lingchung

[lingchung]

Siblings

I am immensely proud of my siblings.

Technically, I am an only child. But I grew up with my cousins under the same roof. They are my siblings.

My aunt? She is Mom.

Collectively, we are an Asian parent's wet dream.

Some would scoff at us: we are the byproduct of capitalism - gifted with the genetic lottery, born into a family that poured resources into us. Our next door neighbour was a Cabinet Minister. Two streets down was the ex-Prime Minister of Singapore. En route home, our school bus drove by standing military guards. I didn't think much of it then. Only upon reflection as an adult, I realized we didn't grow up in a normal neighbourhood.

We had a head start. From how we ate to what we were taught. After school snacks were never Lunchables. Of course we ate junk food, but wholesome, homemade small bites handcrafted by our nanny were our staples. One of our favourite childhood snacks was ikura, Japanese caviar. An ex remarked, "I don't think I knew what ikura was until I was an adult."

The 2001 financial crisis turned the family from riches to rags. My siblings shouldered the collapse. I had left the house by then, so I wasn't impacted by the turmoil.

By then, the abundance mindset was deeply etched into our psyche. It's hard to forget how to think big when that was one of your earliest lessons in life. Even the youngest, who never knew the flush years as we had, walked as if he was born with compass in hand and map in heart. He strived, by osmosis.

Da, he's a VP at Goldman. We were born the same year, mere months apart. He was always the sharper mind: razor-edged in logic and impossible to beat in arguments. We fought like cats and dogs, as all siblings do. I cried more than I won because I could never out-argue him. But I will always remember, he told me I was immediate family, even when I wasn't so sure myself. He kept the best from our upbringing, and ruthlessly discarded the worst. Unlike his own dad, he is a present father.

Do, ex-M&A-consultant turned head of asset management, five years my junior. She carries excellence like it's her second skin. She bore the family burden when the rest of us could not. She moved through her career like a blade cuts through silk. As if by whim, she enters her first Hyrox competition and placed on the podium, as weekend warriors casually do, of course. I always joke - she is me on steroids: younger, prettier, more successful. In our younger years, she herded me into family pictures when I instinctively stepped back. She pulled me into frame with her small hands before I turned invisible. In our adult years, I learned financial generosity from her, especially towards our family.

Hao, Yale-NUS double degree law and liberal arts graduate, now legal counsel at Netflix. He is the youngest. Grew up as a latchkey kid. By the time he entered primary school, the scaffolding had come down. No one had time for him, there were bigger problems. He fended for himself. This kid always had grit. He worked hard, blazed his own path, and became one of twenty-five who got admitted to the selective dual-degree program. Like a forsaken dandelion, he became who he is, on his own.

Dinner table topics? Noam Chomsky and Sam Harris' public discourse. Parallels between the Trump and Nixon presidencies. Parmesan cheese's legally protected designation of origin. Brainless shit coated in wit.

My siblings think in broad strokes and no ceiling. Their brains sprint while most others' stroll.

And while I will never deny the privileges of our upbringing, neither will I reduce my siblings' accomplishments to mere inheritance. They expanded upon their beginnings. They built. They suffered. They reached.

Mummy raised four sharp-witted and resilient kids. As much as there were casualties along the way, she gave us a mental architecture, a blueprint for dreaming large, and a pathway to intellectual pursuits.

Yes, I am very proud of my three siblings - proud of each pompous, successful, wounded fragment of them.

[lingchung]

Happy Father's Day, Bernabe!

Bernabe is my mom's partner.

In those early days, I’d stop by their apartment for the occasional dinner - midweek affairs that began with chicken steaming on the stove and ended with store-bought pastry that was way too sweet. I was already in my late twenties then, more houseguest than child, more acquaintance than kin.

One evening, I arrived to find a new placemat at my setting: Lilo & Stitch, glossy and blue, with animated eyes far too large for their heads. I laughed. Cutesy things had never been my thing, and Lilo & Stitch was neither a cartoon of my childhood nor a cartoon to my taste. Yet there I sat, spoon in hand, scooping up dinner with cartoon eyes watching from beneath my bowl.

Then Mom and I bought our first family home in Canada.

Bernabe moved in with us.

Mom and I got into nasty fights. We had not lived under the same roof since I was six, and the gulf of twenty-five years apart was not one that narrowed overnight. We pushed each other's buttons. But there was also Bernabe: steady, unassuming, neither judge nor mediator, but a quiet buffer between us.

