march 2025 letter
on turning 24, my creator crush challenge, and some cool art from the month
from my mind
i turned 24
A periwinkle mug diffuses vanilla macadamia coffee from one side of the room; on the other, a eucalyptus candle flickers, melting its virgin layer of wax. Soon the scents will meet. With luck, they will marry, not wage war.
The washing machine hums, starting and stopping as if being constantly interrupted, monotonously rinsing just a single item—my rain-soaked canvas jacket.
A light morning chill thinks it’s sneaking in through the cracked window, but its passageway was measured with intent and precision. It is welcomed thoroughly, renewing the space with fresh molecules. The world’s molecules.
In moments of heightened awareness, I feel grounded in the multitude of sensations I can experience, even while sitting in the quiet comfort of my apartment.
I turned 24 this month. As I’ve grown older, birthdays and New Year’s have become sharper reminders of time passing, and the thought of that freaks me out, sorta in the same way that the snail problem does.
There’s a passage from The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes that I’ve been thinking of a lot:
When you are in your twenties, even if you're confused and uncertain about your aims and purposes, you have a strong sense of what life itself is, and of what you in life are, and might become.
Later... later there is more uncertainty, more overlapping, more backtracking, more false memories.
Back then, you can remember your short life in its entirety.
Later, the memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches.
One quiet gift of growing older is that experience layers itself. I can remember what being in college felt like, and I can now also reflect on having been there.
Since moving across the country for college at 18, I’ve operated under self-imposed time pressure and a conflict of interests. When is the right time to return home to family? How do I balance that filial desire with the reality that my closest friends and career opportunities are on the East Coast? How can I achieve financial and time freedom as early as possible, so I can enjoy life fully with the people I love?
It’s important to think about these questions every so often, but obsessing over them is paralyzing because our answers to them change slowly. Overthinking breeds anxiety, and I felt both acutely this month.
What I’ve come to believe is this: the best I can do right now is take what’s given to me and make the most of it. I have plans to forge my own path, but my experiences this month have provided me with the reality check that I needed.
I’m not quite ready yet. There are still deficiencies I must overcome, skills I must improve, and life I must live before I can launch a full-blown attack on the status quo.
Lately, I’ve found solace in recognizing that the most fairway outcome—the one that honors both my ambition and my age—is that I will find my thing closer to 30. That’s not to say nothing meaningful will happen in the next few years. I’ll start projects, they’ll end, I’ll learn. I’ll meet new people, we’ll part ways, we’ll miss each other. But maybe the successes and failures ahead are just blips in the longer journey of discovering something that truly sticks.
Or, I can blame my restlessness all on February.
Like reporter Kevin Killeen once said in that iconic news clip: February is the worst month of the year, but it’s an honest month. It’s a month that doesn’t hold up life any better than it really is.
28 days, 28 creator crushes
If you remember from my last letter, I mentioned wanting to do a better job facilitating community.
That desire sparked an idea: a challenge. For each day of February, I would highlight one smaller Substack creator I liked.
With nothing else on my agenda the night of January 31, I got to work—drafting up the challenge, designing a graphic in Procreate, and figuring out how to present it. And I posted the final product on Notes.
That night, I went to bed rubbing my hands together, fiddling with my hair, itching my shoulders. What I felt that night was nothing other than good ole posting anxiety, and it had surfaced like clockwork the moment I stepped into discomfort.
I wanted people to rally behind the idea, because if they didn’t, this whole project would feel like public humiliation.
Although the project itself was started on a whim, it was a subconscious byproduct of several goals I had been meaning to pursue:
Experiment with being more present on Notes
Get in the habit of celebrating creators I enjoy
Facilitate community—connect myself and others to like-minded people
By those metrics, I’d call it a success. In the end, people were really supportive and genuinely happy to see their work recognized. While it didn’t spark a global trend, a few people joined in, and I got to reconnect with several writers I had fallen a bit out of touch with.
