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.

Today, Chris picked up our Chinese visas from the consulate office. We both got approved for 10-year, multiple entry visas, and we’ll begin using that visa at the end of this June.

I feel a bit conflicted about going back to China. Although I am excited to see places I haven’t been before like Beijing, Chengdu, and Hangzhou, and also interested in seeing how much Shanghai has changed in the last 13 years, I can’t help but already feel annoyed at how on guard I will have to be there, about everything from people spitting everywhere and missing me (this happened even while in the visa line at the Consulate on Monday), people trying to rip me off or take me on a longer taxi route, and in general, the rudeness that is oftentimes associated with Chinese service in general.

I felt like I had such a peaceful, happy, helpful experience everywhere we went in Taiwan, and it was such a contrast to being in mainland China even as a student who was so eager to practice her language skills 13 years ago. Now, I just need to brace myself and restart brushing up on my speaking skills.

I’ve been making edits and additions to my growing reading list and finally spent some time tonight consolidating three different lists I had in different places. One of the books I had on my list was The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism – which I was able to get off the hold list from the library this week. Within the first few pages, it already felt like a book I knew I’d enjoy. One of the excerpts I’ve found interesting so far is this one that advises you to de-stigmatize discomfort by remembering that with over seven billion people on the planet, the chances are pretty much zero that you are the only one who has ever felt this level of shame, depression, sadness, or anger in life. Regarding shame, the author writes:

“Of all the emotions that human beings can feel, (shame) is one of the most toxic to health and happiness … (it’s defined as) “the fear of being unlovable: Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

“Shame hits us so powerfully because it conveys a message about our fundamental acceptability as human beings. And in basic survival terms, if a tribe rejects you, you die. It is a life-and-death situation. The brain equates social needs with survival; being hungry and being ostracized activate similar neural responses. Somewhere in the back of our minds is the fear of being so disapproved-of that we’d be excluded by those who matter to our survival.”

I never really thought of shame in that way personally. I suppose I get it at a high level given that shame is the worst thing you can feel as an Asian child in an Asian family with extremely high expectations about everything from school performance to etiquette to career, hence the concept of “losing face.” But I never thought of defining it as the “fear of being unlovable.” When viewed that way, it would be no wonder that shame is the reason people run away from their lives or even go to the extreme of taking their own lives. It’s a terrible kind of pain for some people who experience it at that intense level.

I wonder if that was how Ed felt, like he didn’t deserve to be loved, as though it was some sort of deformity or disability he possessed that prevented him from being the person he hoped to be. It’s sad to read books that illustrate pieces of what my brother likely felt and believed.

A couple of months ago, I was at an Amazon book store at the Time Warner Center perusing different books, and I came across a collection of poetry by Rupi Kaur, a 20-something best-selling Canadian-Indian poet-illustrator-performer who travels the world sharing her poetry and doing spoken word. She made a name for herself via social media, particularly her Instagram posts, which juxtapose both her poetry and her illustrations. I wasn’t sure what to make of her until I realized I’d read a few of her short poems before. These are some examples (they are much more effective with their accompanying illustrations, though, as the illustrations are meant to heighten the feelings derived from the words):

the irony of loneliness

is we all feel it

at the same time

together

Then, there’s this one:

i don’t know what living a balanced life feels like

when i am sad

i don’t cry i pour

when i am happy

i don’t smile i glow

when i am angry

i don’t yell i burn

the good thing about feeling in extremes is

when i love i give them wings

but perhaps that isn’t

such a good thing cause

they always tend to leave

and you should see me

when my heart is broken

i don’t grieve

i shatter

Rupi Kaur gets a lot of criticism from people who view poetry and writing in a more traditional way, but I think part of her appeal is her simplicity, the fact that she uses simplicity to push meaning and emotion onto you very quickly, and what better and more effective way of doing this than doing it via an Instagram post in 2018? In today’s world, attention spans are shrinking; so few people I know even properly read news articles from start to finish, even the shortest ones, and even just skim headlines (yes, not even read headlines in full).

One of the few modern day poets who has been able to make a comfortable living I’ve read, Billy Collins, who is also a former poet laureate of the U.S., was once quoted having said, “Certainly one thing a poem can do is give you an imaginative pleasure by taking you places very suddenly that prose can’t take you, because poetry enjoys the broadest and deepest and highest and most thrilling level of imaginative freedom of any of the written arts … (poetry) connects you with the history of human emotion. That’s why at critical points in our lives, at funerals or weddings or other rituals, often a poem is read. The poem shows us that these emotions, love and grief, have been going on through the centuries; and that the emotion we’re feeling today is not just our own emotion, it’s the human emotion.”

I think this holds true with Rupi Kaur — her words, however short, however sliced into whatever lines and italics and lack of punctuation that people want to slam, immediately inject emotion into you. These words, reduced down to their purest form, can take the most emotionally numb out of that state and make them feel once again. And that’s poetry.

With the recent news about the engineer Susan Fowler’s appalling experience and departure from Uber, I couldn’t help but feel disgusted at the technology industry in general, as well as how poorly human resources departments I’ve personally encountered have handled touchy and controversial experiences that have been reported. It makes me angry that even in HR, where there tends to be a lot of women leading the team across companies I’ve seen, women cannot even help or support other women. Women, no matter how hard they work, are considered women before they are whatever their job titles are. And confident women are hardly considered a good thing in a male-dominated environment like the technology industry; there’s a very, very fine line between exuding confidence and being perceived as “arrogant” for women in the workplace. And it really bothers me to think about it because I’m positive that is how I have been perceived in the past (in fact, someone on Glassdoor wrote a twisted review of his interview experience with me, which was half wrong factually and also accused me of being arrogant in my position and discussion). If I’m speaking to a prospective employee or in an interview representing myself, chances are that I’m going to be commanding respect and attention with the tone of my voice and how I’m speaking about whatever the topic is. But after almost nine years in this industry, I’ve only met a handful of women who do this. What that means is that people in general around me are not used to women exuding this level of self-respect and confidence, and instead perceive me as being arrogant.

It would be so much simpler and easier to be a man in the technology industry. Like the protesters at the Women’s March in Washington D.C. had signs of, “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit.” But the worst part about the example for me I’ve given above is… it’s oftentimes that women do not support women, not just that men aren’t supporting women.

When I was 6, I loved drawing, coloring, and pastels. I was obsessed with depicting abstract landscapes with a multitude of colors, and my first grade teacher Ms. Jamison encouraged me and said one day, I’d become one fine artist. I went home one night and showed my dad the landscape drawing, and he said it was nice. I triumphantly declared, “One day, I’m going to be an artist.” My dad looked a little confused and annoyed, and in response he said, “But you’ll be poor. Artists don’t make any money. You won’t be able to support yourself.”

My dreams were shattered in a matter of just a few words out of his mouth. I was going to be destitute with no money to my name if I pursued my days-long dream of becoming an artist. I still drew and did pastels for a couple years after that, but I eventually stopped and decided to find another hobby.

I’ve realized that most of the things I like doing for fun are things that would make me little money if I actually did them professionally – cooking, baking, scrapbooking, card making. I thought about this exchange regarding my future failed career as an artist tonight as I made Christmas cards for my friends and family with heat embossing, ribbon, and glitter glue. All these little things that bring so much joy are valued so little in our capitalist society.