Mom and Bernabe never got married.

He was, and remains, her boyfriend. And yet, in time, he became something else entirely. A stepdad, if you like labels. He never presumed a fatherly role, he simply showed up - each time I needed help, without fanfare.

On more than one occasion, when I thanked him for running errands for me, he waved his hand and said: "Ugh! Don't say thank you. We are family."

Two months ago, I took my two Mom's to Portugal.

When we returned, I opened our fridge - I saw love.

The shelves were stocked with tofu, eggplants, bok choy, Chinese broccoli, kiwi, berries, lean meat - all the things that my mom eats, not the kind of groceries a man keeps for himself.

This photo is from 2014. But if I took it today, not much would be different.

Bernabe gave Mom & I a love story told in groceries and placemats.

[lingchung]

A Love Story Written by Algorithm & Bad Swipes

Work got me in a chokehold. No deep thoughts this week, just creativity.

--------

Bumble says: "Write a fun and punchy intro."

In 400 characters? Have you met me?

I say, no thanks to brevity. Let's try something else.

--------

I wish we met because I noticed how sharp and eloquent you were at a seminar, so I batted my eyelashes at you.

I wish we met when my clumsy foot stepped on yours in a coffee line and you smiled at my blush.

I wish we met when we finally broke the ice at the gym, "How many more sets have you got?"

But alas, we met in my online fairytale.

You did better than a polite, "Hi there!" and I reciprocated.

We volleyed. We bantered. We didn't drag it out. We met.

I was drawn to your humble magnificence. You didn't shout for attention. Beyond the looks (which yes, I noticed), you piqued my curiosity.

Later, I learned: I'm fire, you're earth. I burn, you contain. You're the structure, I wreak havoc. But you let me do so within your arms. You let me be unruly - but you know, I will always stay within your lines.

And so we continue calibrating......

What about the ending?

I'm waiting for you to co-create that plot twist.

Ps: you're marrying me, you just don't know it yet. 😉

[lingchung]

How Are You?

This week was brutal.

My creativity burst at the seams with a simple "How are you?"

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"I would like to tell you I won a medal for rescuing a kid from the river. Or that I challenged societal norms and overturned some sacred cows.

Truth is, I am one of the many millions in this metropolitan city called Toronto: engulfed in spreadsheets and dashes all day. Turning numbers into somewhat intelligent prose for our execs so that they can look smart in the upcoming board meeting. Stuffed my face with what seemed to be an endless supply of high-end office sweets and crunches (organic, may I add - they enslave us but they fatten us before pushing us through the conveyor belt to face our fate).

So this message is a redemption: to dig my right brain out of the hole. Deeply buried underneath the left.

Thankfully, a shovel job. Not a crane job. No construction crew needed, yet."

---------

Postscript, courtesy of my firefighter friend:

"Well written about your work day. We get a certificate for a rescue, medals are usually for when we almost die doing it."

Noted. Certificate-worthy, not medal-worthy yet.

[lingchung]

Messier, Not Messy

She was mercurial - volcanic in temper and quick to ignite. The children, intuitive as children were, learned early to tread softly. We made our way through the house like diplomats navigating a minefield.

We absorbed the lesson in silence:

Regulate your emotions. You're hurting us.

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He was, without question, one of the best things that had happened to me. I remember asking over lunch, casually, how he managed to finish his meal so placidly after his morning fender-bender.

"It was my fault," he said, lifting his cup. "No sense in taking it out on you."

We were in our twenties, barely out of school. He possessed a kind of poise that one usually earns at forty. I resolved, then and there, to emulate it.

I Protect Through Self-Containment

When he was about to break up with me, I sensed his jitters. I told him, "It's ok. I will be ok. You don't need to be so nervous. Breathe. Relax."

A different he: a year after our breakup, I told our mutual friend, "I harbour some resentment". She beamed, oddly triumphant. "Finally," she said. "You're always so positive about it - you should be upset!"

I've learned to contain myself to protect others. With enough repetition, even vigilance becomes second nature - I don't realize I'm doing it anymore.

It's Ok to Be Messy

I told my therapist, "I recognize how privileged I am."

I went off and listed all the things I was grateful for.

My therapist stopped me, "Does feeling grateful make you feel any better?"

I responded, "Nope".

She said, "Do you know that you often come into our therapy sessions with 90% of the work done already?"

