Winnie Lim

I think one of the greatest gifts of having awoken from what feels like a long slumber is how I appreciate all the small little joys in life now. I smile when I look out of the window every morning when I see blue skies, because though blue skies are relatively common in the Mission, they are still not a given. I appreciate the gray, rainy days in between because they make me value the days with sun rays and blue skies even more.

I seem to be operating on a different conscious level and I am not sure if I can accurately describe it in words. I am more conscious about every little detail, I have started to care a lot more about things I never used to care about. I never really cared about living in chaos, now I prefer to have my living environment clean and organized. I used to eat anything I wanted, now it makes a difference whether my food comes from a sustainable source or not. Now, it has come to a point whereby I feel guilty for throwing a banana peel in the garbage as opposed to the compost bin.

Having lived so much of my life in Singapore, it never used to mean much when we waste food or throw rubbish in chutes. The scariest part of living in a comfortable modern society is how much we take resources for granted. I still maintain one of my most treasured experiences in my life was to spend a few days in a true eco resort at Palawan, Philippines. Till today, three years later, I still don’t waste toilet paper because I have lived a few days without it. In fact, I have become so much more conscious of how much water I use after living in that resort as well, because over there, there is no such thing as piped water. Everything comes from a natural source and everything is precious.

I still feel incredulously lucky to be in SF. I get the best of both worlds. Cutting-edge technology and hippie-back-to-the-basics-and-nature lifestyle. I just need to walk a few blocks away before I get to buy food from sustainable sources. Every Thursday evening in the Mission, I get to walk through a farmer’s market where I can buy oranges straight from a real farm. Not organically “labelled” or “certified”. A real farm. From a real farmer.

Right now I am typing this entry eating organic walnuts, unsalted and unseasoned. They taste like the best thing in the world. I am actually contemplating the unthinkable of being a vegetarian. Having loved bloody steaks all my life, if I ever take this step it would be huge.

The real reason though, is not really because I am in SF. I am just so preoccupied with being alive now so much that I don’t want to waste any moment. I want to maximize every breath I take. I want my cells to be efficient so that I can maximize the output of my energy. Which means I should stop making them work so hard to get rid of waste by eating less toxins to begin with. It has become very apparent to me now because my senses are heightened now that I am out of my slumber. Partially it is because I am sleeping really well now, so that gives me a lot more clarity than I have had my entire life. So each time I ingest a typical meal, it has become painfully obvious how hard my body is working to digest the food. When I simply eat less or better, my body feels light and free.

I have never noticed this pattern so much, I guess it is hard to notice intricate body patterns like this when I was always preoccupied with not having enough sleep and just coping with survival.

Having observed this subtle but profound change in myself, it makes me wonder about things on a macro perspective. If we all care a little bit more about each other, ourselves and our finite resources, if we remove a little bit of stress from our everyday lives, if we started to be concerned about things that truly matter, if we stopped being so obsessed about trying to prove ourselves to the world but instead, start to work on the things we love.

Maybe, just maybe, we would be a little more aware of how precious it is to be alive and how much it is a gift to be part of the human race. To really love life and not be afraid of death, to be really alive and not just avoiding death.

I never, ever, expected myself to think that it is a gift to be human. I have always had a disdain for the human race, if I may be honest. I was not proud to be human. But these recent years have allowed me to experience how incredible the human race can be, if only we focus on the things that truly matter.

I think real change starts within. It is always easy to point fingers at what is wrong with systems but are we even willing to take that step to change ourselves? If we don’t even want to try a little harder to be kinder, eat better, live healthier, have more compassion for the less fortunate, then what right do we have to point fingers up above?

I would like to believe that now, when people come into my path, they may feel a little different, because I think they would see the light I have perpetually shining in my eyes. How happy I am just to be.

You know people used to ask me, “how are you”, and I wouldn’t know how to reply without being impolite. These days, people ask me “how are you”, and I reply back with “great” – and I mean it every single time.

For the first time in my life, I will admit, I am grateful to be human. And I am very grateful to be in the company of the exceptional human beings I come across.

