2023 Wrapped

Important Personal Events: The Year from Three Lenses

I’ve had a lot of trouble figuring out how to best reflect on this year. There are days when it feels like the world is beautiful and open and full of opportunity and other days where the world is just a slowly tightening noose. I don’t think it’s possible for me to honestly reflect on the last year without acknowledging that my skewed perspectives of events have affected how I’ve operated. I’ve tried to capture that by reflecting on each of these major happenings three times, from three lenses.

Fun or Frivolous?

This year has been incredible in terms of having fun in NYC with my wonderful wife. This is the year that I’ve visited the most art galleries in my time in NY, ranging from small local galleries to huge installations. Two big highlights were 1) randomly wandering into a small store in Midtown that sold items from ancient Greek/Egyptian/Roman antiquity and 2) the Edward Hopper exhibit in the Whitney. Ji and I also watched more live theater in one year than we ever had before. Ji is still obsessed with Josh Groban as Sweeney Todd. I still think about Waiting for Godot, and the loops we trap ourselves in. We’ve also watched a decent amount of live music, a Knicks game (!) and we traveled to Puerto Rico, and we’ve taken advantage of New York’s amazing food scene frequently (maybe too frequently).

Not Just a City, But a Community

My building has been pursuing legal action on the developer of our home due to issues affecting common areas, some taxation issues with the city, and the long term value of the property. This process has been stressful, but has allowed Ji and I to grow our network within the city due to the Whatsapp group of homeowners in our building. I’ve never lived anywhere where we were friends with our neighbors, being invited for meals and Christmas gifts being given to one another. At first I was trying to be as active as possible. I am currently serving as secretary of the board of the building. But honestly it has been exhausting to engage in all the details of legal and property issues. I’m also not the most confrontational person, so awkward disagreements stress me out. Nowadays my participation has waned due to fatigue. Feels like I’ve let a lot of people down since I was so active at first, but luckily others have been around to pick up the slack.

My Career: A Year of Pride and Sorrow

I started the year telling myself I need to feel relieved from the November 2022 round of layoffs at Meta. But further layoff rumors persisted for all of the first half of the year, until I found out I was safe in late May. The uncertainty was definitely the most anxiety inducing part. The second most anxiety inducing portion was all of the changes I was going through. I have been on two extremely different teams this year, with the second team having fairly unclear scope across several different organizations.

The performance rating I’m shooting for this year would be “Meets All Expectations”, which is not in danger of being fired, but somewhere in the median of workers in my role. I’ve received feedback that I’m easy to work with but don’t exhibit creativity/leadership/vision. Essentially I’m performing at the level of my role, not at the level of someone higher ranked than me. This is definitely setting a ceiling on my career prospects within the company.

The root cause of this very medium rating is that I’ve been quite lax in terms of pursuing personal growth within the company. I’ve been struggling with a mix of anxiety and lack of motivation. I frequently find myself being slow at work and not being able to generate as many outputs as I intend. I also frequently find myself confused and unsure of what I should be doing with my day. I am in a well paying and prestigious job that has a lot of benefits and is generally pretty interesting. I’ve worked hard for years jumping from place to place to find a role like this, but I’ve had trouble mustering the focus to grind in the same way I once did.

Losing in the Second Half

In the second half of this year, my mental and physical health took a turn for the worse. I’ve been having pain across my neck, shoulders, hip, knee and foot. I’ve been bed-ridden several times with random viruses, coughs, colds, fevers, and great fatigue. After taking the covid and flu shots on the same day, Ji and I spent the better part of a month in a weird hazy brain fog, where thinking was slower and there was constant fatigue, a lingering throat pain with cough, and some days with bad joint pain. I’ve recently been diagnosed with arthritis in my toes + ligament tears and dislocations on the foot. I might need surgery.

And I’ve been tackling anxiety problems as well, where I’ve had days that I’ve essentially shut myself down and completely wasted the day due to the weight of my anxious feelings. I’ve returned to therapy (both physical therapy and talk therapy) to help with all of this and have tried to stay consistent with mixed results.

