I first started writing publicly in 2018, on a daily blog that was, in essence, a journal. This was, by all accounts, a remarkably bad idea, and, in 2020, I switched to posting only journal entries which contained thoughts that were meaningful. When I started writing for MIT Admissions, I stopped posting those as well. Still, I have continued to “blog” daily and have done so for over six years now, with a dedicated audience of three or four people who are some of my closest friends. After many years away, here is one of those posts.
part 1
Saturday, November 16th, 2024. 9:53 AM PT, Amtrak Cascades 503, about five miles north of Castle Rock, WA.
I've come to the strange epiphany that I might actually be happy.
It's a very strange feeling, but, the more I think about it, the more it seems true. I actually just might be happy.
Let me explain. I'm currently on a train between Seattle and Portland (the Oregon one), having gotten up at 6 AM to take the Link down to the station, after going to bed around 1:30 AM. I'm on a train with a bunch of writers, most of whom are working, I think, on some kind of fiction—it is November, after all, and although the organization of NaNoWriMo has taken its lumps over the course of the past few months, the spirit of the month continues. I've been cycling between a few things: reading a book I checked out from the Seattle Public Library; writing something resembling a blog post; and, occasionally, intercalating the translations of the Chinese lines of the play I'm still working on—Jay v. Jay—into the main script, so that the editing and submission process will be easier in the future.
I've been thinking a lot about what it takes to be an artist with a full-time job. My playwriting professor, back when I asked for advice last year, told me that continuing to write plays in the real world will require feeling like you have two full-time jobs, and requires a commitment and dedication that I'm not sure I have. On a recent visit to Boston, an admissions officer told me that, after MIT, a lot of the artsy people end up losing that spark somewhat; without the pressure of school, somehow that desire to create withers a little, or fails to last. I've been, frankly, worried that this will happen to me.
I've also been worried about whether I'm living enough to write: whether the day-to-day of "leave for work at 8, grind, get home at 6, collapse from exhaustion, make food, waste time" is going to provide any sort of good material, ever (surely not), and, secondarily, whether I'm living enough for someone in my early twenties. I'm still only 22! I should be doing more, experiencing more, living more.
Looking out the window of the train, though, watching the landscape roll by, I can't help but be reminded of all the trips I've taken on the train: the weekend trips to Rockport, MA, or the cross-country trips between Boston and San Francisco, and El Paso and Boston; I've seen so much more of America than many people have. And, now, that I have some disposable income, I am doing more. In the past six weekends, I've done:
a trip to Boston (my first vacation)
(a weekend off, forgive me)
a trip to San Francisco (where I biked around the city)
a trip to Boston (for the "old person reunion" that HMMT tends to be)
and now, today's day trip to Portland.
I'm rediscovering the adventure of going new places, or even going back to old places that had become staid. Of learning to love cities, I guess. Of learning to live. I'm very happy with that.
And, honestly, I love work. I feel lucky to be on a team where people are friendly, where they are often in the office if I have a question, and a team that appeals to my arcane interests as a systems person. I feel very lucky to be working on projects that I think matter, even if they won't ship for years, and to be trusted with a lot of responsibility, even if that's a little bit stressful as a new grad. I am genuinely very happy about work, and certainly in a way that I know many of my friends at big tech companies have not always been.
Even in the art world, new sprouts are promising. I got my very first pit orchestra gig—a substitute for a few rehearsals, sure, but practicing along to the part has brought me a joy that I haven't felt while playing in a while now; I keep submitting my poetry, and I read more books in a month than I did in a semester at MIT. I sing in this choir, and take my artsy photos, and bit by bit, things move along. I'm learning, too, that I still have much to learn about patience; the years unfold before me, and there is so much more time for things to be done.
So, yeah. I feel very lucky to be where I am in life right now, I guess. Time will reveal if the feeling remains, but right now, I think I might actually be happy. I just might.
Now, forgive me for departing, reader. There is a beautiful river outside the train window, beyond which yellow-green trees dot the bank, and it must be watched.
part 2
Saturday, November 16th, 2024. 5:29 PM PT, Amtrak Coast Starlight 14, departing Union Station, Portland, OR.
What happened today? So many things and yet none at all, I guess.
