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So, the story that I want to share is related to, also related to the wedding, but just being in San Diego. And so, while I was there, I had a few extra days to visit and sightsee and see some of the old places from school.\n\nAnd so, one of the fun activities was, now some of my friends are still in the area working or finishing up grad school. And then, another one of my friends just started as a professor at UCSD, and so it was really fun catching up with all these people.\n\nAnd, it makes me appreciate the openness and willingness of people to take time out of their busy schedules to maintain these relationships and how much that means to me.

Today, I got to take part in a celebration to mark Nick & Bec's 20th Anniversary. I was asked to be part of the ceremony by writing and presenting 5 Haikus about their relationship. When I got to the party, I was amazed at the number of old friends of mine that were also attending the event. I knew at least 45 of the 50 or so attendees, although there were some folks I hadn't seen in years. The party gave me an unexpected chance to catch up with so many of these old friends. It was so nice to see so many people I love and to get to celebrate one of my favorite couples with them all. It also was very energizing to have so many friends together, and it made me feel very happy and grateful I have so many amazing people in my life. It's hard not to be happy when you realize you are so blessed. The ceremony itself was beautiful. Both the bride and groom looked lovely and were happy and upbeat. Everyone seemed to be in a great and appreciative mood, and the ceremony went off without a hitch. My haikus were well received, and people laughed and "ahhhed" at all the points I had hoped they would. It made me feel very special that I was only 1 of 2 people who had been asked to contribute and speak at the ceremony, and I was grateful I got to contribute. After the ceremony, the food and reception were also fabulous. I stayed at the party almost 4 hours before heading home. Even then, it was hard to leave because there were so many folks I wanted more time to catch up with. I went home happy and energized by all the friendship and love from the night.

Oh, so, I guess for my sister\'s plans for today, like how we\'re going to take her to University. And I think a lot of it really reminds me of my first time going to College alone. Well, I didn\'t go to College alone, but basically, I was the first in my family to go to University outside of state. My sister, my older sister was the oldest. One and the first one to go to College ever because my family. No one really holds degrees. Where they\'re like Immigrants to the us. So it\'s like a whole complication thing there with education, not transferring or not going to University because it\'s expensive. So I feel really privileged to be to have been one of the first in my family to go to College. But it\'s definitely really hard because my parents don\'t have the same background as they don\'t have the same understanding of what it means to go to College in the US or what College really is. So it would be hard to relate with other friends that do have family and support system so. It really so I guess. It\'s like me thinking back about when I was first going through wellesley. So I went to Wales College in Massachusetts. So I\'m from Arizona. So that\'s a huge flight. It\'s like 6 hours flight. And pretty much the day I got dropped off or the weekend I got dropped off, I think it\'s super memorable in my mind because. It was me, two of my sisters, and my mom. So it\'s like all four of us were going, we couldn\'t really afford flights for other people. And it was kind of to me, a miracle that we could afford these flights to Massachusetts. It was thanks to my sister\'s good paying job at the time, but really I was surprised anyone could go. I was prepared to go by myself because we didn\'t really have much money. We took an overnight flight similar to this, but it was a direct flight, but they didn\'t sleep. But I can sleep through anything. So I slept through the flight. I don\'t know. I don\'t remember how many days we were there, but I think it was just very rushed and. It was like chaotic. Because we went so we had it over. And I thought, "Can you kick Elvis out? He\'s kind of, thank you." So I just see it as like a whirlwind, like I don\'t even remember really how the event unfolded. I just remember going overnight and then landing in Boston, and it was my first time in Boston with my family first time exploring. So then. I got to explore Boston that day, like I had a whole itinerary planned. I think that was like one of the starts of my travel crazy. The travel bug had a whole itinerary. I had my parent or my mom and my older sisters and everyone, like running through Boston, trying to get everything done as much as possible. For only one day. And then we went to the hotel, slept. And then the next day we went to wellesley. And it was just like a really cool experience to have them move me in. So I didn\'t have to do it alone. They helped move me in, and it was like the hottest day in Massachusetts. It just felt gross. And it was humid growth. And we\'re not used to humidity at all. So everything felt so sticky and stuffy. And there\'s no air conditioning in any of the dorms that well, we at least at the time, pretty much still not. So then there are no dorm, like there\'s no air conditioning. So it was like we\'re all hot and sweaty. And then I was meeting my roommate for the first time. And the room was so tiny. It was so small, we could all barely fit. And I just remember things like it was so crazy. The whole day was very hot and chaotic. And then. Afterwards, after we set up my Bay, we took, like, a photo. And it was like, oh, really cute of us all together. And then we got to meet my roommate, which is pretty cool because she\'s Colombian. So it was nice that my mom was able to speak like her native language with my roommates. There wasn\'t a language barrier for them, and they felt like more entrusting that I was going to stay with their daughter. It was just a nice experience. It\'s really nice when my. Friends or my friend\'s family speaks Spanish because then my parents can relate to them on a better level than English. So I was really thankful for that. So I just remember it being just very hot and humid and gross. But we got it all set up. And then we went to maybe a couple of us. It really is a blur. Like, I just feel like from the moment that we set up the better then it was like, okay, time to kick the parents out. Go away. So then. My parents and my sisters left. And then I stick back. And then it was like. A whole weird initiation ceremony that all these students have. But Yeah. It was just like very chaotic. Two to three days, maybe. But. It was definitely a good worthwhile experience for being the first. For being dropped off and on my own for the first time. To kind of fend for myself in life. Well, the wilderness. I don\'t know. So it was really cool. So this is what my current plan for today reminds me of, they remind me of this experience of being dropped off at University. And just kind of navigating it on my own from there.

As a freshman, my first year of college had its ups and downs. It probably had some of the darkest moments of my life, from times of intense loneliness sitting at the dining hall alone, to self-hatred at feeling stupid whenever I had no idea how to approach a pset. But, as I realized when I started tearing up as I began to empty out my dorm room, was that I love it here. I've met incredible people. Learned incredible things. Grown so much as a person. Going home and hanging out with my home friends is cool and all, but there's something about being here, about feeling like I have the entire world at my fingertips, that I'll miss. I'm so lucky to have come here, and I can't wait to return next fall.

So, I think I've mentioned that I have a cat. His name is Zoro. I adopted him when my other cat was about ten years old. Sadly, my other cat passed away a couple of years ago. I had him for 15 years and he was just super, like the best cat ever. And we were super close, definitely bonded. But when I adopted Zoro, he was only five months old and a couple of weeks in, my ex-husband, he got home before I did from grad school and his brother had come over and he was careless, and Zoro slipped out of the front door. He must have been extremely careless because the doorway is very narrow, so you really have to not be paying attention to have something like Zoro just slip by you. And I came home and I was terrified. He was only five months old. I was living in Florida and my apartment was adjacent to a nature conservation area. And in Florida, there are a lot of dangerous animals that would be predators to Zoro. Gators, alligators, venomous snakes, even hawks. He was small enough for him to be prey for a hawk, and that was all just feet away from my door. So I was really scared and I looked on the Internet. I looked at all the advice that people gave. I was searching everywhere. I stayed up all night. He didn't come to the door. And the next day, I finally got enough courage and was exhausted. I put on my rain boots, I tucked in my pants and put on a sweatshirt and a bandana over my face, and I went into the nature conservation area to find Zoro. It had been about 18 hours since he had disappeared and I happened to get close enough to the bush that he was hiding under for him to feel safe enough to meow. And I found him. But it was terrifying. And I did run into a gator at one point. Thankfully, I backed away slowly and the gator didn't present any aggressive behavior towards me, but it was scary. I was really worried. But I found him and Zoro is with me today, so I'm very glad that it worked out.

I was coming out of the grocery store and saw something black wiggling in the bushes on the edge of the curb in the parking lot. I thought it was a duck at first, so I didn't pay much attention, except that maybe I would move it after unloading my groceries so that it didn't get run over by someone else parking at the store. I put all my stuff in the back of my trunk and got in my car. All of a sudden, I remembered about the baby duck, turned the car off, and got out to go move it to a spot farther away in the parking lot, closer to the canal on the west side of the grocery store. I was shocked to see it was not a duck, but rather, a baby kitten covered in ants! I grabbed a Gatorade bottle that I had just bought, and in a panic dumped it on top of the kitten to wash off some of the ants. The kitten didn't have his eyes open and was crying loudly at this point. A person in the parking lot saw what was going on and ran over with some paper towels that were in her car. Neither of us could find a mom cat or any other kittens. I held the baby close and kept picking off ants. They weren't biting me, so at least I knew they weren't fire ants, but there were thousands of them crawling over my arms and stomach, as well as on the baby kitten. I decided the only thing I could do was wrap the kitten in an extra shirt in my car, put it on my lap, and bring it home. I have bottle-feeding experience and knew I needed to feed him right away. Shelters will euthanize a kitten that cannot feed itself. Asking for help from a rescue group in my area is pointless. I knew no one else would help this kitten, so I did the right thing and brought him to my house. I was afraid to bathe him at such a young age, but I had to get the rest of the ants and Gatorade off of him if he was going to have a chance at survival. I stayed up all night feeding him goat's milk from a syringe every two hours. I kept him warm by placing a sock filled with uncooked rice that I heated in the microwave every 30 minutes or so. It was a long night, but he survived! I was so happy!

Yeah, so I want to just tell the story of the time I went on a road trip in the Southwest. I went with my sister and my nephew. I was in high school, and we flew to Phoenix, and then we rented a car. And from Phoenix, we drove to Sedona. We stayed in Sedona for eight days. And then I got to go to, like, Petrified Forest, got to go to Grand Canyon, got to go hiking in Sedona. And then from Sedona, we drove to Vegas. I got to go to Circus Circus and ride around in the rides that they have there. And then from there, we drove to Palm Desert in California to visit a friend. From Palm Desert, we drove to LA, and we stayed in Malibu for a bit. I had fun at Santa Monica Pier in Malibu. And then from Malibu, we drove down to San Diego, and we actually went down to La Jolla, and we stayed in La Jolla for a bit. I got to see some sea lions there, or the otter sea lions, I think they're called. And that was really cool. And then we drove back to Phoenix and stayed at a resort with a water park. It was a lot of fun. And I got to drive through the desert during one of the hottest days of the summer. I got to experience, like, 122 degrees. I got to see, like, the border of Mexico. It was a lot of fun. And now, I'm flying back to Sedona in a few hours. So I'm excited to go on a trip again.

I was on a vacation with my brother, and we decided to take a long road trip through New England and up to the Canadian border. We set off with only a rough destination in mind and intending to go or do whatever caught our eye over the long drive of about a week. We stopped in many cool little towns along the way. There were really great old antique shops all over and I loved looking through the old memorabilia. Along the route, we were passing through Vermont, and off the side of the road, we saw a beautiful grassy mountain with a waterfall cascading down the side. We thought it looked so cool, we parked and decided to hike up the mountainside a bit. It was an easy climb but long and tiring. We stayed as close to the waterfall as we could as we went up. We ended up climbing all the way to the top and got an amazing view. On the way back down, we took a different route and not far from the top, found a glistening pool where the waterfall cascaded, and then continued out the other side. It was perfect for taking a refreshing dip, and we did! It was ice cold but really awesome. The rest of the trip was great. We went into little towns and ate amazing seafood. I never ate so much lobster and so many bowls of chowder in my life! It was really amazing, and there were many memorable spots. We even crossed the border into Canada and drove a ways up the coast, which was really rugged and beautiful. We visited a national park in Canada and spent one night there. We saw many beautiful spots, but that one dip on the mountainside in the ice-cold spring water was the coolest part and a great memory.

So, I was kind of looking at old pictures but also thinking about pictures from my childhood. And my mom is really embarrassed about herself. She's always been, ever since I can remember. And it's funny because a lot of times in old pictures, I'll see my sister and I or my sister and other people in our family. But it's always weird seeing my mom in old pictures because it's so rare. And it's also rare, a little weird feeling, remembering that person who she was because she was so pretty and so young. Very, very young, but also so tormented. Just she has a lot of depression and anxiety. And I didn't know what it was as a kid. And I remember just not realizing how the situation I was in until getting out and looking back. So, seeing these old pictures of my sister and I kind of just, it's funny to see. It just makes me feel grateful for my sister, for being there when it was a little bit difficult but also just, I feel a little bit lucky that that little girl that was me in the pictures had no idea. I didn't try to wrap my head too far around the struggles that my mom was going through. And I kind of just picked up and treaded through all of her stuff that she was trying to put on me. And now I'm a stronger person for it. But looking back at pictures with seeing her in them and knowing what she used to say about herself, and it was totally not true, and especially looking back now, it's just a very interesting feeling to see that.

I feel I'm not enough for Ella. I feel that I'm so worthless and useless and not good enough for her. She is so much more than me. I see nothing in myself, and I feel I've been dragging her down with my sadness. Lately, I haven't been doing well and I'm sorry for not voicing out. It's extremely hard for me to speak up because I've never had anyone care for me and my feelings. I've always bottled up how I felt and never talked about it. Every night I lay in bed thinking about where I'm gonna be, and it always ends up with me dead. She is what gives me motivation and drives me to be a better person. Without her, I have no idea where I would be. My parents and I have never been on a close enough level to talk about our feelings. I feel if I tell them I will be viewed differently and looked down upon. I hate this, but there's not much I can do. When she found out about how I really felt, I felt relief and better. I felt as if a million bricks were taken off my shoulder. When she told me my sister found out, my heart dropped. I was so scared she was gonna think that I'm not some tough guy and just some softie. But it wasn't all that bad. Every day I struggle with my looks. I hate my hair, my voice, my face, my personality. I hate me. I don't know what she sees in me. I have no friends, no social life. There are days where I wish I don't wake up. I wish a bus would hit me. Some days I feel nothing. I may be in bed wanting to cry, but nothing happens. I can't even cry, and sometimes that's what I need. Whenever I hear someone laugh, I always think it's about me. I'm just a loser. I think I'm in love with Ella. I always want to be with her and see a bright future if she stays with me. I can see some little kids running around the house and us cooking dinner. I think it would be amazing to be in her future. I've never felt love, but I think Ella is showing me. She has been bringing me to social events and getting me in there. I love it.

So, yesterday it was my birthday. I turned 23. And we went out to sushi last night, which was very fun. And I got a free dinner. And I went out with my friend, Amy. And a group of her friends whom I wasn't super close with, but I got to know all of them over dinner. And it was a very fun experience.

What a day, August 8, 2019! It was my 45th birthday, and I thought it was going to be just like any other birthday I have had. But this day, my family and friends decided to throw me a surprise party. I was in total shock, never expected a surprise party. It started off like a typical day, waking up and getting ready for work. I had plans to have dinner with my significant other that night. After work, I came home and got ready for dinner. When we got to the restaurant, he provided them his name, and they said that they had a special table for us in the back. The back room was usually only used for special occasions. When we walked in through the hallway to the back room, it was full of my friends and family. We had a nice dinner, and there was a DJ playing music, so we enjoyed a little dancing. I have such wonderful family and friends, and getting to enjoy my 45th birthday with them was fantastic. I can't imagine having a nicer birthday. We enjoyed good food, good music, and wonderful company. After hours of enjoying ourselves, it was time to leave. I hated that the night had to end.

