january 2025 letter

on winter realignment, visiting san francisco, and picking up photography

from my mind

my neighbor likes to sell plants

winter realignment

It smells like a December morning at my parent’s house. The Keurig works overtime, extracting cups of spiced holiday blend coffee while the old heater’s must adds weight to the air.

The holiday season’s magical pull lured me back to my friends and family in always-sunny Los Angeles for the entirety of December. While at home, I’ve been fortunate to be ever-surrounded by a strong network of people; something I haven’t quite been able to establish in D.C.

December was a deeply reflective month from the start. I intended for it to be like that. If I had to throw out a number, my guess would be that I spent between 20-30 hours writing across various journals while drinking hojicha.

Alongside my regular journaling practice, I decided to surgically break my life down into “chapters”, as part of an ambitious endeavor titled “winter 2024-2025 realignment”. My vision was that, if I could understand what I want out of each part of my identity, I could take these fragments and glue them together into the person I aspired to be in 2025.

I wrote feverishly, I tapped into my inner conscious, I straight up lied to myself numerous times, and ultimately, the most worthwhile product I produced from this exercise was incriminating evidence, in the form of pages upon pages of contradictions, that I truly lack a coherent sense of future.

The ideas contained within each chapter makes sense on their own—each has a clear set of wants and a convincing narrative for why those wants are worth having. But the chapters themselves negate one another. For example, in career plans I assert that one of my main priorities should be to find a new job. But then in writing I acknowledge the value and associated freedom that comes with career stability. And everything comes full circle in where I live when I try to muster up the courage to quit everything, move, and then figure career out.

I wish to be the mastermind capable of figuring myself out as soon as possible, but I’d be equally content with leaning into the mess and just floating my way to my answers. Would the middle-ground mean playing the role of an unhelpful yet necessary jester—empowered to at least shake the snow globe that is my own life, introduce some sort of chaos like flint to stone—even if it is ultimately passive, unrelenting fate who determines where each crystal settles in the storm’s quiet aftermath?

I shared a similar sentiment in a previous essay:

I find myself in this unique realm where, at the tender age of 23, I already know I will never be a corporate superstar, nor will I become the next Kafka. My perspective comes from acknowledging my limited talent; my certainty comes from rejecting full commitment to any singular path. There are too many talented people in this world for me to just coast to the top. But despite how sparsely populated this space I’ve carved out for myself is, I think there is still something out there for me.

Fortunately, my time journaling wasn’t a complete waste. I got a lot of my raw thoughts on paper, which helped me realize that most roll up to three main goals:

I often guilt myself into thinking I’ve gotten nowhere, that I haven’t progressed, as the nagging voice in my head pounds: do more, do more, do more. Objectively, of course, we all could have committed to things sooner and worked harder. But would that have been beneficial? When my measure of success is so hazy and unclear, when my goalposts are constantly moving, why do I berate myself for not being at my desired state, when I change what I want constantly?

2024 will be forever cemented as the year I bunkered down and taught myself about myself.

I hope 2025 will be my year of taking, of being a self-advocate, of proving to myself that what I aspire for—the conviction I have developed—is inevitable if I can just continue to unlock who I am and become more myself.

i visited san francisco

sunset over the bay

I visited a couple friends in San Francisco to kick off December.

My trip was deeply formative. It wasn’t the novelty of the city that got to me, but rather, the warm realization that my closest friends are growing and forging their owns paths there.

I also formed a more complete perspective on the tech industry and where things are headed. It seems inevitable that the demands of knowledge work will flipped on its head within the next 3-5 years.

As someone working in a traditional finance role, my company is a slow-mover when it comes to adopting new technologies and ideas. We are still not allowed to leverage GenAI in our day-to-day work. I’m immensely frustrated by this, and thus, I rant.

Centralized finance is a system deeply reliant on complacency—rich people don’t want to change how money circulates, poor people don’t know how to. And while the industry continues to milk profits, spending so much effort and resources creating variants of the same boring drivers of inequality, disrupters have quietly built systems that outperform the status quo. For example, DeFi is one ChatGPT-esque breakthrough away from shaking up the entire industry that I work for, and that deeply unsettles me.

If that is the world we are progressing toward, then what will be valued?

