Portland prides itself for being the Soccer City, USA. We got tickets to the watch party at Providence Park earlier this week.
It’s been a fun month of football, and made me think of what it was like to be in Seoul during the 2002 World Cup. I wish I kept more photos of that crazy month, going to watch parties on the streets of Gwanghwamun (광화문), city hall square (시청광장), and Shinchon (신촌). Everyone had a red ‘Be the Reds’ shirt on and took to the streets to watch and celebrate with each other.
The only photographic evidence of 2002 world cup in my possession, taken with LOMO LC-A on Seoul metro line 1.
For a few weeks, I was distracted with the thought of going back to the daily grind. I opened LinkedIn. The past, corporate me and its cobweb of loose connections came into light, full of dust, stared back at me. My past self positioned her torso about 30 degrees away from the camera. She had a bright smile and sparkly eyes soaked in artificial confidence and empty ambition.
“You have no idea what’s about to hit you, do you?” I thought to myself.
I dreaded the thought of needing to update it. Bad enough to ask LLMs to rewrite some of the already cringeworthy descriptions into something even more wince-inducing. My feed was inundated with heartfelt advice on how to frame yourself as AI-forward in this golden era we are in. Everyone had their 2-cents. Why doesn’t someone collect everyone’s 2-cents and turn it into a buck? Wait, there’s probably an AI agent already doing that.
I applied for one role. The appeal of this particular one was the location. I could bike there under 20 minutes. But after going through the excruciating process of applying for one, it was too easy to get distracted with more. The allure of a regular cadence of life that someone else established for you (or forced upon you) was hard to resist.
It’s been a month, and there’s nothing to show for, as expected. Nonetheless, it was a good exercise to put myself through. Because I realized it no longer gave me panic attacks to dig through the memories of my 6 years at that wild place.
Yesterday was my 5th Write Around Portland workshop session at Powell’s. A few of us were missing, so it was a small group. After we wrapped our 2-hour session, someone asked how everyone found out about this workshop.
“Instagram ad got me.”
“What? Me, too!”
Turned out, all of us, including the facilitator, got connected to Write Around PDX after seeing something on Instagram. Pretty incredible (and telling) given how wide our (assumed) age range is, 20s to 60s. All the cool kids use something else, but everyone at least has an account.
I recently discovered I can do a multiple exposure shot on my Ricoh GR4. Experimenting with stacking different patterns, directionalities, and textures has been fun.
I keep thinking about the brochure my friend JY brought back from her summer in Santa Barbara when we were in the 8th grade. There was a horse taking carrots from a girl’s hand, red, yellow, and blue water slides on giant lawns, a boy with sun-bleached hair, translucent blue eyes, and a huge smile catching a football in the field, and a big group of kids and their chaperones posing in front of a towering Ferris wheel under the orange and purple sky.
Every single image was drenched in the golden sun, dripping with vivid colors. I traced the pictures with my fingertip. My whole body ached, craving a crayon-colored summer in a place far away from home. I held the brochure on my chest as if it were my golden ticket to the wonderful new world. Only two thousand dollars for the whole summer, she said…only two thousand dollars. That was a ticket we could not afford. I carefully folded the brochure and slipped it into the plastic sheath of my scrapbook.
I saw this book called ‘Life after Ambition‘ by Amil Niazi at Powell’s the other day. I haven’t read it yet, but the title alone resonated with me. It sounds like the life I have now, a post-ambition life.
I left tech in October 2022. I thought I would take a brief break, a sabbatical. And then back to the daily grind, right? I went to school for far too long to really quit. To use my engineering Ph.D. for only 11 years seemed like a poor return on investment. Okay, those years burnt me out and gave me cancer. But I was certain I would recover, come back to my senses, and go back. Because that’s what ambitious Asian kids were supposed to do. I WAS one.
Well, I never went back. A lifetime has passed by tech industry standards. Here’s what I traded in, along with the shiny job title and a stupid amount of stock. Proving the value of my existence daily. Explaining why humans matter more than the accuracy of a prediction model. Daily dose of microaggressions. And the morning ritual of putting on a thick armor of plastic smile, sarcastic hitback, and a veneer of confidence.
I now live a sheltered life. I simply exist. And that’s good enough for now.
Wandering Lights 