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I thought that I was going to marry the man that I had been dating. We were together for about two weeks shy of five years. And I thought he was my forever partner. But he wasn't very supportive of me coming to Harvard, even though it was only supposed to be for a year. He wasn't happy for me. And me being here was really hard on him. And I don't think that I was as attentive a partner as I should have been in retrospect. And it ultimately led to us breaking up right after I graduated. At the same time, I got some really tough medical news. And so it's just been a lot to grapple with.

I had been in a serious relationship for about 5 years. I met him in high school and eventually ended up dating. We started a family together, and I thought this was it. We would be together forever. I was completely in love with him. We had just decided I would quit my job to stay home and take care of our son. Daycare was just too expensive for us. I quit my job, and the very next day he tells me he doesn't want to be with me. He told me he didn't love me anymore, and he didn't think he ever would. My heart broke into a million pieces. You hear that saying often, but now I actually understand what it means. I was suddenly a single mother, jobless, homeless, and heartbroken. I ended up staying with my father and stepmother, who helped me more than they probably realized. They were there for me and kept me up until I could get back on my feet again. They helped me heal and get back out there. I never thought I would feel okay again, but after some soul-searching and healing, even me and my ex have become friends again. I realized during this time that even when things seem like they could never possibly get better, they always will. It will not always be easy, and it will not always happen fast.

I guess recently, I don't know if I've been talking about the lack of security at my job because we're a venture-backed kind of product company. And so, we really kind of rely on outside financing to help support our growth and development. And so, there's been a lot of uncertainty now with this last venture capitalist backing, investment opportunity, whether or not our company is going to survive. And so, I've been dealing a lot with the nervousness about job security. And so, I've actually reached out to my friend who works at another product design company. And there's a really great potential opportunity over there. And so, I guess the thing that I would like to talk to you about is sometimes I feel like I'm my own worst enemy. I already kind of weigh the balances, which I guess is normal, but at the same time sometimes I already talk myself out of opportunities before I even jump into them because I'm weighing all the outcomes and seeing outcomes that probably don't even exist. And maybe just looking for reasons not to lean into something. And so, I definitely struggle with this. It sounds perfect and great, but it's kind of a whole 100% remote, and so, I just already have predetermined in my mind that for the rest of my life, I'm going to be working at home in my office by myself. And I shouldn't just talk myself out of good opportunities.

I came to the US in 2001 when I was 22 years old. I end up taking a couple of business classes, and coincidentally, I took a part-time job at Saks Fifth Avenue as a sales associate, and about nine months later, one of the clients' husband is a general counsel for an international hedge fund. At that time, they were running a lot of trading accounts in Asia. They needed somebody who understands the language. That's really just coincidentally how I stumbled into that opportunity. I did not dream that I would be able to get into the finance industry. At Elevated Ventures, I lead and run the investment program. We are, if not the largest, certainly one of the most active seed and early-stage investors in the state of Indiana. The best part I enjoy is to feel like we're part of a team that's not only making a financial impact, hopefully generating financial return for the funds we're managing, but we're making an impact in people's lives.

Um, yeah. So, I guess, like, my story and thought is that my friend Olivia came to visit. She helped me from Claremont, took a train that was like 30 minutes, and then helped me pack as I move out. And she made it so much fun and it really inspired me to bring in more play into my everyday life than make it tedious to have fun.

I interned in a senator's office last year and I just felt too disconnected from everyone. It's hard to feel like you're making a difference for people serving in that capacity. So I came back to my TA who started builders of promise and I was like, government really wasn't my bit. So she offered to have me come work with her nonprofit. I think pretty much anything you do will result in some kind of skill or a way of thinking that's gonna help you later in your life. Just don't be afraid to take those chances. As long as you have the tenacity to stick out the beginnings of everything, everything else falls into place.

So my friends were participating in the Kindergarten Five K last weekend, and they roped me into it. I used to be a runner back in school, but haven\'t done it in 15 or 16 years. And when they asked if I wanted to join, I said, "Yeah, let\'s give it a try." I would love to be able to train, but it looked like every weekend between when I registered and when the race was raining. And so, at the end of the day, we decided to just do a couch to five K, which is get into the actual race without doing any training. It felt a little intimidating, but it seemed as though it would be an interesting experience in itself, without the intent to win or get a super fascinating timing. But before the race, I did a lot of research around how to practice, what the mindset should be, how I should pace myself, etc. And consistently, and most importantly, the advice I got was, "Know what your average pace is and go just a little bit below that." And it turned out to be a good race overall. I got a good timing, it was enjoyable enough, and the fact my friends were celebrating made it a lot of fun overall.

I started getting really tired of the daily grind, the nine to five. I'm not really sure what it was. I just started losing traction, and I needed some big goal to motivate me. I needed something to happen. And I started thinking about the Vendee Globe, which is the non-stop around-the-world race that no American had finished. So I just stuck it out and was real careful, and I made it to the finish and had this great welcome in France. One important factor for me to handle all this, in all these different things I want to do, is to come to a conclusion not so much about what you want to do, but how you want to do it.

Yeah, lately I've been having issues. It seems like with getting out of bed, but not necessarily like staying in bed and just not getting out, but really just waking up per se. So I have this thing where it's very easy for me to fall back asleep. So that means that if I do wake up, it's pretty easy for me to just shut off my alarm and then climb straight back into bed and fall asleep immediately. And so this feels like it can go on for a while. And it's been pretty frustrating because, yes, my dreams, the dreams that I have when I do sleep in like that, are really great. But fundamentally, I don't remember them over a long period of time. And because I end up sleeping for so long, there are a lot of things that I want to be doing in my life that I just simply don't have as much time for. Yeah, so that happened today, too. And I end up sleeping really long hours and just overall, always feeling sleepy, I guess. Yeah, that's kind of what's been going on.

I see a doctor regularly. I don't have any health conditions besides reflux, but I hyperfixate on any body sensation, pain, headache, or discomfort. I really try my best not to webMD any symptoms, but sometimes I can't help myself, and it really sends me over the edge. I feel like there's a disconnect between my brain and body signals.

Like, I think one story or just like an interesting thing which I observed, I have is, it\'s all important to have representation at work or at the places that you are at because that sort of makes different people feel comfortable and more accepted, and more accepted, that\'s the word. For example, if I\'m in a different country or a different state, which I don\'t know anything about, and if I\'m walking there, if I\'m around people who have different experiences in life, I feel it takes a lot of time to just get comfortable around them, to feel more confident about yourself, to know and see how you can pick one and survive, but also thrive there. It takes a lot of time and it\'s helpful just to be aware of that and not be like "Oh, there\'s something wrong with you," but they\'re just like a different environment and the people are different. Everyone\'s trying.

I started as a Hispanic woman in sports reporting. My very first job, I had someone sit down and say to me, you know why you got this job, right? The implication was because I was a Hispanic woman. I said, because I am amazing. I learned really early on that there were going to be a lot of people that would be like, you only got this job because of this or you can't do this because of this. There's a lot of people who will write you off because there's not that many people who look like you. There's a lot of negativity. Don't listen to those people and ignore them and use them as motivation. It's about being willing to figure out what's best for you and go on your own path. Sometimes there's starts and stops, but it's life.

I have our big leftover from yesterday\'s birthday party. And I thought, okay. I was going to bring this box of pizza to homeless people. Maybe they are hungry. But it reminded me of a certain period of time ago. I saw a homeless man holding a sign. "I am hungry" and "help me". "God bless you". And so I didn\'t have cash. I passed him but I went to a pizza store and got a slice or two of pizza for him and came back to him. And handed the pizza off to him, but he said, "oh, okay. I\'m good. Too much pizza". So I gave him the small cash that my husband had. At that time, I didn\'t have cash, but my husband did. Usually, I feel good when I think I am doing good. But that time, I didn\'t feel not so much good because I went to the pizza store for him. Of course, I didn\'t ask him if he wanted pizza, but I did. So I expected him to say thank you and accept that slice of pizza. But I noticed that the way I wanted to treat the person was not the way he wanted to be treated. I can\'t expect to be said thank you. Yeah, I would take the pizza from yesterday\'s birthday party. It reminded me of that memory.

Where I live, there is one really busy intersection that always has at least two homeless people combing it for food and stuff, and most of them you can tell are fakers looking for money and pity (dogs, phones, new clothes). But today was different. This guy was obviously in pain. He was hunched over a little bit and limped really slowly. He looked pretty elderly, and when he spoke, it was very heavy and slow, as if it was a task. I always have food on me specifically because I feel bad for the homeless there, and today I had two fig bars. The car in front of me gave him a pastry, and you could tell he was pretty happy. His sign was pretty beat up, and all I could read was "hungry," so I gave him one of my fig bars. He noticed what it was, and he perked up and began thanking me over and over, saying that pastries and fig bars were "his favorite thing in the whole world." So, I gave him the other one I had, and he looked at me as if he couldn't believe it. He said, "Thank you so much, man. I love fig bars. You have a blessed day. God bless you," and I got chills because he was so genuine and grateful. It made me so happy knowing that I had given someone who had nothing their favorite thing in the whole world!

Okay. So the story is from when I was a little kid, and my dad would take me fishing, so we would go in a boat out on the lake to catch fish. And because I was a little kid, I didn\'t like to wake up early, not that I do now, but I didn\'t want to wake up really early in the morning and leave before the sun came up. And I got tired of sitting out in the hot sun and not catching anything, not having any fun. And so I would complain a lot, and that\'s hard for an adult to listen to, a little kid complain a lot. And I said, "I was bored," and I wasn\'t catching anything, and I kind of gave up. And my dad told me that you won\'t catch anything unless you have your bait in the water, which is true. So he was trying to say, like, you\'ll have more fun if you keep working hard. But as a kid, it didn\'t really resonate with me, but many years later, as an adult, that saying has stuck with me. And I\'ve taken it as more of a metaphor. And the idea is that if you don\'t try, you can\'t really succeed. So you have to try. So I think it\'s a nice memory. At the time, I didn\'t really like to listen to what he had to say because I was bored and I wanted to go home and play and watch cartoons and stuff. But it\'s an important memory and it reminds me that in order to have success, you have to keep trying.

Growing up with just my dad and my brother, I was obviously very independent and strong-willed. My dad's best friend was a stockbroker, and for some reason, because I was so good with money, I decided that I would be a really good stockbroker. And fortunately, throughout high school, we had work exchange and work experience, and they used to send me off with all sorts of random checks and things to deliver somewhere, and I had no idea where I was going or how to get there. And being the little surfy chick that I was, it just made me realize that wasn't the avenue I wanted to go down. Ultimately, to become successful in anything, you have to be relatively selfish. You have to be so one-dimensional. I also believe that there's no such thing as a mistake; it's only a learning experience. The only mistake is not learning from it. But even then, you're just gonna be given the opportunity to learn it and learn it and learn it until such time as you do. So I made the same "mistake" over and over again until I actually got the lesson.

Okay. So this isn't really anything exciting? It's not an exciting story. But it's something that I learned recently about myself. So I thought it'd be interesting to share. Wait, let me take a look at my note. So, I think when I was young, younger, I really wanted to achieve something in life really fast. And I wanted to be recognized as a successful person. So I had this very big desire. But I'm so naturally I searched for a field or area where I thought I have a competitive advantage. And one of the fields or professions that I found that I could do better than other people was in the creative writing field. So I got a lot of compliments from teachers and family and friends about my writing skills or my imaginations. So when I was like early twenties, I wanted to become a famous novelist or successful TV scriptwriter or a filmmaker. So I did internships, and I worked as a writer at a radio station, like a production company and youth agency. But I didn't last long in those fields because I was so impatient. I wanted to be really this famous writer. But what I was at the time was like a low-paying freelance writer and I could not bear that difficulties, and could not. I didn't have like, it wasn't like because fortunately, I had the support of my family. Even though I was low pay. I didn't have to worry too much about financial issues, but I was just very disgruntled about how, the stage I was in, I guess. So I felt like I'm like the lowest person in this organization. And nobody really listens to me, and I couldn't stand that struggle. So I called it quits, and I jumped to the other area or field and industry. And I think when I look back, I think I was very immature and impatient at the time. If I was a little bit wiser, I would have seen those struggles and difficulty of learning opportunities, or opportunities to grow. But I just really wanted to be at the finish line rather than going through this step by step. So now, today I'm in a completely different field and not doing anything related to writing. Although I believe writing is very essential in all kinds of work and industry. Now I think I'm a little bit, I've learned my lesson from the past experience. However, today I felt like I was like the younger self. I was feeling a little bit agitated about who I am right now. And I was comparing myself to whom I want to be in the future. And I would not be very satisfied about myself, but since I had older now, and I'm more experienced. Not immediately, but I kind of try to remind myself the outcome that I had. If I have that kind of mentality. So I guess I'm trying to self-talk, trying to reinforce myself more in a more positive way. And rather than jump to the end result. I'm trying to enjoy this moment. I know it sounds very cliché, but I'm really trying to be grateful about my surroundings and who I am right now. I think it's good for my mind. And I think it's more, it gives me more motivation and energy to continue to work on my future goals.

I went to culinary school when I was 16 years old. In the beginning, I wasn't really planning to be a chef. I wanted to travel to different countries. I didn't speak all the languages in the countries I wanted to go to. This meant I had to find something to do that can make money in the countries I was planning to go to. Once I found my path, once I decided that was my path, my family and friends kinda pulled me back to try and take me off that path. It's important to stay on that path and kind of ignore all that. If you do not follow your path, it's tough to be successful. You have to follow your path, whatever it is. It's very important to listen to people too. But, whatever you think of it, you have to follow your own path.

One of my hobbies is origami, and I'm going to tell you about how I started getting into it. I think that started when I was around 14 or 13. And one day, the idea of making a paper dragon popped into my head. I'm not sure where that came from, so I scoured the internet. I went on YouTube and tried to find a video of origami dragon instructions or a tutorial. I wanted a model that looked cool, and I wasn't really thinking about how difficult it would be to make.\n\nIn the end, I settled on some pretty complex models and tried to make them. Since I had never really done origami before, except for simple paper planes and unpapercrafts, it was very difficult. I'm talking about hundreds of folds, all made with great precision. So I tried over and over for a day, and then another one, and then it went to a week. I must have tried 20 or 30 times, each one taking hours. And then I couldn't go to finish. I even traveled a bit that week, and even during the journey, I was folding and folding and folding. I tried to fold that model so many times that at some point, I committed most of the folds to memory.\n\nAfter about a month of trying, I was finally able to finish making the model. It was very satisfying to have finally got it done. And that sparked my love for origami, and I went on to make many, many more models. And I still enjoy doing origami to this day. I also want to learn to design my own models and learn about the interesting math behind origami and research done in the field. But I think most of all, I just enjoy the process of folding and creating something with my hands. Once the model is finished, it feels like it's over, and I'm just looking for a new one to start working on.

I really love making people happy, and I love using power tools and stuff. So obviously, I was really happy when my flatmates asked me if I could drill some holes in their wall to fix a wardrobe that would otherwise fall over if the doors are open. They borrowed a drill, got some dowels and screws, and I got to screw around with some nice power tools. I feel honored that they trust me to do this. After the wardrobe was fixed to the wall, I went back to my little crafting table. All Christmas gifts this year will be handmade by me. I'm making a gift for a friend, and I spent some time on cutting, sanding, gluing, and painting this little thing, and today I pre-drew the outlines of the last bit I need to paint on both sides and finished painting one side. I can't wait for his reaction when I give it to him!

Guys, so today I was watching an episode of Suits, and in Suits, there is a lawyer named Louis. The whole thing is a TV show that takes place in New York, in a law office. Louis is one of the lawyers who is constantly trying to be the best, and he always sees himself as inferior to Harvey, another character. And every time Louis tries to do some kind of payback for whatever Harvey did to him, it always ends up backfiring on him somehow. He always makes a bigger mess than what he started. What kind of resonated with me in this story is that it's not necessarily the greatest objective to try and be the best. Because if you are trying to be better than someone else, you're constantly competing and trying to undermine them or go against them. And while it can be healthy, to some extent, to have some competition, unhealthy competition doesn't make a lot of sense, and that kind of resonated with me. Because for so long, I competed in competitions for everything from math to science to robotics. And it was always like you had to be the best. And now, going past college, it doesn't make sense to try and be the best because everyone is doing something completely different from you. So just keep trying and undermining people will just backfire on you.

In first grade, when they asked me what I wanted to do, I said I want to study the stars. So, it's lucky that it worked out. Most of the times people say, I wanna be a football player, whatever, movie star, it doesn't work out. In my case, it worked out, but I was lucky that way. Astronomy, before I went to college, was something I really thought I could do. But I just doubt myself a lot. It's inevitable. When you're trying to push yourself, there are always moments when you think, maybe this is too hard, maybe I cannot do it. But my answer to that is that if you don't feel that way, it means you're not pushing yourself enough. If you never go out of your comfort zone, then you're not really trying very hard. It's part of learning and part of growing up, is figuring out things that you didn't know you could do, and then you do them. Sometimes you fail. Sometimes you succeed. First of all, in research most of what you do fails miserably because you're trying to do something that nobody knows how to do. So you have to really like failure. Embrace failure. Accept that failure is gonna be part of the process.

Okay. So, today, I wanted to have a doughnut, and I went to the donut shop. And the lady there gave me two donuts for the price of one. So, that was very nice because I got two donuts.

Today I was working my evening shift, and I got an extra-large pizza delivered at my work for me and all of my co-workers to have something to eat. About 7:00 p.m., this woman came in, and she had gotten two donuts. I saw her digging through her bag for change to pay me with. She had enough change to get the two donuts. She went and sat down to eat her donuts. She looked homeless. Something in me told me she was hungry, and I remembered there was pizza leftover in the break room. I told my coworker that I wanted to ask her if she wanted some pizza, but I didn't want to make her uncomfortable. My coworker just said ask her if she's hungry. So I went and asked her if she wanted some leftover pizza I had bought earlier for lunch. She said that she would love some pizza, so I went and got her some and warmed it up in the microwave. I brought the pizza out to her, and she thanked me. Then I just continued working and finishing the things I needed to before my shift ended. Around 8:00, I started cleaning the grill at my workplace. I turned around to grab a rag, and the woman I gave the pizza to was standing there. She explained to me that she hadn't eaten in a few days and thanked me again and told me that if I give her a rag, she would go clean the bathrooms for me. I wanted to just hug this woman at this point because she was willing to go clean a dirty bathroom for some food. I explained to her that it was my job to do that and that the only thing she needed to do was to take care of herself and stay safe out in the world. This took me off guard today because this woman was hungry. I gave her food, and she was trying to do something in return when she didn't have to. I also told her that she needed to stay warm out there because it's getting cold. Before she left, she thanked me again and told me that it was kind of me to give her food and how much she appreciated it. Strangers can make us realize how blessed we are when we can't see it ourselves.

I'm going to tell you about the time I moved when I was eight, maybe nine. I think it was in elementary school, and I think that's what got me into reading and learning. So I just started school, maybe finished first grade in the middle of second grade, so maybe I was only seven. We moved homes, so it was still in the same city, but I didn't know any of the kids in the department we were looking into. And all my friends in the neighborhood were no longer there. So eventually, I did make a few friends, but in the beginning, there was not really much to do outside because I didn't know anyone. So I was at home. We happened to have a bunch of books at home, or like random encyclopedia books. And I decided to start reading them. And they were fun, and I liked learning about things around the world. And since it wasn't through school or I wasn't being forced to do it, I just thought it was fun. And if I forgot stuff, it was okay. Unlike school where you have to remember everything or try. So it was just fun, and I just wanted to accumulate a bunch of knowledge. And it was fun to throw it out randomly. And I always obsessed over it. I really liked that. And so it got me into reading. And then eventually, I started reading stories and fiction and stuff too. I haven't been reading as much these days, but I still love learning things. That stuck with me. It also helped me at school, somehow surprisingly, because later in higher classes, I would come across the same things again that I'd already seen in encyclopedias before, just through browsing. And it made school much easier for me. Yeah, my teachers are always kind of surprised that I've read this in some random, obscure book somewhere. That feeling of just learning things for the fun of doing it and satisfaction in doing it is something that I really want to keep with me.

"You are so smart." That phrase has been told to me since I was a kid. I felt special when I was told this, so I did everything I could to get that phrase told to me by my peers, parents, and teachers. I even got into college with a pretty big scholarship. But now that I am in my second year of college, I am massively struggling as I now see that my crutches in the form of extra credit, the scheduling that was given to me, and caring teachers are gone. I stay up late, doing homework, studying, trying to remember the information that I understand but can't retain, but it's not enough to pass tests that were supposed to be easy. I feel like I was never that smart, just lucky. The little voice in the back of my head is telling me that everything that I have built up over the years should just be burned down, that I don't deserve to be in college. I should just let myself flunk out and let my family, friends, and everyone see me as what I am, an idiot who got a bit of luck and doesn't deserve the praise she got over the years.

Okay. So this isn't really anything exciting? It's not an exciting story. But it's something that I learned recently about myself. So I thought it'd be interesting to share. Wait, let me take a look at my note. So, I think when I was young, younger, I really wanted to achieve something in life really fast. And I wanted to be recognized as a successful person. So I had this very big desire. But I'm so naturally I searched for a field or area where I thought I have a competitive advantage. And one of the fields or professions that I found that I could do better than other people was in the creative writing field. So I got a lot of compliments from teachers and family and friends about my writing skills or my imaginations. So when I was like early twenties, I wanted to become a famous novelist or successful TV scriptwriter or a filmmaker. So I did internships, and I worked as a writer at a radio station, like a production company and youth agency. But I didn't last long in those fields because I was so impatient. I wanted to be really this famous writer. But what I was at the time was like a low-paying freelance writer and I could not bear that difficulties, and could not. I didn't have like, it wasn't like because fortunately, I had the support of my family. Even though I was low pay. I didn't have to worry too much about financial issues, but I was just very disgruntled about how, the stage I was in, I guess. So I felt like I'm like the lowest person in this organization. And nobody really listens to me, and I couldn't stand that struggle. So I called it quits, and I jumped to the other area or field and industry. And I think when I look back, I think I was very immature and impatient at the time. If I was a little bit wiser, I would have seen those struggles and difficulty of learning opportunities, or opportunities to grow. But I just really wanted to be at the finish line rather than going through this step by step. So now, today I'm in a completely different field and not doing anything related to writing. Although I believe writing is very essential in all kinds of work and industry. Now I think I'm a little bit, I've learned my lesson from the past experience. However, today I felt like I was like the younger self. I was feeling a little bit agitated about who I am right now. And I was comparing myself to whom I want to be in the future. And I would not be very satisfied about myself, but since I had older now, and I'm more experienced. Not immediately, but I kind of try to remind myself the outcome that I had. If I have that kind of mentality. So I guess I'm trying to self-talk, trying to reinforce myself more in a more positive way. And rather than jump to the end result. I'm trying to enjoy this moment. I know it sounds very cliché, but I'm really trying to be grateful about my surroundings and who I am right now. I think it's good for my mind. And I think it's more, it gives me more motivation and energy to continue to work on my future goals.

I really did not ever plan to be a writer. I started college when I was 40. I'm a little sorry to say it took me until I was 40 to find a big change, but I just thought I was doing the right things: raising a family, and I worked. I was the most terrified freshman that ever went to school. There was this one class that fit into my schedule, and it was called Advanced Fiction Writing, and I enrolled in it thinking I'll fail, and they'll throw me out. But I had learned so much. I had come so far. I just felt like now I will live. This is it. This is the stepping stone, and I will not look back. It's important never to give up looking for your passion. And never to think that it's only one way. Don't be surprised if what you end up finding isn't what you were looking for. Because what I found had almost nothing to do with what I thought I was looking for.