Like most moments of uncertainty, the result was neither a total success nor a complete disaster, but something that landed squarely in the middle.
Here’s the full list of creators I highlighted:
getting inspired by art
I ended up going to quite a few museums this month. It’s sorta the main redeeming quality of living in D.C.—free museums walking distance from my apartment.
At the National Gallery, I found myself staring at stunning portraits by Botticelli and Lippi when I had a realization that, while obvious, I had never fully internalized: the subjects of these paintings had seen these images of themselves with their own eyes.
Which then begs the following questions: Did they like what they saw? Were they amazed by the technology of painting? Did they instinctively smile upon seeing their portrait, despite not smiling while posing?
I also visited two special exhibitions.
The first was Osgemeos—the handle by which twin street artists Otavio and Gustavo Pandolfo create under. What fascinated me most was their versatility, working across murals, paintings, sculptures, and even music.
I also kept noticing a small dog appearing in many of their works. Turns out, it was their family dog.
The second was Alphonse Mucha, the Czech painter and illustrator. His style—bold outlines, intricate details, and flowing aesthetics—was ahead of its time, influencing everything from psychedelic rock posters to manga more than a century after his works.
Lately, I’ve felt creatively stuck, and I haven’t been reading much either. I’ll blame it on juggling a busy work month with unnecessary overthinking about big life questions. My head has been too wrapped up in what I’m supposed to do versus what I want to do, leaving little room for my mind to wander.
My goal for March is to build myself out of the rut. I’ve started sketching again and have been working on re-launching my personal website with some fun twists to it.
Hopefully, I’ll have more exciting updates on both (and maybe others?) in next month’s letter.
from my closet
I don’t have many good outfit pictures from this past month. OOTD pics aren’t something I’ve ever done, but I’d love to get better at taking them.
Anyway, here’s what I wore to pick up some Valentine’s Day flowers. While I wouldn’t call my style particularly workwear-heavy, I do gravitate toward looser fits in the winter. Pretty sure it was close to 15 degrees that day—hence my hand hiding underneath my jacket sleeve.
On top: a canvas Stussy white-bone jacket. Paired with baggy double-knee Dickies and 1460 Doc Martens.
from my kitchen
Here’s the easiest way to make juicy steak without setting off the smoke alarm:
Take your steak out the fridge and season generously with salt. Let it sit outside for about half an hour to absorb the salt and come to room temperature.
In the meantime, grab a few garlic cloves (I keep a bag in the freezer), a tablespoon of butter (which I chop into thirds), and preheat the oven to 375.
Open the window closest to your kitchen and blast your stove fan.
Heat a frying pan to medium-high. Once you begin to see some smoke coming off your pan, pour in some olive oil, sear each side of the steak for 90 seconds, and then the corners for a few seconds as well. Searing is important for locking in juice inside the steak.
Transfer steak to baking pan (or if you have a cast-iron just leave as is), shove in the garlic cloves into the steak, place butter slices on top, add some herbs if you have them. Put into your pre-heated oven.
How long you cook depends on both preference and thickness of your steak. I’ve gotten better at guessing how long it needs in the oven, but try 5 minutes for thinner slices and 8 minutes for thicker ones.
from my algorithm
On the allure of Korean figure skater Kim Yuna. I was nine when she won gold at Vancouver and didn’t understand the weight of the performance. Now I do.
“Taste is a skill. Those who dedicate the time and energy to develop this skill are the ones who will be able to cut through the noise.”
New Yorker essay on The Eternal Mysteries of Red. Notice the red caps on Botticelli and Lippi’s portraits?
Sahil Bloom talks about the 5 Types of Wealth; I loved the idea of treating non-financial wealth like financial wealth—keep investing, keep contributing, you don’t need to have it all figured out at once.
Thank you so much for including me <3 such a ray of sunshine
life layering is a beautiful idea. also, congrats on the creator crush project — you had an idea, you made it happen. something from nothing.