I used to be one of those pointing fingers at broken systems without caring how broken I was myself. I blamed the system for breaking me, which to a certain extent may be true. But it is not efficient nor productive to keep on pointing fingers at broken systems. What is it I can do? That is a better question instead. They say, be the change you want and I used to roll my eyes a little when I hear that, because I would be thinking, there’s no point trying to change myself when the entire system is broken.

I was wrong. History has always been made because there were simply crazy people who believed things can change. If you start believing, even if you were delusional, one day you may just be right. If you never believed in anything, then nothing exceptional would ever happen.

They say a leopard doesn’t change its spots. My family and friends who have known me for more than three years, can attest to it that I am one of those leopards who not only changed its spots, but probably grew a technicolor coat.

I believe in miracles, because I am one.

For no one, someone & everyone in particular:

You. Our eyes first met in a vortex where the past, present and future intersect. You. Made me remember my past, inspire my future and embrace the present. You. For me the stars, the moon, songs, doors, windows, tiles, pizzas will never be the same again. You. Whom I want to share my moments of joy, discovery and vulnerability with. You. I imagine your shadow with me as I walk down the streets taking in all the sights I imagine would delight. You. I never really knew and will never know but somehow stubbornly stayed on as part of my psyche.

But you. Can only stay on as part of me and not with me. Because you. As you I loved and I would preserve, but as Us it wouldn’t be you nor would I be. Me. Briefly touching purity and not bearing the thought of tainting.

You. Could exist in a world where it is simple. With just me and you. Where there is no carrying of weight and the taunting of destiny.

But I. Can only strive to be the person you may love and be proud of. And that I. Cannot be that person that belongs to an Us. For I. Only know love in its all-consuming form. That I. The person who would do anything for love, would become a person ironically less deserving of your pride.

For you. I would stay a thousand miles away. Figuratively and physically. Because for you. The best way to love you, is to fulfill my own destiny. Even if that means.

We will never be. Us. There can never be.

Sidenote: I debated with myself whether I should publish writing like this piece here. I concluded that it is my journal (albeit a public one) with my writing and so here it is. Writing is my first love before I discovered anything else and writing these pieces put me in touch with my roots again. I was conscious people judging my writing but again, I would rather publish bad writing and try to be as authentic as possible than to be paralysed and not put a single word out.

This post is partially inspired by Hello, Stranger, Goodbye. & obviously real-life influences.

One month ago I arrived at SFO in jeans folded up to the knee and in my flip flops. I was asked if I was cold and I smugly said that this weather is nothing compared to what I experienced in Vancouver.

I take those words back.

These days I wear some heattech long sleeve tee from Uniqlo and a thick hoodie even in my own apartment. I sleep with three layers of bedding. And I still wake up cold.

Honestly, it still has not hit me yet I am in the place I most want to be. I am still waiting for my own reaction and I wonder if my reaction is this non-reaction. I am very privileged to be here and I feel like thinking of what to do what all that privilege scares me. I tell myself since I have done so much and waited so long to be here, I should simply enjoy the experience for now without thinking too deeply about it.

But at the back of my mind I never really stop thinking about it. This is my favourite quote these days and if you are one of those lucky (or unlucky, depending how you see it) ones whom I’ve emailed, it is attached to my latest email signature:

“When you know you’ve been blessed and know you have a set of gifts, how do you maximize those gifts so you’re impacting the greatest number of people?” – Michelle Obama

I think this is a question that everyone of us should think about everyday. If not, if I am one of those who actually care about the answer to this question, then I feel even more responsible for seriously contemplating it.

My time here is a gift, this one month feels like I am cheating – like I am on a diet and I am cheating by eating indulgent desserts (actually quite literally too). Time flies by so quickly and we’re almost one month down in 2013, I know if I am not conscious about it, time may just spin past me and before I know it, my time is up here without me even trying to accomplish what I’ve set out to do.

I haven’t had many regrets in my life but this will be one huge regret if I allow myself to be caught up in the illusion of busy-ness without purposefully contemplating how I want to carry out my existence here.

It is really hard to find a balance between wanting to be productive on everything I care about and knowing when to simply take a break and just breathe. How would I discern when I am truly letting myself breathe and when I am really wasting time?

It is a continuous journey to learn I guess.