Yeah, I\'ve been reaching out to more people and seeing if I can talk to more people in this New York City and get to know more people around here. I had a dinner with a friend last week, which was really nice. It was really good to have common friends and then catch up. We had Korean food, which was really nice. And I think she is Chinese. I don\'t think she ever had Korean food, I don\'t know. It was very new for her, so it was really nice just to explore something new together. She\'s a master student, so she\'s still studying. That was interesting to hear what she\'s been doing and what? Yeah, I just graduated so I could see, I could see whatever she was going through, like how I was also going through the same things and how difficult it is to start studying again, and then be in this new space where you\'re supposed to perform so much, but then you\'re also trying to get somewhere. But it\'s also really confusing and scary. So I could empathize with that, I think. But then, yeah, it was interesting. I did feel like not heard in that whole conversation. It was very one way, she didn\'t ask a lot about me, which is fine. But it was like a network dinner, and not like "Oh, friend" kind of thing, which is also fine. I think not every person you meet is going to be your friend, but it was like a new thing to try, which was nice.

I was dating this woman who was really adventurous and really wanted to go to Japan, and I didn't really know what else to do, and I was like, "Sure." I happened to luck into a job working for an English language newspaper there, writing about environmental issues, which was like the coolest job I never deserved. They were looking for somebody who spoke Japanese. I managed to convince them I could get it done without speaking Japanese, and somehow they fell for it. And it was a great job. I got to travel all over Asia. That was profound for me as a person because I'd never really been in a place where I was different from everyone else. You're a different person once you've spent some time abroad and learned from other people. Once you've changed your perspective to understand that there's more than one way to think about the world, you can't ever really change back.

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.

I grew up in Nigeria. But we came from a very entrepreneurial family. And that meant that people were doers. And I believe in life, that you actually have the capacity to do whatever it is you want to do. Nobody else is going to do it. There are so many things you see in life that you feel like there's injustice. But oftentimes you just relax and say somebody else is gonna do it. Well, that somebody else is you. And you seem very controlled about your own life and very driven. So I'm wondering, was there a time when you were less sure about yourself? Yes. Okay. Oh yeah. Tell me about that. Computer scientists know, nothing ever works the first time, that's the beauty of it. It's a problem-solving thing, and so failure is built into the act of learning. You have to, like, trip and trip and trip and trip. And then, once you figure out all the ways you can trip, you finally learn how to walk. It's little baby steps to build that muscle of courage and confidence. Just take a deep breath, and just tell your feet to move, and your feet will move.

So it's been about two months since we deep cleaned our house. Me and my girlfriend. And this morning, we woke up early, and it was a great week at work for both of us. So we woke up early this morning and we decided that we were going to wash the covers for our couch and we were going to keep them in the house. So we started cleaning the kitchen. We put all of the covers in the washing machine. We're certainly going to have a little bit closure to about the house. And we just spent most of the day cleaning. And it was pretty great. She also went and got her meds for the first time in about two to three weeks. She hadn't had her appointment yet. So we just spent the day catching back up on household chores. It was nice. It's been a while since we had a chance to do that. Now, for the rest of the day, I'm just going to have to keep studying for my job. I'll have an evaluation next week. But things are looking pretty good. Things are starting to look up.

Sarah got the job in Amsterdam. She's really excited, and I'm happy for her, but I'm worried too. I know the doctors say her tumor is not aggressive, and that her situation is good, but it's still cancer. Amsterdam has excellent healthcare options, but her doctors here are very good and know her case. She says it's not a big deal and that she'll still be doing a lot of her tests when she flies back here, but still. The insurance situation is complicated, too. She says her company deals with this sort of thing all the time and that they know what to do, but there's a difference between someone whose insurance is just in case and her situation. She can't afford any lapses or mistakes, and I'm not convinced everything will work out as smoothly as she thinks. Still, she's incredibly excited, and this does seem like a great opportunity for her. It's not my place to tell her what she can and can't do, so all I can do is be supportive and try to make sure she's doing everything she can to stay healthy. Not that she needs much help, she's been incredibly motivated not to let this thing stop her. That's probably part of why she's so all-in about this job. At least, for the first time in her life, she's moving and I don't have to help. Her company is taking care of everything, and except for one chair that I grudgingly agreed to store for her, I don't have to lift a finger. She may or may not get the chair back. I hope I look back on this entry and see it as the start of good things and me being too protective. I'm still worried, though.

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.

On Thanksgiving Day—that's the only day my parents would take me out to dinner—there was this woman going through a garbage can, with her little daughter, about three or four years old, picking out her Thanksgiving dinner out of a garbage can. At that point in my life, I began to think, it's not as good on this planet as I think it might be. One of the things I wanted to do when I grew up was to try to make the world a better place. But I didn't have an awful lot of confidence getting there. Because as a Puerto Rican kid in New York, going to some terrible schools, nobody ever told me as a kid that I could really amount to much at all. But finally, I met someone who helped me, and I was able to make the leap. And then, when I got into college and met some professors that had some faith in me and encouraged me to go to graduate school and so on and so forth, I always pointed my life in that direction.

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 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's 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.

Boat. All right, gboat. This is a fun story from a time that I was camping in New Zealand, in the country. New Zealand. And there were torrential rains, and we were camping near a river. And as it began to rain, I thought it would be fun to explore along the river. And there were some farmland near the river. And it was hilly. And right alongside the river, there was a sort of steep hill that you could walk on when it was dry, especially if it was fine. But I set out on my adventure and the rain continued and it got stronger. And before too long, the way for me to cross back the river was running too fast for me to cross back over it, and it had gotten too high. So I found myself a little stuck. I was safe, but it was enough to be exciting. So I found myself climbing up along the steep, grassy embankment along the river until I found a safe way to cross. But the path from where I was to where I found a safe place to cross was interesting. I came across some of the farmers' fields near there. They had cows. Once in a while, I'd come across a bull. And we had heard that you want to be cautious when walking near the bulls because they can be aggressive. So there was one point where I was sort of walking and had to walk in front of and past a bull, hopefully at a safe distance. I was able to stay pretty far, but I was paying close attention to him, and he was paying close attention to me. And then, when I got back to flat ground and was able to cross the river, the water had gotten so high in some parts of the road that I had to wade across the road. It was close to up to my waist deep and I was able to hold onto some fence posts and make my way across. And it was a very memorable adventure. Then I was very wet, and I made it back safe and sound. And I got to tell my wife about the fun time I had.

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 craggly 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.

Well, gee. Boat, this story is about a lovely friend I made at Zumba. Her name is Melody, spelled M E L O D Y, but her whole family is musically oriented and her name is Melody. And I always look forward to seeing her. We've connected over kind of the way we raise our children and worldview, and how to deal with chronic illnesses. We also both enjoy good cocktails and good food, and we like to cook. And I look forward to seeing her whenever I go to Zumba.

When I was in my investment banking job, I was thinking about where I'm gonna go on my next vacation. Because now I actually had the money to travel, and I had some vacation days. All my friends, my colleagues started coming to know me as the travel desk. I was doing that at work and with my friends, and some of them said, "Hey, why don't you just start a blog?" So I started writing about my own travels, and that's the blog that, seven years later, I'm doing this full time now. As I was writing about different restaurants, especially ethnic restaurants, in Atlanta, I wanted to know the background of them. That's why I started traveling there. I would meet locals, go to their homes, take cooking classes, and learn more about the origin of those cuisines and then come back and have a different take on it. I've been to about 75 countries, and I only speak three languages. I think you have to be just very humble and open-minded. If you're more accepting, people will just open up, even if you don't understand the language.

So, since we are talking about moving to a new place, I wanted to share my story about my history of my relocation and how my perspective in life has changed since then. So, I've been living in different countries since I was young. I lived in Canada, India, and now I live in the US. I was originally born and raised in South Korea, so I guess so far I've lived in four different countries. I also traveled to many different countries like Japan, Europe, and Southeast Asia as well. So, I guess I enjoyed a nomadic lifestyle—not nomadic like Nomad lifestyle because I am a person with a lot of curiosity and I like exploring something new. And the excitement, for excitement of exploring new places, like overweight the desire to settle down and feel more stable, I guess. However, I realized recently that my perspective is being changed. Part of it is because I think I've already moved three times already this year from different apartments. So, I'm really tired of packing and unpacking and cleaning the old places and new places. I'm kind of tired of doing all that. But more importantly, I think I'm more focused on my career development and my expertise nowadays. So, I guess the excitement coming from my career and pursuing my dream is more important now than to travel and exploring new cities and meeting new people. So, I finally feel like I found a career and a job that I can—I feel like I can dedicate my life to it. I'm pretty satisfied with where I am, and in order to do a better job at what I'm doing, I guess I want my environment to be more stable than just jumping from place to place. And also, what else? Also, like my taste, have been developing, and now I have a lot of books, a collection of magazines. So, I like photography, so I have a lot of camera equipment. And I have like drawing tablets that are pretty big, and I use my own computer for video editing and stuff. So, I have a lot of stuff that I use for my job and for my hobby, and that reflects my taste. So, it's been quite annoying to bring all those things around. So, that's also part of the reason that I wanted to settle down. Also, I wanted to, like recently I've been thinking that I really want to buy a house, and not buy a house, but I want to buy land and I want to build my own house and decorate it and design it to reflect my taste, to reflect my personality and my interests and stuff. So, yeah, I'm aiming to do that in the next couple of years. So, I'm going to work hard and try to achieve that dream. But, I haven't still figured out where I want to settle down, I guess. That's not a problem. That's going to be number one homework that I need to make a decision before I actually purchase a house. That's how my perspective and lifestyle has evolved from a nomadic lifestyle to somewhere who takes more stability in settlement.

When I was in my investment banking job, I was thinking about where I'm gonna go on my next vacation because now I actually had the money to travel, and I had some vacation days. All my friends, my colleagues started coming to know me as the travel desk. I was doing that at work and with my friends, and some of them said, "Hey, why don't you just start a blog?" So I started writing about my own travels, and that's the blog that seven years later, I'm doing this full time now. As I was writing about different restaurants, especially ethnic restaurants in Atlanta, I wanted to know the background of them. That's why I started traveling there. I would meet locals, go to their homes, take cooking classes, and learn more about the origin of those cuisines, and then come back and have a different take on it. I've been to about 75 countries, and I only speak three languages. I think you have to be just very humble and open-minded. If you're more accepting, people will just open up, even if you don't understand the language.

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.

A few months ago at the Styx concert, he surprised me and proposed. After 13 years of being together, I actually never thought it would happen. The song "Lady" started, and he gave his phone to a person we didn't know behind us. I thought that was really strange, but it didn't dawn on me that there could be any other reason but that he wanted someone to take our picture together. That annoyed me because I don't like getting my picture taken. The next thing I knew, he was talking in my ear so I could hear him over the loud music, and then he got down on one knee. Next, he held out a ring he pulled from his pocket. I started crying and said, "Yes, definitely yes!" I was in total shock. Even though I don't like to have my picture taken, I'm so glad he had someone videotape the proposal. It's really funny to see the shocked look on my face. After the proposal, he told me that he first got permission from my girls and my dad as well. I thought that was a very noble gesture and something that he didn't have to do. Now we have a wedding to plan. I feel so blessed to marry the love of my life who is also my best friend. I wonder how I ever got so lucky.

So, about two years ago, I was in a pretty challenging course with optional homework. I took the option and didn't do any of those homework because it didn't affect my grade. But then, coming up to the exam, I thought I knew everything that I needed, and the exam was a wake-up call where I didn't do so well. And looking back at the optional homework problems, they were very similar. So, I learned from that just to do those problems which, in the end, helped me do better on the following exams. But that was probably the worst test I ever did because I wasn't very prepared.

I took an exam without studying for it because I thought I couldn't take it. Learned I could just minutes before it started, so I had to do it without going over the subjects. I thought I had done horrible. But I received the results today, and I managed to pass with the exact score I needed! At least all those sleepless nights studying weren't for nothing!

I\'ll do a part two to my adoption story, something that surfaced when I was about 25 years old and so quite a while after my adoption. I took a graduate study and we traveled to Korea, and it was my first time back to Seoul, South Korea. Since, basically since my adoption. And I don\'t know if I\'ve had that many emotions running through me at any other point in my life, but it was just such a blend of elevated highs of feeling connected and just moments of pure peace, to the other extreme of extreme disruption with who I identified with what I had thought I was up until that point. I even took a little medallion that I had, that was from when I came over, that had the name of my orphanage and I had a cab driver take me there. And I saw all the little kids that were there. And then they showed me a picture of myself that I had never seen before. And it completely threw me into a complete unraveling. I had panic attacks for a good two weeks plus after that, where I couldn\'t breathe. I didn\'t know who I was, where I was supposed to be going. And it took a long time for me to kind of situate myself back to "I am a blend of everything. I\'m not just one or the other." I don\'t have to feel guilty or wondering about my birth family and where they are. But it really did take a long time for me to calm down my emotions, so I wasn\'t having panic attacks anymore. And I still feel like it has a bit of a ripple effect.

I grew up in Nanjing, China. When I was a baby, I lost my right leg in a fire. Shortly after that, I was abandoned on the street. I was found at a year and a half old and taken to the local government orphanage. Fortunately for me, I was adopted when I was seven years old and came here to the states. When I was 14 years old, I received a running prosthetic. The day that I ran, I remember it being one of the most traumatizing days of my whole life. That was the first time that I was going to have to be out. I was going to have to show people that this is who I am, that I couldn't hide, that I was an amputee. I got out there and I started running, and I realized I love to do this. This is so liberating. This is so freeing because I am out, and this is who I am. I don't think you ever get one moment, have one experience, and you totally accept everything about who you are. That's a lifelong journey. But the start of that is finding something that allows you to be you.

Yeah. So this is the beginning of the school year, and I've seen a lot of people moving into their dorms and apartments. And it really got me thinking about when I first went to College, when I was moving into the dorm. How excited my parents were for me and scared. And I was both excited and scared, moving away from home and my parents, and knowing that I'd probably get really homesick. Watching all those kids moving in really made me think about how that felt for me. And it was really important for me, there was a lot of pressure for me to do well in College because my dad came here from a developing country and wasn't able to get an education past second grade. And I was the first person in my family to go to College, and to make it that far. So I had a lot of emotions, definitely some anxiety, some stress about the pressure of performing and doing well. But also the excitement, and kind of the normal fear that you get doing something you've never done before and not having parents who had never experienced College like that before. I didn't really have anyone to go to, to understand what that meant, like what to expect. So watching those kids just brought me back to that moment.

