Today was the first day I realized I woke and felt at peace. It was a nice feeling and realization and I hope it means I’ve turned a corner. My energy levels are still not up to par and I often am tired (but not so much exhausted at least) and/or need nap(s).

We had all sorts of weather advisories early this month, including one day with a heat advisory, high surf advisory, flooding advisory, AND extreme heat warning, so I ended up staying at home a little more, to avoid the heat. We had the aftereffects of Hurricane Marie batter our shoreline and many beaches were washed away, leaving the rocks underneath. Aliso Beach was one of the most damaged, with parts of the sidewalk falling apart, palm trees coming down, and flooding on the parking lot that have it completely shut for the time being. Apparently in 2014, another Hurricane Marie did similar damage, though not quite as extreme as this time. We are supposed to have El Niño this winter, which I read brings swells from the north (as opposed to these waves from the south), and it might actually help repair some of the sand we lost. We shall see! This is the first year that I’ve gone to the beach consistently and started to notice these things.

I complain about a heat wave here, but really it was only in the high 90’s. However, it was unusually humid for our area, so of course it felt much hotter. I usually get a cool ocean breeze and I only have to open my windows for natural A/C, but this time I had to turn on my A/C for the first time I think in 3 years. It was so hot that the insects were barely moving! I had a dragonfly rest in the shade of my house for so long that I thought it might have died. Then there was a katydid that did a very slow crawl across my window and I got to watch it breathe through the glass! The spiders have been out in force as well, with webs even spanning the path to my gate. Many of them seem to have caught a bee to eat, never seen that before. Worst of all, the ants have invited themselves inside to drink my cat’s water and crawl into the space behind the dishwasher. I really try to avoid killing them, so I just try to remove the source of their interest, but they keep finding something new. Alas, I’m about ready to apply more dire methods.

Since my last update, I got around to:

• another Padres game, in which I finally found the La Catrina City Connect gear I wanted!!
• check out the San Diego Central Library. it’s quite large and rather dark
• encountering an owl in the middle of the road at night! it didn’t notice me until I was pretty close and moved over to the other lane — then it turned its head to look at my headlights, and boom! a quick jump and it was gone, just feathery legs and talons leaving a shadow in my mind
• watch the Apple event and thought about getting the Apple Duo, but the camera zoom is not enough for my needs. maybe next year
• snorkel at Shaw’s Cove and enjoy swimming with a cute baby stingray
• try to snorkel at Divers Cove, but the conditions were too rough, so I ended up back at Goff Cove for another round
• go for my monthly facial and massage sessions
• spend a day hanging out with family, with time melting away
• exploring another part of El Dorado Park and getting tons of great shots with my awesome telescopic lens — plus a selfie with a hawk that didn’t even care as I inched closer to its tree
• enjoying a peaceful lunch at a cute hidden oasis
• taking my car in for another recall
• going on a 5-mile hike that took me to parts of my city I’d never explored (I had no clue there was a school a mile from me)

My sense of time is still stretching in the short-term, every 2-3 days feels like a week, but the longer scale time doesn’t feel quite so long ago. I do have trouble remembering when I did what, which is also warping my sense of time. This past weekend, I had a delightful day with my parents and cousin, where we had lunch and then hung out chatting until dinner and beyond. It was a total of about 9 hours where I did not feel rushed or impatient and simply enjoyed their company. I’m not normally social, but I do appreciate some time with loved ones (so long as I still get my alone time).

Liminal check-in (these are the milestones I set that would help me gauge how my body is recovering):

So far I’m finding time is stretching out more, which is quite nice. The first couple of days felt like the weekend every day, and thus by the time I met up with some former coworkers a week after, it already felt like 3 weeks had gone by. I hope I don’t get used to this, as it feels nice to have time and move at a slower pace.

In this time, I managed to rest a lot yet still get a fair amount done:

• visit to my mom on my dad’s birthday, since he was on a business trip
• go for a spontaneous morning hike because that’s what I felt like doing
• do a float therapy session (which also helped extend time)
• visit Bolsa Chica to try out my new telescopic lens attachment for my phone
• attend a Padres day game (which I originally was going to take PTO for)
• finally go snorkeling at Goff Cove like I’ve meant to for months and months! I was rewarded with my first leopard shark spottings <3
• get incredible shots of the partial blood moon eclipse, thanks to that telescopic lens and my Tenikle tripod
• meet up with former colleagues for a lunch
• get books at 3 different library systems (in LA, OC, and SD)
• nap a LOT — sometimes twice a day

As a somewhat newly-anointed Padres fan (as of mid-April 2025), I love that my timing lined up with the new ownership, which was finalized on my last day at work and announced on my first workday without work! It also happened to be Mason Miller’s birthday and he had his 100th K (strikeout) during the game that day. Gotta appreciate small moments of serendipity, it makes life so much more magical.

