Lists

An interesting blog post. I liked this note about trees in Johannesburg by Herman. In our last apartment, the bedroom faced a quiet tree-filled backyard despite the apartment itself being on a major two-way avenue, so I woke up to birds chirping and almost non-existent street noise, and a view of lush greenery. In our current apartment, the bedroom faces a brick wall and a one-way side street adjacent to a one-way main street, so now I have a classic New York wakeup call which is horns honking, garbage trucks rattling, pigeons cooing and flapping, and occasionally people walking....

I spent a lot of time and energy in my life worrying about things I felt like I had to do for one reason or another. Either everyone else was doing the thing, or specific people were pressuring me to do the thing, or I never saw real examples or models of people who didn’t do the thing, etc. At some point I started to realize that, if I really challenged myself, I didn’t have to do some of the things I believed I had to in order to win at life (and I would include the idea of having to “win at life” on this list)....

I love sandwiches. Below are some of my favorites and why. First, a few constraints I will impose to keep it to a reasonable number of sandwiches: these are limited to New York (not that I haven’t had amazing sandwiches elsewhere), sandwiches I’ve had at least 3 times, excluding burgers (are burgers sandwiches?), excluding falafel sandwiches (not that I don’t love them but I can’t pick a favorite spot and also then we get into wrap territory which is going to introduce too much scope creep), and excluding chain restaurants (not that I won’t crush a Subway or Potbelly sandwich if the mood strikes me)....

One of the main reasons why I would find it hard to leave New York is that I have grown accustomed to having what feels like infinite food options and over the years have cultivated my list of good food spots in the city down to a tee. “Good” is a super subjective designation, especially for food. It can also be a sensitive and sometimes classist thing to talk about good food, so I would start by saying that I do not consider myself a foodie (even though objectively speaking I do think about food a lot and talk about it a lot and probably definitely spend an embarrassingly disproportionate amount of my disposable income on food because I genuinely enjoy eating so much)....

As promised, here’s the second part of my year in review. To recap: I audited where I spent my time (loosely) and where I spent my money (incredibly precisely) this past year, in an effort to understand what I really value and to be more mindful and aware of where I’m spending these limited resources. First, the nondiscretionary chunks of my income go towards taxes, student loan payments, and rent (in descending order of relative amounts)....

Note: if you have published a similar 2022 in review on your site, I would love to see it! You can email me a link at kwon(at)fastmail(dot)com. How did 2022 go? All things told, it was… a year. In reflecting on how to reflect on this past year (I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I am an overthinker, particularly when it comes to writing things here), I had trouble relying on recall for notable events and accomplishments....

The cadence of life is a little different now that I live in Brooklyn and work from home. In my 12 years in New York City, I have: lived in Brooklyn and worked in Brooklyn lived in Brooklyn and worked in Manhattan (the worst overall) lived in Manhattan and worked in Manhattan lived in Manhattan and worked from home lived in Brooklyn and worked from home and the one that feels most like not working at all is living in Brooklyn and working from home....

June 2021 marks my eleventh year in New York City. I wasn’t supposed to be here this long. The Plan™ was never to stay in New York for this long. The Plan™ was to come here for five years to learn how to be a surgeon, then go back to Chicago and be a surgeon and live happily ever after. When I was younger, I didn’t think that carefully about my future, which is kind of terrifying to think about now, how I made decisions about my life without really thinking about them....