INCOGNITO is a peek into the private archives of creative people: rabbit holes, deep cuts, and strange obsessions that shape their artistry. It’s what they gatekeep and what keeps them up at 2 a.m.

One of my favorite questions to ask others has always been some version of “So what inspires you?” – be it a specific historical era, Reddit thread, childhood movie, architectural building, parent’s closet, murder mystery podcast... Part of the reason I’m doing this is a selfish desire for a backlog of things to watch/read/research (right now, mine’s embarrassing and needs reinforcements). But really, I see Incognito as a unique form of portraiture – several short stories re: what someone loves and how those loves feed into their work.

For the inaugural edition, I’m incredibly lucky to feature my friend Sarah Pan. Sarah is a lifestyle vlogger and ceramicist, behind the brand When June and the podcast Soju with Sarah, which explores adulthood, relationships, and life in one’s 20s. I’ve long been in awe of Sarah’s Renaissance spirit, but hanging out in Paris with her this summer cemented it for me, as we requisitely laughed and cried over some craaacked charcuterie. Her presence and content are grounding and comforting, like the warmest hug. Enjoy!

INCOGNITO: Sarah Pan

1. Logic & functionality

There is a practical and logical side of me that (very) occasionally pops up in things that I do in life. I sometimes wonder if this is a byproduct of my engineering degree or my 5+ years working in big tech…or simply because I inherited a very “practical” and survivalist outlook on life from my parents.

I am a SUCKER for smart design. Anything that is functional and cleverly created sparks some type of joy in me. I love when things solve problems, have functional design, have purpose.

Example: I love the way a well-designed faucet works (not the automatic kind, but the kind where the spout is just the perfect distance from the back of the sink, where your hand won’t hit marble each time you rinse; and the front, where it won’t splash onto your clothes; where there’s one handle that smoothly glides from left to right. and maybe! there’s a foot lever there too because you don’t want to touch the handles of the faucet).

Some people might find it interesting that I cannot create without a system. It could be as simple as a Notion work board to lay out my ideas or a set of organized templates and formulas I use to create my videos. I haven’t fully conceptualized it yet, but mainly I like to create systems and solve problems.

Because of this, I sometimes wonder what space I occupy in this industry (i.e. art) because I find myself carrying an engineer (or maybe corporate?) perspective rather than a true artist perspective into my projects. But something I’ve had to unlearn is the belief that if something doesn’t solve a problem, then it’s not “good enough.” In a way, being an artist has really pushed me to test that mindset because a lot of my artistry is motivated by function.

Anyways, I love a good design.

2. Old things, new forms

In this current chapter of my journey, I really appreciate things that are ordinary.

Don’t get me wrong, I love novelty and unique, complex pieces — but I also really love the “old” and the “normal.”

I think that’s why, if you were to trace back my collection of clay work from this year, most of it is just reimagined objects. Clothes. Florals. Shapes. Etc.

Sometimes, though, I do love letting my imagination run free with no reference point. Usually this results in “creative jumble” (equally as beautiful in a very different way).

When I was first dabbling with graphic design in college, I started a design account on Instagram. Every day after my internship (and sometimes dinners or social events with other interns), I would sit in the communal space of our alumni social club, following tutorials on how to create a 3D triangle in Photoshop.

I remember at some point, I stopped watching tutorials and my work really descended into “creative madness.” Note: the image on the right is not, in fact, AI slop. It is a picture of roses that I blasted with every skill I had learned in Photoshop 101 (on YouTube).

That’s all to say, I’m much better at creating things rooted in reality. Maybe it’s because I feel out of practice with my imagination? Because up until I quit my tech job last year, I shelved an inherent desire to explore, create & experiment along with the occasional infatuation I had with “ambiguity.” Also I hadn’t really (properly) used my right brain in years.

Ironically, my favorite type of art to consume is actually surrealist art — ones where your interpretation determines the story/impact/message (even movies too! I love the confusing ones that bend your perception of reality i.e. Memento, Everything Everywhere All at Once).

When I was in Paris this summer, I visited the Picasso Museum and stood in front of this sculpture. It looks like a spoon, some sticks and a pitchfork. I stood in front of it for a long time, not because it was telling me anything necessarily. But because I was trying to place my feelings about it. It was confusing and unsettling.

So in recent years, I’ve stuck to a quite literal approach with my work. Most likely because I feel safe and comforted making things I know, whether it’s a “lunchbox” inspired by a utility toolbox or a calla lily shaped into a necklace.

3. My own aspirations

A recent revelation is that I often use my work as a manifestation board. Or at least to ask the universe, “am I doing the right thing?”

During the pandemic, I drew this big, red YouTube play button with chunky red Crayola marker that I had dug up from a stack of miscellaneous pens, pencils & markers. They were stuffed in these scrappy old (baby corn, quail egg, lychee, etc.) tin cans that my dad would always rinse out and repurpose as pencil holders (nod to my appreciation for dual functionality). I taped it on this blank white wall leading into the kitchen, that I’d pass by every day. And it stayed there for years on that wall, until my parents moved a few years later.

I remember my weekly ritual of ending work and clicking that big purple icon, pulling up my latest project, and immersing myself in my video editing for hours. I spent 40 hours a week working on one video just because I had no idea how to use Premiere Pro. Also, because I was way more frugal back then, I had this crappy bootlegged version of Premiere Pro that would always crash on me every 30 minutes.

Somewhere along the way, while I was working at Google, I also switched over from an Ads team into a YouTube adjacent team (my friend had reached out asking if I was looking for a new spot in the org and I hopped on that opportunity).

Sometimes I think I manifested my whole career by drawing that one sketch of a red play button (joking). But I do think it’s quite serendipitous how my career paved out the way it did. I used to joke that I quit YouTube to work on YouTube.

Anyways, a few years later I quit my corporate job and started my “adult gap year.” Despite how it may have seemed online, I was really aimless, jumping between different business ideas, listening to podcasts about female entrepreneurs, and journaling TONS to strategize my path forward.

While in my first few months of self-employment, I became really fixated on the thought of shoes. Probably because I’ve always loved fashion (re: I wanted to be a fashion designer growing up).

I remember sketching out a TON of shoes ~ heels, sandals, flats, boots. My first shoe (tabi) led to my second (cowboy) which led to my third (vibrams), and fourth (alaïa heels), and so-on. Which led to my first real big commission (Timberland; i say with pride, not cockiness). But I truly think I manifested that first commission by making my first mini shoe.

4. Fun

This is gonna sound a bit silly, but I care about fun. Well, maybe not necessarily fun as much as humor. But I love laughter and derive so much creative energy from things I find fun and humorous. If you know me on a deeper level, you’d know that I’m equally as unserious as I am serious (note: I’m a very serious person).

When I was in elementary school, I had this shirt that said “will trade my bf for a puppy” (Unfortunately, I have no idea what happened to that shirt so I had to Google image search a similar shirt to demonstrate…low key the shirt I had was way cuter because it had a giant golden retriever on it, but that’s besides the point).

Anyways, I somehow got these random girls from a few grades above me really cackling when I passed them in the hallway. They asked me to stop just to read my shirt and it made me feel very proud that I had a sense of humor.

I don’t have that shirt anymore (I think I donated it once I grew out of it). And this is the first time in a looong time that I’ve recalled that memory. But maybe it’s that memory or a slew of others that have wired me to believe, “you won’t elicit a reaction in people unless you get them laughing a bit.”

This probably explains a continuous theme in my life where I’ll pick up a shirt because I find it a bit comical. I’d like to call it a “whimsical” trait but I know that’s a misuse of the term whimsical (lol). It’s more like “millennial quirkiness.”

My love of fun and humor has probably shown up more times than once.

In podcast season (for my podcast, Soju with Sarah), I recall the best parts of podcast planning being the Halloween costumes (bald caps, pickle onesies, leaf suit, the list goes on). For reference, every Halloween we’ll have 4 full weeks of costumes & spoooky conversations. Outside of Halloween season, I love intermissions, games, and laughing about inside jokes with our soju shotties.

Don’t get me wrong, I also love the deep, thoughtful conversations I have on the pod — which, if you’re looking for something fun, introspective & incredibly chill to listen to, please take a gander 🤭

But I’ve always chased the belief that things can be serious and fun at the same time. (Note: this didn’t apply when I was drowning in my corporate / YouTuber / podcaster era…I think my philosophy back then was “do anything you can to survive”).

If I were asked to list some media & literature that’s shaped me in childhood & teenage-hood, I’d probably pull from the following:

• Roald Dahl

• (Pixar’s) Up

• The Phantom Tollbooth

• Jane the Virgin

• Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

• The Grand Budapest Hotel

Sometimes I wonder if this compromises the je ne sais quoi-ness of being an artist. The mystique and intrigue that i think a lot of artists embody through their life and their work. But in traversing my career as a content creator, I’ve had to come to terms that I am probably not “that girl.” i.e. the cool and enigmatic girl who travels, indulges in fashion & food, is relatable and chill, whose facade doesn’t break or falter.

I’ve always wanted to chase that coolness, but then whenever I start on that path, I do something stupid (not actually stupid) like post 5 videos in a row of my cat with a caption like “moose sitting like hooman 🐱 pt. 423523 (note: not a real moose!)”

Ironically this “humor” is also a piece of me that i don’t let on very openly in person. Sometimes it feels like there’s a voice in me that is silent screaming to everyone, “hey, i’m FUN! I promise…”

But it does pop up in other ways. Like the way I use circus music in pretty much every YouTube vlog (the tracks are all saved in a folder named “quirky”). Or the way that I am committed to buying one egregious Ryan plushie each time I’m in Korea (to add to our chic NYC apartment).

I think this quirk is something I get from my dad. He’s someone who will roam around Times Square for many hours on his own, taking photos of everything he sees — people, lights, stores. He finds many joys and reasons to laugh in life, despite the loads of hardship that he and my mom have experienced moving to America.

5. My mom

And lastly, the most deep-rooted source of inspiration in my life — my mother.

Any list that describes my inspirations, aspirations, goals, strengths (etc.) would be incomplete without mentioning my mom. As I get older, I see more and more of parents’ quirks (namely my mother’s) pop up in funny ways. For example, I’ll gasp dramatically at the most undramatic event like a napkin falling off the table.

I’m pretty fortunate to have a mother that was present through all my childhood and taught (lectured ehem) me (on) pretty much everything. A lot of it was just practical life skills, which explains my practicality when it comes to life.

My mom is a curtain seamstress. She doesn’t speak English very well and has spent most of her life indoors, working and taking care of the home. It’s a very quintessential Chinese-American immigrant tale about hardship, change, assimilation and survival. I won’t go into it, but she is also why my work ethic and resilience accounts for probably more than half of the praise I’ve received in my life.

There is a distinct sound memory I carry with me. It’s a symphony (in my college essay, I described it as a cacophony) of sounds that I’d hear in the basement — the hum of an idle sewing machine, pins dropping and random crickets chirping at 4AM in the morning as I sat with her in a basement. She was often up late, sewing diligently to finish out a piece.

And at a young age, I had this aspiration to be someone who worked with my hands because of her. I would watch her drape and pleat mountains of fabric in a perfect, almost mechanical way. She was very nimble and it was almost second nature for her to be good at anything she touched. So for me, I wanted to be the same.

Growing up, that translated to my dream of becoming a fashion designer. I wanted to pleat fabrics, pin, drape and do all the things my mom did. Something with my hands (!)

Unfortunately, “something with my hands” actually meant clacking away at a keyboard for 12 hours a day for most of my early adult life. Eventually, this would evolve to making ceramics in a pottery studio (which is where I’ve happily landed today).

But I think my mom is at the heart of everything I do. She’s the reason why art to me is about about purpose, practicality, and precision.

Here’s my confession: I’ve always feared weddings.

The first, most visceral reason is that they feel deeply exhibitionist. (RICH coming from someone who voluntells her life stories for strangers’ consumption on the internet, I know. But there’s still a difference between being perceived, and being perceived by your grandma as you slow dance tenderly.) This is likely a byproduct of growing up in a prudish Asian household, where my parents treated kissing in front of their children like a felony. Their love language small nods and soft smiles, deveining my shrimp and delivering persimmons in bed. So, if my dad suddenly monologued for five minutes about my mom being his soulmate, I’d expect an alien to crawl out from under his skin. No wonder boldly professing my devotion seems incompatible with my default mode of affection: dapping my partner up with a “Let’s go, king!”

There’s also something inherently contradictory about a wedding’s choreographed format, when its underpinning is love – pure and uncontainable by nature. Holding that pose. Kissing on cue. Slicing cake as it’s timed against a swell of orchestral strings. Taylor Swift recently made headlines for her wedding at Madison Square Garden, where a cool thousand of her closest pals – the Gracies and Gigis and Karlies of the world – arrived in gowns so gilded she’d effectively summoned Met Gala 2.0. For Taylor, who has spent years hitting stadium marks before onlookers, it was just another day at the office. For the rest of us, I suspect it would require a concerning amount of propranolol and a teensy lobotomy.

The Swift-Kelce extravaganza made me think about how weddings have become increasingly detached from the two people at the center, and more like community property. Ancillaries feeling entitled to participate, to party. A while back, an aunt I barely knew asked when I was getting married and insisted she’d fly in for it, as if that were a foregone conclusion. I personally wouldn’t have saved her a seat, but the gravitational pull of familial obligation would probably make that decision for me. Since my birthdays have usually consisted of eight friends splitting fries, jumping from that to a black-tie affair with distant relatives is like asking someone who’s only shot driveway hoops to start Game 5 of the NBA Finals (A simile I could not have made before this year. Go Knicks!!!).

Which brings me to the second reason: the sticker shock. The average New York City wedding runs about $100,000 for 150 guests. I used to watch Netflix’s Marriage or Mortgage, where couples chose between a wedding celebration and a down payment on a home. Every time they chose the former, I mourned the lost wealth-building opportunity, but couldn’t exactly blame them. That lace-tablecloth-covered, custom-cocktail-napkined sales pitch is seriously seductive.

Then there’s the infamous wedding tax: the moment a product is designated for a wedding – florals, photography, makeup – the decimal point shifts one space to the right. You’ll pay, of course. What’re you gonna do, negotiate with happily forever after!? That would be uncouth.

Beyond my own calendar filling with save-the-dates, it appears weddings themselves have become the spectacle, powerful enough to launch careers. One Instagram scroll and I find myself knee-deep in drone footage sweeping over an Italian palazzo. Airbrushed cinematic artifacts optimized for mass circulation. In 2023, Sofia Richie’s bridal content rebranded her from tabloid-adjacent nepo to mainstream style icon, and last summer, I followed along as influencer Jaz Smith posted over 20 TikToks on her wedding day in near-real time.

@justjazzzyidkhot tbh

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A wedding is a paradigmatic punctuation mark, signifying graduation to a certain rung of adulthood and having bypassed the disarray of Gen Z situationships and matcha-flation. If you can afford one, you’re doing quite well. If the aesthetics are in order, then everything else must be too – the relationship healthy, the future secure. (Until you remember that your peony centerpiece has never helped with navigating conflict, and planning a perfect day isn’t the same as building the subsequent decade.)

I will say – being a wedding guest is kind of fun. (When I criticized those wanting an excuse to party earlier, I should clarify I was also talking about myself.) As someone who runs (sorry, sprints) on words of affirmation, I’ll gladly shower you with Frankenbites of “I’m so proud of/happy for/obsessed with you.” I love any excuse to score a floor-length silk number on TheRealReal, and I’m helplessly drawn to a couple’s history and Pinterest-boardified taste compressed into a single weekend: the bride’s dress she’s deemed 2026-chic yet timeless enough to hold up in photos, the signature cocktail named after their dog, and the quirky stories they immortalize in their vows, which usually comes with a juicy reveal of who initially ghosted whom on the apps.

I recently went to the wedding of a couple I met in college and reunited with friends I hadn’t seen in years. The group chat had finally become corporeal, the logistical adult nightmare of different time zones and diverging paths suspended. And that’s the cruel trick weddings play – they convince you nothing has changed, as everyone slips back into shorthand from 2018.

As the DJ spun his final song, I looked around the dance floor and realized I had no idea when this exact configuration of people would exist together again. Back then, we’d meet at an off-campus restaurant armed with Franzia, ready to slap the bag until an entire evening disappeared into bickering over something screwy. In the eleventh hour, remember the midnight assignment and collectively panic-shit it out. A throwaway line would fossilize into an inside joke, and years later, someone could repeat it and the whole memory would come rushing back.

As dawn broke, people had flights to catch and toddlers waiting at home. Monday morning creeping in with its Teams meetings. The illusion dissolving into dust motes.