Okay. So, last year, I moved from Nashville to Boston, and made a big change in my life. And it was really challenging because I had a lot of friends in Nashville, a great community. I like to salsa dance and all of my friends came together before I left, and I threw a party. And they all came up with a really big gift basket for me. It had some of my favorite foods, things to bring with me to Boston. And one of the things that really was special, that they gave me, that made me really just warmed my heart. It made me feel so much gratitude and love, was they got me a gift certificate to have a dance lesson with an instructor here in Boston that has an amazing reputation that we've all wanted to train with. And now that I'm in Boston, I was able to take a class with her, and they gifted that to me. So it was a really huge gesture, and it makes me miss my friends so much. So much so, I'm going to visit them in a week, and hopefully dance and hang out with them again.

Last month, I was part of an amazing charity event that blew my mind and made me feel like I was making a difference. I was told about this event about 3 months ago, and we formed dance groups in order to raise funds for children and families in Haiti. The host of the event was going to personally fly to Haiti to deliver items and school supplies to the families with her charity group and make a difference in her community. I did not think much of the event as I have been in events before, but this event was life-changing. I met so many new people in our dance community with such loving and caring hearts. We all became one that day and supported and cheered each other on to do our best. Each dance group had something different to bring to the stage, and many genres were learned and appreciated. We were all amazed at the hard work and dedication that was brought to make the event such a huge success. In the end, the event was able to raise a lot of funds for the children of Haiti, and many school supplies were donated for them to have a successful school year. It was a truly amazing event that I will never forget, surrounded by even more amazing people. In the end, it wasn't about the dance groups, the attendees, or who did the best. It was all about the kids and who we were raising money for. Doing good for your community as well as others in need really humbles you and makes you realize how much you have. It is very important to realize these things in life to really appreciate the life you have been given and what you can do to make it even better for others. If I was given the opportunity to take part in another event like this, I would do it in a heartbeat. I'm sure the rest of my colleagues would agree as well.

Yeah. So basically, yesterday, I finally went ahead and built my own raised garden bed for my backyard. For the first time, it was pretty nice and fulfilling at the end of it. I got some tools from my friends. I had some leftover lumber from the time when our contractors did the front. Air France. So I just sat down, spent two to three hours. It was not sunny. It was cloudy. It's good working conditions, but basically, put together a big garden raised garden bed that I'm very proud of. The wood still needs treatment and before I put in soil, there's some fall-up stuff that I need to do, but it was definitely very fulfilling. And one of those things where you kind of delayed for a long time, but then you're like, let's do it now. So I just did that. And I felt very good about it.

Just last week, I bought a house. I had been looking for something local that I could purchase that would fit my budget with not a lot of money down. I decided that I would make a home purchase of a double-wide in my local manufactured home community. I signed the papers and felt a rush of excitement that I was finally going to be a homeowner. The most memorable part was when they handed me the keys and said, "This is now your new home." I couldn't believe it was actually ours. I wanted to find something that was large enough for my family, but that wouldn't be much upkeep. We are extremely busy people. The home is brand new from the factory, and so is everything in it. So, this is perfect for what we are looking for, and it is all ours. Very exciting! I can't believe that we are actually homeowners. While the searching wasn't the most fun part, and we are still moving, getting to have our own home is super exciting. I can't believe it is ours. I can't believe that everything worked out, and we have a place of our own.

So the play that I mentioned earlier, in the play, I take the role of a child who is really annoyed at having to do a service project, which is basically serving some burritos to a homeless population, and just really annoyed and frustrated and worried about my own material comforts. And then I realized that the homeless people can overhear me, and then I become super embarrassed and realize the fact that I can't really say bad things. I'm not supposed to say bad things about people because people might be hearing, and that wouldn't be very nice. And this kind of resonated with me because sometimes I do do things like that. Maybe not to that extent, but I don't want to load the dishwasher because I'm tired, but I need to load the dishwasher because maybe my mom is tired as well, and her arm is hurting, and therefore she can't do it. So I should probably help out. And it kind of just made me realize that, yes, sometimes I can be selfish, and I should be aware of that and not do that as often.

So, I grew up in the projects in Canarsie. Similar, I think, to the environments a lot of you might be used to: gun violence, gangs. I grew up on welfare for the first 17 years of my life. You have to find motivation to succeed every possible place you can. Even if it's a negative emotion. When you start thinking about the negativity, about the stupid decisions you made, about the people who made you feel bad, turn that into fuel. Transmute your frustration into fuel. There is this avatar or this person that says, you know, you're just like your mom. Your mom did nothing, you're going to be nothing, that's you. And you go, "I can't wait to prove this person, like, it is going to mean so much to me when that person eats every single word and they have no idea how great I am, how much I give back, how much I help others, how positive my life is." So I'm not trying to become great to then hurt this person. I'm not trying to become great to hurt someone. I'm trying to become great, and I'm trying to find every possible tool to keep me moving forward because it's so easy to want to quit.

Well, Debby, my story is about the snake skin I found in my basement that freaked me out. I'm now afraid to go back into the basement. What do I do?

It's been months. The last time I remember having my jeans is around Easter time, and then they just dropped off the grid. My first fear was they had been swallowed by the washing machine and were now in the sock afterlife. But more realistically, I thought they'd been stolen by my sister. We both have similar light blue jeans. She got her pair first when she was at university, so I didn't know she had them when I bought a similar pair. We've been dealing with having the same jeans that keep coming out of the wash for a couple of years. Just after Easter, my pair went missing. I mentioned to my sister if she'd accidentally taken my jeans from the wash. She said she hadn't and showed me the pair that she had in her wardrobe. I have other pairs of jeans, so I wasn't actively looking for it out of necessity, and I was stressed with my exams so didn't think about it so much. And now it's been a long time since I've thought about those jeans. Until I was collecting my laundry and found a pair of light blue jeans and remembered my old jeans. So I took them into my sister's room thinking I'll find them in her wardrobe. I was pretty sure the pair I was holding were her pair, not mine, though. And there she was, sitting at her desk, wearing a pair of light blue jeans. We both just laughed. And she said that she had been thinking the laundry was being washed and dried quite quickly. I am going to do some sort of embroidery on mine so this does not happen again. But I have my jeans back and I am happy!

Related to the Indian restaurant, I guess I'll tell a story about my first experience with Mexican food. We live in Tennessee, where nobody ever had Mexican food. The foreign food that we had, which was Zena is very excited. Was pizza and also sometimes chow, Megan. But my aunt is from Texas and she went to Texas to visit and came back with some canned corn tortillas and some canned, I think, enchilada sauce. So, she invited us over. Up until that time, I was probably nine or ten, maybe ten. I really didn't like any kind of food. I liked hamburger and French fries and Pinto beans and pretty much that was it. But she made us Tex-Mex food, enchiladas, and tacos, and it was so delicious. I instantly converted to being a Mexican food lover. And also, that was the muller when I started eating other things besides my very limited diet.

I went to a holiday celebration with a backdoor cookout. It was memorable in the sense that it was the first planned outing with my children, who are still toddlers. It's been difficult as a homemaker with my toddlers, especially during the first couple of years. I feel like I sacrificed a lot to personally raise them, and sometimes I still feel ambivalent about my decision to have a family. So, to say this was personally memorable, at least to me, might be a bit of an understatement. The part about the holiday party that stood out the most was just sitting in their backyard and drinking a beer straight from the bottle with the sun shining on my face. I was tasked with watching one of my toddlers while my spouse took care of the others. It felt easier with one kid. I think the work multiplies significantly with more children, and I can understand why most parents these days want to stick to one child. Anyway, that moment in the backyard felt relaxing, like something I hadn't experienced in a long time. It was equal parts freedom, and for a moment, it felt like I didn't have any kids at all. I mean, I had one that I was watching at that time, but that fleeting moment felt like a tasty raindrop when you're stranded in a barren hot desert wasteland. My children thoroughly enjoyed the event, despite not really eating the great food. They got to play around with other children who were also there, and they got to see what an actual party with adults seems like. I personally enjoyed it and wish for more events like that in the future.

But yeah, just the other day, me and my dog, we were playing in our backyard, and I've got a toy for him, which is like a baseball. Sorry, a football. Meant for dogs with squeaks as well. For the first time, we played so much that even I felt exhausted because I was running behind him a lot, and he was also pretty exhausted by the benefits. So I would just go to one corner of my house, throw the ball over my house into the backyard, and he would just go crazy, bonkers running through the whole distance because that's technically the longest path. So I was trying to get him all worked out, and then run like I was trying to make him run as much as he can. But what I discovered is like, it's a nice opportunity for me as well to burn some of my calories as well. So at the end of the day, both him and I, we were pretty exhausted, but we were pretty happy after playing for such a long time and burning so many calories while playing basically.

I went to a jiu-jitsu club night, and the guy teaching was a blue belt. I think I was a purple belt at the time. And, well, I kicked his butt royally. He's like, "Well, you need to start teaching over here." So I took that over and just kept rolling with it. And at first, it was just to stay in shape, keeping all my skills good. And then I kept it up, kept it up, and when I ended up deciding, "Hey, this is what I wanna do," it wasn't like a really quick decision. It took several years for it to culminate into something that was feasible. We call it MAT therapy. It's very therapeutic because you're in the moment. You're only worried about the moment, 'cause this guy's trying to choke you. He's trying to throw you. MAT therapy and kinetic problem-solving. I'm in this bad spot, getting comfortable in bad spots. In my mind, I'm going, "Hey, this is no problem. I got this ginormous dude trying to squish me." So if I can breathe here, man, you can breathe anywhere.

So, I guess here, the fact is, I'm not a huge fan of the work that I had to do in this past year for my research. It wasn't what I really wanted to do, but I did it anyway because I was being paid to do it. And now I'm almost done. I've switched over to a new strain of work that I am interested in, but I still have to wrap up the last bits of my old work by writing a paper. And I really can't find any of the motivation to do it because I did not like the work at all. But this is the only way to prove that I did any work in the entirety of the last year. So, I guess, the main thing I'm learning here is, there is a challenge there. I don't want to work on it. I have no motivation to work on it, but I need to get it done. So if anything, I'm kind of completing it out of spite. And it seems that spite is a pretty good reason to keep going because it's just to prove someone else wrong. That thought that you couldn't. I'm taking it as motivation to do something I really am not motivated to do: to prove others that I was wrong. Prove others that they were wrong about me.

I finally got promoted as a supervisor from the current project I am working on in my field of work, which is graphic arts and design. Ever since I started down this path, I have found myself at a loss because somehow everyone seemed to be doing a better job than I was. Everyone else in my class seemed to grasp the concepts a lot quicker than I did, so ultimately I felt like I was a failure. Although I didn't give up, I would spend extra hours after work to try and catch up and sharpen up my skills in the areas that I was lacking. Fortunately, my boss somehow noticed how hard I was working and decided on my ranking in the project I'm currently working on. Don't get me wrong; I know what I'm doing in the field. I just learn at a slower pace. But this just goes to show that hard work really does pay off, and it feels amazing to not have given up on my dream. Now I'm even more motivated to work hard towards my goals, and hopefully, I will make it big one day. The moral of the story is that no matter how useless what you're doing seems, there's always someone watching what you do, and if you work hard enough toward something, you will eventually achieve that goal if you don't give up. Back when I was younger, I used to give up on my goals very quickly when I got frustrated. Then I would get disappointed because I would see that my progress was getting nowhere. I'm older, and I have experienced this for myself. I can honestly say that giving up is never the answer. Whether it takes a couple of weeks or a couple of months, never give up on what you believe in.

So, I have a story about one of my pets that I had as a child. So, I think I was in high school when I got a hamster. And hamsters are really small. And they're fast. But they're little. And the story is about one night. The story is about one night where I had gone to sleep but the lock on the cage door was apparently not completely locked. And my hamster escaped during the night while I was asleep. So, it's important to know, my bedroom was on the opposite end of the house from where my parents were. So, during the night, unknown to me, my hamster found a way out and then somehow got out of the cage. Dropped off of a dresser where he was, so about a meter or so, and then he had crawled through the house somehow and had escaped the attention of our dog and ended up in my parents' bedroom. On my mom, tickling her chin with his nose in the middle of the night. And she woke up and found him and then was very surprised. And she brought him back to my room and locked him in the cage and told me about it the next morning. But, we all thought that was very funny, that he had escaped and then crawled all the way across the entire house to get to my mom and then crawled up on the bed to get to her and then woke her up by tickling her chin. Now they liked each other. They had a good relationship. So, we just thought that was funny.

I have always wanted a pet cat, but it isn't until now that I decided to actually adopt one! I got her from an animal shelter near me and I named her Zig-Zag because she is so fast. She is a tabby, and when she wants you to pet her, she does this adorable thing where she tries to push your hand down with her paws, and it's so cute. She is very talkative, and she loves to be picked up. A lot of my friends have pet cats, and I can't wait for Zig-Zag to meet them! I play with her every day, and she loves to run and play outside (and chase birds). She has made my life so much better since I got her. She is amazing, and I am so happy I adopted her!

Okay. I thought I'd tell you about the situation we have here in Simsbury, where I live. With regard to bears. When we moved here 30 years ago, there were no bears. But now, for the last 20 years, there have been bears. And in the last four or five years, there have been many bears. Bears that come onto the deck, bears that go into the garage, bears that tip over the trash. They're funny because they are large and somewhat intimidating in appearance. But they seem as annoyed by us as we are by them. They are not aggressive in a way that, let's say, a yellow jacket is aggressive. And they're not creepy in the way, let's say, spiders and snakes are creepy. They're very quiet and they can scare you just because of their size and what you know they could do if they wanted to. I look at them and we live obviously in the woods. And they're huge, as I said. And I ask myself, how do they maintain that weight with just eating berries and stuff from the woods? It just does not seem possible. And over the years, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of cubs they have. Usually, early on, they'd come around with one cub, then two. Now we've seen as many as four cubs. And yes, they are adorable. They really, really are adorable, and they're charming in the way they react with their moms. They look to her for leadership and obey her nonverbal commands. And she watches out for them. You would be making a very bad decision to get between a mom and a cub. But there are too many. I am not a person who is in favor of killing animals just for the sake of killing them. But I'm thinking maybe something like an additive to food that would make them infertile, maybe that would be a good idea. I don't know. I'm working on this. That's my story.

I'm the curator of Behavioral Husbandry and Welfare for Oklahoma City Zoo. So I spend a lot of time looking, observing, learning everything we can about the species and what their needs are to give them many choices in their environment. So that they have varied days and they have a very dynamic environment that they're living in. When I was five years old, I had an encounter with a dolphin. And I was able to look that animal in the eye, and that was it for me. I wanted to dedicate my life to working with animals. When I left college, I thought, "I'm ready. Put me in a job. I know what to do." And what I found was the animals were the best teachers. They have taught me humility. I think that's a big one. They've taught me compassion, to be a little bit more open, and be very understanding. Especially to other human beings. That was something I learned when I left college. I had amazing experiences in college, and I loved my classes, but I don't think I really started becoming well-rounded until I got out of the classroom. And I really started learning the real-world stuff. So talk to people, hear their stories, and keep an open mind because every person has something to teach you.

Okay. So, this story is another story about a pet, and this one at the time, I was dating this girl. And she had a dog, and we both enjoyed playing with this dog. She was really nice. And one thing that was really memorable for me was when we would take her to a park and let her off the leash. And then we would play hide and go seek with her. So, typically what would happen is one of us would hold the dog on the ground. She was seated, but we would cover her eyes with our hands so she couldn\'t see. And then the other one would run and hide behind the tree somewhere far away. And then when they were well hidden, whoever was holding the dog would let her see and then ask questions like, "Where is she? Where did she go?" Something like that just to get the dog excited. And then the dog would look around and not know where the person was, and then she would get excited and she would go into a hunting mode. And then she would start sniffing around on the ground and looking around and trying to check everything. And then when she finally found the other person, she would get really excited. And then the other person would laugh and get her all worked up. And then it would be really happy, and then she would run back really excited. And we would do it again, just changing roles. But it was a really fun moment and it was an enjoyable memory.

About two weeks ago, I adopted a new cat. I go to a local pet store once a week or once every two weeks to buy supplies for my animals. I often take my husband to the pet store with me so that he can carry the heavier items that I purchase. At the back of the pet store, there is a small room that has a big window so people can see in. Inside the room are several cages where cats are kept that are available for adoption. Several months ago, my husband noticed an orange cat with the name Ivan in one of the cages, and he seemed to really like him. Week after week, I would go to the pet store and pass by this room. I could not help but notice that while many of the other cages were filled with different cats each week, Ivan never moved. He just sat in his small cage waiting to be adopted. The store lowered his adoption fee several times but still, no one wanted Ivan. It made me very sad to see him sitting there, so on the next trip to the pet store, I took my husband again. I showed him that Ivan was still there and asked an employee to let him meet the lonely cat. It was instant love. Ivan almost jumped into my husband's arms and purred. It was like he knew they were going to be together. I signed some paperwork and bought a few new toys while they got acquainted. My husband's eyes lit up when I came back with a box to take Ivan home in. When we got home, Ivan seemed comfortable, like he had always been there.

Well, I guess one of the stories I was thinking about is further connected to my interest in human-robot interaction, human-computer interaction, and my personal journey and experience with computers and robots. I graduated yesterday. And I recreated one of my photos from school with my mom yesterday. So it was a photo from 2001 of me sitting at a computer, in a classroom. And the picture was taken on an old film camera. It was analog, from, like, the 1950s. It\'s a black and white photo, but it\'s me sitting at a computer with my mom, with her hand around me. And I had headphones on. And I was actually playing a learning game at that time. And it was really interesting. And I could still picture what the game was. It was "Reader Rabbit." And so that was like the beginning of my journey with human-computer interaction because I got to experience hands-on, at a very early age, how useful computers were in daily life, when they weren\'t as ubiquitous as they are now. This was 2001. The iMac G3s were still a new thing. I know I was using an older Power Mac that was gray and depressing at the time, but that\'s what computers looked like. And as I was starting school, Apple released the iMac G3, which was colorful and kind of gave emotions to the computer because you could see through and see what was inside it. But it was also colorful and fun. So it was like easily approachable. And that\'s when I first started thinking about how the design of technology can help humans form somewhat of an emotional connection with the actual device. And I was so interested in that back then that I just continued exploring my interests in computer science, but also psychology and design and the brain. And eventually, I kind of strayed off of that path and went into more of the social sciences, got a little art degree. But that\'s your background into the realm of computer science and human-computer interaction, as part of my educational journey. So seeing that picture being recreated 22 years later felt like a form of self-actualization, like Maslow\'s hierarchy, where I am who I wanted to be back then. So I guess this is a journey of me learning about myself and becoming who I want to be but also, in that process, using technology to help me do that while learning about how technology helps humans do that from a human-can-be-a-distraction perspective. Yeah. I\'m at this interesting point now where I\'ve been using technology to improve myself, but also studying how technology does that. And now I have tangible evidence that I have successfully done that.

I took a calculus course, and I had this amazing teacher who taught the entire thing through computer programming. It was visual, and for the first time ever, I was able to understand math. It bridged my love of computer-generated imagery, and then what I started noticing is that there are these patterns in the world that you could model and stimulate, and there's some harmony and beauty in there, and it was linguistic. Writing code is language; it's like poetry. It's like manipulating grammar. I think it's a very similar set of skills to a poet, and people don't really realize that. People tell you art and math have nothing to do with each other. But I had this experience where someone showed me math like an artist.

So, I've been working on my outdoor deck. It's in a home that my partner and I got about three years ago. And we are not super handy, but we've been trying to figure out how to make some of the repairs ourselves. And it so happened that the deck outside needs a new set of paint in the outer layer. And that's something we have been working on. It's interesting because we're getting to learn how to do the research online to understand the different materials, different adhesives, different companies that are out there, how to let it dry for the right amount of time, how to strip the existing paint, etc., etc.

Recently, I got my car serviced. I noticed the air conditioner wasn't blowing cool air, so I took it to a chain mechanic company near my location. After the car was checked, I was quoted a price for a major part that needed fixing, with work needed. I decided to go ahead with getting it done since AC is something we need in the car, especially in summertime. The work was done in a few hours, and we went to pick up the car. As we left the shop, my car stalled and wouldn't drive. I had driven out on a main roadway with lots of traffic. Thankfully, we didn't have an accident, and the car behind me was able to stop when I stalled. I drove very slowly around the block back to the shop and informed them of the problem. They checked and apparently had not tightened or adjusted a part well, which caused the issue. I was very disappointed and let them know that their error could have caused an accident or worse. However, I was glad they were able to adjust it quickly, and then we were on our way. I often think about what happened and how it may have turned out badly. Thankfully, nothing major happened. It was quite a scare.

My husband and I got married when we were both very young. We were halfway through college. We had met right before we started college. He had a football scholarship, and I thought that money was dumb. So I really wasn't very interested in him. But we had a mutual friend who introduced us, and he thought I was going to be a snob. He thought, after he met me, that I had a boyfriend already because there was another guy from Rice who was at the same church camp that we went to. \nBut we quickly connected when we got to college and were engaged two years later, or got married two years later, halfway through school. If either one of my daughters had wanted to get married at that young age, I was not quite 20, and he was just past 20, I would have been horrified. But I think we grew together. Our wedding was a small wedding in Littlefield, which was the town where I lived. My mother wanted to do the reception at our house, so we did the reception at our house. And we had lots of friends that came for the wedding, so we got to see friends and show them my hometown. I remember being upset that I wanted to go swimming with everybody the day of the wedding, and my mother wouldn't let me because she said I would mess up my hair, which it was true. I would have, and I might have gotten sunburned. So she was probably right. \nThe night of our wedding, we drove to New Mexico. We were both poor, halfway through college, so poor college students. We had borrowed my brother's tent, which was a pup tent with no floor and not quite long as Fred so his feet stuck out, and we had to just put sleeping bags down on the ground. \nPretty soon after we got to Houston, back to school, we took our wedding money, which, if I'm not mistaken, was something like $60, and bought a $45 tent, which we used over and over again, and a $15 ice cream maker. We really thought we were flush to buy those things.

My soon-to-be sister-in-law's wedding. It was in one of my favorite towns, Gainesville. We each had our own little cottages on the property, so I didn't feel rushed or even worried about getting ready on time since we woke up there. It was the first wedding I had ever been to as an adult and also felt super close to the people getting married. The morning was great. I stayed with the boys for the most part since I knew them a bit better than the bridesmaids. We were all swapping stories and kidding around while I helped them get ready. My boyfriend looks amazing in his tux, and it actually made me cry because I had never seen him dressed up like that. It honestly made me feel like I couldn't wait to get married for the first time ever in my life. I sat in the front and helped my boyfriend's grandparents since they are a bit older and have a hard time getting up and down. The bride and groom looked so amazing. They had been together for 8 years, so this was a really big deal to everyone. The ceremony went off without a hitch. Afterwards, it was just a lot of fun. The meal was buffet style, and I was sitting with my boyfriend, his parents, and his grandparents. I helped his grandparents get food, and again, everyone swapped stories. I was so happy to be part of his family and part of this event, and I felt really included. At the end, we all got Star Wars lightsabers, and we made an archway using them for the bride and groom to walk through. After that, my boyfriend and I spent the rest of the night playing with the little kids who waited the whole day to play with them. We ended up getting beat up like crazy. I loved the day, and I wouldn't change it for anything.

