Turning my life around

The three things I want to prioritize from here on out

Photo by Javier Quiroga on Unsplash

On January 14, I officially decided to turn my life around.

I’ve been taking a good hard look at my life—past, present, and future—and I see lots of bad patterns that I’m ready to break.

Here are three things I’d like to prioritize moving forward:

Physical health

Because I was so fixated on career advancement over the last decade, I sadly abused and neglected my body in ways that now break my heart. Thankfully, I never got entangled in alcohol or drug addictions, but perhaps being an adrenaline junkie is just as bad. I let stress ravage my body without healthy ways to cope. I was hardly ever gentle with myself, pushing myself to accomplish things I couldn’t mentally or emotionally handle. So now I’ve decided to focus on listening to and supporting my body in a number of important ways. I’m now committing to a better, more balanced diet that eliminates as many refined and processed foods as possible. I’m incorporating strength training into my exercise routine, plus stretching, massages, and hot water baths to maintain good muscle health. I also realized that even the tiniest details, like the firmness of my mattress, impact the way my body feels…so my husband and I got a super plush mattress topper to alleviate undue pressure.

I’m doing everything now to make sure my body feels happy and functioning well both now and in the long term. I don’t see myself as any sort of athlete, but I want to think like an athlete in order to keep my body in tiptop shape.

Healthy self-esteem

I derived too much self-worth from how other people perceived my work. I used to be afraid of being irrelevant because even just last year, I thought that being irrelevant meant that nobody cared about what I did, and if nobody cared about what I did, then my work didn’t mean anything. Kind of like that question commonly asked in philosophical thought: if a tree falls in the middle of the forest, but nobody is present, does the tree actually make a sound? I was that tree in the middle of the forest, and my take was that if nobody heard me make my epic fall, it didn’t make a sound.

But now I believe the tree does make a sound. I’m starting to see that the value of my work is not externally-tied but something I have the power to shape. I get to decide what kind of work is valuable to me and what kind of value it holds. Relinquishing that power to others was the worst thing I could have ever done to myself. Taking that power back makes me feel free and more at peace.

The boring stuff

After working in the startup world long enough (plus marketing and PR), I unfortunately got caught up in the idea that everything had to be cool or exciting. It was a very stressful pursuit, and along the way, I developed this strange disdain towards anything that seemed boring or not exciting.

I mentioned reading a book called The Courage to Be Disliked, and I was struck by the part about having the courage to be normal. I know normal doesn’t necessarily mean boring, but in my mind, they seemed the same. The gist of the phrase “courage to be normal” is self-acceptance. There’s no need to over-inflate your sense of worth or make things appear a certain way to impress others.

I think having the freedom to be boring or do boring things, without this illusory pressure to be a sales-y, smiley, overly ambitious person, is such a huge relief to me. I still consider myself an ambitious person, but I’ve realized that there can be different kinds of worthy ambitions apart from having a certain kind of career…and I don’t have to bend over backwards or contort myself like a pretzel to achieve those things. Again, I get to choose what has meaning, regardless of whether something seems exciting or boring to someone else.

So from now on, I’m going to try being more consistent in the things that aren’t that glamorous but are important for building a good life: eating a plant-forward diet, mindfulness/meditation, exercising and stretching, taking my vitamins and supplements, doing activities that contribute to personal learning e.g. my Italian and German studies, and probably my least favorite thing: cleaning around the house. 😂

I think writing this newsletter is also part of this endeavor of being more consistent, and on the flip side, I’m hardly checking social media and will continue being willfully ignorant of everything happening there. Not feeling the need to scroll has already done wonders for my mental health.

I feel good about the choices I’m making here. The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized that a lot of times, it’s the little things that really matter the most. The kinds of habits you build across your lifetime make or break the kind of life you live, and I’m grateful that it is never too late to rebuild your life.

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Venturing into savory cooking

Unfortunately, because of some repetitive strain injury, I’ve been trying not to over-exert myself. Thanks to my husband and friends who’ve been helping me out in the kitchen, I’m slowly recovering and able to do some light cooking projects.

I was talking to a friend about lentil dishes on New Year’s Day when I had a brilliant idea—instead of me trying to make authentic dal, why don’t I just invite my friend from India who makes the real deal and make it a New Year’s dinner party?

So I invited him and another good friend to come over to celebrate the new year and cook this super tasty dish together. Dal refers both to the lentils themselves and a spiced, simmered lentil dish that’s almost like a curry. Typically it’s eaten with rice, but I think I’ve had it with naan as well.

I wish I had more process shots, but basically making dal involves two different steps: you have to pressure-cook the lentils with some spices, tomatoes, garlic, and water to soften and infuse flavor. On the stovetop, you fry other spices, chilis, chopped onion, and spinach in some kind of fat (we used butter) to draw out more flavor. Then you combine the stovetop mixture into the lentil mixture, and you get something deliciously creamy like this:

I’m not sure why I’m so obsessed with dal, but it strikes the right balance of comfort food creamy with spiced and interesting. I also noticed this time around that the dal we made had this wonderful umami, almost cheesy flavor that I was definitely digging. We had leftovers for days, and I was honestly a little bit sad when the last dregs were gone. My friend graciously gifted me some of the ingredients needed to make his version of dal, so when my hands/arms are feeling better, I’m going to try making it myself.

Eating dal the day after and enjoying it just as much, if not more, because the flavors infused more overnight.

Something the first friend sent me from America’s Test Kitchen: the science behind lentils and why they taste so good with rice. Also as a side note, Japanese rice cookers become confused when cooking Nigerian rice, which we discovered with a slightly anxiety-inducing experiment. We still ended up with delicious rice thankfully…just that the cooking took longer than expected. The moral of the story is that different rice grains have different starch content, and that matters!

The other tasty thing that my husband and I made was Taiwanese three-cup chicken, or san bei ji (三杯雞). It’s called three-cup chicken because it has three liquid ingredients: rice wine, soy sauce, and sesame oil. We’ve been working on a favorite recipe for years now, and I think after adapting the one from Rasa Malaysia, we’re starting to figure out the proportions of aromatics and liquid ingredients we like.

The secret to the tender meat you get at Chinese restaurants is that they soak the meat in a baking soda solution. I won’t get into all of the details of why, but it basically keeps the proteins in the meat from getting too close to each other when heated. When they stick too tightly together, that’s how you get that rubbery, dry texture.

We soaked chicken drumstick pieces in baking soda and water, fried tons of garlic and ginger in sesame oil, and simmered the chicken in michiu (Taiwanese rice wine), soy sauce, and some sugar. Once the liquid thickened to a nice sauce consistency, we threw in an exorbitant amount of Thai basil, which is another hallmark of san bei ji. The aromatics and basil do a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of flavor, so it’s important not to skimp.

It’s funny because I grew up eating this dish occasionally at restaurants but never loved it all that much. Now that we cook it at home, it’s become somewhat part of our regular rotation. The great thing about three-cup is that the Taiwanese people have adapted the concept to other things, like clams and tofu. The flavor profile is just exceptional, so I can’t blame them. 😉

I recently did a riff on this with oyster mushrooms—doing the stir-fry with ginger, garlic, and Thai basil only—and it’s super tasty. The flavors here actually remind me of a different dish: traditional Taiwanese-style clams, which are much lighter in sauce but still have that redolent Thai basil aroma.

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Thanks for reading! It’s amazing to look back on past installments and see how far I’ve come even within the last 4 months. Hopefully things look up as I continue to write.

Have a good week and see you next time 😎