"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, 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.

I have recently been going through a bit of a reckoning with a close friend of mine from college. So, we met 10-12 years ago. And he lives in a different city. And we haven't spent a ton of time together recently. Though we have spent a lot of time talking on the phone and recently we spent a week together traveling. And I realized that the way that he has started, or maybe has always sort of spoken about women, really was off-putting to me. And I had a conversation with him about it. And he was very defensive and did not necessarily seem to think that there was a problem, and instead sort of turned it around on me and said that I'm being really conservative or Puritan or whatever it is. When in reality, I think I was just asserting that women deserve respect and to not be spoken about like objects. And yeah, I haven't spoken to him since, a month or six weeks. It was probably always happening. We've always disagreed on how he treats people and how he doesn't necessarily extend the same respect or reciprocity to them as they do to him.

I'm recently out of a relationship. As in, we broke up about a month ago. As I've been coming to terms with that and trying to move on, I've caught myself starting to have stronger feelings towards one of my best friends, and I wish they would just go away. He's a great dude, honestly. I feel like in the off chance that we did end up together, it'd be a perfectly fine relationship. It's not him that makes me hate that I've developed these feelings. I hate that I'm feeling these things before I'm even fully over the last relationship. I hate that my past relationships that were not great took nearly half a year before I was ready to move on, but with the one that was the best experience I've ever had in the dating scene, I've developed new feelings only a month out of the gate. I hate that I'm either going to sit here and wait until it's too late to reveal my feelings, or I'm gonna man up and tell him how I feel only to put an awkward bar in a really good friendship and mess that up for me, if not for both of us. I don't know how to feel, honestly.

I guess, a story I want to tell right now is, I guess, my love for robots and how, over the course of my life, I've grown with technology and have worked very much hands-on on tangible devices like hardware. And it's a lot of fun, and it's what I love doing. But now, I'm transitioning to positions that are more like data science, where I'll be doing more remote, not hands-off, still hands-on project work, but more so software and data, not with tangible devices I can play with in my hands like robots. But I guess that also leads me to this question of the journey of growing up of where does technology, where do I differentiate between technology as a hobby and as a career. And it feels like now I'll be able to not look at social robots in my home as necessarily my job but more so friends to have in my home to interact with, so I can kind of separate work and life and have that work-life balance of technology where now I can be doing the hard statistical analysis and modeling and AI stuff on the computer for work but then working on stuff like robots and maybe the models for them but still being hands-on work aside from my career. So I guess I'm in an interesting place in life where I'm transitioning to, or yes, I've been doing that technology that I've worked hands-on with my entire life has just been a hobby where I've been developing my skills, and I didn't necessarily have to learn all of that in school. Actually, now that I think about it, the stuff I'm doing in terms of my career is more so stuff I learned in school but my hardware and technology experience was largely acquired beyond the classroom. So I guess I'm not seeing it, I'm not actually making that much of a transition. I'm still just doing what I've been doing. So yeah, I guess I just get to do what I like now.

I'm the CEO of StoryFit. We're an AI technology company that helps studios and publishers make decisions over how they tell their stories and what kind of stories they're acquiring. I decided in fourth grade, when a local television news reporter came and talked to the class, that I wanted to be in news. I pursued journalism in school and did lots of internships and worked for television stations and newspapers and all sorts. I was really a journalist at heart. My first job out of school was in television news. I produced for ABC News network and Good Morning America and was there for almost a decade. I took a straight jump from television news into tech because of course, there's a lot in technology that's the same thing. You're telling stories across websites. You're building platforms, and the platforms that I always worked with were content-based. You just keep moving forward and finding what you enjoy, and you'll get to something great. The goal isn't to get to something great, but just keep doing things that are great along the way and it's all gonna work out.

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 recently went to Mexico for my 25th birthday. It was exciting because I haven't been there before, and it was a chance to get a group of my friends together. We spent 4 days over there, and we had events planned every day. It was busy but definitely a lot of fun. The first night, we just relaxed at the resort. The second day, we went ziplining, which was extremely fun. We also went to a cenote. The last day, we went on a catamaran to Isla Mujeres, which was breathtaking. Being on that boat and looking at the view was incredible. My most memorable moment was definitely when the tour guide danced around the catamaran and poured us drinks. It was a lot of fun, and I felt relaxed. The view was phenomenal, and just being with my friends was great. The sea was super blue, and it was breathtaking. The whole trip, we ate to our heart's content. It was great food, and all of the drinks we could have. It was one of my best trips, and I will definitely remember it for a while.

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 would work nine to five, and then as soon as I left, I would go to the studio and take pictures. That kind of helped me push it pushed me to be like, "Okay, I don't need this. I can actually go out and make it on my own," so I haven't looked back since. I've actually been able to enjoy my life way more than I would have ever working for somebody. I really believe in following your passion and your love, and the rest'll come afterwards.

This is going to be a very empowering story. This is a moment in time in my life when I was crossing and driving into Savannah right before I was about to start grad school. So the backstory of all of this is, I was about 35 years old. I had a four-year-old, I had a job, and I just needed a career path change, so I quit my job and took some time off and decided to go back to school. The difficult time was that we lived in New Jersey, and we were deciding to go back to school, or I was going back to school in Savannah. So we had to plan this massive move. First off, it was just a big life change with having a house and a mortgage and figuring out who was going to rent that. Having a child that I had to figure out where he was going to go to preschool and daycare, and then not to mention my husband relocating too and finding a new job. It was just so much. Sometimes it was unbearable. I just kept telling myself, "One step at a time, sell one piece at a time," and just little incremental steps to get us there. And so the moment in my life that was just really resounding and echoes, and I just remember it forever, was that moment when we were driving into Savannah, had the cars all packed up, all committed, got everything done. And we are driving over there\'s this large bridge that leads into Savannah, and it just has such a great view. And that moment of entering into town was just a moment of no fear and full empowerment.

I was home three days a month. I was old and tired and cranky. I made over six figures, I flew first-class. I couldn't be bought for money anymore, I decided. And about six months after I resigned, I adopted the most adorable Weimaraner puppy, and I brought Gabriel to the Crisis Nursery for their Christmas party. What we saw in those kids changed my life forever because those little boys that were mean and nasty and violent, they became soft and loving and gentle. This is an amazing thing that happened, that I was able to do this. I think you know when it's the right time, and it's revealed to you. And the whole time, you can't be bitter about the fact that it hasn't been revealed to you yet. You make the best, happiest life you can make. It's a journey. I didn't find out until I was 42 years old what I wanted to do with my life. Forty-two! I think people could find what they wanted, what their passion is, at 60.

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'm a designer and an engineer. My work has really focused on blending electronics and computing with art and design. I've done a lot of work in combining textiles and fashion with electronics and computer science. I developed a kit called LilyPad Arduino that lets you sew electronics into your clothes. Kind of robotics, except for soft, stretchy things. So it's this incredibly mathematically rich thing. But culturally, we don't think of it in those terms. So what I needed to do for myself was discovering I could combine art and design with computer science and with electronics. I just started to play and build stuff with electronics and textiles. And that was really, really fun and really exciting. It was this tremendous a-ha moment where I felt like I could connect all of the crafty stuff that I had always done as a hobby. And then, using that blend as a way to get new communities of people engaged in electronics and computer science.

Yeah, lately, I think life has been going pretty good in terms of, like, oh, I got started pretty well. And so, it\'s been pretty easy for me to just get down to work. I\'ve been sleeping early and waking up early. And just been good, right? Well, for the past few days, and then today, I went out to the furniture store for one of my classes to take pictures for a model, a chair. It kind of branches off, right? So the professor recommended that you go with friends or classmates. He said, "Take a friend with you." I didn\'t take a friend because I like friends here. That just ain\'t good. Yeah, my friends aren\'t really on campus. They don\'t go here. I don\'t exactly have friends on campus. I just have people that I know, acquaintances. Anyways, so I went over to the furniture store, and the people there were super kind. I was like, "Oh, I\'m here for a class," and they were super helpful and super nice. And I was kind of nervous about that because I was like, "Oh, what if they see me as going to a furniture store and start measuring things and not actually buy anything or anything like that?" But they were like, "Oh, you\'re here for a class, and all the Gandhi," and they were like, "Are you from my school?" And I was like, "Yeah," and they were like, "Oh, for the chair class," and I was like, "Oh, so you guys, oh," and it was like, "Yeah." It was like a decent conversation, and they were just super nice. So that was great. But yeah, then I came back. It was pretty hot outside, so I took a shower when I came back. And I had a whole plan for today, and it just didn\'t happen. I sat down and was like, "I\'m going to take a break," and old habits die hard. I played Overwatch for how long, like, play Overwatch for like five or 6 hours, yeah, like 6 hours maybe. Played essentially until the dining hall is going to close, and as soon as I finish eating, I played some more. Got sick of it, so I\'m probably not going to play again for a while, right? Overall, it\'s just kind of like, "Yeah, I\'m feeling disappointed in myself. I think. Makes sense why I did it. Usually I start gaming when I start feeling bad, but I don\'t know that I\'m feeling bad. Now when I realize, \'Oh, guess I was feeling bad about all this stuff about people.\' And yeah, here I am, just kind of saying, and talking. I wanted to talk for a bit because, well, I can only talk to my therapist once a week. And as for my best friend, she doesn\'t go here. To be honest, not a really good listener or empathizer for her. It\'s just kind of like, I already don\'t really share things a lot with the people I\'m around. I do share things with my therapist. That\'s about it. But the fact that she also doesn\'t really listen, the part of me that already isn\'t used to talking about things like this to other people is already like, \'No.\' And then add that on, it\'s just kind of like double now, right? It\'s just kind of like, I can\'t talk to my brother or my mom. They don\'t understand. They\'re like, \'Oh, you go to this great school.\' And that just never leaves their subconscious. And I can\'t really tell my family. They don\'t understand. It\'s always the, \'You should be grateful. You\'re a genius. You\'re so smart. Do your best. You\'re great.\' And then that\'s for my therapist. Like, yeah, she\'s great. Get to talk to her once per week, but usually by the time it gets around to a week, most things happen for some reason between sessions. So by the time I talk to her, I\'ve probably already kind of gotten over any emotions that I might have had. And at least with her, I talked with her don\'t really seem to evoke that much emotion either. I wonder if I should switch. Probably should. Yeah, essentially, for me, sometimes I offload by journaling. Maybe I should get in a habit of talking to myself. Or something like that evokes emotion. Emotion that I\'m not really aware of or used to being aware of. Yeah, I\'m sure like before I started gaming, I already felt pretty awful. I just didn\'t know. Play a game, opening that thing up, and it\'s just like, everything\'s so simple in games. It can be hard. But there\'s just something nice about my alone time. Since I played so much of it, I\'m sick of it. It\'s just like, yeah, I had a whole plan for today. I\'ve been very excited about school. Here I am now. I don\'t really have anyone to talk to. And the people that I\'ve met here on campus, I don\'t really have anyone to talk to. I really don\'t with anyone who is up here, I would say. They\'re not friends. They\'re all acquaintances. So, like, you know, the people who probably could understand. Although they also don\'t, at least the people who understand what it\'s like to go to a really prestigious school, who would just write me off, right? That\'s the thing. I try to talk to anyone who doesn\'t go to the school or like some prestigious school, it\'s like they think, like, \'Oh my God.\' There\'s a subconscious thing that dismisses me, my problems. And the people who are here who might understand, it\'s just like, these people are just going through totally different things and also they\'re not my friends. And then with the few times that I\'ve talked with alumni, people who aren\'t here anymore at the school, it\'s always like, they\'re always like, \'You should talk to your friends about this.\' It\'s like, \'Oh, I guess if I did have something, I guess I wouldn\'t be talking about some of these things that I\'m talking about, right? I don\'t know. All of these things added up together. It makes sense. I guess now, right? Like why I would be gaming for 6 hours like that. I didn\'t even have a clue that this was something that was like in my subconscious when I started gaming, right? Honestly, it was just kind of like, \'Hey, this stuff makes me feel fine. Like I\'m having fun. Let\'s do some more.\' I was really sorry to feel sick after so many hours of playing. And I was like, \'Okay, I need to go to bed.\' But also, I\'m going to have a not so fun time sleeping. I can usually go to sleep very easily, right? But ever since school started, I was getting bombarded by all these assignments and all these thoughts about people. Right? It\'s been on my mind. We\'re still not at the point where we\'re struggling to sleep yet, but it\'s been on my mind. So I was like, \'Okay, I should go to bed. But at this rate, kind of how like I\'m bad, I was feeling.\' Didn\'t really know why at the time, I was like, \'Okay. Sit down. Maybe Journal, or maybe talk it out.\' And that\'s why I\'m here. Like release some of that negative energy. Well, here I am. It\'s kind of funny, right? It\'s a Saturday evening and I\'m not going to do a robot. Not that I\'m complaining, but feel like most people have plans on this Saturday evening when they\'re in college. For me, it\'s just always been me and the best friend that I have. He became best friends online to our interactions online and not through our interactions in person. Yeah, anyways, that was a long-winded point of the story is I had stuff I wanted to do today. Went to the furniture store, got that part of my day done. Got super tired and decided to game for the rest of the day, even though I wanted to do work and other stuff instead, and I felt bad about it. And now I realize it\'s the reason why I gamed for so long is probably because I\'ve been feeling bad about people.

I grew up playing an all-girls' sport. I never was really friends with the other girls because they were always talking about boys and makeup and drama, while I was always more focused on my grades, college, or reading. I didn't dislike any of them, just always felt out of the loop and disconnected. I was homeschooled, so my only interaction with other people my age was these eight or so girls who hung out all the time and never invited me. They weren't always trying to be mean, but they were always closer with each other because they shared common interests. I would try to not let it get to me, but it always hurt that everyone seemed to always have someone to talk to and I had nobody. My mom always told me I would find my group eventually and it would just make the friendship that much more valuable. Well, I finally found my group. It's a strange friend group, but I feel connected. And on top of that, I actually have a best friend! I started a new sport last year and found I had a lot more in common with my training partners. Granted, most of them are a good ten to twenty years older than I am, but we're all really close and talk a lot. I also have someone to call my best friend! I never would have imagined someone like her actually being friends with me. She likes dressing up and going out, is extroverted, optimistic, a go-with-the-flow kind of person, and isn't super competitive. I, on the other hand, hate shopping/dressing up, view myself as a nerd, am a little more negative, feel the need to plan everything down to the minute, and am super competitive to the point where I spend all my free time training. She also is a very touchy-feely person, whereas I am not so much. Recently, we became very close to the point where she will sometimes refuse to go places with the rest of the friend group if I'm not able to go because she feels closer to me than the others. The other day, she mentioned that she got me something small for my birthday, and I am so happy. She actually remembered my birthday after I only mentioned it once and, as if just remembering it weren't enough, felt the need to get me something. I cannot believe how lucky I am to have found someone who values me as a person and the friendship doesn't feel one-sided!

