In early 2020, I wrote a piece on how I had been navigating my first 6+ months after graduating Duke. Specifically, I was guided by upholding the value of adopting balance in my life across the following sectors: health, family, friends, fun, money, and career.
It goes without saying that 2020 has turned out to be a lot different than any of us expected. I moved to the Bay area to start a job in mid-Feb, lived there for 6 months in a coliving space called Tribe, then spent 2 months back at home with family in northern Virginia as my company went remote, and have been back in Durham for the month of October. Nevertheless, throughout all of these times, my mindset of remaining balanced stayed prominent in my life and became more helpful than ever in enabling me to focus on what’s important. In this piece, I reflect on how I learned to approach the rapidly changing life circumstances that have transpired by looking at how I’ve adapted in the different sectors of my life.
Health
Needless to say, staying safe from COVID has been at the forefront during these times, and also an extra motivator for me to take care of my physical and mental health. Normally I try to exercise and rock climb regularly, but with gyms closed, I’ve tried to do my best given the constraints. I have started to run outside more, and I’m grateful my coliving space had a mini-gym.
On the mental health side, I increased my meditation practice to 20 minutes per day (from 10 minutes), after I went on a 10-day silent meditation retreat last Dec. Looking back, it seems timely that I went on that retreat while I could, and I continue to uncover benefits from what I learned in that experience that help me stay calm and balanced during this pandemic.
Family
It’s hard not to think about how much better life would have been if COVID hadn’t happened, but I also recognize the many benefits of these challenging times. They have slowed life down to remind me of what’s most important. I might have gotten lost living a fast-paced life in San Francisco without the pandemic, instead of for example becoming closer to my family because of our shared COVID experience. I got to live at home with my parents after I thought I’d never be able to do so after I left for my job in San Francisco, and spent time with my sister in her last year before going off to college. I’ve also become closer with relatives in China through video calls, improving my Chinese and learning more about Chinese culture and history along the way. I can definitely credit COVID for giving me the time and motivation to strengthen these family ties.
Friends
It’s interesting to look back on how after I graduated Duke, I was navigating the challenges of staying intentional with friendships without built-in social benefits of being on a college campus. Now, those challenges have become more extreme. All the relationships I worked on and habits I formed to develop and maintain friendships have come into good use. I’ve also found that people are more open to talking now, and that the limitations of in-person interactions have been a great equalizer in allowing me to stay in touch with friends in all locations.
More specifically, I’ve leaned into closer relationships and met people weekly through lunchclub.ai (which curates 1:1 professional connections). The spontaneous conversations and the events at Tribe helped a lot too, and in many ways felt even better than if I had lived in SF without a coliving space during normal times.
Fun
With limitations on not being able to do in-person activities, I have focused on things I can do on my own, like making my way through a Coursera class on weekends and watching Chinese TV shows. At Tribe, we also had fun recurring events like “Beers and Ideas”, which I participated in and later helped run, where we would set goals for ourselves for the next 2 weeks, give ourselves feedback, and hold ourselves accountable — all over some beers. There were also one-off events like an in-house version of Food Network’s Chopped, for which I was a judge.
As things started to open up, we started going outdoor rock climbing and taking weekend bike rides to the Golden Gate Bridge. I even went on a 18-person trip to Lake Tahoe with Tribe members and attended my first wedding at Golden Gate Park. While at home with family, we also went on a few hikes on weekends. Now that I’m in Durham, I’ve explored North Carolina a bit, taking weekend trips to Wilmington and the portion of the Blue Ridge parkway between Asheville and Boone.
One challenge I have is not having that many activities I do that allow me to fully unwind. In general, the overachiever side of me can get so caught up in wanting to make positive change in the world and be the best person I can be that I end up rarely really feeling fully relaxed. One activity I’ve enjoyed immensely in the past 2.5 months is the NBA Restart and watching the Los Angeles Lakers capture their 17th title, and I hope to find other activities that feed my soul and allow me to stay more balanced.
Money
It’s hard to grasp how much inequities have been exacerbated during these times, while I often forget to be grateful for even having a job and lower living expenses. I’ve made incremental improvements on the money front in following and investing in the stock market and balancing my 401k, but what I’m most proud of is making regular donations to organizations like Humanity Forward to help provide cash relief to those less fortunate, the Equal Justice Initiative and other social justice causes, and Durham Public Schools to help provide funding for chromebooks and learning centers.
Career
Professionally, I’ve been adjusting to the challenges of navigating a first professional job amidst a pandemic. Overall, my role at PeopleGrove has given me a front row seat into how higher education has grappled with these uncertain times, while it always feels rewarding to know that each week students are getting help through the peer tutoring programs that PeerKonnect helps support at high schools across the nation.
I’m excited about the increased interest and activity in the education technology space as a silver lining to the times we’re in. I am personally looking for more ways to give back on the education front, and further educate myself on inequities and racial injustices that are deeply interwoven with the education space.
This is still very much a work in progress for me, and specifically early June and the NBA’s historic boycott in late August were times that felt just as challenging for me as adjusting to working from home and the quarantine itself. I intentionally took time off work around both of those periods to become more aware and honor those moments in history, but I also realize that tackling these issues around racial and social injustice is a lifelong journey.
Reflection
As I was reading the reflection on my previous piece on how I used this blueprint of staying balanced across these 6 sectors of my life in the first 6 months after graduating Duke, I found it funny that I wrote “I’ve experienced and weathered more change in the past half-year than any other time in my life”. As it is the case for many now, 2020 has now claimed its place as the times of most change in our lives.
When the reality of the pandemic started to hit during the week the NBA and universities among many other things started shutting down, I had felt that my mental model of how to live life had literally been broken. At the end of the day though, what I always ended up coming back to is thinking about how I’m maintaining that balance across the 6 sectors of my life of health, family, friends, fun, money, and career.
The late, great Kobe Bryant had this to say about how he approached his severe ankle injury during the 2000 NBA Finals (where he iconically took over Game 4’s overtime after Shaquille O’Neal fouled out): “I knew what I could and couldn’t do, which directions I could push off and how much force I could apply. After establishing that, it was just a matter of altering my game within those constraints to continue dominating.” I’ve been reminded of Kobe’s words here so many times this year. With each of the sectors of my life, I view my job to be to work within the constraints that life has given me and stay grateful for what I have rather than directing my energy into pondering what could have been.