Habit Trends:

Getting worse at friendship

Historically I’ve been very proud of how reliable I can be to my friends. When I was a child, I had always been anxious about being accepted by other people. I remember that in first grade I was terrified of telling my parents that I didn’t want to call my classmates to ask about the homework that I had missed. I remember the tightness in my chest, the blurring of my vision, and this deep feeling of shame I had in reaching out to other people. I don’t fully understand what was going on when I was a kid, but the feeling has come back. There’s numerous people that I’ve wanted to reach out to here in NY that I haven’t because that feeling rises in my chest once again.

But beyond that I feel extremely disconnected from the people that I am closest to. I’ve been less responsive to them and I’ve reached out less frequently because of these strong feelings of anxiety that plague me. The deeper issue is that as Ji and I continue building our life here in NY, it feels like I’m taking steps further away from people who knew me from where I came from. So I’m no longer able to effectively perform the rituals that nourish friendships: I can’t ask good follow up questions, I can’t ask or share opinions on events that I think might be relevant to them and their interests, I can’t just hold a conversation. Even if I care deeply about my friends, I’ve felt quite held back in my interactions with them. (A big motivator for this blog post is that I’ve been feeling this way)

What I eat and drink has changed

This year, I’ve changed a lot in my material ingestion patterns with some deliberate effort.

1. Drinking less alcohol - likely because I’ve been less social, but also the hangovers have been so so so so much worse this year than ever before so drinking is less fun

2. Eating less red meat and more chicken, seafood and vegetables - have been trying to do this for both ethical and health reasons. The transition is very difficult and I haven’t felt any real results yet. This will be a slow process to continue next year.

3. Enjoying spicy food - Ji loves spicy food, and historically I can’t seem to handle it well. But lately my spice tolerance has been increasing as I push myself more and more. This has been a fun and exciting area for exploration for me as it unlocks so much more new food that I didn’t used to enjoy. At the moment I think for sufficiently delicious food, I don’t care if it’s spicy. But I still don’t like heat without flavor

Having guests is the new going out

It’s been a little difficult to force myself into social activities, but for some reason my brain is able to get itself excited for visitors. I’m very proud of the still developing home that Ji and I have been putting together. Sometimes I wake up and can’t believe we live in a place so perfect for our needs. It’s become super fun to share it with others and I get a swell of pride when people say nice things about the choices we’ve made to maximize the space. Also hosting people that Ji knows and loves is an interesting experience. It’s enriching to get to know more people within the context of our own home. Ji is an amazing hostess, very focused on the comfort of others, and I’ve been happy to keep filling our guestbook.

Does the nesting ever stop?

The big fun thing from 2022 to now is continually turning this house into a home. Every few weeks Ji and I find a small or a big change that makes this house more comfortable to live in. I’m enjoying decorating and looking for more ideas on how to make the home better. It’s been so great learning our own habits about how we like to cook and clean and trying to help each other out in them. The idea of homeownership has really given me the freedom to acknowledge what I want in a place and to make it happen. My favorite project was the gallery wall in our dining nook!

2023 Consumption:

Music

Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo

I love Olivia’s vocal range and her lyricism (you can’t love anyone cause that would mean you had a heart). I do feel bad that a lot of her songs seem to be about how older men don’t do right by her (Cause girls your age know better). And just the way she screams bloodsucker, fame fucker… So much emotion and power. Loved the hook.

Not Strong Enough by boygenius

Love the vocals, production and the guitar. But the lyrics here had the biggest impact on me of any song this year and I find myself constantly singing the song in the shower. Phoebe Bridgers explained to Rolling Stone: “The two wolves inside us can be self-hatred and self-aggrandizing” and the song speaks to the issues I’ve had within the past year.

Be Sweet by Japanese Breakfast

This year I developed a small Michelle Zauner obsession after reading her memoir: Crying at H Mart. Losing her mother and talking about how she connected to her primarily through food hit me in a real special way given my family’s relationship with food. But there’s something about the chorus of this song that really sticks with me. The ear worm is real… but the killer line for me is when she says “I want to believe in you, I want to believe in something”… It hits me like a challenge to be a better person. The tone in her voice says to me: “you’ve been a disappointment and have hurt others before, but the world is ready to have faith in you again, if you’re ready to reward that faith.” Who wouldn’t want to be forgiven?