Reason number three: weddings are one of the rare occasions capable of reawakening an old version of your life, only to remind you that you can’t inhabit it again. Perhaps that’s why I’ve spent this essay lambasting them as an institution – too performative, expensive, overstimulating – because it’s easier than admitting I’m grieving a season of life, and of closeness, that’s already gone.

And so, if the price of gathering everyone I hold dear into a room again – even for a few fleeting hours – is to say something sincere into a mic, pretend to know a distant cousin’s name, and pay extra for flowers that will be tossed the next day, I’ll take it. The wedding was never the point. You were.

The other day I was at a party with my fresh-out-of-college cousin and his friends, when the conversation turned to our favorite social media apps. Someone casually clarified that I wouldn’t like Snapchat or Bumble because they’re “for young people.” Not that I wanted to use either, but it was sobering nonetheless. For most of my life, age only moved in one direction, accompanied by the same disclaimer: “You’re not old enough” – to drink, to rent a car, to know any better. Now, apparently, I’ve reached a classification where there’s a list of things I’ve aged out of, and it’s only going to get lengthier.

(I know my 80-year-old self would find this adorable and trade places with me in a heartbeat. In the grand scheme of adulthood, I’m still a baby – so instead of counting myself out before I’ve even really begun, I suppose I’ll go count my blessings.)

Anyway, for my 28th birthday, here’s a list of 28 commandments I’ve been abiding by. (If you thought I was above making one of these, that’s on you.)

1. Master solitude, then choose company. A starver will eat soggy fries off the floor. It’s a completely gratifying move to take yourself to dinner – do it enough and you’ll start to know the difference between compatibility and not wanting to be alone.

2. You’ll always have energy. The trick is directing it wisely: Toward a shoulder-defining HIIT class, or a TikTok comments-war over whether the Swift-Kelce wedding was vulgar or visionary??? The one that makes you hotter usually wins.

3. Effort is sexy. Even when it faceplants, and sometimes especially then.

4. People treat you the way you teach them to. How others respect you is often just a reflection of how much you respect yourself.

5. Ask more questions. When someone tells you about their life, resist the reflexive, entitled urge to say, “That reminds me of the time when I…” for at least one follow-up question.

6. If someone needs something and you know the person for it, don’t sit on it. Make the intro, be the villager, then watch the favor compound tenfold. I’ve found therapists, jobs, dates, apartments, and good hairstylists all through my communal comrades.

7. Acquire some grandma hobbies. Jigsaw puzzling, floral arranging, dumpling folding – tactile, repetitive things to remind your nervous system it’s not, in fact, being chased by a bear. Sometimes the goal is to glue tiny pieces of cardboard together for an hour until your cortisol drops.

8. Very little can’t be improved by a 20-minute walk with an ice-cold bev in hand (yes, even in winter).

9. Clean often. Cluttered home, cluttered head. Also, you shouldn’t be apologizing every time someone asks you to turn your camera on.

10. Carry hand sanitizer. We’re all too booked and busy to be felled by hand-foot-and-mouth off a shared subway pole.

11. Nothing is worse than a phone wheezing at 2%. Charge it before you leave the house. If you’re hellbent on rawdogging the city, fine, but COMMIT. Be Magellan. Know which way North is in your bones. Anything less and you’re not free-spirited, you’re just lost. And now look what you’ve done – everyone else is lost with you.

12. Fire up the Peaceful Meditation playlist, put the phone down, and go to bed. There’s nothing waiting for you at demon hours except a conspiracy Reddit thread, your ex’s LinkedIn profile, and tomorrow’s regret.

13. Write it out. Sometimes you’ll realize you’ve been circling the same drain for months and it’s time to climb out. Other times, you’ll catch a thought train going somewhere new. Either way, pen to paper gives you clarity that your mind – ever the unreliable narrator – was obscuring.

14. Shoot a shot every week that slightly scares you. Email the founder whose work you admire. DM the crush. You’d be shocked at how often delusion is rewarded. The worst they can do is ignore you, which, respectfully, was already happening.

15. Have mnemonics for remembering names. “Blue shirt Brittany.” “Glasses Gerald.” It’s a small system with an outsized payoff.

16. If you can’t build 3 outfits around it from your existing closet, don’t buy it.

17. You’ll never reach for the shirt that bunches weird at the armpits or the pants you can’t sit down in. Tailor them, or set them free (Depop’s problem now!).

18. No more aspirational produce. Get ruthlessly good at forecasting what you’ll actually eat, even if that means putting down the criminally discounted family-size arugula clamshell. Buy small. Buy honest.

19. Eat at least one fruit and/or vegetable every day.

20. Life’s too short for films under 55% on Rotten Tomatoes. Exceptions are White Chicks and The Holiday.

21. There’s no Michelin star better than your mom’s cooking. Cherish it while you still can, ask for the recipe, and accept that yours will taste at most only 80% as good.

22. Optimize for freedom in your professional life – financial, intellectual, temporal. Define what that bespoke formula looks like before someone else defines it for you.

23. Invest a percentage of your paycheck every month. Future You might be a burnt out, vibes-forward freeloader. It would be kind to help her out.

24. Your family’s or partner’s money is not your money. Let not romance render thee financially illiterate. Know where money comes from, where it’s going, and what your game plan is if it disappears tomorrow.

25. Your emotional regulation is not anyone else’s responsibility. I get it, it’s uber tempting to offload your lingering shame/rage/loserdom into a 4 am text and chase it later with an “lolol sorry.” However, it absolutely sucks being on the receiving end. Put it in Notes, walk it off, and come back with a revised version.

26. Everyone deserves grace, but not necessarily a second chance.

27. Everything happens for a reason.

28. Well, I guess sometimes things just happen, and we call it a “reason” to make sense of it in hindsight. So… everything happens for a reason, or at least it becomes one as we keep moving forward as best we can.

There are different types of Cannes accreditation tailored to your profession and purpose – some for industry members, others for press. If you’re between 18 and 28, you’re eligible for a “3 Days in Cannes” accreditation, which gets you into Competition screenings, Un Certain Regard, and the Palais des Festivals (basically, enough to feel legitimate and not enough to feel valuable. The correct amount for your first rodeo). I rallied people to come, many at the precipice of aging out of the category – but the deadline came and went, and I was the only one who applied (it took a month to hear back, during which I developed an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder for refreshing my email).

This was my first big solo trip. I won’t pretend there weren’t low moments, like the recurring thought that this would be more fun with a friend, partner, or anyone who could verify that what I was witnessing was totally cool and real. But then I remembered: I had complete agency for the first time in recent memory. I could eat gummy worms for breakfast. Queue for the screenings I wanted without being outvoted or parrying sighs at the wait time. Snag a table for one at a posh seaside restaurant and read Lena Dunham’s memoir until the daylight changed. (Besides, no man I knew was surviving three straight days of subtitled arthouse films. Going alone was an act of mercy.)

There, I found myself less swept up in the glitz and more in the sheer commitment to the art itself. The Cannes WhatsApp group buzzed daily on who’d procured the hottest screening tickets, who didn’t, and what to do if you were the latter. Friendships forged in the McDonald’s trenches across from Les Arcades, over 9-piece nuggets housed (That’s right, 9-piece, NOT 10. How dainty of the French). The free shuttle between Cineum Cannes and La Croisette, a 30-minute ride spanning the festival grounds, was a socratic symposium. I met people working in overlooked corners of the industry – translators, accessibility captioners, film theorists and indie theater consultants. Found myself in a circle with women from China, Japan and Australia sharing our Letterboxd fives while the shimmery coastline slid past the window.

I juggled up to three screenings a day. For the record, an 8:30 AM screening on the same day as a 9:00 PM screening is, medically, a recipe for disaster. I did it anyway – heeled up for the Grand Lumière, sneakers slung into a tote for the inevitable moment my feet ceased to cooperate. I slept about five hours each night, lying awake in anticipation like a tot before a field trip. Worth it!!! Obviously.

Now, a week later, I’m nursing a cough and bruised feet, natural byproducts of doing something you love too hard. I love film in that it’s inconvenient – watching it, discussing it, making it. It pulls you out of your comfort zone and keeps you there. There’s something about hearing those who’ve paid their dues describe what it cost them, be it decades across a sprawling body of work, or everything they had poured into a single film. Life is long, and none of us are exempt from its afflictions – so it’s remarkable that people make things even so. It is hard to make anything, and even harder to make anything great. Great, in the midst of a long, afflicting life, gets me every time. The applause at Cannes, a room cresting together, always feels like an acknowledgment of that fact.

I saw seven films in total. Here’s a rundown, ranked from most to least favorite, taste being subjective and all. Rather than synopses (because hey, Wikipedia’s free), I’ll describe each in three snacky words, the game sleep-deprived celebrity costars play in GQ YouTube interviews. I personally don’t consider these spoilers, but scroll away if you must.

1. Coward (Lukas Dhont) - ugly cried, thanks

2. Elephants in the Fog (Abinash Bikram Shah) - best closing sequence!

3. Minotaur (Andrey Zyvagintsev) - slow, somber, STUNNING

4. Hope (Na Hong-jin) - kinda half finished?

5. Mariage au gout d’orange (Christophe Honoré) - everyone needs therapy

6. The Man I Love (Ira Sachs) - fifth date movie

7. Notre Salut (Emmanuel Marre) - theater fell asleep (oops!)

Since coming back from Cannes, I’ve been thinking about the future of festivals and filmmaking, which is evolving faster than I can coherently articulate, but here’s my attempt.

Influencers!

The Marché du Film, the global distribution engine behind everything glamorous at Cannes, attracts over 16,000 industry folks to buy, sell and finance films. This year, the Marché launched its first ever Creator Economy Summit, officially fusing cinema and content into a two-headed hydra, and openly signaling what has been true for a while: the Internet – algorithms, shrinking attention spans, short-form content – is not a disruption to film so much as the water it now swims in. Influencers are no longer photobombing the red carpet and getting escorted away; they are heralded as the most direct line between a film and who it needs to reach.

The case study everyone keeps pointing to is Iron Lung – a $3M horror adaptation directed by Mark Fischbach, known to his 38 million YouTube subscribers as Markiplier. With no studio marketing budget, it generated seven times its cost in opening weekend revenue. Turns out, 38 million subscribers is a measurable, mobilizable audience that traditional infrastructure cannot manufacture from scratch. When you already own the ecosystem – trust, community – studio relationships become a choice rather than a prerequisite. The pattern is repeating – Amelia Dimoldenberg is developing a romantic comedy for Amazon MGM’s Orion Pictures. Kane Parsons is adapting his YouTube webseries “Backrooms” into an A24 feature. For younger audiences, social media is the conduit for discovering, experiencing and interpreting films. There’s a Cannes that lives in your pocket, and it’s not going anywhere.

AI!

The second, more existential conversation happening at Cannes was AI. Every room I walked into, it was there, waiting: What does it mean for our craft, our futures? Everything we thought we knew!?

The week was not short on developments. Amazon MGM Studios and AWS announced the GenAI Creators’ Fund, an initiative giving creators, filmmakers and startups access to AI tools and funding to produce cinematic entertainment. One of the greenlit projects was Punky Duck, from Jorge R. Gutierrez, who received immediate backlash and scrapped the project before the press release had cooled. The announcement-to-apology pipeline is getting embarrassingly short these days.

And then there’s Dreams of Violets, the first AI-generated film to premiere at a festival – Tribeca on June 10 – made by first-time filmmaker and tech entrepreneur brothers Ash and Pooya Koosha on a budget of $2,000. The ROI, if it lands, will be hard to argue with. The trailer comments, however, beg to differ:

Since festivals with rich heritage are accommodating the very systems keeping their attendees up at night, it’s not lost on anyone that their stakeholders and the tech evangelists colonizing film may be one and the same. The split is visible: those loud and unshy about their AI adoption, and those treating it as a lamentation. For now, abstaining – doing it by hand and accumulated devotion – has a cachet. The way a painting is worth more than the print, or a handwritten letter and throwing rocks at a window means more than a Hinge like and “You up” text ever could.

On people reaching for AI as a shortcut to their creative thinking and output, Ronny Chieng put it best in his Harvard Class Day speech:

“What they’re missing is this: the creating is the fun part.”

The journey, however long, afflicting, and riddled with friction, is the point. Yes, AI has speed and processing power, but it doesn’t have the soured relationships, the rejection inbox, or the quintessentially human hunger to make something simply because it feels like it needs to exist. And as the world holds its breath to see where this all goes, we cannot afford to lose that.

@404.mediaNot everyone got booed for an AI grad speech. Emmy-award winning comedian @Ronny Chieng joked about how stupid AI was with Harvard grads. He also talked about how AI was ruining the beauty of the creation process.

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(I primarily use Facebook to confirm the Boomers who’ve shaped my life are still out there sharing Super Bowl dip recipes and videos captioned “LIKE IF YOU LOVE YOUR STUDENTS.” I’m deeply invested in who’s become a pickleball person and who got a new grandkid. I had not once, in my rotational diligence, actually landed on bad news, until now.)

I’ve been thinking about the butterfly effect lately – the idea that even the most throwaway decision can detonate something downstream. You chose to spend an hour here, which means you didn’t spend it there. You got off at the wrong subway stop and ended up signing a lease on that block. You said hi to a stranger on a random Saturday and your world reconfigured, surrounding them. (Too much of this thinking will, of course, send you into a spiral, cataloguing every road not taken, so it really only makes sense to look at the ones you took.)

Frank was the director of QQ, a high school volunteer organization that is now defunct (cosmically unfair given its significance). Every two weeks, teens across New Jersey congregated at a clubhouse to discuss their volunteer projects. Having spent weekends chronically at home, more or less pilloried by the social order of my high school, I showed up like I was on parole. We bonded via exercises like Human Knot and Zip Zap Zop. We shared our roses and thorns, and it was revelatory to learn that teenage angst transcended school lines.

Through the organization, I led the Legacy Project: visiting senior citizens on their last leg of life, interviewing them, and writing their biographies. They’d pour me piping-hot peppermint tea, then spill it on the recessions they fought their way out of and the rolodex cuties they’d unhingedly ring back in the day. When my subjects passed, I delivered their books to their families. (It was beautiful and devastating and an intimate proximity to mortality at an age when I still couldn’t legally drive, which probably does something to one’s emotional development.) This work earned me the President’s Volunteer Service Award (now also defunct, because this administration WILL NOT STOP until it has composted everything great and functional!) and a glowing rec letter from Frank, both later likely factoring into my dream college admission.

From the nursing home hallways I learned how to storytell, how to write, how to sit across from someone and make them feel understood, which I carry into my job as a user researcher, which funds the apartment I live in, in the city I love, where I’ve conjured the relationships that make it worth living in, all of it somehow ending up here on this Substack, still becoming. You see!? Butterfly effect.

My first semester at college, Frank sent a blanket “Hope everything’s going well!” email to the QQ alumni network. He probably didn’t anticipate that I’d receive it at the precise moment I was white-knuckling through a bout of social anxiety, homesick for a feeling akin to the comfort of QQ, of having people who showed up consistently and knowing exactly where I stood among them. I brain dumped back a single-spaced novel: how stressed I was with coursework, how I couldn’t figure out what to major in, how I couldn’t tell real friends from the ones who were sure to disappear by sophomore year.

Frank responded promptly: what he’d been up to, how the org was doing, and how it was categorically, unequivocally, their loss if they didn’t want to be my friend. I knew his time wasn’t unlimited but he gave it like it was. Like he had nowhere more important to be, taking on an eighteen-year-old’s existentialism as if it was his own.

On winter breaks, I’d see Frank with my QQ friends at The Cheesecake Factory, ritually chosen because the supermall sat equidistant from everyone. Frank always over-ordered dessert: one per person, plus three extra for the table. A principled refusal to let anyone leave hungry (or fully mobile, for that matter). We’d sit for hours swapping dispatches from our respective colleges while Frank took it all in, amused and empathetic. Our collective dad.

When college ended, so did our tradition. Correspondence migrated to Facebook, and every year without fail, a birthday message from Frank appeared in my notifications.

This past December, I was back in New Jersey for the first winter in years. The inkling to see him surfaced. But there were errands to run, friends to FaceTime, and I was so burnt out from work that inertia set in and the couch held me hostage. I’ll reach out in the spring, I told myself. Memorial Day weekend. Or summer – it won’t be as cold, and it’ll make for a better lunch anyway.

It really would have been a great lunch.