I have also been learning how to eat better. Instead of going to one extreme and only eating only healthy food, I am trying to be conscious of my choices for every single meal. Since I am a huge believer of kaizen, so I should be grateful I am at least no longer drinking coke three times a day. I’ll celebrate the small wins, definitely.

I wish to note this down in this entry for the future me to remember – the significance of Aaron Swartz’s passing to me. Each of these impacts me differently. Like Aaron I was obsessed with David Foster Wallace, because he had managed to put into words so beautifully how dark the struggles of depression can be. My heart still breaks a little each time I  think about DFW or whenever he’s mentioned, not really because he’s gone, but because I understood why he’s gone. I still remember Ilya Zhitomirskiy. I don’t forget these.

Unlike most people I know, I don’t really “move on” from my past struggles. I remember all of them. Every single shard of pain, I remember. I do not hold on to them, but they are like little pieces of jigsaw which I honor in the entire fabric of my soul. Because I do not forget, they become a source of energy and motivation. They remind me why I am doing this.

We can mourn, point fingers, mope and criticize all day long, but what are we doing about it?

What am I doing about it?

I am trying to be the change that I want.

The world used to depress me. A lot. Looking at it from a macro perspective, society can be so screwed up that I have often wondered why I even bother to carry on living as part of it. One fine day, I do not know what really happened – was it an accumulation of unexpected positive experiences, or was it because I was consistently shown unconditional love by different people – but a switch flipped.

Instead of seeing a world that was grossly unfair, I saw a world with people who are trying all they can to change things. These people are a minority but they exist. Now, do I want to continue lamenting about a world that was grossly unfair and continue to be miserable, or do I at least attempt to be one of those people who are trying to change things?

I don’t know if I can. Sometimes I don’t even know whether I trust myself enough. However I am contemplating hard on it and being kaizen, I think that’s a good start.

Being surrounded by people who want to change things helps my thought and process. It is not the entrepreneurs here in SF whom really move me (sorry!) but most of the time it is the common folk. The Caltrain drivers who drive down the same boring route but still make an effort to make quirky announcements, the counter staff that gives a big smile to everyone and treats everyone the same, even that old lady who paid her in coins, ordinary people who make a huge effort to be kind despite of and in spite of.

I see compassion being played out here in SF over and over again, at a level of intensity I have never experienced before. It was the same in July 2011 and it is still the same upon my return this time. One month on in SF, every day I experience generosity be it directly towards me or through my own observation.

Along with it comes other issues in the city, but this is a tradeoff I’ll make in order to experience the diversity I see.

I am very lucky to be here, hopefully some time in the future, I’ll have a better answer to how I want to maximize this privilege in order to pay it forward in the most effective way possible.

I have been writing a post a week and somehow I would like to upkeep the rhythm. And for me, that’s another secret of life. Establishing and maintaining different rhythms and momentums in your daily life.

I used to write whenever I felt compelled to but as a creative professional that is the eternal struggle. When inspiration hits it is like magic. But what about the rest of the time? There is a reason why so many writers and artists ended up insane or suicidal. It is truly depressing to encounter a block. You start to entertain thoughts like, what if it never hits again?

A lot of us tend to find it a lot easier to go into creative sprints when we were young. As we age, these moments tend to be few and far in between. I personally don’t think it is a matter of linear or physical age. As we grow older, we just become a lot more cynical, we don’t allow ourselves to have a childlike mind anymore. We pack our minds up too much. We don’t have space anymore.

One truly life changing habit for me is – drum roll – learning how to make my bed and doing it consistently every morning. That seems so trivial right? Well, I lived 30 years of my life without caring where I slept, much less how my bed looked like. I never thought or believed it mattered.

It all changed when I rented an apartment for a couple of months while I was in Vancouver, the landlord handed over an immaculate apartment to me. I remember feeling like I was stepping into wonderland, especially so because I just moved over from a shared apartment that wasn’t comfortable. So, it was the first time I was truly living by myself and in a really beautiful apartment. I wanted to keep that feeling, that feeling of, “wow”, when I step into the apartment each time I returned to it.

And so I did. The next morning I woke up, the sheets were in a huge mess, it was cold in Vancouver so there were at least four layers of bedding. It was tempting to leave it in a ball, my old theory was, I’m going to sleep in a ball anyway, what’s the difference? But a switch flipped in me that day – I remembered that I wanted to keep that “wow” feeling. Therefore I spent the next thirty minutes making my bed.

