Honestly, the last few months have been a complete whirlwind. So many things, good and bad, have happened; I don’t really know where to begin.

My company is no longer a startup, we were acquired and so now I’m working for a big company again — I don’t know how I feel about that just yet.

I went to China with my ex’s mom and sister, which was fun but also sad because it shows how much Miana is growing up.

Derek and I are still together, still in San Francisco, still pretty happy.

The major part of why we’re not completely happy is mostly because of my anxiety, which has come back with a vengeance. It actually started coming back toward the end of last year, but lately it’s gotten a lot worse. I’m seeing my doctor two times a week, which feels honestly like a complete failure to function, but I know it’s for the best. I’m also back on medication (Prozac), which feels even more like a failure, but my doctor has assured me that it’s only temporary. She tells me she knows I can get better and that she’s going to be there to help me. And I’m trying very hard to believe her.

It’s hard to write about this sort of thing. There are some very deep emotions that are coming up during my sessions, and I know if I were to write honestly and openly about them some people would end up getting offended or angry, and right now I don’t think I’m strong enough to deal with that sort of backlash.

The biggest problem, of course, is that I’ve somehow convinced myself, throughout the past twenty-five years, that I only exist as a representation of what other people think of me. If someone thinks I’m stupid, annoying, ugly, etc, then obviously I am, because I can’t summon up any sort of argument against it. I am only the sum of everyone else’s thoughts — from the people I’m closest to, my friends, my family, Derek, to the people I never see again, the people on the bus, the barista at Starbucks, the tourists on the cable car. I am what you all have made me. But I’m not happy about it.

I’m not happy with this existence at all. My anxiety is ever-present and overwhelming. Even simple things like commuting to work are full of worry, doubt, fear. I overanalyze and overthink quite literally everything. Even right now I’m worrying that people will think I’m out of my mind or less of a person when they read this entry, that they’ll slowly distance themselves from that crazy girl who writes her deepest, innermost thoughts and discusses her anxiety disorder and chronic depression publicly on her blog.

But I can’t give in to those worries, I have to keep telling myself that. I can’t say with certainty that anyone is going to read my blog after this. I can’t say with certainty that anyone is going to stick with me at all through this whole process. And somehow I have to be okay with that uncertainty. I know that’s what I have to do, but saying and doing are two entirely different things for me.

I call it The Disconnect. It exists as a wedge between what I know to be true or logical, and what I feel. A great example of this: my looks. I know I’m fairly conventionally attractive — I have an hourglass figure, I’m not overweight by any means, and I look generally healthy. But I don’t feel attractive. I sometimes even blatantly gawk at the fact that Derek, who I find exceptionally attractive, could possibly find me even merely cute, let alone “beautiful.” He tells me pretty often that I am, but somehow I just can’t feel it, I just can’t believe it. Sure, there are moments when I do feel pretty good about the way I look, but those are anomalies to me; they’re not the norm. And no amount of people telling me otherwise is going to help that, honestly. I have to find a bridge over The Disconnect, or a zip tie I can use to cinch the two sides together.

So there’s both of those. The feeling that I’m nothing but how others perceive me, and the disbelief that anyone could possibly see me in a positive way. It’s frustrating and disabling, and I’m tired of it, but I don’t know how to fix it.

That’s where I am right now. I know there’s something wrong here, and I’ve taken the first steps to try to fix it. But it’s going to be a very long process, it seems. (And why shouldn’t it be? It took 25 years for all of this to add up, I can’t just expect it to disappear in 25 sessions, right?) And that uncertainty probably bothers me most of all — I’m stuck worrying even more. Is the medication working? Am I getting better? Am I going to be on medication forever? What if I want to have children someday? What if I’m just overthinking all of this? (That one is terrifying.)

But I’m working on it. It’s going to get better. I’m going to keep telling myself that.

Photos from this post taken at the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. More can be seen on my Flickr.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

From Desiderata, Max Ehrmann, 1927.

My grandmother introduced me to this poem (read the full text at the link above) a few days ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it.

AAAANYWAY… In more happy news, Derek and I spent this past weekend in Napa with his brother and parents. We went to a couple of wineries for wine tasting and had a lot of delicious food. And I took lots of photos!

One of the wineries we went to was Rubicon, which is owned by Francis Ford Coppola, one of Derek’s favorite directors. It was a gorgeous winery and we had a really great time there. The vistas are spectacular.

Afterwards, we had dinner at Auberge du Soleil. It, too, was gorgeous.

