Problem and Solution Incubation

Recently, I had a pretty interesting epiphany in the area of collaboration and bringing about change; change being scoped by both project culture and work habits of individuals.

In the past, I’ve become impatient and annoyed when others didn’t acknowledge, comprehend, or even see the “glaring” problem(s) I had been experiencing.

My impatience would become further exacerbated when any of my proposed solutions were met with nay-saying or being completely shut down.

The reality is, the problems I see, probably haven’t manifested for them and they in any meaningful way nor have they been exposed to it.

It’s very akin to the paradox of a user seeing a bug and the developer saying, “It works on my machine!”

In the present, I’ve been seeing some friction on a project I’ve been working on.  This time I wanted to take a much more tactful approach into proposing change and building consensus with my project collaborators.

I went down the path of writing a memo, with the how/what/why, and an example solution.

The memo was sent out as a pre-read prior to a discussion meeting.

In the meeting, questions kept bubbling up, with themes of: “It works fine the way it is.  It doesn’t affect MY development.  This creates a lot of complexity.”  Everyone had read the memo but the problem space had not really resonated.

I left the meeting feeling disappointed – not in my team or the outcome but the fact that I had expected to accomplish all this work in the span of an hour:

  • I had gone into the meeting with the expectation that we would walk out knowing  or not we’d build a solution.
  • I expected that the team would understand the problem context and read through the nuanced example solution.
  • Be ready to provide a yes/no answer on adopting a brand new work flow that has a direct impact on how their work is accomplished.

That part was extremely salient – while I’ve been incubating this problem and solution for what feels like a long time – the team really hasn’t had any of that incubation time nor exposure to the problem.

A few pages of a memo and a fancy Git graph is not going to move the needle in any direction.

The team needs the time to sit with the problem to grasp the nuances.  It is my responsibility to provide data on how the problem manifests and demonstrate (in small pieces) how tackling this particular problem will add value to our work.

My epiphany is, changing behavior is not fast like building a bug-fix or some contrived problem.  Changing behavior is inherently slow and I have to be okay with that lower velocity.

Change, especially behavioral, takes time and it’s okay to take that time to highlight the problem context, take the time to provide space for discussion, and take the time to come to consensus surrounding a solution.

 

Imposter Syndrome

A mentee pinged me recently about imposter syndrome, asking if and how I have overcome it.

With my recent 5 year anniversary at Netflix, I’d like to share my thoughts on this industry-wide topic.

I’ve tried to overcome imposter syndrome and while it’s not nearly as bad as before, it still surfaces every once in a while.

Before I go into how I tackle it, let’s define imposter syndrome.

In my experience, imposter syndrome usually is more of an emotional response to what you’re facing and it’s usually something you haven’t faced before.  It’s the anxiety, dread, or maybe sadness that you’re not good enough, don’t have experience, expertise, or sense of belonging.    

It’s this feeling that you’ve faked your way into a situation and now you’re going to have to pretend even harder to “survive” and not be seen as a fake.  It’s also a feeling that you have to know everything that you can’t ask help for.

Now to talk about how I’ve (slowly) gotten better at understanding and controlling this feeling.

What’s worked well for me, has been to break down the problem or challenge I’m faced with.  I break down the problem and methodically work through the things I need to understand to find a solution.  I try to focus that anxiety and dread into asking myself some questions: 

1.  How can I break this problem down into smaller pieces?  Do I need to get help in this destructuring?  Where can I get this help?  

2.  Do I have enough knowledge to solve those pieces?  If not, where can I go to gain that knowledge? 

3.  Now that I have the knowledge, how can I solve these smaller pieces? 

4.  Am I working towards solving the original problem or do I need to course correct a bit?

Having this model will help give you a roadmap into building experience and confidence in situations that make you feel like you don’t belong.  Doing this often enough will create muscle memory, and your mind and body will start to use this pattern instead of resorting to the emotional response described above.

One of the best examples I have of using this model is in my approach tackling long distance running and triathlons, specifically running 1/2 and full marathons.

Instead of panicking about how I’m going to run anywhere from 13 to 26 miles and thinking I’m lazy, I break down the process into smaller components, which fits roughly into the framework above:

1.  What distance am I running?  How much training do I need?  What does my weekly mileage look like?  How far out on the calendar is the race?  Where I am currently with my running fitness?  What does my training plan look like?    