Surprisingly, I felt really, really good after that battle with bedsheets.

I felt even better returning to that apartment after a long, tiring day out, seeing a well-made bed. When it was time to sleep, each time getting into that bed never felt less comforting.

That triggered a whole series of new habits/rules/momentum for me. I never leave dishes in the sink for more than a day anymore, I make sure everything in my living environment is organized to a certain extent. Each time I return home, I have a huge smile.

I still have that big smile on my face, everyday now, when I return to my apartment in SF and see a well-made bed.

Why do I call it life changing?

We are so caught up in the busyness of life that we start to be trapped into thinking that there’s no time for anything. Making the bed? Too trivial compared to my world-changing work. I should save that five minutes (yes I’ve gotten better at it) and go straight to work.

What we don’t realize is, when we pack our brains and day up with all that busy-ness, there is no space for us to breathe. Or to remember what is truly important. Making my bed for me is a ritual that reminds me that I should honor my own time, well-being and inner peace no matter how busy or chaotic my life gets.

I kid you not, honoring oneself is hard. I don’t know what’s with us these days, we like beating ourselves up so much. Achieving that inner-equilibrium is a challenge. We numb ourselves with more work. I can have the best ideas in the world but what I’ve discovered is – that inner equilibrium translates into the quality of my thoughts, ideas and work.

And how do I maintain that equilibrium? Apart from little rituals to honor myself, I keep a rhythm in my life. Some people call them habits.

Like I’ve mentioned earlier, I used to wait till I am inspired to write. Now, I’ll try to write a post a week and see what unfolds as I start. And it seems like a story gradually unfolds anyway.

I used to be so afraid that bad writing/work will come out of my own hands so much that I would just end up in self-induced paralysis. But the reality is, apart from rare moments of brilliance maybe some of us are lucky to have a few times in our lifetimes, most quality work is iterative. That’s another life-changing concept I had to learn. Yes, it could start off as crap but give it some time to flourish. Ideas have a life on their own, if only you have the courage to get them out of your hands in the first place.

The other part of the equation is learning to trust myself. That instead of worrying that crappy work would start flowing out of my hands, I’ll just start something and trust that it will turn out well enough, eventually.

So why am I being so public about learning how to make my bed only at age 30? I guess I just wanted to share that, it is really never too late to start learning something new. If you ever start to think that oh well, since I’ve already at X number of years so it is too late by now. Says who? Are you going to waste more years or are you going to make this one count?

They say a leopard never changes its spots – I have found out it does, only with the right intrinsic motivation.

And I want to write a post a week no matter how crappy I think my writing is, because I think it is far more important for the old me to look back and know that each week is lived more purposefully and meaningfully than I have thought. I am writing my own story, week by week.

I actually want to know myself as a human being – how I have lived, 50 years from now. What sort of person was I in the year 2013? What went through my thoughts? Did 5 decades just blink past? Writing something each week automatically gives each week a story, no matter how boring it was. By the time I am 80, if I have lived till that age, I would have accumulate a ton worth of stories. Crappy or not, they are mine to tell.

I am experiencing a period of peace – inner and outer. I know life will always has its ups, downs and curveballs, so for now I would just like to take a breather and just be. In modern times it is increasingly harder for anybody to breathe freely and I know there may come a time soon again that I may not have the luxury to breathe this way again, so all I want to do is to think of nothing. Apart from work, that is.

I tell people I need to recover, they automatically assume that I am recovering from my move across oceans. But I am actually recovering from one year of being in limbo and prior to that, years of chronic fatigue.

In short, I have never felt so whole. Like everything is integrated the way it should be. I have always considered myself broken for all my life but now, I feel whole.

I have lived my life like a tightly wound elastic band, especially for the past year. There was so much uncertainty, though I learned and I enjoyed lots of moments, I felt like I was in a constant state of tension. Where was I going to be, what if things didn’t work out? I had a thousand questions swirling in my head, I try as much as I can to live in the now, but I am only but human. For all the strength I had to put upfront, subconsciously I was fraught with worries.

