Month: December 2017

Over the holidays, at some point between eating my third helping of leche flan, and my late-night gorging of a cookie-pie-a-la-mode, I recognized that I need to reconsider my relationship with indulgence. It’s not like I ball out of control, or exist anywhere within the realm of gluttony. At least I don’t think I do. Honestly, it’s hard to judge as an American amidst the culture of vices, of “treat yo self” because “you deserve it.” In D.C., a ridiculously expensive city occupied by people with hella disposable income earned by very stressful living has set the scene for any and every moment to call for excess.

It’s Sunday!
Treat yo self to brunch with bottomless mimosas. 

It’s been a hard day at work!
Time to veg out in front of Netflix for three hours.  

It’s your coffee break!
You deserve a latte with whipped cream, and you might as well get that chocolate cake lollipop, too. You gotta splurge a little every now and then. 

Every now and then?

The fact that any occasion can be a special occasion – that three days out of the week can technically count as the weekend, that hump day calls for a mid-week treat, and the rest of the days are apt with excuses to let go too – is actually an incredible opportunity to be constantly grateful. There’s always a reason to toast. But more often than not, we skip the toast and go straight for the shot. Instead of actually experiencing these instances as true moments of appreciation, we’ve created protocols for an expensive and unhealthy status-quo of overconsumption. 

In trying to exercise restraint, I’ve learned that using the rest of society as a reference might be worse than simply looking within myself. In fact, one of my worst enablers is my confidence that whatever I’m pigging out on is healthier than the daily breakfast donuts of the folks on the bus, or less expensive than everyone else’s daily Frappuccino. Nothing’s too much as long as it’s not that much. There’s always someone who eats more sugar, spends more on gadgets, drinks more alcohol, or engages in decadent activity that makes your own actions seem “modest.” And while I know that I generally eat healthier and more cost-effectively than most people around me, I must constantly remind myself that everything is relative, and the relativity I live in is one that includes unicorn cronuts. Such delicacies seem easy enough to keep at an arm’s length, it’s in the middle of a long and stressful Tuesday in the office.

So my aspirations for this coming year can be summed up in the manta, “consume less, appreciate more.” To me, this means noticing every time a voice in my head tempts me to indulge in something simply because I deserve it. I’m realizing that the logic of consuming something simply because you deserve it is a twisted call to action based on a sense of self worth that could instead be channeled toward something positive. Instead of constantly convincing myself that “I deserve it,” I need to be asking myself, “does it deserve me?” To imagine my brain, my body, my attention as an exclusive space means that some things – however delicious or delightful – may not be good enough to be welcomed into the incredible existence I’m building for myself. What then remains are the true indulgences – the rare moments that can be anticipated, savored, and reflected upon with deep appreciation. A curated experience, one truly fit for this life. 

We’ve all heard that our biggest regrets don’t come from the risks we take, but the risks we didn’t. I’ve lived by that as a code, and it’s one of the reasons why for as long as I can remember I’ve obsessively collected experiences, places, and people to be a part of my life. I take on my days like a vacuum cleaner to a shaggy rug, like the world is my oyster platter and it’s happy hour on someone else’s tab. Being this way is exhilarating and exhausting. It plays out in big ways, like my temptation to jump at most opportunities to go to a new part of the world, or to dive into new projects simply out of sheer wonder of the subject. It also manifests in small ways – at restaurants, I always want to order last so I can pit the delicious dishes against each other in my brain, finally order one under pressure, and almost surely change my decision as soon as I hear it come out my lips. Despite coming off like a stereotypical gemini, my thirst for trying new things has generally played to my favor. I’m super happy being who I am, where I am.

But every decision has its cost-benefit. When I take a risk, packed into it is the assumed consequences of foregoing what else could have been. I moved to New York with iLL-Lit in ‘09, only after massive amounts of soul-searching about whether I really wanted to live so far from my family and friends. We took a big risk. We were met with shitty landlords, rats in our basement, being perpetually broke, stolen computers with music we had worked our asses off on, and plenty of wondering if this was in fact a risk we shouldn’t have taken. When Dahlak and Nico moved back to California, I was again faced with a tough decision — do I follow suit and continue dedicating my full time to the band like I had for so many years, or do I move to Beijing with Lovely, and live out that dream of residing overseas like I’d been contemplating for so long? 

