The life raft I've needed

Somewhat abashedly, I bring you this post that has been sitting in my drafts for a couple months now: The Three Most Influential Books I Read in 2016. 2016 was a big year for me, and the biggest gift - besides the birth of my daughter, obvs - was learning about Overdrive and getting access to a library (#literally) of books at my fingertips. 

I'm thankful for all the discoveries I made through falling in love with reading again this last year; there was so much magic in it (#literallyagain), and I look forward to reading and sharing more in 2017!

1. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

I keep thinking I need to write a separate post about this because it is changing my life, as well as still kicking my butt because I am not done with it (i.e., the tidying, not the book).

I'm sure you have heard enough about Kondo's concepts from everyone else on the internet already, but it has been the one method that has really worked for getting me to confront the underlying reasons of why I can't always do the things I need to do to get to the place I want to be.

A few of you texted me after I wrote The Secret Sauce. I still really struggle with scarcity mentality, and I've been thinking a lot about how if I let go of fear, what will be left?

2. Essentialism by Greg McKeown

Oddly, I can't remember exactly why I loved this book so much (other than having it read to me by the author; I've since changed Siri to a UK man voice so I can pretend that Greg McKeown is with me always).

The most convicting point was when he challenged his readers with the question (paraphrased): are you going to look back on your life and regret not doing the one thing you were made to do, because you were so busy chasing the meaningless other things you thought you needed to do (or that you thought other people expected you to do)?

3. Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

This was another good one to have read aloud (Christine rightly recommended the audio version, and I am SO not an audiobook person), because it's also read by the author, and Liz Gilbert has thee most soothing and encouraging voice ever.

I loved everything Gilbert had to say, but the most important takeaway for me was: don't take yourself so seriously / don't be a tormented artist / follow inspiration and curiosity / don't worry so much about the outcome / enjoy the process / have fun with your art.

This is the message that I've been carrying into my life for the past half-year now, and am incorporating here by showing up on my blog, starting to Instagram more, doing random art projects, and working on some diy projects around the house.

I think she really gets it right when she talks about how inspiration is from the Divine, and that if we want more opportunities for it, we have to take action on the ones we are given.

This seems like a bold statement to make, but I feel like Big Magic has been the life raft I've needed ever since graduating from college.

Please let me know what you've been reading and loving!

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And this week's menu!

Miso mapo tofu is my own creation to make mapo tofu without gluten (so many black bean sauces have wheat in them, didn't know that before!). Miso works really well (not soy free, however) and makes a flavorful dish that incidentally serves as a non-spicy version great for kids! Another standby is to have rotisserie chicken from the grocery store on one night and make broth with the carcass the following day for pho (just add fish sauce!). For bún (i.e., Viet noodle bowls), we work off of Molly's recipe from Delancey.

P.S. I am so giddy because apparently on February 23 I got my first two Amazon Affiliate purchases from this blog. Besides feeling giddy, I am so curious who that was, so if that was you and this wouldn't embarrass you, would you please let me know either by comment or email what you got?? Thanks, on all counts!

P.P.S. Shout-out to Christine, whose What I'm Reading series inspired this post, and which will inspire you as well.

11. The weakest/strongest thing I could be

One concept I've been taking to heart since my writing workshop in July is having a notebook for all the ideas that come to mind or things I observe in my day, as a way of "catching creativity by its tail." I used to do this a long time ago. At one point in college I had a small unlined Moleskine with one-line poems and even a taped-in snowflake I had made out of weigh paper from chem lab. (Molly, I'm currently weighing my options for puns on the word "tare". See what I did there? Elizabeth, I am remembering the many vellum notes and other arch-y gifts I received from you.)

I may have accidentally Konmari'd all my physical notebooks (oops) so I have yet to come up with a happy place to put all my thoughts (plus I love my planner but sometimes feel frustrated with having multiple paper notebooks on my desk). For now I'm gathering thoughts on my phone because I almost always have it on me. (Except when I'm asking "where is my phone?", which happens 2394082343209 times a day. #literally)

Yes I'm an old person who needs the extra-large font.

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I can't remember where I first heard of this concept but it popped into my head again this morning, the notion of "being one's own best friend." I feel like that's not a message I heard growing up but could have really used since, especially when I first moved to the PNW. Even if I had heard it, I probably would have scoffed at that; that's for losers, I'd have thought.

And yet: Liz and Brene (about time I drop those last names, eh?) talk in the aforementioned Episode 12 about how we are quick to offer compassion to others but more hesitant with ourselves, but what makes you so special that you think you don't deserve compassion? (They then go on to talk about the "narcissism of depression." Oof.)

I'm totally that person who always needs at least one best friend and I've been lucky to have many best friends throughout my life.* So it totally depressed me when we moved to a new place that I thought was cool and easy and no one wanted to be friends, period. I hate to consider that this all happened so that I could learn to be my own best friend. (Insert gagging sounds.) It seems simultaneously weak and the strongest thing you could do/be.

So in a way, this project, as it unfolds, is kind of also a "that notebook" with myself. Letters to myself that are evidence someone wants to talk to me, whether or not you readers are here for the ride, which I'm glad that you are.

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*I've also since snagged an extraordinary husband who is now forced to be my best friend for life. (Channeling Ali here. We're already on a first-name basis, after only one previous blog mention.)