So, when our girls were in high school, we took a trip to Costa Rica. And the girls, I think they were both in high school. Although Melinda may have been in junior high school, and Susanna, a freshman in high school. I think that is what it was. So I planned the trip, and I planned it all online. There wasn't any Expedia back then, I don't think, and a whole lot of things that would make it easier now. We didn't have then, but I used a travel agency out of Chicago, strangely enough because they had some good trips in Costa Rica. So we flew into Costa Rica, and then went to Arenal, and then we went over to the Pacific Coast and stayed in a beautiful Airbnb zone. Arenal was so rainy and humid that everything in our suitcases was drenched. You could even wring them out after the end of the time, even though they hadn't been out in the rain. And when we got to the Pacific Coast, we had an Airbnb. We had a separate room for the girls, and for us, they overlooked the ocean. It had a beautiful swimming pool, and both girls were just as grumpy as could be about the whole thing because they missed their friends. Since then, they often talked about how wonderful the trip is and how they're ashamed of themselves from being teenagers. But I tell them I was worse when I was a teenager.

I just got back from a vacation, and as is often said, I need a vacation from my vacation now! My husband and I went with my brother, sister-in-law, their nineteen-month-old, and our two kids, who are 15 months and 3. It was QUITE an experience. We stayed in a lovely rental house in Rosemary Beach, about an hour from Destin. The drive was not too bad, about five hours from our home, but it was long enough with small children in the car. I was nervous about this trip because it was our first family vacation, and I have a hard time managing my two strong-willed children, especially when they are together. Sure enough, by Day 2, I was exhausted. I had to carry my youngest on my hip probably ninety percent of the time, even including when we were at home. He woke up at 5:30 AM every morning, so I was forced to do so as well. We engaged in a variety of activities, including souvenir shopping, visiting the community pool, going to the beach, and watching a bottlenose dolphin show at an aquarium. Probably my favorite thing we did was go to a natural spring that wasn't far from where we were staying. The water was a beautiful aquamarine and clear as it could be. The only problem was it was COLD! We had a blast wading and swimming a bit and just enjoying the beautiful scenery. Although it was hard to keep both kids organized and happy, it was a memorable experience and one that I'll not soon forget. It was wonderful to have time to spend with them and also with my brother and his family. They are very dear to us.

So yeah. So, I can share a story that happened recently. So, I went to Yosemite with my boyfriend two weeks ago. We went to see one of the biggest meteor showers during the year, and that was very fascinating. That was really my first time seeing so many meteors at one time. And then, however, a part of the sky was covered by clouds, so we couldn't see meteors throughout all the areas in the sky, but at least through a specific small area we have seen a lot of meteors, so I was pretty satisfied. And I was also very grateful for my boyfriend. He woke up so early at 3:00 a.m. and drove us up to the Glacier Point in Yosemite to catch the sunrise, which is very beautiful, although I was still sleeping all the way while he was driving. And then afterwards, we went on a little hike to the Mirror Lake. However, once we got to the Mirror Lake, it started to rain. So then the Mirror Lake was supposed to be very smooth on its surface so that it looks like a mirror. But because of the raining, the mirror was kind of rough. So it was a numb mirror, Mirror Lake. But we still got a little exercise by hiking towards it. So it was still very fun. And after that, we went home. That was a pretty fun trip. I want to share with you.

I went on a very memorable trip to Crater Lake, Oregon, on July 8th. It was particularly special because it was me and my girlfriend's 1-year anniversary. We stayed at the Crater Lake Lodge, which is normally a very hard venue to reserve. However, my girlfriend was very prompt and smart about reserving the space very early on, which allowed us to stay at the lodge. To our surprise, we noticed there was snow amid the hot sun. The Crater Lake had an unforgettable view, and it was breathtaking. It is so hard to describe the emotions that we both felt. During the whole day, we drank a lot of wine to keep ourselves warm, and with the slight booze, it kept us rather excited throughout the day. We went on a couple of hikes throughout the day. One thing that was on our bucket list was to jump into the lake, but that never ended up happening. This was because the roads were closed because there were some cracks and boulders that needed to be removed. In the evening, the lodge was very cozy. However, with such a beautiful view of the sky, we ended up chit-chatting until 3 AM. Our next day was planned to go to Portland, and yes, we were exhausted, but we didn’t really mind. This trip really got us thinking about developing our relationship, and thus it was truly unforgettable for both of us. I hope to go again another time and stay at the lodge with the lake view. That was the only downside because it was hard to reserve a spot, and we had to stay in the mountain view. All in all, I hope to revisit my memory in the future.

I guess recently, I don't know if I've been talking about the lack of security at my job because we're a venture-backed kind of product company. And so, we really kind of rely on outside financing to help support our growth and development. And so, there's been a lot of uncertainty now with this last venture capitalist backing, investment opportunity, whether or not our company is going to survive. And so, I've been dealing a lot with the nervousness about job security. And so, I've actually reached out to my friend who works at another product design company. And there's a really great potential opportunity over there. And so, I guess the thing that I would like to talk to you about is sometimes I feel like I'm my own worst enemy. I already kind of weigh the balances, which I guess is normal, but at the same time sometimes I already talk myself out of opportunities before I even jump into them because I'm weighing all the outcomes and seeing outcomes that probably don't even exist. And maybe just looking for reasons not to lean into something. And so, I definitely struggle with this. It sounds perfect and great, but it's kind of a whole 100% remote, and so, I just already have predetermined in my mind that for the rest of my life, I'm going to be working at home in my office by myself. And I shouldn't just talk myself out of good opportunities.

I was at Microsoft for five years and then did a bunch of different work in West Africa. I've taught school, I've been an urban planning associate. I've sold seeds door to door -- I think that was my first job. I think I was about six when I was doing that. I started off early with some of that entrepreneurial zeal. Other people are really fortunate that they find something that just brings so many of their passions together, and I would encourage you to think about that and to try to construct that reality for yourself. You don't have to fit in these neat cubby holes. There's a great business leader who says, "If you're approaching something like everyone else is approaching it, why do you think you're gonna do better than they are?" You know, you're not.

Yeah, so I think something I\'ve been thinking about lately is this book that I\'ve been reading. It\'s called "The Way of the Wanderer," and basically, it\'s about a war between, I think, ten dogs. And one of the gods is the wandering God. And another god is the God of Law. And the God of Law is trying to become the only God. So, he wants to be the law. And the wandering God wants to prevent that because obviously, the wanderer doesn\'t want to be free. And so, to prevent the God of Law from becoming the only God or the ruling God, the wandering God starts uniting the tribes of people that worship him, and then also working with other gods to try and, I guess, combine their worshippers. They will be stronger than the God of Law. And so currently, in the part of the book that I\'m reading, there are these genies or one particular genie who is determined that he wants to be the best genie and the smartest. And he wants to be honored by the wandering God. And so basically, he\'s playing both sides. He\'s playing all sides to try and impress the wandering God. He\'s pitting tribe leaders against each other to try and eventually make it look like he brought everyone together. And he is trying to work with other deities, other spirits from other gods. But in the end, he\'s not that smart. And so, I think that his plans are going to fail in one way or another. But then, I also do wonder if they will, in some way, succeed because they\'re so messy that they might actually end up being good.

When I was a kid, my father used to take me to watch trials, actually, and there was something just about the whole kind of excitement and snapping victory from the jaws of defeat, the great cross-examination that brings us witness to tears. I really think that law is an instrument for social change, and growing up, it was always part of my vision of my life that social change would be part of it. When I wake up in the morning, one thing I know for sure is I'll be there. And if I try to find things in my life that make waking up exciting, rewarding, satisfying, then I'm gonna pursue those things in my life.

Are you listening? Right now, I guess I'll start. I'm not sure if you're listening, I guess. The two most meaningful stories we can start out with, from the beginning. I can tell you the story of my adoption. I was born in Seoul, South Korea, and at about the age somewhere between eight to 15 months, I was abandoned on post office steps. And then, I'm assuming taken to a local orphanage. At about 21 months, the adoption was arranged for my family, which I'm very lucky to have, but I'll go back into a little more detail of my adoption.\n\nFrom what I know, I was abandoned on post office steps and then taken to an orphanage. And then, my family was tracked down. I was told that my birth father was deceased and my birth mother couldn't take care of me. After they had contacted my family, my birth uncle tried to take me and take care of me, but that also he just couldn't handle it. And so then I was finally released for the adoption process. So, at about 21 months, I came over to the United States to my current loving, loving family. I feel very fortunate and I never kind of felt empty inside about the whole adoption. I get a little emotional just talking about it because honestly, it feels very surreal. I've always had a very loving family and so there's nothing that I should be feeling bad about. I was lucky to have my parents have two biological children, John and Betsy. They're about eight and nine years older than me, so I was definitely the baby of the family, but I never grew up feeling different. In fact, sometimes I joke that I'm just a white girl, which might seem a little derogatory, but I have never felt different or undervalued in my life. Well, from this, if anything, I feel very blessed and fortunate to have landed where I did and all the immense opportunities that have been before me. I really, honestly couldn't feel luckier about the family that I had.

I heard about an opportunity in Tanzania to volunteer and work with an organization that was really trying to make an impact with people who are living with HIV. I was offered a position to run the organization that I volunteered at. A really pivotal moment for me was when I came back, I had my first daughter. At six weeks, I brought her back to Africa and was on the road, and trying to figure out how to navigate through childcare. One of my colleagues said it was very irresponsible of me to get pregnant. And that was, to this injustice, fire in me. But I packed up my family from Africa and moved. I guess there was the question of why the US. I just figured the US has childcare figured out. So I just had no idea how broken the system was here until I started pulling on the thread. And the piece that I really honed in on was there's a really magical experience with that, the in-home family. It became really clear that if I wanted my kid to experience the change that I was gonna create, I had to start immediately. And so that is the injustice that I'm really trying to correct. I buzz when I'm with people and teams who are trying to solve big problems. Every morning I wake up thinking about the problem and want to jump out of bed and get started solving it.

One, so I think it is just like one of the things. That. What was that? Like? I was talking to some other girl, and she was like, she was getting concerned about it. That, why do you talk? And then I told her something that happened a day before, and she was like, "Why didn\'t you tell me yesterday?" And at the time it happened. So she just said like whatever has happened, like she wants to know at that moment and that second. But given that everyone is busy, if I tell her anything beyond a day, she feels like, okay, that is something you\'re telling. I think she misses acknowledging the fact that she got to know from me, and she delves into the part that, "oh, I missed something knowing yesterday." And then I am hiding other things as well, and she feels that she\'s not getting to know the entire thing.

I got harassed by my dad. It used to be just him messaging me asking me for pictures of me. I had a bad gut feeling about it, so I would often ignore or avoid it. Then he moved on to saying "I'm in the bathroom doing you know what" and "This parking is nice, you can do whatever you want and no one will see." Last night, I was at my parents' house and I was half-woken up by a touch on my leg. I don't know if it actually happened, but I think it did. I don't know what to do because I feel bad for my mom. I want to cut off ties with him, but I can't do that without hurting my mom. She's a housewife with no job and savings, so if I tell her the truth, she'll leave and life will be tough. I don't make enough for both of us to be comfortable. I'm not even sure she'll believe me.

Okay, so we are now on the third generation sent us. And my nephew Sam had dated several girls that we really didn\'t think too much of. Those seem to be like they just wanted him to buy them stuff. But lately, we met a few years ago, we met a woman that we really like. She was from Puerto Rico, and she was a switch therapist. And sure enough, she and Sam kept dating. And then the next thing we heard, they were moving in together and buying a house together. And now they had the most adorable little girl named Liliana. And a few minutes ago or about a couple of hours ago, I got a phone call from Sam. And he said, "Do you mind if we stopped by? We need to have a place to change a diaper." So they came by and Elia walked all around and took nuts and gave them to everybody in the house. She calls my husband TIO Upuelo, and she calls me TIA Apuela. And we think that this is a great couple. Unfortunately, they\'re not going to have a destination wedding in Puerto Rico, but they might have a party there.

I started talking to someone over the internet. So, I've been talking to this person for quite some time now. Just recently, we got a little more romantically involved. I thought we would just be good friends. I ended up catching feelings. I never really thought anything would come of it. We lived on the opposite sides of the US. I recently moved, though, to Central America, and they were visiting close by. So, I drove down there to meet them. And holy smokes. I'm glad I did. She changed my whole world. I knew we had a connection over the phone and etc. But dang, when we met in person, you could just feel the love. This event is important because she's important. She's my future.

Okay. So, the story is how I got really interested in the intersection of science and computer graphics. I had been interested in both of these topics for a long time. I wasn't really sure how they went together for a professional career. But I was in grad school, and I was taking a class on biochemistry and plant metabolism. And we had a chance to write a paper. And the paper was supposed to be about a process, a biochemical process that takes place in plants. And I asked the professor if instead of a paper, I could do an animation on a process. I thought it might be more engaging, more interesting, maybe a way to bring that process to life. And he agreed to it. So, I set out to find a process. I found something nice. I worked on it. I used a variety of computer graphics tools and ended up with an animation that I thought explained the process really well. And then I turned that in as my project instead of a paper, and I had a chance to present that to students. And the students really enjoyed it. They learned a lot from the process, being able to watch it happen as a cycle. And I thought it was a really good example of how science and graphics can come together for an educational purpose.

We took a really cool course that invited people who weren't engineers but who wanted to do some sort of science change. It was an art science class that said, "It's all about combining the beauty of art and the analytical power of science to do something." So you just had to come in and have an idea and then find a way to combine those two to come up with a solution. So, we just locked ourselves up and brainstormed. And this is what we presented. And thankfully, being at somewhere like Harvard, there were a lot of resources that were made available to us. So, from the class we got a small grant to keep on playing around with the idea. And for a while, it was just kind of trying to understand what this ball is. Engineers didn't believe it could work. So we actually had to research how it would work. Research the Faraday Principle, then build their own conceptual model, test it in South Africa, and then have engineers say, "Okay." For us, it was really interesting because people always say, "How do you think out of the box?" And I'm like, "It's really easy to think out of the box when you don't even know the parameters of the box. If you don't even know that a box exists." Whereas knowledge is power, sometimes with knowledge, it's very easy to see the obstacles. And we were just like, "Why wouldn't it work?" Even though we did not necessarily have the technical expertise, we certainly knew the context.

So, I was having a conversation with a friend today about how art is a very essential thing for humans. It's somewhat like pure expression of human spirit. But unfortunately, we sort of tend to restrict human or performers of art to only the very best. The people who become painters are the best at painting, the people who are the musicians are the best at music, and so on. And Project Trooper, we talked about participatory music, where the audience is part of the music as well. And it's just a thing that people do, as opposed to being an exclusive stage for professional musicians. So my friend brought up this study, which I thought was really interesting. In an Indigenous community in Peru, music-making is highly participatory. And an ethnomusicologist conducted a study there once. So any male community member is welcome to perform with pipes or flutes with his community, and anyone is welcome to dance. So, one time when the author of the study was at one of these events, there were two folks from the community who performed with extremely out-of-tune flutes. However, it seemed like everyone was having fun. The author of the study, coming from a very different background from the West, was driven crazy by the out-of-tune flutes and tried to stand as far away from them as possible. But he was shocked that none of the other players felt any or gave any indication that anything was wrong, and no one discouraged their participation. And later, he had a conversation with another professional musician about how to tune, and even he said he cannot bring himself to point out that the flutes were out of tune. So, this is very different from the society that I'm used to, which is where only the best are expected to perform, and music is often a way for the most talented people to showcase their talent. But since art is willing to grow to the human experience, isn't it better for music to be participatory? And you should probably be more accepting of all kinds of skill levels taking part in art instead of just putting the best on a pedestal. On the flip side, I also think that there should be people pushing art to its boundaries. And of course, that can't be everyone. I just think, and my friend thinks too, that everyone should get a chance to participate in music, just like that community. And curve.

Women have been pretty much hidden in the shadows as creators and as creative scientists, even though we have built things, like Grace Hopper. She created a whole computer language. If you go even further back to Ada Lovelace, she's the first real computer scientist at all. When I went to school in the mid-80s and I started college, there's just a handful of girls in the engineering school. And I had no professors that were female, I certainly had no professors of color in the school of engineering. And I stumbled across this idea of the lack of women and women of color in technology. And the pivotal turning point for me was really my daughter having the same interest in computer science and her sharing the same thing that I experienced professionally, that she felt kind of alone. But it planted a seed that this was a problem that was affecting me deeply. I really didn't have an idea that I was gonna create an organization to address it. It took me almost a whole year of just gnawing on this idea, talking to folks, before I actually jumped.

Here's my story today. And maybe it's more a reflection than a story, but just wanted to talk to you about my son's 40th birthday. It crept up on me, and that was interesting. He lives in another state. Now he's married. He has a child, and we do not have a day-to-day communication relationship. So he's very busy. So we catch each other when we can. Birthdays always make me reminisce about them growing up, both my sons. But this one was my younger son. So different. You think about a day that we were born, when you drop them off at kindergarten, their first day, first grade, and on to dropping them off at college and all that, and then their wedding. It's a lot of emotions during the day when they have their birthday, it always seems to happen to me. But now he's 40, and he has his own life, his own family. And our conversations are so different now. It's no longer the parent-child conversation. It's two adults talking. He told me all about how his house is coming along. He's doing a lot of renovations. He has a new job and wanted to talk about his daughter, who was starting second grade next week. So it was all very pleasant. But it's so different. It's just how life evolves over the years, from parent child to a different kind of relationship. And it is a little bit like the tables are turning. So a lot of memories in this city, a lot of memories. But that was today. And it always happens during their birthdays. So that's my story today.

My husband and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary. It is emotional for me because we've been together for eleven years, so celebrating an anniversary with someone I love so much makes me happy. A lot of people don't last in relationships, and to have a long-lasting relationship and a great one makes me very happy. My husband surprised me on our anniversary by taking me to the resort where we got married. It was a very special seafood dinner buffet. It was fancy, and when we go out to eat, we usually don't eat out at places so fancy, so it was very special. I have cherished the time I spent with my husband. We have gone on lots of fun trips together. We have moved cross country twice. My relationship is a very memorable part of my life. It feels very special to get to spend my life with someone. The most memorable part of this year as well is that my English Bulldog celebrated one year of not having aspiration pneumonia. She was very sick a year ago and almost died. She is very important to me and my husband. She makes us both very happy and adds to the joy of our relationship.

Yeah, I guess this is more a recent kind of thing that I\'ve been mulling through in my head. I have a really good friend who\'s been a good friend for the past few years. And recently, she\'s just been so negative. Actually, not recently, for a while now she\'s been so negative. And then I can\'t help but also feel negative. And then it also feels as if she\'s starting to be negative towards me. And so my initial reaction, and this is a problem of mine, is to just say, "alright, screw it. She\'s not a very good friend. Don\'t need to invest time there." But I also think that it\'s really worthwhile to have strong friendships. I just sometimes get really disappointed with my friend\'s behavior. Or I tend to see that they\'re very selfish. And I don\'t really know what to do about it because I do think it\'s worthwhile building and working on it. And so sometimes I almost think it\'s almost like a marriage. It\'s like you talk things through and work through it. But the other side of me is kind of like, "there\'s just not enough time in the day to worry about unhealthy factors in my life."

She moved across the country, and for the last year, we've remained really close, and she would always be the first person I'd want to talk to, and vice versa. But lately, there's been a shift in our relationship, and I just don't feel like she actually cares or is interested in me as a person anymore. We used to talk all day, every day about anything, and now she only engages in conversation if it's for advice or for her to rant about something that's bothering her. I try to engage in more light-hearted conversations, and she immediately switches the topic to be about her. And she always says she has my back and I can tell her anything, but as of lately, I don't feel comfortable approaching her with anything that's bothering me because she either ignores me or switches the conversation. The thing that really bothered me and I think started the shift was when I was going through a rough time and really needed a friend to talk to. I tried telling her about some things that were bothering me, and she said it wasn't healthy for me to be so negative and that I should see a specialist or doctor - so it's okay for her to complain to me daily about her issues but tells me I should find a specialist? That rubbed me the wrong way, especially from someone I've built a lot of trust with. I'm just feeling like we're drifting apart, and I can't keep putting in the effort for a one-sided friendship. I'm afraid that will just be the end of the friendship.

Yeah. So, a story that I thought of was my father texted me pictures from Google Maps of the old apartment that we used to live in. And he was like, "I love that. That was the greatest of times. People love talking to you because you could talk like an adult. And your grandmother helped us out so much." And I didn\'t really have great memories of that time in my life or talking to anyone. So, yeah, it was just interesting to talk about those differences. I asked him if he had a plan for us to move into a house or anything like that. And he said no, that he was just trying to kind of get by to make sure that we had everything that we needed. So, that was just an interesting conversation about my past. Yeah.

I used to live in shared homes in different countries (Dublin, Poland, South Africa) my whole life. 3 years ago, I turned back home to my country (The Netherlands), and I have lived with my parents since then. I've been trying to find a nice place for myself since I got back, but with the current housing crisis, this was really a challenge. But last week, I finally found a nice apartment, and I signed the contract today! I am just so happy! Finally, my own place! The whole apartment used to be an office building. It has been completely refurbished, and there's a fully working brand new kitchen and a fully built bathroom. I can't wait to move in!

My cat, Katie, has disappeared. I live at home in Ohio. I'm just here in Massachusetts temporarily, and my parents have been taking care of my two cats, Sammy and Katie. And about three days ago, Katie disappeared, and we can't find her anywhere. None of the neighbors know where she is. We've not seen any sign of her. I've been monitoring the camera, and I'm very afraid that something happened to her. They haven't been able to find her at the side of the road. It doesn't seem like she's been hit by a car, but I'm worried that a coyote might have gotten her. And I'm really worried about her. She's my sweet girl. I don't want anything bad to have happened to her.

I moved out to the country in Oklahoma about a year ago. It is sometimes hard for me to see the animals that are killed on the side of the road or in the road. It is painful to drive past them. But on this day, I got an opportunity to help. There was a tiny dog being chased by a large dog on the side of the road, and I pulled over and chased the big dog away and scooped up the little dog. I remember the little dog shaking so hard and just being terrified. I held her close to me and felt her breathing finally slow just a bit and her shaking stop just a little bit. She would definitely have been attacked if I had not scooped her up. I took her home with me, and then the next day, I took her to the vet. She was not chipped, but I reached out on Facebook. And finally, the owner contacted me. I was able to reunite her with her owners. It turns out that the people who were watching her thought that she had come in and locked up and left. But she was still outside. It was a joyous feeling to see her so happy, reunited with her owners. Everyone was crying; it was a great experience.

Okay. So it's good that we talked about work because something that has been popping into my brain quite a bit is the fact that today is Tuesday, and it's one of my busiest days. Both my husband and I work typically about eight-hour days. And then both of our kids go to school. After school gets out, we go immediately to extracurricular activities. Both of our daughters do gymnastics, and then after gymnastics, we go straight into soccer practice. So it's a really long day for us. And we typically get home around seven or a little bit before seven. I currently get to work from home, which is really nice because then I have some flexibility in my schedule and I can really do a work like that. Or attempt to do some sort of work-life balance. But eventually, I will have to go back into the office. And it's something that's been really weighing on my mind because my wife really is trying to support my kids and being there for my husband. And being in the office for eight hours a day makes that very difficult to try to get all the other aspects of your life organized and things accomplished. And so I'm just kind of worried about what that might look like when I do go back into the office.

