Work in progress.

Some things are broken round here.

  • I Now Have an Attention Span

    Published on February 23, 2023

    Various things in the last few years have alerted me to the terrifying fact: I don't think I had an attention span at all until, well, now.

    That I was able to graduate from college, get married, hold down jobs... privilege, and opportunity.

    Most of the time, I was told that I was that way because I was simply careless, lacked attention to detail, and that was just who I was.

    Deep down, I disagreed, but I did not have any other data points that would show that all of those terms were incorrect.

    My first inkling that something might be wrong was when I found myself utterly insomniac and unable to sleep for months at a a time. That was about a decade ago. The feeling I most remember was, "It feels like I have a million ants under the skin of my body!" But no one believed me. That was probably the precursor to a lifelong struggle with thyroid diseases, that was to come.

    Then, I realized that I probably haven't ever had a good night's sleep. Every photograph of me as a baby has my mouth open, as if gasping for breath. I took it to an experienced doctor in the US, who told me I most definitely have had sleep apnea since I was an infant, and that if we were to do a sleep test today he would be surprised if I wasn't in the high moderate or extreme range. He was correct.

    Eventually, I got both issues looked at, and mostly sorted. (These things don't fully go away, but can be managed.)

    Putting aside the issues of not being heard or believed as a young woman in medical system (something that all minorities face, all over the world), I'm pretty pissed. How was I allowed to live through most of my life in such suboptimal conditions?

    Why is it that people were happy to just say 'oh, that person has the attention span of a gnat', but nobody asked why?

    It seriously impeded my way of life. It got in the way of living, doing, existing. I could not remember anything. I could not wake up for important tests, meetings, interviews. I could not even reliably put a piece of paper in a folder, keep it there, and remember that I had ever done it.

    These days, they call it 'executive dysfunction'. But that's a nice term for 'it's your fault until you find a name for it and figure out how to fix it, and get mad that it could have been a reasonably easy fix'.

    Oh, I also have ADHD. But I'm not sure which came first. Am I unable to focus on things because I didn't sleep properly for years, had a severely wonky thyroid gland, or is it a bit of everything? I may never know.

    What I'm finding out is that it's wild, what I can do with an attention span!

    I can file my taxes well ahead of the deadline, and receive my refund before anyone else!

    I can pay rent well ahead of time!

    I can figure out what I want to do and actually do it!

    I'm relearning CSS and JavaScript right now, because I feel like I did not have enough of an attention span or focus back when I first learned it. It's also useful because so much has changed since—like CSS is actually fun now!—that I don't mind.

    I'm learning that I am able to sustain a creative pursuit on the side. I have spent a gargantuan amount of effort consolidating my hard drives from Singapore and Malaysia and the US and everywhere in between that, for the first time I believe I have all the writing, photography, video files, that I ever created, in one place. And actually be able to find them. This was not something I was remotely capable of doing at any point in the past. If something was not immediately before me, it did not exist. I have written entire books that I have forgotten I have ever written!

    I can even shoot, develop and scan film on a regular basis, something I was never able to do! (I could not even remember what film I used, or where anything was, until now.)

    I think most of the people in my early life were happy to buy into the myth that I was a bumbling, forgetful creative person, or to ascribe some kind of pathological shortcoming or disability to me, but the truth was simply that I was a person who needed help, and didn't know that I did.

    As it turns out, being autistic and being not at all in tune with your body or with what's normal or expected, not knowing how to ask for help, has health and other vital implications! If I could do it all over again, I would have learned to pay more attention to my body, and learned to apply my autistic superpowers to all facts of life: by digging deep into why something was, rather than simply accepting that "that's just the way I am".

  • Feeding My Soul

    Published on January 31, 2023

    Maybe some day, I'll think of the years between 2009 and 2019 as a lost decade. It was a decade of development, when I came of age, when I left home, when I made my home in so many different places in the world, where I tried on different ways of being, as if they were seasonal coats, or swimwear.

    Things are different now.

    When I was least expecting it, king tides subsided and became gentle lakes. The weather is rarely frosty or humid, it's mostly even-tempered, and cool. I have time to sleep, exercise, meditate, and eat well: I am no longer scurrying from here to there. I know how lucky I am.

    I got to recover from a chronic illness that not only took away my physical abilities for a long while, I also got to bounce back mentally from it. From insomniac mania, I now have a well-rested, even-keeled, decently-paced life (and personality). When I think back to those years, to 2012 and right after especially, I wonder how anyone ever kept up with me. I barely did. (Autoimmune diseases are a bitch. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.)