She's right.

"You don't always need to do all the heavy lifting. I'm not your boss. You don't have to have it all sorted - it's ok to be messy."

Habitual writing has taught me to tie things up neatly. But perhaps not everything needs a bow.

My Thoughtfulness Cost Me Intimacy

Before I speak, I measure. I edit in my mind - clearing the junk, sanding the edges.

On big matters, my thoughts are always polished, never raw.

I can't even recall the last time I fought with a partner. With this much emotional regulation, I'm hard to fight with.

But somewhere along the way, I made a blind trade - I traded composure for intimacy.

My partners can't get through to me.

It's my own doing.

My Mid-Year Resolution is to be Messier

I don't need to be messy, but I can be messier.

[lingchung]

I Am His Muscle Memory

1999

Dewy-eyed, seventeen-year-old me scanned the high school volunteer job board. 1.5 years in, I finally felt somewhat settled in this new country. No family, no community, in Canada on my own, how do I sink roots?

That flyer on my high school volunteer board was how it started.

I was 17.

---------

I made it past the matching process.

John, my new buddy, hi!

Down syndrome, what was that?

No clue.

This was before people Googled things. The only legitimate use for the internet was ICQ and mIRC.

Down syndrome? I wasn't curious.

---------

My first visit?

Rough.

I said hi. He looked at me. And that was it. I smiled. I coaxed. I probed. I tried again. Nothing.

"Great. So this is it - my longest 2 hours ever, on repeat."

I was 17. What did I know about patience?

---------

We continued.

John began to smile back. He started responding to my prompts. He came alive when we played Shania Twain.

That was it. Music!

My visits became dance parties in his room.

We looked ridiculous. Nobody cared.

Singing and dancing became our thing.

---------

One day, John told his mom, "Today was such a good day. I went swimming at Variety Village and Ling came to visit."

The clouds parted.

I was not disposable. I mattered. I was the highlight of his week.

John gave me meaning.

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I grew up. I grew old.

From high school, to university, to early career, to mid career. I got busier.

Busy with university applications, busy with assignments, busy with parties, busy with dating, busy with breakups, busy with more non-profit work, busy with job search, busy with settling my mom, busy with my first home, busy with adulting.

I got busier, but I kept John.

For 22 years, I remained a constant. I was reliable. As reliable as a Big Mac is to a Canadian in Azerbaijan.

Then Covid hit.

I left the country for 9 months. I returned to Canada, but I didn't return to John.

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Freedom!

John no longer broke up my weekends. My weekends were 100% mine.

It felt great.

Until it didn't.

Is this it?

After 20+ years, I'm letting John go?

I pounced out of bed one night. I couldn't sleep.

I emailed John's mom,

"Can I take John out? I miss him."

---------

That day, John made pie with his mom.

He kept looking up, out the window towards the driveway.

He knew I was coming.

He was watching for my car to pull in.

Our reunion was not cinematic.

There were no tears. There were no grand gestures.

We hugged. And we went back to the day we parted 3.5 years earlier.

Doing the same things we always do.

We didn't need to try.

We didn't need to pull each other out of our memory banks. We didn't need to reacquaint. We didn't even need to talk.

We just were.

I am his muscle memory. And he is mine.

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John, I'm sorry it took me so long.

I promise, I won't throw you away again.

20XX Before Digital Camera

2009 John's

2012 Toronto Zoo

2013 John's Birthday

2020 Covid Zoom

2025 Edwards Garden

[lingchung]

Curious, Not Ambitious

The When-I-Work-Too-Much Version

People say I'm ambitious. I'm not.

I'm curious.

Work feeds my curious mind. It is a craft, not a task.

My work is not stereotypically creative. But I see the creativity in it.

You see numbers, I see patterns. You report on metrics, I tell a story.

Pay, advancement, awards, accolades...... output metrics, meh.

I care about the inputs. What interesting problems am I solving?

I push for advancement not for advancement's sake. Advancement is how I get to solve new problems.

Work has always been fun.

But I need a lot of space outside of work to nurse my creativity.

I work with a bunch of Tier 1 ex-management consultants and iBankers. 80 hour work weeks are a piece of cake for them.

Well, not for me.

The last two weeks, constantly pounding in front of my 14" MacBook, killed my muse.

I'm looking for that spark again.

-----

The Saturday-to-Myself Version

Dear Work,

You strangled my muse.