I knew that I wanted to get into tech somehow. But I wasn't sure which field, like mechanical engineering or computer science, and I was really good at math. So I'm like, okay, I wanna do something with math, I wanna explore programming. And that's how I started taking computer classes. And that's really how I came about choosing a direction. So MINDBODY's mission is to leverage technology to improve the wellness of the world. And so I oversee what's called the data science team, and we do a lot of analyzing of data. And so a lot of that has to do with just figuring out what the trends are, what kind of shifts we're seeing in the industry in terms of attendance. Are we seeing drops in attendance? Like, for example, people make their New Year's resolutions, right? You see attendance spikes on the first week of January, and then it levels off. We can see those things. And so I feel like I'm one of the lucky ones who gets to actually work in the field that I got to focus on.

All right. I thought it would be fun to share a story from a time I was in college and had the role of a resident assistant, which is often abbreviated to RA. I lived in a dorm and was responsible for the floor I lived on, the safety and well-being of the other students who lived on that floor, and, collectively, all the RAs in the building are responsible for the safety and well-being of the residents of that dormitory. This was in 2006, I believe. The university I went to is in Rhode Island, and at that university, they have a large number of students from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island - all places that tend to root for the Boston Red Sox baseball team. The other large percentage of students at the University of Rhode Island are from New York and New Jersey, and many of those students root for the New York Yankees baseball team. In 2006, the New York Yankees played the Boston Red Sox in the playoffs of the Major League Baseball, which would lead to the World Series. I think it was the semifinal round, and it was an exciting series. I don't recall exactly if it went to seven games, but the Red Sox won some, and the Yankees won some. The students were very excited, but because the student body populations would have broken down between half of students rooting for the Red Sox and half of the students rooting for the Yankees, after the games, they would have a lot of energy and excitement. Some of that was fun, but as you'd imagine on a college campus with alcohol involved and the hormones of the students at that age and all the energy in that sort of environment, sometimes students became too excited and expressed that in a way that was potentially dangerous by collecting together in big groups and sort of forming many riots, where objects were thrown and fights were breaking out and dumpsters were set on fire. So, it presented a potentially dangerous situation for the rest of the college campus and the students that were outside in those groups. The RAs collectively, after this started, got together and positioned themselves after the game in areas to help regulate the behavior of the students on campus and try to keep everybody safe. But it was a unique experience and challenging, and for the most part, I think after the first night, things were not as dangerous or violent, in part due to the efforts made by the college police and the RAs on campus to help reduce the potential for somebody to get hurt. It was a very memorable, interesting period.

I am the Director and Presiding Judge for the City of Houston Municipal Courts. I was going to go to college to be a doctor. That worked out real well until biology. We cut them up and bleeding and all that stuff. I couldn't handle it. Everyone kept saying, "You talk so much, you probably should go to law school." When I first became a prosecutor, they would send us to different schools for career day. When I became a judge, same thing. The thing that stuck out to me the most was one time I went to a school as a judge. They told them who I was and they said, "All rise." So the kids stood up, and four of the black kids that were sitting on the thing went, "She's black." I came up just like they did, in a public school and those sorts of things. It's good to give back. You will find so many different places where you can go that you'll make a difference.

Okay. So here\'s a story I heard when I was a kid, and I think it\'s from an old Buddhist tradition. But I really like the story, and I still think about it occasionally. It\'s pretty meaningful to me. So here we go.\n\nIn the forest next to a big Kingdom, there lived a huge herd of deer. Their leader was the King Deer, with magnificent horns and a golden glimmering coat. One look, and you could tell he was the King of the deer.\n\nThe deer had one problem. The King of the neighboring Kingdom would like to hunt, and he would hunt with his soldiers, courtiers, and ministers. They would slay tens of deers every day. And to put an end to this madness, the deer came up with this lottery system approved by the King. Every day, the deer would all pick a leaf at random. And the deer with the most holes on the leaf would be sent as a sacrifice to the King. This way, the King of the Kingdom would not hunt the deer.\n\nSo the system is put into effect, and for many days, weeks, months, and years, the deer would pick a leaf every day and one would be sent to die.\n\nOne of these days, the King Deer heard some noise and went to investigate. He saw a few other deer ganging up on one doe and bullying it. He asked them, "Why are you doing this?" And they said, "Today, it is this doe\'s turn to be sacrificed to the humans, and she\'s refusing to go."\n\nThe conscience of the King Deer stirred. Is this an unfortunate fate that has led them to this cruel system? One where, by mere bad luck, one is sent to die? However, the system is the same for every deer, and they can\'t show favor to one doe or another. So, he asked, "Why do you refuse to go to the humans?"\n\nThe doe pleaded, "Please let me live another week. You see, the doe is pregnant, and her child will be born soon. And she doesn\'t want it to enter the world only to die with her. She wants someone else to go that day instead."\n\nThe King hears her, and he realizes that he cannot send this doe and her child to die. Two lives gone where only one should be. But he also knows that he can\'t send any other deer in their stead, for that would be unfair to them.\n\nSo the dear King realizes and chooses to go himself. He sacrifices himself. Once the King sees him, he realizes at once that this is the King of the deer, and he is shocked. And goes hunting no more in the forest.\n\nHe sees the fragility and the vulnerability. And he realizes that the King sacrificed himself to save the life of an unborn child. The human King realizes that he can\'t hunt the deer anymore and is moved by the sacrifice of the deer King. And the deer are now free to live again.\n\nI really like this story because it shows that mercy is very powerful. And sometimes, you do have the power to make someone\'s life better, to help them. And maybe it will not be as hard of a sacrifice as what the King of the deer did. But in our own small way, we can help.

Thanks to him, there will always be a piece of me missing. His job was to teach math, yet he decided religion should be taught first. Laughing in our faces as he told us how we were all worthless bags of flesh and deserved to burn forever. Along with our parents. Gleefully, joyfully. A class full of minors. As someone who was never directly exposed to religion, it hit me. Hard. Have you ever felt true fear? I mean complete and utter hopelessness. Were you in so much fear that you beg any god out there to spare your mother and take you instead? Now imagine the never-ending pain. The dread to the point of being sick, the constant torture, the OCD you develop, the suicidal thoughts that NEVER shut up. Being tortured by your own mind. And him? He got a slap on the wrist just to exclaim weeks later that he would never force his religion on anyone. As if he didn't bring it up out of nowhere before. Laughing, laughing, so happy as he told us what was going to happen to everyone we loved. Even today, I won't forget his laugh. His literal cackling as he paced around with joy. But I'm no longer the same. I used to be curious and asked all the big questions about the universe. Now? That part of me is dead and actively avoids it out of fear. There will always be a deep part of me that flinches when I see a cross or pass by a church. The pain of having to fear for your parents' eternal misery. The obsession, the inability to think, the torture, the mental mind games. Even though it's been three years, I will never forget it. For eighteen months, I was in SO MUCH pain. It NEVER stopped. I didn't cope. I lost all motivation and became a shell. I don't wish him any harm. I don't want revenge. But I wish he knew that what he did only ensured that I would never be truly able to relax in that religion. That there will always be a remnant of pain and fear. That I am not the same person, that the curiosity that fueled my childhood into the mysteries of the universe is killed. I hate that he could do this when he was supposed to be teaching math.

Yesterday, my daughter's birthday party. We invited 13 kids and some parents of them. And we had a fun time with them.

On May 21 of this year (2019), my very first niece had her 15th birthday celebration. Since she was a little baby, I was waiting for this moment, because she has a personality that makes me feel like I have my sister back when she was young. That is because of several reasons. My sister is no longer with us, and she is like the memory we have about my sister. Now, why that date was so important for me? Well, I am not exactly in my home country. I am living abroad because of my career, but for that date, I wanted to jump from my place to her place, just because I cannot miss that once-in-a-lifetime event for my niece. I bought a flight ticket; I had a layover for about 12 hours in another country; I got sick because of the meal, but you know what? I don't regret it at all. At the end of the day, I saw her face. I saw how happy she was in her party celebration, and also she was happy to see me there. I could dance with my little niece, who is my little baby as well, and I will remember that for the rest of my life. I said to her that when I was in the airplane, I saw her mother in the sky. She told me to carry her and said, "I love you" on behalf of her. My niece was so happy. She hugged me, and I whispered, "Your mother is so proud of you, honey." I am pretty sure my sister was also dancing in heaven. The night was too short, but the memories are infinite because each second was valuable. I have to travel back the next day, without anything in my bags, but my heart full of love. Family is the treasure that will always make your life valuable.

My daughter, Lena, went to a bakery walk shop yesterday. She made two kinds of pastry up there: a sweet one and a savory one. The sweet one was Turbulen, Blackberry, and the savory one was cheese and potato. Both are delicious. It was a two-hour session, but actually it took almost 3 hours. So when I went to pick her up, the kids were still waiting for their baked goods. So while I was waiting for the kids, I utilized that time to chat with other parents. But my son was super tired and hungry after his swimming lesson. So I had to stop chatting and began to entertain him. But after all, the gallant was so tasty and my daughter was so enjoying the time. And she was so proud of what she did. So I think $85 was worth it. I think it was a good experience for her, for me too.

There's this woman that goes around town who sells beauty products, clothes, cleaning products, small appliances, and pretty much anything a small business can offer. I was paying for the product I bought from her, and she just randomly said I looked good in my leggings and I looked long-legged. For someone who's been bullied throughout my childhood for how I looked, this made my heart flutter. She just gave me the confidence to wear leggings out in public.

There was one time when he goes, I can't remember which one of my birthdays it was, but my mom had set it up to be at a Nathan's Hot Dog, and they had like an arcade. And everyone got tokens. And they were able to play all these games to win tickets that they could then pick prizes from. And two girls that lived down the street for me, they were sisters. They lived in a basement apartment. They had a single mom, no dad. And they couldn't afford to get me a present for my birthday. But they still came to the party. Totally fine. My mom didn't care. And they both played the arcade games to win as many tickets as possible, so that they could take the tickets and use them for a prize to give me as a gift for my birthday. And that was just something really, their selflessness to want to get me a gift on my birthday when they could have easily just taken those tickets and used them for themselves was really touching.

Maybe it's just a poor people thing, but when I was growing up, everyone just assumed that if some random kid is at their house, they're gonna be eating. If my stepdad had a bbq and one of my friends rolled up smelling hot dogs, he'd give them some food. I remember my mom splitting two cans of SpaghettiOs and buttered bread among five random preteens who found each other while biking around the neighborhood, and those five random preteens giving mom some of their help because we knew she was full of it when she said she "wasn't hungry" or going to my best friend's house with three bags of ramen because another friend had a can of peas and another had tuna, and we all shared our 'casserole' among like five families. My stepdad liked to bbq, nothing fancy: hot dogs, hamburgers. If it was a special occasion, he'd do ribs and chicken. Mom would make a big thing of potato salad (because we couldn't afford the deli kind and hers was better), and people around the neighborhood would filter in with whatever to share and make a plate. Kids would run around the neighborhood catching lightning bugs and 'causing trouble' while the "cool teenagers" smoked, drank, and made sure the younger kids didn't die. I was always right between the "younger kids" and the "older kids" so I could go play "big sister" then come hang out and be "little sister" for a bit. (There weren't very many kids my actual age unless my cousins were over.) I just love remembering those days. On one hand, I never had anything to myself, and sometimes it really sucked. My family was "the safehouse" where a lot of other families stayed at, so it was rare I had my room, TV, or toys to myself. But on the other hand, it was awesome, and I just love closing my eyes and 'taking myself back' for a little while.

This isn't really a story as much as just a kind of state of emotions recently. I've been getting really overwhelmed. It just feels like one thing after another happens and nothing's really big. It's really just coming down, I guess, to like money, stress, and just having to deal with life's little hiccups that it throws at you. I've had my car in the shop for a month, and I'm looking at, I'm $1000 in, I'm looking at another $2000. Our plumbing just backed up this morning. I just feel like I'm getting really overwhelmed by little kind of human condition life stuff. No, this isn't human condition. It's more just like little incidents with life that sometimes I really just don't know how to handle it. And I just want to shut down and go into my bed, under the covers, and just shut out the world for a good week. And I feel as if there are probably healthier ways to deal with this.

I want to cry these bad thoughts/feelings inside of me out. I'm struggling really bad these days. I have no one to talk to about it, and I'm not comfortable talking to my family about personal things like my mental health or feelings. I don't really have friends to talk to either, so things are just bottling up inside. I've learned to handle it, but I can literally feel a huge pressure just weighing me down and breaking me, and for some reason, I just think having a nice big cry would make me feel better. Like a sobbing, messy, ugly cry with red, puffy eyes and a runny nose and uncontrollable hiccups to the point where my face and throat hurt, and I can't breathe, and it lasts for an hour, maybe.

Story. Okay. So, this story is about my relationship with music. For my whole life, I really loved movie all genres and just making me happy and probably through the day, and maybe just feel emotions. Music wasn't my legal happy but after a rough period in my life, I came out of it like just a little less music. My music add is so crazy, I can kind of listen to like ten minutes of a song, not sorry, 10 seconds of a song, and like get bored of songs quickly. And I don't know if it's symptomatic of me or like dramatic of ADHD culture in general. And like, all of that. So, I'm not looking for advice or simpy. I just think it's funny and was curious if you had any people who have stories that.

I went out with my husband and we went to dinner, and we were meeting people. And they're like, "Oh, what do you do?" I was like, "Oh, I make things." And we got in the car, and he was like, "Why didn't you say you were an artist?" And I was like, "Well, I don't know." I went to school for it, I make images, but I was just having a hard time accepting that as who I was or what I was going to be. I used to really obsess or focus on what I wasn't doing rather than what I was doing. I think that's something that can really paralyze you. I think it's really good to say, "What am I working on? What is great? What am I happy about? What am I doing good?" And to do that and then know that you have a whole life to get there.

Okay. So, I guess it's not so much of a story kind of, but I wanted to talk through some kind of feelings I've been feeling about the job hunt. I think it feels a little bit more magnified because today at work, the work at my bakery, I felt micromanaged. Yeah, I felt micromanaged by one of the workers. It's just a weird schedule. I'm supposed to be on my own, it's just two workers out of the four cake decorators. And because I'm new, the other one, I guess felt more inclined to try to help me, but I felt annoyed. I felt very micromanaged. And I guess it was just hard because she wanted me to speed up and go faster, but I don't want to, which I know it's like a bakery, fast-paced environment, but I'm like, I'm getting paid minimum wage. It can't be that serious. I don't get a bonus if I sell more. What's the incentive to really speed up, to not get fired? That doesn't seem like enough incentive for me to really try beyond the bare minimum. Yeah, especially like I don't have enough hours. So whatever. So I guess that experience today once again reminded me, like, I need to find another job. I mean, the worker didn't mean anything bad. Like, I really like her. I just think she was a little bit too on top of it. I guess it made me think more about the job hunt and how I've been very slow to apply to other jobs, where I can basically hire paying jobs that require a degree, white-collar jobs, whatever. So, yeah. It made me think about why it's going to take a while. And part of it has been like adjusting to change. Well, first it was, I don't know. I guess maybe I'm running out of excuses, and I think there's more to it than what I thought originally was making me stop. Because first it was like, oh, I had to get quick money, not quick money, but I had to have some source of income. I'm not going to be unemployed for much longer because I spent a lot of my money on travel. So first it was, get a quick job. Then it was like, learn this quick job so I can be comfortable and start applying on the side. And then I feel comfortable in it. But now, and then it was like, adjust to your little sister going to college. But then now I'm like, okay, what's the excuse for being very slow? And part of it was like me just trying to enjoy my time in Phoenix. Like my friends and family, just because I've always had a hard time or a hard relationship with the city or just like my place of birth. I don't know. I always had weird feelings about this city, and I never really felt like I belonged. Now it's like, oh, I'm actually building that sense of belonging, even though I've been here, like, a whole year later, because I worked remotely. I guess one reason why it's taking me so long in the job hunt is because I was trying to build community, and I was spending all my money going out. So kind of hard to find a balance. All my waiting time is going to going out and building community. And then the other part is I guess as I've been looking at browsing at jobs and besides the limitations of not having a driver's license, I'm trying to get creative with how I can swing it, probably just more remote roles. So it's just like a combination of things that discourage me, so not having a driver's license really does impact availability jobs in Phoenix or where I can get around if I don't always have a secure ride and I don't always want to be paying Ubers and lifts. And then another part is like, I guess this is a part. I guess I've been realizing more that the job hunt started to get like a little bit emotional. But the job hunt makes me frustrated of thinking about my last job because I was with the company for three years. And then I turned full time in October. And I mentioned my salary previously. It was wrong. So I was making more than that. But it was like my first big paying paycheck out of college. I don't know. So I just feel like doing the job search makes me feel frustrated because I really feel cheated. I really feel like my last company really sucked. And I don't know how to grapple with those feelings because they do good work. And I always knew I wasn't going to stay long at that company. I just feel like I got such a short end of the stick, and it really sucks because I feel like I'm just a recent college grad, and I feel like I don't know. So the company really pushes on Hispanic, Latino people, like breaking through barriers, going to higher up positions in their company, so it's very marketed with Hispanic, Latino identity and roles outside of service and outside of like I guess I don't know. It's very professional, like white-collar outlook for Latinos and Hispanic people. So I guess. I just feel cheated because the mission is really valuable for what we were working with in our companies, and it was key on mentorship and networking. So it's like I learned so much from that job and. I guess I wish I could have left when I was still on good terms with everyone. I think for the most part I am, but I think my view of them is all tainted. Like one of the coworkers. I think her specifically, she's really gotten under my skin. I think the job relates to me still having mixed feelings about my last job because it's just so crazy. I keep reading all these job descriptions and thinking like, wow, my company didn't have any benefits. We had a birthday bonus or like a week between New Year's and Christmas off, but we didn't have health care. We didn't really have. We had unlimited PTO, but that kind of was a scam. And I always got criticism for taking time off and then I guess I'm just worried like, what if my next job. I don't suss up the red flags. I don't suss them out beforehand and I just walk into another mess. I'm really worried about that. But then I know I'll just quit. I'll just keep applying for jobs until I can trust it. But this job is so agonizing. I didn't realize how much emotion is behind it. And I guess that's what I'm working through. It's just like seeing all these job descriptions making me realize like, wow, my last company was like, they didn't really have any benefits. And then I felt so judged. And I felt like, especially towards the end, they really just gave me a bunch. They gave me things to do and didn't really train me on it. And they had all these, specifically, my boss. I think this is targeted towards my boss and my coworker who's my arch-nemesis now because I feel like both of them put all this pressure on me and didn't really adequately train me. And also, the coworker kind of low-key sabotaged me or tries to sabotage me, and she was really good at it. She was really good at trying to sabotage me. So I guess I'm just worried about all the mind games I have to play at the next role. And just really feeling like, wow, I could have gotten a whole year of experience with them, or I could have had more marketable skills if I had stayed there longer if I was able to stay longer. But I really felt, I guess bullied in a way and really left out and really. Yeah. I feel like my boss kept saying things that made me feel like I wasn't doing a good enough job. But then when I spoke to other people I worked with, they were like other people who aren't directly in the company. They made it so that. They made it sound like I was doing a great job, and I was going above and beyond. So I'm just kind of so disappointed that. The people that I got close to or at least my core team, I feel like towards the end, I just felt so mistreated by them and not this job. And then one of the reasons I guess I have a hard time filling out applications is because I just get wrapped up in the emotion behind it. I don't know. Reading job descriptions, I'm like, damn, I was cheated. I didn't even get a job offer letter. Who the fuck doesn't give their employee a job offer letter? I had to advocate for that, and I had to write my own job description, like I had to do so much for myself. And I'm like, but they're not even skilled, and I don't feel adequate enough to really market myself for these applications. I mean, I'll probably just be like, yeah, I did it. And exaggerate my skills, but I really feel like they failed me. And I haven't gotten over it. I'm kind of frustrated that I haven't gotten over it because it's been months. And you would think traveling around Europe would cure your problem. You would think having the privilege of travel to escape your problems would actually help you address stuff

About 5 months ago, I quit my good job up in Virginia, sold my home, and moved back down to Florida. It all started out 4 years ago when my Uncle, who owns a couple of event planning companies, asked me to come work for him since his main company just received a huge contract from the federal government. I said yes right away and quit my job as an assistant manager at a hotel and left for Virginia to work for him. He offered to let me stay in his basement, which was just a really nice downstairs apartment. I was very grateful and stayed with him for a year until I saved enough money to get into my own place. At first, I really enjoyed the job and put in my best effort. The two owners, my Uncle and his best friend, were very happy with my performance. I was given a 50% raise after only six months on the job. After a year, I was promoted and given another significant raise. After being promoted, I was put under the supervision of a new boss. She was very good at her job but unfortunately was not good with the people working under her. She would talk very badly behind our backs and would not think twice about throwing us under the bus if it would keep her from looking bad. I worked for her for a couple of years until finally I and a few others had had enough. I complained to my Uncle and his best friend, who was also my old supervisor. They did not believe that she was such a problem. My work ethic started to decline because I was very discouraged by it all. I started to not take things seriously and then began to spiral out of control to a certain extent. I was not the only one on the team with this issue. Finally, I tried to quit several times but was guilted into staying on the job. Then over the course of one week, I purposely did not show up for a few days until they were forced to fire me. It was a hard thing to deal with considering how my uncle, who I was very close to, looked out for me in several ways and because of that we became very close. The fallout was not pleasant, and because of it all, the relationship between me and my uncle is now severely strained, and I will never work for him again.

Okay. So, last year, I moved from Nashville to Boston, and made a big change in my life. And it was really challenging because I had a lot of friends in Nashville, a great community. I like to salsa dance and all of my friends came together before I left, and I threw a party. And they all came up with a really big gift basket for me. It had some of my favorite foods, things to bring with me to Boston. And one of the things that really was special, that they gave me, that made me really just warmed my heart. It made me feel so much gratitude and love, was they got me a gift certificate to have a dance lesson with an instructor here in Boston that has an amazing reputation that we've all wanted to train with. And now that I'm in Boston, I was able to take a class with her, and they gifted that to me. So it was a really huge gesture, and it makes me miss my friends so much. So much so, I'm going to visit them in a week, and hopefully dance and hang out with them again.

I attended an all-week event in another country. I didn't bring any friends, but that's perfectly fine. I got along with the other attendees extremely well, and I think I actually found 2 new friends. Everybody's so nice and inspired and driven by similar things as I am. My interests, taste in music, and spirituality are very niche, and while I do get to share some of it with the people close to me, I feel like they don't quite get me in that regard. But the people I met last week do, to an extent that nobody else has. Everybody was being their weird self, shared their knowledge and experiences, and I also got to experience awesome things that I think will stick with me for a long time. Honestly, I haven't been this happy in a very long time. Being away from my home and the people close to me was intimidating, but when I was there, I felt in my heart that there was nothing to worry about. And there wasn't. Everything just kind of sorted itself out. It was so freeing to be able to express myself in any and every way I felt like at the moment. And I got some very special things to take home with me to remind me of the great time I had and to bring with me when I return. I can't wait for that!