2.  What have other people done to train for this race?  Are there details about this course I need to know?  What will the weather be like?  Is it a morning or evening race?  Do I need to bring any special clothing or gear for this race?  Do I need to tune my diet for the distance I’m training for?  

3.  Given the weather, distance, course details, and my current fitness, what does my weekly training look like?  Do I need to wake up early each day or move early morning meetings around?  Do I need to shop for specific groceries to help with my training diet?   

4.  How do I track my weekly mileage and stay on target?  Can I join a running group to help with accountability? 

With the above model, I’ve ran dozens of 1/2 marathons, a few triathlons, and two marathons.  My anxiety fades once I break down the race and have a strategy for my approach.  The rest of my energy is spent on executing my training plan.

To reiterate, instead of looking at the entire problem and feeling dejected, break the problem down into smaller pieces and work through understanding and solving those smaller pieces first.  You have to reset the unrealistic expectation that you can’t ask for help, and remove the notion that you need to know everything right away.

With some practice and effort, this becomes second nature and that imposter syndrome will fade.  I don’t think it ever fully goes away, we just get better at feeling comfortable in uncomfortable situations.  In order to grow and be successful, you cannot be afraid to ask for help nor be the smartest person in the room.

The last bit to tackling imposter syndrome – you should always be learning.  No one will ever have “all” the answers or will have worked with “all” the frameworks.  The more you learn and have a willingness to learn, the better you’ll get at tackling the unknown.  The people you work with, managers, teammates, and peers will grow to respect you even more when you show the attitude of asking for help and learning.

Bifurcation & Kindness

I’m going out on a limb here to express something – I don’t necessarily agree with everything being protested right now.

The polarized arguments of skin-color shaming and choosing sides between citizens and government, are minor deviations from the two(-ish) issues that we should be truly focused on:

  1. Systemic racism against African Americans
  2. Police brutality

I don’t agree that we, as a society, should be blaming any group of people, skin color, or political affiliation.  That’s counter-productive to the work that needs to be done.

The work that needs to be done consists of:

  • Acknowledging that systemic racism exists
  • Acknowledging that police brutality exists
  • Acknowledging that as a global society, we need to do an immensely better job at making African Americans successful
  • Defining and building solutions to address the above three points
  • Continuous improvement of those solutions (nothing is ever done…)

In the recent days, I’ve had conversations with family, friends, coworkers, and consumed too much social media.  I’ve also seen people becoming bifurcated, separated into fractions over varying perspectives.

That’s wrong.

This is not a time to separate ourselves from people that think differently than we do.  This is not a time to close doors, un-friend, or block people that have different views.

This is the time for us to embrace each other and truly understand how we’re more similar than different.

I want to mention a strong callout to my non-minority friends in this whole discussion – you shouldn’t feel bad, guilty, or ashamed because you’re a non-minority.

I won’t tell you what to feel, but instead of shame and guilt, I feel tremendous sadness that we’ve been so unkind, so deaf, and so mean to each other, for so, so long.

Let’s focus on the fact that we can be better allies to African Americans, let’s focus on the fact that we should not have militarized police.

We need to come together to learn, listen, and rebuild society, a society that we’re all proud to be part of.  We need to come together to make each other successful, safe, and protected.

We need to learn how to be kind once more.

Where are you from?

I ran across this article a while back which I was musing for a while…

“Where are you from?”  The gentleman and his wife asked my father while we were waiting in line to order our food.

They repeated the question to each of us kids while we stared back in bewilderment.

Seconds pass and the couple jumps into game-show mode, they began listing off the little bit of Asian geography they knew, “China, no?!  What about… Taiwan!  No?  Ok, Japan, it’s gotta be Japan!”

My father casually explained, we’re of Thai and Malaysian descent, with the three of us children being born here in the United States.  The strangers give an excited look to each other and then insist that we look so Chinese.

Throughout my childhood and adult life, I’ve had to deal with this casual racism.  The kind you shrug off because it takes way too much effort to correct people.

It’s tiring to hear.

I’m not here to whine about the racism I face of have endured or will face – there have been far worst cases that I have had the fortunate privilege of avoiding completely.