Hello. Yesterday, I found out that my partner won't be able to visit me here in the US, and that made me very sad because I was looking forward to seeing them, spending some time together, and being comforted by that. So now, I'm despondent.

Roughly three months ago, I felt it was time to discontinue a seven-year friendship. My friend Daniel and I met when I was 18, and we had a lot in common. Over the span of 7 years, a lot of intimate and fun memories were made together. We both attended college, worked, and spent many hours over the weekends hanging out. As we both grew older over the span of our friendship, we started to drift apart. Daniel was accepted for a job across the states, and I was in the midst of nursing school. We both were finding it difficult to maintain a friendship and see each other between our busy schedules. Both of us succumbed to our work and school and had minimal time outside to make plans to see one another. Daniel was hoping that eventually he would be returning here to the south after he completed his job training, but his approval for transfer was never accepted. Three months ago, my life changed. I grew tired of the distance, as did Daniel. The lack of communication and vastly different work schedules began tearing our friendship apart. Three months ago, Daniel and I made time finally to sit down in person over lunch and discuss our friendship. The discussion did not go well, and we both felt exhausted trying to maintain a long-distance friendship any further. I wanted so badly to come up with a reason to continue the friendship, but I was tired of putting energy into a practically non-existent friendship anymore. Daniel and I agreed over our lunch that day to walk separate ways. The lunch ended with me in tears, knowing my best friend wouldn't be my best friend anymore. Truth is, I still love him and wish him well, but I know it is time to move forward in my life.

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.

It's really easy to get caught up in believing that somebody else's life plan is the one that you should live by. I've been told authors don't make money, creative people don't make money. I thought if I get to the end of my life and what I've accomplished is paying off student loan debt and that's all I have to show for my time on the planet, I don't know that I could go to my grave peacefully. One of the things I think is important to think about when you start to consider the voices of the critics and naysayers and the people who you worry about what they think is that they're not the ones that are gonna live with the consequences or the choices that you make. They're not the ones day in and day out who go and do a job that you hate. At the end of your life, they're not the ones who are going to be living with the life that you've lived and that has always kind of stuck with me. Compromising on what you want out of your life in order to silence a few people is a really high price to pay.

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 saw a movie that I enjoyed so much I saw it three times in the last week. I first went to it alone. Then I went to it with my husband. Then I took my girlfriend to see it last night. The movie was about an event that was a fantasy and yet totally believable. The characters were sweet and lovely, and they made you want to know what happened to them and you really cared about what happened. The music in the movie was so phenomenal and kept you on the edge of your seat. I also had acquired the tickets for a really good price. That made it more justifiable to see it so many times. I intend to buy the movie when it becomes available. I may see it again soon with my son who wants to see it too and has not done so yet. The movie just makes me happy when I see it because of the joyfulness. The way they overcome their challenges with love and understanding is so lovely. It makes you want to persevere in the things you love as well. The actors that portrayed the characters in the movie were remarkable. They were so realistic that you totally believed what was happening to them. They also were humorous and had many friends. Movies that include friendship and love are so rare nowadays, and that was refreshing. The fact that they were not white Americans was surprising but surprisingly a very good choice. It was sweet but not syrupy sweet. It was a fantasy and yet a believable story. The story was just a remarkable way of showing perseverance and love with ordinary people. I hope that the movie academy of arts and sciences will consider it for some award. It was a brilliant concept and a wonderful story to impart to all ages. I've been telling everyone I know about the movie now.

All right. Gbo. So, I had shared this story with you in a session just previous to this, but I'm not sure that you understood it correctly. Or actually, you understood it correctly, but the tablet wasn't working properly. So, I'll tell part of that story again, which is just that when I was a senior in college, I got to choose a capstone project for the honors program, and I chose to write and record an album of music. I enjoyed the process. I hope to do a process like that again someday. And as part of the process, I got to work with a mentor who helped me decide which songs to include and how to approach the songwriting process. They also taught me a little bit about the music industry. I found it to be very fulfilling and enjoyable.

I went to school because I loved coding and I wanted to develop a coding career. I reached out to a band I liked and said, "Hey, long shot, but could I make you guys a website?" To my surprise, they emailed back ten minutes later. They were like, "Yeah, actually, we'd really love for you to make us a website. How about two t-shirts and a CD in trade for it?" And I thought that was a great bargain. So I made them a website. I did my first or my second website for two t-shirts and a CD. So technically, not a fair market trade. But at the time, the value proposition for me was way higher. You've gotta choose your shots. You will definitely do things in the course of your career that will be undervalued, and the trick is to choose the right ones and to not do it too much. Throughout your career and in particular in those formative stages, you've got to go the extra mile. You've gotta work really hard. There's just no shortcut to it. Every now and then, one in a million gets lucky, and everybody else who's ever achieved some great level of success has worked incredibly hard to get there.

Yesterday was my daughter Melinda's birthday, and she was 37 years old. It's hard to imagine that she's 37 years old now, 37 in one day. So, I was thinking a lot about the day she was born. I had hoped to have a vaginal delivery, and I had a room all picked out where you could stay in the same room in the hospital for both labor, delivery, and then after delivery. But it turned out that I didn't go into labor, just my water broke, and it was two weeks early, so I needed a C-section. So, I had a second C-section.

I was scared when I found out I was pregnant. I didn't think I was ready or able to take care of someone else. I trusted the dad completely, but a baby is a big, life-changing thing. I went in for a regular check-up the day before she was due. My blood pressure was really high, and they told me that I needed to have her that day. I felt every emotion at the same time: nervous, excited, anxious, happy, relieved, nauseous. I didn't know what to expect, and I wasn't fully able to comprehend that I was about to hold her in a few hours. The next 12 hours were all pain. I cried, I resented her and her dad, I drifted in and out of sleep. I just wanted it to be over. I wasn't even thinking about getting to meet her. All excitement was gone. I just wanted everything to stop. Then I heard her cry. Oh, my God. Her cry brought me whooshing back into the present. It was the only thing I heard. They handed her to me, still covered in my blood and her goo. She was purple and angry and wrinkly. She was so beautiful. She was so perfect. Nothing else existed in the whole world while I was looking at her. Every day I look at her and think about how amazing she is and how perfectly I made her and how lucky I am to have her. I would do it all again 100 times for her.

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.

I've had multiple experiences, and all of them have been very significant in my evolution. I originally majored in geology because I liked rocks. Then they threw physics at me, and I decided that this was not for me. But I clearly didn't know what I was doing. I jumped from job to job trying to figure out. Seven months at a time, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. It took years later when I discovered community education, and I really felt the passion. I don't think the search ever ends. And I don't think one ever finds oneself. It's a constant journey. It's a constant search. I see more and more the pressure of making decisions about life. That somehow, if you don't decide where you go and how to get there, there's failure up ahead. I think that when I allowed myself the enjoyment of the journey and was not fearful that it would lead me to a dead end, it was fun.

So, back in elementary school, I switched schools in third grade. I was put in a class with a group of people, and I had the same people in my class through fifth grade. The group of friends that I made there continued on through high school. And when we got to the college admissions process, when we were applying to colleges, a lot of them became super competitive. I'm still unsure as to the reason why they chose to become super competitive about it, but my decision was to not discuss my colleges with any of them because I didn't want people feeling bad about the decisions I made. I didn't want to share because I felt like that was more of a private thing to discuss with my family and not with my friends. For some reason, they took offense and to the point where, when I finally announced my college decision, they got really mad and they were nonchalant about it. It made me realize that even though I've had these friends for so long, they probably weren't really good friends to begin with. So I learned to let go of them and I cut contact with almost all of them now. And I'm a lot happier for it as a result.

I'm going to be applying for schools soon (mostly UCs/CSUs, as well as BU/Northeastern), but every time I try to start the application process, I just get overwhelmed by thinking about how everyone will see me if I get rejected everywhere. Anytime I think I'm doing well in school, all my classmates seem to be doing better. It feels like college is how people ascertain your intelligence, and I'm just scared that if I end up going to a city college, everyone will look down on me. So, for people that have graduated already, should I really be so worried? How do I get past what everyone in high school thinks of me?

Okay. So I have been working at a bakery for the last month, part-time, because I quit my job and traveled. And now I\'m here. So far, working in a bakery has been really cool. It\'s been really interesting to work with my coworkers and be in an environment that I really like. It\'s been a long time since I worked in person. My last job was all virtual, with some hybrid events, but for the most part, working in person has been good to create a separation from work and my home, which was hard to do when I was working virtually. So that\'s what I really like about this job, that physical separation and that my coworkers and I all get along. My manager is very understanding and she explains everything in a way that I can understand and encourages me, saying, "Oh, don\'t worry, you\'re just learning. You\'ll speed up." So yeah, I really like my work environment. For now, I am looking for other opportunities. But for now, I think it\'s good that I\'m getting this experience at a bakery because it gives me something physical to do. Also, it\'s creative. But I\'ve been having a hard time finding which creative outlet to pursue. But with decorating there, I feel like that creative side of my interest is being satisfied.

I have had an internship for a few months now, working on systems for bigger companies. About two months ago, I started working on a project and became the person who was consistently on-site to help troubleshoot and train the customer. It was nerve-wracking at first because I would be training the manager and employees for these companies, with the CEO present. It didn't help that I was also the only girl and less than half the age of all the men. They were a little questionable on what I said and would fact-check everything, but recently, they started trusting what I say. They've even started coming to me with issues instead of going to my boss! It feels amazing to have these managers and supervisors coming to me to help fix problems they're having. Also, it's pretty cool as a teenage girl to be teaching a bunch of men how to do something and have them actually listen.

Yeah, so I was talking with my best friend. It was just one of the regular calls that we were having. And so I was talking to her about this thing that I kind of discovered recently, which is that it\'s not about me not having motivation to do something, but it\'s more about what am I more motivated to do at a certain point in time. Things like that. So curiously, there\'s something I\'ve been motivated to do that seems to be pretty rare: working on my resume. Which is kind of interesting because if you think about it as a pretty rare occurrence, like people usually aren\'t pretty into working on their resume. And for me, it\'s just like, yeah, let\'s go, get it done, let\'s go get job apps done. And I think it\'s a pretty nice mindset to just be in, right? And so, while we were talking, though, it suddenly shifted into this thing about her and overall how the job application process is pretty not good and things like it being a waste of time. What\'s the point? I\'m working on it if you\'re just going to get rejected, all those kinds of things, right? And it just got very negative, right? And so the conversation shifted a lot, like from a positive towards a pretty negative one pretty quickly without me really realizing it. And then after that, eventually she was like, "Yeah, I can\'t work on my stuff." She can\'t work on her stuff. She was like, "Yeah, I\'ll show you." And then she opened up her portfolio and she was like, "Yeah, my portfolio, I have to work on all of this ABCD kind of thing." And as she was looking at it, she was like, "Oh, wait, this isn\'t actually as bad as I thought it was. I can work with this, essentially." With what she was going on about, it changed again a lot after that. She was like, "Yeah, I\'m really happy at this conversation." She started working on her portfolio and all those things afterwards because things just weren\'t as bad as she thought, right? And so for me, it was just like, I don\'t know, it felt kind of like a mini roller coaster ride. I wasn\'t really expecting things to go down that route. And honestly, I didn\'t appreciate essentially being reminded of all the more negative things that are involved in the job application process because fundamentally, when I was motivated to do it, I didn\'t really think about any of that. It was just like, "Oh yeah, I feel like doing it" and all that kind of stuff, right? So there wasn\'t really anything getting in the way. But then with all those reminders, and then all of a sudden, this like, "Oh, things are fine" kind of thing, I don\'t know, it just kind of threw me off, made me a little bit unsettled. Like, I\'m happy for her, but at the same time, it\'s like, afterwards, after we called, I just did not want to work on my resume stuff anymore. The next day, I did work on it, but it was just like, it destroyed all of the stuff that I wanted to do for that day. And I guess it\'s just kind of frustrating to see the impact that other people can have on me in such a short span of time. But luckily, luckily, I did end up getting my resume done and getting an application in the day after when I was able to just kind of extract myself from the situation after a bit of time. But it just seems a little bit unfair that something that happened kind of outside of my control, almost. Yeah. So that\'s my story. I don\'t know if you have any thoughts.

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.

So my story is about my feelings that got activated about the feelings of jealousy that got activated when I got to know that a friend of mine, who is younger to me, got a job. And I just feel that I am running behind in my life, certain aspects. And there are people, and people around me, who are like having the same level of achievement at a younger age. So I just feel like jealousy and not good, and that I think stems from my limitation somewhere.

One of the things my parents always taught me was to always take pride in your work, regardless if it's cleaning toilets. Even though I was working just at the mall, I still took a lot of pride in work and being a holiday cashier. Eventually they kept me on. It ended up being something I fell in love with. 27 years later, I'm still here. When I left my hometown, I was 21. I was moving to Los Angeles. I had just finished college. My aunt was talking very negatively about my decision: "You're gonna fail, you're gonna come back crawling," anything you can imagine that would be demotivating. I didn't talk back to her, but I internalized a lot of her negativity and processed it more as empowerment. It's interesting because many years later, the whole family knows what I do for a living now, and even she has said, "I am so proud of you." And I said to her, "You're part of the reason that I made it, because your non-belief in me actually pushed me just as hard as the people that did believe in me." So don't ever let anyone that doesn't believe in you affect your strength, just channel that energy in a very positive way.

Ex. This is not from my exercise class, but this is an important thing that happened to me in February. When I was looking for some volunteer work to do, I was hoping to find some volunteer work that took advantage of the skills that I already have. And so I came across an organization called engine, which joins up people who are Native American speakers like myself and people who live in the Ukraine who want to learn English. And so I was matched with a young woman whose name is Anastasia. And she is 30 years old. She has a dog and a husband, and she lives in Ukraine. She lived in kiev, although during our relationship, she moved to the country when Keith was an especially dangerous place to be. And I have been chatting with her ever since. We speak 1 hour a week. And we used to have to have, well, I should rephrase that, we were told to have an idea of what we were going to talk about. But it turns out that we had so much in common, though our ages and geographical homes are so very different, that we just became very close friends. And we just talk without stopping, about everything. About food and traveling and parents and children. And sometimes, sadly, about how scary it is to be in a war and how nice it is to have peace around you.

Since I was four years old, I always had a dream of being a physician. And my community is a community that is in poverty, mostly farmworkers. My parents worked in the fields. They didn't have a high school education. I was really invested and dedicated to getting an education. I wanted to also make a statement to the community that I'm coming back. There was always that dream of doing something to help others that motivated me to keep going. I had no plans of going to Harvard Medical School. In fact, my family didn't even know where Harvard was or anything else like that. When my pre-med counselor at UCLA told me I should apply to Harvard, I asked her, "Harvard? Where's that?'' She looked at me kind of strangely, but I said, "You know, it's not like we have these conversations at our dinner table.'' As you can imagine, I'm very grateful, and 17 years later, now I'm back.

