Suddenly, a cyclist yelled something at me as she rode past me as I cruised down Market Street. Her hair was short, and she wore one of those city helmets. Now, when I am on my bike, I get yelled at a lot. By cars for taking up the lane. By other cyclists for being too slow. By pedestrians who think that the light was green.

But a moment after she started singing (because I realized that it wasn’t yelling, it was singing), I realized what she said.

As she rode past me and swung into my lane, “Your pants are so low and I can see your ass-crack.”

Stunned, my first instinct was amusement. But the next one came almost immediately. Anger. How dare she comment on something that couldn’t be helped. I was in my aggressive cycling mood—almost required when riding downtown, but then my cautious cycling mood popped in the moment the light turned red. She zipped two blocks ahead then further as I waited for the numbers to countdown to zero. I quickly pulled up the expensive pair of jeans, the skinny leg ones that were over $100 and as I rode down Market Street onto Valencia Street, I stopped leaning forward and sat straight up so nobody would see. Like the way I liked it. Because I don’t ever want to be like Kim Kardashian (NSFW).

And the brightness retreats, taking all clarity.
Here is where the storm boils and spills.
Here is where the shouts come out of exhaustion.
Here is where we let darkness consumes us.

In high school and college, I learned to love the night unlike the nights I used to spend terrified of monsters, demanding night lights. This is where my parents and my sister disappeared into their bedrooms and dreams suspended them, leaving me alone in my room with my books and the family computer. I let the ideas fly from the printed word into my head, unfolding and folding upon itself until it became an inspiration for an idea. I let words unfurl from my fingers onto the keyboard, filtering as 1s and 0s.

But as exhaustion overtakes me and my eyelids feel heavy, I rest my head in my pillow and my arms fall slack. For a second, everything is calm, but without electric light, I bolt up and wonder if there are monsters lurking outside of my sight. I rush to turn on the night light to create my own burst of clarity.

I dislike ridiculous slang and avoid it as much as possible. It’s those young’uns that keep using it after all!

But then recently, a young ‘un used hangry in front of me. As we walked around the NASA base a few weeks ago during a public opening, I was nearly dying. Without eating breakfast, I was subsisting on air fumes, the smaller dinner from the previous night. Every step I took to move from building in the multiple acre campus (imagine this: shuttles, big satellites, wind tunnels need to fit all here; imagine the space required). Within two hours of walking, my friend admitted that she was hangry. “I think that I am too!” I chirped, my stomach rumbling and my feet hurting.

But I couldn’t understand the word. Because I have always hated words like totes, natch, cray cray. Just say what you mean! But then I finally understood hangry.

When you find me at my worst, it’s when I have been starved beyond recognition (in my mind). Where I want to collapse in a heap. All because I follow my usual habits of not eating in the morning. My eyes are likely falling out, because I didn’t sleep well or that the alarm woke me up before my preferred natural waking up time.

“Where is the effffing food?” I want to demand and strangle anybody in the way. Instead that day on the NASA base, I just started charmingly singing, “Foodie!” every ten feet. As if I was calling a dog to come back to my side. “Foodie! Foodie! Foodie!!!!! Come fill my belly!”

From a distance, I saw a young Asian female. She shuffled slowly toward the genius bar at the Stonestown Apple Store. Standing near the kids area that played animated games over and over again, I wanted to lunge her and declare, “JEN NG!”

Instead, I maintained my composure and moved my weight to foot to foot, craning to hear her soft voice speak to the check-in guy. “My iPhone is broken,” she said.

Doubt spread among my ears. It wasn’t Jen Ng, someone who had signed up for the 3:10 pm appointment and used my email address. A few days earlier, I was in a rage. How could someone use my email address again? To not only verify an apple id, but more importantly, to sign up for an Apple appointment. The rage rippled through my head muscles down to my shoulder muscles. In my mind, I imagined running up to her, grabbing her by the shoulders, and demanding that she stop using my email address for everything on the Internet, so help me God.

In all clarity, I knew that it was a minor mistake. This one probably would have been corrected easily. But it’s all the frustration I have been feeling as gmail has become prolific and everyone has been using it. At first, I thought that it was hilarious when I received an email about bank statements from Toronto. Then it was just amusing when a travel agent sent me airplane tickets in my name and some husband’s name for a destination cruise. Then it was almost sentimental when I received heartwarming emails from women in Hong Kong for a newly born infant diagnosed with Down syndrome.

