after 'The End'

goodbye 2025 (and hello to what's next)

as a child, i loved fantasy and sci-fi books. i’d reread my favorite parts over and over — the scene where they first kiss, the battle where they defeat the villains, the ending where they all get married and live happily ever after.

the plot diagrams we’re taught in primary school are finite. no spiraling threads, just one trajectory elegant in its simplicity: after the climax comes the falling action and eventual resolution. curtains close, exit stage left.

The End.

sutro at sunset, taken from our potrero apartment

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in many ways, 2024 felt exactly like that: The End to a lifetime of listless wandering, trampled hopes, and pent-up angst. there was no timeline where any younger version of myself could picture the reality i now found myself in. this was my Holy Grail, the One Piece, the Truth within the Truth, the National High School Volleyball Championship.¹

i’d ‘found myself’. i made conscious choices with my own best interests at heart. i wielded my boundaries. i could sit in my doctor’s office and unironically check ‘Never’ on every question in the mandatory depression screener.

i’d built up so much of my personhood around the suffering i felt i deserved that i’d never imagined what it could be like to stand on the other side, victorious. i thought The End of such significance was a fixed state.

2025 taught me that was only the beginning. realizing that life was worth living was not the conclusion, but the start of living life anew.

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so. what does one do next, you may ask?

spoiler alert: still crash out, lol.

beautiful, beautiful Fuji-san

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i spent much of the first half of the year still riding the high of 2024. my 2025 resolutions were all off to a promising start. Playspace remained an anchor to my weekly routines. my new relationship was in its beautiful, ephemeral honeymoon phase. i bought myself my first pair of trail-runners and AllTrails premium. i rediscovered — and finally understood — my longing for Japan. i visited Vancouver for the first, then second time. i tabled at a craft fair with J+K and sold some of my art for the first time in years. i hosted some of my favorite events. J and i mastered a recipe for 5-spice chicken. the Magicar made it to the track, and we crushed our rookie race at Thunderhill.

except a few outliers, i spent January through July in a state of hazy contentment. doing the things i loved alongside people i loved more. everything felt steady. radiant.

part of the magicar team at thunderhill!

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the second half of the year saw me unmoored. though we sunsetted Playspace² in May, it took a few months for the aftereffects to sink in. i had my Sundays back, but i was finally reckoning with the lack of both a sense of broader ‘purpose’ towards the community we’d fostered in SF, as well as a lack of a stable routine for my own creative pursuits outside work. parallely, i directed more of my energy towards work. at the cusp of August, i was offered two unexpected opportunities: to be our new hire’s mentor and join a new accelerated project team within Dating. i’d just come from an unsatisfying half where i had a project cancellation midway through that derailed several months of work and left me scrambling for the remaining time, coupled with an increasingly unhealthy dynamic with my former manager. motivated by residual frustration from the previous half and genuine excitement for what the new opportunities would entail, i said yes to both — in addition to maintaining the majority of my existing work on Dating.

though i still cared about and believed in my work immensely, the commitments slowly eclipsed more of my life. as i observed this shift, the familiar symptoms of discontentment returned, driven by the desire to ‘do more’ outside work. however, without the sense of routine and ritual and purpose that i’d come to associate with Playspace, i found myself adrift. i threw myself into more new things, thinking that novelty and change were what i needed. the longer i went without anything really clicking, the more disillusioned i became.

that frustration put me off even starting to write this reflection; when all was said and done, i felt as though i hadn’t done enough with the year, the way i had in 2024. i was disappointed — how was it that i found my ‘sense of self’ yet still hadn’t figured out what i wanted to do with it?

that feeling remains, unsurprisingly, but i’m trying to give myself some grace. i was essentially a child again, learning to navigate this new body and mind. i’d just learned gentleness a year ago, and here i was, already trying to speedrun this phase and push myself towards my magnum opus without giving myself a shred of what that undertaking would require.

from just below Rainier

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finding myself in turmoil again led to reflection that had been sidelined when things were going comparatively well before. once the novelty of discovering a sense of self wore off, i developed a better understanding of my current self.

1. stepping up to and earning more responsibility and respect at work were always what i’d strived for, but to get there, my own ethos had to grow. i value structure and planning and clear communication more and have less patience for ambiguity and indecisiveness and faffing around. this has made me more serious overall, even outside work.

2. i literally have an ego now. standing by what i think is right and vouching for what i believe in are now instinctual, which has accelerated learning how to have productive and healthy ‘conflict’ — which i avoided at all costs before by being universally people-pleasing.

3. i’m now adept at articulating what i dislike and why, but i have less clarity doing the reverse. when trying to calibrate what i like, i find myself still injecting narratives into my thoughts and feelings. (ie, do i actually like to draw or am i just gaslighting myself into thinking i still like drawing because i did when i was 13 and the nostalgia is muddling how i actually feel? do i feel like i like drawing, or do i think i like drawing?)

