, I fell onto some sharp rocks. There was blood. But I got up, wiped it off, and kept going. I’m probably being more dramatic than I need to be, though it’s life lessons like this that help me reframe my mentality. As Tablo often incorporates in his lyrics, “what doesn’t kill me can only make me bleed.” 

Now I know why Thoreau became so enlightened in Walden. My 4 days of hiking adventures through lush rainy forests, rocky mountain passes, and beautiful crystal-clear lakes made me realize that maybe things aren’t as bad as I thought they were, that maybe I just need to open my mind a little because nothing is black and white, that maybe I should try not to be so bothered by the principle of things it’s impossible to always make everything follow my values, and that I should have more self-compassion.

Yup, those are my musings from my ~30 miles of hiking, ~6900′ of cumulative elevation gain, and ~650 miles of driving.

The title is catchy, and the book is just as good. I found it because it’s another book that BTS read (one of my go-to’s for book recs lol) It’s fascinating though to see how the themes of their reads are echoed in their music and media. 

This book is a collection of thoughts and conversations between the author and her therapist, whom she started seeing to manage dysthymia. The bulk of it is written raw conversation transcripts, which I found creative and made for an easy read. The rest of it is a narrative in first-person, and almost feels as though you were reading the author’s journal. 

A lot of it is relatable--there is something about the thirtysomething age range that precipitates a lot of insecurities. It feels like a time when you’re old enough to realize all your deficiencies (especially in comparison to others) but not old enough not to care.

Here’s a long list of notable takeaways and quotes I flagged from the book.

Don’t worry too much (easier said than done).

Speaking up about colleagues being noisy. “Would that really make you happy... I don’t think you’d suddenly think, Look at me, I’m cured! ...Even when you can accept that a stranger is in the wrong and you should move on, you’re still deliberately making yourself responsible for correcting their behavior. Sometimes the best thing to do with people who never listen to you in the first place is to avoid them altogether. To right every wrong you come across in the world would be an impossible endeavor for any one person. You’re just one person, and you’re putting too much of the weight of the world on yourself.

“Sometimes I think, 35-year-old me would feel so sad about 28-year-old me. And if I were to meet myself as a 20-year-old, I would tell her something like, ‘You don’t have to worry so much’.” “Don’t compare yourself to other people. Compare yourself to your past self.” Victim complex? “We have to keep thinking through it. Because there are parts of it that have to do with your personality. You’ve lived with anxiety for a long time now. Once your new experiences start overwriting your old ones, your view of yourself and others may become far brighter than it is now.”

Human beings and relationships are complex.

The hedgehog dilemma is wanting to be close to someone, but when they get close, you tend to keep them at arm’s length.

Cognitive distortion: “faking bad” is when you regard yourself as being worse off than you are, while “faking good” is when you are determined to feel that you’re better off than reality

Your mind immediate goes to the most extreme explanation instead of stopping to think of the many other reasons... There is no absolute good when it comes to relationships. And it’s perfectly healthy to have disagreements with friends and lovers from time to time. I just hope you learn to differentiate the parts from the whole. Just because you like one thing about a person, you don’t need to like everything about them. And just because you don’t like one thing about a person, it doesn’t mean the person as a whole isn’t worth your time.

People are 3-dimensional. Fairy tales are very 1-dimensional, with only absolutely good people and absolutely bad people. 

I hope learn to look at a person as a whole before judging them. And to look upon yourself as a whole individual as well.

Pent-up, pessimistic emotions can become a vortex that sucks your soul, and this is perfectly normal.

Looking deep within myself is always difficult. Especially when I’m in the throes of negative emotion... It’s like I know everything is fine, but I can’t stop myself from endlessly checking to make sure it really is fine, and in the process I make myself miserable.

I just felt like whining. And leaning on someone, and being sad. To me, sadness is the path of least resistance, the most familiar and close-at-hand emotion I have. A habit that has encrusted itself onto me everyday.

“Fear increases when it’s something that you keep to yourself. Instead of suffering alone, it can often be good to share it with someone else” “I’m afraid of their judgement... Wouldn’t it be more of a relief if you just disappointed them up front and moved on?”

I try to shove ‘properness’ into my twisted mind and body to correct it but end up with a Jenga stack of a self that soon comes crashing down.

Empathy is a double-edged sword; too much of it is a bad thing.

The moment you set out to be more empathetic is the moment it becomes a chore. That would result in your empathy decreasing.

There are days when I wish I were numb, when I’m desperate to feel nothing. I want to be simple and cold and totally without feeling. Empathy has a large presence in my life, and it can cast a very long shadow.

I can totally relate to feeling my heart and mood sinking when watching a sad drama or movie, or listening to a song or someone else’s story.

Which is why I put up walls and tried to keep myself safe for so long. I thought I had built a shelter for myself, but I had only locked myself up in a prison... I thought I would be happier but that wasn’t the case... I kept wondering aloud why I was the way I was, and my cynicism towards others deepened. I had wanted to be a cool, rational person, but once I had cooled down, my world froze. every place I put my finger on would ache. I was angry and frustrated.

Turning your gaze can be a simple, straightforward coping mechanism.

Whenever my self-consciousness hits overflow, or I feel weighed down by anxiety, sadness, irritation, or fear, I think to myself I have to turn my gaze. I think I’ve realized that this constant internal fighting is never going to make me feel better about myself... so I turn my gaze. From despair to hope. from discomfort to comfort. From the majority to the minority. From the things that re useful but make me rust to the things that are useless but make me beautiful. Once I turn my gaze, I see the more interesting aspects of life... I realize that I can't change all by myself; what makes me really change are the myriad things of the universe that my gaze happens to rest upon. through turning my gaze, I learn that the low points of life can be filled with countless realizations.

