words, notes, kernels scrawled over the back of my hand again. i’ve missed my friends and their words
living out of a carry-on for over two months and it’s less than i thought i would miss but clarifying to what i really do. i miss my digital camera. i miss my calendar diary, my drawing notebook and the pens, i miss my moka pot + my coffee grinder and my second pair of glasses. i have a better packing list now.
2.5 hour suite book club on the book transcription omelette with really good hummus and flatbread from my favorite armenian grocery store jon’s drop off box at goodmans shipping maru coffee cream top + spiced latte goodwill drop off a no-purchase walk along silverlake junction, walk away with free things and samplers and wonderful strangers sassoon produce pickup: ice cream bean, tree tomato, quenepas, chocolate persimmon, lychees stumble upon melrose block party down the street, run into old friends walk back home into the best sunset ever, admire it with T’s neighbors in spanish walk to the hollywood comedy show w T & D & T and laugh on the way there and back 3 games of monopoly deal 1 game TFT tockers trials admiring all the things that i did, and noting the bugs i see that ill fix in my last few days
stories / narratives / secrets / beliefs / perspectives / context / throughlines
back when i was leading backpacking trips, i ran into an old couple who's trail names were "inna" and "inno". the older man laughed, telling us the story: they called him inna, short for "in a rush" because he would often scamper ahead of his wife on long hikes. she would trail behind him, and her name was inno - "in no rush". soon after he passed by our group, we ran into his wife, who smiled and asked if we had met him already.
jenis ice cream brambleberry crisp flavor (there is granola that is small and berry seeds. but a delicious flavor) jenis ice cream birthday cake flavor (the sprinkles got stuck. but also, a delicious flavor) chicken noodle soup with lentils (unfortunately too chunky at this point) chicken broth from a box (its pretty good just no sustenance and you are hungry) greek yogurt (i have learned the limit to greek yogurt without toppings and only honey and it is 1.5 big bowls)
chinese steamed eggs made in the microwave with soy sauce and parmesan cheese (just learned that parmesan cheese + dashi + soy sauce do something pretty nuts together) chinese steamed eggs with just soy sauce and kimchi juice miso soup with silken tofu cubes tomato parmesan whole foods soup baby food pouches (these are okay. do not veer into spinach. squash and peas are ok. beets excellent) congee made in the microwave again with soy sauce (blend it) vanilla bean ice cream haagen daz my favorite with good balsamic (do not knock if you have not tried, you know if its good if you hear musk in a positive sentence on the bottle and it is thick)
k’s birthday weekend, the first we’ve been able to celebrate together in a while. she’s surrounded by wonderful love and laughter and teasing in detroit and I got to partake in it all for a night. c + e’s hang the day after, laughing in a random, empty lebanese restaurant for hours at midday. at the end of the day, with the oldest friends, all you’re looking for is a place to sit again for as long as you can
sometimes there are hard weeks and there isn’t that much more to say about it just that it happened and that that one is over
homemade granola with L’s Mom’s texted recipe hemmed my ebay jeans 2 inches repaired my old canvas new yorker bag from 2017 with the extra jean fabric banana bread syrup for coffee planet fitness membership and an old workout pdf tomato jam with my mom’s best friend’s gardens tomatoes daily 1 hour loop walk after work calling a friend
these last few weeks even more so, ive been confused at the idea of artist and what it might mean, for me. its likely this confusion comes from an external recognition what it's believed to be vs what i feel it is and those collisions.
i suspect and believe everyone is an artist, and can be. that to live life in a intentional and attention filled way is an art. it feels like writing and documenting and enjoying and laughing in my life and in my body is all art. i feel like this photo of a man with his bike, taking a break under the summer trees contains everything important and so was when my car broke down on the way to vegas at 110 degrees on a road trip with my brother and so is when two people meet. but how do you describe this? i think i sort of want everyone to feel this way, hope that they might too. maybe grief got me here. maybe luck did too. chance. there’s a lot of things all on top of each other.
biking really fast and feeling it all again. 25 minutes, 5.1km. my mother trailing and pedaling fast and ringing the bell behind me and laughing and yelling that she is having so much fun and I can’t remember her ever doing that before
unplanned until M said to L “you should think about it,” when she found out L was leaving and asked about if there would be a going away party.
a hang how we like it: capture the flag at the glassell recreation center with water balloons. badminton with the gift badminton set Peter gave me. love saturated everywhere. two rolled ankles. pickle chips and chicken sandwiches. the feeling that these are old friends.
the best of summer and the best of love. thank you mary.