Until it wasn’t of course. The annoyance happened when I was accidentally included in a mass email list for a tutoring group in Canada. At first, I politely requested that I was removed. But then I was not. I received reminders, doodle invitations, and new assignments. Anger flared and I sent very directed angry messages to be removed. Then I received dinner invitations and bachleorette invitations. At first, I again asked to be removed. Then in my following messages, I gave snarky reply about how I wish that I was invited, but sadly my name is the only thing that really matters. Whose fault was it really? I wish that I knew, because I wish that I could blame the person with my same name. But how can I blame the non-Jenn? How can I blame the people who have too misspelled my own name?

My war continued. In the Apple store, I stood stupidly right there near the guys with the check-in tablets. Waiting for someone to show up. But then I realized: if she scheduled the appointment with my email address, then this means that she never received a reminder or confirmation email. How would she have remembered to come? I argued with a genius about how I could contact this mysterious Jen Ng who was a no-show. “Just email her,” he said.

I scoffed, because I didn’t follow his logic. “But how can I email her if I don’t her email address?” I said. “Because she used my email address and as you know, I would be sending an email to myself. Do you understand what’s going on?”

The rage tipped over, and my blood pressure must have been going higher than its usual low calm level. I was impressed with the guy’s calm as he smiled. “Just schedule an appointment,” he said. “Let’s take a look for what we have.”

It’s a crazy question. And yet, we are all human and we make promises that we can’t keep, because we can’t keep all the variables in our hold. The variables that are the more interesting events that may happen at the same time, the chance that a family member needs our help, the deadlines for work (because work always take priority over everything), the energy levels, the timing of other activities.

We don’t know the risk and rewards.

But what if I did everything that I said that I would do. That if the words slip out of my mouth that they were the truth. That yes, I would go to the book reading on Saturday and the dinner with my parents in the East Bay and help my friends move to a new apartment and wash my car and do my laundry. What if I actually did commit?

Wouldn’t it be a crazy world when our words become meaningful and they are worth something?

That’s what had surprised me the most as a child. That words are only words. “But that’s what she said!” I would scream when I was surprised by lies. “But it was a promise!”

What if all the words that we leak in conversations, the empty promises that seem to pour out of our fingertips could not be taken back? What if they meant something and that we were chained to it? On one hand, that seems like a horror movie where yes, we would still have free will, but we wouldn’t have play, experimentation, and failure? But then again, isn’t the reason that promises become broken is because we are afraid of commitment so words keep falling and falling out, rolling around on the ground until they become forgotten and decay into dust.

I fell in love with Journey to the End of the Night several years ago when I stumbled upon it trying to figure out what adventures laid in San Francisco.

After a few years running it, I found that I became too aggressive, too competitive, too defeatist that it wasn’t enjoyable anymore. Tagged a few blocks from the end point, I felt my life sucked out of me, literally collapsing in the street. Dangers lurking around me was interesting and perhaps even fun. Yet when it became real, it wasn’t something I wanted.

How could it be?

I would blame the balance of the game—when someone is tagged, the desire to go on is taken away. The joy of experiencing the checkpoints is gone.

So this year, along with Chris and others, we manned a checkpoint. We asked players to run two at a time through a tire obstacle course. The other volunteers would yell at them much like a bootcamp for the tires that lined approximately 30 feet. The “winner” would receive a cape for their achievement. Of course, perhaps to my surprise, people enjoyed winning even if it was a “cape” that would make them more obvious to the chasers. Everyone wants something that shows their dedication, their achievement, their best.

How do they feel if they lost? Do they know that they have won and that they can still continue to run without a signal that they’re playing a game?

Yes, I have always repeated this mantra over and over again to drill people into what I value: Presence > Presents.

But it’s more than that. I truly believe that to succeed at anything is to show up. If I want something, the least that I can do is just be present. Because the fact is everyone else who doesn’t want that something as much as you do will not be present, will not show up, will not commit.

I admit though that the detriment of this belief is that I lose trust in others when their presence falters. So many people claim “busy lives”, but it’s the fact that what I value isn’t the same as what others value.

But then there comes the question of: will they even notice my presence? will they even notice my absence? will it even matter? will it matter if I was present and then as they say…ghosted?

I always notice when people appear and when they disappear. I wonder what happened to their self-respect if they won’t let others remember them.

