Belated Birthday post: Lessons for my 20 year old self
I started writing this long post on my birthday last Friday and had planned to add to it and eventually finish up through Sunday. Unfortunately, the coronavirus was in full force and the markets started to crash so I was quite distracted with the events and didn’t feel like writing much over the weekend.
The markets have calmed and I was happy to write this with a much happier and positive mindset.
For my birthday, Sophia booked us a reservation at Omakase on Friday night and a sushi dinner in midst of canceling our trip to Japan was exactly what I wanted. It was as great as advertised, but Sophia said it didn’t live up to Sushi Noz in NYC. That’s what I get for taking her there for her first omakase style experience.
I spent Saturday morning playing mini-golf with my 9 year old sister and it was equally parts exhausting and rewarding. After passing off my sister back to my parents, we did an escape the room game (we escaped!) and finished the night off at my favorite restaurant in the world, Thanh Long.
Despite the bad news on Sunday, I had an amazing time with my closest friends. I am insanely fortunate to have a supporting group of friends that will always be there for me. Markets come and go, coronavirus will hopefully be over soon, but moments with friends like this past weekend remind me what the important things in life are.
For my 30th birthday blog post, I thought I would do one of my corny “Letter to My 20 Year Old Self” posts to reflect back on my 20s. If anything, it’ll be great to just laugh at down the road when I turn 40 and maybe... just maybe I’ll have some insight from this to teach my future offspring.
I don’t actually feel like writing a letter, so I figured I’m going to do it in the way I would communicate with my own self… in bullet points.
Without further ado, notes to my 20 year old self:
Meditate everyday. A day with meditation > a day without meditating.
Start writing. Keep that journal that you once thought about. Start your blog. It’s therapeutic, you’ll learn a lot about things and yourself, and you’ll want to reflect back on some of your most important years in the future.
Think long and hard about switching out of that engineering degree. There’s a lot of high paying jobs in tech and building things is really awesome. You probably won’t listen and end deciding to go to the business school and work for a big firm, but you’ll realize that you were wrong soon enough.
Have fun and enjoy your youth, but take it easy on the drinks and realize that you don’t need to be wasted all the time. No matter how unfathomable as this may seem, you will one day get tired and realize that life isn’t about partying all the time.
There’s going to be a lot of toxic people in your life. Figure them out and get rid of them. It’s not that hard and you’ll be thanking yourself once you do. Life is too short to be wasting it with people that don’t give a shit about you.
Everyone has insecurities and you’re not special. The sooner you realize this, the happier you will be. Embrace yourself as you are and don’t try to change that for anyone.
Your metabolism will slow down no matter how much you think it won’t. You will gain weight and that’s okay. Start developing better eating habits so you’re not teaching yourself not to eat junk food after you realize this.
Those days where you think the sky is falling? You won’t remember them down the road so keep your head up and realize how little those things are in the grand scheme of things.
Embrace the nerd in you. There is nothing wrong with being curious and staying in and missing the party to read books or articles that interest you is perfectly okay.
Teach yourself better sleep habits. You may not feel it now, but 5-6 hours of a sleep is 5-6 times more miserable when you’re older.
Last thing. Don’t ever think getting a fake tan before a date is a good idea. You are an absolute idiot for thinking this and it won’t end well for you.