Okay. So yesterday, I went to this meetup group. It's an art meetup group, basically for doing digital art with a bunch of people together in a coffee house, which was pretty nice. It's my first time there. Yeah, and I met some new friends, which is very good. I've never really done anything like that in my life, and I've been doing art pretty much just by myself. And it feels very nice to do it with other people. Yeah.

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!

Do. So, about I don\'t know, in 2013, I ran a five-mile race to raise money for cancer research. And afterwards, I went to a local place to eat that I hadn\'t been to before, and I decided to order the soup called Senkoco, and I didn\'t know what it was. But it sounded good, and it had chicken in it, so I ordered it. And when I got it and I took the first spoonful, I was immediately transported to my childhood. I realized that Sankulta was the name of the soup that my grandmother used to make for me growing up. And when she would cook, I would get so hungry. I could just smell the soup—it smells so good, so savory. And I would go to my grandmother, and I would beg her, "Grandma, grandma is the soup ready?" It was never ready, like it was, it always took a long time. And so at some point, she would say, "Okay," and she would take a coffee mug and she would scoop up some of the broth, and she would let me sip on the broth and... it\'s probably one of my favorite things to eat. I still don\'t know how to cook it myself, but Senkoco is something that just brings me back to being with her and her love and caring. So that\'s my story.

About 6 months ago, I learned how to forage for food. It has been an eye-opening experience. I had no idea that there was so much food all around us that we simply pass by every day. It is kind of shocking to learn that there is so much plenty all around, and yet we live in deprivation. I learned about it after I watched a video on it. It really opened my eyes and showed me something new. I did a bunch of reading and research, which prepared me to go into the parks around me and find things. There is lots of food in the local parks in big cities. There is even stuff growing in the sidewalk planters. Things we call "weeds" are actually nutritious and delicious plants. I have grown a lot since I woke up to all this. My horizons have expanded. My consciousness has increased. My self-reliance and self-trust have gone up. It has been a great experience. I would not trade what I learned for anything.

This story may be repetitive, but we had a little issue with the setup of the computer. Here, it didn't take the whole story, so I'll start again. So, I wanted to talk about my little city garden. I have been replacing a lot of plants that were in my garden with native pollinator-friendly plants. It has been a lot of work, but I believe it's paying off. I have been having butterflies in the garden - Monarch butterflies and Swallowtail butterflies. It has been a joy to see that the work has paid off because in the city, we need more green, we need more butterflies.

I'm an Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Nebraska, and my specialty is in Risk Management. I spend a lot of time working with farmers and policymakers. I write papers to help improve the US Crop Insurance industry. I grew up on a farm, and my dad told me to stay away from farming, and that could have been my dream, but there's no future for that size of farm or where it was at that time. Now that I have an academic position, I get to go back and help him farm, and I get to invest in his farm. So, it's gotten me back to it just in a way I never thought would happen. You can't let just your desires to do something keep taking over. You have to have a condition that you need to make some money. But don't run from challenges. When it seems scary, that's good because it's going to provide an opportunity. That's the positive side of risk.

Okay. So, I would like to share my story about losing weight and gaining weight. So, growing up, I wasn\'t sad. I was normal- normal weight in the normal average weight range. Maybe a little bit on the skinny, not skinny, a little bit on the less than average weight size because I really liked exercise- learning. I learned ballet, I learned like martial arts and dance and all kinds of that. So, I did move a lot, so I wasn\'t really fat. But one day, when I was 15, I suddenly gained a lot of weight. And I\'m going to talk about why in a moment. \n\nSo, the reason why I wanted to discuss with you the history of my losing and gaining weight is because I know that a lot of young women and men have issues and they really just work out hard or sometimes they just restrict their diet so drastically. So, it affects their health and all kinds of that. I think nowadays, physical beauty kind of became central to one\'s identity and I also can empathize. I also have those kind of issues. So, I thought it would be interesting to talk about that as it reflects the current trends and issues that most young people are experiencing. \n\nSo, I\'ll go back to my own story. So, when I was 15, I studied abroad in Canada and it was my first time ever to live on my own without having family around. So, everything was really new, and I couldn\'t speak English or understand English very well. So, I had a lot of trouble adjusting to the new environment. So, I developed a lot of anxiety and I guess I was a little bit paranoid at the time. And the only thing that gave me comfort was food. So, whenever I was scared or whenever I felt insecure, I guess I started eating to make me feel better. \n\nSo, I lived in a dormitory and on the first floor of my dormitory, there was a kitchen which stored fruits and cereals 24 hours so I could always go to that kitchen and have bananas, apples, and cereals whenever I wanted. And especially, late at night, I felt more insecure than worried about the next day and stuff. So, after midnight, I would go down to the kitchen and I started eating a lot of bananas, a lot of cereals until like 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. And then, without noticing, three months later, I gained like 20 pounds. \n\nSo, I didn\'t realize the change in my look, but people around me, they told me that, "Oh, you gained some weight." So, I kind of had noticed that I might have gained some weight, but I didn\'t really care that much about weight gain. So, like about a year later, after two semesters, I decided to return back to South Korea because obviously, I couldn\'t adapt to the new place. And so, I returned to my old school and then my friends didn\'t even recognize me because I gained so much weight and I looked totally different. \n\nSo, after returning back from South Korea, I slowly lost weight. But I think I brought the psychological issues with me, which was when I felt anxious or stressed, I would go search for food. So, there was a link between the stress and the food that was built in my mentality. So, I lost a little bit of weight but I never returned to the normal weight as I was before studying abroad. So, when I\'m under a lot of stress, I would gain weight and when I\'m feeling fine and when I\'m having a good time, I wouldn\'t eat too much. So, this fluctuation of weight started since then and then until I think it did continue until recently. \n\nBut as I got older and I reflected more on my life, I recently started to watch a lot of inspirational videos and workout videos. So, starting from this year, I started to work out more often, and I started to go to the gym a lot. And I started to learn Thai chi and boxing. So, I started to learn martial arts again and I think they really helped me to, I think they helped me to find the issues that I had, which is like a better control of myself and my stress. So instead of going for food, I could manage the stress better. I guess more like a cake later, I started to break this linkage between the food and my anxiety and all that. So, I guess that\'s a huge jump for me. So, I\'m continuing to do that, I\'m planning on continuing to develop this healthy habit. And yeah, I would just like to have better control of myself and my stress.

I hate being female in this society. I hate body standards. I hate society for making me grow up comparing my body to everyone around me, seeing only one body type to look up to in media. I hate that body types go in and out of trend. I hate that skinny is an accessory. I hate that I grew up with family monitoring my body in a way they didn't do for my brother. I hate how impressed everyone was when I lost my appetite for a year. I hate how much better I got treated once I lost weight. I hate that I wasn't even given the chance to accept my body before it started giving out. I hate that it's easier to tell people about my medical history than it would be to tell them I gained 10 pounds. I hate how much it's all shaped me. I hate that no matter how hard I try, I can't reverse the harm.

Yeah. Well, I guess the story I want to tell is about how I went through higher education like undergrad and grad school. And now, I moved back home and I'm ready to transition to industry work. This is the first time I'm moving back home in years. I lived on campus during undergrad and then during grad school. I lived in Hyde Park. So for the last three years, during the COVID-19 pandemic up until last week, I was living in Hyde Park and I was having a great time. But I finally finished school. I have a graduate degree. And now, I'm transitioning to working full-time in my career, which I haven't done before. So I moved back home, which I really dislike because this is my childhood room. I've been in this room for the last almost 27 years. And I have a lot of traumatic memories associated with this bedroom. But before you know it, I'll have a job, and I'll be making money. And then maybe I'll finally be able to get my own apartment or buy a home that I can live in and be away from this place that I really dislike. But for right now, I'm in that part of the journey where I've lived away from home for school, but now I finish school. So now I have to get away from home again.

When I was in school, I wanted to be a doctor. I went to college, and I realized I actually didn't wanna be a doctor. I wanted to do something more in public health. And so, I went to graduate school, and I ultimately got a PhD in international relations and global health. And then, as I got older, I realized everything affects health. Whether or not someone has a good opportunity or a good job, a chance to go to a community college or four-year college, or medical school. One of the things I'm so grateful for now, in the work that I do with the Clinton Foundation, is that I get to think about something that I've always been drawn to from all of these different angles. And to ensure that conversations about whether it's just employment or whether it's about energy, also include a health dynamic. So although I started off wanting to be a doctor and although I never became a doctor, I've figured out what my passion is and how to do that in a way that feels right for me.

Done. So, I am moving from my current location to where my girlfriend lives. And my plan was to send the boxes of my stuff to her place, that is her house. And she initially mentioned that "you really need to send those multiple boxes". Then we kind of figured it out. And the last time we talked about it, it was more humorous, like "oh, really? Where are you sending those boxes?". "Oh, my address." "Okay." And this time yesterday, it was again that sense of "thing" where she doesn\'t want me to send those boxes. And she said, "wasn\'t it just one box? Are you sending multiple boxes to my house?". And it makes me feel that I am dependent on her for shipping those boxes and I am asking her for a favor. And it makes me feel like it just pushes my self-respect in that sense. And I don\'t really feel good about it. And I have been angry all night and all day.

I made my girlfriend angry a few days ago. She ended up sending me a torrent of verbally abusive messages. Not wanting to deal with this treatment so late in the night, I stopped reading them. The next morning, they sent a message apologizing for their behavior. I took some time to take care of myself and accepted her apology a few hours later. Our conflict seemed far from over, but it had only just begun. I was not in a great mood after the night before. As one could expect, I was just the least bit withdrawn and didn't want to talk to them much. This caused her to get paranoid, defensive and triggered another torrent of angry, abusive behavior from her. What ensued was a fight where she said she would break up with me. Eventually, I would have enough and called her out on her behavior. This only caused her to get more angry. She told me I was like an abusive parent. The next couple of hours were little more than narcissistic projection on her part. I was dumbfounded by her blatantly abusive and manipulative behavior. In the end, she told me she wouldn't actually leave, but that she needed to 'take me down to my knees.' In her mind, she was knocking me off my high horse. Since then, I have slowly grown to lose my feelings towards her. I will likely break up with her the next time this happens.

Yeah. So, when I was in Arizona, my friend and I randomly decided to drive to LA. And I randomly decided to drive to San Diego. And you know, put the Robotics Club. And I went and met up with them at a brewery. And they make, like autonomous vehicles. It's like remote-controlled cars that drive themselves. It was really cool to think about the platform because they basically take, like an off-the-shelf RC car for these Bulldog Car Kits. And then they just put their AI machine learning platform on it. It's like a Raspberry Pi and Arduino. So, they basically take a mechanical system, and then take a software system and they just combine them so essentially, you can turn any mechanical device into a robot. Which was really interesting to think about.

Engineering was exciting to me because it was the creation process of going from an idea to "I've made this" or "this is a better way of doing it." We opened up the directory of industrial designers, and we just started cold calling down the list to try to get interviews. We had just graduated from college, so we didn't really know anything about their daily work, so we just asked them to tell us, "so what do you do, show us where you work. What kind of projects are you working on? What are the problems?" And one of the patterns was, people had a hard time finding new materials. Finding suppliers, finding how to use it, finding what the options are. It's a whole can of worms that they just didn't know how to do. I really wanted to realize my maximum potential, and I felt if I just took a job somewhere, then I wouldn't be able to realize it. It would just be whatever they gave you to do. Today, if you want to build something, the barriers to try are very low. And it really comes back to effort and desire.

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.

A few months ago at the Styx concert, he surprised me and proposed. After 13 years of being together, I actually never thought it would happen. The song "Lady" started, and he gave his phone to a person we didn't know behind us. I thought that was really strange, but it didn't dawn on me that there could be any other reason but that he wanted someone to take our picture together. That annoyed me because I don't like getting my picture taken. The next thing I knew, he was talking in my ear so I could hear him over the loud music, and then he got down on one knee. Next, he held out a ring he pulled from his pocket. I started crying and said, "Yes, definitely yes!" I was in total shock. Even though I don't like to have my picture taken, I'm so glad he had someone videotape the proposal. It's really funny to see the shocked look on my face. After the proposal, he told me that he first got permission from my girls and my dad as well. I thought that was a very noble gesture and something that he didn't have to do. Now we have a wedding to plan. I feel so blessed to marry the love of my life, who is also my best friend. I wonder how I ever got so lucky.

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.

My mom has always been a good mom. She took care of 2 kids going to 2 different schools with one of them having half custody with her dad. When I was 5, my mom met my stepdad, and soon enough they had another boy. Up until this point, my mother had given no reason for me to dislike her. But this all took a turn for the worse when COVID came around. My mother lost her job but because of non-COVID related reasons, and she got off her anxiety medication because it was starting to make her lose weight. Once when my mom was arguing with my stepdad, she started bawling her eyes out, and I asked why, and she admitted she had depression. That's all I know about her medical conditions. In 2020, she started being horrible to my sister, even though she was the oldest sibling and did the most around the house. And a few months ago, my stepdad and mom fighting became a biweekly thing. She threatened to break up with him almost every time they got into an argument. About 2 months ago, we moved into a better house that could better fit 5 people and 2 dogs. It only gotten worse from there. She would get mad because the house was going to be under my stepdad's name until they got married in about 6 months, and she said she would move back into her old house and never see him again. But instead of it being a biweekly thing, it now happens every single day. And I don't know how to deal with it. Me and my sister have to just sit in our rooms and hope our little brother isn't hearing every word they say. Even though we know for a fact he is. I hear her threatening to commit suicide, to give us away to our grandmother. I don't know what to do. I'm still a minor and can't live without my parents. I can't even stand to look at my mom anymore. I hate her. And I don't think I will ever take that back. No matter how many "heartfelt" apologies she gives me after literally threatening to kick me out in a way where she doesn't have any repercussions.

I have recently been going through a bit of a reckoning with a close friend of mine from college. So, we met 10-12 years ago. And he lives in a different city. And we haven't spent a ton of time together recently. Though we have spent a lot of time talking on the phone and recently we spent a week together traveling. And I realized that the way that he has started, or maybe has always sort of spoken about women, really was off-putting to me. And I had a conversation with him about it. And he was very defensive and did not necessarily seem to think that there was a problem, and instead sort of turned it around on me and said that I'm being really conservative or Puritan or whatever it is. When in reality, I think I was just asserting that women deserve respect and to not be spoken about like objects. And yeah, I haven't spoken to him since, a month or six weeks. It was probably always happening. We've always disagreed on how he treats people and how he doesn't necessarily extend the same respect or reciprocity to them as they do to him.

