Happy first birthday to my blog

Last month, this blog turned one! In honor of that, I want to share more about the origin story and reflect on what I have learned and continue to think about in the past year. 

Origin story: 

Around May 2020, I started to pretty seriously think about starting a website (initially I didn’t love the word “blog,” but I’ve since embraced it). I didn’t have an insightful reason for doing so - it was more that I knew some people who had websites and it seemed inexplicably cool. In hindsight I understand this a little better. I’ve always been interested in people’s stories whether through reading personal essays, consuming memoirs, or having a great memory for what people tell me about their personal lives (but a mediocre memory for school stuff and current events). 

I started a site on Weebly initially (which I would not recommend using) but between starting a new job, moving across the country, and figuring out how to navigate a long-distance relationship, starting my blog fell to the wayside. In November 2020, after the aforementioned relationship ended, I finally started my blog (on Squarespace - which I would recommend using). 

As a side note, people can absolutely work on interesting personal projects while they’re in a relationship, but if I had stayed in that relationship, there’s no way I would have started this blog. That’s not to throw shade or censure the relationship or anyone involved in any way, but it’s more of a reflection of my priorities at the time. When I was in a relationship, it felt like I was wearing blinders and guided by an invisible hand telling me what milestones to hit to secure a successful life. Between seeing people coupling up, getting engaged, and buying houses together, (both in real life and on TV), I felt like those should be my priorities as well. Only after the relationship ended did I start thinking more about what kind of person I wanted to be and how I wanted to be defined outside of a relationship. 

Starting Redefine Dichotomies: 

Initially, I didn’t know exactly what type of content I wanted to put on my blog; I was more interested in the idea of just having a blog. But at the end of 2020, my friend Belinda Lei was about to publish her book, Not THAT Rich. I wanted to support her, so I decided to interview her. I had spent a lot of time at my last job (in consulting) interviewing people, so I figured that would be a natural use of my skills. I’m also more than a little nosy, so I’ve always enjoyed asking people (many) questions and going beyond exchanging pleasantries. I enjoyed interviewing Belinda so much that I decided to devote a section of my blog to subsequent interviews with Asian Americans. I dove in with the fervor of someone who needed a distraction from processing a breakup, and initially I published a new interview every single week. I loved being able to meet new people and learn about industries I hadn’t worked in before (e.g., food and beverage, fashion, music, photography, travel). Along the way, I began thinking more deeply about how Asian history has and continues to affect the lives of people in the Asian diaspora (e.g., 1990s recession in Asia, Khmer Rouge, communism in Vietnamese). People started messaging me about how my blog helped them reflect on their own Asian diaspora identities, and I loved hearing these stories. 

Personal essays: 

I’ve previously written about some of the weird, racist incidents I’ve encountered while living in San Francisco. The first of these occurred this past spring and involved a man wildly gesticulating in my face while chanting “ching chong ching chong” repeatedly. After this happened, I started thinking of my blog as a way for people to appreciate the differences we maintain and also better understand the similarities we share as humans.

Living in San Francisco has also made me appreciate other aspects of my life that I had previously taken for granted. When I’m in a homogenous environment, it’s harder for me to notice the things that are special about myself. The most salient example is my upbringing in Indiana. I never thought much about the fact that I’m from Indiana until I moved to SF. On dating apps, people in SF messaged me about how they’d never met an Asian American from Indiana before. Recently, a group of people from the Bay Area was surprised to hear that during my K-12 education, all of my teachers were white. (A childhood friend later reminded me that we did have one non-white teacher.) I initially thought all of this was hilarious, but gradually these encounters have helped me recognize things that make me unique. In the past few months, I’ve been writing more personal essays about my experiences growing up Taiwanese American in Indiana and the anti-Asian racism I’ve faced in San Francisco.

Since the surge in violence against AAPI earlier this spring, I’ve started trying to be more of a bridge between different groups of people. Not in a sanctimonious way, but in the way where we need to hear personal, diverse stories to better understand one another. I’ve tried to make my content more accessible by posting summaries of my essays on Instagram and starting a newsletter.

What I’m learning and thinking about:

1. I deliberately treat this blog like a personal project and not a business - and definitely not like a “side hustle”: When I played basketball growing up, we would say “good hustle” when people worked hard to steal the ball or drove to the basket. This state of hustle was ephemeral - not a perpetual state to live in. America’s hustle culture can make people feel like their worth is tied to their productivity. This becomes toxic when people who have “side hustles” work all the time and people applaud that or at least positively reinforce this type of behavior. I don’t love this – I want to normalize resting and recovering and not feeling like you always need to be working on something. Yes, I spend a lot of time on my blog, but I also spend a lot of time sleeping (always striving for that 8+ hours of sleep a night) and generally relaxing. It’s great if people do have side hustles, but I don’t think we should make people feel like they have to have one to live a meaningful life.  