And we ended the day with a gorgeous sunset over the Napa Valley.

We can’t wait to go back – maybe just me and Derek this next time ;) – and try more of the great wines and explore more of the beautiful area. :)

For starters, Derek is down in Los Angeles visiting his friends and his parents, so since about mid-day Saturday I’ve had to entertain myself. This is exceptionally hard to do when it’s rainy and grey and cold outside. I want to out and take photos, but they come out awful because there’s no sunlight to bring out the contrast and color.

Add to that the fact that I haven’t been sleeping well (in part due to his absence) and you have a very exhausted Jess.

I’ve been doing very well with my resolution to take more photos, as my Flickr photostream can attest. And, since you can see three blog entries within the past week, I think I’m doing pretty good with that resolution, too. Tomorrow is my first yoga class, which I’m hoping will go pretty well, and that takes my “good resolution” tally up to three of five.

It’s the other two that are difficult. You know the “being happy” and “cutting out negativity” ones.

The problem with being happy is that I feel like I haven’t quite settled into my place yet in San Francisco. I’ve got the routine down, I’m doing well at my job and everything, but I feel pretty isolated sometimes. In LA, for quite a while, I was working pretty hard at making myself get out of the house, spend time with friends, be independent and have a life outside of my apartment and my relationship (since those were my prison during my last relationship, honestly). Now, up here, I’m finding myself feeling very lonely. I have a few friends that I very much enjoy spending time with, but they live outside the city, and it takes them quite a bit of time and money to get into the city to hang out (and vice-versa). Even more, I feel awful if I ask them to come into the city too often. I’m going to yoga tomorrow and a photography meetup on Wednesday, so hopefully that will help a bit, but at the moment it’s definitely preventing me from truly being happy. I can go out on my own, sure – I went all around Market Street last Thursday taking photos, even – but it’s very lonely doing that, especially when the weather turns and I find myself sitting in a coffee shop with no one to share in my lament.

Cutting out negativity should be easier, since it’s all under my control for the most part… but I keep finding myself in situations that just make me feel frustrated. Take, for example, our downstairs neighbors. I expect neighbors to make some noise, it’s inevitable, especially in an old apartment building in the city. These neighbors, however, have very loud sex in the middle of the night, usually on nights when I have to wake up early and random weeknights, and for hours on end (literally 3-4 hours). The first couple times, we laughed it off. But then it happened several nights in a row, then again on a night when I had to get up early to go in to work early and then AGAIN on a night when I had to get up even earlier to catch a flight down to LA. I was furious, so I called the building manager, who sent them a letter telling them to keep it down. It hasn’t happened quite as loudly since then, but every once in a while I can still hear them, or they’ll get loud for a few minutes. Or one of them will talk very loudly on her cell phone, which she has on speaker. Or they’ll get high or drunk and giggle. Or they’ll leave their new puppy home alone and he’ll whine all day. It’s really annoying, and I don’t know how to escape it. If they are loud for more than 5-10 minutes, I knock on the floor, and they generally shut up, but I’m getting tired of having to deal with it at all. And if that weren’t enough to get me feeling pretty negative, I don’t know if we can afford to move anywhere better when our lease is up in April. And that just opens up a new can of worms.

Is it possible to cut out negativity when it’s literally coming up from beneath your feet? And is it possible to be happy when you’re lonely?

I’m ready to take bits and pieces, minute parts of reality (see quote, above), and turn them into digital (and sometimes printed) records that I can share with the world.

As part of my resolution to take more photos in 2011, I decided to join Project 365, as well as Sara’s Flickr group for the project, 24-7 of 2011.

Hopefully, being a part of these will help me to continue with the project and really thrive with them.

I’ve also, more just for fun, started a Posterous blog for my daily Instagram shots called “the daily jess.” At the moment, my biggest problem on that blog is that I keep posting TWO photos a day instead of just one. And one of my photos was a Photo Booth photo, which doesn’t count at all. :P Focus, Jess!

Have you taken any early steps to get on track for your New Year’s resolutions? Do share! :B

Goals:

• Be a better blogger.
• Start doing yoga (first class 1/5/2011).
• Cut out the negativity in life – people, actions, habits, thoughts, etc. It’s all unnecessary.
• Take more photos.





• Be happy.

Come on, 2011. We can do this.

I will, however, give you a little bit of beauty.

I recently found a gorgeous little Tumblr blog called “Advice for All My Children.” And I wanted to share a few of the pieces of advice with you.

See many, many more at Advice for All My Children.