A Reflection on Storytelling and Art

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.” - Francis Bacon

I think the same can be said about all sorts of art. I’ve noticed that some pieces of art are like candy. They’re really fun and enjoyable, but not exactly nourishing. This is most of what I enjoy on TikTok. It’s a lot of comedies that I’ve watched as well. However some art and some movies just have a profound effect on me that lingers. There are stories that I may not have enjoyed at first, that I reflect on more deeply and change my opinion on later. These pieces of art are fun to talk about and meditate on and are often open to multiple interpretations.

Strangely however, music seems to not fit well into this candy-nourishment binary. It can be enjoyed repeatedly with little to no increase in the nourishing and challenging experience of the art. Candy-like music doesn’t seem to saturate the same way that other art forms do, at least for me. After all, I’m not constantly going to the same galleries or watching the same stand up comedians, but I am listening to the same songs over and over, even if they’re silly.

That being said, a funny thing happens when you arbitrarily try and digest any given piece of art: the more you focus and meditate on it, the more nourishing it becomes. Jennifer Roberts, an art history teacher at Harvard, assigns an interesting first assignment in her class: go to a museum, choose a painting or a sculpture, then look at it for three hours straight without checking your phone. Apparently when you commit to the exercise, you start slowly noticing small and interesting things about the work that you would never have picked up on a passing glance or even a close inspection. Areas of symmetry and beauty that turn the work from nice to transcendent.

I personally find that I’m constantly discovering new things about my favorite songs, because I listen to them repeatedly and think about them whenever I’m bored. I’ve found extra layers in movies and books when trying to experience them a second time. So that makes me doubt this candy-nourishment binary in art. Maybe finding value and insight is really about sticking around longer and taking the time to focus more? Maybe art-nourishment is not so much about the work of art itself, but about us who receive and interpret the work?

Random Reviews of Stuff I Watched

Waiting for Godot - still not sure what to make of the play and I think of it frequently. The performances were amazing. The script was entertaining. But nothing really happens. Didi and Gogo are Waiting for Godot. I’m waiting to understand why I find their relationship so compelling.

Prima Facie - it’s an interesting experience to watch a play about sexual assault and a broken legal system. It’s far more interesting to watch it with two women and seeing how they connect to it on an emotional level that is clearly different from how I was affected. Glad I experienced it. Jodie Comer is a revelation.

Shrinking - an all time favorite line in any sitcom: “Fuck you Phoebe Bridgers”, which is a sentiment I feel very frequently when her lyrics hit me right in the feelings. Harrison Ford and Jason Segel are great! This show can do better but I really just enjoyed the content and I think it needs time to find its feet more. Hopefully the plot doesn’t go off the rails and be overly drama-based, because I really like the characters and the concept of a therapist solving your problems more directly.

Better Call Saul/Breaking Bad - I’m late to Better Call Saul and did a Breaking Bad rewatch this year. Appropriately rated! I liked Breaking Bad way more and have been noticing more things about the character arcs during my rewatch. I recommend going back and rewatching. What I’ve been noticing more is 1) Walt’s overcompensation for moments in which he’s powerless and 2) How incompetent Walt is viewed by criminals except for Jesse

Past Lives - I think frequently both about immigration and Borges’ garden of forking paths so this movie hit me hard. I noticed that a lot of people look at this movie in terms of who Nora’s soulmate is, but my brother and I had a much larger focus on the aspect of immigration and identity than on just romantic love.

2023 Important Meals

Mala dry hot pot was the spiciest meal I’ve ever enjoyed. We ate during NY restaurant week and the numbness from the Szechuan peppers and the heat from the red peppers were just so interesting and flavorful and delicious. Ji found it on the far edge of her spice tolerance and I was able to finish the meal and enjoy it - which is a first for me. Really excited to explore this more!

Jed made Thanksgiving turkey and it was really incredibly delicious (thanks Ina Garten!). There was something about how he made that gravy that I’d never experienced on a Thanksgiving turkey before. Definitely one of the best dishes of the year on its own, but with the amazing sides + great company having Mom over, this was a real highlight of the year.

Feast of the Seven Fishes was the biggest and most complex dinner Ji and I put together, and it was pretty fun despite being difficult. What started out as a reference to the Bear became a complex production that required multiple weeks of planning and choreography. The food and cocktails and decor came out great and it felt very mature to just execute on ambition. It’s fun to do these kinds of things but I don’t know if we can keep it up.

