2024 Intentions and Meditations

My attempt to lead a more easeful life, powered by clean fuel

Hello 2024 and happy early Lunar New Year! This is the year of the dragon, my zodiac year, known as Ben Ming Nian 本命年, which is a year of extreme karmic volatility for good things or bad things. During your zodiac year, you need to be dripping with red and jade to ward off any bad energy, which is why I got these baller dragon nail art: 

I’m trying to approach this year with renewed intentions instead of resolutions. After heart surgery last month, I realized while listening to sappy Christmas music with my back against the operating table, that I want to lead a more ~easeful~ life. As the nurse prepped me with an iodine sponge around my incision point, I thought to myself “How will I be remembered if I die?” Would I be remembered as the Asian American girl who worked herself to death trying to crack the glass and bamboo ceiling? My epitaph would read “She died trying.” How lame.

EASEFUL LIFE

The beauty of going through health scares is the sobering realization of what is most important in life. Coming out of heart surgery, I want more joy and the kind of life experiences that you remember on your deathbed with gratitude, not regret. My friend Nina recently shared her mantra for an easeful life with me over coffee. An easeful life is not easy per se but one open to embracing more ease, choosing joy over productivity, and choosing the path of least resistance. 

I’ve lived my adult life the opposite of easeful, swinging between sprinting at warp speed and recovering from burnout. Every two years I would cycle through some kind of psychic, physical, and mental exhaustion manifesting in serious health issues like mono, chronic fatigue, insomnia, anxiety and depression, and heart problems.

Taking time off to recover from heart surgery and focusing on recovery created space for the first time in my adult work life to reflect. Writing my own will (bequeathing my skincare and beauty devices to my friend Derrick) and adding my husband to life insurance forced me to reassess and examine my life. 

Up until my surgery, I had focused my life on achieving and brute forcing my way through life, rushing to the next thing. Every time I accomplished something I would not savor it but, instead, immediately move onto the next thing. I was an achievement junkie who acclimated after hitting every milestone and needed more and more to sustain my high. So much of this search for more stemmed from my feelings of not being enough. I don’t know where this feeling of not enough came from, that’s for my therapist to unravel, but I do think it has to do with not being the “chosen one” in life. Born a girl in China under the one child policy in a society that wanted boys, immigrating to America where I’m often viewed  (or rather not viewed) as invisible, and growing up in a predominating white city like Portland, Oregon, will make you feel not enough. Not Asian enough or white enough.

SPITE DRIVEN APPROACH 

Despite feeling not enough, I also have the utmost gratitude for channeling “not enough” into motivation. It was feeling not enough that led me to strive and overachieve. I was always trying to prove people wrong, transmuting their doubts and biases towards me into working harder. This type of spite-driven motivation was jet fuel that gave me a short-term boost but became carcinogenic to my long-term health. Like Earn in the FX show Atlanta, I found spite to be an efficient feeling that forced me to be better. In Earn’s therapy scene where he says, 

“I love spite. It’s a pure, powerful thing. It gave me courage; I could count on it.”

Source: FX Networks

I felt those words in my spite-driven soul. His therapist tells him spite can be powerful but also leave you empty and depressed, turning your life “into a book written by someone else. Someone with  no incentive for your well-being.” So much of my life has been reactive to other people’s doubts and biases, whether overt or subliminal, against me. I’ve done well proving myself to society that I have value, I can be a useful instrument to the capitalist system–a productive cog in the wheel–grinding to the beat of shareholder value. I am a good immigrant who pulls 10X my weight but I’m also incredibly tired. So tired. 

CLEAN FUEL 

In this new evolution of my life, I am searching for clean fuel. Clean fuel is a positive life-sustaining force that motivates me to move through the world on my terms, centered around what Bo wants. Clean fuel is accepting projects, book deals, and opportunities based on what is aligned with my values instead of out of obligation. Clean fuel is about focusing on the process instead of the end outcome. Clean fuel is choosing to work with the right people instead of deciding based on a sexy brand or topic. Clean fuel is following my energy and feminine intuition–not brute forcing my way through hard things for the sake of proving to myself and naysayers that I can do it. Clean fuel is setting boundaries and saying “no” more–without guilt or shame– so I can prioritize myself for once.

THINGS I’M INTO

1. No extraneous spend January - I’ve been taking a break from buying anything extraneous this month. This does not mean no shopping at all but rather exercising my purchasing desire based on need instead of want. This period has helped me understand why I buy things out of stress, boredom, anxiety, or depression. Rarely do I buy something when I’m feeling good beyond food and drinks. 

2. Pilates and yoga - I had to take a break from my beloved boxing and running after surgery. Easing back into movement has helped me not push my body into yang energy and lean more into yin energy. Pilates and yoga although easier on my body can be effortful too without exerting me to the point of depletion. 

3. French baby butt cream - my best friend Sherry hauled me two tubes of Cicabiafine from her Paris trip. To avoid buying extraneous things (ahem, skincare), I started using Cicabiafine on my face after Tretinoin. It has a soothing molecule called Avenanthramides similar to oats that reduces any irritation I get from my 0.025% tret. Little did I know this is a popular baby butt cream in France! If it’s gentle enough for babies, it’s gentle enough for my face. No wonder this cream leaves my face baby butt soft. 

   

Cheers to 2024 powered by clean fuel and baby butt cream! 

–bo