people talk about going home as if it is a return.

as if you arrive, step back into your old life, and become exactly the person you were before you left. and things stay exactly where you left it.

i went back for two weeks. long enough to see the people i loved, drive the roads i knew by memory, and pass the places that once contained almost my entire world.

the feeling arrived before i did.

somewhere between the plane descending and the mountains coming into view, i felt it. the strange relief of recognizing everything. the roads. the light. the shape of the city beneath you.

and then, almost immediately, the sadness.

because the city was still there, but the version of me who belonged to it completely wasn’t.

i drove past streets i had walked and driven thousands of times. buildings i used to call home. parking lots, schools, coffee shops where entire chapters of my life seemed to happen for no reason other than we were young and had nowhere else to be.

every few minutes, there was another memory.

things i used to love. things i still loved. a night that could have felt ordinary before and somehow so precious now. a younger version of me sitting in the passenger seat, having no idea that one day i would drive past and miss him.

the strange thing about growing out of a place is that nothing has to be wrong with it.

you can still love it.

you can still know which lane to be in before the turn, which streets to avoid at rush hour, which restaurant order has not changed in ten years. you can still laugh with the same friends until no time seems to have passed at all.

but you begin to feel more like an admirer from afar than a participant.

the city continues without you. people build routines you are no longer part of. places that once felt enormous seem smaller. the life you imagined staying inside forever has become something you visit.

and yet, for two weeks, i was so happy in a way that felt almost embarrassingly simple.

i saw my family. i saw old friends. i ate familiar food and drove familiar roads. i was surrounded by people who knew versions of me that no one where I now live ever will.

there is a kind of love in being known before your work, your ambitions, your plans. by people who remember you when your whole life could fit inside a few block radius.

then the two weeks ended.

and as sad as i was to leave, i was excited to go back.

for a bit, that felt like a contradiction.

how could i be so sad to leave one place and so happy to return to another?

but maybe home is not always one place.

maybe, if you are lucky, your heart learns to live in more than one.

one place holds the person you were. the other holds the person you are becoming.

and perhaps the ache is not evidence that you chose incorrectly.

perhaps it is the cost of having two places worth missing.

two cities on different coasts, in different countries, pulling at your heart with almost equal force. one filled with the streets you have walked a thousand times. the other filled with streets you are still learning.

i felt it as soon as i landed.

i felt it again as soon as i left.

and somewhere between those two sadnesses, i realized how rare it is to have one place you cannot wait to return to.

let alone two.

there’s a quiet assumption in all the ai discourse that the smarter species ends up in control.

that if something surpasses us, it will rule us. rewrite the hierarchy. make us obsolete, or obedient.

it sounds logical when you say it like that. almost inevitable.

but that’s never quite matched my experience with cats.

because i’ve lived with two of them. and if intelligence..or power decided hierarchy, then i should have been in charge. i paid the rent. i bought the food. i opened the doors and closed them. by every external measure, the system was mine to run.

it wasn’t.

they ignored me when it suited them. disappeared into corners of the apartment i could never quite map. decided, without explanation, when i was allowed to be close. and somehow, without ever trying to control anything, they dictated the rhythm of the place. when it was quiet, when it was alive, where you sat, how long you stayed.

we didn’t rule them. they didn’t rule us. but if you’ve ever loved a cat, you know this is the part people miss: the relationship doesn’t organize itself around power at all.

it organizes itself around love. around small, unspoken permissions. around the strange, fleeting fragile privilege of being chosen, briefly, fondly, and without warning.

and once you’ve been chosen like that, even a little, it’s hard to go back to believing that intelligence, or strength, power, or ownership…has anything to do with who gets to matter forever.

Dear Jeremy, Your twenty-seventh birthday is coming up… and I know you feel it.

You’ve been carrying the weight of it more than you admit, the sense that something is closing, that time is asking you a question.

I’ve been thinking a lot about endings lately. Not abrupt ones. The quiet kind you feel coming long before they arrive.

The closest thing I compare it to is like watching a beautiful movie for the very first time and realizing … there isn’t much left. You’re still inside the story. Still leaning forward. Still catching details you didn’t notice before. But somewhere in the background, there’s an awareness that time is thinning. Every scene feels fuller because you know there aren’t many scenes left like it.