By the time I found out, the funeral had already happened. Life, meanwhile, kept moving at its usual unmedicated, agitated ADHD frequency. I could’ve moved too and let it dissolve into the feed: someone’s marathon, engagement, new apartment, next. The internet is good at flattening grief into any other update. So sometimes, the reckoning happens later, on your own terms, perhaps months late, in the middle of a perfectly ordinary day.

I scrolled through the posts dotting his Facebook wall and realized quickly that I wasn’t the only one. There were people who’d accrued jobs and partners in zip codes far away, and Frank was in their foundational DNA – and he’ll never know the half of it. (But I suspect he wouldn’t have wanted the credit. As was his way.)

I’m a clinger by nature. Impermanence frightens me, so I’ve held onto friendships well past the point they were serving either of us, and stayed at the same company my entire adult life after swearing two years was my ceiling. But death is the great equalizer, and it’s wholly indifferent to how tightly you grip. It comes on its own schedule. Doesn’t care that you were going to get to it eventually, when you had more bandwidth, and when the seasons changed.

Everything is transient, and pretending otherwise is a terrible case of dismissive-avoidant attachment. The identity you inhabit will be dismantled and redesigned by a future you. The neighborhood you adore will be unrecognizable years from now, and you’ll be the bar curmudgeon recounting what it was like before the transplant influx. The dinner party chatter, the restaurant’s ambient quality, are not reproducible again in the same way. The ones you love will move infinitesimally further with the cool passage of time and ultimately, with the great equalizer. (This sounds nihilistic, but the alternative – everything staying as it is, forever – would have no urgency, stakes, or weight. No reason to look up in case you might miss it. If nothing ends, nothing begins. If nothing is at risk, then nothing matters.)

In her book The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying, Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse, chronicles people’s gravest regrets. At the top of the list was:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

Dreams deferred haunt us. Ware depicts a woman named Grace who spent decades fulfilling societal duties in an unhappy marriage, postponing her desire to travel. When her husband moved into a nursing home, she finally booked the trip, only to be diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

@theimperfectspodcastBonnie Ware spent eight years looking after people in palliative care and was gifted some wisdom, which she wrote about in her book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. This is the most common regret. I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. Listen now on your favourite #podcast app or watch the full episode on #YouTube. #wisdom #regret #courage

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So if we’ve established that time is finite (and we have, extensively just now), then it implores us to stop spending it performing the awnings and trappings of a life instead of actually living one. To play outside more, since it’s in our mammalian wiring. To not let the shmooze circuit devour the hours that could be spent with the people who see the bright-eyed childhood version of us. To want things fully knowing they’ll expire, and to build knowing it’ll eventually be rubble. The excruciatingly embarrassing 2 am blunder, or the heartbreak, is never so serious that you can’t start over.

Frank wasn’t preoccupied with ego or frills; he just showed up for the people he knew and loved, and left the room better than he found it. I can only hope to steward what he modeled into the spaces I enter – listening acutely, savoring thoroughly, then taking the time to respond with curiosity and care, which is the bedrock of good conversation and frankly, good living. That’s the legacy. How it keeps going.

Recently, I went back to The Cheesecake Factory with my best friend. We sat in the kitschy wood-paneled booth under bleached lighting that has never flattered anyone’s face. The dessert was not as gourmet as I once remembered (NYC has irreversibly tainted my palate). But for a brief moment, it tasted like a Human Knot and a butterfly and being fifteen and belonging. Some things you order again and again, simply because they’re yours.

The air reeks of syrupy self-tanner and uncut dreams. Digicams flash en masse at the rainbow tower, Coachella’s most reliable lookbook shoot headquarters. Influencers in vintage Dior baby tees that cost more than the stay in Indio. Right next to them: wannabe influencers in Western (derogatory) belts and lacey micro-shorts that the dust will claim by Sunday and Amazon’s 30-day return window will claim the following Tuesday. It’s democracy. Theater. The range is staggering, but the commitment holds.

The Disney adults were onto something. I get it now, the compulsion to spend consecutive days in blazing heat, in a themed outfit, eating a 10-course meal dispersed across several hours, anticipating pyrotechnics. We strut the grounds calculating how long it’ll take to get from KATSEYE at Sahara to Sabrina at main stage while navigating a sea of equally-deranged people, not unlike flitting from Space Mountain to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad without a Lightning Lane Pass. I don’t run, but for this, I’ll sprint.

Gated and finite, yet boundless. A panacea where, for 72 fine hours, my real life falls away entirely. It’s a portal for nostalgia and poor decision-making and I’m not sure I want to know what else.

COACHELLA!!! I love it here. JK, this place is insane. But why don’t I want to leave?

My friend recently asked me for my highlights and lowlights. I’ll also share them with you.

Highlights:

Starting with the heavy hitter… Bieberchella!!! He opened with music off SWAG – raw, stripped-down R&B balladry and twangy guitar, my favorites “ALL I CAN TAKE” and “BUTTERFLIES” among them. Mid-set, he shifted to harmonizing with his old discography like “Never Say Never” and “Baby.” I saw the light return to his eyes in real time, like it healed something in him, and by the transitive property, something in me. My dance moves that ensued transported me temporarily back to my 12-year-old self, aka the most unfuckwithable version.

Biebs has the perfect balance of a boyish swagger and a gravitas that only comes from having been put through the wash by the world. I was wrapped in a big Coachella-branded hoodie, sandwiched between a coworker I’d recently befriended and my bestie of the last decade – the optimal friendship config for a sonic journey that traveled across that same span of time. I don’t care what people online were saying about his set being boring. They weren’t there. It was so distinctly, consistently JB. I had the time of my life.

Water bottles are still $2. Strawberry lemonade costs as much as a tank of gas, the Nobu Coachella price tag is as obscene as it gets, but water? It is unbothered by inflation and long may it reign. I hydrated aggressively. Airports, take note. This is what it looks like to respect your customer.

The ~ random ~ sets. Music has always been a daunting entity for me. I’m tone-deaf, can’t hold a note even at casual karaoke, and my parents put me through 9 years of piano lessons only for me to emerge with Für Elise. BUT! I am an extremely easy audience. Some people have omnivorous taste buds; I, omnivorous eardrums, will accompany you to virtually any concert, let you have the aux without negotiation, and find something to love about it. The beauty of being a music baby is that everything clears the bar.

Which makes Coachella ideal. Just by getting your steps in – hunting for merch, taking the long way back from anywhere – you stumble across artists you’d have never intentionally sought out. I walked into Davido’s afrobeats set while waiting for my friend to get out of the bathroom and left a convert. Fatboy Slim’s set provided apt untz as I queued at a Yerba mate stand. Then there was FKA Twigs, who was a last-minute add to my itinerary, and ended up being the best set of the night. She spanned the whole gamut of human expression in 75 minutes: operatic belting, pole dancing, even sword fighting. She closed on “Cellophane” which devastated me completely. (It was only afterward that I learned “Cellophane” is where the “Let me do it for you” meme originates from, which I’d been gleefully sending to every dog lover I knew circa 2023. It took watching FKA Twigs perform it live for the full circle moment to hit. This is what the internet has done to us – compressed art and sounds and their absurdist afterlives into the same undifferentiated scroll so that we can circulate something for years without ever knowing what it actually is or where it came from. Anyway, I digress.)

Lowlights:

Shame! The inevitable downside to remaining a neophyte is that my peers, having done their homework, were rattling off names like Ninajirachi, Slayyyter, Royal Otis, Ethel Cain, Anyma, etc. The gap between us was humbling. I resigned myself to feeling inadequate for the weekend and took comfort in the fact that I at least knew all of Bieber’s lyrics. TLDR, I need to elevate my music taste. There is so much good stuff out there.

Scheduling conflicts. Multiple times I was forced into an impossible Sophie’s choice between two artists playing simultaneously, with the entire length of the festival grounds between them. Giveon and Sombr. Laufey and FKA Twigs. BigBang’s first performance in 9 years after reuniting, and Karol G’s debut as the first Latina to headline. This wasn’t even a matter of which was more momentous – I would’ve made history watching either. (I ended up leaving BigBang halfway to catch the end of Karol G, then filled in the gaps on social media later.) Coachella, I love you, but forcing your festivalgoers to choose between two artists they want to see is the equivalent of handing them a golden retriever and a dachshund and telling them they can only keep one.

Spiraling. The smell of Rainbow Candy Elf Bars is nauseating. “What’s on the menu today?” drops in the group chat conspiratorially. Some guy nearby is nursing a warm mid-afternoon vodka soda with a teethy grimace. Coachella can wear you down to your most unpolished self. Angels contorting into demons if you look too long, faces doing things faces shouldn’t do. Everyone is possessed, half from being physically unwell, the other half from the emotional amuse-bouches that accompany the aforementioned menu. Powdered thoughts about your relationship status, the geopoliticosocioeconomic state of the world, and your father, in that order.

The booze gets to me a little. The heat gets to me more. I began wondering when I could change out of my sequined shorts and into something with a more forgiving waistband. Why the hell I wore sequins to the desert in the first place. Who exactly was going to hold me when Sombr crooned the surefire tearjerker “back to friends.” At this point I looked over at the couple I was third-wheeling – my best friends, newly engaged – and realized the answer was right there. I fought to reclaim my power over the Aperol, which NYC bars have built me for, and found myself smushed in a bear hug between them right as the opening line, “Touch my body tender,” bled over the crowd. The sorry tears became sweet tears. It would all be okay. It always is.

The influencer industrial complex. It wouldn’t be Coachella without addressing what has annexed it. At some point – no one can agree exactly when – Coachella became as much about the economy surrounding the music as the music itself, if not more. Brand activations as far as the eye can see: Gap, Camp Poosh, 818 Outpost, Rhode, Skylrk, Loops Earplugs, the list goes on. It’s worldbuilding, FOMO-pilled architecture. Look at us. Living our bestestestest lives. Don’t you wish you were here? Don’t you wish you were us?

Every corporation with a mood board and marketing budget has planted a flag here, genuflecting to the algorithm, banking on people in the desert manufacturing moments and moving product for the millions of followers watching from their couches in real time. The troubling conclusion of all of this is that it may beget the extinction of the person who showed up primarily for the music. I'd like to think I'm still more her, but I'm not totally sure.

Before I knew it, I was packing up a duffel that smelled like sunscreen and something unidentifiable, boarding a red-eye back to the corner of the country I came from.

I don’t know where I’ll be in a year, what I’ll be doing, or who I’ll be doing it with. But for a weekend in a field in Indio, the assignment was clear – whimsymaxxing, funmaxxing, whatever you want to call it; I’m calling it necessary. That, it turns out, feels great.

See you next year?

I love the pursuit of greatness, obviously. I live in New York, arguably its global capital, where everyone wants to succeed at their sparkly, specified thing – a startup, screenplay, pilates certification, etc. Remove ambition and the whole city would collapse in on itself. A frothing heap of rats and trash.

But! Not all ambition is created equal. Some kinds feel inspiring, inviting; others leave a bad taste. I started wondering where the line is – when it stops being a generative force and starts souring into something sickly – and how you can detect it early, in partners, colleagues and friends alike, before it infects you too.

Timothée Chalamet made headlines last month for a string of cringey PR misfires during his Oscars campaign – a campaign that, notably, did not end in a win. Ironically, his character in Marty Supreme is an ambitious, ego-driven young man, and off-screen, that same energy was palpable. He hyped his acting as “some top-level shit,” which the internet promptly flamed him for.

On the opposite end of the virality spectrum was Olympic medalist Alysa Liu, who competed under the highest levels of pressure and somehow remained entirely detached, unburdened by it – not in a performative way, but as someone interested in the experience, and for whom that alone was enough. Her energy was infectious, and it snatched America’s hearts.

@mindbodybrianaNew YouTube video out about how to think like Alysa Liu ✨ #alysaliu

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Two people, both clearly ambitious. One stretches your horizon outward. The other makes your cheeks clench inward.

After careful observation (and several wine glasses), I’ve developed a framework for evaluating and identifying healthy vs. toxic ambition. Use it to call out the ambitious people in your life, or, if you’re feeling brave, to course-correct yourself, which is admittedly less fun. Alternatively, if you read the toxic section and think “That’s literally me,” you could always double down. From monopolizing media to starting wars out of spite, that breed is actually doing extremely well right now.

The core difference:

Healthy ambition is, at its core, purpose-driven. An engine pull toward genuine mastery, curiosity, impact, and love. The work itself matters, even when your dog eats your WiFi router and now no one’s watching. Healthily ambitious people retain a relatively stable sense of self across the spectrum of meh to absolute terrible-case scenarios.

Every time I’m in SoCal, I make a pilgrimage to one of my favorite restaurants, Pho 79, for the most consistently-perfect, restorative bowl of soup. When the owners won a James Beard Award, they didn’t know what it was. They weren’t intentionally optimizing for prestige. They exacted their craft, and prestige just so happened to catch up later.

That’s why when people chase recognition for its own sake, “famous for being famous,” it tends to clot. You see this with influencers who ride bouts of momentum with a nil center, dithering among shiny ventures and plastering their names on products they can’t properly describe the value of. Done this way, everything reads as hokey, hollow – an exemplar being the D’Amelio family’s extended makeup/footwear/mattress/popcorn universe that has caused their $30M empire to plateau.

Toxic ambition, fundamentally, is ego-driven. At its core is a need to prove something – usually one’s status, legitimacy, and worth. Sometimes it’s to silence those pesky insecurities, and other times, à la lofty goals guy, it’s to silence critics living rent-free in the head. Unlike healthy ambition, it’s externally-oriented and rarely grounded in deriving true meaning.

Relationship to others:

Healthy:

• They see success as expandable, not scarce.

• They collaborate, mentor, and build networks where multiple people can win.

• They keep strong friendships because competition isn’t the main lens.

Toxic:

• They treat life as a zero-sum game.

• They compete even with allies or friends.

• Relationships become instrumental (useful vs. useless).

Mindset toward success and failure:

Healthy:

• They are strategic and solution-oriented.

• They treat setbacks as data and growth signals, rather than threats to identity.

• They possess long-term thinking and are focused on building something durable.

Toxic:

• They are reactive and status-sensitive.

• They treat setbacks as evidence of injustice or slights.

• They think short-term, prioritizing immediate wins and comparisons.

Discipline style:

Healthy:

• Their routine and self-regulation are internalized habits.

• They move with quiet consistency (ever seen a sleeper build??? Yeah, like that).

• Discipline exists to serve the mission, not to perform productivity.

Toxic:

• Their productivity is built for display.

• They run on showcasing their effort (how hard they’re grinding, who they’re outworking, which obscure podcast they’re able to quote mid-meeting…).

• Discipline collapses without an audience.

The tells:

Growing up with feverishly motivated Chinese parents, I learned early on that a little interpersonal pettiness was permitted, encouraged even. The model minority label amplified this, and soon played out across every scarcity-structured space I moved through, from competitive schools to corporate America. Everyone wanted so desperately to feel chosen, to land one of the finite seats of ascension. The catch is that once you do, it’s isolating by design. Trapped in a low-vibrational state, tokenized, and rewarded in ever-attenuating ways.

Layer in being a digital native in the attention economy. The expectation isn’t just to succeed now, but to do so visibly – which makes you more perceptive about not only the ambition in your inner circle, but your entire feed’s. After enough exposure, one starts to acquire a sensitivity to when earnest, good-natured ambition has begun teething.

Toxic ambition (TA):

Someone shares good news. TA’s reaction starts out as “I’m so happy for them!” and then immediately gets peppered with disclaimers: “Well, their dad does know someone there. And that company isn’t even that selective anymore. And it was totally a timing thing.” No one else’s win is allowed to exist unaudited. The conversation gets firmly redirected back to them – why they’d never want that job, but, you know, to each their own!

Everyone feels jealousy, a byproduct of being alive and social. But for TA, success outside of their grasp is proof that the universe is out to get them and (ugh – as if!) doesn’t actually revolve around them. They have little issue cutting corners or undercutting others, the hapless included. After all, kicking someone when they’re down is the best time to kick.

TA maintains a carousel of challengers and enemies: a high school doubter, an ex-boss they had a mouth-off with, a LinkedIn comment from 2019. Which, sure, can be short-term fuel, fantastic for a workout or a breakup. But for them, this fuel is sacred.

You leave conversations exhausted from the relentless besting. Who can brim with the most busy-brilliant-burnout? They will not yield. They will not die. They make Despicable Me’s Minions look like amateurs.

@wentworthbrosWhy Minions Are IMMORTAL #despicableme #riseofgru #illumination #universalstudios #dm4

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Healthy ambition (HA):

The only witnesses to HA’s routine are themselves and, unfortunately, their barista. They soft-launch that they’ve been writing a novel or training for an ultramarathon every morning for two years, and you wonder how on earth they found the time while you wasted yours. It looks kinda dull from the outside. From the inside, apparently, it’s everything.