By Tuesday, I had already forgotten that it wasn’t the weekend and was surprised to find people walking around in business clothes as if they had work — oh wait, they did! And they were just on their lunch breaks! I do not miss working at this point, but maybe I will get bored down the line (though I have plenty of plans for things to do to keep engaged mentally and physically).

As this past weekend approached, I planned to avoid the crowds and mostly stay home. I had originally intended to blog then, but it turns out I’m really good at reading the day away. I’m going to try this flipped approach and go do activities on workdays as much as possible, so I don’t jostle with everyone on their days off. This Sunday, I needed to grocery shop, and it was such a strange sensation to go out and find loads of people out and about. I rather prefer my isolation at the moment.

Liminal check-in (these are the milestones I set that would help me gauge how my body is recovering):

See, over the years, I prioritized work and slowly wore down my health. Early last year, I was able to take a 5-week sabbatical to try to reset, but I found that it took me 3 weeks to come down, I got about a week of peace, and then I started thinking about my return. I scheduled my first day back for a Friday, so I’d have time to catch up rather quietly, yet all the stress seemed to come bearing down immediately despite that.

I couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong — I didn’t think I was burnt out since I still had interest in the work, yet I found myself utterly exhausted every single day. Weekends, holidays, and vacations were but brief gasps of air as I was wearing down. They were not sustained enough to truly offer a reprieve, or any lasting effects. I went to the doctor (which I never do!) and my bloodwork was all normal.

I decided I had malaise — but what do you do with symptoms that cannot be measured? I had persistent fatigue, did not feel rested from sleep (despite sleeping “enough” and through the night), started developing brain fog and headaches daily… but those don’t show up in tests. Less frequently, I would get other random symptoms like heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, spontaneous rashes or other inflammation, and even an ocular migraine (I went partially blind for a day). All of these were enough to drastically reduce my quality of life, but none were enough to say I’m ill per se.

I tried eating better, sleeping better, and being more active. I talked to therapists and career coaches. I pushed myself less at work and rarely worked overtime anymore. Yet all these felt like a drop in the bucket, barely affecting my overall situation. Since nothing was working, I started to come to the conclusion that I needed a more drastic change. I contemplated working parttime, being project-based, or asking for medical leave. But ultimately I think I needed the most extreme option, to completely leave not just this job, but the workforce entirely.

For how long? I don’t know. My body will have to let me know. I intend to give myself at least a year without having to worry about rejoining the workforce, but maybe that won’t be quite enough, or maybe I heal much faster than my current brokenness would allow me to imagine. I’m fortunate that I have the opportunity to give myself that time to figure things out and experiment a bit.

So here we go! I have now concluded my employment and jumped into the unknown with no plan. I don’t have a next career move, I don’t know what I’ll do with my time, and I don’t know how long it will be for. I just want to listen to my body and firstly find healing, then start seeking peace and then perhaps build up goals again. I think that I have trouble letting go of the stresses of work and that is the source of what makes me unwell. I’m hoping that by stepping out of that realm, my body will naturally adjust itself.

This new phase I am dubbing my “liminal” — I like this term because it is about transitioning, a point of change, being on a journey… with uncertainty about what lies on the other side. I know it’s meant to be an adjective, but if you know me, you know how I love to play with language, so I’ve decided to use it as a noun. I like that liminal infers neither here nor there, as that’s how it feels to me. I’m neither employed and working in the way I’ve known for so long, nor at the next step of whatever I might do. I’m taking a pause to do things very differently, to try to get in touch with my heart, as I don’t really know what it wants.

I find it a nice, fitting start that today is also my dad’s birthday, a little marker for us as I embark on my adventure. I’m curious to see how things pan out and how long it takes for me to start feeling a change. For the first month or so, I want to have no obligations (including not having to plan for the rest of my time). People would ask me what I want to do, but if you ask a drowning person what they want to eat when they get to shore… I’d say they just want to get to shore first. Similarly, I don’t know what I want to do yet; that’s not the point. I need that reprieve first, and then I can start thinking about all the cool things I can do with my liminal.

There’s a lot more I’m hoping to unpack in the coming months, but my fatigue and brain fog have caught up to me and I’m having trouble proofreading this, so it’s time to go rest.

*I’m choosing to interpret a Viking bath as a cold water plunge done after a session of heating your body up, typically in a sauna, but it could be from a hot tub, hot springs, or steam room. I’m not sure how accurate that is, as there didn’t seem to be a lot of sources describing it. Per the link above, I did not do a full Nordic cycle, though I considered dipping a second time but the sun had set and it felt much colder.