What surprised me is that the dominant feeling isn’t sadness. It’s gratitude, overwhelming gratitude. Followed immediately by sadness. They arrive together, they’re part of this same emotion. I’ve stopped trying to separate them.

That’s how I think about you now.

When I picture you at twenty-seven, I don’t see your plans or your ambitions. I see you in the middle of the scene. Still right in the body of the story. Still assuming there will always be another act where everything settles. You don’t yet feel the weight of how rare your ordinary day actually is. Right now, you move through time like the movie will go on forever. You’re impatient. You’re always thinking about what comes next. I don’t blame you for that. It’s how young people move at that age.

There’s something I need you to know.

This part really really matters.

You can stop worrying about life so much. The story doesn’t suddenly fall apart for no reason. You build a life. You’re surrounded by people who love you and who you love deeply in return. There are children laughing in rooms you haven’t entered yet. There are babies’ hands you’ll hold without understanding how much they’ll come to mean.

You don’t end up alone.

You won’t get everything right either.

But, you end up full.

Some chapters will feel so much messier than they needed to be – and darkness will inevitably creep up. But somehow, things end up working out. Not perfectly, 100% the way life should be.

Love becomes the only throughline that makes the whole story cohere. What makes it ache isn’t that it ends. It’s that it was so good while it was happening, and you couldn’t fully see it from inside the frame.

Trust me I know.

I’m 72 years old now.

I’ve watched the rest of the movie.

And this part.. this exact version of you, right in this moment…right where you are… is one of the parts that makes me pause the screen the most.

You were still in the middle of it, unaware of how beautiful the scene already was. If there’s anything I hope reaches you… it’s just… this… feeling…. capturing this moment in time. I get the sinking feeling of sitting in a dark theater, knowing the credits are close, and feeling love for the ups and downs of the entire story so much.

It hurts because I’m so grateful, but I also really don’t want it to end.

That’s how I feel about you.

— J.K.

There’s something about New York that sharpens my attention.

Not in a loud way.

More like it quietly insists that I show up awake.

Being here, I notice how quickly the city exposes whether I’m actually present or just moving through it out of habit. I’ve been walking so so so much more than usual.

Letting subtle moments stretch. Drinks with friends linger. Conversations take new meanings, and take their time.

New York is good at holding moments that don’t announce themselves as important while they’re happening. The city keeps its pace, but it leaves room for pauses and subtlety if you’re paying attention.

I’ve always been drawn to places where effort is visible. New York doesn’t hide the work. You see it in the scaffolding, the late lights, the way people move with purpose even when they’re tired. There’s something grounding about that honesty. It makes things feel clearer, simpler, more real.

Creatively, the city reinforces something I try to practice: restraint paired with confidence.

Not everything needs to be explained. The best things in life are often implied. A sentence or night that ends a little early, moments that are allowed to stand on their own.

New York communicates like that. It trusts the observer. What I appreciate most is that the city doesn’t demand permanence. You can step into it fully without needing to decide what comes next. Some experiences don’t ask to be resolved. They just ask to be noticed. For now, that’s enough. Being here has given me a better sense of rhythm. This is how I want my days to feel, how I want my work to move, how much attention I want to give the things that matter. New York isn’t offering answers. It’s sharpening the questions. And I’m okay staying with them a little longer.

Getting a company acquired feels less like a finish line and more like closing the last page of (in my case) a very short book.

You spend years inside it. Three, in my case. Living with the characters, the problems, the rhythm of the days.

Some chapters move quickly. Others drag. You try to rewrite sections you were sure were finished only to leave chaotic markings everywhere.

On reflecting, I noticed you really miss things you should have seen earlier. I made an unbelievable number of mistakes, just so so many stupid ones. The kind you only recognize once you’ve already turned the page. And yet still, the story however broken still seem holds.

When it ends, there honestly isn’t a rush at all. Just a quiet recognition that the book is complete. It said what it needed to say.

What surprises me is how little the mistakes dominate the ending. They’re there, clearly. But they feel like part of the texture, not the point. They taught me how to pay attention, how to recover, how to keep going without pretending I knew more than I did.

Finishing a book doesn’t mean you’re done writing. It just clears the desk. Makes space. You close it gently, set it aside, and notice there’s a lot of room in front of you again. That’s where I am now. The story is finished. Shorter than expected. Messier than planned. Still beautiful in its own way.