I’d like to explain why it’s tiring:

It’s tiring because everything I say or do is measured subconsciously with what people think of me as an Asian male.

When I step “out of character”, being the soft-spoken, timid, Asian male, people around me assume I have a short temper or I’m getting riled up.  Replace me with a non-minority male, and that person is just being adamant about making a point.

Let me pose a hypothetical question, skim through 4 minutes of Steve Jobs being angry throughout his career.

In hindsight, he’s this amazing creator and visionary of Apple products.

Would a minority leader be held in such regard if he or she acted the same way?  Honestly?

I was talking to another coworker of color, she mentioned that minorities often have to work twice as hard to get recognition, acquire skills, and experiences that grow their career.

It’s tiring because I’ve had to put 2x+ that effort into my own career, repeatedly.  I have to fight my desire to be soft-spoken and timid.  It may seem easy to those that don’t know me because I’ve spent my entire life practicing (being an extrovert certainly helps too).

These are all small pieces of why it’s tiring.

It’s really tiring because I’m only one person and I wish I had the energy, resources, and time to fix all of it.

I’m going to do my damned best though, even if it takes 2x the effort.

Loaf and Burn

 

I’ve adapted the recipe taken from The Perfect Loaf.  I’ll outline the modifications I performed for my bake.

Adaptations (details in the recipe below)

  • I adjusted the original recipe to make a single loaf, with a final weight of 651 grams.  It’s about the size and density of a typical loaf of sourdough you’d get at the market.
  • Instead of a levain build, I use an active sourdough starter, I’ve adjusted the ingredients list and baker’s percentages to account for the starter.
  • Instead of 3.5 hours for bulk fermentation, I gave the dough 4 hours to ferment.
  • I lowered the salt content down to 7 grams.

Terms & vocabulary

You’ll see these terms in various recipes and I’ll follow the vernacular:

  • Autolyse – “An autolyse is the gentle mixing of the flour and water in a bread recipe, followed by a 20 to 60 minute rest period. After the rest, the remaining ingredients are added and kneading begins.” (King Arthur Flour)
  • Bulk Fermentation – First rise or primary fermentation (King Arthur Flour)
  • Proofing – Retarding or slowing down the rise of the dough
  • Hydration – Ratio of water to flour, by adjusting the amount of water to flour in a recipe, you can adjust the crumb structure, flavor, and texture of your bread

Ingredients

  • Flour (all purpose):  407 grams
  • Water: 294 grams
  • Sourdough starter:  85 grams
  • Sea salt:  7 grams

Baker’s percentages

  • Flour (all purpose):  100%
  • Water:  72%
  • Sourdough starter: 20%
  • Sea Salt: 1.7%

Timeline

This recipe will take two days.  The key here is to have an active starter by 5pm, when you start on the first day.  It helps tremendously if you can perform all steps at 70 – 75*F and use room temperature water.  This will help make the yeast more active and cause better fermentation.

Day 0

Get your sourdough starter ready.  Remove from the fridge and feed up to twice a day.  I gave mine two days (with two feedings a day) before it was ready to be used on the first day.

Day 1

8AM/9AM: Feed your starter as you normally would.  I usually feed mine in the following ratio:

  • 1 part starter
  • 1 part flour
  • 1 part room temperature water

By 5PM, your starter should have doubled in volume so you can perform the autolyse (mixing step).

5PM: Mix flour, water, starter together:

  • Flour: 407 grams
  • Water: 200 grams
  • Starter: 85 grams

Mix everything together with your hands until the flour and water are incorporated.  See step two’s photos here (ignore his recipe’s dough mix ingredients list).  Let the dough rest for 20 minutes.

5:20PM:  Mix in the salt and slowly add up to approximately 94 grams of the remaining water.  Follow the original recipe’s step 3 notes about slowly adding water.  The dough, “should be shaggy and loose”.  I added approximately 40 – 50 grams to my dough.  The dough’s ability to hold water will depend on the type of flour you’re using!

5:30PM – 9:30PM Start 4 hour bulk fermentation.  Follow the original recipe but perform the bulk fermentation for 4 hours.  At the end of the 4 hours, your dough should have increased in volume.

9:30PM Shape the dough.  Follow the original recipe.