Ask me what my childhood dream is. I mean, really ask it. Don’t accept the answer when I say “writing”, because that was the dream that was attainable.

Ask me what I really wanted to do.

It was dancing (and singing). I dreamed of moving along with the music. The way I could let the music vibrate through my body. The music would fly through my veins, my fingers, my arms, and my legs.

Until the dream fell through my fingers when my body, voice, and social anxiety didn’t cooperate. I attended ballet class until I was 10, wishing so hard to do the first positions and second positions as my classmates did. I pretended to sign in chorus, but only a whisper came out.

Every so often, I come across contemporary dance, and it reminds me of what my dreams were like. The dreams where I fly through the air, so easily and simply. I land with grace and the world is mine.

Yesterday, my fourth roommate in my current apartment moved in.

Yesterday too was the anniversary of my eighth year of living in the same Edwardian apartment. Rent-controlled. Untouched. It’s almost the longest place I have ever lived in. It’s a quarter of my life already!

There’s something scary about that. Not because of the age. But because I can honestly say that the eight years that I have lived in the same apartment in the same city have been the most defining years of my life. That may be very melodramatic to say, yes, but I entered this apartment very different than I am now.

Or at least I would like to think so.

On October 15, 2006, I moved into this apartment with excitement. It was meant of a new life. An adult life. At the time, I thought that I knew myself. My life was open with possibility. I knew so many people, so many friends. I could be who I wanted to be and believed that I had the confidence to do so.

But as life always it is, I found that I had less confidence than I really believed. I was crushed by heartbreak and failure. I wailed around the house like a lost ghost and experienced excitement at my desk when I succeeded.

This is the apartment where my room is trapped in four walls and one window, the window that looks out into nothingness. Yet despite that, the sun still breaks through in the morning without any pretense. This is the apartment where I learned to jostle the bathroom doorknob carefully not to lock myself in and conclude that it’s truly securely shut. This is the same apartment where I retreated to my room to read and write, always with my fingers dancing across the laptop’s keys. It has watched me have over 8 different jobs, 4 periods of “funemployment”, and planning meetings organized by yours truly.

I will remember this place when I leave just like I remember all the places, but what will I forget?

When I meet a marketing expert, especially one in consumer media, I immediately see “branding”, “outreach”, and “content creation” cross their eyes. My gut twists. An invisible shell grows instantly around me. All because I don’t think that matches who I am.

But what does it mean to “sell out” anyway? When I started promoting the Kickstarter and spreading the glory of the Ice Cream Travel Guide, I received many emails. Want to help up promote dairy, one said. Another invited me to take part of a food blogging event. Yet another suggested that I take part of radio shows and TV appearances. I hesitated and selectively chose ones.

Working in design, which touches advertising and marketing, I am familiar with all that nomenclature. Based on research, people don’t like being advertised to. They don’t want to be told Use our household soap to open your pores! and our vacuum cleans 10x as fast and efficient as the one you own! I pride myself on being authentic and real, but in doing so, I realize that I am losing by not letting others know who I am.

Yet, it’s partly because as much as it doesn’t seem like it, I value my privacy. It’s a risk to be vulnerable. So of course, I show scorn at the lifestyle brand of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and Blake Lively’s Preserve. Someone in their team thought: what if we take a well-known celebrity and make it into a brand?! And that’s what it turns out to be. An empire of fashion lines, household beautification techniques, recipes that *gasp* the celebrity eats, and curated videos that “show” glimpses into the celebrity’s life. I raise my eyebrows when I read obviously designed language to not drink Earl Grey (since it contains bergamot; reality check, only if you’re allergic to oranges) and the juice cleanses believed to cure all (reality check: the body is made for cleansing; a cleanse may feel clean only because it’s psychological). But who knows, I am just this Asian chick in San Francisco who doesn’t really get it. But then, I realize that by putting yourself out there whether it’s a horrible marketing message or not, there will be someone even if it’s only one person who will love you. Even if it’s just your parents.

And so I continually write in this blog, a place that I haven’t promoted to anyone for nearly a decade. Partly, it’s because I am afraid of the above. The scorn that I show others is likely the same that will occur here. So I remain in my safe place, not growing, squeezed in this perfectly controlled box. I am stunting myself by that fear, yes. But in the moments that I send words out to literary magazines and publications, I hope that someone would hear my voice. Not because it’s about selling things, but because my work is good.