Tag: well-being

Enjoying the Warm Weather With a Bicycle Ride

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Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4.5, 1/2900 sec, ISO200
 “Kites” Cedar Park, 2021

This afternoon I took advantage of the warm weather to go for a long bicycle ride along Brushy Creek Regional Trail. When I ride on this busy path, I wear my mask 95% of the time. Of course I want to be safe during this COVID-19 pandemic, but also, it helps with allergies (as my brother reminded me). Besides wearing my mask, I also held my breath most of the times I passed by people. By riding on the relatively busy trail, I’m taking a risk, but I think wearing a mask, wearing glasses (yes, there’s a study that says this helps with safety), keeping socially distant when possible, and also holding my breath when passing people, I think the chance of catching COVID-19 is very small.

That being said, it was nice to see a lot of bicycles on the trail, from little kids to older folks. I even saw some teens cosplaying and wearing elf ears! The weather was very nice: low 70s, cloudy, with a gentle breeze. It was really cool to see kites flying above the park! By the way, it wasn’t as ominous as the photo above looks – but it’s just too fun to play with the post-processing in Adobe Lightroom. 😄

I’m happy that I live close enough to this trail that I can bicycle from my house and be there in 10 minutes or so. But even if I didn’t live close, it’s easy to access the trail by car at many points along the route.

At the eastern terminus of the trail I took a photo with my bike. Several years ago, I took a photo at the same place, so I thought it might be nice to do so again.

Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4.5, 1/100 sec, ISO320
 “End of Trail” Cedar Park, 2021

I recorded this ride on my GoPro, so please join me (virtually) on the trail if you have time:

I hope you had a great day!

Slice of Life Blogging

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I like this post from artist and author Austin Kleon about how today’s mundane and boring items might become interesting in the future. It’s kind of how I’ve approached my blog for a while now. There’s nothing earth-shattering or click-worthy in my slice-of-life posts, but they may be of interest in the future, specifically to my descendants that I will never know.

Several years ago, I realized that I don’t know anything about my great grandparents besides their names, and it made sad. I would love to know how they lived… even reading some of their journal pages would be super-interesting to me! So perhaps one of my descendants would enjoy reading about our lives from the early 21st century.

What you think is boring now may be interesting in the future

In the spirit of this slice-of-life mindset, here’s a little video I made of my morning routine… putting away the dishes and making coffee in the company of our cat, Anko:

I hope you have a great day!

Writing by Hand

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Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/4.5, 1/80 sec, ISO3200
 “Green” Cedar Park, 2021

Today’s snapshot if of my Pilot Kakuno and Iroshizuku Chiku-rin ink. I am really enjoying this combination!

For 2021 (and for the previous month) I’ve been writing and doodling in my Traveler’s Notebook. It’s a fun experience, and very different for digital note-taking and drawing for me. I think digital has many advantages over analog, but writing by hand is kind of… heartwarming? Good for the soul? A connection to reality? I can’t explain so well, but I think it adds something positive to my daily life and rounds out my well-being.

Relax and Recharge (and Thoughts About Work-Life Balance)

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Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/2, 1/100 sec, ISO800
 “Reading and Relaxing” Cedar Park, 2020

I officially have the entire week off from work, so I’m using it to relax, unwind, and play games. But I also check in with work a little bit which is fine.

In the past I would feel bad about checking my work laptop on weekends or days off, thinking that I needed a hard separation between home-life and work-life. Not just separating it with physical space or actions, but also in my thinking. For instance, if I was doing something mundane at home like taking a shower or folding laundry and a thought about work comes into my mind, I’d feel guilty, as if it was encroaching on my space. But beginning a couple of years ago, I found myself letting go of that guilt… it wasn’t really a concerted effort on my part, but I just realized that I didn’t feel bad about it anymore. And it felt great, as if a weight were lifted off my shoulders. ☺

My work involves visual design, and I find that creativity isn’t bound by the 9 to 5 workday. Some days I am just not that productive creatively, but often when I’m doing mundane things outside of work hours, I think about design challenges and formulate some solutions or things to explore when I do start my workday. Why shouldn’t I take advantage of these moments of creative insight? It’s more stressful to force myself to be creative exclusively during my work hours like I used to do. Now, thinking about work outside of work hours isn’t a negative, but a positive thing.

Letting go of that guilt has been liberating. Of course I still prioritize family at all times, but I can’t deny that work is a large part of my life, so I might as well embrace the fact that it always will take up some of my headspace and use it to my advantage.

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Today’s photo is of Bay, reading and relaxing in the massage chair. He’s on winter break from college and it’s been so nice to have him home!

“I Don’t See Color”

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I was reading a thread in a forum, and one of the commenters said “I don’t see color”, with the intention of conveying that race shouldn’t matter. Honestly, I thought this was an admirable sentiment, but soon learned how problematic this phrase is. I spent some time reading about the reasons why, and I now consider myself a bit more educated than I was a little while ago. I’m linking the articles below:

After 51-years of life, I’m still figuring out what it means to be mixed/multiple-ethnicity. It’s complicated, but fascinating, and surprisingly challenging to find information or groups that discuss mixed-Asian ethnicity (Asian-Asian, not Asian-Caucasian, Asian-Black, etc.).

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On a side note, the original commenter’s reaction to the links to the articles was defensive and hostile, instantly devolving into name-calling and personal attacks. Which reminds me of the saying, “when you resort to ad hominem attacks, you’ve already lost”, as in the entertaining feud between James Altucher and Jerry Seinfeld.