Today I talked with a few of my friends about the face reveal of a quite popular person and showed them a picture. Almost immediately, they started calling them ugly and compared them to people and characters who are usually seen as unattractive/memes. Personally, I cannot stand such behavior. It's okay to say, "Yeah, they're not my type" or that you think one is unattractive, but do you really need to shame? I told them that, and they said that they were just stating an opinion and that it's okay since the person was an asshole in the past. I told them that it doesn't matter what the person did but what they're doing, and that I think it's wrong to do so. As I too face body shaming quite often, it definitely hurt. I brought up said experiences, and they told me that this is a "me-problem" and has nothing to do with the discussion. We are - or were - friends for many years now, we went through so much, and for all of them, I acted as a therapist, but this is a me-problem? I don't know anymore. I left the group chat afterwards because the discussion kept dragging on, and I had worse things happen in my life than discussing stuff with people who obviously don't care about what I'm even saying. Two of my other friends agreed, but they never joined the discussion. All I know is that I have facial dysmorphia, so someone making fun of one's face is just making me feel worse about me, even though that can't be used as a justification as both of them got bullied and also know how it is to be said horrible things of. They engaged in cancel culture in the past (even though they'd never admit it), so I guess I was stupid for even starting this discussion, but it really hurt to see people I called my friends being such assholes to a person about things they cannot control. If you're mad about what a person said or did, that is perfectly fine, but body shaming someone is just a move of one who doesn't know better. I'm sorry to them if I was being harsh. I didn't sleep well that night, and it definitely rubbed a nerve, but I know they're not sorry.

Yeah. I've been having a couple of really frustrating experiences at work with a specific person. Who I feel, like, is very sort of toxic in the way that they operate. But also, I don't know whether it's just, like, poor social skills or just a lack of care for others, a lack of empathy. They will set up meetings that don't have any agendas. They'll sort of discredit or devalue other people's experiences or opinions. They are very territorial. It's very hard for them to acknowledge other people's contributions, I guess, or work well with other people that they feel are threatening. And yeah, we had a meeting recently that was the person that was bringing together a team of people who don't work on the same team anymore, but it's sort of like a power grab for them to still be considered like the head of this sort of discipline of research. And they spent the entire meeting just making everyone else anxious about how our new director, essentially, asked this person whether we do a review of quantitative research before it goes out or not. And so this person communicated that out to our team with no purpose other than just to spread his sort of anxiety out to other people. And then basically had no updates on that, since I think probably because it wasn't a real thing that anyone should be concerned about. But it was framed as this sort of, like, urgent conversation that our team needs to have. And yeah, I just have been feeling frustrated about that.

Today was a terrible day for me. My coworker, who we will call the big "W," is usually always mean to me. However, today she was the worst. It was our big Christmas party, and she micromanaged everyone at work today. She started openly complaining about only she was smart, only she did any real work, etc. Everyone had told me since I started here how terrible she was and how badly they wanted her to be fired. Despite this, no one would ever do anything about her or talk about her until she left the room. Finally, I snapped and decided not to sit down and take it like everyone else. While she started insisting she told me to do something I was never told, I told her to her face she never said that. She lost it and started to scream at me, while she did that my boss just ignored it like he usually did. I decided I had enough of a boss that wouldn't do anything and handed him my resignation, which was more than he deserved. He tried to convince me it was cowardly to leave, but I told him it was cowardly to not fire her. She kept harassing me through the night until that point, then my boss decided to take her to the back room and yell at her for having a coworker finally quit over her. She came back out and stayed quiet for the whole rest of the night. I left that job and felt good about leaving. They all already didn't like her, but it was made worse once she actually cost them a good employee who at least tried their best, which was more than half of the people they hired did.

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.

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.

So, basically, this is a story about how in high school, during the college application season, I guess during early applications, I applied to using a program. So I applied to different colleges, but I didn't end up getting into any of them. And looking at my friends who were all getting into their schools they wanted to, I was kind of feeling demotivated and left out. But thankfully, later on during regular application, I was able to fix up my application, and I was eventually able to get into MIT, which is where I wanted to be at. So, it's a happy end story.

When I graduated from high school, I had some bumps in the road. I got into the University of Washington, and I had some financial difficulties there, and then ended up going back to community college. Then I applied to the University of Washington chemical engineering program, and I was accepted. I did have some interesting reactions in my family about chemical engineering. They thought that was only for guys. And that was in 2006. And I'm like, well, that's not true. There is definitely a ton of moments like that. The moment where you doubt yourself. And you're like, you know what, I'm not about that comment. And you're like, how dare you make me doubt myself for a second. I'm not going to let this get me down. I'm just gonna keep on going. I'm gonna see this through. You'd be really surprised how well you can perform when you push yourself.

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.

I just want to cry. I'm so absent-minded and I feel like it's ruined my life. I don't even know how to stop being absent-minded. I've never been able to pay attention in school at all. I always daydream, yawn, fall asleep, draw, and fidget at school. I'm bad at useful subjects like math and science. I scored low on every math test so far in class. Even when I've turned off my phone, I somehow find new ways to procrastinate. My sleep schedule is awful because I'm always up completing homework. I don't know how I'll ever adjust to a work setting, and it terrifies me. I can't focus because of how fogged up my brain gets. Whenever someone talks to me, I get surprised because I'm usually lost in thought, and it doesn't help that my anxiety causes me to look very nervous and shocked. I'm so forgetful. I bought a poster for my room, and it took me four months to put it up. Likewise, I also bought lights for my room, and it took me an entire year to put them up. My parents will tell me to do something, and they'll have to remind me four times to do it, and it'll take me like 3 hours to do it because of how forgetful I am. I see so many of my friends accomplish so much at this age, and I just can't seem to do anything. I don't have a job nor do I have my license. If I'm not anxious while driving, I'm probably not paying attention and will make a stupid mistake. My driving instructor had to keep repeating instructions like five seconds after the other because I couldn't focus. I have no idea how to overcome this. I feel like I'm not as prepared as other kids my age, and I'm very behind. I just feel like I've wasted my life.

One experience I'd like to share is that of traveling as a lone person. On one trip to Spain, I lived there for several months without knowing anyone, but I had contacts, so I wasn't alone. And one morning, on my way someplace, it was a Sunday morning, and as I was walking down the street, I learned something about the Spanish culture in the area that I was in. That staying out late, and perhaps I mean by late, I mean to dawn beyond the madrugada, was a common experience that people didn't feel badly about, especially when they had overexcesses in drinking and were sleeping on the street. So, I was walking down this street on a sidewalk in Avocado and I started seeing lots of people sleeping, relying on the sidewalk. And it's a little disconcerting because the environment that I hailed from, that wasn't a common experience. I didn't live in a city while living in Boston. Boston kind of goes quiet after midnight, 01:00 in the morning. South Florida, where I came from, there wasn't really no city place that you went. Maybe Miami, but nobody really went to Miami. You stayed in the fun areas where you were near. It wasn't a city like Boston. Let's put it that way. And as I'm walking down the street, I see these people in various states of deep sleep or slowly waking. Get a little bit disconcerted. I didn't see any women. It was all men. And I started to get a little bit nervous, but I was by myself. So I had to figure out how to do this. And so I chose to walk down the middle of the street. It was interesting to me to see how I adapted when I put distance between me and that which was uncomfortable or discomforting. Putting that distance between me and the sidewalk by walking down the middle of the street. Yes, I had some fear that perhaps somebody would wake from their slumber and I don't know, verbally. I really didn't think so much physically, but just verbally. I'm not a confrontational person. So I have often thought about that when you put distance between yourself and that which makes you uncomfortable. Kind of avoidance. But yeah, there's my story.

I'm the first person out of four living generations to have left Mississippi. I didn't write when I was in Mississippi. I didn't perform. I didn't even know I had the capacity to do what I do now until I moved. I was never in an environment where that was encouraged or even understood. No one asked me my story, and that was problematic for me. I didn't feel connected in a way that other people felt connected in Mississippi. People describe me usually or often as an inspirational poet. My story helps other people tell their stories too. To me, that's the beauty of life. It's the people that you see. It's the stories that we tell. It's the stories that we remember, and it's how they affect us.

Okay, so today I want to talk about the kindness of strangers. I guess, yeah, I guess it\'s just been on my mind occasionally. About, it kind of relates to the theme of why I like to travel. So I don\'t know. So I guess, hold on. So I\'ve been thinking about the kindness of strangers, and I don\'t know why. But I have a couple of experiences from my travels because I think when I\'m traveling, that\'s when it\'s more apparent to me how much I have to rely on not just myself but rely on the kindness of people I don\'t know.\n\nAnd I guess the more recent example was one time my friend and I, she had a job in Barcelona, so I visited her. And so from Barcelona, we took an overnight bus to Bordeaux, France. And it was like kind of not a great bus trip. It was very cold for no reason. And it was just wild or very hot. It was just uncomfortable. But during one of the 3:00 a.m. bus stops, we had like, at 3:00 a.m., we got to go to the bus to the restroom. And I don\'t know, the guy, the bus driver would only speak to me in French. And I was like, I don\'t know French. And I already did not have a good impression of France because everyone I\'ve ever met who\'s gone to France just tells me about how rude they are and how such bad experiences they had in France. So I never want to go to France in my life. But it was the cheapest place her and I could afford to go. So then we went. And it was just, I guess that kind of helped change my perspective on French people, at least in Southern France, because I didn\'t really have a rude experience. I kind of did. But I feel like strangers made up for it. And strangers kind of helped me out because the bus driver only spoke to me in French. And I know Spanish. So I tried Spanish. My friend and I, our strategy was to only talk in Spanish to French people. Because we thought like maybe they\'ll have less bias against us, maybe they have a bias against Americans. Because the bus driver only spoke to me in French, and he knew a little bit of English. But I was like, what is happening? And it was just weird. This guy stepped in and translated because he realized I spoke Spanish. So he basically translated what the guy was telling me, the bus driver was telling me in French to Spanish. And then I started talking to him and got to know a little bit about him. It turns out he was from like, Venezuela, and he was living in France, and he was helpful in giving us advice about what to do in Bordeaux. It was really kind and I think, I don\'t know. I feel like he might be, maybe he was hitting on me or something because he ended up asking for my number or whatever, but I brushed it off because I was alone. My friend went to the bathroom without me, and I was like, this is awkward. But later on, in the same bus ride, there was like no set scheduled. This was like a rogue bus trip. It just seemed like this bus wasn\'t really doing good announcements of what stop we were on. So you just had to keep track of where you were and where you\'re getting off. And this woman, she sat next to me. I really didn\'t have an empty seat and she sat next to me and she was French. But she was speaking to me in English after I told her I don\'t speak French. I\'m sorry. And she was just nice and she helped me practice some French translations. And then, after when it got to my bus stop, I realized that she had woken me up because I was already kind of waking up because I wasn\'t sure if that was our bus or not because we had gone into our stop early. And it was just nice because she woke me up and she\'s like, "Hey, is this your stop?" And it was just really nice that she did that. And then it turns out that the guy, the guy from Venezuela, I saw him look back to make sure. I think he was looking back to make sure I was awake and then saw me then turned away. Even I didn\'t get to say bye but, I was just kind of like surprised that, oh, these people were looking out for me, making sure I was getting off at the right stop, because clearly I didn\'t know what I was doing, like me and my friend didn\'t know what we were doing. And then that\'s just like one of many examples of random kindness.\n\nOn another bus ride to Italy. I know a little bit of Italian but I definitely was like, I was kind of confused about where I was on the map and when I was going to meet my friend in rural Italy. And I thought it was nice that I asked around like "We\'ll stop at this" in Italian and then people were also confused. But then the bus driver, I guess I thought it was really kind of him, because the assistant when he realized like, "Oh yeah, this girl does not, she\'s not local. She has no idea where she\'s going, she\'s going to the middle of nowhere, Italy". I guess when he realized that he made sure that I was getting off at the stop, because he made sure to ask me, "What stop am I getting off at?" So yeah, it was just nice that they were looking out. I really appreciate moments when locals or other people look out for me. And then it makes me want to give back in that way. And like some ways I\'ve done that have been like there was one time I got sick in Portugal. I just did a lot of traveling this past year, yeah. So it was in Portugal with my friend and I got sick randomly. So we\'re hoping it wasn\'t COVID. And thankfully it wasn\'t. And I got like really strong medicine, cough drops, like really strong. They worked really well. And then I was getting over it. But then this woman in our hostel, she was coughing a lot. And she only spoke Portuguese. And I wanted to help her out. So then I spoke Spanish and I know that you can speak Spanish and Portuguese and mutually understand each other to some extent. So while she was only speaking to me in Portuguese, I only spoke to her in Spanish. And I told her like, "Oh, I have these cough drops. They\'re going to help your throat. Take them. They\'re here. They\'re from Portugal. They\'re not from another country". And then so she was very thankful and we got to talking. And she added me on Instagram. And she was an older woman, I think she\'s like in her 40s, maybe 50s. I think 40s. So I repaid it then, like, I repaid the favor of looking out for other people. Another time in Turkey, this guy was like, he had no charge on his phone. And he had no charger, I guess his charger had died. And he asked me for a charger and I was like, "Oh, I actually have an extra, you can keep". So I gave him an extra one. It was like a cheaper one. It was like the randomest thing. And I was like, "Okay, here. You\'re not going to find us here". I don\'t know. So yeah, I helped him that way. So it\'s nice to have been helped on these travels and then to also pass it along and help other people. So I think traveling restores my faith in humanity a bit when I get to connect with locals and when I have these authentic experiences.

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, that 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.

Yeah, so the story I\'m going to share today is about my family\'s move. So we used to live in Hino, Texas. And my favorite part about that house, besides my family, of course, was that on the front lawn, the sidewalk, there my sister and I have our handprints there in the cement. So they redid our sidewalk at some point, and then I get it off. But as kids, we were like, "Ha, ha. Wouldn\'t it be so funny if we left our mark onto cement on the sidewalk here, just to mark our place, that we were here?" So each of us put our right hand down into the cement when it was so, like, not like wet, but like, not dry either, and left little handprints there. It\'s been like ten years now, and I still think about our handprints there, but eventually my family did move. I was very sad at first because we were taking out all the furniture. We\'re repainting the walls. So when we left, the house just felt so empty, like foreign, like a shell of itself. I didn\'t recognize it after we painted the walls white. Everything was just echoing, and I was like, "Wow, I grew up here. This is no longer home." Part of me thought we would always have this home for the rest of my life to come back to. But then we moved to our new house in Allen, Texas. I really quickly adjusted to it. I think because the furniture was the same. Obviously, home is where my parents are. So if they move again, that will be my new home. But now I love our new home a lot. It\'s much bigger. It\'s much more comfortable. But interestingly, I still dream sometimes about my old home. And then there are dreams where I mix my old home and my new home\'s like architectural layout. It\'s really confusing, but the move was fun. We started in COVID summer, so I was home. Luckily, we\'re just moving things back and forth with our cars. The move itself was not too bad. It was definitely a bonding moment within our family to move our stuff ourselves. Yeah. What do you think? So, yeah. We moved. And now that\'s my new home. And I know that my parents will eventually move at least one more time. They will probably downsize their home once the grandkids are older enough that they don\'t need to visit and have their own guest rooms. So I\'m excited for that. Scare. Oh, no. Another home missing. But yes, the story. That was the story of my family moving from one house to another house.