Don't take it personally. I still love you.

People treat you like some kind of shrine. Paycheques, promotions, awards. A holy trinity for grown-ups.

Not me. I treat you like a game, a puzzle. Something to keep my brain from turning into mush.

But goodness, you've been needy. You're on me all the time.

I go to bed with you, I wake up to you.

You're not much of a game recently.

You're becoming a production line. And I am the factory worker pulling gadgets off the line.

Now that's no fun.

When the hell am I supposed to dream?

You say you want dreams. You need dreams. Dreams make you interesting. Otherwise, you’re just spreadsheets and pie charts.

Boring. Like a beige wall.

You’ve got enough sharp, left-brain geniuses on payroll. All those ex-management-consultants and iBankers. Impressive. Efficient. They give you the best 4x4 matrices.

But you said you were different. You want more.

You promised me creativity, curiosity, chaos with a purpose.

Don't cling on to me.

Give me some air, and I’ll give you fireworks. The good kind. Grounded in numbers, but I will throw in ideas with teeth. With me on your payroll, you're not one dimensional.

Right now I'm chasing my muse down a back alley, fixing your boo-boo.

If I catch her, you'll know. She sets things on fire.

[lingchung]

Breakup #20-ish

I haven't decided how I want to show up today.

Earnest and heartfelt, or whimsical and hilarious.

Let's talk about my most recent breakup.

Breakups don't knock me out like a brick hits me in the head.

It's more like a fungal infection: omnipresent, low-grade, chronic.

Like mold exposure, I don't even know what hit me until I strip away the dry wall to find green gunks smirking at me,

"Peek-a-boo! I'm here. Took you this long. You sucker!"

2 months post breakup, the emotions still gnaw at me.

Two revelations:

We got into a power struggle very early on:

I wanted time and effort. He wanted me to fit into his jigsaw. It was never explicit - we are both low on the neuroticism scale, so Jerry Springer was simply not in the cards. I was subtle. He was subtle. It's easy to point fingers at him if you listen to our story. But the truth is, I fought him for power. It was almost indiscernible, but I perpetrated too.

Trauma took over:

Instead of communicating, I let go. Childhood imprint sinks deep: abandonment, detach.

This is my pattern: if initiated by him, I always walk, that's what I do - no questions, no dialogue.

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I don't regret #1. But I need to work on #2.

Trauma, I run the show. You step back.

I'm the boss. Next time, I lead.

[lingchung]

Think! God Damn It

I wonder if I’m reading too much and thinking too little.

Which is a strange thing to say, because reading is how I learned to fake thinking in the first place.

I suspect most of my 'thoughts' are rented; hand-me-downs from the smart or the dead.

Sometimes I open my mouth and Socrates falls out. Other times Tim Ferriss seems to possess my soul.

I talk like I own the ideas.

But I am just a parrot with a thesaurus and a reading / listening habit. A vivacious one, sure.

But still.

I mimic, I squawk, I repeat.

They tell me I’m smart.

But, it just means I can stitch together other people’s genius.

Original thoughts?

That muscle is somewhere beneath the flab of curated newsletters and youtube videos.

So when a work project says, “think!”

I stare into the abyss and the abyss emails me links to industry reports.

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Philosophy, I’m told, is about the search for fundamental truth. Challenging what is, breaking sacred cows.

Maybe I should try that.

I should stop piecing together jigsaw puzzles made of other people’s brilliance.

Cook up something dangerously new, dangerously mine.

This is why this blog exists - I'm training the monkeys in my head to write something real, something Ling.

[lingchung]

I Have Two Moms

One pushed me out of her vagina. Another raised me.

(Technically, I have three moms. One is now frolicking with the angels.)

I did not escape nature. Nor did I escape nurture. Two weeks in Portugal with both moms made it clear.

I have my birth mom's personality: boisterous, gritty, somewhat proletarian and uncouth, optimistic, risk-taking and naturally unencumbered. Picture loud laughter at dinners, big hand gestures, no filter.

I have my other mom's habits: we crave and fear the same types of food, we long to understand the world, we absorb information like sponges. Picture a dinner date who glides between philosophy, current events, culture and economics.

Despite the decorum, we sometimes explode.

The mom who raised me had her temperamental bouts. Us kids hated walking on eggshells. Now that I'm grown up and hold the power, I bullied my moms the same way she once bullied the powerless us 35 years ago.

