My week in Jeju.
1. Day1: Co-working, Korean classes, Korean food
2. Worked in a cat cafe before a Korean meetup with locals
3. Me sharing my plans and work during demos and reciprocity session
4. FOOD
5. Hamdeok Beach
6. Hiking part of the Olle trail
7. Wandering and bar hopping
Vertigo is physical and psychological. Fear of falling keeps us safe and holds us back. One distinct vertiginous memory takes me back to Jeju Island, the “Hawaii of Korea.” It was the early 1990s, my childhood pilgrimage to my ancestral country.
The Jeju of my memories was lush, green, virgin. We hiked up mountains, and at a certain point, while trekking to a waterfall, I had to tiptoe and jump from stone to stone across a river. I had never done that before, and I was exhilarated and dubious. Did people really do stuff like this or was I a real pioneer? It felt like I was breaking new ground, the champion of rock jumping. And as basic as it was, I was scared that I would be swept into the water and away. Some twisted part of me wanted it to happen.
My cousin was charged with taking us all around the country. Roughly a month of towing around two kids and my demanding mother. My current self feels grateful and horrified by the burden she had to carry.
A week ago, I landed back in Jeju-do. I have no family here (that I know of). Continue reading Different sides of Jeju
When I was [some low numberish] old, I was ripped out of my NYC melting pot community and flung up the eastern seaboard into a Boston suburb. This is how innocence is lost.
I remember waking up to the sound of buzzing, crackling, and stomping on that fateful day. It was early (as it always was in my household), and as I stepped out of my bedroom, I saw that the house was nearly emptied. A few months earlier, I had similarly woken up to a residential transformation. New furnishings adorned all four levels. Beautiful artwork, plants, and matchy matchy furniture.
What a reversal. And equally unexplained. Continue reading A moving day, a culture shift
…is good friends, good food, love, caring, simplicity, staying at home, appreciating the moment. London.
Home is taking that feeling with you everywhere you go.
On Christmas Day 2014, I was in bed at my dad’s place in Boston with my sister, looking dead. (I was the one looking dead, not her, in case that’s not clear.)
I was thinking ahead to the trip I would be taking 2 days later to Chicago to tell 50+ people, many of whom had worked for my company for decades, that they no longer had a job. This was one of my undercover priorities stepping into my new role as head of strategy and product development a few months earlier.
For months, I had to deftly juggle being effective in my external public-facing role so that I wouldn’t lose credibility while orchestrating the outsourcing of peoples’ jobs in the background. Almost immediately after taking my job, I had taken a trip to India and the Philippines to meet with vendors, flying to a new city every day. Three of these flights were overnight flights, all taken in coach over the course of a week. Needless to say, I was somewhat weary, though determined to do my very best. Continue reading London Fashion Week
I finally got my hair cut in London. I was sitting (shaking) in the hair hoping the chick wouldn’t shred my locks into wispy frays. I opened up immediately and started telling her about how I quit my job and have been traveling the world. After a few careful questions and a pregnant pause, she politely asked, “Would you say that you’re going through a sort of crisis?”
I laughed. “Um, yeah… Actually, no. I would really call it more of a renaissance.” I explained that I used to be extremely stressed by the workload, travel, and culture of my old job. I wore suits and formalwear every day and sit in boardrooms with gray-haired executives who were meant to be my peers. My impetus for leaving? I just didn’t feel like me anymore. I wanted to do something “creative.”
Why do we create a division in this world between creative and not creative? What is not creative? Activities that are rote or analytical? Even when working on an assembly line, it is possible to innovate or bring a different process to what you do. In laziness even, there is great creativity. I spend countless hours in bed envisioning scenarios or creating meaning out of my disparate thought processes.
When I was in a corporate role, I felt that almost everything I did was creative actually. My days were spent figuring out how to creatively deal with people, build good-ish products, find white space to create competitive differentiation, build teams that were a good balance of skills and personality. Sometimes I drew things on paper or PowerPoint. Other times, I sketched things out in my mind. I created publications and marketing materials, websites, and product interfaces. Was that creative?
Maybe creativity is more about a spirit you bring to your endeavors? Continue reading What does it mean to be creative?
It’s been a heady day already. I woke up at 4am with my stomach turning.
Tonight is another full moon. I thought about what Smiling Buddha had said to me in Bali. One day before, during, and one day after the full moon, it’s hard to sleep. So far, this seems accurate.
The tranquility I thought I had created and the inner “okayness” I was feeling was foundational and yet momentary. I was very happy being in London, taking a pause.
Then I started working crazy hours in preparation for London Fashion Week. I started to feel the memories and imprint of burnout creeping my up on me. I needed to slow down.
Then I received a note from my management company trying to evict me for AirBNB’ing my apartment, though the language wasn’t quite clear. I took down the posting. Continue reading Everything catches up to you
This period in London has been filled with silence, crazy work, and lots of personal lessons learned.
Altruism can be a very good quality and yet, sometimes, we need to ask ourselves what lies underneath all that goodwill.
Thank you for the good moments. It is amazing when people converge in a location. I’ve had so many people tell me they’re in London or coming to London. Thai feast at Patara, Indian feast at Dishoom, and chilling at the London Edition. It feels good, guys!
September 10th already. I’ve been in London immersed in the fashion world for the past week helping to launch the fall collection for an emerging label for London Fashion Week.
Fabrics have swirled around me as dresses have come together, and I’ve been heads down for up to 16 hours a day costing garments, looking at patterns, setting prices, prepping for investor and buyer meetings, and creating line sheets in InDesign, among many other things. Multi-tasking while casting models for the Lookbook. Dressing and undressing some attitudinal and some nice models. Hair and makeup tests. Cigarettes on the roof. Stylists and set designers coming in. Meanwhile, the designer has come in and out sleeping 2-4 hours a night and jumping out for meetings with ambassadors, magazine editors, music people, and others. It is really a crazy world.
When I’ve had a chance to process, I’ll need to write a full debrief. It has been intense. Glamorous in a sense but also just intense.
I haven’t pulled a near-allnighter for work in a while and from an experiential point of view, that had some merit.
7:30pm on a Friday night, and I found myself in a room full about 40 other people planted on yoga mats with bolsters underneath their legs, eyebags mounted atop eyes, blanketed underneath the head, blanketed on top as well. Wow, this is how London rolls. Or…I guess there are people in the world who choose to spend their Friday nights this way. I mean, every night at this point might as well be Friday night for me.
I was there for a class entitled “Yoga Nidra: How to Access Your Deepest, Wisest Self.” It had seemed good at the time when I’d handed over the 25 GBP. Continue reading Mind-walking Friday night in London
