Since I was young, I was always an avid reader. It took me a while to read “classics,” but I eventually got there. Two of the books that I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t read until the last month, which were always on my reading list, are Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mocking Bird and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. They are both novels that touch upon the 20th century oppression of black people, and what is the worst part about reading both of these books in the year 2019 is that… not much has changed in the way that black people are oppressed today. It is simply masked in another way, whether it is the inordinate incarceration of black Americans, or the unarmed killing of black people by the police, the supposed protectors of our society.

Both of these books are oftentimes on reading lists for children in high schools across America. While reading up about both books after finishing each, I was disgusted to learn that both are still on a number of “banned books” list from American schools even today. To Kill a Mocking Bird is banned due to its “use of foul language,” because the N-word is used extremely often. Then, with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, this book has many warnings due to its very graphic depiction of Angelou’s own rape experience.

I have a lot of grievances with this entire attitude. The reason the N-word is used a lot in the first book is due to the fact that during that time, that was a word that was oftentimes used by white people to condescend and condemn black people. It is fitting for the time and era during which it was written. Therefore, it is only fitting to be true to that time and use that type of language. It is not a flagrant way of being disrespectful today, but rather a method to capture the time and hostility felt then. Context is everything. With the second book, the rape scene is depicted to show the level of personal atrocity that Angelou faced while a young child. How can you possibly expect young people to grow, mature, and learn from the past if we are constantly shielding them from all the brutality and the harsh history of our world? You cannot sugar coat slavery or segregation. You cannot make rape seem like it’s some quick event that just happens, passes, and is done. That is not reality. There is a lack of desire and even a resistance to be rooted in reality and face the painful facts and history of this country, and it has persisted for far too long.

Over the last two and a half years, open white supremacy, anti immigration sentiment, and anti women sentiment have been on the rise. With a president who is openly sexist, racist, and xenophobic, it all makes sense why the average American would think that this type of rhetoric would be okay. So it also makes sense that the number of hate crimes has steadily risen, and that mass shootings by white supremacists would also continue. But all the rants and the hate completely obliterate what really unites all of us to each other, and that is our humanity, our love for others and our love for the supposed rights that we think we have. 

Today, a friend shared this article entitled Swimming to America, a Love Story, in which the writer details her father’s treacherous path to coming to the United States during a Mao-ruled communist China, all via escaping the mainland and physically swimming across to Hong Kong. She highlights his struggles and ultimately, his love for this country. And she insists that every single one of us who can say our parents, grandparents, or great grandparents immigrated here — we’re all immigrants, too, and we have to not only remember that, but share that story to ultimately bring humanity into these cold, awful hate-filled conversations we see in the media, by ICE agents, by humanity-lacking right-wing politicians, and by our own president.

I wish we’d have this dialogue more openly, but my biggest fear is that the dialogue just cannot happen because we refuse to listen to each other anymore, and we selectively choose what “facts” and “statistics” to believe.

The Libby app that I finally synced to my New York Public Library card is currently my favorite app right now. I’m still marveling since Thursday when I renewed my card and synced my account to the Libby app that I have all these books I can either read on Kindle or listen via the app right at my finger tips, and for free! I’ve already put a number of Kindle and audio books on hold and have them queued up and ready to read. Before this year, and as of 2016, I’ve made a deliberate goal to read at least 12 books per year, or one book per month. A couple of those years I missed it by one, and other years, I just made it. This year, it’s only August, and I’ve already finished 12 books! So I’ve increased my reading goal for 2019 to 20 books total. The way I will get there is by setting a goal to read for at least 45 minutes to an hour before bed each night, and also to maximize my plane and walking time by reading or listening to books over mindlessly scrolling through Instagram or Facebook. The amount of time we waste on social media when it doesn’t truly fulfill us is getting pretty dangerous. Looking at my screen time tracking on my phone makes me feel embarrassed at all the time I have wasted.

I got excited when I finally renewed my New York Public Library card after six months of delaying it. All I really needed to do was print out some proof of current residence, like a utility bill, but I kept putting it off until yesterday. I finally did it and renewed my card, which then allowed me not only to access the general public library system, but also to activate my library card and link it to my Libby app, which gives me free access to any digital version of a book that is available through my phone or Kindle. I successfully linked my account to the app, which now gives me access to any book I’d like for free. That’s tax payer dollars at work! The first book I pulled from my reading list was Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. I’m a little embarrassed to be reading this so late at age 33, given that in many schools across the country this is assigned reading, but hey, it’s better late than never, right? I also decided to commit myself to reading this given all the open bigotry and racism so overtly displayed by President Dipshit as of late. It’s always been going on since he started running to be president, but it’s truly gotten out of control in the last few weeks for anyone who has been paying even remote attention to the news.