Now, I feel the elastic band slowly unwind and it is actually kind of disconcerting. I look back at my entire life and I don’t ever remember being truly relaxed and free before.

I guess I just want to take things as naturally as possible and ease myself into some normalcy. Being part of a hustling start up means there is no such thing as having true normalcy, but I’ll take whatever I can outside of work, thank you.

I have tons of things I want to do once I am recovered and settled, among them I want to try rock-climbing, meditative yoga and hand-lettering, but just not right now.

I have no idea when my next pressing life challenge will be, so this is a opportune time for me to recharge. Carefree and playful? I have never felt that in a long, long while.

I can be an asian over-achiever in my own convoluted way but I will give myself permission to simply be and have as much fun as I can. For being fully engaged with life means to stretch yourself as far as possible, with periods of adequate recovery in between.

It has been two weeks since I’ve moved to SF, mostly I’ve been busy at work and doing all the paperwork that I have to do as a new transplant to the city. Things moved so quickly since my petition to work in the states got approved, that I didn’t have time to react. I had to be preoccupied with more paperwork after the petition approval, then the embassy interview, and thereafter just preparing to move.

But along my long walks in between, there are moments of silence and inner-peace when I feel an immense gratitude. Grateful, because I knew how hard it was for me to be here. Immensely grateful, because I remembered the state I was in before I came to San Francisco for the first time.

I was basically a living dead the year leading up to my first SF trip. I was having migraines everyday, I couldn’t sleep, I was extremely fatigued, I could no longer feel. I was just numb, going through the motions everyday and hoping every single day that I would not wake up with a migraine. That was all I could hope for. To not feel that debilitating pain in my head. That was my life. I couldn’t dare to dream or even dare to live like anyone else.

Perhaps people would be curious why I was even in that state in the first place. It is a complex myriad of factors, but to put it simply I was under too much stress from multiple areas of my life for a extended amount of time. Both internally and externally, micro and macro. You know those stories you read in newspapers where people die from stress? That was almost me. I was having palpitations constantly, I lived in a constant state of tension, I was always worried about the days ahead.

And then there is that dull, hollow pain in the core of my being that I carried for most of my life. An inexplicable sadness for life.

It would take me a long, long process to even understand why I was carrying so much pain with me.

The gift of having been there is that now, it allows me to see my life in a very different perspective and it allows me to be grateful.

For I will never forget how it had felt to be that way.

All the flowers I see blooming now, the birds I hear singing, the smiles I see on strangers’ faces, the incredible vast blue skies, the sheer beauty of sunlight – I can go on and on, everything gives me joy and gratitude. When I remember how I used to not be able to sleep, waking up every morning now makes me smile.

I see so much love and beauty in people and I remembered how all I could see was the ugliness of human beings. The world is full of promise to me and it used to be full of despair.

And all because in July last year, I came to San Francisco.

The city that changed the way I viewed the world. That life could be lived in a different way. I am sure some people would understand how I had felt, perhaps for them the city had been New York, London, Melbourne or just somewhere they feel like they belong to.

For the first time in my life, I finally felt like I belonged somewhere.

I started smiling a lot when I was first here last year. I smiled at brown paper bags, I smiled at some dude singing and playing his guitar while walking on the streets, I smiled when people say thank-you to the bus drivers, I smiled when the BART driver made us laugh with his jokes, I smiled at street-side stalls selling home-baked cookies for an animal shelter, I smiled at how a homeless person was treated graciously by a shop owner, I smiled when suddenly, the whole world seemed to be smiling at me.

A lot of people like their lives here. That was something new to me. I see a light in their eyes, I hear the vibrations of their voices when they speak, I feel their energy when they move. They are alive. They feel alive.

I had never experienced such life before. That it was possible to be surrounded by people who are so alive and so in love with life.

For once, I started to believe that I, could be in love with my life too. Yes, that person who was as good as living-dead.

I look back and I start to connect the dots. There is this Chinese saying that says, “first bitter, than sweet” – I finally know what this truly means.

If my life was a charted line-graph, it was always so low, that everything now is a high.  That all the unfortunate events only served to remind me of my extremely good fortune now. It doesn’t allow me to take things for granted. Just like if you had known the feeling of starvation before, you’ll never forget how precious food becomes. Or well, you can be extremely stingy about food but that only happens with shortsightedness, that deliberate scarcity will never remove that feeling of lack.