TikTok is Cheaper than Therapy

I’ve been getting served a lot of content from therapy related TikTok. I found two big insights that I really enjoyed. This doesn’t replace therapy but it was still helpful!

1. People come to therapists with their solutions not their problems

   • A person with anger issues gets angry as a response to problems in their life where-in anger helps alleviate the issue. Someone who doesn’t express emotion clams up because being unemotional helps protect them from something. The list goes on and on.

   • This has helped me be more empathetic to others but also be more accepting of myself (more on this later!)

2. There are practical steps that can break anxious people out of their anxiety spirals

   • One neurodivergent creator who has trouble focusing at work on some days puts on a hotdog costume because the hotdog can do things that she can’t do herself.

   • Novelty helps when you’re not doing well, so going to a new environment can make you more effective

   • My therapist has encouraged me to notice and acknowledge what I’m doing while I’m doing it. This way time doesn’t pass mindlessly.

Lessons Learned:

To be honest I wasn’t sure if I wanted to keep this section here. It seems a little childish to have a moral of the story like this is some kind of fable. But the thing is I still love fables so I’ve kept some lessons here.

A Year of Meaningless Urgency

“The Spirit of the Times is meaningless urgency” - Marilynne Robinson

This year I’ve spent a lot of time doing things that are neither productive nor particularly fun. I watch videos of other people playing video games. I watch the hydraulic press channel. I look at powerwashing videos and lawn care and magnets and trick pool shots and videos of jugglers. I do not particularly enjoy any of these videos and yet they’re mesmerizing and I watch them to their end.

Short form video recommendations have been part of the problem. The videos are structured to maintain your attention and get you to focus on them, even if they’re not valuable. But they’re so demanding of attention that it’s hard to look away, kind of like driving by a car accident and naturally turning your head away from the road. Then finally, the design of the format encourages you to restart the cycle with the next clip.

But the demands of shallow content are not the only thing pulling me away from meaningful activities. Day to day life encourages me to give grudging focus to meetings that I don’t care about and dull routines like laundry and toothbrushing and physical therapy. All of these things demand a lot of my attention and time, and yet I don’t really do them with joy. It doesn’t FEEL like these things add value even if they are part of my duties as an employee and an adult member of the household. The feeling is more relevant here than the actual reality.

Honestly, I’ve had a decent amount of free time and money (of course I could still use more of both). The real scarce currency is focus. When doing things that don’t feel particularly meaningful but must be done, they stress me out. They drain my focus and energy. My solution for this has been to tune out my focus and work on autopilot, at which point I’m likely doing a poor job.

But I’ve slowly been realizing that functioning on autopilot isn’t really a great way to live. During a look back exercise such as this, I can see that living forgettable days that I don’t focus on is functionally identical to never having lived any experiences at all. This happens on one level as an artifact of an environment demanding my attention from all sides. But on another level, it happens because of the choices I make in allocating my focus. Solving meaningless urgency requires me to resist the allure of false urgency and to sharpen my focus on activities that are the most meaningful for me.

Avoiding Confrontation / Confronting Avoidance

“Doing stuff that matters entails discomfort and confronting your limited control—and that’s scary.”

— Oliver Burkeman

For as long as I remember, I’ve been a procrastinator. This year has been way worse than ever before. I stay up extremely late into the night to catch up on work that I had intended to do weeks earlier. Even worse still, when I procrastinate I have been unable to stop worrying about the thing that I’m procrastinating on. It’s not like I’m doing anything particularly fun or meaningful while I procrastinate (see section above). And yet, I constantly am worrying and still not doing the thing I’m worried about.

“Worry, at its core, is the repetitious experience of a mind attempting to generate a feeling of security about the future, failing, then trying again and again and again — as if the very effort of worrying might somehow help forestall disaster.”

I’ve been blanketed with this dreadful sense of worry and anxiety all year and yet I’m unable to muster the strength to pull myself out of it. So I’ve spent a lot of time and therapy trying to figure out why I’m procrastinating and worrying so much without doing anything.

In therapy, I’ve learned that procrastination is basically an avoidance strategy. There’s something you don’t want to do so you don’t do it. The big question though is: what exactly am I avoiding? After a lot of contemplation I realize that my constant worry is a means for me to cope with negative emotions that I experience when performing tasks that are “productive”. Thus, even if they are important activities that ostensibly add value to my life, my procrastination while worrying acts as a coping mechanism for the negative emotions.