Conversations are left feeling energized and useful and beautiful. You can’t wait to try what they suggested, and later text them, “The magnesium actually works!!!” because they’ve created a safe-enough space where you know it’ll be received warmly and incredibly.

Whether any of this is scientifically substantiated is unclear. Whether it rings true, I’ll let you decide. Either way, it was a cathartic accounting. I’d love to know – what frameworks are you using lately to evaluate the people around you? And have you also tried them on yourself?

Now that I’ve lured you here under false pretenses, the way men lure us into relationships by seeming emotionally well-adjusted, I’d like to start from the beginning.

Over the past few months, I’ve been creative producing a basketball documentary feature film. This is shocking for several reasons. First, I have never produced a feature film. I do not have any formal training in producing, unless you count watching BTS of David Fincher’s The Social Network in my childhood bedroom. In my early twenties, I shot a few climate change documentary shorts, then took an n-year hiatus (n = long enough to be humbling but short enough that I still felt entitled at parties) from large-scale filmmaking.

Second, and more alarming, is that I do not know basketball. I have never watched a full game. I couldn’t tell you how many people are on the court (floor? field?) at once. When a friend asked me if I knew what a three-pointer was, I assumed it was a rating out of five.

So when the opportunity presented itself, my initial reaction was pure, unadulterated panic. Was I wildly in over my head?

I met Shane, the director, in the most professionally strategic way possible: by loitering around my friend [REDACTED]’s defunct Hinge endeavor. Shane is the founder of East Side Stories, a film nonprofit dedicated to telling authentic Asian American stories. A respectable, culturally-significant endeavor, which made it even more impressive that [REDACTED] let it die. They went out, realized they were incompatible in the way refreshingly-mature adults sometimes are, and are both now in stable, happy relationships with other wonderful people. One night, I was invited to join their double date as a fifth wheel (It made me wonder if I’d been approaching my career all wrong. Should I start fifth-wheeling more aggressively? Enter seventh-wheeling, eleventh-wheeling, and inserting myself into increasingly stable couples until one of their exes hires me? Should I download Hinge as a professional development platform? This is not the advice you’ll find on LinkedIn, but it probably should be.)

Shane had been shooting this film for a while (That’s the thing about film, and art in general – it can exist indefinitely in creative purgatory. There’s no finish line unless you declare one, and even then you wonder: What if the breakthrough happens three more months from now? Time is money, sure, but if you wait long enough, money sort of magically regenerates. Also, artists struggle with perfectionism – I would know, I’ve spent an afternoon agonizing over what to caption an Insta story of my friend’s dog). The film, The Walk On, follows Ace, a Taiwanese‑Thai American from an immigrant family who became one of the first Asian American players in NCAA Division I basketball, and the very first on the UConn men’s team. Now, in his 40s, he’s reflecting on that era, the history he helped shape, and his pivot into restaurant entrepreneurship and giving back to the AAPI community in New York.

Last summer, I watched an early cut: flashy, polished basketball footage and praise aplenty from the Caron Butler to Gary Vee spectrum of affirmation. In my feedback form, I wrote earnestly: “It feels like this film would resonate with a very specific demographic… dudes who love the sport.”

Then Shane called. He wanted the film to expand and have more universal appeal, and asked me how. On the surface, this was a story about success – Ace wears confidence like a uniform and embodies the American dream. But at its underlying core, it’s a character study: a man with inner wounds, who ties his self-worth to his performance, and initially believes that that can sustain him through life. I realized I didn’t need the full stat sheet on Ace’s basketball or business journey; I needed more of who he was. Humanized and messy.

As someone who enjoys peeling the fleshy layers of an onioned person (realizing this sounded way less serial killer-y in my head), I turned to Ace’s childhood. Childhood, for better or worse, is the bedrock of who we are and why we do what we do. To get there, I tapped into a few beats.

Beat #1: Ace’s parents divorced when he was in college. He believed achievement could stabilize his family. He says, “I thought that if I made the team, my parents would get back together,” a line that climactically becomes the thesis of the film’s first half. I wanted to confront this belief fully: What impact did the divorce have on you? How did your role in your family change? How do immigrant family expectations – and the weight they carry – permeate through your choices when every step feels like a potential disappointment to parents who’ve sacrificed so much?

Beat #2: Ace’s relationship with his father, Park. Park ran a small restaurant, and Ace grew up inside it, observing and helping. The restaurant eventually went out of business, but Ace says, “I was inspired by my dad to be entrepreneurial.” I wanted to explore how he reckons with his father’s influence, love and shadow: Which traits do you take forward, and which stay behind? What lessons about masculinity are embedded in this inheritance of running on thresholdless treadmills? Is your fixation on business now another attempt to “save” or “fix” your family from the failures you witnessed?

By the end of the film, it’s clear that success alone doesn’t heal – connection does. Ace was a point guard, whose role was to distribute the ball, to set others up to score. To help. Today, he channels that same instinct: coaching youth basketball (explaining for the twelfth time that yes, that counts as a double-dribble) and running businesses that invest in and uplift his community, creating opportunities for those who might not otherwise have had them.

I’m a long-time fan of Dr. Orna Guralnik from Showtime’s Couples Therapy. She is constantly dropped into relational chaos – cheating, gaslighting, polyamoring, cult deprogramming, ego dissolving… and somehow gets everyone to calmly access their inner child. She lowers the temperature and has them articulate the thing at the heart of the thing. It is elegant, licensed witchcraft.

So of course I thought: What if we did that? If this film was about performance and self-worth, then we had to sit Ace down intentionally, bring in his loved ones and probe further. We searched for someone we trusted, and brought on Dr. Kathariya Mokrue, 1 of only 2 Thai-speaking therapists in the nation (which is both remarkable and grim. Very… last Northern white rhino) to facilitate real, unsanitized conversation.

And – Eureka! – Ace cried on camera, for the first time in years. The scenes suddenly had gravity. He felt genuinely likeable and venerable, more than any glazed b-ball reel could show. (Yeah yeah, I know how it sounds. But the excavation was fully consensual, promise! Not some sadistic reality TV stunt. We simply held the frame for it to happen – tweaked a variable, asked one more question, sat in silence a beat longer… because behind showmanship is always a person, and that was who I wanted to meet.)

In summary: that tension – of admitting pain, insecurities or fear of inadequacy beneath a glossy, trophied exterior – is invaluable and must be accounted for. You cannot convincingly sell strength without letting vulnerability surface (or, wait for it – vulnerability is the actual strength).

Additional summary: as a woman, I’m well aware that my empathy gets exploited constantly. We tend to overextend ourselves – staying too long, giving too much. But, is it also our sharpest tool? In a world designed by men, for men, empathy can function like advantageous contraband, the knife you weren’t supposed to bring to a word-fight. When everyone else was buried in the niche, in the sport’s mechanics and optimal camera angles, I could zoom out and actually see: Where does it transform him? What does it cost him? Where does it hurt? My strengths had potency in the most unsuspecting room.

As vibe coding proliferates and AI absorbs all the rote, process-heavy entry-level work, I’ve noticed a countertrend in the news lately: communications and marketing majors having their moment. Companies are tossing hundreds of thousands of dollars at people to shape narrative, not just ship product. To give their brands a distinct point of view. As building gets automated, why you’re building matters more than ever. Does the thing resonate? Does it have meaning, voice? The ineffable sauce?

@llaureggbreaking down current tech twitter discourse for the girls

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I still don’t know basketball, really. And yet, my value wasn’t in what I knew, but in what I noticed – and thereby was able to curate. I notice what it’s like to sweat desperately to prove yourself. What it’s like chasing love through achievement, and then realizing an even greater love exists beyond it and was never contingent on it. Attention is the currency, people. (Don’t let the dope-pilled screens steal it.) I’d bet on it.

@eyavanana2016 me 🤝 2026 me

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In 2016, I was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania with a confidence that comes from mistaking knowing nothing for everything. The invincible, far-left end of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Failure, illness, and anything else that could go wrong were theoretical concepts and happened exclusively to other people.

Four years later, right before graduating, I wrote that version of myself a letter. I recently found it again. Here’s a snippet:

“It’s weird how time passes consistently. Because somehow, it always manages to feel too long in the moments you wish would end, and so short in the moments you want desperately to cling onto. How college seemed so limitlessly long in the beginning, then sunrise after sunrise mixed together with mortality, until your youth quickly evaporated before your eyes. The ephemeral nature of time is something you’ll never quite figure out. And that’s the biggest thing you’ll find yourself grappling with at Penn too, is how there isn’t enough time to do everything. You’ll become so breathless chasing after what everyone else wants, before you realize that all of that energy should have been focused on defining a life that you so passionately crave. Sometimes, you’re going to get caught in the kaleidoscope of light and heat from another wave of try-hards who seem like they have their lives figured out. They will send you into a spiral of awkward experimentation and philosophical exploration. But at the end of it all, you are your own salvation, you hungry, greedy kid.” (I won’t lie, I kind of ate. Read the full letter here.)

The mercurial passage of time has stuck with me over the last decade, and it’s not going anywhere. I’m undeniably older, and it shows – I can tell a Traditional from a Roth IRA, I have strong opinions about the optimal mattress type (hybrid girl through and through), and after a long week, my body rejects Friday nights out. But in other ways, I haven’t changed much – my eyesight (bad), the cadence I journal (good), the number of emails I hoard in my inbox (sickening). My muscle memory can still rocket through MarioKart on a Nintendo DS, fingers firing like it did all those years ago.

My mom, who recently crossed into her 60s, was wrestling with the same existentialism (albeit from the vantage point of having finally relinquished responsibilities for cocktails and crossword puzzles). When I asked what it was like, she said:

“You know, I don’t feel 60. But one day I looked around and realized many people were younger than me. I know my body has aged, but my mind, my spirit… they’re still me. At the end of the day, I’m just me.”

I felt something similar at work the other day, training a new grad who had joined my team. She looked at me like I was some wise oracle, and then it hit: Ah yes, I do know things. Even though not long ago, I was pestering others for help in a tone that screamed, “No worries if not!” while very much worrying if not. But stepping into expertise doesn’t mean I suddenly dispense arcana that unlocks the universe’s secrets (Though who knows! Maybe it lands spectacularly in her brain). Mainly, it’s just knowledge accumulated over time, and I suppose that time is valuable. Shiny coins in the experience bank.

I like the framing that we’ve always existed in one continuous moment, carrying every past version of ourselves along. That girl from 2016 isn’t a fossil but an active, stalwart companion. She still believes in people’s fundamental decency, despite mounting evidence to the contrary; still whispers the same impostor syndrome-nonsense into my ear. She’s in the room when I make decisions. Perhaps the question Would 2016 me think 2026 me is cool? collapses under the weight of its own imposition, and the real questions are simply: Do I like me? Do I like my life?

My life used to hinge on exceptionalism. In 2016, I was collecting straight As and buying into the “beyond her years” narrative that adults liked to pin on well-behaved students. Taylor Swift’s “this is me trying” languishes: “I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere.” Run far enough, and you end up right back where you started, dizzy from the chase. Lately, feeding myself a green or making my bed counts as a victory. I can’t evade the conditions that render humans more or less alike, that sand down whatever edges we thought we had.

On top of that, our culture loves neat, listicle-worthy accomplishments. Teen Vogue’s 21 Under 21. Forbes 30 Under 30. Fellowships for under-25s. Coronating those who’ve figured it out and can preach about it with wrinkle-free foreheads. If you haven’t peaked before the clock ticks, what’s the point? Younger me, squinting into the future, might ask, “What happened???” And I wouldn’t be the one to comfort her. She’d be the one grabbing me by the shoulders, shaking me awake: “Alina you’re smart and pretty and funny and nice and you have so much ahead of you!” (And she’d be right.)

Still, it remains true that the older we get, the less we lean into dreaming and more into delivering. In 2016, possibilities hung everywhere, ripe for the taking; in 2026, those same possibilities feel constrained, congested. Duties in the way. I used to lay out my twenties and all the grand adventures I would have in front of me (consisting of more than just the bed to the coffee shop and back, I swear!). Now, each day presses down like an indictment. Sunday mornings are wrought with guilt for doomscrolling, for these are nonrenewable resources that could’ve been allocated to more productive pursuits.

Maybe that’s why I look back, to remember who I was when my dreams were amorphous morsels. Hollywood does it too – keeps resurrecting the past and polishing it, then selling it back to us in reboots and reunions. In precarious financial times, nostalgia is a safer investment than invention. But I wonder if the execs who greenlight projects are, like the rest of us, wandering through the rooms of their younger selves and reconnecting with that sense of limitlessness. Imagining themselves on-screen as the teen pop starlet they once swore they’d become. I saw Camp Rock 3’s announcement last year and thought, Oh boy, only a matter of time before High School Musical 5’s!

Back in January, people posted gritty VSCO-filtered throwbacks of themselves donning skinny jeans and Adidas Superstars, set to Chainsmokers bangers. 2016 was the social Web’s heyday, when you could participate without the immediate pressure to perform, monetize or worry that the government or anyone else was watching. The internet and life itself carried an insouciance.

The common thread I’ve seen running through the discourse of 2016’s resurgence is agency – or the loss of it. We’ve lost it to the ghosts of former dreams, but also to the macro absurdity around us. In 2026, outcomes feel increasingly random: who soars to power, who sinks, who is detained and who walks free. Good and bad news arrive by windfalls, not earned merit. Our nervous systems register this, and we act accordingly, play unpredictably via Kalshi and Polymarket, even betting a cool, casual, collective $1.76B on this year’s Super Bowl. We barely have time to trade the anxiety of not having a traditional job for the anxiety of figuring out what to do with the money we accidentally made flash-doubling crypto overnight and, whoops, becoming trillionaires. (That’s all life is, really. Trading anxieties.)

@slothothowhen the world is random it’s rational to be a gambler when the world is unfair it’s rational to be a cheater when the world is crooked it’s rational to be a pirate when the world is untrustworthy it’s rational to be superstitious a digital-first world is one that follows the laws of digital distribution which is to say, the power law. winner take all. First mover advantage. #philosophy #videoessay #culture #economics

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As a semantic, superintelligent Web emerges with AI as its backbone, studies suggest it’s slowly eroding our critical thinking and cognitive function. We question what becomes of it, and of us. Whether we matter. Who cares if you break? The world is teeming with other talented youth and even more tireless bots, eager to leap over your body and get the job done.

It seems the most sensible response would be to bunk with my aging parents and act like phones never existed. Burrow inside my 2016 wardrobe (that amasses dust at their house) and perhaps, if I’m lucky, time-travel back there too.

Yet I stay in New York, epicenter of ambition. Why? Because I can’t just sit idly in a Forever 21 tee and pout – I have to face the me that stands right now. I’m an adult and must be held accountable as such. My demo of 20s/soon-to-be-30s has the ability to shape culture, art, policy, priorities, tech, memes… and leave either a mess or masterpiece for generations that follow. will.i.am says we’re on the brink of a renaissance. AI flattens content into looking and sounding identical, hollow of human emotion, so the premium belongs to those who can cut through noise and reach new heights creatively – the very best of humanity. Engagement is survival. Opt out and miss the fire. Per my letter, “At the end of it all, you are your own salvation, you hungry, greedy kid.” Of course I bear cautions and grumblings, but living like a pariah isn’t the solution.

So… Would 2016 me think 2026 me is cool? Well, first, she’d note how sobersided I’ve become and side-eye my occasional doomscrolling. Then, she’d scrutinize the whole AI racket and wonder how we got here. But eventually, she’d realize that somewhere between 2016 and whatever this undefined future turns out to be, I keep finding proof of a delightful, meaningful, worthwhile life – that is, if I actually, deliberately, dare to live it. And that’s enough, I’d say, for the both of us.

Then I went to Val Thorens, France, which was my first Euroski experience. Europeans are exceptionnel at living. I would do two leisurely Blue runs, take an hour-long break for a fur coat photoshoot, then head straight to après at La Folie Douce, just as God and Karl Lagerfeld intended.

That said, when you mix skiing with partying, even the calmest terrain becomes a contact sport. It was also Irish Ski Week, which meant the slopes were packed with aggressively-sunburned, fondue-drunk people who were sure to take everyone down with them. Eyes sprouted on the back and sides of my head as I swerved for my life.