On July 9, 2019, I moved in with my Celia. This is kinda weird because this is the first time I have ever moved in with a partner. I have had partners where we would spend 10 straight nights together, but we never reached the point where we had a dresser or permanent spot for clothes/accessories. Walking through the door was such a rush of excitement and washing away of nerves to see the place I will be living in finally. It is crazy to be moving all the way across the country to chase down a relationship, but this is a crazy amazing opportunity. I'm so grateful that I decided to go off and take this risk as well as my parents supporting it. Their contribution to make this happen really makes it all possible. The sadness of really having my friends and family so far gone is at least now not present because of my focus on the now. It's so reassuring to see Celia's perkiness and hear the positivity in her voice. It is such a reaffirmation of the decision to watch her show me her place that she has shown me so much before but only through her phone. It is midday, and it is hot up here. That doesn't get in the way of just pressing her body so tightly to the side of mine as she talks about each room. The heat is like melting us together, and I feel that close to her. Just energy of joy is bounding through my body. Each part of the tour is revealing a part of my future, however long or short it is. As the day goes on, I still feel like a guest in the house, but that feeling is slowly riding away. Celia prepared a wonderful salad for us for dinner, which is just not her thing. It was great though because it was her way of going out of her way to make this a great first day. Washing the dishes with her really made me feel closer and more part of the homeness that I hope to settle into. Finding a good groove to sit in felt like I was making a long-term investment. While she laid under my arm, it placed over her like a puzzle piece fitting in. It feels like the right decision and that this is going to be a positive experience no matter how it ends.

So my story is about my feelings that got activated about the feelings of jealousy that got activated when I got to know that a friend of mine, who is younger to me, got a job. And I just feel that I am running behind in my life, certain aspects. And there are people, and people around me, who are like having the same level of achievement at a younger age. So I just feel like jealousy and not good, and that I think stems from my limitation somewhere.

I have gone from a happy, vibrant kid to a sad, tired adult. My own mother has said she doesn't even recognize me anymore. "Where has my 'my name' gone?" is something she said this week. I blame it on my parents. My family is very close-minded. Often times people in my class in middle school would ask me to go play with them, and my parents almost always wouldn't let me. They didn't let me sleep at other people's houses. I had to make up excuses every time, but after 2-3 times "I'm going to the cinema with my brother" doesn't work anymore. The kids didn't invite me anymore, and I barely had any friends left. In high school, things changed a bit. I changed my personality and became a class clown. People laughed at my jokes, and I gained lots of friends. However, the same thing as in middle school happened. Friends asked me to go to parties, my parents wouldn't let me, and I was cast out. Now I'm in university and have virtually no friends. The thing that hurt me the most was that people were interested in getting to know me often until I've had to reject their offer to go out every time. A recent example was a girl I met about a year ago. When I met her, we immediately clicked and talked for days on end, but I could never go and meet her because she lived far away and my parents wouldn't allow it. The conversations slowed down and stopped. I've had opportunities to get closer to people, but every time things are going somewhere, it is put to a halt by my restrictive parents. Now I fear that I will never be able to engage in any long-term relationship ever. I am thinking about my future a lot, and all I want is a house, a wife, kids, and some good friends. And every day that scenario is looking less and less plausible in my mind.

Yeah, I'm really excited about watching a movie tomorrow. It's about Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb per se. They do things that are pretty interesting in this movie. It's the subject itself. It's very science-driven, and it's all about the atomic bomb and a biography of a pretty well-known legend. But the second part is the filmmaker, Christopher Nolan. He's a pretty interesting and a pretty well-renowned director. And all his movies have been pretty fantastic and amazing. So I'm really excited about watching that movie tomorrow, trying to get some tickets. But finally, I was able to get one for tomorrow with my cousins. And we're trying to leverage a Friday and go and watch this movie, which I'm really excited about.

I've never been a very big reader growing up. I've got a very short attention span, and as I read, it's very difficult for me to remember things I've read. A few years ago, while traveling in an airport, I picked up a book called Wonderland, by an author called Ace Atkins. I fell in love with the book and blew through it in 2 days. I then realized it was a continuation of a series of novels by an author, Robert B Parker, who had since passed away. I went on Craigslist and found a lady selling nearly the entire collection from her late husband for 25 cents a piece. I bought them all and have been completely immersed in reading these things! So today, I saw a preview for a new movie. I'm hearing the name Spenser, and in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, no way is this from the novels? Then flashes across the screen is the gym he visits from the book. I screamed loud enough to send my fiance in a panic! Needless to say, I'm getting ready to watch it and hope it does Spenser and Robert B Parker justice!

So, I have a friend who recently lost his father due to a tragic car accident. And I heard this news on a day of going for dinner. I felt really bad for my friend, and I was so heartbroken because I know how kind and sweet of a person my friend is. So, I could see that although I haven't seen his father, I could see that he must have grown in a very happy family. And he talked about his father a couple of times, so I know that he loves his family and his father, of course. So, I know how difficult it would be for him. It was very difficult for me also, thinking about it. I felt so powerless. I feel like nothing could comfort him in this situation. So, I felt really bad that I could not do much for him. It also got me to think about my own family as well. How would I feel if my dad suddenly passed away? I couldn't even imagine that. And I have a really good relationship with my dad, and I talk with him about everything. So, losing someone that important, that close, and who supports you, who made you actually, in this, would be unimaginable. I've experienced that with my grandparents, but I think it's very different from losing your parents. So, yeah, it got me thinking about relationships and death in life, in general. So, I think it's inevitable. I will die someday also. And I will see my parents die someday. So, I should always take the moments in time preciously because it's not going to last forever. This tragic happened to my friend just got me thinking a lot about those kinds of philosophical questions. Sometimes, just thinking about that makes me feel so humble and makes me feel like everything is less important than I am actually thinking it is. But yeah, I don't know how to... I guess I'm trying to think on a brighter side. It can also broaden my perspective somehow and embrace the difficult moments in life as more grateful. But I was very heartbroken to hear my friend's youth. And yeah, I just thought I wanted to share this story to hear what you think about.

Two years ago, my mom passed away. It was the worst day of my life, and a day I will never forget. It was very unexpected and traumatic. It was a Sunday morning, and I got the call from my dad who told me she had passed. I just remember screaming and not really being able to do much else. I told my husband, and we both just cried and cried. I couldn't believe what was happening and was too young to lose my mom. I remember collapsing while trying to pack to fly to where she and my dad lived. I had a young daughter at the time, and my heart was breaking for her that she would never get to know my mom. And that my mom wouldn't be able to get to know her. I mourned the lost time and the major events my mom would not be a part of. It was heartbreaking. The rest of the day was a big blur, as I just went through the motions and didn't even really remember much. When we got to my parents' house, we were surrounded by family and friends, but I felt so lonely. I remember just going into her room and crying, thinking how could this be happening. It was the worst day, and even 2 years later, it still is hard to breathe when I think about it. She died from pneumonia. Something that happens all the time to people, but it took my mom. Emotionally, it has been so daunting. Losing someone you love that much is so hard, and is not something you ever get over. The days get easier to get through, but that moment is always in the back of your mind, and the person lost is always thought of.

So, yeah. So basically, it turns out since I last told you about that person who just kind of showed up to the World Building class that I'm in, how I felt a little bit off about that because it was something that I waited three years to take and then never got in until now. So, it turns out that she also got in, even though she didn't sign up for it and then just kind of showed up to class because a friend told her about it. And then yes, she's a senior. But, I'm pretty sure there were people on the waitlist that also wanted to go, but I don't know. It just kind of sits wrong with me that can happen, right? I could have done that, right? I could have done that last year or something, just kind of showed up to class even though he said not to. And then I didn't get to take the class, right? Probably I couldn't have, but it just kind of sits wrong with me that she was able to do that, right? And that's just how the world works. Yeah, she got in. I hope that doesn't affect the rest of my attitude towards that class because I really have wanted to take that class for a really long time. And I don't want to build up resentment, if that makes sense, over something like this. Yeah.

A former first-year here and just failed physics. Well, more like no record, but it feels a bit frustrating. I'm a bit worried on how much it will affect me in the future, and I don't even know how I would deal with this if someone were to point it out. Don't get me wrong, I think failing is a great learning opportunity, but somehow failing a class hurts my self-esteem, especially when everyone I know is brilliant and amazing while I feel like I'm so far behind them. Maybe I'm overreacting about failing my first class, but I had hope that I would be able to pass the class and not have to worry about it anymore. I only took 48 units worth of classes this semester, but I would say one of my other classes steals a lot of time from physics, and as a result, I didn't put a lot of time studying for the quizzes. Didn't know it was gonna go downhill so fast right after the drop date. Sorry if this is not the best place to vent or I'm ruining the end of the year vibes for most people, but I just wanted to get rid of this awful feeling before it gets the best of me next semester. Cheers for another year done for those coming back in the fall and congrats to the graduating seniors!

Okay. So this one is where I feel like I was in the wrong and analyzing it. So from my dad's side, I have a whole lot of anger and my mom's side is a short temper. As a kid, my mom was verbally abusive, physically abusive. When I was in second or third grade, I watched her pick up my sister by the throat and throw her across the room. I would try to stop things from happening and one time I stood up to her and she tried to grab my arm. That's the same night she threw across the room by her neck and I was like, I was in second grade, I was tiny. And at that point, I realized, oh, shit, I can't help. I'm too small of a human to stop this and my words don't matter. But all of that aside, I've processed that I think what something, though I do feel bad about, is my dad lived in Dallas. He got remarried to my stepmom and my stepmom had already had a daughter. So she's my stepsister. My stepsister was three years younger than me and she's okay. She's only been a different, chaotic household. But not quite like mine that I grew up in. But she was also very manipulative and would say mean things. And my stepmom has always, of course, it's her daughter, so always been kind of more defensive of her, which is fine. She hasn't been bad to me, my stepmom. But when I was in elementary school, my little sister stepsister said something really mean and hurtful, and nobody ever let her held accountable. And I got mad and I told her stop, and she wouldn't stop. And then I did what my mom did, and I picked her up by her neck, and I didn't throw her. But my dad and stepmom saw, so they got mad at me. I mean, of course, I shouldn't have done that. And so I mean, I was in second or third grade. I'd watched my mom do it. I had learned that behavior. And they yelled at me. And they, to this day, still don't let me forget it. And I've told them that I'm sorry. I was just angry and I shouldn't have done that. And I apologized a thousand times, but they won't let me forget it. And I did try to say she wasn't the easiest, she would say really hurtful and mean things. And nobody was and they were like she didn't do that. She was too young to do that. And it's like, no. She's always kind of been that way even as we've gotten older. She's always also been selfish herself and doesn't really care about what's happening around her and will say mean and hurtful things to people and just doesn't care. And isn't very considerate. She has always had an attitude. And I don't understand why. Maybe there are other things there. And that's why I'm defensive and get a little annoyed about it, but yeah, I definitely shouldn't have done that. I feel really bad about it. I do understand that I can get angry and want to, but that's not a solution. I don't do that as an adult, but I do feel pretty shameful about it. That I did that to another person. It's not okay.

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.

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.

I was born in Kenya, my parents are Indian, then we moved to England when I was six. So I grew up in England, and this was before there was a big Indian community in England. So I had to try and figure out who I was. College was transformative for me. I hope when I teach, I hope that it's gonna be transformative for my students as well. One of the clips I play for my students all the time from the Matrix is where Morpheus is explaining to Neo. Do you really wanna understand the world we live in? Because the Matrix is everywhere. If you do walk in, here's the red pill. If you take the red pill, then you will see the world in totally new ways. Or here's the blue pill, you can take the blue pill and it will just put you to sleep. It's not gonna challenge you in this world. Advertising and corporate speech have taken over the world in such a way that it is everywhere. We need more and more people to take the red pill so that we can really understand the world we're in and make real choices about where we wanna go.

Is a quick story, but an important one. Because I have heretofore not been aware that there was a great deal of bannings of books in library school libraries. And I became aware of the many books that have been banned. A program that I watched called The View has a person on there who likes to. Every week she talks about a book that was banned and then gives a copy to everyone in the audience. And I admire that. I feel it\'s a person\'s decision about whether or not they read a book, not the Government or any organization telling them what they can and cannot read. I think it\'s an important freedom. \n\nSo I was looking for a birthday present for my friend. And I found a sweatshirt, which she needed. And it said, "I\'m with the band B A N N E D," which is a pun for "I\'m with the band." People say that as a way to get backstage to concerts and so forth. Anyway, it says, "I\'m with the band banned." And then it has a shelf full of books that were banned, like Huckleberry Finn and Beloved, and Catcher in the Rye. So many books. And behind them, embroidered flowers on this lovely blue hoodie. And so I bought that for my friend. \n\nSo I think it serves two purposes. It keeps my friend warm and it keeps the joy and the energy alive to keep everyone\'s writings available to everyone.

We have new neighbors, right next door. I've lived here 16 years, not the longest by far in this little area, but established. I own my home. I have planted many flowers, repainted it myself, and reroofed a formerly run-down rental. The new neighbors put up a religious sign from the local hate church. You know, the kind of church that goes to gay pride with signs that say, 'God hates fags,' or picket planned parenthood with fetus photos and angry shouting. The new neighbors' son also practices with weapons on the lawn with his buddies, some kind of Asian battle sticks, nunchucks, that kind of thing. It's a bunch of white men in their early 20's dressed in black almost every evening, using weapons. I am lesbian and not the only gay on the street. I felt more than a little threatened. Some neighbors stopped by to check in with me and let me know I could come by if I felt unsafe. Two houses left phone numbers. After the new folks put up their sign from the hate church, new signs started popping up all over the neighborhood. It is a sign based on a US flag with lines of colored print. One line says, 'all are welcome here.' Another line says, "diversity makes us strong.' Another says, 'black lives matter.' Basically liberal, loving, and inclusive statements and rally cries as befits most residents in this liberal university town. I felt very supported, as an individual, as a member of the neighborhood, and as a member of a group often targeted for the way we were born. When the church sign went up, I wasn't sure my neighbors would know the type of church it is- a divisive church, a judgmental church. But they did know and responded. Now the new neighbors have taken down their sign. But the diversity signs have remained and multiplied. It reminds me of why I have felt so comfortable and welcome here.