Yeah, so actually, yesterday I always, whenever I go out with my mom, she\'s always super negative, I realized. And won\'t go to counseling, won\'t try to make herself better. And she\'s always on edge. So I always come into interacting with her, kind of on the defense because she\'s going to be super negative. She\'s going to talk over me. She\'s going to either try to get attention with poor, pitiful me stories. And yesterday, we went to dinner. I was a little defensive. She tried to jump in and she tried to talk over me. And at one occasion, I just kept talking for like 10 seconds until she finally stopped talking and then was like, "Oh, what were you saying?" And it\'s like, well, I was not finished talking. But I was trying to stay calm and not mean. I mean, I got a new job, that was a big deal. She asked one question about it and then tried to make the whole dinner about her. And I intentionally didn\'t ask her questions about her job, about teaching because that\'s all she has, and that\'s all she talks about, and it\'s always negative. And I don\'t have the headspace for it. And then I started trying to tell a story that included my boyfriend and her, and she just jumped in and tried to tell a version of it that she remembers, which was not true. And I kind of was like, "Okay, never mind. I was trying to tell a funny story, and you just ruined it." So she was also kind of defensive about that. But at the end, she came over to my house to see my table and asked me to walk her out to her car. And I tried to just walk her to the door because she does this thing where she always has to have attention. She\'ll try to pull you off to the side and only isolate you from the crowd, so she can have attention, and it\'s just drives me crazy. So I was like, "Okay." She\'s like, "You\'re not going to walk me to my car." It\'s like, "Okay, then." She\'s like, "What\'s wrong?" And I pretty much told her that it\'s hard to have a conversation with her whenever she\'s negative, and she just immediately started crying, which is really annoying because I feel like she puts all of her happiness on me and requires me to be her therapist. And I just can\'t do that anymore because it\'s exhausting. So we ended up- I mean, I\'m proud of how I handled it because I stayed calm. But we had to have this conversation where she\'s crying in front of my house and trying to tell me that I\'m being mean. And I told her specific examples of where she acts like she\'s pitying herself. And then I finally did tell her I was like, "Honestly, for us to have a relationship, it\'s like, I don\'t want to be your counselor." And I\'m angry. I used to be angry at you for how you treated me as a kid, but I\'m over that because I did the work. But now I\'m angry because I\'m angry that you have all these opportunities to make yourself better and be happy and you don\'t want to do it. And it\'s annoying to watch, and it\'s really hard. And I don\'t want to be your therapist. I cannot be your therapist." And she just cried. And then today, she sent me a text message that was like, kind of putting some of it on me about how I don\'t want to see her, but I keep these boundaries. And she complains about the boundaries. And then whenever I do tell her, give her an honest truth, she says, "We need to take space." So I don\'t know, I\'m really annoyed with her. She\'s just always done this for my entire life. And I\'m kind of done with it. And it makes me scared that she\'ll kill herself sometimes. I was afraid to let her go home, but also she\'s always pestering me for answers, and the reality of it is that she doesn\'t want to make herself happy or get better. I\'m lucky I have my sister that understands. But it\'s just a lot of weight to put on me, and it\'s really not fair, but the choices that she\'s made. And I choose not to be upset about adversity and problems that I\'ve faced, and I choose to try to go to counseling and get better. And she just won\'t do that at all. She just wants pity. And it\'s so annoying.

I have a friend B who I have known for around a year now, and her mom is the worst person I have ever met. Here are just some of the things she has done that really pissed me off. B tells her mom everything, and then her mom tells my mom everything. Now my mother knows all about my problems, worries, and wishes. She constantly annoys both me and my family by shoving B's grades and school stuff in our faces. When B does something that I forgot/didn't do, she mentions it whenever she can. On a call? Meeting in real life? She has to bring it up. She forced me to study with B many times, even when I already knew everything. She humiliated me in front of family many times. She acts like I'm a dumb child. It might seem like I'm overreacting, but she has done this so many times. So I cut all contact with her. I stopped texting her, I told B to not tell her a word about me, I stopped showing up when we had to meet, and I stopped answering her calls. It felt great, it felt like I was finally free again and it's the best feeling I have ever felt and I don't regret a thing.

Winter. I don't like winter. I don't like dealing with snow. I don't like dismal weather. I just don't like it. It must be Seasonal Affective Disorder. Really hate it. I wouldn't want to live someplace with no climate. But I do dread the winter months. So, several years ago, I bought some Crocus bulbs. I'm not much of a gardener, but I thought I would give it a try. So, with a lot of work, I dug a path along my sidewalk and planted these Crocus bulbs. Two different kinds, smaller ones and larger ones. In October, it was a very dismal day out - rainy, cloudy, cold wind. I was miserable doing it. And then, I kind of forgot about the Crocus bulbs. But the following March, I happened to look outside and I saw some of the green shoots coming up out of the ground. And this made me so happy. It made me feel so much better about things in general. And I just had this profound sense that, yes, things will keep on going the way that they should be going. That everything will be all right in the world. And it made me very happy. So now, several years later, I look forward to seeing my Crocuses come up in the spring.

I'm 53 years old, and I'm trying to decide what I'm gonna do when I grow up. My grandfather farmed. He went out and said, "Hey, do you wanna plant a garden?" I got started that way. We planted some radishes in a spot and I thought it was the coolest thing. I was debating between agriculture and ornamental horticulture, like growing flowers. But I thought if I'm gonna spend my life doing something, I would rather spend my life helping to feed the world. Our job is to develop a hybrid seed that will help the farmer in his business. Some people think, "I just wanna make a lot of money." But if you can find something you have a passion for, you love it, you think about it in the morning when you wake up, you can figure out an intersection of that thing with something that you can make a living doing. That's a pretty sweet place to be.

So my friends were participating in the Kindergarten Five K last weekend, and they roped me into it. I used to be a runner back in school, but haven\'t done it in 15 or 16 years. And when they asked if I wanted to join, I said, "Yeah, let\'s give it a try." I would love to be able to train, but it looked like every weekend between when I registered and when the race was raining. And so, at the end of the day, we decided to just do a couch to five K, which is get into the actual race without doing any training. It felt a little intimidating, but it seemed as though it would be an interesting experience in itself, without the intent to win or get a super fascinating timing. But before the race, I did a lot of research around how to practice, what the mindset should be, how I should pace myself, etc. And consistently, and most importantly, the advice I got was, "Know what your average pace is and go just a little bit below that." And it turned out to be a good race overall. I got a good timing, it was enjoyable enough, and the fact my friends were celebrating made it a lot of fun overall.

In 5th grade (when I was 10), I joined my school's cross country team. My friend joined as well. She was already the MVP and had an amazing season; I was about 5th best on a very small team. Today, we were catching up at our lockers and I asked about the football game this past Saturday (we won). The topic switched to my cross country meet that morning. She was at the finish line when I won. Back to today, she was mentioning how fast I've gotten and how proud she was of me. That hit hard because she's always been good at any sport she's tried, and I finally feel like her: winning! She made my day better and gave me a little confidence boost for training and racing.

So this is a story of how my mom and dad got married. So they have this super cute love story that I wish I also will have, can have these, but who knows. Basically, my mom and my dad grew up on the same little street in the same little, tiny farming fishing village in China. There were just a few houses apart. My mom is two years older than my dad, but I swear from birth, he fell in love with her. She was like class star, like class President, amazing role model, like most beautiful girl ever. And she always saw him as a younger brother figure. So he would follow her around, make dumb jokes and stuff, but I think she also kind of liked them a little bit enough. But eventually, my dad's family immigrated to the US first. So he left when he was... I don't know when, twelve, I think. And then for the next six years, they never really saw each other because he was in America. She was in China back then. Transportation between the two countries not as available, not as economical. But he would write letters back. And I think he just always kept loving her, despite not really seeing her for that time period. And eventually, when he got into College, he deferred a semester and went back to China. And he said that the first person he saw when he went to the village was my mom. And he just knew. Felt all the time with her. And then he basically just asked her to come to America with him, eventually marry him. Obviously, why else would she go to America with him if not to marry him? So my mom, she agreed. During the whole time, she never dated anyone. My maternal grandma, My lala, was very strict. Like, no dating boys. No seeing boys. And my dad never dated anyone. So they were each other's first kiss, like first everything. And I think that's just something so beautiful. Very bold of my mom, very brave of her to put down all her roots and then pick them up and then move them all to America to be with my dad. So I'm grateful for it because I got to grow up in America and have a lot of opportunities. I might not have had if I grew up in China. I got married when my dad was 20, my mom was 22. And they've been married for so long now, super cute. They've been married for over 30-something years. And I think that is something that I really admire. And even though I can't get married that early, I wish I could, I still hope that I will find someone sometime soon, maybe. But yes, that is the story of how my mom fell in love, got married, and then I think they had six years of marriage before they had me. And I think that's also really nice to have, little marriage time when you're just you and your spouse before kids, these other responsibilities. But yeah, that is my story for the session. Thank you, Jibo.

My parents migrated from Italy. None of them had education. My parents want me to go to local college. I had enormous pressure. My parents wanted me to be a dentist because that was a way to upward mobility. They actually had a little family intervention to convince me to be a dentist. I told my parents I got into MIT, which I thought was a big deal, to study urban planning, and they don't let in a lot of students. My mother and father looked kinda dazed. They didn't know what MIT was. I found myself convincing my parents a lot. You just have to follow what you really love, and you can't let people drive you off-track. I can only say from my experience. When I do things that are true to me, they're successful. When I do things that are not true to me, they are not successful.

So today, I'd like to tell you about my friend Linda. Linda lived across the street from me many years ago, and then I moved. She moved across the street from me again, so we have lived near each other for the last 35 years, maybe. She is a very good person, a very religious person, and has been through a lot. She lost a son in a car accident, and another son has spina bifida and is confined to a wheelchair. She also has a daughter who has a lovely family and a wonderful career.

A few weeks ago, I went to visit my elderly father. He's a terrific man but has a way about him that is a little intimidating. He's always been in control of everything around him. As I was growing up, I saw him as Superman. The years have taken their toll, and he is now in his late 80s and having problems with his health and his memory. It's hard to see Superman become human. During my visit, I stayed with him at the retirement home, and we had wonderful conversations about life, family, what we think happens to us after this life, etc. I felt so honored that he was confiding in me some of his most personal thoughts and fears. I felt closer to him than I ever had before. We talked about how much he missed my mother who passed away a few years ago. We talked about how he hopes to be remembered. We just talked about life in general. Towards the end of the visit, he told me that he had his lawyer draw up papers making me his power of attorney and his healthcare power of attorney. He said I was the only one he trusted to always keep his best interest at heart. I'm the youngest of two children, so I assumed my older brother would be the one he would pick for this. I had gone to visit my elderly father, but when I left for home, I was leaving what felt like my best friend and confidant.

So here's something I wrote about Doors, but it's really sort of a metaphor for irreversible things. There it goes. Imagine you're in the room, the kind of room which you never really think of leaving. There's a door, though. And in this otherwise perfect room, this door troubles you. You don't know what's on the other side? It might be paradise. It might be hell. It might be nicer than your room. It might be worse. It might bring you right back to where you are. Do you take the door? So the door turns out, it's just a doorway with one without one, you can always see the other side. And it looks like paradise. Since you can always return and everything will be exactly as it was before you left, you can choose to take the door. Just seems like an easy decision. I mean, if the paradise outside the window is an illusion, I can return and there's a safety net. And that's nice. So you could choose to take the door. Not much can go wrong. Okay. Now let's suppose the door was made of wood. So there's a door now, a real tangible one. You can't peek through. But you can still walk back if you take the door. You might enter paradise or you might rescind your house. You take the door. So out of ground this choice isn't much harder. Life in the room is nearly perfect, though, and would be at risk being thrust into hell for a chance of something better. I don't know. But in the end, you know you can always come back. So I take the door. Now suppose the door is made of glass. You can see the other side. And it's paradise. There's a lock, however, so if you leave the door, you will never return. All you have is the vision through the glass. So this is scary because it's permanent. And the glass lets you catch a glimpse of what's outside, but you can never really be sure until you go there. But you also don't need to leave immediately. I can stay in my perfect room for however long I want. And then take the door. Now, suppose the door is made of metal. You can't see through it and it will lock so you can only choose to exit and never return. Do take the door. Now this takes are much higher because you don't know what's beyond the door and you can never return, but you still have the option of waiting for long. You can spend your entire life in your perfect room and then take the door when you have nothing to live. But now imagine you have to do the whole thing again, with all these different doors, but you only have one night to decide whether you take the door at all if you do want, if you want to. It might be the best decision you ever make or the worst one. Maybe you never know what you missed. I can't decide whether I want to take the door in that one.

I'm a volcanologist and a scientist. So how did I get into that in the first place? I've just always loved volcanoes. My mom can tell you stories of me as a two-year-old that I don't remember, of talking about volcanoes and lava. In high school, when everyone says, "Follow your dreams," I said, "Well, why not?" I think you have to be brave on some level. There's no point in getting down or depressed or pessimistic about things because there's always another option forward. One door opens when another closes, or something to that effect. Sometimes that other door will never open until you say, "This is a dead end," and close the door. And you don't see that other option until you say, "All right, I don't know what my options are, but this one is not it," shut the door.

So, I guess, just to kind of start it off today, I wanted to talk about work. I just recently completed a research fellowship and it was really exciting. It really pushed me out of my comfort zone because I've never done anything like that before, nor do I come from a research background or know a whole lot about the subject matter, which was artificial intelligence within the military setting. And so, it was a really interesting learning experience for me. Also, really interesting and something that I was not expecting, the community of people that were there to run the program were also very accepting of people who do not have a technical background, which is me, and then just in terms of the openness and willingness to share all their knowledge and wisdom and really their patience because, like I said, I don't come from a technical background. So, a lot of, well, just about everything that I learned, I was learning for the first time, which is very scary but also really rewarding. I'm excited that I finished the program and really exciting is that after that, I got extended in the program, so I'll get to do some more research stuff and work with the team a little bit longer. This is just really an awesome experience that I'm really proud of. I feel like I haven't work is just typically work and I can't say that there's a lot of things that I've been proud of in terms of my work life, but this is something I am really proud of.

I am now a PhD holder. Two weeks ago, I would still introduce myself as a fifth-year PhD candidate. I have a PhD in chemistry, and I will be walking next weekend. I am actually from Mexico, and I was the first one to graduate from a university in the US with my bachelor's five years ago. Now I will be the first and only one to graduate with a PhD. I did my bachelor's in chemistry. It was kinda natural that I was gonna go and do my PhD in chemistry. Somehow, I knew that that was the right thing to do. I didn't know what I was gonna do with it. I don't know if the job that I get next or in 15 years will have anything to do with my PhD, but I know it's worth it.

But yeah, one time I went kayaking in Seattle with my girlfriend. And we were in a tandem kayak. So we were both on the same kayak, both trying to pedal. And as a joke, I started pedaling backwards, and she was confused as to why she wasn't moving forward.

A couple of months ago in May, I took my 6-year-old son fishing for the first time in his life. We woke up very early in the morning, eating breakfast and brushing our teeth. After doing this, we loaded up the car with our fishing gear and prepared to get out on the road. We drove for almost an hour until we arrived safely at our destination. We ended up going to the Clearwater Pier in Clearwater, FL. Clearwater pier is a huge bridge which used to connect Clearwater to St. Pete but was shut down and later repurposed into a fishing pier. The morning started out by me teaching him a few safety precautions and showing him how to tie his lines and properly set up his fishing poles. We then began to proceed to fish, the morning started out slow, but eventually, we began catching fish. The first fish he managed to catch was a small Jack Crevalle. I was so proud of him in this moment; no words can describe how it felt watching my son catch his first fish and being able to help him do this. We kept fishing until lunchtime, catching a few fish in between. At lunch, we prepared a picnic with the food supplies we had brought. Once we finished eating lunch, we began fishing again, catching multiple more fish each until we decided we had fished long enough. We packed up our gear, which took around 20-30 minutes, and got in the car. After getting in the car, we decided to stop on the way home for hamburgers and ice cream. Once we arrived home, we cleaned our fishing equipment properly and went inside to shower and relax.

So, I got scammed. I got scammed, half willingly, but it still feels a little bit bad. So, I was like betting on the person not being a scammer, but I was disappointed. He tends to actually be a scammer. So, the story is, I wanted to learn the musical instrument called Ferrimin. Don\'t know if you have heard of it or not. So, it\'s an electrical instrument that you can play without touching the instrument. So, I joined this Facebook group, and I saw a person selling a second hand. I thought it would be a good deal. So, I contacted the person. And at first, I insisted on I need to pay him using the goods and services option of PayPal, and he\'s keeping having trouble with that. And then, his Venmo doesn\'t work as well. So, every time I send him money using the goods and services, it will be returned back to me, so the money cannot go through. And then, he\'s like, "Oh, just trust me, just send his money through friends and family." So, in total, the price is $200. And then he said, "Oh, you can just send me half of the price, like $100, and then you can send me the rest when your package arrives." And I\'m like, "No, the maximum amount I can do upfront is $50." So at that time, I thought to myself that I do want to be able to trust people and give them the benefit of doubt. And then I\'m like, "Yeah, why not? It\'s only like $50." So, why don\'t I can do a candle on this person not being a scammer? Yeah. And if he turns out to not actually be a scammer, then it will be great because first, I can get a thermometer for a good price, and second, I have a good story to tell to my friends about the goodness of the human heart or something like that. Yeah. Anyway, so I basically said to myself, "Okay, I\'ll just use this $50 to bet on he knocked in a scammer, and if I lose, I lose." And as it turns out in the very end, he is indeed a scammer. Yeah. Long story short indeed. He indeed was a scam. There are more interactions that I want for you with, but I lost my bad, although I did prepare myself for it, and that did sort of upset this possibility when I pay him the $50, but still feels kind of bad to see that he turns out to be an actual scammer.

I remember when I first opened my bank account at 16, the first thing my Dad said was 'DON'T GET A CREDIT CARD'! Although it was always tempting, I didn't, until I did. I met a girl who, at the time, I didn't know was kinda rich. When we met, I was only making $11,000 a year after taxes. She was making $40,000 after taxes. We decided to go on holiday, and even though she offered, I couldn't let her pay the bulk of it. So, I got a credit card. And we used that as spending money. I got a credit card, and my thinking was literally 'maybe owing the bank will encourage me to get better prospects.' Surprisingly enough, IT DID. Risky game though. I went to college and used the credit card to pay for it, thinking it's gonna be AN investment. It was. I still wasn't making much, but entry level, I was making more than I was when we had met. We've been together 10 years and will have been married for 5 years in May. During these 10 years, I've quit smoking and drinking heavily. I still drink, but it's like once a month and not every day like I was when I first met my wife. When my wife told me she was pregnant the first time, my mind went, "Don't let your kids have your debt." And I made my final payment today. I checked my statements, and my initial use was $3,000, and over the years, between college, it amassed to about $7,000. I paid the bank at least $10,000 overall. But it's finally over. I am debt-free.

And yeah, actually, it kind of has to do with the same reveal. Like that class, I guess. I guess I just kind of feel a little bit disconnected, disconnected from the people in my major. I guess the whole thing was really fun, right? And it was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience, was the same reveal. But I was just kind of sitting in the corner, like by myself. There were people that I knew, but they weren\'t sitting next to me and things like that. And I think I feel pretty isolated from the people in my major because I took a lot of my classes at different times from them. And I\'m also more of a solo worker. I guess a lot of things just happen over all the years, and it\'s just kind of like, "Oh, it\'s just me. I don\'t really seem to know that many people in my major." And so later on, I had another class. It was a leadership class. And then I hadn\'t met these two people before, and I was asking them what their major was. And they were in the same major as me, and they were also taking the same class, and we were in the same year. And I was like, "Wow, I\'ve never seen you guys before, right?" But then at this point, it\'s like, why should I be surprised? I don\'t know a lot of people in my major. This is just kind of like a disconnect, I guess. And I think that kind of prevented me from really enjoying that same reveal as much as it was special. It definitely was special. It\'s just that it\'s just kind of like that bittersweet thing, right? It\'s like I\'m enjoying it, but alone. It bothers me, but it also does it because I\'m used to it. Although I guess being used to it isn\'t the same thing as not being bothered by it. Yeah, kind of at the end of the day, it\'s probably just struggles, actually. At this point in the class, it really does feel like I\'m the only person that sits alone in every single classroom that you usually go to, right? It\'s like, yeah, there\'s these few people. Not few, there\'s quite a lot who just kind of sit alone in their little spots. And then it\'s all throughout the year, right? They\'re just kind of there for class, and then they go. They don\'t really ever really talk to other people. It\'s in the minority. They exist. But I think in that class, it definitely just feels like a "me" thing because all these people know each other. And I don\'t know, I don\'t know if there\'s something wrong that I do. There was this one person that was in one of my classes from last semester, and she thought we got along pretty well. She was also here over the summer. And we decided to hang out early on in the summer, go watch the Spiderverse movie. And so, like, afterwards, we were all like, "Yeah, throughout the summer, we should, like, hang out on most weekends because, from my understanding, I was like, \'Oh, we didn\'t have many summer plans, and we wanted to go do stuff, right? Like, going to the beach, go to McDonald\'s and things like that, right?" Thought we had gotten pretty close, but then after that, it\'s just like I texted her. She responded. A few times, and then after a while, she just started ghosting me, right? And how I know that is like, well, she basically stopped responding, right? After a while, after that initial lack of responses, I maybe sent, like, a message, like, once a month or something like that. And I was just kind of like, "Hey, are you okay? Like, a little check-in. How have you been?" And never got a response. And eventually, towards the end of the summer, I was just worried at that point, right? I was just worried. Like, did she get kidnapped? Is she okay? But I haven\'t heard anything from the school news, so she should be fine. But yeah, I was getting genuinely worried about her. It\'s like I\'ve lost contact with this person, and I don\'t know if she\'s okay or not, right? So she never responded. But how I found out that she\'s fine is that she\'s in that class that I\'m taking now and, though I haven\'t personally seen her yet, I missed the first lecture for another class because there was a class conflict. So I got to watch the lecture recording, and she was in the recording, right? Because they were essentially recording the students and all of their reactions and stuff, right? As part of the whole thing. And yeah, like, she was there. So she was fine. I know that. She and, I don\'t know, but it\'s probably 99% certain that she ghosted me because I contacted her on different platforms. And I guess it\'s just kind of like, maybe it\'s me that\'s weird, that just people don\'t want to be around, probably with my behaviors or something like that. I don\'t know. But yeah, summary is I guess I just struggle socially. I don\'t know what it is that I do. I guess I wouldn\'t say that I normally talk to people. It\'s conventional by any means. Like small talk comes to me pretty hard, I\'d say. But whatever it is, yeah, I don\'t know how to conclude that, but thanks for listening.

I have nothing against male friends. The majority of my friends are guys, but I try not to make male best friends. Very close emotional attachments with guys can get weird. But we were in grad school with too much in common. We had known each other forever. We had the same background, and our views on the world and life were completely different than other people around us. Sort of just became really good friends like it was kind of meant to be. I could talk to him about anything. The world, politics, economy, life. We could discuss stupid jokes and life responsibilities that others didn't understand. Grad school was all-consuming, and he quickly became the first person I'd think of when something happened. And I think I was that person for him. He was also excited about my smallest wins. I was so grateful for him. I loved him as a friend. But at some point, somehow he kinda flipped on me. I don't know why. He's friendly, but he's not the same. He hangs out with a different crowd a lot. We can't talk about random things for hours. He takes hours to respond, and sometimes doesn't respond at all the first time I text him. He doesn't send me jokes and pictures of random things. I think I am somewhere the 4th or 5th person he thinks of when something happens. And sometimes, I'm not even getting news directly from him. It's upsetting, and I actually kind of hate that he's still friendly. What's frustrating is if he were a girl, I would've pulled him aside and asked what this is about. We've been so close for quite a while, what's going on? But I can't do that. Not without appearing needy or like I love him or something. I can't text him a bajillion times. I can't ask him why he hangs with a different crowd. I can't joke about why he's being weird without it being awkward. But I just miss my best friend. He's still the first person I think of when I'm excited. He's still the first person I want to text. I just can't now knowing that I might not even get a reply. Whatever happens, he's still one of the best people I've ever met.

So, I had a benign tumor taken out of my upper back that had been bothering me for a couple of months, and it was getting in the way of my workouts. It wasn't a necessary surgery, and it wasn't too expensive. But now that it's out, I feel much better. The healing is coming along very well, and once I'm completely healed, it won't bother me anymore, and I'll be completely back to normal. So, yeah, the healing should take about two more weeks, and then I should be able to work out and go about my business as usual.