(This is not to be confused with a Nordic bath, which seems to be quite the opposite, and more of a hot tub in nature, powered by just a crackling fire. That sounds pretty awesome and something I’d be interested in trying another time.)

In contrast to this, one of the most relaxing things I tried many years ago as part of an MBA class was float therapy (how cool is that! it was an actual assignment for a course I took). Funny enough, while floating isn’t anything like the sauna + plunge that a Viking bath entails, it was the first thing that came to mind when I thought about something rejuvenating. Plus, many locations also have infrared saunas, cold plunges, and other trendy things like cryotherapy and hyperbaric chambers. Alternating hot to cold is known as contrast therapy and I can still do that if I wish, but my primary goal here is self-care that feels healing, which floating gives me too.

Sadly, one I had tried and was planning on visiting again, Newport Float Therapy, looks like it actually just went out of business last month. I liked them because they had actual rooms, like the first one I went to (below, and unfortunately also closed now), and not just pods like most seem to have. And so the search was on, for the next one I can try, which led me on quite the comparison journey. Ultimately I found one that I really like and ironically, it looks like it just opened last month. Such timing! See below for my comparison and how I landed on this one.

I liked Awaken for the float rooms, but it’s the furthest and it only has floating. Culture OC felt a bit hardcore for me, plus they’re not open Sundays, which would be a common time I’d want to go. Float Therapy doesn’t have cold plunge for when I do want to mix it up.

Thus I was left with Pause Studio and Newport Body Works — aaaaand thank goodness I did this grid, because I somehow overlooked that NBW has everything I’d want yet is cheaper than Pause. Originally I was thinking Pause was the one, and this location is brand new as I referenced above. But now I see that NBW should meet my needs for less! They are just a stone’s throw from each other, so it’s easy enough to try them both to compare how I feel with their offerings. It’ll likely come down to the comfort of their facilities and how customer-service oriented they are.

P.S. – All this reminds me of this cool 7-step “ritual” that I read about at Sky Lagoon in Iceland. I didn’t get a chance to try them out yet and went for Blue Lagoon when I was there, so the next time I go visit Reykjavik, I’ll be sure to put it on the itinerary.

To welcome in 2023, some friends and I decided to go to Austin to visit our friend who moved there recently. It was my first time out there and it felt strangely like I was in a foreign land at times. Austin feels like a gangly teenager to me, in its awkward growth phase where some things are matured and some things are underdeveloped. I also found it to be a great place for shopping inspiration, lol — I ended up noting a bunch of things to look for deals to buy, ranging from jewelry and accessories to shoes and maybe even an instrument.

It was a grand time, trying all sorts of vegan places, playing a ton of pickleball, experiencing a very Texas New Year’s Eve (the only time I felt like I was in Texas), kayaking and chasing birds and turtles, checking out some cool instruments, learning a bit of banjo (I learned Auld Lang Syne, of course), and then working the rest of the time before going home to a very rainy SoCal.

It was just in time, as I’ve been so exhausted non-stop for over 7 months that I could barely hang on anymore. My main goal has been to decompress and try to unwind, though I think it would take weeks to truly achieve that. Nonetheless, I focused on not feeling like I have to do any particular thing, and just allowing myself to do whatever felt like the right thing in the moment. I had a few ideas of things I could try to do, like build various furniture pieces I bought (4 out of 5 completed!), go to read at the beach (just did that today), hang out at a park (maybe another time?), join a whale watching tour (TBD, could still happen), or plan some future trips (expecting to do that tomorrow).

With this peaceful time to myself, what I realized is that I haven’t had a chance to enjoy my local surroundings in the way that we used to back in school, with summer breaks. I’m suddenly noticing and experiencing all sorts of little things about the rhythm of my community that I could only catch during a normal workday when I’m not working too. For example, all the construction that my neighborhood has going on! Not only did I have no clue that my neighbor at the end of the street was completely re-paving their courtyard, I also saw quite a few other projects ongoing, which is surprising given our community only has something like 168 homes. I also saw activity at a van that is always parked in the same spot and I had wondered if it was possibly abandoned.

Similarly, I was admiring a gorgeous magnolia tree in another neighborhood and found out that home does have residents — I’d wondered about it before, since its flora often attracts cool creatures when I pass by on walks. As with most homes in the area, I wasn’t sure if it had full-time residents, since I hardly ever see activity from any homes. Everyone pretty much stays put (a lot of retirees), it seems, especially in the recent heat.

I’ll have to set aside more time like this periodically, so I can experience my own area as a vacation, instead of always running off to jetset somewhere else. It’s been really cool, like discovering a secret world that opens up only when we are all at work. I’m super grateful that I stumbled upon this unintentionally, just because I needed time off and was too drained to go anywhere for a vacation. Instead, I’ve been able to do a ton of chores, start organizing things I’ve put off for ages, and gain an appreciation for my own town. I hope that you choose to try out a staycation like this for yourself sometime, and find similar gains as well!