Big Solo Living wants you to think that roommates are not the answer but you must fight it. it is always more life giving, enriching, questioning, synthesizing, playing than you could ever know. every time.
wearing my mothers clothes learning to walk again
lightning storms in utah bioluminescence in maine seeing the rushing river of the mississippi and the slow moving one of colorado mountain goats, prarie dogs, and bison in colorado plains deep red ravines and pullaway stops with vendors waiting the deep green rolling fields of nebraska moving into the dense cornfields and windmills of iowa to fall in love with america is to drive across it
black capped chickadee american crow downy woodpecker red cardinal american goldfinch 6:18pm, late summer, middle michigan
maine magic, for a few weeks. late summer, greens that look like michigan's. staying in a house that is generations old, meeting old people who talk about how their great grandparents were alive when and were motivated by the california goldrush. hearing people talk about the confusion of their twenties that i’m feeling in just a single sentence, only a blip in their story they’re telling.
looking for a religion discipline, maybe. trying. attention. friends, love, family and proximity. relationships. goodness, strangers. humanity, joy. noticing. presentness. leaning away from things that harden you. openness, trust. faith. repetition. learning. something. maybe all of it.
a week from the car getting hit. sitting in the new geffen galleries building after HTML day, it both makes no sense and all the sense that there is an erewhon cafe location at the LACMA. I can’t imagine what people must think of los angeles when coming here, at least from the museum’s point of view. the couple next to me say how terrible it must be for this to be someone’s first impression of erewhon (“the others are so much better!”). They are wearing Onitsuka Tigers and the girl picks around the crust of her chicken pot pie, only eating the chicken.
i think a lot of my collection, consuming, thinking, have been ideas + observations from that around me, and brought back to my friends (L calls this "bringing the nuts back" like a squirrel) and we talk in this matrix of different experiences/personalities and toss the ideas back and shape them with our experiences.
but, more recently, i feel as if ive been meeting, or finally attending the right events, where I am meeting people who I feel like are asking the same questions as me, working through the world in the same way, you begin to realize you are far from alone in these ways of thinking. its really exciting to feel like you have found a pocket of people that have been there all along.
our perfect white couch > to someone who texted that they loved it and sent two luggs the beautiful painting I found > to olivia :) my bike > to a great coworker my favorite red wool rug > to a young artsy boy wood bench > to someone in los feliz camping sleeping pad > to someone about to camp wonderful rug in our living room > to two girls who just moved to LA! disco ball plant hanger > to a girl with a stolen wi spa shirt garden of earthly delights (hieronymous bosch) frame > to someone from los feliz tall lamp > to someone on the street bed frame > to someone who put a deposit down and sent me a message how great it was bed > for free in the los feliz buy nothing clothes hangers > free on the street settlers of catan > to someone sweet looking for friends in LA mysterium board game > brief handheld whisk > to someone at work office chair > to someone at work monitor > to someone standing desk > to someone who needed it for we work architecture desk lamp > to someone descended from shamans a wonderful wood dresser > to someone who just moved to la from ny a wonderful wood bookshelf > to someone also from the midwest! filing cabinet > to someone for free on the street green wood bedside table trash cans, kitchen organization, drying rack, clothes drying rack, stepstool dark wood console table and coffee table > to two girls who just graduated ucla frameless full length mirror > to someone named talia a bundle of baking supplies > to someone who bakes! vornado fan > to a mother a bundle of spices and sauces > to someone in los feliz buy nothing tv and roku > to someone who's tv just broke dining table > a bundle five wooden chairs > a bundle
sometimes everything changes on a random wednesday. said goodbye to L and to an empty home the last one in July.
future note to self: get rid of lighting last when moving out :)
K does her first ever DJ set, and it’s wonderful. my pole performance before we leave, and her DJ set before she does. she says it in honor to those friends who have danced with her all these years, and those very friends do just that in a semicircle for hours as she plays.