    I have work that is engaging, challenging, and evenly paced. I have the weekends to discover and explore. Surprising to everyone, especially to myself, my new hobbies are fun, slow and old: birding. Cycling slowly. Walking slowly. Hiking. Being in nature. If I'm optimizing for anything (throwback to my startup days!), that's it.

    So many weekends spent around the Bay Area wandering about with friends and people I love. Sometimes I look at birds. Sometimes I look at fungi. Many times, I am just happy and so damned pleased to be out and about, and alive.

    In line with the theme of 'finding joy in things I have always loved', like playing my piano, saxophone, clarinet for fun, I started picking up my camera again. Over there, on my microblog, I'm documenting all the ways in which my brain gets to have fun. I've forgotten how nice it is to just make things, tell stories, and do things for fun.

    I'm done with the hustle.

    The hustle that I want to spend time and energy on is the one that's about nourishing my soul. I'm working on some long term writing and photography projects. While it's tempting to think of 2009 - 2019 as the lost years in which I did not do very much creatively, I think it's given me the experiences and time to really become the kind of artist that I want to be. In recovering from chronic illness and hustle-related illnesses, my mind is now clearer than before: I have the headspace now to work and make things the way I want.

    It's still too early to share what I'm working on, but know that things I do in this space will always have something to do with one or all of the following: immigrants, California, India, Southeast Asia, food, culture, festivals, climate, nature, mushrooms, birds, queerness, bicycles, music, and maybe more. Those are all of the keywords to my life, these are all of the things that keep me going. Until then, snippets of my creative brain can be found at the microblog, and sometimes also on Mastodon (especially at the #FilmIsNotDead hashtag that I sometimes use).

    So instead of focusing on status, success, money, or hustle and grind culture, I'm going to explore all the ways in which I can immerse myself deeply in all of the things that I love, some or all of them at once. And I feel incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to do this.

  • Graphic novel review: All Quiet in Vikaspuri

    Published on January 24, 2023

    Finished reading: All Quiet in Vikaspuri by Sarnath Banerjee 📚

    Sarnath Banerjee's graphic novel "All Quiet in Vikaspuri" is an alt universe / dystopian future story centered on the posh neighborhood of Vikaspuri in South Delhi. An ensemble of colorful characters illuminate this otherwise monochrome book, whose pencil art is sparse, but powerful.

    Girish, a psychic plumber tasked with finding the magical river Saraswati. A former army colonel. A former employee of the Delhi Water Board.

    For anyone who is vaguely interested in how Asia's mega-cities balance urban planning, growth and ecology (hint: mostly poorly), this is a poignant way to understand some of the issues at stake. Even though the characters and issues are presented as dystopian fantasy, they are very real.

    Nowhere more real than Banerjee's quips about Gurgaon, the satellite city just outside New Delhi that was built by private enterprise, and feels like it.

    In the graphic novel, he says, "80 per cent of Indian cities will become like Gurgaon". "People think their building provides their water and power."

  • Mycology: Fantastic Fungi

    Published on January 24, 2023

    Finished reading: Fantastic Fungi by Paul Stamets 📚

    As part of my new interest in mycology, I read the book by the supposed granddaddy of the field.

    If you've watched the documentary on Netflix, this book is what started it all. Lately, I'm trying to read more about the perspectives of Indigenous people on mycology and nature, and their relationships with the mostly settler types who participate in mycology, whether in foraging, creating enterprises, or even in healing. I'm starting to develop a more critical view of some of the more well known faces in mycology.

    The book is a little disjointed, in that it presents many different perspectives from all types of people who are in the field, some interested in the healing properties, some in the climate change fixing possibilities, some in the psychedelic aspects. I found myself most interested in the essays written by activists from other parts of the world, like the one from Chile who is working to see how mushrooms can help create interesting solutions for climate change, but am largely meh about an approach that is too psychedelic-focused.

  • Manga review: Moyasimon volume 1

    Published on January 2, 2023

    Finished reading: Moyasimon by Masayuki Ishikawa 📚

    I spent the latter half of 2022 reading widely on all things microbiome and mycology. I am fascinated by these two related topics, particularly by how little we seem to know about it. I certainly wish I had been exposed to these topics more extensively in school.

    From a book about mushrooms, I was introduced to a manga about a boy who can see germs and bacteria. It's certainly a topic I never imagined I would read about in this format. It's very educational but also fun.

    It's set in an agriculture university, and through a variety of characters tells you about the different types of bacteria in sake-brewing, bacteria that exists around us, as well as different fermentation practices around the world. It's fun, and quite action-packed for manga that's about something so.. unseen. Highly recommended, and I'm digging into volume 2 as we speak.

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