I’m in the fortunate position of having too many options on what to do next and frankly motivated by pure ambition and impact versus just money this time. I feel full.

Luckily for me, I’m already writing the part (it’s a secret), and what’s next already feels so much bigger.

breathe in deeply and let your mind return to your body.

the last eight years went by in a blink.
not because those years were empty
I just lived them all in the future

every day was a rehearsal for some version of tomorrow or the next day.
I’ve been so busy making my future life perfect,
that life was quietly happening without me.
REMINDER: the present isn’t a stepping stone … it’s the whole. damn. thing.

How I Structure My Creative Time

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about creativity, it’s that it doesn’t wait around. It shows up when it wants to, and if I’m not ready, it’ll move on without me. That’s why I structure my days around it. For me, the morning is sacred. Once the first meeting hits, the noise of the day takes over, and my creative window quietly closes. So I wake up early. Not because it’s trendy but because it’s the only way I can protect my focus before it gets pulled in a hundred directions.

I’ve always been fascinated by how great writers and creators structure their lives, not just their work. I honestly didn’t study Stephen King, Christopher Nolan, or Hayao Miyazaki to copy their techniques, I studied how they lived. How they showed up to the page or the storyboard with care, intention, and discipline. King writes every morning. Nolan creates environments where deep, focused thinking is possible. Miyazaki treats animation like a living thing…slow, detailed, and deeply emotional. That’s what I wanted to learn from. Not how they write, but how they prepare to write.

That level of discipline gave me permission to take my own creative work seriously. I’m currently working on my first screenplay, Degen Galaxy – a 2D animated story about the tech and venture capital world, told with a mix of humor, satire, and reverence. It’s a love letter to the tech ecosystem and the odd cast of characters that drive it forward. I think the tech world is one of the most fascinating and absurd modern landscapes. Covering it like a creative historian that in part lives in it, is one of the most fun challenges I’ve taken on.

I’m deeply inspired by the sheer amount of smart creativity it takes to build something out of nothing, whether it’s a startup or a story. And I think 2D animation is one of the greatest artistic forms we have. There’s something timeless about it – hand-drawn movement, carefully crafted expressions, each frame a decision. It’s not fast, it’s not optimized, which gives it more meaning. That really speaks to me. There’s beauty in the slowness and the labor, and I try to carry that same energy into my writing.

People sometimes ask how I stay motivated to write, and the honest answer is: I’m just a fan. I love great writing. I love a perfect line of dialogue. I love when a story turns in a way I didn’t expect but instantly understand. I’m the type of person that will listen to the same great song on repeat 1000 times. Reading great writing is like listening to your that amazing song on repeat – I just don’t get tired of it. So writing creatively never feels like a burden. It feels like I’m getting to be a part of the thing I love most.

But writing time doesn’t appear out of nowhere. I’ve learned to treat it like any other kind of commitment, it needs a container. For me, that’s usually the first two hours of the morning. No email, no Slack, no news, no multitasking. If something good comes out of it, great. If not, that’s fine too. The point is to show up and make space.

My only advice to other writers is this: get the first few lines onto paper as soon as you wake up. Don’t wait for inspiration to arrive…just start. Writing is rhythm. Writing is flow. Even if those first few lines end up getting cut or rewritten later, they serve a purpose. They’re your warmup, your way of telling your brain, “It’s time now.” I actually learned this by watching the old “master” at the Korean hair salon I go to. When someone walks in with a huge, unruly mane, you can almost see the wheels turning in his mind- mapping, planning, imagining. But before he dives into anything major, I noticed he always makes a few small snips. Maybe they don’t mean much structurally, but they matter. It’s how he gets into flow. A cue to his hands and his mind: now we shape, now we create.

I’ve come to respect this idea that creative structure isn’t about rules, it’s about rhythm. You don’t force it, but you do make room for it. And when you treat your time with care, it responds. It’s not magic. It’s just attention. When I give my creativity a place to land, it usually shows up.

And that’s really what it comes down to for me … attention, time, and care. Just the quiet, consistent practice of making space to do the work I love.

Trying to Hold Time

When I was seven, I told my mom that I wasn’t a kid anymore. I said it seriously, with full conviction. I told her I knew life came with responsibility, and I was ready to carry some of it. I don’t think I fully understood what I meant, but I felt it. Awareness that time was moving forward and that I had to grow up with it.