Between Steamboat and Val Thorens, I genuinely couldn’t tell which was more efficient at producing bodily harm. All I know is that I came home with four bruised toes, two shin splints, and a lingering sports-bra rash, so I’ll be sitting still for the foreseeable future.

The first time I ever skied, I was 10 years old. Around then, my parents and their friends developed an annual tradition of taking mountain trips. None of the adults could ski, which, in hindsight, is kind of iconic. I think they wanted an excuse to rent a house, drink industrial amounts of hot chocolate, and gossip uninterrupted while launching their children down a hill to tire us into silence. It worked. We did this every year until I hit high school, when I guess we got too mouthy or busy or both.

Despite technically skiing for nearly two decades, I’m still painfully intermediate. My skill level has plateaued (and in many cases paled) compared to friends who picked up skiing during COVID, which means I taught them everything they know, and now they wait for me at the bottom like patient babysitters. At this point, I no longer tell people when I started skiing, as it only invites questions like, “Oh… then why do you look like that?” Instead, I say I started not too long ago, which immediately reframes me as some kind of prodigy. (This is, frankly, a useful hack. If you’re mildly good at something and want others to marvel, tell them you learned “not too long ago.” You don’t have to disclose the endless false starts. That instrument you’ve owned since college? You just began playing it, actually. You’ve been “reading” that book for six months? No, you picked it up yesterday. And you’re already halfway through.)

First of all, before you come for me, I blame being from the Northeast. Our mountains are molehills, our runs icy. Conquering a Black Diamond in Pennsylvania or Upstate New York means I am fully qualified to panic on a Green slope literally anywhere else.

Second, I’m not exactly an adrenaline junkie. I once tried to challenge myself by running on a treadmill speed clearly above my limit and ended up pinching a nerve in my leg that put me in bed for days. I’ve seen the F1 movie so I know the rules. Higher velocity = harder to stop = higher chance of death.

I asked my friend who’s a decent skier for advice on how to attempt the ever-dreaded steeper terrain, expecting a concrete tip like, “Squat deeper.” Instead, he said something a bit unintuitive: “More speed gives you more control.”

Sometimes, objects are more steady in motion than at rest. Bikes stay upright when moving, planes stall when they lose sufficient airspeed, skis edge better with momentum. Going slow might feel safe, but it’s often where balance is the worst.

The skiers on Reddit who’d been stuck at “intermediate” forever were saying the same:

At some point, I’d repeated the same Greens and Blues enough times to establish an unsexy truth: I could ski just fine. The risk of an injury, of course, never fully disappears, sports being sports, but it had become indisputably bounded. So why was I counting myself out of the next level? I suppose I was waiting for some proof or permission, in advance, that I was ~officially~ ready. Clearance from the Department of Not Crying/Dying/Destroying Your Life. But that’s not how it works – you don’t trust yourself first and then act. You act, nothing terrible happens, and then you learn to trust.

So when I finally overrode my instincts and sent it flying down the mountain, less out of bravery than an annoyance of being cold and left behind, I found myself having real, earned fun. I’d stayed upright. I’d survived! It made me think about how frequently I overestimate the danger of acceleration and underestimate the cost of remaining inert. The projects I don’t start. The risks I don’t take unless I’m certain they’ll land cleanly or yield a precise result. I tell myself that it’s self-preservation, that too much gusto and visibility invite evil eye and disappointment. However, staying the same, by design, shrinks the surface area for luck to ultimately find me; for me to feel stunned and smug, the way I did carving down a powdery Black Diamond in Steamboat. Waiiit. Maybe I CAN do this.

I’ve been a massive overthinker for as long as I can remember. Standing atop a run will never not be a moment of acute anxiety: impending snowstorms, pinching another nerve, the Irish. I burn out from trying to micromanage variables before I even point my skis downhill. And the reality is, I simply can’t do everything – flatten the slope, slow gravity, make the snow more forgiving, monitor who buys a lift ticket.

This is the Paradox of Control: the idea that trying too hard to control something, especially external outcomes, often makes it harder to manage or achieve, while letting go or accepting the situation can paradoxically lead to greater freedom and better results.

A few months ago, I didn’t get into a writer’s fellowship that I desperately coveted. My knee-jerk response is usually to turn inward, obsessively reread my application and diagnose fatal errors. It becomes easy to over-identify with the rejection as a “failure” or “waste of time”; to treat it as emblematic of my talent, and by extension, my entire future.

Which is absurd, because I couldn’t possibly extract certainty from a process that is fundamentally noisy, adjudicated by the committee’s mood on a random Tuesday. What I could be certain of was the seriousness of my effort. The fact that I even applied at all. Once I stop trying to dominate the outcome, my relationship to my work stabilized. I can’t control which doors open, but rather, whether I believe in myself enough to knock.

One of my favorite films from last year, Eva Victor’s Sorry, Baby, ends with a scene in which the protagonist, Agnes, speaks to her best friend’s infant daughter, Jane. Agnes realizes she can’t fully protect Jane from what’s coming, the very messiness of being. She can’t intercept pain or outmaneuver fate or guarantee any endings. What she can promise though, is not to disappear when things get ugly.

Oftentimes, control isn’t found in manipulating the world into compliance, but in mastering your own reactions and internal focus. Checking yourself before that hemorrhages into resentment and self-sabotage. Life has a way of unfolding how it wants, whether we’re ready or not, and when it does, we get to regulate our response: Catastrophize alone or phone a friend. Forget to feed yourself or make a sandwich. Lose your shit at the summit or surrender to the ride. I hope I keep choosing the latter.

I started wondering, who taught him? Who taught the one before him? And the one before that? Are we all just Russian nesting dolls, stuffed with the hand-me-down words from the mouths of someone smarter, older, better read? And more importantly… how do I get there?

If the soil is dry, you water it. That means reading more widely, watching thoughtful films, listening to podcasts hosted by great orators – with the intention of retention. For years, I skimmed over unfamiliar words as long I could infer their general meaning and the sentences still landed emotionally. Even when I paused to look something up, it was only to clear that temporary hurdle, not enough to actually remember.

I’m actively working to break that habit, because that’s how you circumvent an algo-saturated inner voice that beats “delve” and other slop words to death. I want to show that I’m an erudite individual who can resist the urge to say “viiiibes” when really, what I mean is “nuance!” And so now, I keep a living list in my iPhone Notes of punchy, juicy words, and 1. The definition + 2. The source of encounter + 3. A sentence I made up to use it in context.

For example: 1. Commensurate: corresponding in size or degree; in proportion + 2. Bowen Yang’s August 2024 Stephen Colbert Interview + 3. “Marty Supreme has received commensurate hype so far. It is the performance of a lifetime for Timothée. And the score absolutely rips! Period!!!”

The last part works because language is meant to be taken outside, walked, handled. I force myself to add in words from the list each time I write. I use them in conversation. When you bend words into sentences only you could form, they texturize. You create a bond, imprinting on the word, Jacob to Renesmee, it at last becoming your baby.

Steal these!

Here are some words from my personal collection for you to borrow without shame. You’re welcome.

• Accoutrements: Accessories or additional items that accompany something, for practical or decorative purposes

• Beguiling: Charming or enchanting in a deceptive way

• Catatonic: A psychomotor state marked by immobility, disassociation or agitation, often associated with conditions like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or depression

• Contretemps: An unexpected and unfortunate occurrence, or a minor disagreement

• Copacetic: In excellent order

• Denouement: The final part of a story where the plot is explained and loose ends are resolved

• Egosyntonic: Thoughts, behaviors or values that align perfectly with a person’s self-image, even if others find them problematic, as seen in personality disorders like narcissism

• Entropic: A tendency towards disorder or randomness

• Escheatment: The process where unclaimed assets are transferred to the government after a set period of time

• Fabulation: The act of creating or telling imaginary, fantastical stories

• Faustian Bargain: “A Deal with the Devil,” where someone sacrifices their soul or morals for worldly gains like wealth, power or fame

• Foist: To force someone to accept something unwanted

• Fulcrum: A central, essential point in which a situation, argument or system pivots

• Inimitable: So good or unique that it is impossible to duplicate

• Limn: To depict or describe in words or art

• Non sequitur: A statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument or statement

• Orwellian: Characteristic of the oppressive, totalitarian world in George Orwell’s novel “1984”

• Ostensible: Appearing to be true, but not necessarily so

• Perfidious: Deceitful and untrustworthy

• Poetaster: A writer who does not deserve to be called a poet, despite their pretensions

• Rumspringa: A rite of passage where Amish teens leave the walls of the community and see what life is like outside. Metaphorically, a temporary period of exploration and self-discovery before making a permanent commitment to a particular lifestyle, community, or set of values

• Salubrious: Pleasant, healthy, beneficial for the body or mind

• Sanctimonious: Making a show of being morally superior to others

• Troglodyte: A cave-dweller, or describing someone who is reclusive and out of touch with modern society

• White whale: An obsessive, elusive target that is hard to get

Naughtier, nicher non-English words

Spurred by an immersion into French YouTube and the bravado that comes with having a Duolingo streak, I’ve started dropping the phrase “je ne sais quoi” everywhere. At dinner: “This restaurant lighting has such a je ne sais quoi.” “The amuse-bouche? Je ne sais quoi’d.” It’s infinitely more satisfying than saying something has “the sauce” or “swag” or “slays.” Is it pretentious? Perhaps. Correct? Absolutely! Let a foreign word rear its little head and suddenly you are radiating sophistication, singularity, and might I add, a je ne sais quoi. And isn’t that, at the end of the day, what we’re all after? To be seen from across the table? Admired? Remembered?

A few months ago in Milan, I went to Hygge, a popular brunch spot. On a wall was a catalog of words for feelings and concepts embodied in other languages that have no neat English equivalents. I found it fascinating how linguistic diversity can reveal what a culture notices, values and deems worth conveying. It enriched my understanding of both the world and human perception. So, in the spirit of the New Year, I am spreading the lexical wealth. Impress your friends. Confuse your enemies.

• Abbiocco (Italian): Drowsiness from eating a big meal

• Ailyak (Bulgarian): The subtle art of doing things with peace and calm, without society rushing you. Slowing down in the journey of life

• Bakku-shan (Japanese): A beautiful girl as long as she’s being looked at from behind

• Dapjeongeo (Korean): When somebody has already decided the answer they want to hear after asking a question, and are waiting for you to say that exact answer

• Drachenfutter (German): The gift a husband gives his wife when he’s trying to make up for bad behavior

• Hiraeth (Welsh): A homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to. The nostalgia and the grief for the last places of your past, places that never were

• Huzun (Turkish): The gloomy feeling that things are in decline and that the situation will probably get gradually worse

• Komorebi (Japanese): The effect of sunlight filtering through the leaves of trees

• Lesfeben (Swedish): The restless heat of a traveller’s heart before the journey begins, a mixture of anxiety and anticipation

• Mitfreude (German): To share in another person’s joy or be happy for their good fortune

• Nepakartojama (Lithuanian): A perfect situation which will never happen again, unable to repeat

• Onism (Danish): The awareness of how little of the world you’ll experience

• Shoshin (Japanese): A curious mind without ego

• Tima (Icelandic): Not being ready to spend time or money on a specific thing, despite being able to afford it

• Utefils (Norwegian): To sit outside on a sunny day and enjoy a beer

• Waldeinsamkeit (German): The feeling of being alone in the woods, a sense of solitude and connectedness to nature

• Yalaburnee (Arabic): A declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how unbearable it would be to live without them

Recently, I watched an interview clip of R.F. Kuang discussing why AI ultimately can’t replace the art of writing:

“Writing is about communicating a subjective experience from your skull, this inaccessible part of you, your consciousness, to another person… You have to articulate it in a way that is clear and concise and legible to somebody who is not you, who doesn’t have access to your senses and impressions and biases. This is all work that AI cannot approximate. It will just tell you what lots of other people have thought on this topic, and assemble a response that looks passively human, but now you’ve sidestepped all of the important work of figuring out your position on an issue and what you want to get across to another person. If you’re doing that for all of your writing, then you’re not even really a person anymore – you’re just a chimp pressing buttons. The authors that get us the most excited, that revolutionize literature, are always pushing the boundaries and stretching the rules of the English language and coming up with new ways to articulate an emotion or an experience.”

If writing is about transmitting the world inside our skulls to other human beings, then words are our most indispensable tools. A robust vocabulary isn’t just decoration; it’s infrastructure. It makes precise, deliberate expression possible and distinguishes us from the very things trying to replace us. It determines how far our thinking can travel, how finely we can articulate feeling, how fluidly we can move inside a sentence and between them. From that fluidity comes cadence, more inventive metaphors, and eventually, voice – ones that are humorous, meditative, analytical, grave, wry, acerbic, persuasive, etc.

Happy writing!

There was a time when this kind of power was earned. “Oprah’s Favorite Things,” an annual holiday tradition for nearly three decades, worked because she was an undisputed authority, holding the keys to the kingdom of taste, with a studio audience to back it up. Now, anyone with a Notes app can publish a list of suggestions for the life you could be living.

Assigning yourself sociocultural capital and calling it service journalism has metastasized into an economy of its own. Influencers and creators make entire livings off product recommendations, with affiliate-marketing platforms like LTK driving $5B in annual retail sales. Unsustainable, compulsive consumption is the default writ large. I saw a Wall Street Journal article lately about Americans’ appetite for buying cheap stuff. In short, we have never owned more than we do now, and yet so little of it is designed to endure:

During the recent Black Friday rush, I found myself waiting on multiple inbound packages at once, which quickly turned my recycling bin into a shredded-paper mausoleum. A permanent army of online orders invading your door should not be normal. Black Friday used to demand venturing into the freezing cold and standing in a two-hour serpentine line for a single big-ticket item, so very hunter-gatherer. Purchases were made with a curatorial eye, with pause. These days, we scroll frictionless, zombie-tapping “Add to Cart” on clothing we wear an average of 7-10 times before it is unceremoniously discarded.

By 2030, Gen Z is projected to become the highest-spending generation in history, which honestly feels inevitable. Growing up online has killed the art of delayed gratification. We are wired to value immediacy, guaranteed thrill, while future planning – savings, investments – remains fragile, hypothetical. Why painstakingly penny-pinch my way toward a house when I can procure a designer sweater and feel like a competent adult for five glorious minutes? After surviving the unpredictability of global events like the 2008 financial crisis and COVID19, our long-term goals are negotiable, absurd even. We numb out and crash out. And if the tears are coming, at least let them fall over something embroidered from KHAITE.

It’s funny, none of the things we buy come preloaded with significance, and yet the powers that be have done a masterful job of making them feel otherwise. In truth, value isn’t inherent; it’s a narrative we assign. Steve Jobs engineered desire into his phones by turning them into a sensory, almost spiritual experience, making his real talent arguably seduction. Even currency itself is no exception. Paper money was once backed by gold, which had tangible weight. Today, most money is digital, with crypto extending this abstraction. What exactly backs it now – pixels? Air?

But to play Devil’s advocate (and because I am, after all, alive in a capitalist country), I’ll confess: I like shopping. Again, not because the objects themselves matter in any concrete sense, but because they symbolize the person I am, or am trying to be. Each a tactile record of selfhood. My gingham bedsheets belonged to a season of soft femininity and emotional safety; the studded boots and belt arrived when life hardened me and I rediscovered Nickelback. I project my personality onto pretty things and they project onto me. Is this floor-length, affogato-colored shearling coat my vibe, or do I just need therapy? I’ve noticed that when I’m particularly understimulated – stuck at home too long, not having written anything – I start fiddling around, which fatefully leads to buying everything under the sun. Shopping becomes a way to fill time (and the gaps in my identity, the loneliness in my chest, etc.), and I have to check myself before it gets out of hand.

And so, in classic Gen Z fashion of having sufficiently critiqued a system only to immediately participate in it, I regret to inform you that I’m adding my list to the ever-growing dogpile. My spending this year has hit an all-time high. I’ve made whimsical purchases that are only natural when you’re on the brink of a Saturn Return and trying to sidestep the 27 Club. I am no Oprah, nor am I one of those intimidating beauty/fashion/lifestyle people who do this for a living, but this is me, gravitating closer to my tried-and-trues and taking stock of the things that have stuck around.

Clothing

Jackets: Jackets are my favorite thing to buy. You can wear the most drab, laundry-avoidant outfit underneath and a nice jacket will lie on your behalf. I like to own things that imply I’ve stepped foot outside my apartment. Favorites include a Ramy Brook denim jacket picked up on a trip to L.A., a faux fur coat from The RealReal, acquired during fur’s 2025 comeback, and a jacket I bought in Hangzhou, the silk capital of China (It feels important that people know it came from the source). None of these jackets are for warmth. They exist purely for signaling.

