Christmas / Waiting progress

Hello friend! It’s been another week. The days fly by even when you’re doing nothing.

This week—as you already know—was Christmas week. I’m lucky enough to be home with my family during these times.

It’s been an unprecedented season of gifts for me. I’m not really the type to give or receive gifts. For a while I oddly prided myself in this trait.

“God I’m so zen. I don’t have any needs or desires” was my way of thinking.

But my philosophy on this has been changing lately.

It’s like when someone asks you where you want to go eat for dinner. Just because you reply “I don’t care” doesn’t mean you’re zen. It just means you haven’t thought enough to develop an opinion which also means you may be a dull person :(

Is that fair to say? Yeah sure…

Anyways, this year I was a dull person and didn’t actually want or ask for anything. But somehow—against all odds—I ended up receiving a bunch of gifts.

In order of when I received them:

  • A mug, beanie, socks, coasters from my company

  • A customized beanie from Cara. In the past I’ve often texted her sg2w (sounds good to wood) and she sent me a beanie customized with those letters. I was touched by the thought and cannot wait to wear it in the cold NY winter

  • A handwritten letter from Jess and a postcard from Rupert. I love receiving mail that isn’t bills or ads and try to be a good penpal in return

  • A book from Apollo (Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut). This was very unexpected given we hadn’t ever exchanged gifts or even talked about Kurt Vonnegut but I was thrilled to receive it. I am convinced that it’s a great idea to start sending books to my friends for special occasions

  • A display box from Andrew T. Our group did a small secret santa and he gifted me a box to display my leadership stones. What are leadership stones you ask? When Andrew and I went to a company leadership conference a few years ago they handed out a bunch of random colorized stones representing different leadership traits. Courage, Communication, Truthfulness, and so on… To this day I have kept my leadership stones and—thanks to this box—will never lose them

  • A jacket from Harry. Super warm and I’ve been wearing it for the past four days

Thanks everyone :)

I spent the rest of Christmas week eating n repeating, watching a new Korean drama and reading Player Piano

For my eating n repeating:

  • Dad’s company treated us to a free meal from Mastro’s: ribeye and NY steak, along with mashed potatoes, lobster mac n cheese, salad, ice cream, and cake

  • Homemade pizza. This is a new tradition I’m trying to make. Every Christmas I make pizza dough from scratch and we bake customized pizzas for ourselves. I don’t know if it’s an immigrant thing or an Asian thing but our family just doesn’t seem to have many traditions. This saddens me and I’m actively trying to change this.

  • Cookies

For the K drama: I’ve been watching Uncanny Counter. It’s aight.

Lastly—Player Piano. The book is set after World War III where—after having automated a bunch of stuff to support the war effort—most people that aren’t engineers or managers are out of jobs. The story focuses on a branch manager overseeing a factory. He’s ballin. Got hella respect, money and a banging ass wife but he starts to doubt his place in the system.

Good read overall. Was surprised by how prophetic Vonnegut was. He got so many things right:

  • automation displacing actual human beings

  • human beings losing a sense of worth/purpose

  • class divides widening between people who had been displaced by automation and those that hadn’t

  • And this part: “Things, gentlemen, are ripe for a phony Messiah, and when he comes, it’s sure to be a bloody business… Sooner or later someone’s going to catch the imagination of these people with some new magic. At the bottom of it will be a promise of regaining the feeling of participation, the feeling of being needed on earth—hell, dignity”

And he wrote all this back in 1952.

Also spent time working on Waiting. This week I got to recording the vocals. I had an issue with a corrupt Logic session so I’ve had to backtrack a little.

Every few days I get the feeling that I’m wasting my time with this song. I think from very early on in the process you get a feel for whether the song will be good or not. I can’t say I imagine this song being much of a hit.

After days of doubts I realize that even if the song turns out shit I still want to finish it. There’s merit in finishing songs—even bad ones.

So I shall power through.

With the vocals recorded and the session restored I think I can aim towards getting a final draft by next week.