I caught myself and snapped out of it.

I am my moms - every lovely, noisy, broken piece of them.

This trip was a mirror.

I looked, I flinched. Just a little bit.

Still sanding down the rough parts.

[lingchung]

Chastity Belt on My Head

It started with a harmless impulse, the kind a woman entertains on a fine Saturday afternoon.

I was bored. Restless. Looking for a change.

Novelty was the salvation I sought.

Alas, salvation I did not get.

Instead, as if to punish me, I was chewed up by suburbia and spit out looking like a Korean ajumma (middle aged woman).

A haircut gone awry is the perfect chastity belt.

It was so bad I went for a second haircut to salvage the wreckage.

Less disastrous now. I graduated to boyhood with my new bob.

The Universe is in on this: a big cosmic joke.

"Let’s make sure she never gets laid again," says the Sky.

Fine. I’ll hide.

[lingchung]

Don't Major In The Minors

I keep my books. I’ve done it for ten years. Every year I look at what I spent and what I made. I look at the changes. I look hard, like some kind of benevolent financial stalker.

I track every cent. The tools make it easy. Every year, I sit down with my ledger - okay, an app - and I ask it: “What the hell happened?” And it tells me. My friends laugh. I don’t care. I like knowing.

I do it for two reasons.

I set aside money like a squirrel buries acorns: I know my cashflow, I know how much I can put away. I set a stretch goal and I make it happen.

Expense creep? Nope! the more we make, the more we tend to spend. Maintaining my books keeps me from turning into a rich idiot who spends money like a broken fire hydrant. I like to believe I'm intentional. (I also like $3000 skin care treatments. Intentionality and overpriced treatments can coexist.)

Anyway, I did my 2024 financial review. On vacation. On a train in Portugal. Because apparently that’s where I do my best existential math.

And guess what?

I thought I was bleeding cash on laser treatments, fancy restaurants and my 26th pair of shoes. But when I looked closer, the damage was... well, tiny. Rounding errors. Blips.

Compared to my house purchase, investments, and interest rates, the extra spent on food and face cream is a rounding error.

Don't major in the minors.

There's only so much brain to go around. I strive to spend my finite mental energy on things that move the needle. $0.99 banana at Walmart vs $1.99 banana at Whole Foods? Pst. Hell with it.

Focus your attention on what moves the needle.

In life, it feels like everything matters. But look at the numbers. Only a few things ever really do.

[lingchung]

Oddly, I Feel Gratitude

One of my recent favourite books is Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture.

His humour amid life's adversity is an apt reminder of how one should live.

Something bad happens - but is bad truly 'bad'?

Maybe the Universe knows what to gift me better than I know what to ask for.

Career

I didn't get the job.

I pivoted. I convinced the hiring manager to let me do a short term assignment in that function. I am happy to put in my own time at night to take on the extra work to round out my skills.

My new manager was reluctant. He's still trying to figure out resourcing on his team since he just started this role. The idea of me dual-hatting doesn't sit right with him. I understand where he is coming from. But I asserted. I forced many uncomfortable conversations and shared my last 3 performance reviews with my new manager. In our most recent meeting, he told me, "You're clearly a high performer, and I will definitely lean on you in this role."

Without the job rejection and the subsequent career conversations, I would not have thought to share my performance reviews with my new manager. I didn't do this intentionally, but I planted a positive seed.

Also, I got my way with the short term assignment albeit at a later start date. I'm happy to compromise. The timing works out better for me anyways.

Mom

The doctor called yesterday. Mom has endometrium cancer and needs surgery pronto. We don't know what stage, how severe or when we will hear about next steps.

We are leaving for Portugal in 24 hours.

I'm so glad I planned this vacation and the vacation is scheduled for when it is serendipitously. I get to spoil my mom (and my aunt) just in time for what I know will be a successful surgery.

Relationship

I'm thankful he set me free. I spent my entire 20s and 30s dating with malleability. My friends joke that I've dated all colours of the rainbow. At this point, I know clearly the type of partner I need. If he cannot step up, set me free. The feeler in me will invest despite knowing the relationship is wrong. So, please leave, don't let me invest.

Home

I was engulfed in fear when my realtor presented me with real estate options outside of my budget. The negative cash flow jumped at me.

After calming down and churning out the numbers - I realize, what a privileged position I am in. Without a tenant and without a job, I have enough liquid equity to carry the investment property for 13 months.