9:45PM – 7AM Proof the dough.  Follow the original recipe.  I don’t have a proofing basket, so I placed my dough into a wooden salad bowl and covered the top of the bowl with plastic wrap, then draped a hand towel over the bowl to help keep the plastic insulated a bit.

Day 2

7AM Pre-heat, score, and bake.  Pre-heat your oven per the original recipe.  When the oven and your vessel is heated, pull your dough from the fridge to perform scoring.  Go ahead and follow the original recipe.

I baked my bread for approximately 23 – 25 minutes covered, then removed the dutch oven cover and baked for approximately 15 – 20 minutes.  The internal temperature of the loaf was 210* when I removed it from the oven.  Keep an eye on the thermometer!

When done baking, remove the bread from the vessel and parchment paper and let it rest for two hours on a cooling rack.

 

Shitty Disco Ball

“FUCK!  Get down Xavier!  Another fucking drone in 500 meters!!”  Anna braked hard entering the corner leading to the final stretch before Highway 101, they were still 10 blocks until they could get out of San Francisco’s drone patrolled airspace.  Xavier braced into the back seat as Anna pushed the X5 hard into the sharp corner.  The pain from his earlier gun wound was coming back even though the bleeding had stopped.  He pulled the last Vicodin he had from the passenger seat first-aid kit and swallowed the bitter-tasting medication.  He knew it wouldn’t last.  The pill was of unknown age but he needed something to get his mind off the pain even if it was not better than a shitty TicTac at this point.

San Francisco had been placed under strict road closures at the beginning of the epidemic and now the city was littered with steel and concrete road barriers resembling oversized, toy jacks.  The government attempted to shut the city off from federal support after riots erupted demanding accountability for the outbreak.  The National Guard arrived shortly after along with the new surveillance technology the Pentagon and Department of Defense had been funding for the last several decades through various shell companies and venture capital firms.

As a phased approach to locking the city down, the National Guard launched autonomous drones armed with pepper spray and high decibel sirens to deter protests and riots.  San Francisco’s tech-aware citizens realized these drones could be easily defeated with Internet sourced green astronomy lasers.  The $10 lasers were able to disrupt the sensitive sensor and camera arrays on the drones, rendering the drones useless (and often causing them to fall out of the sky), which the army only realized out after investing billions of dollars to create these so-called “future-proof” weapons.

Following any arms race, the army introduced armed (and laser hardened), autonomous drones that would use facial recognition and biometrics to deter citizens from unruly conduct.  Citizens then began building homemade potato-canons with fishing-net payloads to capture these machines for reverse engineering and parts scavenging.  At least PVC, fishing nets, and pipe glue were still easy to come by.

Anna toggled on the heads-up-display, four dots hovered in quadrants, with the SUV centered at the display’s origin.  Three dots were in green, one in yellow.  “Fucking pieces of shit, they didn’t detect the G2’s they’ve got on the city perimeter!!”

Anna cursed under her breath.  The drones were military surplus she had sourced from her other hacker friends at the Department of Defense, extremely similar to the ones attempting to stop them at this particular moment.  These “E1/ Endurance Gen-1” models were modified to fly higher and longer than the military drones, but had no weapons payload.  Their main task was to provide a detailed view of the surroundings in a 5 mile radius around the SUV as they traveled south towards Los Angeles.  The G2’s were recently deployed but Anna and Xavier had run out of time preparing the drones for their run.

“E3 IS GETTING READY TO FALL OUT OF THE SKY, XAVIER!”, “I’m on it,” Xavier grunted in response.  He reached down for his laptop to get a diagnostics report, his phone didn’t have the extended antenna link the laptop had, sitting two feet above their heads on the antenna array next to the car’s other defensive sensors and equipment.

Anna slid the BMW slid into another corner, wheels grinding out noise at the extra load and sudden acceleration.  They had heavily modified the SUV into an armored personal carrier, as the country devolved into third world status over the last several years.  Xavier had taken it upon himself to migrate a Tesla drivetrain into the SUV, scavenging the battery tech Elon and his engineers had seemingly perfected over the last few decades.

The other benefit of their hacked SUV?