I can’t help but think about the importance of the loved ones around you knowing what you want to do so they can support you. It’s like breaking the seal, the first time you do it. A tattoo, a performance, just trying. The people around you cannot wait for you to succeed.
addy visited i did my first pole performance for my friends bacari open bar and i called it a perfect day in my head i hiked the trans catalina trail (solo). filled with trail magic. these were perfect days, too. celebrated the solstice and pride yoko ono at the broad (free on thursdays) deep sea fishing off the coast, caught scorpionfish riotlings, courage bagel solo, apple fritters, spike ball, polymer clay had my first summer heirloom tomato made big decisions
long conversation with A, and L during their visit. about our happiness, about the happiest moments in our life, about joy, about times when things are easy, and without friction. about regret. and - sitting and looking at all my friends and loved ones after my pole performance, i cant help but think if it all has led to a moment like this, that i have not, could not have, made any wrong decision. i've been feeling so lucky.
counting my age in my summers
walking to the reservoir every day, celebrating the solstice in the grass
i teared up, today, tasting summer strawberries. it wasn't their peak sweetness, in fact they were not quite sweet at all, but because i was overwhelmed by something in their scent that i never realized strawberries could have.
with their in-seasonness, there is something: something that smells like the sun, that also smells like dirt, that smells like heat, and that exists just the same in the ripe blueberries that i would pick off the bush, right into my mouth, in michigan every year when i was younger in the late summer during their peak.
i need to make it back home, this summer.
this morning I woke up with so much time and space confusion. I thought it was Sunday. I thought it was Wednesday and I had to make it to work. I felt relief that I still had some time to sleep. I only grounded myself in Tuesday after seeing my bruise from climbing. Time was feeling especially malleable, today. I don’t know if it was a function of sleeping and waking up before an alarm, a lack of stress, or just a certain brand of tiredness.
It is naive (and young) of me to think this period of questioning is something that only happens in your early 20s. Sentences come to me sometimes in books where someone older reflects on how they were once an age where they thought months were long periods of time - and I am met with the realization that that is how I am feeling. The beginnings of their brevity reach me when I count how many weekends I might get to hang out with friends, do long day trips, and how difficult it is to find a joint weekend where we all can rest together.
I think I know where I want to be at the end of this year. I am trying to define some sort of success criteria, look at what I want of this world, to know that I made the right cascade of decisions that barrel me to the end of this year. I suppose all I can do is wait and sit down at the end of today at a nice location and think a bit about how this will all play out. Send out the right messages, as it goes.
third year at the dogwood campsite. the group changes every year, a mark of time passing. maybe smaller groups are better, but its always difficult to pinpoint any one thing that is the reason for why something is different without being prescriptive.
birdwatching with K, our necks arched as we clumsily try to echolocate the bird. legs scratched up and bruised from the pinnacles hike with M and K the day prior. fresh trout, fresh foccacia from M, falling asleep to the sound of M laughing watching her saved episodes of hacks. watching each other wipe out on the wipeout lake obstacle course again and again again.
one thing stays the same though year over year: blistered hot dogs, laden with ketchup, around a campfire made by L. always enough to go around. this year I have a taste for ciders to accompany.
morning eggs and sungold tomatoes bird watching on the balcony pina coladas on the beach and lessons in how not to get scammed free beers from the group next to us chasing rock crabs on our beach blood orange moonrising at 7pm snorkeling walking to playa medano, lessons in how to not get scammed homebase location calibrated perfectly, 5 minute walk to the beach season 2 of beef thinking about how los angeles has spoiled us uv 12, sun hoodie anxieties celebration of two years
camping in the sequoia national forest, at potwisha campground. open tent, no rainfly the second night. i think about how lucky this is, to have two evenings where nothing of the outdoors triggers any homeostatis response. food is abundant, no bugs, quiet outside, nothing needed but a jacket. our eyes close under the stars. the trees are bigger than you could ever imagine.
met our camping neighbors, a group of friends who spoke tamil and made fresh chai in the morning. they shared a cup with 9999 and I. i leave this weekend thinking to myself it's wifi that is public enemy number one. and that it's also important to feel small.
Linocut event today, and a LNY hotpot with some work friends. Both of these events today were with groups of people, friends, who the majority I do not know and was meeing for the first time.
It’s nice to move between groups, make things, enjoy food. People are all quite generous and amazing. On the drive back from the west side I was thinking about how I heard about the “chinese banquet” wedding, twice, one from a friend who was about to attend her childhood friend’s wedding in May, in China, and the other from someone who just proposed last year, who was from Malaysia, and had three events planned, all timed around the superstitious Chinese New Year calendar. One event in southern California, one in northern California, and finally, the Chinese banquet back in Malaysia. I've always wondered what a Chinese wedding could look like, I've never been to one myself. It's nice to think that Chinese people like to celebrate with food and with many people in more ways than one.
it’s nice that there are days where the weather tells, suggests, to you what the day might look like. One less decision to make.