P.S. Remember how I mentioned my neo(?)-Ludditism in previous posts? I feel like I fell off the edge of the Internet when Google Reader died. How did the rest of you survive? I still don't think I can recover from that. RIP, GR.

10. Do the impossible

Halfway there. Is this what it feels like to run a marathon? I am so proud of myself for my accomplishments and yet I also cannot wait for this to be over. (Well, not exactly. I do feel like there's something about this discipline I want to continue; I just mean that I can't wait to reach and complete my goal. I am a compulsive goal-reacher.)

“You go through big chunks of time where you’re just thinking, ‘This is impossible — oh, this is impossible.’ And then you just keep going and keep going, and you sort of do the impossible.” —Tina Fey

I have been super encouraged by so many of you sharing your thoughts via comments, emails, or even text messages. So grateful for my community that is meeting me where I'm at. I leaped, and the net appeared.

I've written a lot already ("a lot" is relative, of course) but I continue to feel that I'm dancing around the edges of what I really need to say. Yes, maybe there are "vulnerable" and "real" things I will get to eventually - the deeper you go, the more universal you get? - but I also want to exercise the concept of embracing where I am, even if it's not where I think I ought to be.

One of the things that I keep coming up against in my personal meta-dialogue (and there is SO MUCH meta-dialogue) is the idea that I have nothing new to say, and that people have already had these thoughts (if I would just Google), and worse, the people who have said these things are half my age and therefore how juvenile and behind-the-times I am.

When I started this project I was fueled by the words and voice of Elizabeth Gilbert, telling me that it doesn't matter what people think; or, even if you let those voices speak, what are you going to do, just nothing? The last thing I want to do is live my life a victim.

I wonder if part of the struggle is not just my 6-ness, but also my Asian American-ness. The whole idea of saying "I am _____" and filling in the blank is utterly terrifying. I am so many things and I don't know which is more scary: to name and settle on one thing, or to live in the undefined.

Philosophical question of the day: Do you get to decide the genre of your life?

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The more I write and the more I read, the more I find things that are exactly what I'm thinking about. (Even Liz Gilbert mentions this in her book; she describes this as the universe giving you signs, portents; this is what I felt before Day Zero, and why I decided to keep going forward, even though it was scary and unknown.)

I am referring now to the wonderful, glorious, beautiful thoughts in Fault in Our Stars, and the nerdy, stick-it-to-The-Man-ness of The Art of Non-Conformity. I mentioned starting these books on Friday and have finished the first and am 80% through the other. Guillebeau mentions that sometimes deferred gratification can be a sort of life avoidance - saving up for a better future vs. enjoying life now. This balance (the fact that this paradox even exists) is exactly related to: (1) my thoughts on choosing sanity over money, (2) a lot of things about Konmari (editing your life and making joy out of what you have by getting rid of things you held on for a reason that was probably good at one point; living your best life now without over-focusing on the past or the future, and all this definitely needs its own post), and (3) my thoughts/reflections on the principles of Mr. Money Mustache (also probably another post). Going. to. explode.

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I don't know where this fits so I'm just going to plop it here:

I have a history/pattern of ignoring my gut, which is, admittedly, yet another Enneagram 6 issue. I make decisions by fighting between my head and my heart, but the engagement of my gut is underdeveloped. (Except the food-eating type of gut. No issue there. I try to find the good food in every situation.)

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Speaking of food, this:



Theo got this baby eggplant from our church's community garden yesterday. Today, out of nowhere, he went to his bookshelf and grabbed this book to show me a "match" between his eggplant and the book. We seriously hadn't read this book in months. I love how he inherited my crazy random associative memory. Insert heart eyes emoji.

05. All quite comforting

Every day since this project began (i.e., these oh-so-dramatic last five days), I have had to resist the urge to begin every post by typing into the stratosphere, "I don't want to write. I don't want to write. I don't want to write." Liz Gilbert reminds me that it is simply boring to be a creative who complains about how frustrated she feels, because frustration is essential to the creative life. She also talks about how you don't have to be a creative and be a tormented, tragic person. It's all quite comforting.

A lot of what catapulted me into this project is the result of stewing and marinating in the cocktail that is reading Brené Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are and listening to Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. (Prior to last month I did not know there was a genre for "Creativity" on Amazon. And now for the last few weeks I've been talking David's head off about creativity and the creative process and I'm sure he's like, Yeah, I went to school for this. #arsepoetica)

What I'm taking away from Gilbert's book (besides everything, obviously) is that creative living is a marriage between discipline - the only thing you can control among talent, luck, and discipline - and inspiration. (I'm paraphrasing here, but: "If greatness were to find me, may it find me hard at work.")

Being creative is a gift bestowed on all of us; however, actually creating is a choice. I appreciated how Gilbert acknowledges that having (or making) time to create is a complete and total luxury, but that perhaps instead of seeing creative living as hedonistic, we can instead perceive and then thus receive the ability to create as a divine gift.



P.S. Thank you, Eunice, for introducing me to Overdrive for e-books and audiobooks. It took me about a year to actually try it out but I'm loving it now! And thank you, Christine, for recommending the audiobook version for Gilbert. Totally the perfect medium; except for when I'm driving and I need to pull aside to write down something amazing she said.