The army and other bad actors could not immobilize them by pushing an OTA ping.  Anna had removed any over-the-air capabilities the Tesla hardware carried when originally shipped from their Fremont factory.  Original Tesla owners were ecstatic to receive features and “improvements” out of thin air but the government had used this nascent technology to their advantage as they lost control over its citizens.

As Xavier opened the laptop to connect to E3, the air around them became electric and filled with ozone.  Xavier glanced at Anna in the rear view mirror, he knew exactly what would happen next.  She was going to activate her, “disco ball”.  She hated it when he called it that.

Anna flipped open a toggle switch on the dash to ready the laser array on the roof.  Anna called out, “TWO MORE G2’S AT 450 METERS FROM THE SOUTH!”.  A brief flash of light lit up the road in front between the smashed out office buildings.  Then the report came.  A sudden concussion of pressure, followed by the smell of jet fuel and explosives.  The G2 drone that had been following them for the last mile had finally reached its weapons capable threshold and had began unloading its ordinance at the rapidly moving vehicle.

“XAVIER, WHERE IS E3?  I’M FUCKING BLIND UP HERE – I’M ACTIVATING THE BALL!” “Working on it!  The link is not fucking working, I told you we shouldn’t have bought those shitty British telecom antennas!”

Anna grabbed her glasses, and pressed the toggle switch, a brief flash of blurry, green lasers illuminated everything around in a 500 meter radius.  Months ago, her friend Amelia shot down one of the G2 drones with a net cannon.  The two spent hours reverse engineering the G2’s new defenses against green lasers.  Anna had found a vulnerability in the new drones that only required placing a small piece of lens in front of the green laser, altering its wavelength.  The slight change in wavelength was just enough to disrupt the G2’s navigation hardware.

So much for “future-proof” weapons.

The defensive mechanism she activated was no bigger than a football, and true to its terrible nickname, was a disco ball of modified green lasers that rotated at a high speed.  Laser beams flashed out in multiple directions with high rotational velocity.  The theory was that when a G2 would fly into the laser array, the beams would be able to disarm the drone’s navigation systems.

Rapid rounds and more small arms ricocheted off the ground, and began pelting the car.  The drones were quickly closing in.  Anna’s heart began to sink with the realizing her defense weapon was really no better than a disco ball that could cause severe eye damage.

Xavier punched a few commands to quickly power-cycle the antenna array.  Seconds ticked by and E3’s diagnostic menu finally displayed.  The damn drone was showing a thermal issue with one of the drive motors.  “Cooling issue, diagnostics says it’ll last until we hit the highway, we can bring it down for mobile retrieval once we get past the Bridge!  Coms should be back, I increased thermal threshold to buy us more time.”

Anna glanced down, E3 went from yellow to green as soon as Xavier finished his sentence.  Another tablet began issuing alerts and the car’s stereo came to life, dictating airspace warnings as the army drones began coordinating the attack on Anna and Xavier.

Outside, sparks began flying as the army drones began executing their attack plan with small arms before switching to larger munitions.  The rounds ricochetted the pavement and bounced against the cars exterior.

The shitty TicTac Xavier ate was doing the trick.  Xavier popped a caffeine pill (coffee had gone by the wayside as farmers fell ill due to the pandemic) and readied his rifle, checking the ammunition count in the magazine, proud of his 3D printed design.  The government had long banned 3D printing of any type of firearm but Xavier’s interest in the maker community and early investment in machining equipment had paid dividends.  He had been able to build his own rifle devoid of any government restrictions.

Suddenly, a loud explosion erupted, 200 meters away from the driver’s side window.  Two drones had collided and ruptured their fuel cells.  The flames lit up the long-forgotten Oracle Park.

“THE BALL WORKED! Shitty disco ball my ass!” Anna smirked at Xavier in the mirror from the driver’s seat.  He shot a glance up to her from the backseat, catching that smile he’s known for nearly eight years while they built their start up.

The world had become an interesting place in the span of five years.

Left hand over your heart, right hand over your lower abdomen.

“Breathe.”

“Inhale.”

“Exhale.”

The instructor repeated this mantra every few moments as the class settled into the next 75 minutes of vinyasa yoga.  “Think of something you’re grateful for.  Hold that image to your heart.  Be grateful for what you imagine.”