The last time a leap year was skipped over was 1900 and the next time is 2100. Some of you who are young enough now will certainly make it to the next one, in which Feb 28, 2100 will be the last day of the month and there will not be a 29th added. Some of my peers might make it then if they are particularly long-lived, or living to 115+ becomes more regular.

I don’t know why it didn’t stick with me the first time I read that article, but is it coincidence that the leap year cycle also matches up to US has presidential election years and the summer Olympics? It certainly makes all of them easier to remember, whether intentional or not.

Also, I had never considered how confusing the term “leap year” could be — you could easily think that a leap year would be the opposite of what it is, and we “leap” over a day. But the framing is completely different and I encourage you to read the article to see how the Smithsonian explains it.

Rather than this mythological stuff, I find this year — if you broadly consider 2024 — to be the year of the natural phenomena convergence! Take a look at some of what’s going on:

• December 2023/January 2024 – earthquakes, avalanches, volcanic eruptions
• late 2023/early 2024 – (temporary) return of Lake Manly in Death Valley, where usually it’s just the Badwater Basin salt flats
• January/February – atmospheric rivers — which might lead to super blooms this year?
• February – leap month!
• April 08 – total solar eclipse (I’m going to Waco to catch this one)
• May/June – emergence of two cicada broods (I’m considering going to Springfield, Illinois to try to catch a little overlap in them)
• likely sometime this year – the sun’s poles will flip on their 11 year cycle
• towards the end of the year – possible solar maximum, causing lots of Northern Light shows
• all year, but especially prevalant in winter months – Northern Lights! (I plan on going to Norway around October-December to try to catch some beauty out there)

(late December to) January: Austin for my birthday and New Year’s

February: Hawaii for a friend’s bachelor

March: Austin for cat and bird-sitting while Bestie went to Wrestlemania

April: Spain & Gibraltar with the Squad

May: Austin for Bestie’s birthday

June: Canada for that friend’s wedding

July: China for my cousin’s wedding and seeing my grandma for the chest time since COVID!

August: Austin to cat and bird-sit again

September: send-off for friend deploying

October: Bonaire for diving with Ceeburticus

November: Austin Friendsgiving

December: Austin again for my birthday and New Year’s

After finishing the show in early March, I eventually circled back a few days later to look him up and I basically started to stumble across his songs on YouTube. I was curious to hear him sing since his feminine face and reserved, almost timid, demeanor was intriguing. Well, I certainly got to see a different version of him in his music videos! Suddenly I found myself looking at a kid with a little bit of swag and some good dance moves. He still had the baby face and sweet voice, but also some confidence and allure.

There were some pretty funny video clips from a TV show he was on for awhile, Running Man. In one he was paired up with Dilraba and lost a heart rate contest pretty badly haha. In another, he made eating noodles in the wind look about as good as you can.

Eventually, I came across his live concerts and was fascinated by his way too pretty eyes and fun, colorful hair. Out of all the stars who act, sing, and dance, he’s one of the only ones I think is actually really good. There others who are just good, but they don’t hit me the right way and impress me. I don’t particularly like Lu Han’s songs, but I can tell he is actually a really good singer.

The songs that I did end up liking are 勋章 (Medals), which he sang as the theme song for a movie he was in, The Witness, and 我们的明天/Our Tomorrow. There’s one line in 敢 (Roleplay) that I really like — “你瘋了 boy” aka “you’re crazy, boy.” Lol, it’s the fun pacing and blend of languages that makes me appreciate it.

At some point, I read that he was sort of like a Chinese version of Bieber, so I took to referring to him as baby Bieber even though he’s actually older haha. But look at him! He looks SO young. He apparently is so popular that he even did a song for Stars Wars, has the most comments on a social media post, and plenty of other accolades.

I find it unique too that he has tattoos, which I don’t generally seem to see Chinese stars having (or maybe they hide it really well). I think tattoos are still pretty taboo in East Asian cultures.

If you’re up for watching a full concert, here’s the one I prefer. I like the way he yells “hey” sometimes haha.

Before I learned more about him and I saw he was engaged to Guan Xiao Tong (Gabrielle), I thought he was pretty lucky. But then after I got to see everything he’s done, I feel like she’s the lucky one now! Other than the show they met on (Sweet Combat), I haven’t really seen them together. He started a vlogging series called “One Day” recently, so I wonder if she’ll make it on there eventually…

So what do you think? Is this kid worth the hype? Do you like his music and/or acting? I’m not a crazy fangirl, but I do appreciate and admire his work and talent.