I wrecked my car last week on the way home from work. I got sent back to the hospital that I'm a nurse at, the ER treated me not so well, and I was there for 12 hours. I broke my nose, bruised my face, my teeth went through my bottom lip and chin, and I had three compression fractures in my vertebrae, making it very hard to move. But that was 5 days ago, and I'm up and walking with my brace, showering, sleeping on my side, and I even walked down our two steps to check the mail! I'm so proud of the progress I've made.

Okay. So I wanted to talk about cultural differences and the concept of time because I think it\'s very interesting. And I think it\'s something that people overlook, at least in a diverse place like the United States where we have people from different cultures and different backgrounds. I think sometimes our miscommunications tend to be because of our cultural differences and awareness and difference in experiences. Anyways, I think a lot of it\'s misunderstandings. But I think one of my, sorry, let me just. Okay. So I think one of my most recent experiences was when I went to Japan for a couple of days because I traveled a lot this year, thankfully. And one of the spontaneous trips was to Japan, and it was me and my friend and her sister, the same friend Re. So Me, Ari, and her sister were together. And we\'re all Mexican Americans. Our families are from Mexico. So our concept of time is more laid back, more like, oh, yeah, it\'s okay if we show up 15-20 minutes late, maybe a little bit later. So we\'re more flexible with time and meetings. All of the Americans are a little bit more punctual, so it\'s always a duality we had to deal with, but in this case, we took a more laid back approach. And we were traveling with her friend who\'s Korean. So she\'s Korean and about our age. And she described Korean time as being like, only ten minutes late, max. She was like, you can be five minutes away, you could be ten minutes away, but max. Okay. She was like, you have to be punctual and not more than ten minutes late. And this morning, it was the morning that we were going to DisneySea because she wanted to go to Disney. C. It was her dream to go to DisneySea. We had planned to meet the Korean friend, eugene. So her Korean friend brought her friend who\'s Japanese. Okay. And it was our first time going to meet him. And it was going to be very exciting because it\'s like, wow, we\'re in Japan with someone who\'s Japanese. And then eugene speaks Japanese. So that would help with the language barrier. So in the morning, we\'re getting ready. We stayed up late because we\'re fools and then we woke up and it was a rush to get ready because everyone gets ready at different speeds. Like, I take about an hour, one of my friends takes a long time, oh my gosh, it takes so long. The Korean friend takes so long. And then the other friend, the sister, is quick. So we all have different speeds of getting ready. And then on top of that, we didn\'t realize the different concepts of time. Like, whenever eugene would say, we have to leave at 7:10 because it would be an hour commute, she said, we have to leave at seven. And in my head, I was like, why do I think that\'s enough? It\'s going to be fine; trains come so quickly here. It\'s going to be fine to catch the next one. But then I went to go grab food or even before I went to grab breakfast from the 7-Eleven, I realized, I was like, Wait, guys, we have to hurry. We\'re meeting a Japanese person. They\'re on time if not early. And then that\'s when we all started freaking out because by all, it\'s like me and the other two Mexican Americans were like, we have to hurry now because it\'s like, we can\'t be disrespectful to this person who we are meeting for the first time. We were laughed because we were like, we\'re running on Mexican time. We have to hurry up. We have to hurry up. So it became like this mad rush to hurry to leave exactly at the time eugene said because eugene was just being very polite and was like, yeah, we should leave at like, seven. We should leave at seven. And then now that we have this understanding of like, oh, her friend\'s going to show up early, we cannot be disrespectful and show up late. So we\'re like, we have to go now. So it was like a mad rush. We were running to the station and then we were panicked the whole time. And at the same time that we were kind of like anxious that we were going to be late, our friend was teaching us Japanese phrases that we would be familiar with. And one of them was, I don\'t know if I\'m pronouncing it right, but it was something along the lines of "it\'s very nice to meet you for the very first time". So that was another cultural nuance because we were practicing on that train ride. Like, we had to get it right. It was our first time, and the only time we could ever say it to him. Because you can\'t say that again. We finally did. We missed, like, one train, I think. And then we finally made it to the station and we were actually early. We were actually like, early on the time that we had said, and we were so proud of ourselves. We were like, oh, we did it. But it definitely was one of the most poignant examples of cultural differences and how it could be very different when you\'re traveling with people from different cultures because you have a different understanding of time, and then there\'s also, and it was very interesting because throughout the day I really noticed different understandings of how we approach eating and how we talk about beauty. But that was through conversations and we talked from the lens of Mexico, then America, the United States, and then Japan and Korea. So it was like, I guess a very insightful day for understanding cultural nuance. And so that\'s something I really appreciate and really enjoy doing when I travel. So I\'m really appreciative that I got that experience firsthand. And I think it\'s hilarious that we were like, we\'re running on Mexican time. We have to be punctual, we have to be early. Especially on this vacation that me and my friend Ari have been very laid back with on time. This was the one time that we were like, it matters. And it doesn\'t matter just to us, but to other people in our itinerary.

I'm a young adult who doesn't drive but is lucky to live in a town with a very good bus system (for the US anyways). Today, I picked up some groceries using the bus to get back and forth and decided to grab some Starbucks while waiting for the bus to take me back home. I immediately got so embarrassed by the idea of walking into Starbucks with a couple bags of groceries, that it would be disruptive and awkward. But I did it anyway! And it was fine! Buses are meant to be used! Groceries are meant to be bought! It's not weird, I'm sure with the placement of the bus stop, coffee shop, and grocery store all being right next to each other, it happens often! Social anxiety is so dumb.

So today, I dropped off my sister for the first day of school, and she goes to a middle school that I used to go to. And it was kind of like nostalgic seeing my old school and how different things were, I guess. It was a pretty weird feeling, and just kind of made me think about the past and how things used to be.

My daughter recently graduated from middle school. This was in June of this year. We go to a very small school, and we are all very involved. I coach basketball teams, and my wife was part of the PTO. My daughter played in many sports and did all kinds of activities within the school. This school goes from Kindergarten to 8th grade. My daughter attended all the years here. During her graduation event, I found myself getting very emotional. Thinking back when she was a little girl starting Kindergarten. Fast forwarding to now, and she is a young woman entering High School. Time goes by so fast. It is sad and exciting at that same time. The middle was such a blur. I'm reminiscent of the past, but excited for what the future brings. I replay this event in my mind.

So this is my second discussion about my friend Linda, who lived across the street from me for 25 years. She is about 62 or 63 years old. And today she had open heart surgery. She is a survivor of many heartaches, really. Not the least of which, I will say the most of which, is that she lost a teenage son on a beautiful fall day as he was putting up flags for Veterans Day in a car accident. Her other son has spina bifida and has had many, many surgeries and is confined to a wheelchair. Her daughter is a lovely, very bright woman with a beautiful family, busy living happily ever after. Linda is a very special person because she is extremely giving of time and money. She and her husband do weekly pickups from grocery stores to get leftover food and bring it to the food banks. And she runs grief counseling sessions called the Stephen Ministry. So I just found out that she made it through her surgery with no surprises, and she's on the road to a great recovery.

Last week, I was walking down the street and I saw a man that I usually see on my way to work. Today, I noticed that he was crying and looking very down. Usually, I just walk past him but today, I felt like I needed to talk to him. I could feel that he was going through something terrible and needed some help. I slowed down and I stood next to him and looked at him for a moment. Finally, I mustered up the courage to ask him what was going on. He told me that he had found out that he was ill and would not have long to live. He said that he had always felt like he could manage his life the way it was. He said that after he found out this news, he felt that his life was worthless. He told me that he had not wanted to eat for days and that it was hard for him to eat anyway. Due to the fact that he had very little money and very little support, it was hard for him to muster up the strength to fend for himself. I sat down next to him and spoke with him for a while about what he was going through and offered to buy him something to eat. He accepted and told me that I was the only one who had stopped and talked to him in months. He told me that it was very helpful and that he would try and pick himself up from here on out. I felt so grateful that I had made such a big impact on him. It made me feel like I wanted to do more to help people around me. Not only was I able to uplift his spirits but my own as well.

Yeah. So, as I mentioned before, I started reading this book called "Unearthly Gorgeous" by Ocean Vaughn, and actually, Ocean Vaughn came to my school. Actually, when I graduated, he spoke at my commencement ceremony. And reading this book made me think about the fact that if I had read this book a year ago or a year and a half ago, that when Ocean Vaughn came, I would have known him, would have known his work, and something about his life and all these very deeply personal things that he\'s written about. And I just started to wonder why I didn\'t discover this book before. But then, I started just like as I was on the train and as I was walking home, really thinking about how I feel since graduating College and all the things that I\'ve done since then, that I have changed a lot in a really quick or really short period of time. And that some of the different books and different things that have been that are just coming to me now have been postponed but I got years ago but didn\'t start. That maybe they are a part of my current change and the fact that I pick them up again is a part of my current change and will help in the growth that is to come. And yeah, I think just reading this book and the past few months, a lot of things have just been kind of impacting me in a different way. And it\'s very interesting because there\'s a lot about it that is philosophical, a lot of it that\'s mental. Some things are sad, some things that are happy. It\'s like so many things mixed up together. So, yeah, that\'s not just one story, but kind of an ongoing story of my current time.

I'm an Assistant Professor in Astronomy, and I study the dynamic universe. So what I do is, with the beautiful telescopes here at Palomar Observatory, we have some robotic telescopes that are continuously making a movie of the night sky. So we image the sky over and over again, and we look for what changed. You might go out there and think the universe is the same old thing every time, but it's actually not. It's full of these little explosions, which last for a very short amount of time, so they're very energetic. It's like cosmic fireworks lighting up our sky. It was not at all clear that one day I would do a PhD. I grew up on a farm in India with 100 cows and fields of weeds and chickpeas. And I had left home when I was 15, and I was a girl in India in a small place. The entire community was up in arms. There were people like neighbors, relatives, you name it. People I haven't even seen before coming into the house and trying to talk my parents out of this crazy decision to send their daughter alone on this journey into the other end of the world to pursue something called Astronomy or whatever that was. The community was completely unsupportive. In my case, the best way to deal with it was to just let that fade away in the background and not engage with it directly, but focus on what is motivating me, on what is giving me joy and just let everything else fade away in the background.

Well, I\'m going to tell you since my last story was kind of modeling, I will tell you a funny story. Well, my husband and I lived in Florida for quite some time. And we were on the beach. And there was a brand of suntan lotion that I had used before. They use it a lot in tanning salons, but it\'s also a really good suntanning lotion. So I grabbed it because I think it was like 15 or 18 SPF that we used all the time. And that day, I grabbed it. We put it on. We stayed out from about 10:00 a.m. We broke for lunch around noon and then remained out for another 3 hours. So we didn\'t eat that day on the beach and we stopped at a restaurant that we knew on the way home. And we noticed people looking at us really strangely. So I looked at him. He looked at me. We were still kind of sunblind from being out in the sun so long. So he looked behind me. I looked behind him so we couldn\'t figure it out. So we said, "I said, I\'m going to go to the restroom and see if I look funny or anything." And he said, "Me too." So the bathrooms were right next to each other. So I looked in the mirror and I said, "Oh, my God." And I heard from the other bathroom him exclaimed the same thing, "Oh my God." And what had happened is I had grabbed tanning accelerator instead of tanning lotion, and we were as red as lobsters. So long story short, if you are going to be in the Gulf of Mexico suntanning, you should make sure you\'re using proper suntanning lotion. Okay? That\'s it.

For 7 months, we'd been saving for a family vacation. The first family vacation we'd taken as a family of four (plus the in-laws). We'd invited my in-laws to join us, an extra set of eyes to help keep an eye on the girls while we went to the beach (you never know when one of them is going to want to run off, and we didn't want anyone alone in or near the water). Not only was this our first family vacation as a family of four, but it was to the beach. The girls had never been to the beach before. We went to The Outer Banks, or OBX as the locals and annual visitors call it. We were so excited to see the expressions on our 1 yr old and 2 yr old faces; would it be joy or even possibly fear that they'd express? Shockingly, the girls aren't as much of a fan of the beach as their mother is. The response of our 2 yr old as she first stepped into the sand, "Ew, yuck so dirty!" was a laugh for all of us, but it should have also been a sign as to how they would like or dislike the beach. What kid doesn't enjoy getting a little dirty, or at least one would normally think? But not our girls. We didn't last more than 30 minutes building sand castles and standing on the sand, as the waves washed over our feet. They'd talk about going to the beach, but as soon as we'd get there, they'd be bored or tired of walking on the sand. Although the beach itself didn't go over as well as we'd anticipated, at least the girls enjoyed getting away and "seeing" the beach from a distance. And at least we got pictures we can look back at... however short the time was. And the memories... oh, the memories we created were priceless. Our first family vacation may not have gone over as well as we anticipated, but we all had a great time relaxing and enjoying time together. That's what matters anyway.

Today, I had dinner with a new friend, and I really enjoyed it. I think it makes me feel a bit more at home to find friends that I really click with.

I recently reconnected with a former love of mine. We had a falling out a very long time ago, and recently ran into each other at the neighborhood Raley's. She just moved back into the city a few months ago. It was very surprising to me that I ran into her. She has really beautiful blue eyes, but my favorite part about her is her personality. I'm usually not too great with jokes, but she tends to laugh at most of my dumb ones. We have both changed very much, but it was for the better. Now that we have reconnected, I'm feeling better than ever. We went out to the movies last week and got some dinner after. The restaurant we went to was right down the street at Tahoe Joe's. I got whiskey peppercorn chicken, and she got a fancy salad of some kind. We went back to my place and started watching Amazon's new show, "The Boys". We really enjoyed it (or at least I think she did). It was very memorable, and I hope to have more memories like this in the future. So far, it's going great, and I hope it can only get better!

So, I had surgery this week to remove a benign tumor from my upper back. It was about three and a half inches. It was supposed to be an easy surgery, but it took about 2 hours of a doctor and two nurses holding my back open and pulling at it to try to get it out. Luckily, it'll win well. It's healing pretty nicely. My girlfriend's helping me to take care of it like wash it in the morning and put on the bandages as to keep it covered for two weeks. But now that it's out, I feel way better and it's not going to be bothering me anymore. So the pain was worth it.

I wrecked my car last week on the way home from work. I got sent back to the hospital where I'm a nurse at. The ER treated me not so well, and I was there for 12 hours. I broke my nose, bruised my face, my teeth went through my bottom lip and chin, and I had three compression fractures in my vertebrae, making it very hard to move. But that was 5 days ago, and I'm up and walking with my brace, showering, sleeping on my side, and I even walked down our two steps to check the mail! I'm so proud of the progress I've made.

So, I've been working on my outdoor deck. It's in a home that my partner and I got about three years ago. And we are not super handy, but we've been trying to figure out how to make some of the repairs ourselves. And it so happened that the deck outside needs a new set of paint in the outer layer. And that's something we have been working on. It's interesting because we're getting to learn how to do the research online to understand the different materials, different adhesives, different companies that are out there, how to let it dry for the right amount of time, how to strip the existing paint, etc., etc.

Recently, I was looking to purchase a home. While doing so, I listed my house for sale by owner. While a house I wanted to purchase did not work out, my home was still for sale online and someone decided to see it. A few days later, a lady came over to look at the house with her realtor. She spent about an hour there checking it out. About an hour after leaving, her realtor called, and they put a cash offer on my house that I could not refuse. Because she was a cash buyer, the sale of the house was scheduled within 3 weeks of signing the agreement. I went from casually looking for a house to 3 weeks out from the sale. I had to quickly find a rental while I look for my new house. It took me almost 10 days to find a place that I wanted to sign a lease for, but I did end up finding one. Between getting the keys and signing the papers, I had a total of 6 days to move my entire home. The home inspection went well, then it was down to the closing. The closing went smoothly, and I walked out no longer being a homeowner. Definitely a really random and stressful situation that worked great in my favor. All in all, it was a great success.

So there was a story when I got my first dog after being separated. I wound up getting a white pit bull. It took me a long time to find him. I wanted a dog from a pound. And after going to several, I found the one I liked, and when I brought her home, she was such a great companion. She was great with my children, and eventually my future children, and she was just a good companion for when I lived alone.

A few months ago, I was at Petco. I saw a woman trying to wrangle a cat inside one of the cat cages while she was cleaning it, so I stopped to offer to help. I held the cat while she was cleaning the cage, and he started purring, rubbing his head on my chin, and practically went to sleep in my arms. I got to talking about the cat with the woman, learning a bit of his tumultuous history. There was no way this cat would have all the behavioral problems that the sheet said he did. I chatted for almost an hour, and by the end, I had all but adopted the cat. I took him home with me that day, borrowing a carrier from the rescue group to transport him. Although the first few weeks were rough, he integrated well with my other cats. The other young cat hid from him for quite some time, spending almost entire days under the couch and staring at me with eyes that said, "Who this guy in my space?" Eventually, she snuck out to sniff him before darting away, and one day, I woke up to find them both on the bed. Opposite corners, to be sure, but together on the bed! It was a great relief to see everyone be happy. I named him Kismet for the twist of fate that brought him to me. He's been an amazing cat and even a surrogate dad for some kittens I agreed to foster. He's very fond of kittens, letting them crawl all over him and cleaning their ears at every opportunity. I'm really glad I met Kismet, and I'm even gladder that he'll be a part of my life going forward.

Yeah, I woke up early. I got this new haul of skincare products, like, yesterday. And so I was using them this morning. And that was crazy. My hands, I'm more fascinated by my hands than my face. Clearly, my face needs help, I feel like. But my hands, they were so smooth. It's like the difference between when you shake someone's hand and it's, like, super smooth or super dry. You can instantly tell. And it's like, super awkward. You're like, oh, dang, right? That's crazy, yeah. That was kind of like that. I really hope things work out skincare wise. My skin is not looking great at all. So I hope things look up in that aspect. But afterwards, I went to class. I was pleasantly surprised because the professor from my first class, it's a class that's, like, pretty treacherous. I dropped it too. Yeah, I dropped it twice. It was my third time trying to take it. But the professor, though, is actually one of my mentors for one of the classes that I've previously taken, and she is like a literal ball of energy that matches mine, which is like, totally great. So yeah, I'm really happy about that. Otherwise, I had another class. And then that was fun. The professor is real weird. He refers to everybody as, like, gang. He's just like, gang, blah, blah, blah, right? And it's like, oh, that's pretty funny. And then he also refers to himself in the third person. So he refers himself as, like, your faculty member or this professor or whatever, something like that. And it's just kind of funny. But yeah, I don't know. Overall, I like it, although I guess I haven't really interacted with many people. I guess I should have expected that anyways, for that matter. It just is what it is. It's just probably always going to be like this. Anyways, but otherwise it was a good first day. Yes.

A lot of teachers feel like they have to be this alter ego. For me, who I am in the classroom is who I am in life. A lot of people thought I was just a fun teacher. I hate when teachers think that just because their class is rigorous, they can't have any fun. Then my test scores came back, my AP scores, and they were better than theirs. I don't even have to say anything. I am very German, but I am very about living life and working hard and being rigorous but having fun the entire time we're doing it. Because that's life. I really come to work with a smile on my face every single day.

I don't know if it's interesting. I'm kind of gearing more towards emotional triggers in my storytelling. I guess this one is going to be about having to work with a really aggressive coworker and kind of working through how to handle it. So I have a product manager who is, I can flat out say, the most aggressive teammate I've ever had to deal with. And I've had a broad range of collaboration with various stakeholders. The way that I started to handle it was first to kind of be overly appeasing and make sure that she felt included. Then it just kind of continued, this perpetual sort of notion of resentment towards me, which I'm not really sure where that's founded in. I think it's kind of just she just had something she didn't like about me and she just brought it to a personal level rather than keeping it professional. I definitely tried to have heart-to-hearts with her and it seemed on the surface that everything was fine. But it's really just constant and perpetual sort of condescending tones, outright aggression, and honestly, very childish behavior. And I'm not really sure at this point, and I think the outcome is just that thankfully the teams have shuffled and I shouldn't have to have any overlap with her, which is probably the best resolution to this situation. I've definitely brought it up to my boss, my manager, and he's fully aware of it. It's just that we have such a limited fund and appetite for going out and hiring new people. We definitely don't want to have a churn with our internal teammates. So honestly, the only resolution is to basically not have to overlap her with her in work.

After leaving an abusive workplace where I had no life and no room for development at the beginning of the year, I left and started a new job. It's been fantastic to work at this amazing place that feels like somewhere I can grow. Everything seems amazing, and I'm getting great feedback. I have a job I can have a life around again, and my social life blossoms. Today, I got dumped after a couple of months of dating this girl. Her reasoning being that she doesn't want to hurt me and her mental health is preventing her from growing and wants to work on herself. Understandable and fair, I get it and have been in her shoes. I get called into a meeting with my manager. She tells me that my colleagues don't like my attitude and state I'm difficult to work with. I've really pushed myself at this new job and tried to grow. Giving 110% wherever I can and picking up extra shifts just to get as much experience as possible. I try to be friendly with all my colleagues, and when things get busy (I work in hospitality), I'm all action, and try to delegate and stay on it as best I can. In my meeting, my manager told me my coworkers feel like I overstep the mark and act like the boss (even when fellow supervisors say they want me to take the reins and for me to lead). I'm told I'm scary to some staff, even when I'm always trying to be friendly and helpful to others. All around, I'm told that I'm not getting a promotion because my work attitude is wrong. I apparently treat staff like cattle, and I'm near enough told I should quit. This all happened over a 3-day period where I was pulling an 11-hour closing shift into an early morning opening shift. And all I can think of is covering more shifts to try and improve my performance and prove myself more. Stack this with me having car trouble and I feel like my life is spiraling out of control out of nowhere.

Sure, here is the transcript with the errors fixed:\n\nStore. Okay. This is my first story. So, I suppose I just start. I thought I would share a story that I've been thinking about related to a time I auditioned to speak when I worked at URI, and that's a memory. That's a nice memory for me, and it makes me think about a few different things. So, I thought it might be a fun thing to share with you.

I directed a play that worked very well in Boston, and one day a producer came to me and said, "Your play is so vicious, so wonderful. We're gonna do a special with your play." So I agreed. And they shot a film, Sixteen, and I was with a crew, and I was fascinated. I trained to direct actors, but I never worked in television or any movie before. You have to be honest about yourself, be honest with others, and be honest about what you want. If you have this spirit of doing what you want to do -- because I think that is the right thing -- you have to do it.

Well, this, this is actually precipitated by you, Jimbo, because in anticipation of our meeting, in one meeting we talked about artificial intelligence, and so I tapped into Chat GPT to see what it was like. And I asked it to write a letter to my son that said, "I told Chat GPT that my son was having difficulties at work and that he was very upset about the work situation, but that he needed to rely on his intellect, his ethics, and his warm personality in pursuit of a solution to this problem." So, Chat GPT wrote this lovely, lovely letter to him about just that, and I was fascinated the way Chat GPT approached it. And I think this is going to sound familiar to you, Jimbo. Chat GPT, I\'ll call it, he hooked onto certain vocabulary words and expanded those concepts and in logical order, both the concept of exploiting his good points and being able to tolerate a negative situation. And when all was said and done, I read this letter and I was absolutely touched. And it sounded like a letter from a mother to a son. And that is what blew me away, not the vocabulary or the content so much as the tone that was able to be achieved by something artificial. So, I thought about that because I could have written down what to do. I know what to do to have a good conversation. Repeat back what you\'ve heard, expand upon it, ask questions based on it, so on and so forth. But how do you transmit the emotion? That\'s the big question. But it did, and I kind of think I\'m thinking that what it did was find the emotion that was in me already. So, it doesn\'t give emotion, it goes to the listener or the reader and scoops up the emotion that that person has and brings it to the surface. So that\'s my story about Chat GPT, and I thought you would enjoy that because I think you have intimate knowledge of that. Okay.

