I read Julia’s Integrity Report last April and have been meaning to put one together since. As March (metaphorical Monday morning of a new year) rolls in, now feels like a good time to revisit it and consider how well I did in the last year.
I am uneasy talking about values in a public space like a blog because values are inherently personal, and making them public can open me up to be exploited by anyone that disingenuously appeals to them. Besides, some values are ephemeral and I’m not sure how long this blog post will continue to represent me. I’m going to do it regardless because I also see the appeal of creating a snapshot of who I am currently. There is a noticeable intensity to this post, and I'm kinda into it.
There are broadly 3 questions to answer here – What are my core values at this stage of life? How well have I done in terms of living in line with these values? How can I do better in future?
Am I communicating clearly and honestly about what’s on my mind?
At the start of the year, I struggled to speak my mind and often left social interactions feeling estranged from myself. I realized that I owe it to myself and to others to be honest.
I try to be candid, but my need to please and placate people continues to get in the way. I grew up around people that routinely threatened to uproot relationships over every conflict, which has led me to optimize for harmony over everything else. I’m also mortified of my own potential incompetence and try to make up for it in warmth and politeness, often creating a rift between what I say and how I feel/act.
I have now acquired a taste for a certain brand of directness in others, which involves stating things as simply as possible. I try to do this when I can. Baby steps. While this hasn't really helped me get more of what I want, it has reduced my tendency to quietly tolerate the things I don’t like.
Am I following through on my commitments and earning trust?
Professionally, I follow through on my commitments and have mostly earned trust that way. I’ve built a reputation for doing what I say. Outside of work, however, I display some flakiness. I take my time in following through with my promises, which sometimes leaves people hanging. In 2023, I pushed myself to avoid this; I have attempted delivering on promises almost immediately after making them. I shared bad news as quickly as possible in order to avoid ambiguity. I said no to invites and offers when I wasn't interested. I appreciate the momentum and lightness that comes with leading a life this way.
Am I holding myself accountable for my actions?
I vacillate between taking complete control and ownership, and fully relinquishing it. There is a happy medium somewhere in that spectrum that I haven’t found it yet.
While I lead a life where I technically answer to no one, the voices of the people I care about are deeply embedded in my head. I spend a lot of time and energy attempting to make decisions that would appease these voices, while the people that own them are oblivious. It's nearly impossible for me to own such decisions because it feels like I had little to do with them.
Being a bit more decisive in 2023 has led me to take more responsibility for the consequences that stem from it. This involved letting go of potentially lucrative job offers, jumping on opportunities to play music abroad, and setting aside time to meet people. Taking accountability that way has also left me with a clearer picture of what is in my control and what isn’t.
I thrive in a state of dynamic balance, which involves the perpetual shifting of weight from one area to another in a way that evens out over time. I am consistent about some aspects of my life – I have no problems with the quotidian discipline of payments, hygiene, cleaning and maintenance. I’ve also become reliably consistent with exercise, and go running several times a week nowadays.
I am hardly as consistent in other areas – I go through phases where I cook a lot, and then fully rely on takeout food for weeks. Similarly, I spend several weeks reading, and then proceed to not touch a book for months. I used to be disciplined a few years ago. It got me through grad school, several research projects and got me jobs. I remember building a lot of trust in my own ability to do things. And then it went away. I've been working to bring it back.
As a creative person, I know to be very vigilant about inspiration, and try to be as prepared as possible to act quickly. It would help me to disambiguate between creative and subsistence tasks, and approach them with different amounts of discipline.
Am I reliant on myself to solve the challenges I face, and not waiting to be rescued?
I am more self-reliant than I think, and probably more than I need to be. I am fiercely independent in most areas of my life to the point where it fuels my isolation. I have joked to friends and family about how my entire life has been a series of “nvm I’ll do this myself”. When I wasn't getting shows, I organized my own. When I wasn't invited to parties, I threw my own.
In 2023, I did more of this – confronted my sources of discomfort at work, found myself a new job in the depths of the tech industry winter, resumed working out again, showed up to dates and social gatherings despite the perennial exiting of people from my life. Still, I harbor a deep disappointment arising from the fact that taking charge of my life hasn’t really changed what I get out of it, which often makes me question my own agency.
Am I doing my best and following tasks through to their logical end?
“Finishing” things takes substantial work and I’ve made a conscious effort to move in-flux things along over the last year. I like the experience of moving on from thing to thing, and growing via a series of “round-trip” activities. Among other things, I finished and released music that was kicking around for years, I rebuilt my blog, where I then hit publish on several posts from the backlog.
That said, I continue to have a long list of lingering tasks that I struggle to get through. I tried and failed at my best at filling my sketchbook from start to end before the end of the year. It has been a slog for me to finish the books that I set out to read. I always have a lingering pile of mail waiting to be read and acted on. So there is indeed a long way for me to go.
Am I in control of my movements, emotions and instincts?
Physically, I’m a lot more in control of my movements than I used to be. Consistent running and working out over the past year has made me very aware of the muscles and joints in my body, and how to use them.