The first image that materializes is one of my family and Kristin in San Diego.  We had gone down to visit everyone.  It was a warm weekend but typical southern California weather.  We spent the day wandering around Balboa Park, drinking coffee, walking, and playing with Shiloh, my 4 year old niece.

I’m still fairly new to yoga but breathing has always been something I try to be mindful of, while I workout.  Throughout the day I find myself holding my breath or taking shallow breaths instead of really inhaling and filling my lungs.  Having short breath creates tension and does not allow the blood to be properly oxygenated.  This usually results in fatigue, poor posture, or exhaustion.

I’ve been exhausted.  For the last three months, Kristin and I have talked about divorce (and are following through) and all I’ve been doing since she moved out, has been holding my breath.  I’ve been hopeful we’d figure things out.  Hopeful that she’d be waiting at home, the home we began building together.  I don’t want to blame anyone, be angry, or upset.  I’m just sad and heart broken.  I’m tired.

My own therapist has said this experience will feel particularly painful for me because of my particular emotional background and upbringing.  It does feel painful.  It feels awful.  I can’t run off the pain or the hurt.  It goes wherever I go.  It follows me and keeps me up at night.  It’s changed my appetite, my mood, and to a certain degree my physical appearance.

I don’t like this version of myself.  I want to go back to being a happy-go-lucky guy with a happy marriage.  I can’t go back to that and it’s hard.  I really loved being married to Kristin.

Our lives have changed and I have to accept that.  I have to be grateful for change, grateful for my friends, family, and coworkers who have reached out, lended an ear, or a shoulder for me.  I have to be grateful to have had the limited time with my wife.  Even though I can’t be married to someone I love dearly, I’ve found a lot of love from everyone around me.  For that I’m grateful.

As one of my favorite songs go, “Just breathe.”

So as the days go on, I’ll keep breathing.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Wake up.

 

The last year has been immensely trying, emotionally.

Approximately 13 months ago, my wife and I received a late-night phone call from her parents.  Kristin’s father had been diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer.  We sat in silence staring into the iPad while we FaceTime’d with the in-laws, absorbing the diagnosis, future plans, and brief flashes into our future.

What I want to surface here, is not the call to fight cancer but the emotional and physical suffering surrounding a loved one battling cancer.

It’s ugly.  Really.  Fucking. Ugly.

Over the last year, we watched a happy, joyful man degrade, emotionally and physically.  I’m fortunate enough to have both of my own parents alive.  I knew going into this phase of life would be challenging and surprising.  Entering your thirties feels like an escape from the toxic, unknown, and insecure 20’s.  You enter your thirties with confidence, assurance, and perhaps some sort of measurable success.  I’m fortunate to marry, have a wonderfully lucrative career, and loving family.

Rarely do we speak openly about the things that can go wrong, ranging from divorce to terminal illness.  No one covers how to deal with all the ugliness that starts to manifest itself (if they do, I’ve apparently missed the memo).  I realize maybe I’m partly to blame.  I’ve always focused on the positive, compartmentalized sadness, and stuck to having a can-do attitude.

It’s been fucking tiring.

My wife and I went from the happy-go-lucky couple to having ugly fights over stupid, stupid things because of this ugly disease.  We went from planning weeks-long vacations to how we can move schedules around to be there for family.  We went from celebrating birthdays to cancer-cell counts and the number of chemotherapy appointments endured.

It’s only been four days since Glen’s passing.  I miss him, his family misses him, his friends miss him.  My internal struggle has been separating the death of a greatly loved man and how I miss my own father.

Coming back to all those ugly things you find in your thirties, my loving parents separated after nearly thirty years together.  I don’t blame anyone for their separation.  I understand their need to be happy, to have individual needs and wants.

I’ve gone through the therapy, asking those hard questions, have had the privilege of spending a lot of time in introspection.  Going through this process of grieving the physical loss of someone, I realize I’m still grieving the emotional loss of my own father.  I’ve had to separate that grief with, the grief I have for Glen and my family.

The last four days have been filled with laughter and tears.  We reminisced all the good and quirks of a life well-lived by a man that dearly loved his family, friends, and the people around him.

I know the road ahead isn’t going to be any easier.  There’s going to be a lot of “firsts” this year.  We’re all trying to move forward and this post is probably something I’m doing for my own benefit right now.  I don’t have any witty advice or anecdotal story for you, dear reader.  All I can tell you is what we all know, life is really, really, fucking short.