My bet is in human connection. Individuals who can create platforms and spaces that facilitate community will be hailed as geniuses of the new age. This has served as further motivation for me to work toward building a future that is dependent on multiple streams of income that cannot be superseded by technology.

I don’t know how strongly I believe this. Maybe my prefrontal cortex is too underdeveloped to thrive in an overly-corporate finance job based out of D.C.—the land of rules, regulations, bureaucracy, and old people.

All this is to say: San Francisco was the breath of fresh air that I needed, and I’m so grateful for my friends—Geireann, Shay, Leyton—for being wonderful hosts as I couch-surfed across the city they’ve come to call their home.

Hope to see you all again soon!

taking fancy photos

I’ve started taking photos around my home and neighborhood.

My relationship with photography started back in high school when I asked for a Canon Rebel T7 for Christmas. But after a few weeks of initial excitement, I became overwhelmed by the pressure to take “good photos” and the flurry of technical adjustments required to achieve said “good photos”.

And so I stopped taking any photos.

Yet, whenever I visit home for the holidays, I inevitably make eye contact with my black camera bag—metaphorically sagging as if pouting, but quite literally, extremely firm and upright because it’s barely been touched—and I feel obligated to give it one more shot (pun intended).

As I took the camera on walks around my neighborhood, snapping little things that caught my eye, I began to feel the meditative power of noticing. I now realize that I don’t like the idea of taking or looking at traditionally “nice” photos. Things look better in my memory than in edited high-definition.

At the same time, I’ve always been slightly aloof—often dissociating from conversation and becoming overly infatuated with random things like the interesting wrinkle of fabric on someone’s pants or the texture of walls. And it’s this quality that inspired me to take a photo of my dog’s leaf-like ear, the dreary yet homey windowsill, and vibrant, uniform trash bins.

I’ve decided to give photography the chance to serve as a valuable supplement to my creative practice. For the time being, I’m not going to play around with settings. I’ll get around to the fancy stuff later on.

The most important thing is to learn to snap what catches my eye.

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from my closet

I had been hearing great things about BEAMS for months, so one could only imagine my excitement when I heard they had opened a pop-up shop in LA.

Despite going in with high expectations, I was still surprised by the quality and the fit of their products—being a Japanese brand, all the clothes fit my body proportions (5’ 6” ish) really well!

Out of respect for my wallet, I only purchased one item, which were these double-pleated chinos. I love the loose fit and aggressive taper, as well as the cropped length. Given the cooler winter weather (yes, it gets cold in LA), I’ve been pairing them a lot with knitwear.

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from my kitchen

The Christmas meal I cooked with my sister was probably the most intense kitchen endeavor of the month. We threw down some turkey (pre-smoked from Costco), smashed potatoes, sweet yams, and a root roast.

I was also unexpectedly tasked with steaming some snapper. The only fish I usually cook back in D.C. are white people fish from Whole Foods, a.k.a. salmon and cod, but given that my dad took care of all the dirty prep-work, all I had to do was season and cook the fish.

I loosely followed proportions from this recipe, but I had to sub some ingredients. Overall it was super simple: eyeball some soy sauce and mirin, sprinkle in white pepper and sugar, add in sliced ginger and scallion, drizzle sesame oil and salt to taste, and garnish with cilantro, lemon juice, and Fly By Jing’s Sichuan Chili Oil.

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from my algorithm

watch and listen

• A relatively accessible breakdown on crypto trends to look out for in 2025

• On identity crisis and personal vs. brand identity

• Affirmations on trusting your instincts—the opposite of anxiety and doubt is self trust

• POV Husband (the dude that cooks crazy meals at home) shares how he started his own business

read

• Substack

  • “This Reminded Me of You” by Jay

  • in praise of writing on the internet by Celine

  • From Goldman Sachs Trader to Parking Lot Striper by Isaiah

  • Aim Lower, You're a Mess. by F.D.

  • call me by my name by Rish

• The New Yorker

  • Homage to Willie Mays

  • A Revolution in How Robots Learn

  • How Much Does Our Language Shape Our Thinking?

• The Economist

  • Finance, consulting and tech are gobbling up top students

  • Why Black Friday sales grow more annoying every year

  • Gambling is growing like gangbusters in America