projects | blog
June 9, 2026 10:36 PM
Leveling Up
I did another V2!
That's exciting! You're leveling up!
Like a pokemon?
Yeah, like a pokemon
When I climb, I don't really care about trying to puzzle out the solution before I get on the wall. If I flash something, that means it was probably too easy for me. I feel the most accomplished when I finally top a climb that I was struggling on.
Like when I'm finally able to get through a climb that used to feel impossible just to do the first move
Or a climb that felt impossible to top
Or a climb that I saw so many people do with ease, but it took me many many failed tries over several weeks, until I finally found the beta that worked for me (the day before it got reset!)
June 30, 2026 12:05 AM
Recovering workaholic
well, trying to recover at least.
What motivates you to work hard?
i was raised to believe that working and earning money is like the most important thing in life, so i've kind of always been a workaholic, and i'm actually really trying to stop being that way since it just leads me to burnout
I think the question implied that working hard is a good thing. It probably is, but that's not how my brain took it.
I had a meeting yesterday that I was absolutely dreading because I dread every meeting because meeting means talking to people about work. It ended up being perfectly fine, but I don't think I'll ever stop dreading meetings for anything really. Call it a meeting and I won't look forward it.
I was doing pretty well with working on my Teochew and focusing on myself and not doomscrolling too much, but then I went on a family vacation for a week, and I also started feeling a little anxious again about all the things I have to do, so I don't think I've really recovered from that yet.
With moving to a new apartment, and trying to register the space as a charity, and all the summer plans, and the endless amounts of things to do in WhatTCSay, well, there's just a lot of things to juggle right now. And I don't know how to juggle. I'm staring at a bunch of boxes in my living room and I really just want it to be cleared and organized and I want to have nice lamps in the room that I'm sitting in at night.
August 26, 2026 1:42 PM
more of the same, but I wanted to write a blog post today
I definitely have way more things that I want to do each day than I have time for. Between What Teochew Say, The Space, practicing Teochew, working on my own Teochew site, exercising, eating, cooking, cleaning, doing other household chores and running errands, helping my family, social things, reading, playing video games, crochet, journaling, my food blog, this blog, ...
well, I can't do them all every day. But I am back from all my summer vacations, so I can at least do some of them each day. It feels like I'm getting a little crazy with all my TODO checklists, but I think it's working for now. I'm still figuring out the whole "balance" thing.
I celebrated a birthday last week! My mom made me an ice cream cake with Trader Joe's Coffee Bean Blast (the best coffee ice cream ever), and I had double birthday dinner with one of my best friends (it's our tradition), and he gave me some homemade bagels, and Dan gifted me a standing desk, glow-in-the-dark stars, and some ice cream (something practical, something playful, something sweet?), and I got some nice birthday wishes from other friends and family.
And right now, I'm sitting in a coffee shop, drinking an iced caramel apple butter latte (I requested this flavor months ago! They listened to me!! ...Maybe. I doubt the owner remembers that I talked to her, but I'd like to think my request subconsciously made an impact while they were deciding on new syrups to order. Or maybe they're just embracing fall flavors. Whatever. I'll take it.)
September 24, 2026 6:17 PM
I wanted to start a blog...framework
If you're reading this, you know I love blogs. I love blogs so much that I have three blogs. You might be thinking, three? This blog and the food blog, but what else? Well, my Teochew site technically has a blog as well. It's just hidden under the "Updates" link at the bottom. But I post updates pretty frequently! (Like waaaay more frequently than the food blog or this personal blog) But I never really considered it my "Teochew blog", no, not until...last Saturday. Because that was when I finally put my Teochew updates on my blog framework.
I have always always been a fan of blogs. I first became interested during the days of Xanga and everyone had a blog back then. A blog wasn't just a collection of entries. You customized your blog. The font, the colors, the obnoxious music playing in the background. And you did that by writing code. (I'm counting html as code) Or maybe by copying and pasting code, it doesn't matter. The fact is that you had a lot of control and it was fun. And it didn't matter what you blogged about. It was just an online journal. You did you and it also allowed you to connect with others remotely which is what the internet was made for in the first place, right?
At some point "social media" took over and blogs stopped being a thing everyone on the internet had. I had my Xanga for years and years, way after it stopped being popular, but eventually I stopped using it too. It was like, the first step in making the internet less fun. The thing is that blogs never really went away, but they became more of a business and marketing tool. It's like you needed a purpose for a blog. But I still enjoyed them! Food blogs, fitness blogs, technology blogs, early retirement blogs. I was reading lots of those.
And I had this yearning to start blogging again myself. I don't know how many times I tried to start a blog and then just stopped after a small number of posts. I had a tumblr, a blogger, a wordpress, even an angelfire website. Maybe I needed a purpose too. And in 2018, I finally had one. I would make my own food blog. My purpose was to show my aunt what I was cooking for dinner. I made sure to post updates frequently and I thought about things like making sure each post had enough pictures. And I put ALL my cooked meals in that blog! When COVID hit, I was food blogging so much and then...I just got tired.
I made an official "Taking a Break" post in my food blog on May 22, 2020, and you know how long it took for me to want to start blogging again? One month, almost exactly. Maybe I didn't need a purpose. Maybe I just needed control again. I needed something that was 100% mine. So I created one incredibly simple static page for a homepage. Then I looked at my Teochew site's code and copy pasted the stuff I used for updates to make the most rudimentary blog framework. And in like a day, I had whipped up my custom-made personal blog site. I had...a sense of pride, really. I had never felt proud of myself for starting a blog in the past. But now I like, actually knew how to code. This felt different.
And it didn't take me long to get back to the food blog either. I basically did the same thing for v2 of the food blog, with the copying and pasting of my blogging script and templates. Eventually I got tired of doing everything twice, so I looked into creating a Mojolicious plugin. And I will admit, that was...a whole project. But I don't know, is that something you'd want to hear more about?
...anyway, while the blog code all started in the Teochew site, I actually had taken such a long break from it, that it never got updated to use the shared framework. Not til last week, when I finally got tired of not having all my nice features that I've added over the years. So if you want to follow along, keep checking my updates page, or use the RSS feed, which I added as part of adopting the framework.
So here I am! Clearly still blogging. Still blogging...about blogging. I just like to share my thoughts online sometimes! I'm trying to think less about putting out the best content and more about, well, posting what feels right to me. In the past half-decade of my life, I've managed to meet a few others that also enjoy reading or writing blogs, which is crazy! Even knowing that one person reads my blog is honestly enough to make me excited about it.
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