Category: on my mind

It’s strange how I’ve been so busy the past six weeks or so that I haven’t been able to post anything here. And now I see that my previous post was a list of new year’s resolutions, and how off target I am.

Just to reiterate the resolutions, which were not in any particular order:
1) Get promoted.
2) Buy a house.
3) Love ballet.
4) Be in a relationship.
5) Accept that I’ll be 30 soon.

The title of the post is from The Little Prince, which I’ve recently re-read in some of those few waking hours when I’m not at work or at ballet. After this re-reading of it, the book has basically vaulted into my top 10 favorite books of all time. It’s so beautifully succinct in its themes, so forcefully yet whimsically and mysteriously direct in its message.

And maybe these feelings are also compounded by the fact that I also recently read Tuesdays with Morrie, but looking at my life now — in a moment of reflection while having a nice, much-needed chat with a friend after a rather grueling workday — I see that almost none of what I’m doing is essential; and that furthermore, all but one of the resolutions I’ve made is essential. The rest are inconsequential.

What is essential? I think only resolution #4 truly matters.

Take #1, for instance. I’ve been pushing myself this year as a stress test to see where my breaking point is, and I think I’m near the limit. I’ve gone from essentially needing at most one cup of coffee’s worth of caffeine to three recently. Work and other life stresses I believe have contributed to my being sick this year, and while I can’t say for sure, I think stress is also related to this skin allergic reaction. It’s not that I don’t enjoy my work: I do, and I believe that most of what I work on is for the greater good (one of the benefits of working on the search side and not the ads side). Maybe this is not the most impactful way to contribute to the world, but I do truly believe that the projects I’m working on are steps in the right direction towards a vision of the world that we would want to live in.

The work-life balance pendulum swings in one direction and then the other, but when I start having nightmares about work, when I’m able to get 8 hours of sleep a night and still not feel at all rested — these might be signs that I’m overexerting myself. (Writing this, incidentally, means I’ll be short a couple hours of sleep tonight and tomorrow will suuuuck.) I’m straining to figure out how I can be more efficient at work, or how I can offload some projects. It actually does distress me a little knowing that last year I “won” our team’s award for writing the most launch reports (one of the bread and butter tasks of our team), and that the previous two recipients were the only two teammates in the past three years that have quit the company. One can’t say that my coworkers aren’t a smart and ambitious bunch, but working at this sustained level of stress is probably not a great long-term, steady-state solution.

Why do I even want to get promoted? Partly it would be for recognition. There are some interactions that are inherently difficult for my position: it’s part of my job to ask others to do things, and sometimes rank does play a noticeable role. But as long as I can do my job, which is true for the vast majority of cases, the title (and thus promotion) itself should be meaningless. Except for the part regarding compensation.

#2. As much as I keep repeating the mantra that I should be satisfied with what I have — which, objectively speaking, is tremendous — it’s so hard to not try to keep up with the Joneses. My income level is more than enough to let me do anything I can modestly desire. I feel like I should be able to afford to buy a place around here, and yet it seems so difficult to put together that 20% down payment when housing prices are rising so quickly. When you have enough friends your age who are millionaires, I guess it’s impossible not to feel a little envious, even if your materialistic desires are not as great as others’.

Part of me wants to own a place just so that I have an anchor somewhere. A mortgage would give me a much greater incentive to care about working (and #1) and to be vested in the Bay Area. Because while I enjoy living here, this is still not the place that I can readily call home. A part of me still yearns for San Diego. Having a house would also let me more easily get that Welsh Corgi or Scottish Fold.

The thing, though, is that there’s no reason why I can’t wait another year, or a few more years, before purchasing a home. I’m not even sure I’m in the right stage of my life to be owning a place, especially when other parts of my life are not settled down — does it really make sense to own a place if you’re not in a relationship? And if I don’t need to buy a house, I certainly don’t need any additional income from a promotion.

As for ballet (#3), it certainly has its benefits: good physical and mental exercise, a welcome and very different way to spend time outside of work. But it’s also a huge time sink: its very nature requires a huge time commitment to improve, and progress is glacial. (Of any activity, ballet is among the most time intensive to be passably okay at it. You can train for a year and run a marathon. If you do ballet for a year, you’ll still be terrible and look like absolute shit. Although maybe this sentiment is due to the fact that I knew it would be difficult for me even to begin with; the challenge was and is a big draw.) And frankly, the cognitive dissonance of it all has made me want to quit many times over the past few years.

I think my friends are right, though, that I’m not meeting any girls (or at least none within dating range). One of the secret (i.e., secondary) goals of my doing ballet was that I had hoped that I would feel less awkward around girls. I’m not sure that’s worked out at all. And while there’s probably nothing *inherently* wrong with spending practically every non-working, waking hour with teenage girls and married or older women, it’s also not particularly constructive in my search for a girlfriend.

And maybe there’s actually some truth in my friend’s statement that my devastating crush on ___ might be as much due to the fact that she’s conveniently *there*, rather than the fact that she’s, you know, absolutely perfect. (She also implied the same thing when she rejected me. I still don’t agree.)

And as others before me have pointed out, for #5, the other option is to be dead.

