Chris loves to harp on me and tell me that because I tend to think negative thoughts, it’s no wonder that I oftentimes have dreams that are full of conflict. I’m usually fighting with someone, having a passive aggressive interaction with another person, or even beating someone. The funny thing about this is that this actually hasn’t happened in a few months. I haven’t remembered any dream that has any real conflict in it. Now, I tend to have dreams about relatively benign or everyday things: going grocery shopping, sorting through items in the cupboard, even measuring out ingredients.

But then, last night, I had a weird dream that did not sit well: my mom called to tell me she got diagnosed with cancer. It felt so real when it happened that I actually thought it was real… until I woke up. And then, when I woke up, I wondered whether my mom actually DID have cancer and just wasn’t telling me.. because that actually sounds like something she would do in real life… and not tell me until it was too late.

I stumbled upon Laila Lalami’s book Conditional Citizens, which was released in September 2020, while reading reviews for another book on race relations in the U.S., a few months ago. Being Muslim and Moroccan, and having been educated in Morocco, the United Kingdom, and here in the U.S., Laila Lalami has an interesting and in depth perspective of what it means to be an immigrant in this country and to somehow always still be considered “other” and “conditionally American” despite having citizenship status now. In her short but well-thought out book, she weaves personal stories with facts from throughout human history, and it’s almost like you’re listening to a thoughtful lecture when reading the book.

I think this is also on the list of books everyone should read. It’s for people who believe that people “choose” to see race in everything. It’s for people who believe that racism no longer exists. It’s for people who believe that it’s a choice in this country to be rich or poor. It’s for individuals who think that if you work hard, you will achieve everything your heart desires, and if you do not, you will live surrounded in roaches and squalor. It’s for people who have chosen to turn a blind eye in the role that U.S. government has actively played in past, present, and future, in continuing the disempowerment of poor people. It’s for those who believe in the national myth that poverty is 100 percent in an individual’s control, and that the concept of “living paycheck to paycheck” is an actual choice. It’s for those who believe that for the most part, everyone treats everyone else equally regardless of race, sex/gender, religion, yet has no problem asking a non-White person, “Where are you really from?”

Today, I had the day off because my company gave us a Wellness Day today. And even better news is that I have the day off on Monday, as well, for Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, so all in all, this weekend will be a four-day weekend, with tomorrow’s procedure and my birthday on Sunday. And on my day off, what did I do? I went down to Chinatown to stock up on ingredients, produce, and baked goods, and also get the apartment ready for my bedrest day tomorrow post procedure. I cleaned the bathroom (because honestly, Chris’s bathroom cleaning methods are just never up to par) even though I’ve read that most women don’t do any housework before the procedure and instead rest until the day of for their entire period of stimulations. I even made Instant Pot chicken pho because I read that some women cannot eat solids after the procedure, so they subsist on soup and light foods for up to a week after the procedure. I even prepped a bunch of vegetables to make sure we had greens to eat for at least 4-5 days after. I think we’re all ready.

I’ve been relatively calm during this period of “stims” as they call it. I’ve been fairly positive and optimistic. All my appointments seemed to go well. I’ve been consistent with my daily meditations and exercise, although the exercise, as advised, as gotten lighter as we’ve gotten closer to retrieval day. I’m lucky in that I have not had any bad side effects from the medications. Common side effects include nausea, vomiting, headaches, migraines, stomach protrusion/swelling, and especially mood swings. Many women have reported crying frequently or having excessive arguments or tantrums with family/friends/their partners, including friends who have gone through this. I’ve encountered none of these symptoms. The worst symptoms I’ve had, which I cannot complain about at all, are slight soreness at the site of injection immediately afterwards, plus some slight bruising. I feel decent. I think I will be okay. I can do this. I’m going to do this.

I’m ready for tomorrow morning.

I really do not think any woman ever looks at their life path, at any point of their life, and thinks, “Yay! One day, I’m gonna do fertility treatments/IUI/IVF! I CAN’T WAIT!” It’s not a decision that any woman would make with a light heart, and it’s one that requires a massive emotional, mental, and in almost all cases, some financial burden and stress. Unfortunately, I’m currently in that boat right now, and it… is disheartening, to say the very least.