Choosing the latter has set me into an unreal life (not like touring the country with a funk band wearing giant Lego heads wasn’t). I’ve met people I’ve never imagined meeting, gone to places I never thought I’d be, and embarked on projects on a scale that I never fathomed before. But in the frequent moments when I contemplate my couldawouldashouldas, they show themselves not so much in missed leaps I didn’t take – the kind that are idolized in those TED talks about seizing moments and maximizing potential – instead, they’re in the paths I left behind when I switched tracks toward newer pastures. 

Obsessing over whether you really made the right life decisions can be a full-time job, but it’s a completely irrational mental exercise. I say this because the solutions demanded by regret can only be achieved with the stuff of science fiction. How can I be sure that I truly spent my years barking up the wrong tree, other than to employ some psychic power to catch a glimpse at an imagined alternative reality? If then, I do find things to regret, do I fix that by hopping in my nonexistent time machine? And if I do manage to go back in time, when I get there do I magically clone myself so I can seize all the missed opportunities while still making sure I salvage the lived experiences I’m content with? And then what? I return to the present moment and just bask in all the money I’ve made or recognition I’ve garnered or success I’ve achieved, I guess. 

But that’s the thing about commitment – you lock yourself in, even if briefly, to the track you’ve chosen. Some people fear commitment because the thought of the indefinite can be frightening. But I think what really brings us unease are all the other things that could happen but won’t. The flaw here is that we think holding off on commitment means that all the possibilities are at our fingertips, but that’s where they remain – at our fingertips and never within grasp. By refusing to commit, we think we’re seizing every moment, when in reality we’re grabbing at everything but taking hold of nothing. 

My chronic indecisiveness means that I’m perpetually aware of the slew of missed opportunities that I’ll never know. But instead of ruminating on that, I’m trying to remind myself to appreciate the fact that such a wealth of possibilities is available to me in the first place. It’s an unearned privilege that not all have. Honoring the privilege of choice means fully embracing what life has provided, even there’s a chance it might not be the absolute best hypothetical outcome offered by the multiverse. 

If I’m fortunate enough, I’ll be seeing many phrases in my life ahead that I will one day reflect on, wonder about, reappraise. There will be risks I’m on the verge of taking before deciding not to, and I’ll take chances that I’ll wish I hadn’t. I’ll keep working at my job wondering what life could be if I was doing something else, and when I finally do leave, I’ll wonder if I walked away from the career of a lifetime. I’ll continue traveling, longing to see and live in places I’ll never step foot in. And when the fateful times come when my loved ones leave this earth, I’ll wish I hadn’t ever moved or traveled at all. I’ll wish I stayed in the house I grew up in and spent everyday holding them close, never distracting myself from professional accolades or public recognition or internet attention. I’ll look at those who lived slow, seemingly unadventurous and uneventful lives, and wonder if I couldashouldawoulda followed that path. And then I’ll do what we always do regardless of how our existences transpire – I’ll live with it. 

This year, amidst traveling through Hawaiʻi and producing ʻAe Kai, shooting landscapes throughout New Mexico for Bombshelltoe, and generally forming a more acute awareness of my surroundings, I’ve seen the buddings of a new interest in agriculture. My own process in getting here seems very natural, but building a career in all things digital can make it appear to be counter-intuitive or even random. And so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that when I expressed my interested in working on more projects in this realm at work, I was warned that some – particularly scientists at the Smithsonian – might dismiss me or even find my pursuit problematic. “You don’t want them thinking you’re just pursuing a pet project,” I was told.

“Pet project” is a term to describe a means to no end, a story with no plot. In my head, I imagine someone grooming a mossy rock obliviously while the world around them crumbles. In our world that’s increasingly about productivity, maximizing time, and focus – a pet project is the surrogate for time and energy wasted.