That’s one of my earliest memories of time—really noticing it. Not in the calendar sense, but in the way a child starts to grasp that life isn’t endless. I remember it hitting me even harder when I was nine. I’d look forward to something, usually a school field trip or summer vacation. Then, almost before it arrived, it was over. I’d find myself stunned by how quickly it all disappeared. Like I’d been holding my breath waiting for the moment, and then suddenly I was watching it dissolve in the rearview mirror.

Now I’m 26. Time doesn’t just move fast anymore every year feels like a blink. Holidays blur together. The seasons flip like pages in a book someone else is reading too fast. And I find myself trying to grab at seconds, to hold them in my hands, even though I know they’ll slip through anyway.

When I visited Santa Monica in LA not too long ago, I stood by the water watching the sunset. And all I could think—besides how beautiful it was—was how damn badly I wanted to just remember vividly that exact moment. To take the clearest full view mental screenshot. To somehow dig in and remember that moment for the rest of my life. It wasn’t just about the view. It wasn’t about not wanting another moment to pass. I knew it would become another memory so fast, I wanted it to be one that I really remembered.

Childhood is the training ground for nostalgia—we build our first mental scrapbook, and we also start realizing how quickly the pages turn. It’s not that we didn’t enjoy those moments. It’s that enjoyment and impermanence are inseparable. The more something means to you, the faster it seems to end.

People always say life is short. I used to wonder if that was just because it’s finite. But it’s not just about the total length—it’s about how much of it we feel. You now fully realize you can live 80 years and still feel like it all happened in the space between two blinks. Especially if you don’t take time to notice.

And that’s what I try to do now. Notice. Slow down when I can. Pay attention. Make things, share things, write things—not because they’ll last forever, but because the act of creating something is one way to stretch a moment just a little further. Sometimes, the only way to hold time is to leave a mark inside it.

I don’t have all the answers. I still rush through days I wish I hadn’t. I still find myself missing things as they’re happening. But I’m trying. Trying to live like time is something sacred. Trying to hold on—not to stop it, but to really be in it while it’s here.

For most of my life, birthdays felt like something to brace for, not celebrate.

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the day I was born. My third birthday was traumatizing in a way I didn’t have the language for at the time. My 13th birthday was the same day as my closest grandparent’s funeral, a moment that permanently fused joy and grief together in my mind. Most years, I didn’t get presents. And the one actual party I had as a kid? Everything went wrong. I remember leaving it more confused than happy, wondering if I was the problem.

As a kid, you grow up watching birthdays on TV or in movies. There’s always cake, laughter, parents beaming with pride, friends showing up with gifts. You grow up thinking that’s normal. And when it doesn’t happen for you year after year you start to internalize that maybe celebration isn’t meant for you. You become the kid who shrugs it off. You start to believe it’s better not to expect anything at all.

If you asked my therapist, he might say that birthdays represent more than just getting older. They’re emotional checkpoints. For people who grew up with instability, grief, or disappointment, birthdays can feel like pressure cookers: a time when unmet expectations resurface, when old emotional wounds come out of hiding.

And for a long time, I didn’t even feel sad about it. I didn’t feel much at all. It was easier to disconnect. To treat the day with lower expectations than any other day and just move on.

But something shifted this year. I turned 26, and I tried to do something different.

It wasn’t anything huge and it wasn’t even solo. It was a joint birthday with a friend. But for me, it was symbolic. An act of healing. I let people celebrate me, even just a little. I let myself enjoy the moment – not because it was flawless, but because it meant something. It meant I was trying to rewrite the script.

What I’ve come to realize is that birthdays aren’t really about cake or parties or the number of people who show up. They’re about permission. Permission to be acknowledged. To be celebrated. To take up space. And sometimes, that’s the hardest thing to give yourself…especially when your earliest memories tell you not to.

So no, I don’t regret the past. I’m not bitter. But I’m also not pretending like it didn’t shape me. I’m learning to hold both truths at once: that I missed out on something, and that it’s not too late to reclaim it.

My 26th birthday was a step. And I think that’s all healing really is…giving yourself small moments that remind you you’re allowed to feel joy on your birthday, even if it’s taken a while to get there.