Vince Fluid Satin Bias Pants: I have to shout these out because I’ve spent about half the year in them. They’re appropriate for any function – the office, a night out, a movie theater where I plan to fully recline, you name it. The issue with most pants in this material is that they wrinkle instantly, but the Vince ones never do. I got the Espresso pair as a birthday present, bought them again in Black, and am actively resisting the urge to own them in every color.

Roller Rabbit PJs: Going to bed is way more fun in these – I feel like a five-year-old. They are covered in mischievous monkeys that probably judge my midnight snack choices.

Madhappy Hoodie: Say what you will about the price, but this hoodie fits. It’s not frumpy, not weirdly cropped, doesn’t have tight armpits, the hood doesn’t look like a tent, etc. I wear it to the airport. I throw it on for errands. I live in it on long days on set.

Nike Shox: These babies lift my flat feet off the floor and have enough springy cushioning to make slogging through NYC sidewalk grime manageable. Plus, they’re hot.

Beauty and Accessories

To Summer: I discovered this perfume brand in Shanghai, and everything smells phenomenal. So fresh and earthy, like they bottled spa days and forest hikes together. The packaging is an art form in and of itself. My favorite scents are Cedarwood, Triple Tea, and Osmanthus. If they aren’t massive worldwide soon, I will personally petition.

Officine Universelle Buly: I waited in an obscene line in Paris for their flagship store. Their engraved combs make the ideal gift – I got one for my best friend, and it did not disappoint. They have hand cream caps shaped like faucets, so every time you moisturize, you’re giving your hands a little drink. Genius.

Maison Magdalena Brisa Scarf: I got this scarf after seeing an interior designer raving about it (and if you can make a kitchen look chic, you’ve earned my trust with textiles). It’s crafted from superfine wool, and you can wear it as a top, tie it around your waist, or invent a new clothing category.

Brooklyn Charm: This place went viral on social media, and I gave into the hype. My friend Jordyn and I spent two hours scavenging for charms that embody us, elite adult arts-and-crafts. I loved peeking into her right brain, trying to decode why she picked each charm, and note her love for tiny donuts and houseplants. It was cute, it bonded us, and yes, I may have silently judged a charm or two.

Laneige Lip Glowy Balm: The gold standard. End of story. They had a lot of flavors (matcha bubble tea, mango, peach iced tea) come out this year. It’s basically a snack you can wear.

Fancy face towels: These velour ones with tassels make slapping on serums feel stylish. I get compliments every time someone steps into my bathroom. Zara Home has a solid line up if you are looking for other chic options.

Furniture

CB2 Corroy Sofa: I’m in my white couch era. TikTok says it’s what you do in your 20s when you don’t have kids or pets, because this is the only time you can justify a high-maintenance couch before life makes it impractical. The CB2 Corroy is perfect for naps, like being swaddled in a baby crib. I scored it on Facebook Marketplace in mint condition for a fraction of the price, from a mom of messy teens who was trying to offload it (LOVE TO KIRA!!! The unsung hero of my living room).

Coromandel screen: I bought a coromandel screen intending for it to be a room divider, but it’s now my headboard. Each panel is hand-painted. I’ll quite possibly have it forever. It’s covered in cranes, representing longevity, peace, hope, and fortune, which seems like divine energy to have hovering over me. It’s so tall that my head never slips off. The Chinese furniture shop called me three times to confirm I actually wanted it and to answer questions I didn’t even know I had, and that, my friends, is how you conduct business.

And it’s not just me; the stories circulating among my friends feel borderline paranormal, everyone in the same emotional trenches:

“A is trying to get her company off the ground, and everyone’s telling her that she’s killing it, even though there are multiple group chats dedicated to dragging her.”

“I had a five-hour heart-to-heart with B last night, and today, he’s completely ignoring me. Did I get too close too fast? Did I hallucinate the whole thing?”

“C told me she was really into pilates, so we did a class together. But when we got there, she looked like she’d never seen a reformer in her life. Girl, why lie?”

It seems we are all woefully miscalibrated when it comes to reading other people’s intentions, assuming they even know their own. It’s the deranged, desperate dance of Do you like me? Do I like you? I’m not sure yet, but does it matter as long as I seem cool and normal? and everyone is doing it, badly. I’m no expert, but over the past few months, I’ve gathered a few tells – consider this my nascent field guide for the performers you should avoid when you’re searching for genuine connections. (Note: Names have been changed to Victorian ones from the 1800s that I personally find distasteful, for privacy, and for accuracy of the essence).

The Transactionalist

Recently, I was set up on a friend date with Mortimer (again, not his real name, but spiritually, absolutely is). Our mutual friend told me: “Mortimer is super cool, whip-smart and just gets it. He’s someone you want in your orbit.” I nodded intently and made a mental note to adopt “someone you want in your orbit” into my own personal lexicon.

Mortimer arrived with the eagerness of someone wanting to breach a world he’d sketched himself into. I’m far from where I want to be creatively, but having worked on a couple of films, I suppose I looked like a door he could knock on. We commiserated about the precarious state of the industry, AI chugging out brainrot faster than anyone can make sense of it. We romanticized the indie films that shaped us and flipped off the old Hollywood machine. When we compared Letterboxd Top 4s and both had Peter Weir’s The Truman Show, we did a reflexive hands-over-mouth gasp, the universal signal for OMG twins!

But before long, his questions shifted.

“Who’s the coolest person you know? How close are you to them? Like, could you call them right now?”

“How much did that project cost? Who are your backers?”

“What makes your ideas different from everyone else’s?”

It quickly turned into me elevator pitching myself under duress. When I casually admitted that I was still wayfinding, and that “life’s a beach, I’m just playing in the sand” (–Lil Wayne), his attention flickered out like he’d just been unplugged from the wall.

“I’m sooo obsessed with you,” he said, gathering his things. “We have to do this again. What does your schedule look like next week?” I texted him my availability and followed up on a few of his asks.

That night, we made eye contact at a party. I smiled, taking it as my cue, and stepped toward him. He looked away. He never answered my text.

Of course, I spiraled, because I am, after all, a woman who interprets every inharmonious interaction as a referendum on her character. Maybe I was too negative about the industry; maybe Mortimer bristled at the nuance that yes, I work in film, but also have a day job in tech, making me hyphenated, technically “film-adjacent.” Did I not give enough? Did I simply exist incorrectly?

But alas, there is no correct way to bare a soul, and some people aren’t looking for one anyway. You hear it in the way they pose questions, not to understand you, but to size you up like inventory. Their attention has a mechanical quality, animating when you mention something of leverage and dulling when you drift somewhere with no immediate yield. Eyes sharpened at an illustrious name-drop or job title, glazed over at your childhood. They tug on loose threads with extractive curiosity. You find yourself bending, subconsciously, to hold their attention, while disassembling internally. Real connection demands a spiritual generosity that isn’t optimized. Theirs exists only as long as you remain relevant. It’s not always malicious, but it is unmistakably thin, conditional, and fleeting.

The Imitator

Egbert and I met on a group hike, because nothing bonds strangers faster than mutual dehydration and the looming threat of fainting in public. Words tumbled out of me in an attempt to distract myself from the incline: “It’s hot!” “The trees smell weird!” “There’s still a rogue aftertaste of croissant in my mouth!”

Egbert matched my chaos with a kind, agreeable warmth. “Totally. It is hot. Now that you say it, the trees do smell musty. Did it rain last night? And croissants… you’re making me hungry.” I thought, Wow, this guy is impossibly chill.

On that hill, we discovered we had way too much in common – both Chinese American, with younger siblings, claiming Ratatouille as our favorite Pixar film. We were guilty of karaoke-ing too loud and obsessively following fashion bloggers we thought were chic. So when he asked me out later, I said yes.

We went to a comedy show, which is my preferred sociopolitical litmus test. You can tell a lot about a person by watching what makes them laugh. One comedian joked, “The Barbie movie for women is as bad as Andrew Tate is for men.” Egbert nodded and delivered a Gracie Abrams-level: “That’s so true.”

“Really? How?” I pressed.

He blinked, buffering. “Uh… do you think otherwise?”

“I do. But I want to hear your thought.”

“Never mind then. Sorry, you’re so right.”

An hour in, I realized I’d basically been talking to myself. Every dissenting opinion he had was rewritten to prove we were on the same wavelength. He interjected every few seconds, drenching every line I spoke in such feverishness that it stopped feeling like a dialogue and more like I was being consumed. I love words of affirmation as much as the next person, but excessive flattery empties itself of meaning. Honey ladled nonstop is nauseating. Sweetness requires restraint.

While trying to bond over our alleged shared love of matcha, I asked for his favorite spot in the city. He rattled off a generic café name that sounded like an improvisation. I Googled it later. It did not exist. (My deepest apologies if he’s reading this and it does exist. I don’t deny that the odds of me living under a rock are high. BUT as a devoted NYC matcha snob, I’m still betting on myself).

It occurred to me that Egbert didn’t so much like me as he liked a glossy, pre-packaged version he could sponge off of to feel momentarily fortified. Some people hover in your sphere not out of affection, but out of appetite. Egbert admired me with the intensity of someone studying a manual for a person, parroting every inflection. My approval shored up his ego and patched whatever was leaking inside him – and he’d contort the truth to keep that reflection intact. Mirroring is a form of exploitation, a fast-track to faux depth. We can overshare too quickly, believing it will nurture a bond, and end up handing over the blueprint for someone to manipulate us. Unfortunately for him, I was not attention-starved nor naive enough to confuse imitation for intimacy.

The Lurker

Blanche and I met up on a slow Sunday. She’s a friend who has drifted in and out of my life. Every so often, one of us replies to an Instagram story with, “This looks so cool! BTW how are you? We should totally grab coffee,” and then suddenly there we are, sitting across from each other wondering who suggested it first.

Blanche has always carried herself with a kind of disciplined reserve, possibly the imprint of a religious upbringing, or having ingested a planner in the womb. Her life moves on a schedule, and even moments meant for reprieve somehow loop back to deadlines and to-dos. Which, fine, ambition is great, but surely, there must be other things (A love life! A mistake made! A hot take!) itching for attention.

I began to notice myself depleting, my well dry. Conversations are supposed to be a shared information excavation, secrets swapped for secrets, sins for sins. Her hushed, contained energy stood in stark contrast to my own instinct to run my mouth. She’d lob leading questions and clutch her pearls at my confessions.

The second I tried to reciprocate, she’d retreat behind her usual shield: “Oh, my life’s not that interesting,” then immediately ricochet: “Anyway, so tell me more about your office being haunted…”

Once, she introduced me to a guy she’d been talking to, and the very first thing he said was, “Oh, so you’re the friend who did [that thing]!” before launching into a full-blown narration of my life. That’s when it hit me – she’d been retelling my stories as her own personal lore to make her conversations more colorful. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he knew more about me than he did about Blanche herself. My drama had been co-opted, folded into the seams of an identity that I never agreed to merge.

Lurkers can often disguise themselves as friends. They’ll clip and quote you journalist-style, your vulnerability a playground they stroll through at leisure. You’re an impish freak, stress relief, sloppy spectacle under the spotlight while they stay safely behind a curtain. There’s no mutual daring or willingness to risk tenderness. And perhaps that ends up being their own tragedy to eventually unpack – a life spent at the perimeter, assuming no one ever gets them, blind to the imbalance of their own making.

Myers-Briggs says I’m an ambivert, a clean E/I split, which means I’ll crave attention from 20 people before noon, then barricade myself inside and let my apartment swallow me whole. New York, mercifully, gives me the option to do both. I’m still figuring out friends and lovers, fake and real. Most encounters sit somewhere around a B-minus, but every so often an A-plus appears and life feels cinematic again. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my I-side is clocking in. Shhh. Gossip Girl reruns are calling.

The Chinese way of speaking is crisp and factual. No long-winded pleasantries or “lovely weather today” small talk, doesn’t matter if you haven’t seen someone in over a decade. The opener is a judgment on how skinny you are, accompanied by a directive to eat more, even after you’ve just confessed to demolishing an ungodly number of dumplings. From there, the conversation careens through the classic checkpoints: How tall are you? How much do you weigh? Where do you work and what school did you go to? Do you have a partner, and if not… well, then what the hell are you waiting for?

@nubzaplol #petergriffin #familyguy #asian #asianlevel #funny #clips #fyp

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At 27, maybe the art of listening had finally sharpened (i.e. frontal lobe lobing), or maybe I’d just reached the age when adult responsibilities start getting passed down, along with the curtain lifting on my family’s underbelly. Suddenly, I could pick up on fragments of years-long grudges that I hadn’t before: which of my dad’s siblings my mom loves vs. simply tolerates, which foods my grandma hates despite pretending not to have a picky palate. I was even entrusted with a secret about my cousin’s marriage (As someone who lives 7,000 miles away, who could I possibly tell?). I zipped it up and sprinkled it somewhere over the Pacific on my flight home.

It is humbling to realize I’m now the same age my parents were when they immigrated to the States. I combed through old photo albums and thought about the weight of a decision like that, when I can barely decide what to have for dinner. I’ve only ever known them as my eternally-parental figures, but apparently they had a whole pre-me existence (Who knew parents were people too?). Once the youth of their home country, perhaps part of some chaotic friend circle, frequenting favorite thinking spots, eating a brand of candy they didn’t realize couldn’t be bought anywhere else. Curious and unmoored.

One weekend, I tagged along as my mom attended her 40-year college reunion in Shanghai, watching her navigate the anxiety-inducing task of reconnecting with people she hadn’t spoken to since immigrating. My own college days were an endless Hunger Games of social comparison, fraught with who went on the scene-iest spring break trip and who landed the internship at [soul-crushing firm that looks good on LinkedIn].

I conducted tableside anthropology, dipping my chopsticks into salty seafood with each Lazy Susan rotation, amid smatterings of chatter. Every so often, someone would drop a Nobel-worthy insight on the meaning of life or a hallmark of being a Boomer (a variation of “Kids these days don’t know what life was like before high-speed rail!”). Then, the conversation would veer into gentle one-upmanship: who had the most grandkids, the most money, the least lucky marriage. Who stayed in China and who went abroad, and which was the wiser move. I wondered if that would be me in 40 years, still spinning life’s tables and keeping score. Perhaps there are core impulses we never outgrow, only learn to rationalize with age.

It dawns on me that for my parents, this is another version of home. For me, I know where the spoons go, but I don’t have my own set of keys. I can get around just fine, but living like a local requires roots I don’t have and reps I haven’t built, ones that outlast a sentimentality and subpar Chinese. God forbid anything happens to my parents and I might lose the bridge entirely: favors, unspoken understandings, the effortless way they are seen.

I’ve been seeing memes on people feeling “more Chinese” lately.

@digital.godYou met me at a very Chinese time in my life #china #chiense

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My feed is crowded with videos of Westerners visiting or outright packing up and moving there. China’s technological and cultural footprint – the likes of DeepSeek, BYD, Shein, Labubu – has never been more visible. At this point, almost everything you own is already made in China (even merch telling you to vote American), so hey, you might as well be too. And as Western faith in capitalism and its political institutions falters, suddenly, embracing Chinese influence provides a sense of possibility or at least some aesthetic inspiration.

People tout that “China’s living in 2050,” its cyberpunk-chic cities gleaming with glass and drone-lit skies. My jasmine milk tea transactions flit through Alipay and biometric scans; cash a surefire way to cast myself into social exile. Spotless parks preserve thousand-year old structures with care, giving the impression of a nation with its posture practiced. And I (ever Carrie Bradshaw’s disciple), couldn’t help but wonder: was this just a phase, or was I witnessing the future? The unfolding of a new 21st-century world order?

My friends and I play the recurring hypothetical called “Would we ever move to China?”, usually when the U.S. news cycle feels too apocalyptic for our liking. On paper, China sounds appealing: it’s remarkably safe (music to any woman’s ears) and everyone is on their best behavior, courtesy of the Social Credit System that tracks every move and neatly files you under “trustworthy citizen” or “potential public nuisance.” For instance, one law requires Chinese TikTokers to have formal qualifications to give expert advice on topics like medicine, finance and law, or risk facing significant fines. It is refreshing that not just anyone with a mic and WiFi connection can start spewing about gut health and crypto. Imagine that, half of American content vanishing overnight.

But of course, in the same system, post something disagreeing with the powers that be, rack up a few misdemeanors, or have a relative that steps out of line, and your credit can drop faster than your Uber rating after GNO. Parents with low scores can tank their children’s school and future prospects; entire families can be blacklisted from flights, jobs and loans, all because Uncle Chen couldn’t resist a spicy WeChat rant.

