Three vignettes for September 🏜️

Dear Friend,

Hey, how’s it going?

1. Ian and I just came back from Seattle from just a few hours ago. It was our first non-weekender trip since our Japan trip back in 2020, and it was really nice to step away from the Bay Area bubble and to explore a different town for a bit. The hotel we stayed at wasn’t my first choice — the others just weren’t available for whatever reason — but it ended up working out since coincidentally it was blocks away from the Apple office in Seattle. We went to have coffee and while we were sitting in this beautiful cafe — there was this rare moment of pride of how far I’ve come. It was surreal (and privileged!) to be there with someone I love knowing few can access what we were experiencing at that moment.
   
2. I’ve been running on and off for years, and for the most part my routine consisted of various run-walk intervals that helped me build up my running endurance over time. I don’t know if it’s all hype or if it’s the YouTube algorithm getting me, but lately I’ve been focusing less on speed or distance and instead try to keep my heart rate in a lower heart rate zone. Known as the MAF method (YouTube), it’s apparently the real deal, but that also means my running duration is heavily limited by my heart rate, something I just can’t control. In these runs, I am incessantly reminded to let go of my ego while trusting to let my heart lead. Still mad annoying though.
   
3. Denise Ho (or HOCC), a Cantopop artist and Hong Kong activist I’ve followed and adored for years released a new song (YouTube) earlier in the week. In the past few years her songs have been censored, and her safety threatened and even arrested multiple times by the police, yet her audacity to persist and carry on never ceases to amaze me. With everything that happened to her, you’d think her new song would be full of rage, but very much to her brand it’s about being embracing your past and carrying on. This song may be new, but it sounds like I’ve heard (and loved) it years before.

The Leave Behind:

• The photos I took this month
• What’s worth remembering in September 2023
• I don’t quite have this thought fully formed yet, but I’ve been noodling this notion on “how to say no to Y in order to do X”. More to come next month, perhaps.

Thanks for reading on this and being with me on this journey. You can check out past issues of Dear Friend, here.

Love wins