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.

There have been some real gems on Twitter when it comes to commentary on what people are choosing to post on Facebook and Instagram during COVID-19. The three biggest areas that I’ve seen an increase are:

1. Cooking posts/pictures from people who normally NEVER cook or bake.
2. Workout videos showcasing people working out at home in a confined space.
3. Screen shots or videos of people’s Zoom catch-ups with friends and family.

For #1, these people are clearly seeking out praise for going to what has been to them pre-COVID-19, “uncharted territory.” Congratulations on actually being a freaking adult finally and learning how to cook for yourself. I’m actually happy that people who refuse to cook, think they are too good to cook, or just insist on using the excuse that they’d be a lousy cook to not cook are actually PUSHED to cook during this current sheltering-in-place. Stop being stubborn and emperor-like and grow the f*** up.

For #2, no one cares about your home workouts because guess what? Assuming you exercise and want to continue exercising during this period, home is the only place where ANY of us are working out. The only exceptions to this is people who go running.

Lastly, for #3, this is where people who love to post group pictures of their brunches, picnics, friends’ outings, etc., come in. They are so devastated by not being able to have a social calendar to fill up for the next six months that this is their survival tactic. By posting a Zoom screen shot of all the different faces of people you consider your friends, you are trying to show your “network” that you do value human connections and HAVE people in your life who actually want to catch up with you and your mundane life today. You are not a loner. Scream that out via your Zoom video.

This is a tough time for everyone. Tough times are when people show their true colors, though, their grittiness, their vulnerabilities, their insecurities. I just find it completely predictable for some people how they choose to share this via social media.

Once upon a time, in a day and age of Facebook, Instagram, and social media, when everyone wants everyone else to know what they are doing and thinking at all times (what am I wearing today? >> OOTO, aka “outfit of the day,”; where am I traveling to? What am I reading (news articles, features, books, etc.); what am I celebrating? Who am I dating? How much do I love my mom that I need to write a really gushy, overly affectionate post about her on Mother’s Day?), we lived in an era of FOMO, aka “fear of missing out.” That person is getting engaged or married, so why am I single? All my colleagues are getting pregnant, so why am I not having a baby? My friend seems to be on a holiday around the world every two months; where do they get that kind of money and time off, and why can’t I have that life?! Because of social media, many of us have been left feeling even more lonely (as ironic as that sounds), as though our lives aren’t measuring up because of all the fancy and amazing posts those we know are posting. Our lives suck in comparison. WHY IS THIS THE CASE?

But now, fast forward to today, or rather, in the U.S., the last six weeks. Anyone who lives in a city that has leadership that actually cares about them is enforcing social distancing and sheltering in place. This means that there’s really no more FOMO anymore, unless “FOMO” means you are jealous of what someone is making for dinner, how much more bubbly your friend’s sourdough starter is, or the fact that your colleague somehow was insanely productive the last six weeks and nearly mastered piano/Japanese/doing the splits/something else that generally takes a lot of time, energy, and perseverance. No one is traveling the world. No one is going on crazy business trips to exotic places. No one is running marathons. No one is having some lavish first birthday party complete with a professional photographer, videographer, caterer, and balloon artist. No one is getting married because the courthouses are closed (the engagements are still happening, but well….).

All of that has been replaced with FOGO, or “fear of going out.” If we go out, will our friends, family, and colleagues judge us? If we leave our houses, will we get coughed on or catch the Coronavirus just by touching a shopping cart at Wegman’s or Trader Joe’s? If we get takeout or delivery from our favorite restaurant, are we actually helping a small business survive, or are we putting their workers more at risk for catching the virus?

All of social media is now: comparing grocery hauls and what we were able to buy or not buy (“Duane Reade ran out of toilet paper!” “THERE’S NO MORE DRY ACTIVE YEAST OR FLOUR AT Whole Foods!” “OMG, I finally scored a dozen eggs on my fifth try at Trader Joe’s!” Oh, and there’s also the super Type As who are being crazy productive, doing home improvements like rearranging furniture and redecorating, creating make-shift home offices that look like they came out of a Pottery Barn catalog, and those who have started the most intense art projects ever (mosaics made out of pistachio shells, wine bottle corks, and recycled colorful paper, anyone?).

If life ever returns to “normal” again, how will that new “normal” be redefined, and how long will FOGO return back to FOMO?

Last night, Chris and I went to 59 E 59 Theater for their Summer Shorts, Series B plays, which are a compilation of short plays that this theater does several series of each summer. Of the three short plays that we watched, the last one entitled Appomattox, was the one that still lingered in my mind after we left. The story line is simple: two friends, one black and one white, get together for a picnic lunch and some catch, and they immediately get into a conversation about life and history that touches upon the idea of reparations for slavery at a university and whether this is a good idea or not. And then they break it down: what is the cost that is being paid by student, and what is the price, if there is one, that could ever fully compensate and make up for the 300+ years of slavery and mistreatment of black people in America?

The black friend responds to his white friend and says there really is no cost that makes sense, but if there were a cost, it should be something that “hurts.” It shouldn’t be an easy payment or something we wouldn’t think about because it would be automatically deducted from our paycheck without us ever seeing it. It should inflict pain on those who are paying it to acknowledge the pain of slavery and its lingering after effects into today.

It’s a relevant topic with many pertinent questions to today, especially as we hear members of Congress debate this very point. Does it make sense to pay descendants of slaves many generations down the line? What cost would be considered appropriate, if any? How would the distribution of these funds be handled, and who exactly would be paying for these?

I don’t think any cost would be “enough.” What would be enough? If we could remove all the harmful racial stereotypes, the police brutality of unarmed black men and women, if we could completely and fully desegregate schools and neighborhoods around this country; if we could abolish gerrymandering and and allow people their true voting rights regardless of their skin color or where they live; if we could eliminate all the systemic racism that this country seems to accept blindly every single day as “normal.”

I don’t have faith that this will happen in my lifetime, or even the next, though.