I’ve been bouncing this term and dilemma in my head for the past few days, and here’s the thing – I can’t think of anything that I do seriously that didn’t start off as a pet project. Everything I’ve become good at, and even become known as an “expert” in, began as a wandering journey of curiosity, an interest in trying my hand in something that I had absolutely no experience or background in. I still remember being that senior in high school, being enchanted by the spoken word of Saul Williams, and clumsily piecing together the first few lines to perform at an open mic I had absolutely no qualification for being in. This was while I was receiving my college acceptance results, while anyone could have popped their head into my life to berate me for writing amateur poems instead of preparing myself for my future career as an engineering student. Actually, some did.

Not long after, newly politicized and still figuring out my own interpretation of my identity, I found myself behind megaphones at anti-war rallies, fighting my own self-doubt about fitting into the label of an “activist,” while college republicans shouted at me that I had no idea what I was talking about. This was also during the time when I was making flyers and posters on Microsoft Word, building websites on Geocities, and trying to drown out the imagined judgement of all the professional graphic designers who would probably look at my work as chicken scratch.

And when I found myself at the Smithsonian, after somehow becoming a curator (a term I had to Google when I applied for it), I shouldered past blaring bouts of imposter syndrome while reading the most elementary of texts about museum practice and contemporary art.

Anything in this this world that has been conceived of is attached to a person or community that has been deemed an “expert,” and expertise can build up like plaque, barring newcomers who approach with curiosity and questions. Those who spend their years and careers earning their titles gnash their teeth and click their tongues, dismiss newfound-yet-unfounded passions as “pet projects” to downgrade what can be potential threats to the ivory towers that they’ve built.

But anyone who has ever had a pet knows that there are few things in life that one nurtures with more care. Few of us who have dogs are experts in canine biology (that’s probably not even the right term) but we do know how to love our pets in ways that are unique, profound, genuine, and even full of expertise. We tend to them with an intimacy that no pound or shelter could ever express, no matter how highly-regarded they are in their field. It’s with this sense of ownership and agency that we should all know our right to pursue our pet projects. Pet projects may be, in fact, the purest and humblest entry point towards being our best selves.

I’m spending the month of December to recall those who entered my life this year in profound and inspiring ways. One person a day. One would think, with all the posting we do, functions we go to, business cards we hand out and “friends” we add on Facebook that this would be an easy task. I consider myself lucky for getting to do my work in such an open space, where in some circumstances people are even excited to meet me, and also where I have access to minds and souls more brilliant than I had ever fathomed. But last night, jotting down names in my notebook, I came to a stop at around 15. This includes artists I’ve collaborated and curated with, people I’ve met in my travels, and those who entered my world in the way that they do as life unfolds. I thought there would be so many more, yet at the same time I’m surprised there aren’t less. It’s not like I’ve actively implemented a “no more friends” policy in my life the way that some people do when they feel overwhelmed by their social circle. At the same time, it’s not like I was actively searching. I’ve definitely met more than 15 people this year, way more. My list – personal and without particular standards for qualification – is simply comprised of those who “struck a chord” with me, whatever the hell that means. Sometimes it’s a single day well-spent, or a piece of information exchanged that unlocked a connection, or a moment of inspiration that now plays a vital role in my everyday life. And then there are the countless people I’ve long known but finally connected deeply with, and those I met recently and know I want to cultivate something deeper with.

I don’t consider myself incredibly extroverted, and over the years my guard has come up (especially here in D.C.). But within the intro/extro binary, I know that I’m the latter – I gain my energy around people (albeit certain kinds of people), I wilt when I go long without human contact, and most of my most cherished memories involve at least one other person. But I’m also far from being the social butterfly. I’m terrible at small-talk, mentally wince at memories of my awkward encounters, and like to generally leave social gatherings late. If the typical extrovert is equated with the “Type A” personality, I’d consider myself Type-Z – my social interactions are calculated and intentional, I hang in the back until I feel fully able to be my full self to another. As we close this year and enter the next, I’m doing this exercise to appreciate my new friends as more than just a collection to add to my social network. I’m hoping to value them the way that I long to be valued, perhaps the way we all long to be, as the world gets smaller, more connected, and more urgent.