Over the years, I’ve met and am friends with many women who have had many types of fertility treatments, whether it was surgeries with their Fallopian tubes or uterus, IUI, IVF, and everything in between. I follow bloggers who openly talk about their fertility struggles and journeys. I also have a good friend who recently went through IVF and gave birth via the IVF process. But I guess what I never really thought much about before I was actually in this situation was how lonely it can feel. You have to go to all these appointments on your own. You have to keep track of schedules and medications and insurance and pharmacies. You have to do all these things all by yourself even when multiple doctors have told you after many (costly) tests that nothing is “wrong” with you, and that you’re in “optimal health.” In their eyes, I am “young and healthy.” It is infuriating, lonely, terrifying, and deeply unnerving.

I’m not really the kind of person who gets jealous easily. When I see other women with babies or hear of other people getting pregnant, I don’t really feel anything. For my own friends and colleagues, I am genuinely happy for them because I logically know that their situation has zero to do with mine. Everyone should have all the happiness in their life that they deserve. But what bothers me is when I try to share my own experiences with some close friends, particularly ones who have gone through their own fertility struggles, with the hope of seeking empathy and support, and instead, I am turned away, reminded of my privileges from a health insurance standpoint or that I “am so lucky” to be in the situation that I am in now.

I told this to one of my friends recently who gave birth last year to her first and only child, and she said to me, “Geez, Yvonne, this isn’t the privilege Olympics. You’re allowed to be scared and confused and upset and stressed.” For some people, she said, it doesn’t matter how much hardship they go through, even if it’s the same kind of hardship you are currently going through, but they just “lack an empathy chip.”

Joining infertility support groups was supposed to help, but that, while it has given me some more insight into issues like side effects and emotions, has also possibly increased the level of worry because a lot of the people posting have “worst case scenarios” that I do not necessarily want to be bombarded by. I am aware of all these worst case scenarios, as nothing in life is guaranteed, but I do not want to read these stories over and over in my feed because then, on some subconscious level, I may think that may end up happening to ME.

It’s unfair and infuriating to me that women and women alone have to go through this burden, that the most men will never have to do in this journey, even when male factor fertility is the supposed cause, is masturbate into a cup and make sure their semen sample doesn’t miss the cup. The world of infertility is only a further reminder to me how much more women have to bear the brunt of in this sexist world, and how we will continue to do so until there actually is some real, tangible change in society… and SCIENCE.

It’s day 4 of the new year, and I’ve already finished my first book of 2021: The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. You might know who Ben Horowtiz if you are familiar with the tech industry, as he’s a tech entrepreneur and also the co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, also known as a16z since they didn’t think anyone would be able to spell all THAT out in a URL.

If you read a lot of the reviews for this book, they will say that you probably shouldn’t read this book unless you are either a CEO, planning to be a CEO, or planning to be part of a C-Suite of SOME company. I think those reviewers are idiots because there’s a lot that can be learned from someone who has successfully sold companies and started his own company to fund and back OTHER companies.

For me, I have zero desire or aspiration to become a C-Suite anything or a CEO. I have little ambitions, frankly, for moving up the ladder in the tech industry. For me, as long as I am earning what I want and my earnings are growing, and I work at a company where I actually enjoy the customers and my colleagues, that’s all that really matters to me at this point. Reading this book did help me reflect more on all the companies I’ve previously worked at, along with all the shitty, embarrassing leadership decisions that were made across the board, and for better or worse, it made me realize in hindsight all the stupidity of the people I once worked with before I even realized it was stupid. It also made me breath a huge sigh of relief that I am where I am today and at a company that I really, genuinely think is the best place I have worked to date. This place is not without problems, but it’s such a far cry from the places I’ve been employed at previously.

Thank goodness. Thank goodness.