Eventually, I began to group together similar concepts and tenets into a little set of principles for myself:

• Do not harm the world
• Do not harm yourself
• Enjoy life as it is

Each of these maps to some major aspect of Buddhism, particularly the Five Precepts, and makes it easy for me to make choices throughout each day. They’re pretty simple concepts, overall, but they have pretty far-reaching effects on my daily life.

My first principle is “Do not harm the world.”

It’s also probably the most complex of my little principles. It has obvious implications – don’t litter, don’t be mean to people, etc – but what happens when you start to apply it to everything in life? What if, in everything you do, you were to focus on not harming anyone or anything?

Eating Meat

Some things are pretty clear cut – I’m not going to murder anyone, of course – but other things really take a lot of thought – especially when it comes to my dietary choices. If I’m not to harm the world, how can I justify eating meat? What makes animals different from humans – and some animals different from others? Is there a compromise?

A Buddhist proverbial story tells of a General Siha, who was so convinced by the Buddha’s teachings that he gave up Jainism to become a Buddhist. When he did so, he decided to make a large feast for the monks and Buddha, and told one of his servants to go to the market and buy meat for the meal. The Jain monks, seeing this, were extremely upset, as Jains believe in not harming any animal for any cause. But the Buddha, however, made a very clear but subtle distinction: the meat which was served to him at the feast was intended for consumption, it had been raised exactly for that purpose. The animal was not killed explicitly for feeding the Buddha.

“Monks, I allow you fish and meat that are quite pure in three respects: if they are not seen, heard or suspected to have been killed on purpose for a monk. But, you should not knowingly make use of meat killed on purpose for you.”

Despite their direction specifically to monks, I also hold these respects very dear: I will not eat the meat if it was explicitly and knowingly killed for me. I will never order someone to kill an animal for my consumption, nor will I do so myself.

In addition, I strive to make sure that the animals I do consume lived cage-free, free-range lives, eating what they were intended to eat, and were treated humanely throughout their lives, up until and past the moments of their death. Derek and I happily pay a premium — really, more what the animal’s life was worth — for grass-fed, free-range, cage-free animals (and their byproducts).

While I do not rely on almsfood, as Buddhist monks do, and therefore have a choice in what I eat, I strive to make informed choices to ensure that the meat I eat (as well as the vegetables) do as little harm to the world as possible.

For more information on Buddhism and eating meat, there is a wonderful page on Urban Dharma which details a monk’s conundrums surrounding meat.

Refuse and Trash

When I began evolving my principles and defining what they meant in my daily life, I thought that taking care of trash would be pretty simple – just sort out the recycling and all is good, right? Not quite. Each day, I started to realize how much food was going to waste – from forgotten leftovers, spoiled fruit, spilled plates – and it bothered me. All of that food could go to another purpose, I knew – it could easily be composted and turned into soil, nurturing plants and animals to grow from my waste. But how can you compost when you live in a tiny apartment, with no backyard, in a concrete jungle?

Luckily, San Francisco came to my rescue in the form of a little green bin. It appeared outside my apartment building one morning, and I happily called Derek to tell him about it (as he was on his way to work already). A lovely little green compost bin, provided by the city of San Francisco.

Even more, every apartment in the building was given a compost bucket for their kitchen, to put the scraps into until they’re ready to take it to the big bin. When it’s collected, the compost goes to special lots where it’s further composted until it turns into nutrient-rich soil. Then the soil is distributed to local farms and vineyards in the Bay Area (as well as to hobby gardeners, I believe) and helps to make the next crop of fruit, vegetables and wine for me!

For more information on San Francisco’s composting efforts, check out RecologySF. And please, encourage your local sanitation and disposal departments to look into these efforts as well!

Getting Around

In this day and age, it’s pretty impossible to get around without using some sort of mechanical transportation – car, bus, train, plane, etc. In addition, I’m really, really bad at riding a bike (I didn’t learn how until I was 16 and I’m still really shaky at it). But part of avoiding harm to the world is considering how to get around and do as little harm as possible. Since my zero-emission methods are out (I can’t walk over these hills and biking would pretty much be suicide), I have to think of other ways to reduce my impact.

For me, that means not just public transportation but, even more, cleaner public transportation when possible. One electric bus halfway to work, and then either another electric bus or a diesel bus (not as great as an electric, but less emissions/person than a car) depending on the timing.

Interacting with Others

It’s pretty easy to avoid harming the world when you’re making all the decisions and controlling what you yourself do. But what happens when you come into contact with other people?