Go say those things you want to say to your loved ones.  Do the things you love.  Live the life you want to live.

***

It was 1:46 AM when Kristin’s mom called.

It was 3:49 AM when I saw the missed call and called back.

It was 4:00 AM when I had to gently tell Kristin, “Wake up.”

It was 8:16 AM, Kristin texts me, “He’s gone.”

 

Rest in peace Glen.  We love you.

Chicken Pesto

Student conversations floated through the air, including the smell of the food court and the stale carpet.  My Dad and I were sitting at my favorite table by the windows facing the university courtyard, (one of the only ones that had a power outlet) he had come to the USC campus to take me to the airport later that day; it was a rare opportunity to show him the campus and actually catch up with him.  Even though I still lived at home, commuting to and from the school meant I only went home to sleep and shower, the rest of my time was occupied by being on campus.

I was halfway through my meal, when my Dad asked me, “What’s your rush?”

I took a long gaze out the window.

We had been talking about an upcoming job interview and what I wanted to do after college.  At that point in my life, I wanted to make money, as fast as possible, be successful (which at the time I hadn’t even defined clearly), and live life as a fresh-out college grad.  I was surrounded by a lot of driven, rich, and successful students.  I had been eager the last two years at USC to get out into the world and make my mark.

Something happened to me, during those short years in university.  I managed to find, time is ultimately your most valuable asset.  Time to learn, time to decompress, time to take care of yourself, time to give to other people.  At the end of the day (pun intended) we don’t really control the time that’s given to us, we can only control how we spend what’s been allotted.

***

“You’re going to do just fine at this company!  We’ll look out for you, you’re doing great work!  We’ve been working here for 30 years, this is where you belong!”  My coworkers were flattering me while we made our way through mediocre airport food in Chicago O’Hare airport, after a bitterly cold week spent in Ottawa performing vendor work.  I was ecstatic to receive the praise.  Everything I had worked for, seemed to add up in the moment.  It was the idea of security, an elegant career path, a management role at an engineering company, complete with the white picket fence, a future wife, and a semblance of financial security.

A few years (one lay-off, several moves, a break-up, a wedding, and a handful of companies later) I sit here back in the Bay Area, mulling over that same question, over, and over.  My wife and I see change (and a shortage of time) as a forcing function to allow us to spend time the way we want.  It helps us fight complacency in our personal and professional lives.  It gives us purpose to how we structure and live our lives, and lets the both of us focus on the things that we deem are valuable.

While my aforementioned coworkers were being thoughtful and looking out for me, I’m glad I moved my career on and pushed myself to spend time in other places performing other responsibilities.

***

I sit here, mulling over the time with my siblings and my parents.  How some of it was well spent, how as a youth, how I squandered too much of it away, how I always want more.  I read this beautiful piece tonight and reminded me again, don’t squander time.  The article is quite coincidental, seeing that my friends and I all ride motorcycles, with the plan to ride to Alaska sooner than later.  Things have changed for a lot of us that want to go on that ride, jobs, different cities, marriages, divorce, life circumstances.  Some of those things were in our control, others not so much.

These types of stories always surface, my last manager even shared of something similar about his coworker (let’s call him Bob) that was waiting until retirement to go on a round-the-world trip, golfing.  Bob worked for nearly 40 years, had the grand retirement party, received his last check, and went home that evening.

Bob passed away 3 days later at home without ever going on that trip.

***

I looked back at my Dad and told him, “I just want to live life before it’s too late to enjoy it.”

It’s been some time since I’ve seen my own father as he’s still working away in Malaysia, with little to no contact.

It feels that time keeps speeding up, the days growing shorter.  A few years after I graduated and moved back to LA, he and my mother had met the ends of their relationship, he decided to move back to Malaysia after their divorce.

I never stopped to consider living life to be a double-edged sword of happiness and sorrow.  It’s always been a balancing act, taking the time to work hard but also taking the time to enjoy achievements, family, and all those things that I value.

I guess this is just a reminder to myself, don’t take anything in life fore granted, enjoy the things you love, invest your energy wisely, and value the time you have.  It’s also a reminder to myself, it’s okay to spend time to grieve loss.  Something I haven’t done in a long, long, time.