I generally do not believe in New Year’s resolutions because for the most part, the vast majority of people who tend to set them will fail. Why do I say that? Don’t I just sound like an asshole for saying something so cynical? Well, yes and no, but what I’m saying is rooted in data. Depending on the data source you want to use, anywhere from 70 to 80 percent of people will give up on their New Year’s resolutions by February. They’ll have a “clean eating” January, forgo carbs, or hit the gym regularly every week of January, feel some level of self satisfaction, and then stop. Then, they will spend the rest of the year complaining that they do not have time to do things like go to the gym, work out, meal plan, etc. The stream of excuses and blaming never stops for most people.

When I joined my new company in September, I found out that one of my employment perks was free access to Headspace, a popular meditation app. I decided to download it and give it a try. I’d previously tried live sessions of meditation via Meetups I’d attended, but they didn’t really work for me. The group meditation intimidated me. I had weird visualizations around the time I tried this when my brother passed away. Meditation freaked me out. The idea of focusing on one’s breath seemed boring, difficult, and terrifying all at once. My mind wonders a lot, and as anyone who has ever lived with me can attest to, I have a very hard time sitting still and just doing one thing (Chris loves to say I love to “fuff” – is that even a word…?!). I also am a little bit overly obsessed with productivity and efficiency. If I spend time meditating, that feels like… I’ve wasted time. Or, so I previously thought.

I used the app on and off since October, but I finally started being regular about it mid-December, and I realized it actually did have a bit of a calming effect on me. It’s certainly challenging to clear one’s mind, and it’s an ongoing struggle, but what, in life, is worth having without a challenge? Since then, I’ve spent about 10-15 per day meditating. Sometimes, it’s in the morning after my workout. Most of the time recently, it’s been shortly after dinner or before bed. But that quiet time has actually helped me feel a bit more calm and grounded in the total calamity of U.S. political bullshit, this worldwide pandemic, and some personal challenges I’ve been facing.

So I guess you could say that this isn’t really a New Year’s resolution since I started being regular about it in December, but just a goal for myself to meditate every day. It may initially feel like it’s not doing anything, but afterwards, I always feel a little better and less tense. Meditation requires extreme dedication and focus, and… unless you are willing to commit to that, this probably will not be for you.

Given the current climate we are living in regarding racial injustice, I’ve been thinking a lot about the book I just finished reading by the historian Ibram X. Kendi called How to Be An Antiracist and about my own experiences as a person of color in White America. One of the ideas that Kendi discusses in the book is that people oftentimes think that racism came after race was defined, but he argues that actually, racism came first, which was what brought about the need to categorize people in different racial groups. White people saw people on the African continent and thought they looked different, therefore they pillaged and made them slaves simply because of skin color. When Asians tried immigrating to the U.S. and tried to define themselves as “white” (so as not to be considered the “colored” or “Negro” folks, as they called them then), the white ruling class shot them down and said, NOPE! You’re colored, too! We don’t want to employ you because of how you look; you need to be below us. All human beings’ DNA is 99.9% the same, and this is a scientific fact. So if we know this, the desire to then take what is 0.1% different is based on a need to create a hierarchy of socially constructed groups to elevate some and oppress others. The saddest part about this reality is that whoever is the majority, whoever is the “dominant” group then has to “approve” whether the oppressed group can get their rights. That was the way it was with women’s suffrage — men had to grant the right to vote to women. Yes, women fought for it and weren’t handed it on a silver platter. But the “ruling party” had to “approve it.” It was the way it was in 1865 when slavery was abolished; black slaves didn’t “free” themselves and make the law; they fought for it, and they had white allies (well, sort of. This is more complicated) fighting for them. It will continue to be the way we live until… forever. It will require a lot of protesting and a lot of noise to get there, as all these changes did, but that “white approval” actually has to happen. That is such a depressing thought.

During quarantine, we’ve started watching a few new short series on Netflix (Taco Chronicles was pretty delicious, and it was fun to think that the taco was actually talking to us), but one new show we started watching on Showtime has been Billions. I wasn’t sure I was going to like a show about greedy people who work at hedge funds, but I was quickly proven wrong when I met the characters and realized how well written they were. The character development is very nuanced and real. Like in real life, I don’t really fully like or dislike any of the characters; there are things to love and hate about all of them. One of the characters I have yet to fully decide on is Taylor, who was an intern at Axe Capital and is now working on a contract week to week since she thought at the end of her internship, she’d leave for grad school. I actually had a dream about her, that she was trying to win me over, and to attempt to do this, she offered to take me out to any restaurant I wanted to visit. I insisted it didn’t need to be extremely expensive or fancy, and she insisted back that it was her treat, and any place was on the table. Even if I didn’t think we could get a reservation, she’d work connections and make it happen.