Meanwhile in America, land of the free (allegedly), we inch uncomfortably towards our own brand of censorship, with beloved late night hosts getting suspended. Even birthright offers no guarantee of protection when one’s parents are undocumented. How different are we, really? If our rights are destined to be revoked either way, do we opt for the iteration with bullet trains and universal healthcare?

When I left for the U.S., I bid farewell like I always do, like it might be the last time. Life happens, loved ones age. My ability to return feels contingent on forces beyond me, on ever-shifting geopolitics and fragile borders. My relatives said goodbye, “man zou” (慢走), which literally translates to “walk slowly.” To me, it always sounded more like a tender plea:

“Take your time, don’t rush away, let us hold onto you a little longer. If you must go, be safe, and we’ll be missing you long after you’re gone.”

I’ve always gravitated toward the arts, as they refuse the tyranny of “right” and “wrong” answers. In film, fashion, writing – taste is not binary, it just is. There is no moral high ground in preferring sky blue paired with chocolate brown over the discipline of a monochromatic brown fit (both, depending on the day, can be exalted as chic or dismissed as crime). The fun lies in the justification, in fiery discourse that follows. You can ground your belief in theory, historical references, or praxis, but it will never calcify into a hard and fast rule, the way people are never purely one thing or another.

Having taste that others actually defer to, however, is another level. Certain tastes are anointed, sought after, the pinnacle being someone like Rick Rubin, who is paid obscene amounts of money for the sheer conviction he has in his own discernment.

@60minutes“I have no technical ability. And I know nothing about music.” Music producer Rick Rubin says he can barely play any instruments, but says artists come to him because of “the confidence I have in my taste and my ability to express what I feel.” #news #music #60minutes #rickrubin

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Lately, those around me have been nurturing their tastes like fragile houseplants, constructing them like Pinterest boards millions have asked to see. Apparently, it’s never too late; I’ve witnessed men crawl out of years-long slumps and rebrand overnight, trading corporate-logo polos for A.P.C. and BODE, going from their “Atomic Habits” copy collecting dust on the shelf to casually quoting Toni Morrison.

I’m highly interested in other people’s tastes, especially those I’ve deemed cool. What they watch, read, listen to, buy, post about… if I study them hard enough, maybe some of that aura will rub off onto me like secondhand smoke. Perfectly Imperfect’s Instagram account has perfected the cultural surveillance game, neatly curating what’s “in,” a Bible for self-audit. Are my habits aligned with the zeitgeist, or tragically offbeat? I binge Criterion Closet videos, check if the filmmakers I admire happen to pick the same movies I’ve crowned into my Letterboxd Top 4, and declare us kindred spirits.

In an age of anti-intellectualism, where much thinking has been outsourced to AI, reclaiming our taste has never felt more important – and it demands a little discomfort. Back in grade school, I was thoroughly exposed to things I would have never sought out on my own: my 7th-grade history teacher (probably nursing a crush on Aamir Khan) broadened my cinematic horizons with Lagaan and 3 Idiots; my high school English teacher introduced me to John Steinbeck, and “East of Eden” became – dare I say – my favorite book of all time. Now, without someone senior and scholarly hand-delivering invitations to worlds I didn’t know existed, it’s far easier to scroll hypnotized through the algorithmic mean, letting my mind atrophy. Therefore, in order to build my taste, I have to make the active choice to take the longer, less-embraced path. Only then do I surpass the passive consumer mark and begin to explore the contours of myself.

We are constantly, whether by habit or design, assembling a rotating cast of media, books, artists, and things we like. Here’s how to craft a canon that is unmistakably, and defiantly, your own (Note: not a perfect formula, just something I’ve been practicing more deliberately, and thought I’d share.)

1. Start by venturing into your genre-phobias.

Watch, read, listen, and consume things that you’ve declared “untouchable” in the past. The more it makes your comfort zone squirm, the better. My friend Shay, a horror film fanatic, dragged me, resident scaredy-cat, into a screening of The Philippou Brothers’ Bring Her Back. As a comedy lover, I was pleasantly surprised to observe that horror and comedy have a kinship: similarities in beats, timing, and sense-activating absurdity. Lately, I’ve been enjoying the horror genre on my own terms and what I’m able to derive from it.

2. Explore outside of your time.

We all like to think our generation knows best, holds the final word on what matters – but I’ve found that diving into work beyond my age bracket expands both empathy and awareness of the human experience. There are people on this Earth with entire mental galaxies shaped by the years they were born in; why not hitch a ride? I used to avoid “old stuff” like the plague, as if doing so would stave off death itself. Now I accept that much of what we love today is built atop what came before. I watched Agnes Varda’s Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), and realized how her directing style, emblematic of the French New Wave’s iconoclasm, both lends itself to modern cinema and feels utterly alien (In other words, they don’t make ’em like that anymore!).

Of course, the youth cannot be ignored either: while learning Italian for a recent trip, I fell down a Gen Alpha Ballerina Cappuccina brainrot rabbit hole and was hooked. It seems that sometimes the most boundary-pushing art thrives in this tension between honoring tradition and imagining something entirely new – a delicious, liminal space where depth meets relatability and generations elbow each other for attention.

3. Notice what moves you.

As you engage with each work of art, pay attention to the emotions it stokes, the facets of yourself it calls forth, and how you respond. What feels warm and fuzzy, like a favorite meal? What presses lightly on your chest, or crushes it entirely? What awakens sadomasochistic tendencies you might feel ashamed of? These emotions are breadcrumbs, subtle markers for deeper self-understanding.

Resonance often begins in closeness (e.g. As an Asian woman, naturally, I prefer stories about other Asian women), but it also emerges at the edges. For example, when I watch Eurocentric male-dominated war films, I can still connect with their broader elements: mentorship within a hierarchical structure, the grief of losing a loved one, character traumas that echo childhood wounds. Your taste is inevitably shaped by what is familiar, but it should also stretch your sensibilities out a little.

4. Develop a robust vocabulary.

Name the emotions you notice in response to a work. Start with the basics (angry, sad, happy), then increase to twenty, then eighty… until it gets fascinating. The more precise your language, the richer and more nuanced your appreciation. Draw patterns across the works you like. Instead of saying “This is funny,” try, “I like comedies that distill existential malaise while the protagonist reconciles unresolved daddy issues.”

5. Log it.

Keep a running list of the works that captivate you and the themes that thread through them, apt for dropping into dinner party chatter. Revisit it every six months to a year. Add, subtract, watch it sprout wings and take flight. Tracing the evolution of your taste also means tracing yourself in the process: quirks, obsessions, and the values you hold. (Reminder: your canon isn’t solely meant to show off cultural cachet; it’s a living map of your mind, of what has moved you, challenged you. Let it surprise you and above all, remain yours).

Everywhere I looked, people looked… incandescent. Perhaps because the food isn’t preserved with the same chemicals used to embalm the dead, the water doesn’t taste like a municipal betrayal, and the governments choose renewable energy instead of ritualistically killing it in committee. Or perhaps it’s because European cities are designed for meandering and accidental intimacy, rather than traffic purgatories. I work with German colleagues, and every summer they vanish on PTO (But if I can handle their Slack silence, surely I can handle a crush who ghosts? Silver linings.) I keep thinking their lives must be so overwhelmingly full that logging on feels as absurd to them as me voluntarily running a marathon.

The other day, I saw this comment on TikTok (Because of course, they’re always listening):

In Europe, I had every intention of staring down racks of silk blouses until my credit card whined. But once I arrived, suddenly, the urge evaporated. I left with one skirt, a humble purchase that felt like going to Trader Joe’s for only a pack of gum. An entire afternoon I’d earmarked for shopping in Paris was derailed when I passed Jardin du Luxembourg and sat there instead. Even the most restless American appetite cannot compete with the spectacle of children shepherding toy boats in a fountain.

In the 1970s, researchers conducted a series of “Rat Park” experiments. In one setup, rats were kept in solitary confinement with morphine-laced water, and soon enough, they all became dependent on it. In another, rats were placed in an enriched environment (à la Rat Park), with ample space, toys and opportunities to interact with other rats. There, when offered the same morphine water, their consumption dropped drastically. The study challenged the prevailing notion that drugs were inherently addictive, revealing how profoundly our environmental conditions shape our inclination to use.

I thought about how, in the U.S., much of the population sinks into depression, 10% struggling with a drug use disorder. Suburban infrastructural skeletons are rarely made for cradling people and more for extracting from them: strip malls born in beigescale, vinyl flooring destined to deteriorate by year three, a sameness that stretches across state lines. Westport, Warren, White Plains, the Build-A-Town Workshop of it all, every inch engineered for profit. People drive an hour to Costco as though a steaming hot rotisserie chicken could redeem it (And maybe it does – who am I to judge?). We reach for escape in substances, only to punish ourselves for it, while across Europe, drugs like cannabis are decriminalized and addiction rates remain low – a reflection of neighborhoods built around belonging.

I am grateful to live in New York City, a different animal, though not necessarily kinder. Here, capitalism parades in neon and steel – bodies forced on top of each other, a three-foot asphalt slab doubling as a bike lane and restaurant seating. Billboards assault your vision, each one a reminder that you are behind and failing to optimize. For every wide-eyed tourist, there is a flyer being shoved into their palms, romantic strolls punctured with the gravity of survival. Freedom and entrapment pressed together in the same breath. Touch and go. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, billboards are banned, and the sky is allowed to exist in silence, not carved up and rented to the highest bidder.

Capitalism is the heartbeat of the United States because we are still young and unformed: a 249-year flicker of history against the millennia of our global peers, leaving a blank canvas for corporations to actively smear with their imperatives. It is our de facto religion because we lack homogeneity (thankfully!) for a Catholic or Buddhist anchor to take mass hold, and so our differences scatter us: distracted and bickering, eyes relentlessly fixated on achieving the American Dream and those who already have. Our infancy is both our beguiling charm and very tragedy.

In such a landscape, why should anyone bother to craft beautiful, communal spaces worth inhabiting? Tax codes reward indifference to streets feeling inviting or parks looking alive. Instead, we pay for fleeting luxuries: $100 to reserve a golf simulator for an hour, $10 for an oat milk latte, because the alternative is neglect. Everything that endures publicly is maintained far too little, corralling us into private refuges, turning overconsumption into a veneer for our need to feel something.

Therefore, the easiest instinct, if you’re tired of swiping your card every time you pass through a door, may be to fasten yourself to the glow of a screen. In towns hollow and interchangeable, people scroll through lives that appear shinier, more complete. In New York City, my phone becomes a sedative for panic: headphones in, Taylor Swift’s “willow” threading through my skull to muffle the subway mayhem. Don’t talk to me! I can’t tell if that’s my phone vibrating incessantly or just my nervous system trembling in fight-or-flight.

When I was in Paris, I was able to reclaim my attention span, which felt like an act of rebellion. Like Charli xcx, I became “interested in the tension of staying too long.” Turns out there’s pleasure in overexposure to one thing, in lingering.

I dined alone and people-watched. (Because your phone has no utility when the outside world has everything to offer.) Two and a half hours folded into themselves. I sank my teeth into apricots drenched in caramel, warm and velvety against vanilla ice cream.

When it was time to go back to the States, I was shocked by the extent of my reluctance, the dread of returning to emails stacked like Jenga blocks, waiting to topple. I thought about alternate lives where work and wanderlust aren’t separated, but rather slide into each other. There are few, it seems, where this happens organically, like being a grad student in a foreign city, an actor who films perennially on location, or a vlogger whose creation is adventure itself. No wonder Taylor Swift is obsessed with touring.

So, the takeaway? Move to Europe! (JK… unless?) Still, I’ve fallen for the person I’ve become there, amused by the cadence of my own company, gentled by the patience of my gaze. But upon coming home, I realize that I can carry that anywhere, if I allow it. Move untethered by justification or urgency, consume with intention, tend to the parks I long to lie in, stay off my phone, and exist fully among others, offering them the warmth of community I’ve finally learned to enkindle within myself.

Renting a house at the Jersey Shore for after-prom is a sacred New Jersey rite-of-passage, where teens down cheap Svedka in coastal rentals and LARP as Snooki and J-Woww in Hollister bikinis.

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@alexafielddi fear i might be obsessed with 6 am workouts… 🧘🏼‍♀️🌿 #f#fypf#foryoum#morningroutine5#5am5#5ammorningroutine5#5amclubm#morningmotivationh#healthymorningroutinem#motivationw#wellnesstipsw#wellnessv#viralt#trendingw#wellnessgirlm#morningaestheticm#morningskincareg#grwmforthedaywellnessroutine ib: @DaniellePheloung 🫶🏼

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Unfortunately, at 5 AM, I am horizontal. Amnesic. And frankly, haunted. My thoughts are not organized into bullet journals, they are leaking out from under me. Where is the media representation for those of us whose brains don’t finish buffering until 2:48 AM? I would like to formally submit a defense of night owls – we are not lazy, debauched gremlins who hate discipline. We are moonlit philosophers. We don’t just “stay up late”; we descend into the night, when the world stops demanding duties and starts whispering ideas.

I believe bedtime is part-genetic, baked into DNA by thousands of years of ancestral sleep schedules optimized not for productivity apps, but survival. I once saw an anthropological theory (Reddit comment) on night owls descending from people who kept watch while the rest of their tribes slept. I’m convinced my family comes from this lineage, crouched by the fire with a spear in one hand and intrusive thoughts in the other. It would explain why my brother replies to my midnight texts with the reflexes of a trained sniper. Some inherit land or businesses; I, a biological urge to scroll in the dark and keep the group chat safe until dawn.

As someone living in NYC, solitude is not something I stumble into; it’s what I fight for, usually while dodging a pigeon dive-bombing my forehead during a lunch break. Between unread Slack messages and the constant pressure to be available, we’ve made it so the days no longer end; they blur. But when night falls, and the world does too, I exhale for a little, time-traveling to an earlier decade: one where I’m not summoned with a buzz, and being unreachable isn’t rude, but romantic.

Night is a hotbed for creativity precisely because it’s empty. Vast and ripe for actual thinking, not just planning what kind of salad to order while suppressing a panic attack. My golden window is between the hours of 12 and 2 AM: it’s too late to start a movie, so I’m left with my best and worst company, my little brain symphonies. This is when I usually write. I’m not religious, but here, I feel closest to a God – making something of nothing, feeling Her claw Her way out of my chest and onto a page that belongs entirely to myself. Franz Kafka famously wrote exclusively at night, in a “trance-like Dionysian activity, opening the endless inner darkness of self as an abyss,” because only at night does the abyss feel generous.

Don’t just take it from me and a tortured Czech man; Barack Obama is also a wolf on the Sleep Chronotype quiz. A study found that night owls could actually have superior cognitive function compared to early risers (PBS’ words, not mine!). Even mothers, our literal superheroes, crave nocturnal hours, when no one’s scream-crying at them to cut grapes, and they get to be people again.

Night is where chaos brews. Questionable decisions drag you into quagmires, only to ferment into legendary brunch stories the next day. There are certain activities sacred to witching hour that would simply cease to exist under the clinical glare of daylight, like Googling your high school frenemy to confirm she peaked then, or planning how to start a new life in a Portuguese seaside town. Half-finished texts are sent into the void. Plenty of room for nothing good to happen, which is exactly what makes it great. Nighttime is the rain, loosening the soil, wriggling the worms. And come morning, there it is: grass, freshly fertile. Proof that you are wild and undeniably alive.

Like all great things with duality, night’s one frustrating quirk is that it often gives fears a megaphone. Recently, I watched Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, where Sammy, the protagonist, plays blues music in the dead of night – breathing life into his community while also drawing in evil. Our greatest gifts, it seems, come with exposed wiring. In the film, fearsome spirits attempt to pull Sammy into their vortex, forcing him to resist and reclaim his voice.

My therapist once asked, “Are you more committed to your dreams or to your fears? What are you feeding more, the visions or the what-ifs?” Too often, my mind is overrun with unrealistic, disproportionate fears. Fear talks me out of big investments (financial, emotional, sartorial…). I’ll buy the $50 tank top that I know I’ll wear once, abnegating the $500 statement piece. Fear has kept me under-committed to the life I want, because if I don’t try, I can’t fail. (It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, really, aiming lower to avoid disappointment, and then ending up disappointed because you didn’t aim high enough.)

In the daylight, you can distract yourself with errands and matcha refills. At night, you are left alone with the version of you who never followed up, never sent in that application, never risked wearing the metaphorical $500 top. Here are a few of my fears that like to clock in after dark:

• My bed is my refuge, until I remember I walked home through three subway platforms, two puddles and a deli floor that hasn’t been mopped in a year. How much bacteria am I sleeping with? Am I going to get a niche disease that can only be transmitted through NYC cockroaches?