And so my friend has brought to focus that I’m currently spending all of my time pursuing #1 (for the sake of #2) and #3 (which admittedly does make me incomparably happy at times), and trying to quell those doubts of #5 and whether I should bother or if I’ll just die alone, that I’ve denied myself the energy and ability to spend on what really matters: #4. Maybe it’s time to re-prioritize my life to focus on what really matters and not these other distractions. That is, to spend time finding someone to love, to be able to share the experience of living with somebody, to finally be able to see the essential.

(Yes, this post takes inspiration from an Abba song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BshxCIjNEjY)

It’s hard to put into words how insanely awesome and crazy the past couple of weeks have been. That confluence of rehearsals plus performances with the busiest of workweeks sure makes life interesting. Throw in conference calls and holiday parties — sheer insanity. I’m physically and mentally exhausted and might be getting sick, but it’s been a lot of fun with ups and downs.

The Nutcracker this year was more special because I felt much less of an outsider. Maybe it’s that the kids were much friendlier and the adults also a more cohesive group, or maybe it’s that doing an actual variation (Russian) — even if poorly — made me feel slightly more legitimate this time around. I know for sure that it’s not the closing of the technique gap: everyone else still dances circles around me (pun intended). In any case, the crazy tech week rehearsal schedule was tolerable even though they punctuated the 10 to 11 hour workdays during the earlier part of the week.

The performance weekend was simply magical. I don’t know how we get through five performances over three days, but that mix of adrenaline and mutual support somehow got everyone through the rather brutal schedule. It’s a rather nice break to drop everything else in life and just focus so deeply on something in which you have not aptitude that it feels really real for a few days. When I get to perform with people who truly believe in what they are doing, it seems so incredibly beautiful that I feel this glimmer of pride and emotion(?).

Some shoutouts: my Clara this year is quite good and is a very promising dancer. I look forward to watching her grow and mature as a dancer — one day, I’m sure she’ll do SPF. Mad props to “Rubies” for nailing SPF on such short notice; she has improved so much over the past couple years, it’s amazing and inspirational. And to KD and YP for dancing beautifully in their roles; they make me believe that this is not a completely foolish errand. And of course “Beauty” is always mesmerizing on stage regardless of her role. And to DC for being a great Mouse King foil and making rehearsals a lot of fun.

I still think those mirliton costumes are kind of cute.

And despite my attempts at dissuading everyone from attending, I really am very grateful for all those friends who showed up and watched the performances. It really means a lot to have you in the audience. One of these years, I will be confident enough to actually invite people to attend.

Also, I really need to learn how to smile onstage. Worst fake smile ever. I guess I can’t jettison all that inner irony/sarcasm in just a few years, but I’m really trying very hard.

Also also, my party scene wife gave me a nutcracker, so now I have one of those.

Finally was able to procure tickets to see Yo Yo Ma! A decade of waiting is about to end early next year. I am uncomfortably excited.

The title of this post is regarding to what I was trying to explain to my friends on our monthly(ish) conference call regarding question #4: life philosophy, and a similar line of thought I had at the theater. Which is that, in the theater, we performed for only a few hundred people at a time. The show itself is probably not life-changing to anyone in any way, yet it feels real and worthwhile. Live performances, though, are always under economic pressure because they just don’t scale well.

On the other hand, the products that I work on at work literally affect a billion people, albeit in generally minuscule ways. Maybe it’s true that by surfacing relevant information to people, we do save lives and improve the wellbeing of humanity as a whole. The reach is surely there. But, saving ten seconds for a billion people isn’t the same as saving one individual’s life. More and more, I wonder if I should be taking a more personal approach towards work, and life in general. The hordes of data do mask the underlying people — entire lives and beings — to some extent, and maybe I have become numb to some aspects of that. When a 1% change means millions of people… it’s hard to even comprehend that sense of perspective. There are all sorts of people out there, both good and bad, that use search.

But it’s also a personal issue, too. How to live my life and imbue it with some semblance of meaning. Isn’t it the personal connections, which are necessarily few, the ones that truly matter? And if so, am I being untrue to myself by not spending time working on establishing and nurturing those? That is, finding a job that cares for individuals as such. But another part of me says that I’m doing a job that I’m relatively good at doing, and that I am probably contributing to society as best as I can, so who cares if it feels a little off. And I still love my job, despite these philosophical tensions, so who knows.

Went to the company holiday party last night. The De Young Museum is actually surprisingly large and quite a swanky venue for the holiday party. It was quite nice that the exhibits and galleries were open; wandering around the museum was fun, and I hope to visit again in a non-holiday-party setting. It’s always fun to see a bunch of engineer coworkers get all dressed up. And omg, “IJ” was even more stunningly beautiful than usual. I do wish that I were a little hungrier, because all the food looked delicious but I hadn’t the appetite. Chocolate-dipped bacon was the highlight of the desserts. Pretty damn good.

And then went to a white elephant party this afternoon with some friends I haven’t seen in far too long (recurring theme of my life). I really should be much less lazy about visiting people in sf, although I feel like maybe they should come down here sometimes, too. It was actually a nice gift exchange, and I’m glad that someone seemed to enjoy the Boyz II Men Christmas album, which I’d hoped would be hilarious. All the gifts were actually pretty good.

This late-night blog post writing caps quite the interesting two weeks. I’m really tired, but in a good way. I suppose we all taste the bittersweet and either learn to love it or hate it.