1. Powerlessness

   • TikTok called me out once with a video explaining that overthinking is just pretending that you’re trying to decide but really trying to find a way to eliminate consequences of a decision. Procrastination gives me the illusion of control over outcomes. When I’m working on something important to me, the outcome is firmly out of my control once I complete my portion. As long as I haven’t started yet, the outcome still has the possibility of being positive based on my own inputs. The reality, however, is that I can do perfect work and not get the ending that I want. This is an uncomfortable reality that I don’t enjoy facing.

2. Incompetence/Failure

   • In the course of completing a piece of work or practicing something, it’s really emasculating to encounter my limitations of knowledge, intelligence, creativity etc. I’m very used to being the person with the answers and the direction, and in situations of ambiguity I am frequently unable to figure out what to do on my own. The irony is that dealing with ambiguity is the only way to get better at dealing with ambiguity. But I avoid it because it makes me feel so worthless and incompetent, especially when I inevitably make mistakes. In my work I’ve been feeling very incompetent and very unsupported, and while working, the feeling gets worse.

3. Meaninglessness

   • As I go about my day, I notice that what I’m doing isn’t really what I want to be doing. I’m doing work to make Zuck richer. A lot of my work rewards a certain type of showmanship where I must trumpet my own successes and frame them effectively. It doesn’t really give me joy to do that type of work. I like answering questions and solving problems. I don’t like spending time explaining to people why what I’ve done is valuable. So I often find myself getting frustrated when I work on something because it feels stupid and pointless.

4. Fear of Rejection and Judgment

   • A lot of what I do ends up being submitted to the judgment of others. As I continually work on an output, I start imagining what other people think of my work and my anxiety levels increase rapidly. I realize that in a lot of the spaces where I’ve been successful, I’ve felt much much safer from judgment. This gave me the chance to fail without feeling hurt and rejected by others. My mere presence and enthusiasm felt like a contribution. At work, I feel very scrutinized for any piece of output. I feel like the rug will be pulled out from under me and I’ll be fired any minute, as my value is only in how my coworkers perceive me.

These are really big feelings that I’m experiencing and this year I’ve been succumbing to the negativity more frequently and with greater intensity. I’ve picked up a few effective coping strategies that have been helpful for me. They don’t always work and I can’t always do them, but it’s been helpful for me.

1. Ignore Big Rocks and Focus on Moving Pebbles

   • A lot of typical advice says that you need to do the most important things in your life first, then fill in the gaps with the less important things. They use that metaphor of filling a jar with big rocks, then pebbles, then sand. And I’ve been a big proponent of this thinking in the past. The issue with me though is that the big rocks have become a little bit too overwhelming such that I don’t feel able to move them. And because I prioritize the big things first, I end up not doing anything except attempting the big rocks and failing, with nothing to show. What has been more effective is to do whatever small thing I can do and to try to shrink the big rocks wherever I can. Advancing my career and securing the family’s future is ideal, but not always possible. But doing things that are comfortable and helpful (like laundry or small work tasks) is good enough. A pebbles first mentality has helped me make bigger tasks less daunting and to feel like I have some wins.

2. Avoid “Should”-ing

   • I tend to use words like “should”, “must” or “ought” to describe the duties and obligations that I think the best version of myself should be accomplishing. “I should work on this” or “I must complete this” or “I ought to be more of that”. This has historically been a strong motivator for me and pushed me towards decent enough achievements. However, this type of language sets an impossible bar for myself. There are unending and unrealistic standards that I set for myself. And in the rare case that I meet some kind of standard, I find new ones that I’m failing. Using words like “should” makes me feel guilty, ashamed, and constantly failing. The reality is that most of the “shoulds” of my life are manufactured. It simply isn’t possible for things that are beyond my ability to be “must” do’s. While I can be proud when I accomplish things, there is no need for me to feel ashamed when I don’t.

3. Accept the Circumstances and the Outcomes

   • I need to deal with the fact that the positions I’m being placed in are often unfair and difficult, such is life. I need to accept the fact that to get the things that I want, I am going to experience lots of unpleasant emotions. I need to accept my own limitations: that it’s impossible to always be more than you are, and to constantly ask more from yourself. I need to accept that my perceived best version of myself is unrealistic and that it’s ok to rest and do less and surrender to impulses sometimes.