Then, I woke up. That’s the life of having a crap ton of money, huh? Money and connections just open all doors for you, and nothing is out of your reach?

I spent over three hours tonight catching up with a friend on old TV shows, books, and podcasts. We talked about our experiences with others dealing with our mixed ethnicities/backgrounds and talked about different religions and how they view the world. I spent much longer on the Zoom chat than I thought I would, but I think it’s because I just found the conversation very stimulating. It actually made me think, particularly about topics and issues I don’t constantly think about day to day. Those are the types of conversations that seem to be lacking in my usual day-to-day, whether that’s with friends, family, or colleagues. I rarely hear anything that provokes me to stop and think, to really dig into how I feel about something.

But I think, even on a more basic level, it’s really refreshing and fun just to talk about books we’ve read, why we love them, and what they mean to us. Too often, and maybe it’s partly due to the context in which we are discussing, but when people talk about books, all that is really said is whether the person liked or didn’t like the book, whether they would or would not recommend it. There’s no conversation around what the actual plot line is in more than sentence. There’s no talk about the meaning of the characters, the nuance of the characters themselves and their personalities. There’s no depth in the discussion, if you even want to call it a discussion. I hate it when friends try to give me book recommendations, and all they do is say they liked the book, think I would enjoy it, and just leave me with the title. In many of these cases, I actually did read the book and hated it. Many of these books were books I never even finished because I found them so unbearably insipid. One of them is sitting in my Kindle, 43 percent finished, but will likely never get finished because so many other books are far more interesting to me.

I now have two friends I’ve met in the last few years who are both avid readers and have similar tastes in books that I do, so it’s been fun to talk about these works with them and see what gets them going. These are the types of people I need in my life.

Since visiting the continent of Africa and exploring South Africa in December 2017, I started thinking a lot about the Western European/white bias of the entire world we live in, from education to politics to art. I thought a lot about it throughout school, especially when studying art history (that was the thickest, heaviest textbook I ever used, and our teacher said that since the Advanced Placement college-level exam didn’t cover the Asian or African continents that we’d skip over those chapters. Those chapters were HUGE — they basically were half the weight of those textbooks!). In English, our focus was about 99 percent on American or European authors. When we did have the option to read books of our choice, the consideration list was always limited when it came to works from Africa, Asia, or Central/South America. Oceania basically didn’t exist from a literature standpoint. It was unbelievably depressing and made me feel like outside of Western Europe and North America, no where else really mattered or had “high status.”

As an adults, though, we have the responsibility to ourselves and our communities to self-educate and learn about these other areas… assuming we actually care. I’ve tried to read more and educate myself more to make up for the crappy biases I’ve been raised with. It’s definitely an effort.

I think one major benefit of Trevor Noah taking over as the host of The Daily Show is that he’s showcased so many guests of many backgrounds that normally would not get a spotlight like this. One of the guests he interviewed a while back was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian author who splits her time between the U.S. and Nigeria, and writes novels and short stories. She writes about the perception of race across different countries and what feminism means — not directly, but more indirectly. Her direct acknowledgement of the importance of feminism in society comes out a lot more strongly in her interviews. One of her books, Americanah, was a New York Times bestseller, and has been on my reading list for a while. I finally got it from the NYPL and had it sent to my Kindle this past week, and from the first page, I was in love with it. It’s honest, raw, poetic, colorful — you really feel what the characters are feeling. The writing draws you in immediately, and her commentary on black American vs. black Nigerian attitudes, perspectives, and how the world views them is so pointed. I personally think that if we had books like this as assigned reading in school throughout K-12 and beyond, we’d have a more well-rounded education that incorporated more viewpoints around issues that, well, are still a challenge we all face today. We’d be more open-minded, less in denial of things like racism, sexism, classicism, and inequality.