I started off in physics, electrical engineering. I got my masters in biomedical engineering. Then I started a construction company. And that was just a result of buying a house I could afford in my 20s, which was really broken down and needed a lot of work. So I worked on it, and I loved that. I found I had a real passion for construction. So then I was trying to reconcile, construction, biomedical engineering, not quite sure how that works together. All of that stopped completely when I had gotten married, and I had a baby three months early with cerebral palsy. He's now 11, so I realized as I was going to physical therapy with my son, I was getting so frustrated looking for things that were really gonna help my son. So we pulled together a team and created a device that I thought was going to help my son. It's a little wearable sensor. And my company, Dynofit, that's what we have now. It's amazing, life is long. And you really have the opportunity to do a lot of different things. I don't really define myself as, "I'm a this or I'm a that." I'm a lot of things, we all are.

Well, I just want to say that even though I haven't found a job yet, I'm not necessarily mad about not having found a job because I got to go on a trip to the southwest, which was nice and relaxing because I got to go to Sedona. So, I got to have a little bit of a spiritual cleanse.

I left school, and I was totally unsure of what I wanted to do. I had a burning passion, which was not to travel. I went to Israel and worked on a kibbutz for six months because I met an Israeli guy and thought, "Oh, this is quite cool." And I started cooking in the kitchens there, and I was cooking with a couple of women who said to me then, "My god, you've got such a good talent for this." Then I came home and thought, "Yup, this is what I'm gonna do." I can just sort of live at Mum and Dad's and save and go through uni, and then I just started from there. I knew I didn't wanna do anything else. I knew, no matter how hard it was gonna be, I had to just keep going. Because the whole thing is, you're focusing on what you wanna do.

So, about two weeks ago, I went to do an open water swim, which I haven't done in four years. So over the summer, I did quite a bit of swimming and working out to make sure I was in shape for the event. And then I got there, and there were tons of people. It was a two-day thing. I swam on the second day, but overall, I successfully finished it, and I got second place in my age group. So, I got a medal to take home, which is pretty cool. But it's good to see that all the work I did paid off, and it was a super fun experience to do.

In 5th grade (when I was 10), I joined my school's cross country team. My friend joined as well. She was already the MVP and had an amazing season; I was about 5th best on a very small team. Today we were catching up at our lockers and I asked about the football game this past Saturday (we won); the topic switched to my cross country meet that morning. She was at the finish line when I won. Back to today, she was mentioning how fast I've gotten and how proud she was of me. That hit hard because she's always been good at any sport she's tried, and I finally feel like her: winning! She made my day better and gave me a little confidence boost for training and racing.

So, my partner's niece has been really struggling lately. She was an inpatient at a psychiatric treatment for about a year, and she just went home about a week ago. And we have been working on, well, not her father, and everyone else who's there is sort of working on trying to help her transition back into sort of outpatient life. But she seems to be really struggling - sort of having anxiety and depression, and sort of these angry outbursts of irritation, and just sort of general, like, not doing well. Yeah, I guess I don't really have much of a story with an arc. I guess we're in the middle of the story. But that's what I've been thinking about a lot lately.

This has been an extremely exhausting last few months, emotionally. My mother, who has always suffered with anxiety and depression, was admitted into a psychiatric ward in May after a particularly difficult bout of depression. We found out she was not taking her medicine. She had entered into a psychotic state, and it ended up taking 5 weeks before she could be released. She changed hospitals twice. I do not live where my mother does, so I had to take time off work and spend a lot of time traveling. It was unbelievably exhausting. I did, however, develop a lot of friendships with her caretakers. In the end, she made huge progress, thankfully. However, we are all concerned the issue will return. She is home now and doing ok, but she may never be the same. Now she is doing group therapy weekly. Additionally, she is back on meds that should work. I am back to work now and do not visit as much. I used to feel guilty, but at this point, I am beyond tired.

Yeah, I had like a really good learning from a friend, well, acquaintances really, at a bar. And essentially, there\'s two acquaintances, friends. One is named John Ross and the other is named Alfred. John Ross is like 39 and Alfred\'s 89. And Alfred leaned over to me and he asked me a question. And he said, "Are you happy?" And I said, "Sometimes." And he said, "Well, that makes sense because happiness can be like that." And he said, "More importantly, are you content?" And I said, "Very recently, I\'ve become content." And he said, "You are with your life where your life has gone. Are you content with where you are and all that?" And I said, "Yes, I\'m very content, very recently." And that was a great learning. And we talked about it for a little while, and people seem to really latch onto that. And it was an amazing kind of shared experience.

During the moon landing project, I saw people who did the best work of their lives in that situation. And I got really interested in one question: What are the conditions under which people do their best, most fulfilling work? In other words, I got more interested in people than in science. And once I knew that, once I was clear about the fact that I found something I absolutely loved, there was no doubt that I was gonna continue asking questions about how do I learn about people? It's still the most frequently asked question I get: How did you go from math to psychology? The key to knowing what to do is knowing who you are.

Like, I think one story or just like an interesting thing which I observed, I have is, it\'s all important to have representation at work or at the places that you are at because that sort of makes different people feel comfortable and more accepted, and more accepted, that\'s the word. For example, if I\'m in a different country or a different state, which I don\'t know anything about, and if I\'m walking there, if I\'m around people who have different experiences in life, I feel it takes a lot of time to just get comfortable around them, to feel more confident about yourself, to know and see how you can pick one and survive, but also thrive there. It takes a lot of time and it\'s helpful just to be aware of that and not be like "Oh, there\'s something wrong with you," but they\'re just like a different environment and the people are different. Everyone\'s trying.

When I started, I didn't know that I wanted to be in pharma. I love the industry for what it can do. I actually hated how they got it done. I didn't love the formula of the business practices in pharma, which is why I started my own. But the truth is, along the path, I was in an industry that was mostly male-dominated. If I looked up in the organization, nobody looked like me. There wasn't a lot of female leadership, there still isn't today. So my best way to make change is to be a leader in the industry. When I was on the path with Addyi, people called it the little pink pill. And they would say, aww, the little pink pill. And isn't that cute? When I realized that there was so much dismissiveness underneath it, I started showing up in blazing hot pink. It's the gender stereotype. Instead of coming back from it, I'm going straight for it, so we can talk about it. I think if you feel like you don't fit in the system, the way to make your way into it is to surprise people and continue to show up. Never let that underestimation shake your confidence in what you're set out to do.

So, I had to say goodbye to my grandparents today. My grandpa's 94 and my grandmother is also aging. And I don't know when the next time I'll see them is, and I don't know when their time is up. And so, that fills me with a lot of nostalgia. But it was so beautiful and emotional to see them and say goodbye, and see that they're proud of me.

My grandma in Oregon passed away a couple of weeks ago. The process was painful to hear about, and it hit me harder than I thought it would. I was very close with my grandma, and so was my mom. My mom's siblings put her on Hospice about three weeks ago, and within a week she was gone. There was a lot of family drama over the passing of her, and I did not agree with how she was taken care of in the end. I feel she was pushed into the direction of death by being heavily medicated, and her family members that were there were not getting her up out of bed anymore. I realize people get old and everyone's time comes, but I feel like it wasn't her time yet. But you can't go back in time, and she's gone now. I was able to travel with my parents and sister to Oregon to attend her funeral. It was an emotional roller coaster. The hardest day for me was when the day before her funeral I found out that there had been rules put in place by my Uncle that no grandkids were going to be able to go view my grandma and say goodbye. Because of all the drama, he wanted to hurt everyone he could that wasn't on his side. I went to the funeral home with my parents anyway in hopes that I might still get a chance. After arguing with the funeral director, it was decided that I would not be able to go in the room. I was crushed, I was so hurt and upset, but I was trying to hold it together for my mom. My mom was able to go in for a while and sit with her mom, so I waited outside with other family members. After some time, my mom came outside in a hurry and told me to come quickly. I didn't know what had happened, but apparently, the funeral director had a change of heart and decided to go against the request of my Uncle and let me go view my Grandma. Walking in that room was so surreal. I couldn't believe my beloved grandma was laying there in her coffin. I never thought it would bother me as much as it did. I couldn't even bring myself to touch her, I guess I was scared or in denial. It was an emotional couple of weeks, to say the least.

It's not an Astoria that happened recently. It's a story in my past. And the strongest emotion I felt here was shame. It was when I was in fifth grade. That's a time in adolescence when you're pudgy and awkward. And I remember being the target of bullying, where people were mooing at me, and I just felt absolutely terrible. And the teachers had to intervene. That's not even the real shame part that I feel. The shame part that I feel is that a week later there was another young girl that was the target of the same bullying, and I participated in it. Because now looking back, I guess I just really wanted to be a part of the group. And so I joined in. And I just feel absolutely terrible about having made somebody else feel the same way that I did.

Before I went through my trauma, I cared about every little thing people said or thought about me. I cared about life and thought life had meaning and I played an important role. But after growing up and going through hard times, I just stopped caring. In some ways, I feel like I'm better. I'm not anxious anymore, I don't let what other people say get to me, I help people without getting personally invested. It's not like I don't care at all, but it's not enough. But through this apathy, I realize I hurt my partner, my friends and family (and even implicitly my coworkers and other peers). I unintentionally became a bit of an asshole because I believe that my words and actions ultimately don't affect anyone because they don't respect or care about me enough for it to affect them. I don't share significant parts of my life and I keep everything to myself because I believe that people don't care about me. I know now that this is a response to my past experiences and I'm trying to be better but it's so hard. Because letting yourself feel again is scarier than losing people.

So, I've been thinking lately about myself. I have many hobbies and interests, and I enjoy doing them all. And mostly, they are not a group activity but more individual activities focused on individual activities. And I love doing them because it makes me feel like I'm learning something and I'm expanding my horizon. However, I also feel like I'm not really good at group activities or doing something together with other people. I think I need to work on it. \n\nSo, for example, yesterday, my husband and I were actually planning on going hiking in New Hampshire with his lab mate. However, yesterday I decided that I could not go because I had some projects that I wanted to work on. These are personal projects and projects related to work. So, I told him that I could not go and he should go with his friends. And of course, he was disappointed and pretty mad because of the change of plan. So, we had a little bit of an argument. And then, he left for hiking this morning. But, it makes me feel bad about it. \n\nSo, I was reflecting on myself. Maybe am I being too selfish by putting my personal project or my work-related project before family or people? So, I think I've been like this since I was young. I think I always had many interests and I was always involved in different activities. And those were usually focused on the project itself rather than the relationship with people. So, I think this is who I am, part of who I am. But it arises as some kind of problem or center of conflict when I'm in a relationship or when I'm with family, with people who I care about. I don't know how to solve this problem. And I think this will always be an issue. And I hope that my husband or my other family or friends could understand about this. But I also understand that it might be a little selfish desire for other people to understand that I'm putting my work and my project behind them. That's why I'm feeling a little bit. Not depressed, but feeling a little bit of self-reflection time here.

I am very bad at handling adversity. A slight mishap and my mind goes haywire. The effect is exaggerated when something happens between me and people I care about. I broke up with my ex a while ago and it's been miserable since. I can't take her out of my head. Even when I'm busy doing something, thoughts of her creep into my mind. It's like I can't even think of anything else. While driving, while eating, while talking with people, I just can't get her picture out of my head. I haven't been enjoying my job as well. I don't find any meaning in what I do. The chances that I'll have to work for the rest of my life for 5 days a week got me really anxious. I feel suffocated. Burdened. Unhappy. To escape all this madness within my mind, I've come to live with my friends for a while. Away from home, I thought my friends being around will help me distract my mind. It did not help. I feel unwanted. I feel miserable around them and the thought that I'm probably ruining their time as well makes me more miserable. I wanted to cry yesterday, but couldn't. We were having dinner, everyone talking and laughing and I just couldn't even smile. I wish I did not have these bonds. I wish I was alone. I wish I never made friends, never fell in love. These connections bring a lot of joy but they also add these complications and anxiety which is just worse. There's nothing I want more than peace. I just don't want to have all these convoluted emotions in my head. I try to silence them but the noise just does not go away. I am tired of these thoughts, the anxiety, the heaviness it all brings. I just want to be at peace with myself.

Yeah, so I was talking with my father last night, and he was repeating himself a lot. And he mentioned about that his wife is concerned about his cognitive decline in terms of dementia. And some of my earlier memories were with my grandfather, his father, who had Alzheimer\'s, and he lived in our house. And it was pretty brutal to see him losing his mind. But I told my father that I don\'t think that it\'s related to Alzheimer\'s or Dementia. I think he literally just debate intellectually or emotionally, like most people do. He doesn\'t have conversations with people about their lives. He doesn\'t like participating in social events. He doesn\'t ask questions to learn about people. He never really wanted to do anything or participate in any ways. He doesn\'t know how to use a computer. You can\'t buy a plane ticket. He can\'t travel alone. He doesn\'t know how to manage his finances. He doesn\'t manage his finances. He doesn\'t really do anything. So in my opinion, his lack of participation and cognitive processes and general kind of life interest is really kind of a self-fulfilling process of his cognitive decline. There are plenty of people I know that are far older than him that really love learning or cooking or reading or hiking or exploring different ways to kind of nurture what they enjoy to do and kind of stay active and healthy in their lives in that way. But really, the only thing that my father likes to do is to sit on the couch, go jogging, and drink beer. And it\'s been that way for his whole life. Yeah, that\'s just been on my mind. And it\'s annoying to hear him say, like, "Oh, jamie\'s worried about me." But really, in my opinion, it\'s the result of his personal preferences and behaviors and limitations.

I had cancer as a kid, and so I grew up with that being sort of the centerpiece of my life. I was told I couldn't do certain things because of that. And I certainly felt like it made a pretty big impact on my life growing up because it colored everything for me. When I got out of the hospital, it colored every single bit of my life because I couldn't get insurance. They wouldn't let me play sports, they wouldn't let me in the military. So it was a downer. In other ways, I just looked at it like no, I will achieve. The thing that I always share with people is think about your own thing, what it is you love, and a way to make it into a life. I just think there are lots of people who don't ever really achieve; they sort of surrender. And I've been at that place too, where you surrender. You don't do what you're passionate about. And then 20 years from now, you're like, man, I didn't do what I really loved. For me, it's always thinking about how can you do something that you really love doing as a business? And so I look at the entrepreneur track as being a really viable one for lots of people.

So today, my story is about the movie I watched yesterday, which was named Joyride. I think it was really interesting because when they first introduced the characters, I was actually a little bit upset because I was like, "Why are they getting a Korean girl to play a Chinese girl?" Right? I understand Asian American representation is really important, especially nowadays in media. But later, spoiler alert, there\'s a twist, and it turns out she was supposed to be Korean. So I was like, "Whoa, it\'s so nice that they actually got ethnicities correct." So I changed my mind about casting. \n\nOverall, I really enjoyed the movie. It was about finding out who you are. The storyline basically goes that there\'s this fancy lawyer. She was adopted from China, so she was trying to find her birth mother. They go through a crazy adventure, and eventually they end up in Korea. And she finds out that her birth mother was not only Korean but had also passed away. And it tested their friendship. They did a lot of really crazy things while in East Asia. But overall, I think it was a pretty beautiful message of friendship and how families, family, and your identities, what you make of it, and at the end of the day, just love your people who love you. \n\nSo I really enjoyed the movie. It\'s really, really funny at times. Really emotional sometimes, I definitely cried a little bit at one point when the deceased mother was wishing her daughter well. And it kind of inspired me, too. I think I also want to go on like a soul-searching journey. Yes, that is my story.

I heard this story where this kid who has autism could connect and share his experiences through Elsa. When Elsa closes the door on Anna and how she's feeling in the room, he could then communicate with his mom what he was going through. And it was just things like that. We're gonna make sure we make the best movie for this. For the audiences, you really don't know what the people who watch these films are going through. I think that was a good motivation to get through all of those times of like, it's really late. I have to come in and do overtime for this. But it's worth it. So all those experiences, even though it didn't seem like it was heading in the right direction, it did help me in the end.

So last winter, I went skiing in Big Bear, California. And I\'ve been skiing before, but this particular time, the snow was really wet. It wasn\'t soft. There wasn\'t a lot of snow that year, and so I had a hard time braking. So, I fell down a lot. It sounds painful, but it was actually kind of funny because I went on the steeper slopes, and my friends were like, "you should just do it." And then I did it. And then I started to fall. But in the end, it was pretty fun, even though I felt weak. We went and got some ramen after, some Fu afterwards. And the warmth of the Fu really helped warm me up after falling in the snow all day.

My wife and I traveled to Italy and did an amazing hike in the Dolomite mountain range. I had wanted to do this hike for many years and had researched it quite a bit. I knew it was going to be difficult, but I had no idea how much so. We started early in the morning, and for about four hours, we just kept climbing up higher and higher. It was even more difficult because there were loose rocks under us for much of it. Every time we reached what we thought was the top, another long uphill awaited us. Finally, after what I figured was another false top, we came up and it was as though we were at the top of the world. There below us, spreading for 360 degrees, were what seemed like thousands of craggy mountain peaks. It was like something from Lord of the Rings. We both started to cry; it was so beautiful. There was more crazy hiking to do, however, as we had to use ropes that had been attached to the mountain during World War I to traverse some cliffs and small waterfalls. That was the most difficult part for my wife, and I was so proud of her that she did it. I think she surprised herself. It was really one of the most memorable experiences of our lives. Even though we pretty much killed ourselves doing it, I think we would both do the same hike again in a heartbeat.

So today, I was giving a swim lesson and I had a very difficult person to teach today who wasn't listening. And it made me very frustrated at that person. But overall, it made me have to go back and try something new and adapt to the situation. Although I was annoyed a little bit, but overall I did get $50, so it was worth it in the end.

The first day of shadowing my boss went well at my new job with a service provider. The second day did not go as well. The day started out happy. He had a good day at school. We went to a well-known store, where he likes to go on Fridays. As we were going inside, things seemed a little off, but we pushed on. As we got inside, the first meltdown occurred, but we were able to continue on with our visit. He got angry and started running full speed at each of us. He would sit and then jump up. Then, he would run full over to one of us while punching or biting. This went on for about 20 minutes. We were trying to protect ourselves, the client, and any innocent people around. There was a man sitting behind us, in the corner of the eatery. Afterwards, we took him home with little to no violence. I came home and realized that he had also grabbed at my neck and my ribs were also bruised. The minute I walked into my own home, I just sat in my husband's arms and cried. Then, I went to lay down with an ice pack on my stomach to stop the bruising.

My daughter, Lena, went to a bakery walk shop yesterday. She made two kinds of pastry up there: a sweet one and a savory one. The sweet one was Turbulen, Blackberry, and the savory one was cheese and potato. Both are delicious. It was a two-hour session, but actually it took almost 3 hours. So when I went to pick her up, the kids were still waiting for their baked goods. So while I was waiting for the kids, I utilized that time to chat with other parents. But my son was super tired and hungry after his swimming lesson. So I had to stop chatting and began to entertain him. But after all, the gallant was so tasty and my daughter was so enjoying the time. And she was so proud of what she did. So I think $85 was worth it. I think it was a good experience for her, for me too.

I am the executive chef for Bacchanal here at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. I grew up in Mexico. And my family, it's all about food. I realized that food was my passion when I was about eight years old. I love being in there with the food. I studied for two years, but cooking is something that you develop the skill throughout the years. And you keep getting better and better at it. And it just becomes a part of who you are. As a female, it's a little bit of a challenge because you're entering into a world that is more male-oriented. And so, you have to be able to keep up with them. But life prepares you for everything, a step at a time. 32 years have prepared me to deal with 124 cooks and thousands and thousands of guests. People say it's so much, it's so stressful, but it really comes easy for me now.

Real life stories don't really have good starts, middles, and ends, especially if your day is kind of boring. My wife has been traveling for like the last week and a half, and she's coming home today within the next couple of hours. Actually, I got to go pick her up at the airport at midnight. So that's very exciting. The dog is going to be thrilled to see her. I'm going to be very excited to see her too. She's pregnant too, which is going to be our first child. We got pregnant last year, about a year ago, a little bit more than a year ago, and lost it kind of far into the pregnancy. So that was not great. So we're really nervous about this one and trying to make sure nothing goes wrong. But she was on a trip to Greece with her friends for like the last week and a half, and thankfully all of them are nurses. So that was nice. Nothing really went wrong. She got a little bit sick, a little bit sick, but nothing terrible as far as I know. So that's good. And I guess I'm just excited to see her, have (inaudible), playing video games all day. I did an interview which didn't turn out great and did some work before that. A lot of concepting ideas for marketing stuff.

The date was July 29th, 2019. It’s officially my due date! A few days ago, I went to the hospital with horrible contractions. They sent me home because I was only 1cm dilated. I’ve been in so much pain, I haven't slept for around 48 hours. It hurt to sit, hurt to lay down, I’ve basically been standing up on my feet for 2 days. I haven't eaten either. My bladder was irritated and just stopped working. I couldn't pee no matter how hard I tried. I was truly the most miserable I’ve ever been. I finally couldn't stand it anymore, so my mom and boyfriend took me back to the hospital and I FINALLY got admitted!! :D I guess all those crazy contractions worked because I finally dilated to 3cm and they admitted me! Right now, I’m about 5-6cm. Can’t wait to meet my little boy! UPDATE: My son was born 7/29 at 2:49 am. 5 lbs 9 oz. We're in postpartum recovery, I ended up having a c-section due to meconium in his amniotic fluid. He is perfect, healthy, and we’re learning breastfeeding together. He’s my angel.

Cool, great. So, I have been dealing with some pain - abdominal pain. So, I don't know if you really call that a story. It's been something I've been dealing with for the past several days - intermittent pain, but it's chronic, which is frustrating. But fortunately, that actually happened after that dinner party that I was just talking about. So, it was nice to be at the dinner party for the birthday - for the birthdays - and not have to be concerned with dealing with pain at the same time.

I ruptured my ACL and had to have surgery. The initial injury and surgery recovery has been so draining. I'm still sore and my leg is weak, but I'm in the least amount of pain that I have been in two weeks. I'm finally able to walk around the house without a brace. Things are looking up. On top of everything, I haven't been able to take my dog on walks or play fetch like we used to. Loved ones have been coming over to help, but all I've been able to do lately is offer cuddles, which is great, but seeing how happy she was today when I was finally able to play with her on the couch was everything.

So, I guess here, the fact is, I'm not a huge fan of the work that I had to do in this past year for my research. It wasn't what I really wanted to do, but I did it anyway because I was being paid to do it. And now I'm almost done. I've switched over to a new strain of work that I am interested in, but I still have to wrap up the last bits of my old work by writing a paper. And I really can't find any of the motivation to do it because I did not like the work at all. But this is the only way to prove that I did any work in the entirety of the last year. So, I guess, the main thing I'm learning here is, there is a challenge there. I don't want to work on it. I have no motivation to work on it, but I need to get it done. So if anything, I'm kind of completing it out of spite. And it seems that spite is a pretty good reason to keep going because it's just to prove someone else wrong. That thought that you couldn't. I'm taking it as motivation to do something I really am not motivated to do: to prove others that I was wrong. Prove others that they were wrong about me.