And It Takes and It Takes and It Takes

“The more you focus on using time well, the more each day begins to feel like something you have to get through, en route to some calmer, better, more fulfilling point in the future which never actually arrives.”

— Oliver Burkeman

Around halfway through the first act of the musical Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton and his eventual killer Aaron Burr have a confrontation of philosophies on love. Hamilton says to Burr: “I will never understand you. If you love this woman, go get her.” Burr responds in monologue, with what I think is the best song in the play: Wait for It. He rationalizes to himself that his patient and opportunistic approach in life will be rewarded at some point. (If there’s a reason why I’m alive when everyone who loves me has died, then I’m willing to wait for it.)

All my life I’ve felt like I’m waiting for something too. When I was younger I believed that one day my time would come, and fate would call upon me to awaken the latent greatness within me. I believed that life would lead me places naturally, and I would one day flick a switch and my greatest dreams and ambitions would come true. I identify strongly with Burr because of this. He says “I’m not falling behind I’m not running late. I am not standing still, I am lying in wait.” and I realized that I told myself something similar. I’m not idle or lazy. I’m a hunter getting ready to strike.

Like Burr, I have always admired, envied and been bewildered by the mavericks of the world. Hamilton doesn’t hesitate, he exhibits no restraint and he takes and he takes and he takes. He keeps winning anyway. A lot of the people in my life I admire have this mentality of just doing the thing they want to do, not focusing on anything but the task at hand. They want to do it, so they just do it without hand wringing. And as things get more difficult, they stay resilient and keep pushing to the next level.

When I’ve been assertive in pursuing the things I want, they work out fantastically: my marriage, my career and life in America, my successes during University - all of them were generated from the Hamiltonian force of will to make uncomfortable changes even as I get disappointed. With all the joy in my life in recent years, it’s been a bit harder to push myself into discomfort for the big dreams. My life has been so good recently that waiting for the next thing is pretty comfortable and nice. It seems that once again I’ve started to wait for big things to come instead of being unrelenting in my pursuit of big things in my life. Maybe patience isn’t such a virtue for a person like me.

Sights I See From ‘23 - 5 year Horizons

In the Rearview Mirror

2018 was a tumultuous year for me. I had just been promoted for the second time at my job in Chobani (in less than a year!) but I was trying hard to make my way out to build a tech career. I was frustrated at the lack of coding and was getting seriously bored with the repetitiveness of the work I was doing. So I ended up starting at Pernod Ricard to start earning more money and working in a new environment. 2018 was the end of my doomed relationship with my ex. 2018 was my first full year in Brooklyn and the time that I really began exploring the non-Manhattan portions of NYC. This was also my first year living with Monica.

Honestly this time in my life is kind of a blur looking back. I was still very money motivated at this point: playing around with investments, making career decisions just based on money, and trying to remain very frugal. I was hurting badly from staying in a relationship that had already run its course and soured, until our breakup in the latter half of the year. And I was kind of just trying to survive a lot of big and difficult changes in my life by taking things day by day.

I think of 2018 as kind of a transitional year, saying goodbye to big parts of my life, settling into corporate America, and living in a new place. This was also when I was really starting to settle into the fact that my long term prospects were best placed in America. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had a lot of good things ahead of me.

The View Ahead

The big thing I’m hoping for is to be a dad within 5 years. However, I think there’s some tangible goals that I want to have fulfilled before this happens. I hope we have more money and our careers are taking off. There are money numbers that I want to be at to sustain the lifestyle we want. At this point, Ji and I will likely be choosing whether to sell this apartment or not, given that a one bedroom would be too small for a growing family. We would know by then how good this apartment is as a financial investment, although it’s been excellent for non-financial reasons.

Tangible financial goals are one thing, but the bigger thing is that I want to be the type of person that’s ready to be a good father. I want to be more mature in my decisions and more measured in my emotional responses. I want to be someone who can consistently activate himself in the important day to day tasks of fatherhood. I want to be someone who can provide more than just the bare minimums. I want to be a good role model and represent the values Ji and I hold dear. And I want to be a person who can bring magic to a home.

But even more than just being a good father and husband and person, I’m hoping to feel like I’m worthy of joy. Feels like I’ll need way more therapy for that to ever happen.