***

That was the last time I had a chicken pesto sandwich on campus – and one of the best moments in time I had with my father.

  • Jonathan

You’ll never get into USC.

Before digging in today, spend the five minutes to read this article.

Done?  Great.

I remember hearing those words from my high school counselor.  She continued, “You should try the local state school, it’ll be easier for you to get in“.  No mention of transferring, community college, or even discussion of reaching out to USC to inquire about other avenues of admissions.  It didn’t sting but it was a reaffirmation of everything I had felt and known while I was in high school.  I was different and I wasn’t good enough.  I hated sports, I didn’t know how to dress, or “fit in”, whatever that means.  Most of my teachers, classmates, the administration staff, and counselors all thought I had an attitude problem.

They thought one day I would “snap” (their words).

***

I was the first born, from an Asian family, to attend high school here in the States.  My parents are both highly educated, making their version of the Dream work for their three kids.  It wasn’t always smooth sailing growing up but I remember coming from a home where both parents cared and loved greatly.  I just didn’t fit in at school.  I was too busy trying to reconcile what my parents expected out of my grades versus what it meant to be an Asian American high school student.

Let’s frame my story a bit further:  Monday through Friday, I would attend a Christian Baptist high school, predominantly white, upper-middle class families; Saturday and Sunday would include homework, studying, going to the Buddhist temple with my parents, and the high possibility of church on Sunday morning.  Weekdays and weeknights, my Dad was running his own company and my Mom was working for the Department of Homeland Security while obtaining her Master’s degree in public policy.  See where I’m coming from now?

***

Monday morning was faced with dread.  I was constantly bullied and picked on, I thought trying out for sports was a good way to help.  I didn’t even make the flag football team in junior high.

Starting with an example of the negativity…  We had an assignment to interview a grand parent or relative about their WWII experience.  Simple enough, right?  Try explaining to a high school history teacher, that you have no relatives living near by, or that can be easily reached with a phone call.  It sounds like the perfect excuse to not get the assignment done, right?  My Dad and I spent hours that weekend coming up with a fake story just so I could finish this assignment.  Keep in mind, there was no FaceTime or Skype, let alone the idea of Facebook.

The one teacher that finally got it?  My computer science professor, Mr. Moffatt.  In his classroom and behind the keyboard, nothing could touch me.  I found my calling in that class.  I also found my path out of high school.  I put all my energy into finishing high school so I could graduate and get into to USC to study computer science.

A few years later, the rest is history.  I have my USC degree hanging proudly in my home office, alongside my other medals and keepsakes from my adult accomplishments.

***

Speaking to the article now, I wish more educators understood the impact of their words to the students.  I’m not talking about coddling and giving students pats on the back when they actually show up.  There still needs to be a firmness to the approach of education but perhaps asking the simple question of, why?  Why is the student misbehaving so often?  Why is the student getting picked on?  Why do the other students feel compelled to pick on other students?

My high school counselors never asked why.  They attempted to solve the symptoms of getting bullied, even suggesting I transfer to a different school.   The point of this article is not a SOB story about my shitty high school experience.  The point is to get you to participate and get involved.

The high school education system and educators aren’t built to scale knowledge growth in the areas of cultural and behavioral diversity.  There’s not enough time, money, resources, understanding, or staff to combat this issue.  Why spend the time helping a dysfunctional student, when you’re underpaid and trying to get the rest of the kids that “fit in” to graduate?

The time is ripe for change.  It’s time to change the way we approach high school education and how we treat students.  I think it’s time to pay attention and give students the opportunities they deserve.  The real world, as we’re all coming to find, is full of diversity.  It does not get any easier to “fit in” as you get older.  There’s still a subtle pressure to assimilate, even as an adult even though the trend of late is stop caring what others think.  It’s hard to break old habits.

***

I encourage people to get involved.  Mentor, provide internships, guide the younger generation through the choppy waters of high school and college.  Tell people they will succeed.  Don’t hold others back from achieving their dreams nor should you ever tell a young person they can’t do something.  True to youth, they’ll go out and do it anyways to prove you wrong.  So why not provide them with the tools and tactics necessary to blaze a path forward for themselves?