• What if the cockroaches in my apartment find love before I do? What if they’re currently raising a nuclear family under my radiator?

• For all the space my bed takes up, somehow it shrinks the rest of my room. How long before I have enough dignity to claim more floor space?

• Maybe this cramped life is the price of human connection. But if I’m paying a premium to live on top of people, why do they still drain me so much?

• Do people think I hate them when I’m just introverted at first? Or worse, what if they hate me? Does my group chat have a separate group chat?

• Why do I need so much validation? Why can’t I just enjoy things without wondering if someone’s watching – and deciding if I’m cool?

• Who’s thinking about me right now? Are they missing my presence?

• It would be fun to go out, but I’m also tired. Still, missing a core memory terrifies me. What if that bar moment is the last time I ever see someone, and I skip it, and they win an Oscar and forget me?

• I should call my parents more. But am I still mad? Can I emotionally summon my higher self for a few minutes while they tell me to go get a Master’s degree?

• Life is too short to spend holding a grudge and I should just let things go. I’ll be happier this way.

• Life is too short to not have boundaries, and I should enforce them by holding a grudge. I’ll be happier that way.

• Have I been thinking too much about other people and not focusing on myself? As a form of self-care, it’s time to impulse-purchase that watch I’ve been eyeing for two years. It will fix everything. Especially my personality.

• Why the hell did I buy that watch? How much does this set me back on the path to home ownership?

• What if the way to get to where I want is to manifest it by reaching for things beyond my means?

• Manifestation requires a type of delusion that I’m too self-aware to allow. What if I’m simply too good at assessing what I have now and living in the moment, to set myself up for my future?

• I’m also so deeply attached to the past that I still carry my 2019 MetroCard, even as it becomes obsolete. It’s a nostalgic token, a reminder of where I’ve been. Perhaps that’s why I’ve spent my entire young adult life in this city. Even when other places call, moving feels hard. What if I have no dreams beyond New York and this life I’ve built?

• What if I don’t have enough time on this Earth to chase all the dreams I have beyond New York and this life I’ve built?

Night is when I’m left alone with my roguest thoughts, gnawing and echoing in loops. But here, I can finally see them for what they are: shadows and distortions, not truths. When they hit me all at once, I start sorting through them, pulling them into consciousness. Giving them shapes and names, so they don’t steer from the backseat while I autopilot through my days. And eventually, once that sorting begins to settle, my body sinks into the mattress, and my brain that once screamed softens into static, the kind that hums from my white noise machine as I finally drift off.

The last time we spoke, really spoke, was at a family gathering (translation: social hostage situation where unresolved decades-long tensions marinate alongside short ribs). We were surrounded by people when my dad said: “Alina, we don’t have a relationship anymore. It’s so sad.”

I paused. The truth is, I hadn’t intentionally withdrawn, I’d just… stopped calling. After years of one-sided effort, I realized I didn’t want to keep performing daughterhood to an empty seat: someone who couldn’t remember my college major, let alone name my closest friend. So I rerouted everything through my mom (“Tell him I said hi!”) and went on with my life.

“You know the phone works both ways, right?” I asked.

He didn’t miss a beat: “I don’t call because our conversations are sooo boring.” There it was. The most honest sentence he’s ever said to me, and the most tragic. Seeing my deflation, he added: “You should ask more about me and my interests next time.” (My dad wanted a stage, and I’d failed as an audience member.)

At this point, aunties and uncles started chiming in like it was a town hall. “Why the hell would you make your kid talk about your interests?” “You’re supposed to ask about her!” “You’re a parent, act like one!!!” (Bless them.) Cornered, he mumbled something about it being a joke. (He always says he’s joking, a preemptive shield against accountability.)

An hour later, I lose a game of Mahjong. He sees his opening. Suddenly, I’m torn apart for missing a move that barely mattered, the insults growing more creative, cruel, and poetic in their intensity. It’s clear it isn’t about Mahjong anymore. (It’s revenge for earlier, for making him feel small.)

We fought, and maybe it was the way he smiled – satisfied, like watching a fire he lit burn – that made it click: this is what he lives for. Not tenderness, but the thrill of setting things off. I soon stopped mistaking noise for care, reaction for a relationship.

For years, I didn’t have the vocabulary for what he was, then therapy handed me a word like a flashlight in the dark: narcissist. Dealing with one is perturbedly hellish and hard to comprehend unless you’ve spent your childhood doing emotional gymnastics just to be acknowledged. You grow up whisper-screaming: “What should I do next? Tap dance? Juggle? Learn Pig Latin?!” When a parent casts themselves as the protagonist, and conversation is always a contest for airtime, your needs become trespass. You are denied something essential: the stability of being chosen over ego. That void doesn’t just ache, it erodes one’s entire sense of self.

Denial was my native tongue, and self-blame my second language. I carried it everywhere – the belief that if only I were more (interesting, impressive, loveable, etc.), maybe then I’d finally be worth seeing. Over time, I mastered triaging mood swings and modulating myself into something quieter, smaller, to keep the peace. Before I discovered who I was, I’d already been subconsciously trained to doubt myself and my reality.

To describe what it’s like dealing with a narcissist, I’ve compiled a list from personal experience and the r/narcissism Subreddit. (Note: Exhibiting these behaviors doesn’t automatically make someone a narcissist, but if someone’s narcissist, well, then… It’s like a rectangle-square situation).

1. Never confront narcissists about what they did or didn’t do. You’ll start with a perfectly valid point and then find yourself apologizing for something your dog did in 2010. They’re not there to resolve conflict, but rather, to contort it into a Mobius strip of semantics until you regret ever bringing it up. Narcissists don’t take accountability; at best, you’ll get “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

2. Narcissists require admiration like it’s life support, but the resume doesn’t always match the front. They overcompensate, terrified of being found out, and are not above spotlighting your insecurities just to keep the heat off theirs. If you hand them a secret, just know they’ll file it away like courtroom evidence, and weaponize it when they’re at their worst.

3. Narcissists genuinely believe they’re more special than everyone else, that the universe bends to their frequencies. They seethe when others succeed. They claim entitlement to your time and energy, while lacking the ability to see your perspective. “I was up till 4 AM overthinking. I can’t drive you,” the narcissist will declare, on the morning you have your wisdom tooth surgery.

But narcissists are not the enigmatic basement dwellers we sometimes imagine; no, they can be wildly charming, magnetic even. I’ve dated one. And while everyone around them is collateral damage, their partners take a direct hit.

The summer after high school, I was young and unsure of myself. Then he showed up: full of conviction, offering a path that seemed less murky. He said he had answers (He did not). I was gullible, then slowly, quietly exiled – told not to see friends or meet new people. He was a seasoned performer, using emotional theatrics to keep me close. When I dared to set a boundary, the show escalated, sometimes ending in a meltdown, other times an unannounced cameo at my doorstep. Once, he landed himself in the hospital just to prove a point. I absorbed it, thinking love meant holding space for destruction.

Eventually, something in me woke up. The promises of salvation were smoke. I was the scaffolding supporting him, on issues he was too cowardly to face himself. My autonomy threatened his control, masqueraded as care. Soon, he vanished, onto someone younger and more malleable. It’s a recognizable playbook now: preying on hope and dangling fantasy, just long enough to take what they need before moving on. I’ve since learned not to set myself on fire to keep someone like that warm.

The very unfortunate, annoying truth is that society has a kink for narcissists. They become our world leaders, CEOs, and red carpet regulars. Our systems reward those willing to exploit others to get ahead, and to opt out of narcissism can feel like relinquishing success. But narcissism doesn’t just sit at the top – it trickles down, seeps sideways and can settle into your everyday life: through the emotionally-stunted friend who hears “I’m going through the worst time” and responds with, “So, what do you think of my new hair?”; the co-worker who disappears during crunch time, then magically reappears to collect the praise for your team project. You leave the interactions feeling off-kilter and exhausted.

Narcissists don’t operate in a vacuum. They need enablers who cushion their behavior, excuse it, normalize it. Friends who shrug and say, “That’s just how he is.” Family units built around not rocking the boat, when the boat is clearly sinking. Once you spot the enablers, it becomes much easier to stop blaming yourself, and that clarity is the first step to liberation. (For every enabler’s “But he’s your dad! He could die tomorrow!” there is, “Cool, so could I! And so could any other human being on Earth”).

@donlemonKanye is a narcissist, and we should stop giving him attention #kanyewest

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The United States is currently under the administrative grip of a narcissist. To diagnose the condition is to lay bare the consequences borne by the populace. Trump isolates those vulnerably yearning for money, identity, purpose (often all three) and offers them the illusion of certainty, in exchange for something far more valuable: undying loyalty.

As a resident Gen Z, I’ve watched narcissism seep through a generation marked by deep isolation and a rapidly-dwindling capacity for empathy. Addicted to screens, we retreat into shells; filtered feeds like shrines to the self. Zoom meetings have us staring at our reflections more than the people we’re conversing with. This narrowed focus engenders narcissistic tendencies, making us prone to trading our energy for profit. People who rally behind figures like Trump often share a common truth: disregard for others that makes them easy prey for leaders who care no more for them than they do for anyone else.

Resisting narcissism requires you to log off and let your eyes adjust to natural light.

It requires performing quiet acts of kindness not for validation, but because they feel right. Sitting with strangers’ stories a moment longer than usual, then watching your empathy stretch and strengthen. Creating art, then detaching it from your ego. Letting your works exist without needing them to reflect back your worth. In doing so, you reclaim yourself from the spectacle, and perhaps begin to connect with something more genuine.

I’ve cycled through every stage of grief like it’s a spin class playlist. Anger is overstaying its welcome, which I’m blaming on the Prednisone I’m taking for the cough. (A week into steroids and I now get why WWE wrestlers body-slam each other for fun. Thankfully, as a woman, I’m channeling the rage gracefully: punching my decorative pillow).

I recently rewatched Celine Song’s Past Lives, and this time, it hit in a way it hadn’t before. The Korean concept of “In-Yun,” or fate, is beautifully captured by Greta Lee’s Nora Moon:

“It’s an In-Yun if two strangers even walk by each other in the street and their clothes accidentally brush. Because it means there must have been something between them in their past lives. If two people get married, they say it’s because there have been 8,000 layers of In-Yun over 8,000 lifetimes.”

J and I met in college and went from strangers to something resembling soulmates in less than two weeks. There was an end-of-semester celebration neither of us originally intended to go to, and without it, our paths likely never would’ve crossed on campus. One minute, we were making eye contact like the protagonists of a coming-of-age montage set to a Phoebe Bridgers song. The next, he was walking over – bold, sure of himself, but not in an arrogant way. I didn’t expect anything, but I leaned in anyway, like some part of me had been waiting to be invited. He was the steady confidence to my restless wonder, and I always admired that about our dynamic.

J was my first healthy relationship and I was his first real one, period. On paper, we made zero sense. He was a Pacific Northwest guy and an omniscient, straight-man encyclopedia: sports teams, stocks, and the strongest fertilizer. My YouTube algorithm was a chaotic blend of GRWM storytimes and soft girls journaling; his was ASMR of beavers dam-building and men restoring vintage cars. And yet, we stayed curious – genuinely, endlessly curious. We made each other’s worlds feel worth exploring.

I told J everything. Every random thought, irrational fear, and breakdown disguised as a “quick update.” He’d listen patiently, until I’d veer into emotionally dangerous territory. That’s when he would sometimes go full football-coach and say, “Okay, let’s reset. Maybe we get you some help.”

Naturally, I’d take that super well by swearing to never tell him anything again. “You’re not hearing me,” I’d say, eyes narrowing like he’d just told me I’d be prettier if I smiled.

He’d sigh: “So… you just want me to sit here and do nothing while you spiral?”

Yes. Obviously. People don’t ask “Can I vent?” because they’re looking for advice. They do so because “Please validate me and tell me I’m hot” isn’t socially acceptable. (After we broke up, I finally started therapy, so maybe he was onto something.)

J was unflinchingly blunt. If we were already seated at a restaurant and realized the menu was a bust, I’d opt to whisper “I’m fine,” order the least offensive item and force it down like a moral duty. J, on the other hand, would flag down the waiter with a disarming smile and charm us into a graceful exit. We’d end up at an amazing spot after that made me remember I have free will and should exercise it more often. He had the balls to say exactly what was on his mind, regardless of how inconvenient or unpopular it was. Bad news didn’t faze him. He switched jobs every other year because he was honest with himself. I, meanwhile, feel like changing shampoo is too big a risk, even if mine dries out my scalp.

I was the self-proclaimed movie buff, but somehow, J was better at actually watching them. He’d absorb movies on a cellular level, spotting details in scenes I’d completely miss. His attention span was long and lingering, a cat sunbathing. Mine was a squirrel with twenty tabs open.

“Did you catch that? The villain said that same line earlier – they’re definitely connected,” he’d whisper during some intergalactic-superhero-heist-blockbuster.

“What line?” I’d ask, as he’d already be rewinding, incredulous. Then, he’d watch me, excited, as I pieced it together in real time. (And I did love a good callback).

To that end, J was better at just… being. I loved how he could pause at the sky or a stretch of beach, and take it all in, like an enlightened retiree. He’s the only Gen Zer I know who’s never downloaded TikTok. He treats Instagram as if it’s a time capsule, posting one grainy photo every few years. One time, we vacationed in Arizona, and he said, completely seriously, that he could see himself living there (no shade to Arizona, but, like, there’s literally no shade?). I nodded politely while wondering if I could survive more than a week with the extreme heat and no pistachio milk. I always felt difficult – the greedy, overstimulated kid who kept clamoring for more.

We started dating at a time when questions like “Do you want kids?” or “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” felt like distant hypotheticals – things you’d answer on a college survey, not actual decisions to build a life around. But those questions have a way of catching up to you, usually around the perplexing age of your mid-20s, when suddenly everyone around you is either moving in with their partner or across the country for grad school, and the future stops being abstract; it starts knocking.

Looking back, I can see that we were always fundamentally different people. But instead of accepting that, we both tried, silently, subconsciously, to mold ourselves into the versions we thought the other person wanted. Because we so badly wanted it to work.

We didn’t fight much in the last year. For a while, I thought that was a good sign. But eventually, I realized that no conflict often just means no real conversations. We’d slipped into autopilot, roleplaying “happy partner” while suppressing the parts of ourselves that didn’t fit the script. We built up resentment the way people amass clutter in a house, slowly, then all at once. A relationship isn’t supposed to feel like you’re swallowing yourself so much to keep the other person whole. I kept my own feelings at an arm’s length, avoiding the questions I didn’t feel ready to answer. Being with him was an escape from having to truly meet myself, and ask: What do I want out of life?

The thing is, when there’s distance between you and your inner world, there’s inevitably distance between you and those you love. Mine had grown into a chasm. I told myself that if I loved him, then maybe that would be enough to quiet the parts of me I didn’t yet know how to care for. So we held on, like two boats tethered, steadily pulled by opposite tides, because losing each other would’ve meant admitting something scarier: that we’d already lost ourselves.

Somewhere along the way, we fell out of love. It wasn’t loud. It didn’t announce itself. It was the imperceptible ache of things left unsaid, of needs unmet, of ordinary days that started to feel heavy. I’ve come to understand that growing up with someone doesn’t always mean growing together. (When you do find those who still feel like home after the drift of time, hold onto them with both hands. They’re rarer than you think.)

I’ve been seeing edits to Charli XCX’s “party 4 u,” where two people, heartbreakingly close to ending up together, share a final, longing look, the kind that says: “We won’t have the life we imagined, but I still hope everything beautiful finds you.” There’s something tender about how people who never speak again still vow to root for each other from afar.

@editsalfonparty on you #normalpeople #lalaland #fleabag #eternalsunshineofthespotlessmind #portraitofaladyonfire #wlw #wuhluhwuh #littlewomen #deadpoetsociety #aftersun #wicked #corpsebride #callmebyyourname #mlm #500daysofsummer #lifeisbeautiful #anora #maurice #perksofbeingawallflower #cinema #letterboxd #charlixcx #brat #party4u #movie #moviescene @Letterboxd

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And since I can’t resist a callback, here’s one last Past Lives reference to close us out.

I told J in one of our last conversations: “If this, too, becomes a past life, I hope I get to find you again in the next one.”

In this life, I hope we all find the people we’re meant to become, and the ones we’re meant to become that with.

Check out my latest piece, Money is everywhere except where you need it.