Welcome to my blog! Screenshot 2026-08-14 at 6 I am a chemical engineer by day and an all-round creative by night. I’ve been on Bear for over two yea...
As I enter a new chapter of my life, I keep wanting to become more "disciplined" - better at my job, better at writing, better at making money. When I dissect my thought process, though, I realize that, most of the times, my discipline runs on shame: I don't have enough money saved, which means I can't afford things, which means I am less than my peers, which means I have to instill a rigid, iron…
Sometimes, I am overwhelmed by the sheer amount of existence and possibilities happening all around me. My friends are leading their own lives: one recently started a new job, another is testing the waters for a side hustle. A high-school classmate got engaged, and another is experiencing the heartache of her life (a five-year relationship!). In their eyes, I'm probably someone trying to navigate…
I write this thinking of everyone who had to build themselves from scratch in a foreign country, who had to put their pride aside and took the low-wage job to make ends meet, who only have themselves for a safety net. In such position, I think most of us carry the same rooted fear, and it isn't "What if I fail?" It's closer to, "What if I lose everything I've built and end up back in the exact…
Recently, I come home from work and dissolve into nothingness. I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and I wait. I don't know what I'm waiting for - perhaps for the next 12 hours to pass so I can be useful again at my corporate job? Initially, I called my idleness "a much-needed rest;" however, now I'm suspecting it's something closer to a comfortable form of avoidance, anxiety disguised as…
There is a defiant friction between me and words that I haven't experienced in a long time, as I write (force out) this entry. I avoid naming this fear, but sometimes, naming it becomes the first step to loosen its grip - What if I can never write again? What if I lost my words somewhere in all the chaos of the past two months? For 2026, I set myself the goal of consistency (four to five Bear…
Through regular journaling, I became an avid believer we cause a lot of our own suffering. Sometimes, I'll catch myself in miserable situation I know I could leave. I'm not even trapped, though I'll still perform the motions of someone pressing hands against a cage that is neither iron-barred nor locked. 1 Perhaps I stay because it's comfortable; because I've spent enough of myself there that…
I'm clearly a lists person: to-do lists, bucket lists, wishlists, lists of books I will get to someday. Lately, I've been unsatisfied with various aspects of life, and my first instinct was reaching for a gratitude list to mediate this anger. But won't that mean I'm running away from what I'm becoming subconsciously resentful towards? How would being grateful help me right now? Instead, I made a…
Somewhere, someone decided life needed borders: timelines, five-year plans, appropriate age to begin, appropriate dreams to outgrow. Entire systems built by people no less frightened and confused than you are now; anxious people who needed their worlds to feel more legible and tangible, a way of coping with the fact that reality is neither. This isn't pessimistic criticism, if you assumed it is.…
I've previously talked about joining a poetry circle as a non-poet, and I learned that, sometimes, a metaphor discloses more of a person than their name ever could. I've met people whose names dissolved from memory, but whose barest vulnerabilities clung to me long after they left. Today's prompt was On Spring's End (prompt: how did spring end for you?) and I thought of the way a season loosens…
It's been almost two years since my diagnosis and nearly six months since I've last written about it. Time has passed, unnoticeably, yet I still ask myself: who are you now, after all this? For two years, I've kept a list of bullet points describing who I was before (Was it a desperate attempt to claw back to my old self?). I was looking for the seam, the precise place where I was unwillingly…