There’s really no end to worrying once you set your mind to it. If you shift your perspective from their past to your present, you can start perceiving your personal experiences in a more positive manner. From ‘How sad they didn’t realize this’ to ‘How lucky it is that I realize this.’“ Superego from experiences creates an idealized version of self, but it’s not who you actually are. “You keep failing to meet that ideal in the real world, and then you punish yourself.”

Self-compassion is underrated.

I am... someone in need to help take each step forward, warmly and patiently, to allow to rest on some days and to encourage on others--I believe that the more I look into this strange being, myself, the more route I will find happiness.

But just as a person who is dropped into a dark well must make a circle in order to determine they are inside a well, I am sure my continued attempts to be better will take shape into something resembling an octagon, or even a dodecahedron, and maybe one day a circle. I was told that my accumulated mistakes will create a stronger sense of self, that I was doing just fine, that I was perfectly capable of looking at the other side of the coin, but the coin just happens to be a little heavy, that’s all.

Becoming a good person... is a very difficult process. Aside from characteristics one happens to be born with, it’s hard to change all the thoughts and attitudes that have accumulated over the years. Which is why even after coming across a piece of advice and realizing how good it is, I can’t follow it for more than three days. Words and behaviors are very different, and while hiding words is easy, hiding the behavior that reaches out from one’s subconscious is impossible.

I’ve got to accept that everyone has a flaw or two, and first and foremost, see myself as I am first. I must stop expecting myself to be perfect. The best I can do is to learn or realize something new every day.

Loving others starts with loving yourself.

Because I don’t love myself, I am unable to understand those who do love me in spite of it all, and so I test them... Even when the other person forgives me, I am unable to understand their forgiveness.

I want to love and be loved. Without suspicion, and with ease... Looking more closely at myself, there are parts that I’ve improved on. My depression has lessened a lot, and so has my anxiety over my relationships. But other problems have filled the cracks, and the culprit that thwarted every effort I made in exploring my problems in detail was my self-esteem. Because I still remain someone who is unable to love herself. But as I had that thought, I had another: light and darkness are part of the same thing. Happiness and unhappiness alternative throughout of life, as in a dance. So as long as I keep going and don’t give up, surely I will keep having moments of tears and laughter.

Opening up is counterintuitive, but brave and commendable.

Finding facts and information about the terms in this book--depression, anxiety, dysthymia, and so on--isn’t too hard in today’s society. But for a patient to brave societal prejudices and reveal in such vivid detail all the experiences that led her to seek treatment and the difficult process of treatment itself--this is perhaps not something that is as easily googleable as the name of an antidepressant.

Sharing thoughts after therapy with family, friends, colleagues, and strangers. “In the end, a better way to live is to live among others... Togetherness means altruism, and altruism is what saves us from selfishness. Because it begins with me and ends with everyone.

The ups and downs are just a natural part of life.

Everything is dynamic, which means life will have jump-for-joy moments as well as bad ones, going back and forth like the tide. If I’m sad today I’ll be happy tomorrow, and if I’m happy today I’ll be sad tomorrow--that’s fine. As long as I keep loving myself.

Life is all about getting better and getting worse and getting better again, so getting worse is a natural part of life and I just have to learn to deal with it.

I tend to go back and forth romanticism and cynicism. Crossing those barriers between hot and cold, I forget the lukewarm boredom of life; that lukewarm state is what I fear the most. Unable to return to feeling hot or cold, to be numb within a state of room temperature. In that state, we’re nothing better than dead. Life is all about getting better and getting worse and getting better again, so getting worse is a natural part of life and I just have to learn to deal with it.

The chef’s kiss was the ending about the author completing her healing process by going on a solo trip. Ironically, I read this book on my first solo trip, which was surprisingly indeed very healing.

I think it’s good to experience complete solitude in an unfamiliar environment. You’re not hitting rock bottom right now. When we’re sinking in water, it can be a relief to feel the ground beneath my feet, the rock bottom, because we know we can kick against it to rise again. But if you can’t feel the ground in life, the fear can be overwhelming. So maybe it’s good to find your rock bottom.

My first real solo trip was somewhat spontaneous. I just happened to randomly have a few days off work, and someone brought up Astoria and the Oregon coast when I was brainstorming places I could go. 

After asking around more and planning, I realized I like forests and mountains more than beaches and the ocean, so I planned 4 full days of long hikes in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, followed by good food and cute coffee shops in the city.

I used to think that solo travelers looked lonely and sad, but my own experience was rejuvenating. It’s nice to have complete control over your own schedule, and I packed so many destinations (drove 550 miles) and went ham on hiking (25 miles with 6260′ elevation gain!) There’s something fascinating and amusing to discover your true unhinged self. 

A few memorable moments that were such a mood:

Wine, cheese and crackers, and soft serve on a patio by myself

Cider flight and burger on a fruit farm picnic table by myself

Taking a waterfall selfie on timer mode (with great results!) and chatting with a couple who commended me for being brave to go on an 8-mile hike by myself

Self-reliance is a wonderful mindset. Humans are just too fickle; relationships are great but have inevitable ups and downs. As a straightforward example, I became really good at taking timer selfies on my trip. Hubs does an amazing job taking photos for me, but it just always feels like a vain favor and sometime I feel like he just wants to wander around with some alone time. Having myself as a fallback is a comforting thought.