We arrived in Portland somewhat late but not disastrously so. After a little bit of milling about, we headed out into the city. I tacked along with a group of other two people; we got brunch at Deschutes and then walked over to the art museum. It was one of those perpetually grey, Pacific Northwest days, the kind where the sun still blows out all your photos but doesn't have the energy to actually show its face. Downtown Portland was a little suspicious, for lack of a better word, but parts of it really reminded me of Back Bay, walking down streets with short, old-looking buildings, a skyscraper here and there, and, near the museum, a park down the middle of the street that I could almost imagine was Commonwealth Avenue Mall. It was quaint, not that I really saw a lot of it, but, it, too, gave me envy from Seattle.
The art museum was under renovation, so the vast majority of it was closed. The bottom floor was an exhibition of Paul McCartney's photographs, which I was skeptical about at first but ultimately really enjoyed. I think there really is something to capturing pictures of people that feels layered with love and care, and I was surprised by how striking some of the pictures in the gallery were. It leaves me with the mild envy for someone who could navigate two different fields of art, and with a lot to think about with regards to my personal interest in photography, which continues.
The upstairs had an exhibition on psychedelics and psychedelic art. This, too, I was skeptical about, and here my skepticism won. Mostly, it was a lot of band posters with groovy letters, which I could appreciate, but did not stand out to me. More excitingly, there was a tiny portion of the floor carved off where they were showing portions of their permanent collection, not grouped by century or movement, as is traditional, but instead by theme—e.g., form, shape, color. I actually found this exhibit fairly moving; there were so many beautiful things near each other, from beautiful landscape paintings to Monets to 20th-century modern art to art produced in the past five years, all saying something with the affect of their particular time and voice. I liked it very much, and it gives me hope that if when I come to Portland next—which, it turns out, is fairly easy to do—if the art museum renovations are done, I will get to peruse an even better collection. One can hope, at least.
We stopped by Powell's afterwards, which is an apparently legendary bookstore, for reasons not completely clear to me but exciting nonetheless. It is immensely large, to be certain; there were rooms upon rooms of different kinds of books, and I scarcely had the time—based on the original train departure time, at least—to visit all of them. Instead, I settled for my typical ways, and, once again disregarding my budget (I really should start doing prospective rather than retrospective planning here), I ended up buying five books: two plays, two poetry collections, and a novel. More specifically, I wanted to be a little more adventurous with books, so I got two poetry collections from poets I haven't heard of—Chen Chen's "When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities" and Jihyun Yun's "Some Are Always Hungry"—and then a bilingual edition of Lao She's "Teahouse", Mamet's "Glengarry Glen Ross", and, for the novel, Emily Henry's "People We Meet on Vacation", which ought to be a good palate cleanser. I don't exactly know when I'll read all this, but I've been reading about a book every week or two recently, so maybe I'll be able to keep that up.
We returned to the station; I chatted with another Microsoft new grad who'd come on this trip along the way. It was interesting to share both some technical thoughts and some creative ambitions; I found out that she'd gone to Harvard and had taken a class with Paul Yoon, actually, who I'd taken Novel Lab with back in senior spring. The train, unfortunately, was delayed by an hour or more, so everybody sat around for a while, passing the time; I texted people, copied the photos off my camera, and mostly just sat around, waiting for the train. And then the train came, and we left.
I think this is the most social interaction I've had with people in a non-work, non-school context for a long time. Maybe even years, I guess, although I'm almost certainly forgetting some event or another in the meantime. I feel like it's both strange and unsurprising how easy it is to talk to people; strange in the sense that it is hard to make friends as an adult, as people's lives are busy and divergent and full of so many differences, and there are simply not as many opportunities to get close to people as there were before. But—and as a writer, I suppose I ought to remember this well—it is unsurprising because everyone's life has a story, full of this sort of fractal complexity of friends and relationships and communities and beliefs and ideals and desires, and there is so much to be gained from talking to and learning from each individual voice (and that includes myself, too).
In other words, I should probably get out more.
Well, three more hours to Seattle. Maybe the hope of getting more sleep tonight will not actually be realized. But, hey, I've had much longer and much worse Amtrak trips before. Not a high bar, but...
coda
Saturday, November 16th, 2024. 10:08 AM, the apartment.
Slept for two hours. Bored for the rest.
Said goodbye. Took the Link. Walked through the mist Seattleites call rain, for some reason. Got home.
Uploaded pictures. Ate grapes.
What a lovely day.
Tomorrow, rest.
THIS WAS A LOVELY READ! It perfectly articulated so many thoughts I've been having about how to preserve creativity while doing school/life full time and also needing to do things that spark inspiration and happiness so that I can be creative. Thanks for putting this into the world :)