For me, this is the hardest part of my first principle. When someone harms you or someone you love or even someone you’ve never met, how can you avoid wishing harm on them? If someone lies to you, why would you want to be truthful to them? If someone elbows you on the bus, how can you avoid giving them a mean look?

The answer lies in a very deep concept: karuna.

Karuna is often translated as “compassion” – but the truth is that no English word exists to sum up all that this concept entails. Compassion is “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering.” (from Dictionary.com). Karuna, however, is the ability to relate to someone so deeply that it feels as though you have gone through their plight with them. It’s a universal love for every being as if it were yourself, which can only be achieved by the acceptance of one’s “oneness” with every other being. You accept every being’s imperfections because they are your own.

When someone harms someone else, I close my eyes and wish for them to be encompassed in the universe and feel the wholeness and love that they are missing, that makes them feel the need to act the way they do.

I remember that they have their reasons for lying, for harming, for elbowing me on the bus, even if they’re misguided. Maybe they’re having a rough day. Maybe they feel like they’ve never been able to trust anyone. Maybe all they’ve ever known is hurt themselves.

It’s very similar to a Christian verse:

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. (Luke 23:34)

It’s not easy. Oftentimes, the pain strikes very close to home and it’s hard to remember that these people are humans, too, and connected by the same universe. But, for me, it is important to extend out that universal love and compassion – karuna – regardless.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been dealing with a lot of pain, as someone I’ve never met inflicted harm on one of my loved ones. It’s exceptionally hard to deal with – as much as I don’t want to ever forgive them, I know that I already do. There is no blame, there is no fault. There is only pain traveling from one person to the next, and I will not let it travel past me to go on and harm others.

Kuan Yin’s Prayer for the Abuser

To those who withhold refuge,
I cradle you in safety at the core of my Being.
To those that cause a child to cry out,
I grant you the freedom to express your own choked agony.
To those that inflict terror,
I remind you that you shine with the purity of a thousand suns.
To those who would confine, suppress, or deny,
I offer the limitless expanse of the sky.
To those who need to cut, slash, or burn,
I remind you of the invincibility of Spring.
To those who cling and grasp,
I promise more abundance than you could ever hold onto.
To those who vent their rage on small children,
I return to you your deepest innocence.
To those who must frighten into submission,
I hold you in the bosom of your original mother.
To those who cause agony to others,
I give the gift of free flowing tears.
To those that deny another’s right to be,
I remind you that the angels sang in celebration of you on the day of your birth.
To those who see only division and separateness,
I remind you that a part is born only by bisecting a whole.
For those who have forgotten the tender mercy of a mother’s embrace,
I send a gentle breeze to caress your brow.
To those who still feel somehow incomplete,
I offer the perfect sanctity of this very moment.

More information on Karuna can be found on this page.

I think that’s probably enough deep pondering for one entry, don’t you? Next time we’ll talk about my second principle – Do not harm yourself. Hopefully it will be a little lighter fare. :)

Sorry, I’m getting a little deep here… In the past few months (or maybe even longer) Lianhua has been stagnating. I haven’t felt like writing in it, mostly because I haven’t had any idea of what to write. Suddenly, I realized two things: a) I had to focus on something in my blog (other than the random things I did that no one really cared about and I didn’t find important enough to share) and b) I had to clear the slate, turn over a new leaf.

And so here we are. The slate is clean. The leaf is turned.

The old archives exist. I can’t get rid of them, they’re a huge part of who I am. But, coming up on five years with this blog, I’m realizing that they’re not who I am at all, actually.

I don’t think that really makes any sense.

Everything that has happened since I started this blog (July 2006, although my archives span back to December 2005 thru another blog) has made me who I am. That is undeniable. But I am not the person I was throughout any of it, really. Every day brings new changes, and roundabouts 1700 days brought an astronomical amount of change. So while those entries and years are a huge part of who I am, they’re not me at all.

So, like I said, here we are.

I’ve decided to focus what I write about a little more. There will always be little snippets of my daily life, of course, but rather than having no value to readers outside of their concern for my well-being, I am going to try to use my experiences and day-to-day happenings to explore two very important aspects of my life: gluten-freedom and Buddhism.

Back in June, I went gluten-free, after discovering my non-celiac gluten intolerance/sensitivity. And back in 2004, maybe even earlier, I began following Buddhism and adopting its philosophies into my daily life. Lately, I’ve been thinking about both of these things and how important they are to me, and I’ve come to the realization that I’m not nearly serious enough about either of them.

So I’m on a mission to change that.