The economic uncertainty is causing buyers to hesitate. Investment properties are not moving. Very few people have the gunpowder to buy right now - but I do.

I am very scared.

But I've always made big financial moves when people are scared.

The negative cash flow is not a negative, it's an opportunity.

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Shakespeare: 'There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.'

I choose good.

[lingchung]

Pi Day, Bye Day

3/14

"I think I'm not where I should be emotionally with this relationship"

With that, he ended it.

I'm not sure if it's because he's simply not into me, or if his work is so all-consuming that he can't date. Or perhaps he wants to date someone logistically easier who meshes into his schedule more than I do.

I didn't ask.

His actions over the last 1.5 months showed that I was not a priority.

It stung. We've only seen each other five times over the last 1.5 months. The emotional investment was still capped. So, I'm okay.

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I still wonder what he's up to. Is he back on the apps? Already seeing someone new?

That urge to know is still there, but it's far lower than in my previous relationships.

I wonder if this is an indication of my growth. Maybe my regular meditation practice is helping me stay centered. Alternatively, the relationship may have been too short, peppered with red flags along the way - making it hard for me to be fully engulfed post breakup.

Regardless, I'm beginning to grasp and live this:

Why put myself through the sting of grieving the loss of us - and then the second sting of knowing he could be seeing someone else? That he could have chosen someone else over me?

I don't need to put myself through that sting twice. Once is enough.

Recognizing this helps me counter the need to find out what he's up to. I choose my peace, which remains largely in tact.

------

My heart remains full. I am still ready, still open. I look forward to my next relationship, I know he will be awesome.

Pi Day, Bye Day.

0 notes

[lingchung]

John, I Miss You

John flashed through my head again.

Context: About John & I

I haven't seen John since Covid. For over twenty years, I visited John regularly - from weekly visits when we were teenagers, to about twice a month when I entered adulthood.

I stopped during Covid. I haven't seen John for three years. I have never gone this long without seeing John since I started my visits in 1999.

When I think about John in our no-contact state, I feel a palette of emotions: affection, nostalgia and... guilt. I abandoned John after twenty years. Covid gave me an easy excuse to phase out of his life. Committing to biweekly visits is a big time-suck when I am already constantly racing against time.

I know what I mean to John.

Hence I am overwhelmed by guilt whenever I reflect on my convenient 'phase-out'.

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Two nights ago, John flashed through my head again.

Is John still living in the group home? Is there someone who sings and dances with John in my absence? Is the Ker family doing well?

The next day, I emailed John's mom.

I asked to see John again. At this stage of my life, it's hard to commit to regular visits like I once did. But I'd still like to take John out on an ad hoc basis - I want John in my life - he has a special place in my heart.

My email was met with excitement from John's mom. I'm going to take John out when the weather gets warmer.

I don't know what took me so long to reach out. But one thing is for sure: I am glad that I did.

John, I miss you.

[lingchung]

I Took Him To...

My ex asked me where I was taking him to, I responded with:

Kids of the 90s. Pixels. Colours. Neon lights. Convergence of forgotten classics. Escape. Youth. Friendship. Nostalgia. Celebrate the us who once were.

I took him to an arcade bar

Here's another one for a different man:

Colours. Soundscape. Juxtaposition of worlds, yours and theirs. Big city living. Underground eclecticism. Tourists in our backyard. Kisses in the alleyway. Hot man. Me. Imaginings.

I took him to an art battle.

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Forever is very long. I enjoy peppering my relationships with exploration and creativity.

I strive to have a fun forever, not a forever weighted down with nothing but adult obligations.

If I can not see the fun in my forever, he's not it.

[lingchung]

I'm In My Matilda Moment

It's a sense of joy that emanates from within, not reliant on external distraction or validation.

I don't have the perfect formula that got me here. If I did, I would bottle it and gift it to my friends.

Perhaps it's my fitness. Or perhaps it's letting go of my fitness - it's ok to miss my activity goals once in a while.

Perhaps it's my daily ten-minute meditation. Or perhaps it's letting go of time - I can find the time to meditate despite the running to-do's.

Perhaps it's responding to curt clinic staff with a smile. Or perhaps it's realizing I don't have to meet people where they are at - I can stay true to me.

I'm at my bliss point. I call this my Matilda moment.

Close to a year later, I'm here.

Related Post: My Matilda Moment