4. ‘faking’ my emotions is something i’m no longer able to do. this is particularly true for negative emotions; when stressed, i can’t physically hide it. i still over-compartmentalize, but it’s more noticeable nowadays. i’m more visibly upset, emotionally detached, and distant.

throughout these realizations, the dissonance between what my body remembered and who i was today was a frequent undertone in my mind. my life was literally ‘here there be dragons,’ complete with vague hand-gestures. as someone who has long been entrenched in my father’s values of consistency and continuity, i was unsettled and disturbed. on top of that, i feared that i was losing the kindness and gentleness that i’d always associated with myself.

this is something i’m still trying to reckon with. softening the parts of myself that i can, without losing the form.

yippee! tahoe!

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though i was still pushing myself to ‘do more’, i’m grateful that i threw myself head-first into new, uncomfortable things and relentlessly hobbymaxxed.

1. i started playing Pump it Up, an arcade dance game. i ended up writing a separate piece about it, if you’d like to read it all.

   1. the tldr is, Pump it Up showed me i was capable of feeling that sort of conviction towards something i did outside of work. that i could actually Like Things. that i devoted myself to them with relatively little cognitive dissonance³ when i did. and reaffirmed that working towards something alongside someone else is so unbelievably great.

2. this year was the first year i started applying to things again — lit mag submissions, fellowships, retreats of various forms. ever since receiving a resounding wall of club rejections my freshman year of college, i’d shuttered myself with the narrative that i was underqualified for anything i found interesting thereafter. i still got rejected from almost all of them, but i had the opportunity to attend Rabbitholeathon 6.0⁴ in the fall.

   1. this retreat also was a pivotal moment for me. it fell at a time i was deeply absorbed at work and was the first mental break, albeit brief, i’d taken from work in many months. i spent the whole weekend immersed in delightfully thoughtful conversations, as well as readings of my own choosing. i’d forgotten how freeing it was to think again; i’d tunnel-visioned onto my work so stridently that blinders had obfuscated the rest of my creative and intellectual pursuits.

   2. after a rejuvenating weekend, i dove straight back into my work as soon as my Monday layover. i told everyone about what a wonderful time i’d had, with the addendum that i wished i could’ve basked in that environment more. i realized the reason my restless pursuit of some sort of deeper creative practice had been fruitless thus far. i simply didn’t have enough remaining emotional and intellectual bandwidth to devote myself to something outside of my work with that level of rigor and intent. i couldn’t do both to the extent i was pouring into my work.

   3. though i haven’t yet had the chance to tap back into that, i have at least the remembrance and significance of that weekend. i have new friendships, new sources of inspiration, new conviction in my ability to find conviction once the environment aligns. and, of course, endless gratitude for the people who made it possible and made it exactly what it was.

hiking into the Grand Canyon at sunrise

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beyond all the novelty, i grounded myself more firmly as well.

1. in october, i bid adieu to my Potrero apartment, the first place since leaving home that i’d lived in for longer than half a year. the first place i’d ever lived in that i felt ownership and equal stakes. that apartment bore witness to many beginnings and endings — a love for oyakodon and walls filled with art, the ends to relationships that weren’t meant to be. moving was unanticipated and bittersweet, but our new apartment already feels like home, the same people and marginalia rearranged to fill a different space. home as something co-created is still one of the most precious joys of my adult life.

2. as much as change stems from the individual, the people closest to us still have the ability to mould and sway. some part of who i am now is borne from a steady push-and-pull with my partner, the parts of my individuality that have melded into common language, as well as the parts i’ve reaffirmed as sacred to hold onto. this version of myself is one that has embraced more spontaneity and whimsy, that will leap at the opportunity to listen to another small indie band at an intimate venue, that is trying to see the world more as art. this version of myself is learning what it means to love when one is already whole on their own. when love is a choice and not Salvation. and how it is all the more beautiful then.

3. i had a few resolutions heading into 2025 — 10k steps a day, monthly journaling, bi-monthly hikes, cooking and drawing more. many of these have transcended rote routine and become ritual. my hope is that by rebuilding and solidifying this foundation ⁵ with baseline activities i value, it’ll be harder for me to become destabilized in the face of unprecedented changes in other facets of my life.

friendsgiving in our new apartment

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looking towards 2026, there’s a couple areas of focus derived from what i’ve learned over this year.

1. i’ve been turning a blind eye to my health for too long and neglecting myself physically for almost my entire life — at times unconsciously, but sometimes intentionally as well. my physical response to stress has worsened over time and being physically active again has been a glaring reminder of my chronic anemia and the cumulative impact of a lifetime of bad habits.

   1. this year, i want to stretch more, do more plyo, get myself insoles, eat less sugars and processed foods, take more supplements and ironmaxx. i want to incorporate strength training and cardio more regularly.