Los Angeles + flash flooding warning until 2PM on President’s day. Delia’s and delicious coffee in the morning with T.
watched the Titanic today today with E and L for the first time ever. I can't help but feel like no one told me that it was this good, which is totally untrue.
burned moka pot / canes with E, they forgot the sauce in my kids meal / made date brown butter banana bread my recipe
Yesterday I found a huge, and beautiful painting near the trash bins. I cannot believe that I found it, nor can I believe that someone threw it away. It now sits above our living room.
- When you have a last conversation with someone, always speak with your full heart, here.
- The winds of life will move you
- Health is really important, sleep as much as you can
- Being outside is a cure to a lot of things, walking, quite is too. Drink some more water, while you are at it
- Flow state is key to being good person
- Creation with an audience is also a way to self actualize
- Your moods quite rarely trust each other: gratitude and sleep will often get you to a better place, I think
- Consumption makes you miserable, the two weeks where you were able to use a rule to say no to a lot of things really freed your heart
- Call your friends, they really are there
L brought my pants to the Highland Park repair fair, today. We also got our knives sharpened after two years of the task haunting us every time we found ourselves in Atwater! I am so struck by all the small repairs on the pants, the generosity, the second life that these actions bring. I’ve read think piece after think piece about mending, but it feels so extraordinary the first time you really experience it.
victor talking about art, and artists trying to grapple with the very human desire to create something that outlasts themselves, to create something permanent. this resonated, another data point to better understand this almost desperation that I feel trying to capture everything, write about, jot down, to make something out of all the moments that are ever so fleeting.
ping pong tournament at J's field day, joint birthday party for M and S 80 degree day in february, in los angeles. it all makes me want to stay. somehow the sundays in los angeles makes it feel like you've made every decision right.
moods do not trust each other make bit by bit, do not need to know towards what end
have recently been a huge fan of the camera app using the 1:1 (square) framing instead of the standard 4:3 encourages soft framing in every photo you take, instead of cropping after the fact (thank you finn) a little easy mindfulness in how you capture
week off in la
m: mei katie over working
t: carrot cake from neighbor
w: pole / ping pong training
th: open pole
f: art division / pole / walk
sa: huntington / spina / toms 1hr / tacos / chipotle / 33 taps / bacari
su: ping pong tournament
the first party in january is everyone's subtle debut day of their new holiday items (fur hat, adidas ballet flats, new jacket, new sweater, new earrings) cute and sweet
15,621 steps bunny handmade ceramic mug ($60 USD) handmade earrings ($10 USD) tea ($3) korean cold noodle soup ($8) wool sweater ($80 USD)
abnormally warm day in mid january (80 degrees) everyone clustered in the few tree shadows at the reservoir 40 minutes to lay before pole
ive been loving la
the collective sounds of everyone's phone notifications once the plane lands sigh of relief
sticky note wall of "truths and learnings" from last few months of last year attempting to document every truth I learned in my days in my twenties when writing they meant so so much on looking back there are a few that I cannot recall but they are important to me anyways
irl notes app. still trying to find a way to document all that is important
- we're all fucked because we need more flow state
- in china everyting is gambling: society's push towards gamifying everything
- everything i made in 2025
- screenshot of all my tabs that I posted to instagram
- gluttony/hedonism at all you can eat and unlimited locations
much like game design, web design benefits from the same idea of "juice"
interactions with the mouse, hover interactions and animations, playfulness.
where/what is the line between playfulness / usability / flexibility?
met for the fourth book club with sarah, addy, lucia: "perfection" by vincenzo latronico never has a book felt more relevant to our moving lives and our decisions that guide them - sarah in spain, addy moving around, lucia and I in los angeles
talking about using the third person instead of the first person as a way that both distances yourself from the characters, losing empathy but also seeing how the world impacts your choices, and how the ever changing world will always affect your life and your direction
so in a way it's kind to yourself to remind yourself of the third person and write about yourself in the third person
and, lastly, to stray away from consumption of a city and the importance of ties work that ties you to people, being in a place with anchors (family, friends)
just saw a post on instagram of someone talking about performance art
argued that performance art can be a decision in your life, and you reacting to or understanding that decision and seeing what changes for you
this feels again like the tuning conversation lucia and I had - we spend our lives tuning, trying things, getting to the point when your gut feeling rewards you habits as a sort of performance art
v2 of blog: gathering design inspiration my arena websites collection
learning so much about designs from other portfolios - what sticks?
v1 of blog deployed you can learn so much just by creating again