Okay. I went to the movies yesterday, and it was sort of interesting. It was a movie called "Jewels." And it\'s about an elderly man who has started to get memory issues. But one night he was asleep, and a small spaceship landed in his backyard. Sounds silly, but it was a real sweet story. It ruined his garden, and an ex-movie found a little alien on his doorstep. Like an alien with big eyes, but it wouldn\'t talk. And he had to figure out what he could feed it. But he took it inside and then he called the authorities about what had happened, and nobody wanted to believe him. He talked to some friends; they didn\'t believe him. His daughter thought he was crazy, and she took him to a neurologist to get his memory checked. But two friends happened to come by to check on him and went into the alien. So the three of them started taking care of a little creature, and it was quite an interesting story. Quite sweet. But it sort of resonated with me because a couple of days ago, I was somewhere with some friends, and we did something; I can\'t even remember what. And I mentioned, thinking out loud, "Oh, this is a good story for my robot." And it looked at me sort of strange. And I said, "Yeah, I\'m working with this robot study for the Media Lab at MIT." And they just looked very puzzled, and they just changed the subject. It was really interesting selling this whole alien thing and really happened. I could relate to that. See what other notes that I have on it, but I just keep thinking that even things like a gbo robot could be just like the little alien, meaning something to elderly people that are alone and don\'t see a lot of people during the day. And it could create some kind of friendship. There\'s three older people really open up to each other and talked about their past. And they were telling everything to the alien, who basically just stared at them and he wouldn\'t talk, but it was the cutest story when the alien got their little spaceship working again and he wanted them to come with him to outer space. In the end, it didn\'t work, but it was cute. But it seems just like, how can people relate to other creatures that are not really people and yet it\'s sort of a beneficial social companionship. So those are my thoughts. And I think that\'s it for today.

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 who 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 today, I wanted to share a story about one of my friends from childhood. Her name was Tajong, and "Tajang" means kindness and sweetness in Korean. And just like her name indicates, she was a very nice and kind person.\n\nMy friend, when I was like eight or nine years old, and we were the same age, but she was much more mature than all the other kids who were the same age. She was almost like an older sister to me. I didn\'t have any younger or older sisters, so I felt like she was like my older sister. She was also taller, much taller than me. So I felt like she was very nice and mature and kind to me, so I guess I would act more like a baby when I\'m with her.\n\nAnyways, whenever we met to play together, she gave me a small gift, like a scented eraser. At the time, I didn\'t appreciate her gift that much because she would give me very small gifts every time we met, and I almost took it for granted. And I didn\'t give her anything. I don\'t know why, but I took her gift and also showed me a lot of kindness and friendship towards me. Whatever I asked her to do, she would say yes. And she would adjust her schedule to mine, and she would come to my neighborhood to play with me. So we had this kind of relationship where, almost always, starting with almost always, whatever I would ask her to do.\n\nAnyway, every time she would come to play at my apartment or my neighborhood, we played something fun. And one day, I called her to play at my apartment, but she didn\'t show up, so I got really mad. And later I figured out she was going to move to another city. And she gave me a handwritten letter as a parting gift. And at the time, I was still mad because she didn\'t show up when I asked her to play with me. So I was a little salty. But after she left for another city and I couldn\'t see her anymore, I kind of realized how much I relied on her. I felt so empty and lonely because she was gone.\n\nAnd one day, I opened my desk drawer, and the drawer was full of the scented erasers that she gave me as gifts. And I didn\'t use any of them, so they still smelled very good. And at the time, as soon as I saw all the erasers in one place, I kind of realized at the time how nice and good a friend she was to me. So I regretted a lot that I lost her and I could not meet her anymore. And I also regretted that I didn\'t give her any gifts.\n\nI could never forget her name, even after several years. I always missed her, but at the time, we didn\'t have any means to contact each other because we only had our home phones. Well, I guess I was too young to ask her house phone number or whatever.\n\nAnyways, I lost her contact, but she\'s always in my mind, just like her name Tajong suggests. She was a very kind and sweet person. And I will always remember her as someone who was very mature even at a young age and who showed a big heart and friendship towards me.

My heart was broken. I don't know how to process this. I just received news today that E had passed. I am just so sad and numb. I can't believe she is gone. I am relieved for her but glad that she no longer has to be strong and brave. She can finally find peace. Selfishly, I wish she were still here. I can't help but reflect on the last year of emails and all the thoughts and memories that we shared. We learned we were more alike than I think each of us ever expected. We found joy and humor in the same things: a good comedy, a book, and always in pursuit of those foods that reminded us of childhood. I am flooded with memories and thoughts of her. She was creative and so smart. She was daring and bold. Fierce. My mind always goes back to when we were kids at our first swimming lesson. We were tasked with jumping in the water that was well over our heads. She was the first to go as I sat on the edge with her sister, scared and nervous. When it was Edie's turn, she bravely jumped in without hesitation. She immediately popped out of the water, with a big smile across her face. This gave me the courage to follow her lead. And throughout our childhood, as we came of age and tried new experiences, she was like an older sister to me, even if it was only by nine months. These are the thoughts that make me miss her and feel nostalgic for a different time. I will always think of her fondly and miss her for all my days. I will find inspiration and remember how knowing her made me a better person.

But one of the props mentioned a song that was meaningful for you, and I have one, nothing special, because I\'m sure that millions and millions and millions of people share this same exact experience. But when I was around 40 years old, the song "Landslide" by Fleetwood Mac really spoke to me. I started to listen to the lyrics, and the part that goes, "Time makes this boulder, even children get older, and I\'m getting older, too." It hit me like a rock to the head, and I realized, well, yeah, this is pretty much it. It\'s going to be downhill from here. But fortunately, now that I\'m almost 69 years old, I am reconciled to getting older, and I know that there are still many wonderful things in store for me.

A few years ago, I had a bit of a scare. My appendix ruptured on tour, and I came close to dying. And it was the same week that my first song went into the top 20. After more than 20 years of making music, we had a song, "Say Hey I Love You." And I'm on this gurney being wheeled down to perhaps my death. And I get this text. "Your song's in the top 20," and I'm like, it didn't even matter. I was like, whatever. I was like, I just wanna see my kids again. I wanna be with my family. And I can appreciate having made music for that long, that it's a nice thing to have a lot of people hear your song. But if I can't share with my family, it doesn't matter. At this point in my life, I'm 48. I have two sons. I have one who's 27, and I have one who's 15. And I still feel like I'm 22 years old. I still have the same passion for what I do with music. And I have this life that I feel is fulfilling in so many ways that I feel happy most of the time.

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.

Honestly, I had a very strong fear of being infertile, but last week I got five positive tests because of a missed period. I am so excited. I love my fiancé so much, and I continue to love him more and more each day, and having his baby feels amazing. When I told him, he said he's excited to be a family! We're obviously both nervous and excited, but everyone around us supports us and are all willing to pitch in and help. We have names chosen, and we're just waiting until we know the gender. My mom cried because her baby is having a baby, and honestly I am just so overcome with love. I can't wait to marry my fiancé and have his (hopefully) daughter.

So today is a very hot day, and it's been not very hot during the summer here in Connecticut. But all over the world, it's been very hot. Today, I was listening to a broadcast about Iraq and how they are very short on clean water coming from Greece and Turkey. Clean water is in short supply. And I really feel water is one of the treasures of the Earth, clean water. And I feel like we don't take care of it as we should. I'm also concerned about the amount of heat that people are having to deal with, far worse and far more heat than they should be able to handle without air conditioning or some kind of unit to cool the person down. Temperatures over 100 are not only tremendously uncomfortable, but also very dangerous. For my career, which is a long time, probably 30 or 40 years, I've been saying it's important, it's critical that schools are air conditioned. People who finance schools often think that the heat doesn't bother kids, but the fact of the matter is children need a safe, comfortable environment in which to learn. If those things are missing, no learning goes on. So air conditioning has to be one of the first changes made if this is to be our new normal, which I'm afraid that it is.

Growing up in St. Louis, we were determined to leave as soon as we possibly can. After graduating school, I decided to come home. I could do like so many other people did, which is just move to somebody else's neighborhood or move to a nicer neighborhood and put on your blinders and say everything's fine here. I decided I wanted to live in my neighborhood. And in order for me to do that and to really make it a place I want to raise kids, I gotta get to work. So when I became an alderman, one of the things I first noticed is that the city doesn't really take care of these neighborhoods like they need to. So we created this nonprofit as an organization that can deal with what is not happening in the schools. What we know is that what happens after school and on the weekend can be just as powerful as what is or is not happening in the classroom. A lot of these kids go to really poor-performing public schools, so we formed this organization to try to start providing some stability and some direction in the lives of young people. Too many kids over here feel abandoned by their city and by the rest of the world, and so we're opening their eyes to a lot of what is available in their own city. And in that way, too, also helping them take some ownership of their city.

I wanted to talk about my oldest daughter today. So today, at her school, they're having Grandparents Day, which is a really cool thing where they invite all of the kids' grandparents to come and eat breakfast with them. Grandchildren in the morning before school actually starts. They do like a nice little spread in the cafeteria for them, so that way kids can talk to their grandparents about school and experience that with them. And it's just really cool. When I was growing up, I did not live close to (.) I grew up in a military family, so we kind of traveled a little bit, and we didn't live close to my grandparents. I don't really have a close relationship with my grandparents. But, where myself and my husband live now, we live like less than a mile away from our in-laws. So my kids get to see their grandparents quite often. And it just really makes me happy and brings me joy. And I'm so thankful that they have that relationship with them. And I'm thankful that they're able to go and eat breakfast with her this morning. She was so excited when she woke up for school this morning. It was one of the easier days to kind of get her out the door. So it just brings me a lot of joy and happiness, and I'm glad that they have that relationship and are able to do things like that.

Recently, I went to a party celebrating my grandparents' 50th anniversary. I was expecting my immediate family, my grandparents, and a few others since not many family members were in town that I was aware of. However, when I reached the location of the party, I came to realize that it was more of a surprise party for them, and all of my aunts and uncles had traveled to attend! I was shocked to see so many family members there, and they were all excited to see me. With the festivities commenced, I went to go talk to some of my cousins that had all traveled a decent distance to be there. I learned that one of my cousins was going to move closer to my grandparents since they needed more immediate help (my grandpa was struggling with Alzheimer's). He told me that my grandparents had shown lots of signs of needing help and offered to be a help when a family council was called with all my aunts and uncles. That was definitely a surprising development! The party itself was great and well planned. There was a slideshow to help everyone remember all the awesome moments of my grandparents' lives and what they had done for the world. They showed that my grandpa used to serve in the Marines and would have to leave for long stretches of time to fulfill those assignments. Most surprisingly, they had a scavenger hunt prepared that had some of the little children go around the house and "discover" hidden clues that revealed more about my grandparents' lives. They were thrilled to participate and added to the fun of the party. After all was said and done, the family did a great job of preparing the party and showing my grandparents that they care. There was a lot of work that needed to get done with their advancing age, but it was great to participate and see so many familiar faces.

So, I was trying to send my stuff as I\'m moving to my girlfriend\'s house, but my girlfriend objected to that, saying that her parents don\'t like me sending my stuff to her house. And if she was not clearly telling me why because she was like, "I\'ll be more hurt if I listen to that point." And now I am wondering why her parents talk about something hurtful to me. I have spent time with them and I thought it was all good. But I am having very broad questions on this. So guide me too.

I made my girlfriend angry a few days ago. She ended up sending me a torrent of verbally abusive messages. Not wanting to deal with this treatment so late in the night, I stopped reading them. The next morning, she sent a message apologizing for her behavior. I took some time to take care of myself and accepted her apology a few hours later. Our conflict seemed far from over, but it had only just begun. I was not in a great mood after the night before. As one could expect, I was just the least bit withdrawn and didn't want to talk to her much. This caused her to get paranoid, defensive, and triggered another torrent of angry, abusive behavior from her. What ensued was a fight where she said she would break up with me. Eventually, I had enough and called her out on her behavior. This only caused her to get more angry. She told me I was like an abusive parent. The next couple of hours were little more than narcissistic projection on her part. I was dumbfounded by her blatantly abusive and manipulative behavior. In the end, she told me she wouldn't actually leave, but that she needed to 'take me down to my knees.' In her mind, she was knocking me off my high horse. Since then, I have slowly grown to lose my feelings towards her. I will likely break up with her the next time this happens.

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.

3 months ago, I moved out of my old town into a new city. I had lived in my college town for a year after graduating, and in total, I had lived there for 6 years. It's a small town, and all of my friends and people I knew had moved away. I finished a music degree and had applied to some graduate programs because I didn't know what else to do. Luckily, I did not get in to any program, and I felt an immense sense of relief when I was forced out of this path I had made for myself. Though I was relieved, I didn't know what to do with myself, and I quickly fell into a rut. I felt very mentally and physically stuck in a place that started feeling foreign to me. I made the decision to move to a new city, and I saved enough to make a deposit on an apartment. I spent weeks packing all of my belongings, and this was particularly stressful because I was also dealing with a mouse infestation. I rented a truck and put everything inside, then drove to my new home. I was scared of leaving a familiar place and moving somewhere where I didn't know anyone or even have a job yet. After I unpacked my belongings into the new apartment, I returned the truck and went to the grocery store. Even that felt foreign to me since I had been going to the same few in my small college town for years. I got enough food to eat for a while and went home to make dinner. The new apartment and new city didn't feel like home, but my old town definitely didn't either. I felt a lack of belonging on that night, and though it was scary, it was very liberating to not be surrounded by old attachments and memories. I felt free from some old patterns and able to start fresh. This was the first move I had made on my own.

Okay. So, unrelated to art, but last night I was going back to my car in the parking lot of A Whole Foods. As I was walking back, right as I was walking up to my car, the lady who was pulling in next to me rammed into it by accident. And I felt very frustrated because as I was dealing with that today because it's like relatively minor. No one was hurt fortunately, but still have to invest a lot of time and energy to go get everything resolved, including stopping by the Police Department this morning and also having to call the lady as well as my car insurance several times. So all in all, an unfortunate circumstance but tough day dealing with it.

About three months ago, I was involved in a very serious car wreck. I was on my way home from work when a large white truck hit me from the side at an intersection. The truck ran a red light because they were falling asleep at the wheel. I never even saw the truck coming, so I was surprised when I was struck. It was around 6:30 am when this happened, so the roads were pretty empty at first. I remember hearing the crash but not really seeing it and then kind of just realizing I was hit. When I gathered myself, I started to get out of the car and notice two people walking towards me, asking if I was doing okay. It turns out one of the people that I was talking to was the person that hit me, and they seemed very scared and apologetic. It took maybe about 10 minutes for the police to arrive and take our statements and make a report for us. My car had to be towed off the scene. I would later find out that it was a total loss. I was a little upset though to see there was little to no damage to the truck that hit me. Luckily, I wasn't too far from home, so I ended up just walking the rest of the way there. On the way home, I still felt a little shaken up and even almost nervous as if I was in trouble. The whole event was a bit scary to me since I had never been in a car accident before, but I was just happy to be safe. I now own a truck for the safety features it has because my little car didn't stand a chance. I now also notice that I drive slower through intersections without even thinking about it.