2. my mental bandwidth is finite. if i truly want to figure out what i want my creative ‘life’s work’ to be, it cannot happen at the same time that i’m consumed by my work.

   1. this one is the Hardest Pill to Swallow. i’m stubborn when it comes to wanting to doing everything, but blind ambition will get me nowhere. recognizing this means accepting that i will have to make sacrifices and recalibrate my own expectations towards work or the ideal of a serious ‘creative practice’.

   2. the way i have it sketched out in my mind is that when i eventually leave my current job, i will take several months of time off to not work/look for work at all, and take that time to reset and fully explore.

      1. however, i have no desire to leave my current job anytime soon, and there is a nonzero likelihood that i will never carve out that ‘sabbatical’ for myself. without that dedicated time, it would be much harder for me to disengage from my current level of commitment.

3. i love reading and listening to and sharing stories. i love being out in nature and driving on open roads. i love hosting dinners. i love playing DDR. i love making things for other people. i love spending time with friends. i love exploring new things. i want to do more of everything, but again, my time is finite, and i want a better framework for how i live my life beyond just doing what i want in any given moment.

   1. this is a personal thing and not something i think is universally true. i think it’s healthy to ‘do whatever you want’ but i’ve realized that my desire to do everything also stems from a fear of commitment. this manifests in many aspects of my life; i’ve always been more of a mediocre jack of all trades, than a master of anything, but the discernment and intention behind mastery is something i fundamentally have not discovered yet.

auspicious find around alamo square park

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the default game mode in Pump it Up lets you play up to 3 songs per swipe. the first song is free, but if you fail any song thereafter, you are immediately kicked out of the game. the failure message unfurls on the screen, and the anime girl voiceover taunts in an absurd treble — ‘HEY!! WHY DON’T YOU JUST GET UP AND DANCE MAN?’

in 2024, i learned to stand up. in 2025, i’ve figured out some basics.

come 2026, i’m ready to dance.

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ps.

thank you for coming along with me through another year. i owe much of my joy and inspiration and desire for growth to the lovely people that fill my life. life is worth living by the gift of living it alongside you. to you all, always, forever: thank you, thank you, thank you.

i’m not entirely sure what form i want my writing to take going forward, only that i want to write more than i have been in this latter half of the year. whether through this substack or another medium (physical perhaps?), i will continue musing into the void. as always, if anything ever piques your interest, please come say hi :)

in the meantime, here’s some lists:

nonexhaustive list of new things i tried this year:

• beginner dance classes, relearned how to drive stick, picked up drawing and climbing again, hiking, cooking, baking, salsa, ring-making, archery, jewelry-making (wire wrapping), gouache, ddr, volleyball, stamp making, mushroom foraging, building AI AGENT, tennis, BJJ

things i’m glad i bought:

• the mini MUJI notebook that i bought in NY during my offsite to try to get myself to draw more. i actually filled it out by EOY!

• FB marketplace crashpads — so far, J and i have taken them to Tahoe, Berkeley, Castle Rock.

• trail runners and AllTrails — truly the upsells on AllTrails are the most rage-baity UI i’ve ever dealt with and i was reluctant to get the membership bc of that, but it’s been worth

• full-sized Blahaj — bc i am a child and my oarfish deserves more fishy friends and my partner likes sharks

• AM-Pass. for DDR!!!

• volo league membership. making middle school grace + seattle grace’s Haikyuu dreams come true.

• marugame hack: regular kake udon + 1 karaage for < $10…in this economy.

  • tho it’s devastating when all the available karaage r smol

short-term things i’m excited about:

• finishing FMAB

• dremel-ing the sea-glass i picked up in Mendocino

• snowboarding!!!!!

• season 4 of lemons

• eliminate concert

1. i was recommended Frieren for this exact reason lol.

2. at the conclusion, we wrote a full letter to the community, co-authored by J and us cohosts. so much love and intention went into the beginning, middle, and end of this community space, and you are invited to read about it if you’re curious.

3. say you’re doing X and your ultimate goal is Y. when you’re putting in a lot of effort towards X, but there isn’t a clear line of translation between how X might get you closer to Y, there arises cognitive dissonance. dissonance that leads to questioning why you’re doing what you’re doing, and if it even matters at all.

4. 100000% recommend applying once their next retreat opens. special shoutout to my friend Kasra for being the inspiration behind applying and one of the organizers for 6.0!

5. in hindsight, this was likely unconsciously inspired by a tradition my ex and i had amidst our time working at Orchard, when work comprised the entirety of our lives. we had 3 daily ‘baseline’ goals — go on a walk, eat dinner by 9pm, sleep by 2am. if we met a condition, we could draw a chicken. if not, we’d draw a tally. the ratio of our chickens to tallies was….unfortunately abysmal and a constant, sobering reality-check.