This is a healing travel blog about leaving before you disappear. After burnout, long weeks, and darker thoughts than I knew how to name, I took a sabbatical and went travelling not to chase destinations, but to sit with the in-between moments. The long drives. The quiet nights. The conversations, songs, and breakdowns that don’t make postcards but change you anyway. I’m not here to tell you where to go. I’m here to tell you what it feels like to keep going when you’re tired, numb, healing, and slowly unexpectedly finding joy again. How I will try to heal being burnt out.
I am in China, fumbling my way around –and laughing at myself. This version of me is new. Or maybe old. Or maybe the one that was always there but never given much air. In my responsible past, perfection was the game. I wanted everything I touched to be right. Vacations meticulously planned. Code polished …
A week into China, and yes –it is hard. I’m in Nanjing now, after five nights in Shanghai. I arrived here by accident. I meant to go to Nanchang. When you’re booking train tickets in a language you don’t read, “accident” becomes part of the itinerary. The small victory is that I at least booked …
Today, I wandered Chengdu the way I wander most cities –without a destination, letting my feet decide. Somehow, I ended up on the rooftop of a mall. Above the noise. Above the crowds. There, in large letters, it read: “I Am Here.” It stopped me. I’ve been wearing those words on my body for over …
Today I visited the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding –a place devoted to saving a species that almost disappeared. The base stretches over three square miles, crisscrossed with paths that look straightforward until you start walking them. I carried a map. I followed the signs. And still, I kept ending up in the …
Today was the Fringe lottery draw. I was in China, thousands of miles away from Toronto, watching a livestream of a party happening in the city where the stage is –the city where this dream has always lived. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I had traveled across continents to find myself, and now I …
I am not a musician or musically talented, however songs have been the best trigger for reminiscing my history. When I hear a song, I can flashback to a period of my life not thought of for a very long time.
These two songs remind me of my support group on a cruise a group of strangers who, for a brief time, became something more. We arrived from different places, carrying different stories, yet somehow found common ground through shared moments on a ship. I Got You Babe speaks to the quiet reassurance we offered one …
I grew up hearing this song in the 80s, but this week it stopped me in a way it never had before. As a kid, the melody was catchy, almost light something that played in the background of a life still mostly intact. Back then, I hadn’t lost anyone worth being reminded of. Now the …
Why does so much music from the 80s keep rising to the surface of my memory? I suppose those were my formative years –the time when songs didn’t just play, they imprinted. Come On Eileen always brings me back to my one true crush in Trinidad. She was Asian, sassy, and effortlessly beautiful. She also …
It’s 1987, and I’m graduating from a high school in Texas with a class of 1,200 other seniors. Lean On Me was voted our graduating song. At the time, it felt fitting in a general way –warm, communal, hopeful. Only later did I understand how much leaning I had actually done to get there. I …
I’ s 2020, and I hear this song just before having my first Twinkie ever. A small milestone, maybe –but a memorable one. Sweet, soft, and surprisingly good. The kind of moment that would normally pass without notice, except music was there to pin it in place. I’m starting to believe that music, memory, and …
To hint, or not to hint: that is the question.Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the blanks and blunders of outrageous guesses,Or to take clues against a sea of letters, and by solving, end them. Alright, alright — enough Shakespeare. But if you’ve ever played Wordkle, you know the drama is real. Four words. Nine guesses. …