This autobiography of Angelou is one of her most famous works, and the first of seven total books in her autobiography. She talks about growing up in the segregated south in the 1930s and 40s and all the bigotry and inequities she and her broken family faced. After her parents divorced, her mom moved to St. Louis, her dad moved to California, and they left her and her older brother Bailey with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The book is easy to follow and immediately sucks you into her world; I’m already half done with it after two evenings of reading it for about an hour each. I think what has really stuck with me is how close she and her brother Bailey are, and how much she truly loves him and constantly expresses it, both in writing and to him. It’s so endearing, yet heartbreaking at the same time. While temporarily in St. Louis staying with their mother and her boyfriend, the mother’s boyfriend rapes Maya. He threatens her and says, “Do you love Bailey?” to which Maya of course confirms she does, very much so. He responds, “If you tell anyone, I will kill him.” She is so shaken by the thought of Bailey dying that she keeps this atrocity she faced at such a young age to herself for days, until finally she got so sick that she had to be hospitalized and was forced to admit the truth.

Bailey kept asking her while in the hospital, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” over and over again. But Maya cannot stomach telling him the truth. She doesn’t want Bailey to know that she was trying to protect him, that she was scared that this man would actually take Bailey’s life.

That’s the power of sibling love. It just really stuck with me through the first half of this book. It reminded me of Ed a lot. He was as protective as he could be of me, and when bad things happened to me that he’d find out about later, he always asked why I wouldn’t tell him sooner. And I always responded the same way: I told him I didn’t want him to worry about me. Yet we did this to each other because he also hid so many things from me… because he didn’t want me to worry about him either.

I used to hope every year, around the time of the anniversary of Ed’s death, that he’d come back for a visit. This time, as though summoned, he came back a few nights ago during the 6th anniversary of his funeral, which happened seven days after he passed away. We sat in a fully furnished room I didn’t recognize, and out of nowhere came my childhood pet Willie. Willie was my turquoise parakeet, purchased from a private breeder in Pacifica early in my elementary school years. He was just five weeks old when we took him home. He was my little pride and joy; I took care of him fully on my own, feeding and cleaning him and his cage. We tamed him and taught him to speak a number of words, which was impressive given his small size. He passed away when he was about seven years old, when I was in seventh grade. Due to his dangerous curiosity and finding things in our house that had lead, he ate his way to his death, causing a massive accumulation of lead in his tiny tummy. This spurred a cancer growth in him that ultimately ended his little life. I was shocked to see him flying toward me. To see if this was all real (at least, “real” in my dream), and to verify that it was really him, I stood up and ran to the other side of the room, put my arm out, and said, “Willie, come here!”

He recognized his name immediately and flew over to me, landing on my forearm. He then climbed his way up my arm to my shoulder, affectionately nipping the tip of my ear. This was really my little parakeet. It had been too long since I’d last seen him.

“Yep, it’s Willie,” Ed said, staring over at Willie’s little face. “Even after he’s died, he still doesn’t care about me and prefers you.”

Ed used to occasionally taunt Willie, and Willie did not particularly like him very much. He was only attracted to him in the house if my dad or I were not in the room. Then, he’d fly to Ed.

“Do you see him where you are?” I asked him. “Since you’re both dead, do you ever run into him?”

Ed: “Not really. But after you die, it’s not like your relationships get better. They pretty much stay the same with the same people. Where we are, relationships don’t improve or change.”

He seemed so solemn when he said this, as though there was some hint of sadness or regret in his voice. I couldn’t quite understand it.

I didn’t know what to say to him. I was still shocked we were even together, discussing how he and my childhood pet are dead.

“I miss you,” I said to him, looking over at his face. It’s as though all his acne had cleared up and he had perfect skin. Maybe that’s what death does to you.

He put his head in his hands and wouldn’t look at me. “I know… I know,” he said, nearly inaudible. “I can’t do anything for you anymore.”

Then, I woke up. I felt a little distraught, wondering where the heck I was and what just happened. Did I really see Ed, see Willie, in the same place at the same time? Was it real?

I don’t know what any of that meant. But it just made me feel even worse. At least I got to see the both of them again.

I’ve been fundraising for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) each year since my brother passed away, and this year will be my sixth year walking in their New York City Out of the Darkness walk to raise awareness. Given that I have been actively sharing my story through the fundraiser and via social media to spread the word, what this has also meant is that many people over the years have also reached out to me in need of help and guidance. I’ve been happy to be that shoulder and support for them, and if anything, I’ve felt really appreciated that they would remember me and my brother and how I’ve tried to increase awareness about suicide and mental health.

While in town in San Francisco this week, a former colleague who had left my company about two years ago reached out randomly on Facebook. She was always someone I respected a lot; she’s extremely intelligent and had a way of working with colleagues that I’d never quite seen before. I remember sending her note before she left, suggesting we stay in touch. We did that, but just over Facebook to date. In her private message, she said that her good friend’s son had attempted suicide and was currently under close watch at a psychiatric ward, and they were all terrified and had no idea what to do and how to help, and the first thought she had was of me. In her life, she said, she’d never met anyone who had talked about depression, mental illness, or suicide, except me, and she’s over 40 years old, and found this fact embarrassing when she shared this with me. She asked if there was a way for us to connect, and so I met her at a local coffee shop near my office here. We talked for over an hour about the situation, navigating through different options, and advising her on things they absolutely needed to do (and not to do).