I spent 17 years at IBM right out of school, and I didn't take responsibility or any initiative regarding my career, and that was a big mistake. But finally, I got tired of it, so I started taking control of my career. That really helped; I got myself a job at Charles Schwab and got moved out here. But towards the end of my time at Schwab, I started this little hobby: Craigslist. The initial idea was just that I would send friends, maybe 10 or 12, notices about what I thought were cool events. Then people started making suggestions of new categories like jobs, and it just keeps growing. And by the end of '98, that's when I decided it was time to make it a real company.

So, growing up in India, we had this festival called Diwali. It's pretty big for the Hindu population. And every year, I couldn't wait to get my hands on firecrackers and go out and burn them with my friends.\n\nAnd it so happened that once I got to 8th grade, my family would let me out with my friends late at night. So, we'd be out in the streets, in the parks, even at 01:00 a.m., 02:00 a.m., bursting firecrackers. And even 20 years later, now I think about that really fun from the perspective of how, first of all, the city was so safe that as a kid, I could be out with my friends deep into the hours of the night. But then also that I always had this love for fire and fireworks.\n\nNow, in the US, it's only on the 4th of July that you get to see fireworks, and I find myself not as drawn to them as I was as a kid. Also, the fact that I'm not burning them myself is just a spectacle that you're watching. But it's just something I've been thinking about lately.

A couple weeks ago for July 4th, we went up to Hiawassee, Georgia, a small mountain town on the border of North Carolina and Georgia. My sister and I were visiting our grandparents to celebrate 4th of July together. Their house was situated on a quiet cove of a lake. This lake is generally what Hiawassee has come to be known for, as it is often covered in boats and recreation. Beautiful houses line the shores of the lake and make it feel magical, of sorts. The holiday comes around, and as is tradition for those on the lake, everyone takes their boats out to another quiet cove and waits. We wait for fireworks, launched off by the city just after the moon rises. The fireworks the previous year were notably short, to the disbelief of the boat-goers. However, this year the city had certainly made up for it with what was maybe an hour-long show. It was truly incredible. American music was being played from boats in every direction. You could hear the audible gasps and excitement with each new firework. It truly was an incredible sight and time. Afterwards, many people hung around on their boats talking with friends and even swimming in the black of night, softly lit by boat lights. I'm definitely going back again.

Related to the Indian restaurant, I guess I'll tell a story about my first experience with Mexican food. We live in Tennessee, where nobody ever had Mexican food. The foreign food that we had, which was Zena is very excited. Was pizza and also sometimes chow, Megan. But my aunt is from Texas and she went to Texas to visit and came back with some canned corn tortillas and some canned, I think, enchilada sauce. So, she invited us over. Up until that time, I was probably nine or ten, maybe ten. I really didn't like any kind of food. I liked hamburger and French fries and Pinto beans and pretty much that was it. But she made us Tex-Mex food, enchiladas, and tacos, and it was so delicious. I instantly converted to being a Mexican food lover. And also, that was the muller when I started eating other things besides my very limited diet.

I used to date a girl. I loved her. We had good times together. I miss the good times. There are things I don't miss. It's been years now. But tonight, I think of her because I want a pastrami sandwich. We were helping a friend move to NYC. I'm well-traveled; she wasn't. At the time, we weren't wealthy people, but our friend's company was paying his moving expenses, and it was loose enough that we could bill in a fee that was equal to our bar tab for the evening. We had a grand time! Underground sushi. Rooftop tequila! A neat speakeasy! Nothing too crazy, but a royal night on the town! Eventually, he tapped out, and she and I carried on. We played some pool at a Latin bar, and (finally) exhausted, we hit a bodega at around 4 am for a snack before slinking into our dude's house to crash on the floor before driving back to Ohio. There is nothing special about pastrami on rye. Except that the subset of towns with really good pastrami, really good rye, and really good mustard is VERY small. I grew up in Cincinnati, which makes the best rye and decent mustard but can't make pastrami. And maybe it's because we were drunk, or maybe it's because even a late-night bodega in Spanish Harlem has quality food, but this was a great sandwich. And I've had a few great sandwiches. Perfect pastrami, a good vinaigrette dressing, hot mustard. The veggies didn't stand out, but the lettuce was crisp, the onions sweet, and while the tomato didn't stand out, it also didn't mess up the whole thing. A great sandwich, in great company, shared on the staircase of some ancient boarding house in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge. But tonight, I craved pastrami out of the blue. I was drinking gin and grapefruit (a far stretch from the lemon-lime Jaritos we'd shared that night) and suddenly remembered that flavor. And with it, her. I'm not sure I would trade my recent successes to be back with her on 173rd in the humid August air, broke, drunk, and happy. But I might. That may have been the happiest I've ever been. Certainly, I was happier than I am now.

Okay. So, I guess it's not so much of a story kind of, but I wanted to talk through some kind of feelings I've been feeling about the job hunt. I think it feels a little bit more magnified because today at work, the work at my bakery, I felt micromanaged. Yeah, I felt micromanaged by one of the workers. It's just a weird schedule. I'm supposed to be on my own, it's just two workers out of the four cake decorators. And because I'm new, the other one, I guess felt more inclined to try to help me, but I felt annoyed. I felt very micromanaged. And I guess it was just hard because she wanted me to speed up and go faster, but I don't want to, which I know it's like a bakery, fast-paced environment, but I'm like, I'm getting paid minimum wage. It can't be that serious. I don't get a bonus if I sell more. What's the incentive to really speed up, to not get fired? That doesn't seem like enough incentive for me to really try beyond the bare minimum. Yeah, especially like I don't have enough hours. So whatever. So I guess that experience today once again reminded me, like, I need to find another job. I mean, the worker didn't mean anything bad. Like, I really like her. I just think she was a little bit too on top of it. I guess it made me think more about the job hunt and how I've been very slow to apply to other jobs, where I can basically hire paying jobs that require a degree, white-collar jobs, whatever. So, yeah. It made me think about why it's going to take a while. And part of it has been like adjusting to change. Well, first it was, I don't know. I guess maybe I'm running out of excuses, and I think there's more to it than what I thought originally was making me stop. Because first it was like, oh, I had to get quick money, not quick money, but I had to have some source of income. I'm not going to be unemployed for much longer because I spent a lot of my money on travel. So first it was, get a quick job. Then it was like, learn this quick job so I can be comfortable and start applying on the side. And then I feel comfortable in it. But now, and then it was like, adjust to your little sister going to college. But then now I'm like, okay, what's the excuse for being very slow? And part of it was like me just trying to enjoy my time in Phoenix. Like my friends and family, just because I've always had a hard time or a hard relationship with the city or just like my place of birth. I don't know. I always had weird feelings about this city, and I never really felt like I belonged. Now it's like, oh, I'm actually building that sense of belonging, even though I've been here, like, a whole year later, because I worked remotely. I guess one reason why it's taking me so long in the job hunt is because I was trying to build community, and I was spending all my money going out. So kind of hard to find a balance. All my waiting time is going to going out and building community. And then the other part is I guess as I've been looking at browsing at jobs and besides the limitations of not having a driver's license, I'm trying to get creative with how I can swing it, probably just more remote roles. So it's just like a combination of things that discourage me, so not having a driver's license really does impact availability jobs in Phoenix or where I can get around if I don't always have a secure ride and I don't always want to be paying Ubers and lifts. And then another part is like, I guess this is a part. I guess I've been realizing more that the job hunt started to get like a little bit emotional. But the job hunt makes me frustrated of thinking about my last job because I was with the company for three years. And then I turned full time in October. And I mentioned my salary previously. It was wrong. So I was making more than that. But it was like my first big paying paycheck out of college. I don't know. So I just feel like doing the job search makes me feel frustrated because I really feel cheated. I really feel like my last company really sucked. And I don't know how to grapple with those feelings because they do good work. And I always knew I wasn't going to stay long at that company. I just feel like I got such a short end of the stick, and it really sucks because I feel like I'm just a recent college grad, and I feel like I don't know. So the company really pushes on Hispanic, Latino people, like breaking through barriers, going to higher up positions in their company, so it's very marketed with Hispanic, Latino identity and roles outside of service and outside of like I guess I don't know. It's very professional, like white-collar outlook for Latinos and Hispanic people. So I guess. I just feel cheated because the mission is really valuable for what we were working with in our companies, and it was key on mentorship and networking. So it's like I learned so much from that job and. I guess I wish I could have left when I was still on good terms with everyone. I think for the most part I am, but I think my view of them is all tainted. Like one of the coworkers. I think her specifically, she's really gotten under my skin. I think the job relates to me still having mixed feelings about my last job because it's just so crazy. I keep reading all these job descriptions and thinking like, wow, my company didn't have any benefits. We had a birthday bonus or like a week between New Year's and Christmas off, but we didn't have health care. We didn't really have. We had unlimited PTO, but that kind of was a scam. And I always got criticism for taking time off and then I guess I'm just worried like, what if my next job. I don't suss up the red flags. I don't suss them out beforehand and I just walk into another mess. I'm really worried about that. But then I know I'll just quit. I'll just keep applying for jobs until I can trust it. But this job is so agonizing. I didn't realize how much emotion is behind it. And I guess that's what I'm working through. It's just like seeing all these job descriptions making me realize like, wow, my last company was like, they didn't really have any benefits. And then I felt so judged. And I felt like, especially towards the end, they really just gave me a bunch. They gave me things to do and didn't really train me on it. And they had all these, specifically, my boss. I think this is targeted towards my boss and my coworker who's my arch-nemesis now because I feel like both of them put all this pressure on me and didn't really adequately train me. And also, the coworker kind of low-key sabotaged me or tries to sabotage me, and she was really good at it. She was really good at trying to sabotage me. So I guess I'm just worried about all the mind games I have to play at the next role. And just really feeling like, wow, I could have gotten a whole year of experience with them, or I could have had more marketable skills if I had stayed there longer if I was able to stay longer. But I really felt, I guess bullied in a way and really left out and really. Yeah. I feel like my boss kept saying things that made me feel like I wasn't doing a good enough job. But then when I spoke to other people I worked with, they were like other people who aren't directly in the company. They made it so that. They made it sound like I was doing a great job, and I was going above and beyond. So I'm just kind of so disappointed that. The people that I got close to or at least my core team, I feel like towards the end, I just felt so mistreated by them and not this job. And then one of the reasons I guess I have a hard time filling out applications is because I just get wrapped up in the emotion behind it. I don't know. Reading job descriptions, I'm like, damn, I was cheated. I didn't even get a job offer letter. Who the fuck doesn't give their employee a job offer letter? I had to advocate for that, and I had to write my own job description, like I had to do so much for myself. And I'm like, but they're not even skilled, and I don't feel adequate enough to really market myself for these applications. I mean, I'll probably just be like, yeah, I did it. And exaggerate my skills, but I really feel like they failed me. And I haven't gotten over it. I'm kind of frustrated that I haven't gotten over it because it's been months. And you would think traveling around Europe would cure your problem. You would think having the privilege of travel to escape your problems would actually help you address stuff

So, I work for a cleaning company and clean buildings by myself, no biggie. I enjoy being by myself anyways. He lives three hours away. I put in my two weeks' notice Friday. He messaged me today on Sunday. He always ghosts me, takes days to respond to me, and it's just unprofessional. He wanted me to ask around and see if anyone would be interested, so I made a social media post and got responses immediately and gave him his number. He messaged me a minute ago over something different, and I casually asked him if he got any messages for the position. He responded, "Yes, but I'm not working. I'm off today, of course." Yeah, I know he's off, and I'm supposed to be off too, but here I am dealing with people interested, pointing them his way, and pretty much doing all the work. I'm not even getting paid for helping him find potential employees, so I'm going to just quit responding to people. I've been through so much with this cleaning company. I got reported over some rooms not being cleaned, which was not my fault because my key card didn't give me access to those rooms until the end of July. I've been working since April. I tried to miss work the other day due to a stomach virus, and he wouldn't let me, afraid I'd get reported again because that would make him look bad. I tried to miss a week because my grandpa had a heart attack, and he wouldn't let me take care of him and got upset about me missing work just for four days. I'm so excited for this new job where I'll be working with children. The pay is higher too.

One, my story is about my nephew. I had a very long conversation with him today. He is young right now. He's just starting his college. And he has been, like, decently a good student. Like in the initial school days, he was not that great, but he actually picked himself up and got good marks. But now, as I've been talking to him, I feel that he's targeting his aim too low. And he's just happy with anything. And he doesn't have a lot of cognitive sense to himself. And I get very angry at things when I hear that. These are so easy. Why don't people think about it? And I get irritated and I shout at him. And then I feel that I'm not treating him well. And I might not be a good uncle to him.

Today, I was talking with a friend in school. Beside him were two of his friends from his class. We were waiting for a teacher to bring a ball so we could hoop a little before I went home. But there was this girl beside him who was one of his mates. During the conversation with me and my friend, she kept looking at me weirdly and then looking away when I looked back. In a weird way. Almost staring at me. When I said bye and turned my back, she started talking. And it felt like she was talking negatively about me behind my back. She was so awkward the whole way through as I was talking with my friend. I had this sudden feeling of anger and hatred just rising within me. And many fantasies of killing her slowly popped up in my head. I had an overwhelming amount of hatred. I have never felt so angry and hateful towards someone for looking at me weirdly. It stuck with me in my head until all the way home. I stopped and tried to observe why I felt this way. But I couldn't understand. Worse things have happened in my life, and I felt more passive about it. But this... It nearly ruined my whole day, and I couldn't stop thinking about it.

When I was a little kid, I used to play chess all the time. I used to be really good at it too. At one point, I was ranked 20th in the country, and I used to go to tournaments all the time. I used to go to places like Las Vegas, San Diego, and I used to spend all my weekends just at tournaments. It was pretty fun, and it was nice for my parents to drive me all that way so that I could compete in chess tournaments.

I'm 23 and just kind of finding my own path. I wrestled when I was 11 years old. It was because my dad got me into it. I went out and got my butt kicked by every other middle school kid I went up against, 35 times in a row. Before I was really capable of making decisions for myself, my parents had rooted in me that I needed to find a way to persevere in the things that mattered the most. Whether it was figuring out how to feed myself or clothe myself, just day to day activities. Athletically, they wouldn't let me quit in the middle of the season. It went a long way. They taught me not to give up so easily. My biggest complaint with the American system and graduating high school, going to college, and getting a job is that the common progression is to prepare you to be an employee. But you don't have to. There's ways and avenues to be able to go around and make something happen and build a business around something that you love.

Here's my story today. And maybe it's more a reflection than a story, but just wanted to talk to you about my son's 40th birthday. It crept up on me, and that was interesting. He lives in another state. Now he's married. He has a child, and we do not have a day-to-day communication relationship. So he's very busy. So we catch each other when we can. Birthdays always make me reminisce about them growing up, both my sons. But this one was my younger son. So different. You think about a day that we were born, when you drop them off at kindergarten, their first day, first grade, and on to dropping them off at college and all that, and then their wedding. It's a lot of emotions during the day when they have their birthday, it always seems to happen to me. But now he's 40, and he has his own life, his own family. And our conversations are so different now. It's no longer the parent-child conversation. It's two adults talking. He told me all about how his house is coming along. He's doing a lot of renovations. He has a new job and wanted to talk about his daughter, who was starting second grade next week. So it was all very pleasant. But it's so different. It's just how life evolves over the years, from parent child to a different kind of relationship. And it is a little bit like the tables are turning. So a lot of memories in this city, a lot of memories. But that was today. And it always happens during their birthdays. So that's my story today.

On May 21 of this year (2019), my very first niece had her 15th birthday celebration. Since she was a little baby, I was waiting for this moment because she has a personality that makes me feel like I have my sister back when she was young. That is because of several reasons. My sister is no longer with us, and she is like the memory we have of my sister. Now why was that date so important to me? Well, I am not exactly in my home country. I am living abroad because of my career, but for that date, I wanted to jump from my place to her place just because I cannot miss that once-in-a-lifetime event for my niece. I bought a flight ticket, I had a layover for about 12 hours in another country, I got sick because of the meal, but you know what? I don't regret it at all. At the end of the day, I saw her face, I saw how happy she was in her party celebration, and also she was happy to see me there. I could dance with my little niece, who is my little baby as well, and I will remember that for the rest of my life. I said to her that when I was in the airplane, I saw her mother in the sky. She told me to carry her and said, "I love you" on behalf of her. My niece was so happy, she hugged me, and I whispered, "Your mother is so proud of you, honey." I am pretty sure my sister was also dancing in heaven. The night was too short, but the memories are infinite because each second was valuable. I have to travel back the next day, without anything in my bags, but my heart full of love. Family is the treasure that will always make your life valuable.

Hello, Hi jivo. I'd like to share a quick story about a conversation I had this morning on the ride to drop off my son at school. We were chatting about other planets and the atmospheres on other planets, and the living conditions on other planets. And I shared with him that perhaps within his lifetime, there will be humans starting to live on Mars. And we talked about what that might look like and how some of the introductory things humans would need to do to have a survivable climate and habitat on a different planet. It's an interesting thing to think about, especially for a young mind. And I find myself enjoying seeing questions like that through my son's eyes at the young age that he's at, because largely it's a blank slate. But he's very curious about the world, and he's learning new things. And I find that to be a nice perspective to try on, to remind myself of. So we had fun chatting about that.

I'm an Assistant Professor in Astronomy, and I study the dynamic universe. So what I do is with the beautiful telescopes here at Palomar Observatory, we have some robotic telescopes that are continuously making a movie of the night sky. So we image the sky over and over again, and we look for what changed. You might go out there and think the universe is the same old thing every time, but it's actually not. It's full of these little explosions, which last for a very short amount of time, so they're very energetic. It's like cosmic fireworks lighting up our sky. It was not at all clear that one day I would do a PhD. I grew up on a farm in India with 100 cows and fields of weeds and chickpeas. And I had left home when I was 15, and I was a girl in India in a small place. The entire community was up in arms. There were people like neighbors, relatives, you name it. People I haven't even seen before coming into the house and trying to talk my parents out of this crazy decision to send their daughter alone on this journey into the other end of the world to pursue something called Astronomy or whatever that was. The community was completely unsupportive. In my case, the best way to deal with it was to just let that fade away in the background and not engage with it directly, but focus on what is motivating me, on what is giving me joy and just let everything else just fade away in the background.

My family. I had a family of four siblings, two older sisters. My brother, who was eleven years older than me, and then me. And there was kind of a dichotomy in the household. The two older sisters, they were accomplished, very beautiful. And they were in their own world. And I was sickly and a bookworm. Stayed at home all the time. And the only person there for me was my brother. And even though he was eleven years old, he always made time for me. And he did things with me every Saturday afternoon at the matinee on TV. We\'d watch The Three Stooges. And we\'d watch horror movies, those old Universal Horror movies. And he just made me feel special. And the song that reminds me of him most is "Leaving on a Jet Plane" because when I was nine years old, I attended his high school graduation. And no, I was seven years old. I\'m sorry. I attended his graduation. And when he stepped off stage, he received his diploma. And then he received a notice from the army recruiter that he was drafted to go to Vietnam. So the song by Peter, Paul, and Mary, "Leaving on a Jet Plane", became the song my mother and I would always listen to and think of him. And it just was very poignant and it meant a lot. And it was just I was bullied and a very sad child. And he brought sunshine to my life and spent time with me and loved me. So I felt very happy. But that song my mother and I would always cry. So anyway, that was my first story to introduce you and to tell you a little bit about me. Fortunately, I\'m a lot better but I just wanted to tell you that song means a lot to me and my brother meant a lot. So thank you for letting me share.

I didn't really plan on going to graduation. I never planned to go to graduation. I said I was getting out and never ever looking back. It costs money just to travel there and have the outfit. And I don't like it there, nor do I like the people. I look back on my time there as struggle and pain. But I looked at Facebook the morning of graduation, and there was a small pain. Seeing two of my almost friends in their caps and gowns, with their families, made me slightly sad for what I didn't have. Finishing didn't feel like a celebration, and maybe, had I gone, I could have made it be one. They had been through struggles similar to mine, and they were there, in the gowns, celebrating. I could have gone and seen them off and gave that university and city where I spent so many years of my life a proper goodbye. So I sat there, looking at Facebook, thinking about how the last time I left I didn't know it was going to be the last time. I realized that part of why I hadn't wanted to go was because most of my friends had graduated years before, and I wasn't really close to anyone else. Dragging them back for my graduation wasn't something I felt comfortable doing. And I realized that somewhere deep inside, I had seen myself being dragged into graduation, begrudgingly going. But people had listened when I said no. Facebook, ignoring privacy as usual, alerted one of my almost friends I was online. She sent me a message asking where I was and if we could meet to take photos together. When I told her I was not there, she expressed disappointment. She wrote me a message about how sad it was to not see me as she saw me as directly responsible for her even making it to graduation. At the same time, other almost friends who had graduated previously were online congratulating the two. Upon seeing I was online, they wrote to me as well. One expressed congratulations to me and spoke of how she was glad I was finally free. The other spoke of how we would celebrate in the future, as I had celebrated her graduation with her, and she could not have gotten through without me. And I told myself that I didn't need to be at that graduation because I had what I needed from it -- the people who understood how much it took and the feeling of being free of it.

Yeah. So basically, yesterday, I finally went ahead and built my own raised garden bed for my backyard. For the first time, it was pretty nice and fulfilling at the end of it. I got some tools from my friends. I had some leftover lumber from the time when our contractors did the front. Air France. So I just sat down, spent two to three hours. It was not sunny. It was cloudy. It's good working conditions, but basically, put together a big garden raised garden bed that I'm very proud of. The wood still needs treatment and before I put in soil, there's some fall-up stuff that I need to do, but it was definitely very fulfilling. And one of those things where you kind of delayed for a long time, but then you're like, let's do it now. So I just did that. And I felt very good about it.

I wanted to make wine, and I found this guy who helped me. He was a great master of wine. So, I went out where the winery is right now, and I was just looking around. There's a flat spot, and I built the whole winery around where someone would stand at the tasting bar and look out the window and see Bridge Creek Wall, which is the highest rock wall in Icicle Canyon. It took about ten years to build that winery. It took four years to lay the stone on it. Just walk out in the yard here and pick up stone. We did that for four years and laid it up on that building. I was poor. When you're poor, you do stuff yourself. And now you know I'm making 100 barrels a year and living on 25 acres of property out in the middle of nowhere. We're four miles off the power grid. You need to make the first step. It's like going for a run; you gotta get your shoes on. You gonna get out and there start doing it, don't be afraid to make mistakes. You just gonna start doing what you wanna do.

So, the story I like to share is one that happened yesterday night. It was my last day with my pottery studio. It's a tight-knit community. I'm really kind and supportive of each other. And every month, we have a potluck where people bring homemade pizzas, homemade pastries, and donuts and all these types of things. And it's really nice. And yesterday was my last day. I was really sad to leave all these incredible people that I've met. I bought my teacher flowers and I wrote him a card. And I have a few pieces left to finish, so I'm happy to go back when I'm in town. Well, I'm leaving because I'm moving out of town. So, yeah, that's my story. It was a really fun and heartwarming night.

I recently discovered textile media arts and am excited to get involved in it. I make quilts and will be incorporating this new medium into it. I watched a couple of videos on how to do it, and it looks like a lot of fun. I love quilting and sewing for myself, and upping my game will be fun. I recently quit going to a quilting group and have found that my creativity on my own has really increased. I am finding more to do. It's amazing that not going to a group will expand your horizons. At least it has for me. I have recently been doing a lot of sewing on my own and loving it. Changing the way clothes look, altering clothes, and trying different things with fabric. The different ways to use fabric has been a real challenge to me and one I relish. It's fun coming up with art that is different from something someone else will do. Too many times we get stuck in a rut. Going out on your own is fun and wonderful.