The Most Important Relationship

I have been single most of my life, so I spent most of the Valentine’s Days single.

When I was younger, I would be super envious of the people who ended up finding their love, whom they can celebrate Valentine’s Day with together. To love and be loved romantically, what a wonderful feeling that must be!

However, as years go by, the definition of love and relationships to celebrate on Valentine’s Day became broader and broader. I’ve since then celebrated Valentine’s Day with my date, and I’ve celebrated Galentine’s Day with my girlfriends. Most importantly, I’ve celebrated Valentine’s Day with myself. I cooked up a wonderful dinner by myself. Went for a walk with myself. Read a book. Watched a movie with myself. At the end of the day, I had the whole bed to myself. Truly, it’s a wonderful day.

When I was younger, I’d be uncomfortable when I was alone. I felt sad and disconnected to the world. Now, I know that it is critical to have time alone and connect from within. I sense my own emotions, energy level, and needs. I ask myself: What should I do to make me happier? And I do exactly that. By providing happiness to me, by me, I regained strength and power.

To quote a role model of mine, the wonderful Diane Von Fürstenberg:

“Love is about relationships, yet the most important relationship is the one you have with yourself. Who else is with you at all times? Who else feels the pain when you are hurt? The shame when you are humiliated? Who can smile at your small satisfactions and laugh at your victories but you? Who understands your moments of fear and loneliness better? Who can console you better than you? You are the one who possesses the keys to your being. You carry the passport to your own happiness.

You cannot have a good relationship with anyone, unless you first have it with yourself. Once you have that, any other relationship is a plus, and not a must.”

Cheers to a great Valentine’s Day, with the love of your life, with your friends, with whoever and whatever that give you love and are loved by you, and with yourself! <3

Rupi Kaur poem print on Etsy

Cheers to a New Job (and a New Path!)

Recently, I started a new job. After doing investor relations advisory for three years, I transitioned into being a product manager. I was so thrilled, I ordered my favorite Diptyque candles and asked the shop to send them to me as a gift, personalized with a card that writes: “Happy New Year and congrats on your new job!” I put that card on my fridge.

As some of my friends may know, I was feeling stuck for many years before this. For a long time, I was in a job that I knew wasn’t for me, and I was trying everything to pivot into a new field. A few months ago, I received an exciting job offer, and I finally felt that I was on the right track for the first time. It’s so refreshing to be on the other end of the tunnel, after all these frustrations and struggles.

In college, I was one of the bright-eyed students who dreamed about working in investment banking. I’ve always been interested in business, and it’s so cool to have a chance to learn how a business is built. However, despite hundreds of applications and networking chats, I didn’t get any offer. I enrolled in a masters program and tried again at recruiting.

This time, an offer came around, taking me to New York to do investor relations advisory. While it wasn’t a dream job, it was what I had at that time, and I had a plan for transitioning into something that seemed more interesting, which was equity research. For a while, I thought I was doing well.

Then Covid hit, and so did my quarter-life crisis. Suddenly, the finance industry didn’t sound interesting to me anymore. I began to struggle finding value in my job, and what I did day-to-day became increasingly unfulfilling. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and I was extremely lost. I dreaded going to work every morning, and was constantly feeling like I was wasting my time, letting my youth slip away.

It was a time of deep reflection, and I explored numerous ways to find an answer. However, I had no luck for many months.

First, I tried to connect the dots as I reflected my life journey. I realized that, growing up, the things I always had the most fun with were all creative. I wrote short stories as a kid, and I was a student journalist as a teenager. However, working in creatives required me to start over, and I was scared by this big commitment. Was that really my calling? Was I talented enough? I wanted to find something that intersects between business and creativity, so that my current work experiences were not going to waste.

As an art enthusiast, I thought about brand management and fashion. Perhaps data analytics in the retail industry? Fashion merchandising? Still, neither sounded right to me.  

Looking around what my peers were doing, I thought about tech. I signed up for a product manager bootcamp, but I was intimidated by all the technical jargons. My first try in product was a failure.

Looks like I was not going to find an answer for a while, I thought. The pandemic seemed to be getting better, but I was still where I was. Eventually, my mind came back to my current role, and I thought about new possibilities in my firm. What was the one thing I wanted to do the most, if I was going to stay? I asked myself. That was when I got started on building a VBA excel template to automate workflows for my team.