It was a gut-wrenching situation, and while I do not wish this situation upon anyone, it just goes to show exactly how prevalent mental health is ignored and how suicide ideation and attempts are so much more frequent that we could possibly fathom. She just kept expressing how helpless and alone they all felt. This friend was like a sister to her, and her son was like her own nephew in terms of how close they were. I kept prefacing everything by saying that I wasn’t an expert, that I certainly did not know everything there is to know, but she insisted that just having this conversation openly and without needing to think before she spoke was what calmed her down so much after this horribly intense week. I told her I’d follow up with some resources that might help her and the family, and that I’d be in touch.

If I could help save just one person’s life in my efforts of being open about my own experience through Ed with mental illness, that would be enough for me to know that everything I have done in the last six years has been worthwhile.

After a long hiatus from scrapbooking, I’ve recommenced the project of documenting our life and travels. I realized I had run out of 12×12 scrapbooking pages, scrapbook page protectors, and even a large enough scrapbook binder to hold everything in, so I had to order more supplies to start the project again. Without even really trying, I’d already added over $50 worth of all of the above into my Amazon cart.

“All of this?” Chris exclaimed. “Why is this stuff so expensive?”

“Scrapbooking is a billion-dollar industry, remember?” I responded. “This hobby isn’t a cheap one.”

Really, no arts and crafts projects are cheap. A single stamp at Paper Source can cost $15. A small sheet of stickers could cost $8. It sounds a little insane, and sometimes it is painful to purchase these things, but then I remember the Marie Kondo question of “Does this spark joy?” and yes, these objects do spark joy for me, so I still end up completing my purchases. In the end, it’s worth it to me to be able to have a physical way of documenting all of our travels and experiences. It always feels rewarding to look at it all, even if I don’t look at them that often.

Last year, the awards dinner we had on the second night of kickoff was so sales-focused that everyone who was not in sales focused on the food and little else. So at the end of last year’s kickoff, many of us gave a lot of feedback, insisting that the sessions be run differently and more interactively, that the awards dinner recognize people across the go-to-market team, not just sales people, among other things. It looks like they really took our feedback seriously and have iterated differently this time around. I was surprised when the awards dinner was announced when our CEO announced that they would go team by team, starting with Services, then going to the Sales Engineers, then Customer Success Managers (or CSMs, that’s my team), then finally Sales (because of course… it’s sales focused…), and direct sales support (legal, operations, etc.). In my head, I was wondering if I was going to have my name announced given that I knew I did pretty well last quarter, and my manager had recently told me that I was getting recognized by the leadership team as being the most consistent person on my team in hitting targets repeatedly quarter after quarter last year.

They started discussing President’s Club on stage. In the past, they always announced President Club winners only if you were on the sales team, never if you were on any other team. So I kind of zoned out… until our CEO said he was going to announce CSMs  who “made club,” too. They announced three names of people on my team, and then our COO says he’s announcing one final CSM… and…. well,  it ended up being me. I couldn’t believe how many people were clapping and screaming and standing up for me. It was all a bit of a blur. I had people hugging me, giving me high-fives, and I barely remember what was said when I went on stage to be recognized and they gave a blurb about my accomplishments and my numbers for the last year. I took my gift, which was a Tiffany crystal with our logo and “president’s club 2018” on it, and later had to give it back so they could send it in for engraving. This year’s president’s club event is going to be at the Bacara Resort in Santa Barbara, which is funny to think about because Chris and I went to visit the resort in 2015 as a potential wedding venue. We ended up choosing something far more intimate (and less expensive), but I remember really loving the visit and thinking it was a gorgeous property with stunning views of the ocean.

The order in which they announced our names was from the lowest to the highest, which means that I was the top performing CSM based on last year’s targets. I didn’t even realize this until my colleague told me afterwards because he thought I was brushing it off as not a big deal. “This is a big deal — you’re the top CSM globally!” my colleague yelled over the commotion in the room. “Everyone knows you now!” Again, public recognition is so odd to me. I rarely get complimented in front of a lot of people, much less the entire go-to-market organization hearing about my accomplishments. I had so many people from everywhere coming at me to hug and congratulate me. It made me feel happy but also a bit embarrassed and uncomfortable at the same time with all this newfound attention. And it even culminated in our CEO having a 30-minute conversation with me one-on-one, which I was not expecting at all. But it was actually a really good and deep conversation that went beyond work and even touched topics like my fundraiser and my brother. It’s odd, but I actually felt like we connected, and it was a good feeling to see another side of our CEO that I don’t often get to see when he’s trying to get us all to hustle.

It was a fun and exhausting night. I didn’t even get to sleep until past 2:30am because of all the conversations and partying tonight. But it does feel good to be publicly recognized for all the work I’ve done during my time here… even if it can be embarrassing for me personally. It’s like this is all finally paying off.