I haven’t even begun to write about how long and trying was the entire process to get my work visa, I’ll save that for another story, but all the more it makes me appreciate where I am now.

I am beginning to see roadblocks very differently now. Everything really happens for a reason. Even that long visa process only served to make me a strong, better, happier person.

And therein lies another big secret of happiness. It is all about perspective. Perspective allows you to frame everything with a different context. You can either choose to become bitter with life when you encounter roadblocks or make that roadblock a stepping stone instead. You can either feel a sense of entitlement to everything you have or know that they are all god-given gifts to you. You can be weighed down and be filled with despair by all the unfortunate events that’s happening in the world, or choose to celebrate the ones who are making attempts to make this world a better place.

I could have used my pain as a source of bitterness and I will not shy away from the fact that I had done so for most of my life. It has become a source of strength instead, for everything that has happened in a magical timing to allow me to flip that switch – I am grateful.

I was developing a split identity between my two blogs, so I’ve decided to put them both in permanent archive-mode and start anew.

It is symbolic in many ways, mostly because I am no longer the same person who wrote in those blogs, but they will always remain a part of me. Tied to this, I am also no longer afraid of being myself in every sense of what it means, so I no longer need to ‘hide’ behind ambiguous blog titles. The url of this new site says my name and that it is how it is going to be.

I was not really worried about writing authentically online, I mean you just have to do a google search to know what I’ve been writing on the web, but somehow I was never ready to put my name on it. It is the last 5% I couldn’t commit to, I guess.

I would never have been who I am now or where I am if I didn’t go through the entire cathartic process of writing my thoughts on those two blogs. I will never want to hide that part of me because it is so integral to who I am now. But I am setting off on an entirely different tangent in my life now. It is like I acknowledge and honor that part of me, but I no longer want them to weigh me down.

I believe in the power of authenticity and storytelling, so I am not going to stop writing authentically. It will just be a different voice, that’s all, a much happier, more positive voice. I don’t have any delusion that everything will be rosy from now on, in fact I am looking forward to going through the ups and downs, I actually have a thing for the downs – I have grown to really appreciate how much they make me stronger. I look back now and I smile at them. All of them.

Truth be told, I am not really used to this. It hasn’t sunk it yet that I am finally in the city who made me discover myself, I am also not really used to my new self. My new-found sense of self and liberty. It is so empowering to know that I am free to make almost any choice I want now, that I don’t really know how to deal with it. I not only want to deal with it, I want to deal with it efficiently.

My first 30 years of my life were not wasted, but now that I am no longer really finding myself or my purpose, I don’t want to waste any more of the time left in this lifetime. There are so many things I want to do, I have lived in an existence whereby I was not incentivized to do anything at all so this is pretty new to me.

The point of my life when I actually feel and truly believe that anything is possible. That my heart is bursting with love for this world. That I really want to love and hug all my friends who stood by me. That my parents is fully supportive of how I want to live now, despite us having had a difficult relationship for most part of my growing up years. For the very first time in my life, at age 31, my dad texted me to tell me that they are proud of me.

For the first time in my life, I don’t have any negative influence in my life. Nothing. Nothing to wear me out or pull me down.

In reverse, I have love. In everything. I am in a city I love, I have work that I love, I love every single member of my team, I know I have family who loves me, I have friends who have demonstrated incredible support for me even though honestly, I wasn’t really worthy of it. I have a network of like-minded people who want to accomplish ridiculous goals like me, I no longer feel alone on this path. There are only more awesome connections to make, I am sure.

I will really need time getting used to this. And you know what I’m going to do once I am done getting used to this? I am going to find every means possible to pay this forward. I have been lucky and I know it. I have worked really hard, but I know for a fact that other people played a huge role in shaping my life today.

I will continue to deliberately write my own story, the story I want to tell. That is how I want to begin and how I want to end. A story worth telling, that is.

p.s. Yeah I really wanted to start a new site so I’ve put together this ultra-minimal-yet-acceptable-for-now theme. Not sure if I’ve time to work on it, but as long as the content is readable, I don’t care. lol.