Something sparked in my second try in product, and I was hooked. I was thinking about my project day in and day out, and I was constantly dreaming up new ideas to improve my design. Coding no longer looked intimidating, as it was now a tool to solve problems. By googling and asking around for help, I overcame all the technical difficulties. I ended up building something that cut workload by 90%, and I was beyond ecstatic. Finally, I discovered the fun in building a product.

And just like that, my journey in product management began. My template launched successfully last April, and it was another 8 months before I found a new job and officially started as a product manager. Now I am a month in, I’ve been enjoying every minute of it. For the first time in the last few years, I felt that I was finally unstuck.

Most people will get stuck some time in their life, and it takes a lot of work to pull themselves out of the trap. For me, the most painful period was figuring out what I wanted to do for my career. I wanted to find an answer as soon as possible, and I was anxious I was wasting time. Looking back, I realized that as long as I was proactive in self-discovery and trying out new things, no time was lost. By taking on new projects, I discovered new interests. By signing up for new classes, I learned about my strengths and shortcomings. Even in the job I knew wasn’t for me, I made a significant amount of progress without realizing, strengthening soft skills that are important for working in product.

Today, I am thankful that, throughout my years of feeling stuck, I was never actually stagnant, and I never gave up finding a way out. After a few years of trying, I finally pulled myself out.

Readers - have you experienced feeling stuck? How have you forged your own path?

Cheers to a new beginning!

*Picture from Mad Men.

How to Keep in Touch with Friends who Live Across the World

Back in college, my best friends and I were all living in the same apartment building. We’d knock on each other’s doors randomly to borrow things, or just simply show up at someone’s place with a bottle of wine. Then adulthood hits, and everyone moved away, chasing new dreams in new cities. Nowadays, most of my closest college friends are living time zones apart from me - in China, UK, France, Japan, Singapore, and different cities in the U.S.

Do you have friends who are now living across the world from you? How do you keep in touch with them, during a pandemic? Here are some of the things I do to try keeping in touch…

Be active on social media

My best friend from college lives in France now. We don’t always call each other, however we are somehow aware of what’s going on in each other’s lives. We both update our social media regularly, and we catch up through that: pictures of Parisian streets and New York subways, friend gatherings, food we eat. Having a social media account largely reduced the friction to keep our lives up-to-date with our friends, and seeing their pictures make it easier to envision what lives they are leading - especially when they live in another country.

Start conversations, no matter how small they are

Many times, conversations between me and a friend would get started because one of us reacted to an instagram story we posted. These small messages always end up with longer paragraphs about our life updates, or even requests to schedule a video chat. If you are wondering what message to send your friend, perhaps start with what they share on social media. Marvel at the dinner they made, the places they travel to, or laugh at the memes they share. Coordinating regular cross time zone video chats could be a daunting task, and small check-ups here and there could go a long way.

Celebrate important life events together

My first best friend in New York who now resides in London recently traveled to the U.S. to celebrate bachelorette with me and another close friend, who later moved to London as well and now lives in Phily. It was so nice seeing each other again, two years after both of them moved out of New York. We got tons of drinks and delicious meals, strolled down tree-lined streets, and stayed in watching movies. It was wonderful. Meanwhile, another friend whose birthday was a day before mine would send messages when we get a year older - even though we haven’t talked for months and she lives in Japan. We would chat for hours, and then go on living our lives again, not hearing from each other for many months. In a way, important life events are great occasions to re-connect with a friend who you haven’t caught up for a while.

And lastly, make the effort to schedule a video chat

Me and a few of my college friends have a group chat, and once in a while one of us would message to schedule a video chat. We are a group of girls living in the U.S., Europe and Asia, so there are 3 time zones to coordinate. However, we always make the effort to find time - after U.S. friend’s morning run, before Europe friend is getting prepared to do groceries, and around Asia friend’s bed time. These chats are hours long, as we give updates one-by-one, talking about everything and nothing. Ultimately, keeping in touch is about finding time for each other, even though we are living different lives in different countries.

Just like any long-distance relationships, long-distance friendship also takes efforts to maintain. What lessons have you learned about keeping up with friends who live far away? Feel free to share…

To my Asian friends - happy Chinese New Year!