I’m always looking for balance. No one’s going to care about this blog more than me, and that’s okay and even good. This past spring and summer, I started to feel burnt out and overwhelmed by my blog. Someone reminded me that it’s okay to rest, because my blog will always be there and I can always come back to it. During that time, no one asked me why I wasn’t posting interviews every week anymore. 

Sometimes I feel a surge of energy and inspiration that drives me to easily write an essay. Other times I think about the daunting task of editing an interview and instantly feel overwhelmed. I’m still trying to find the right balance. If I wanted to treat my blog like a business, I would set a vision, create goals for the year, and track certain KPIs to execute on those goals. But I don’t want to feel this pressure.

2. Using my intuition to “just start” and have fun with it: Initially when I interviewed people, I used to ask what their advice was for people who were interested in doing something creative or entrepreneurial. I stopped asking this question pretty quickly, because I realized that a lot of people would answer with variations of “just start somewhere”. And that’s how I feel about my blog. 

This blog has helped me revive my dormant creative spirit – as a kid I would compose songs, write short stories, and create newspapers and yearbooks for my stuffed animals. I simply worked on whatever felt fun and let my intuition guide me. As an adult, that creative intuition kind of receded, as I subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) was shown what the “right” or “productive” thing to be working on was. But with this blog, it’s been nice just working on whatever I’m interested in again (another reason why I don’t set overarching goals for this blog). I think it’s important that I’m creating out of enjoyment and not catering to what is trendy or what people expect. There are times when an interview or essay I really like doesn’t get a lot of views or attention, and focusing on the joy of creating helps me be more okay with that.

3. Beyond the superficial: I’ve used my blog as a way to have conversations with people who I would have never been able to talk to in-depth otherwise. This has been especially helpful during Covid. I grew up in the Midwest where there isn’t a lot to do. My friends and I would often go on long walks replete with long conversations. (We were teenagers, so these conversations usually consisted of interrogating one another about our unrequited crushes.) When I got to college, I was confused by people who were perpetually looking for something “to do”. I love having conversations – so much so that I wrote an essay about how I think people (including myself) can have better conversations

During Covid, it was rare for people to talk about new friends they had made or new experiences they had had. Conversations sometimes felt stale; people were all feeling the ennui of the pandemic and that percolated into conversations. In hindsight, I realized that this blog has helped me have deeper conversations that gave me energy throughout Covid. One of the people that I interviewed (Kalina Silverman) created Big Talk, a movement to skip the small talk and make meaningful connections instead. That’s what I was inadvertently looking for and have found through my blog. Aside from Belinda, most of the people I’ve interviewed I only tangentially knew or didn’t know at all. But even though we were strangers, I was able to move past exchanging pleasantries and ask my interviewees about deeper things like their upbringing, what they were proud of things, what scared them, etc. I’ve interviewed people who I really admire, and I’m really grateful to have this experience. One of the most meaningful things in life for me is building relationships and having these fulfilling conversations

4. Exploring the balance of writing about being Asian American vs. other stuff: Slowly over the last few years, being Taiwanese American has become one of my most salient identities. It happened as I was hanging out with more Asian Americans in undergrad, studying in Beijing, studying Chinese, and meeting people who were unabashedly proud to be Asian. The anti-Asian racism and hate crimes within the last year definitely accelerated this feeling, as well. When I was younger, I identified as someone who did well in school or as a runner – but I didn’t necessarily see everything through the lens of being Taiwanese American or being Asian. Now, I’m really proud of being Taiwanese. I love writing and talking about being Taiwanese, but I’m still working on finding the right balance of writing about those things vs. other things I’m interested in. I don’t want to solely write about being Taiwanese American or Asian American, and I think this is something other Asian Americans think about, as well. It’s not like white people’s creative work is perpetually about the nuances of “the white American experience.” 

Thank you:

This blog has been one of the most fulfilling and rewarding things I’ve done in my entire life and is one of the things I’m most proud of. Earlier I talked about not being obsessed with vanity metrics (e.g., number of views), but I do want to balance that with being proud of what I’ve accomplished in the span of a year. I’ve conducted and published 20 interviews, written two long-form essays, and amassed views from people in 78 countries across six continents. 

This blog has helped me learn about myself and my priorities, given me a sense of purpose, created a community, allowed me to hold deeper conversations, and gotten me through a year of unprecedented isolation and flux. 

So thank you to anyone who has ever read anything on my blog, looked at my Instagram summaries, signed up for my newsletter, or asked me about my blog. One of the most rewarding things people can say about my blog is that an essay or interview made them think. I’m so grateful for the old and new relationships this blog has helped me create and nurture, and I’m excited to see what direction this blog goes in next.