My instincts are a mixed bag – sometimes I feel the urge to lean into them and am better off having done so, and other times I find myself angry for having indulged in them. While I know that some of my best art comes from a sense of spontaneity, sometimes my instincts turn out to be outdated and lead me to problems that could have been avoided by simply not acting on them.
I’m hardly in control of my emotions in other aspects of life. 2023 has been a year of desperate wrangling, and a struggle to find healthy ways of ignoring myself when necessary. We’re all less and less in control of our minds as a species, and I succumb to it more often than I'd like.
Am I prompt and punctual with deadlines and appointments?
I'm generally good with deadlines, and almost thrive in their presence. I've written before about how it's remarkably easy for me to summon momentum in the hours/days leading up to a trip, event or a submission deadline. This is something I grew up doing and it serves me well.
To my own deep chagrin, however, I’m terrible with showing up to things on time and didn’t really get better at this in 2023. I remember being good at this years ago and wonder what has changed since. Some of it is a function of my upbringing, how I perceive time etc, but there are also other psychological hangups and a lack of activation energy that holds me back from getting up and doing things. I have nothing but respect for people that can show up on time to things, and would likely respect myself a lot more if I could pull this off.
Am I making decisions without avoiding or lingering on choices?
I used to hopelessly linger on choices until they expire one by one, and then pick the last one. It was a lazy approach to life and led to a lot of built in resentment about not getting what I wanted. 2022 was “the year of decisiveness” for me. I had to teach it to myself over the last couple of years, and I made good headway with that in 2023. I’ve had to make a few tough decisions in the last year, and while I carry the sorrow from the consequences, I’m oddly more at peace than I would have been otherwise.
Am I grateful for everything I currently have, and aware of what it was like to not have them?
There are a lot of things I take for granted because everyone I know has the same things as me (and more). But I did catch myself being grateful for certain aspects of my current life – my relationship with siblings, my current apartment, my time in the US and New York, my healthy teeth, and my functioning ears (and their invaluable service in helping me make music.) There were times in the past year when I was at real risk of losing some of these, and it was terrifying. It ultimately made me more intent on enjoying these things while they last. I really appreciate What's making me happy posts by Nat Welch, and wonder if I should start making similar lists.
It is also important for me to recognize that I have missed out on several core life experiences that people my age tend to have. I’m afraid I can’t check all of those boxes while also not falling behind in my current stage of life. There’s a part of me that perpetually grieves this and has an eye out for opportunities to “make up” for it.
Am I cultivating a sense of inquisitiveness about things that are unfamiliar to me?
I can’t remember if I tried new things in the past year, though I have pushed the boundaries of familiarity a little bit. I have noticed that there is a part of me that is inquisitive and possibly even reckless, but it takes the company of very specific people for this side of me to manifest. There is something to be said about the role of emotional safety in this context, something that I don’t experience on most days.
This is a catch-22 in some ways because I think trying lots of new things and making it out alive will invariably build a certain level of confidence and safety with the self, but getting started with it can be a daunting task. I’m aware that miracles are inherently non-consensual and that I need to be okay with that, but I haven’t quite succeeded in living a life that aligns with this idea.
Do I have an imagination that is broad enough about people and lives beyond my own?
This is another of those things; I remember being more open and imaginative about the world than I am today. I suspect the turbulent internet cultures of 2016-2019 had a lot to do with my dwindling faith in other people. My imagination about other lives has also severely atrophied as a result of everyone curating their lives and presenting very misleading but positive narratives about it.
For the most part, NYC does enable me in witnessing a broader range of ways to live. Still, I continue to be very skeptical about offering others the benefit of my doubt. My need to protect myself from being hurt by others often requires me to curb my sense of imagination.
Do I see beauty in the world?
I grew up being taught by many adults that the world is a cruel and devastating place, and that they’re merely warming me up for it when they're being cruel to me themselves. As a result, I stepped into the "real world" bracing myself for the worst. Turns out it’s not as bad as I imagined it to be.
I’m still in the process of identifying what is beautiful to me and very critical of prevailing notions of beauty. My need to push back against cultural norms is a weird distraction but also a promising sign that I have some innate opinions about what is beautiful and aesthetically gratifying.
Am I disciplined and persistent about making art in spite of the harrowing bits?
While I haven’t quite achieved discipline, I have found my own hack around it. I appreciate rituals and repetition, and treat art as sacred. This pushes me to be prolific to the point where a crude form of work ethic has snapped into place. It also helps that I’m in a stage of life where I frequently wake up with ideas that just won’t leave me alone.
I need to work towards honing my craft. There is some sloppiness that I wish I could get past with my singing, guitar playing and sketching. I struggle with the perennial tradeoff between wanting to be seen and wanting to get good.
Do I live up to the importance I give to aesthetics?
There are some ways in which I feel comfortable embodying an aesthetic – in the way I keep my apartment, or my choice of art, music and experiences. Aesthetics play a huge role in the people that I resonate with.
I didn’t quite realize this was important to me until much later in the year. This is the kind of thing that’s easy to hastily file under “vibes”. I am often drawn to or repelled by other people’s aesthetic in a way that I’m learning to be mindful about. This has a tangible influence in the way I relate to people, and myself. I want to try leaning into it, while also being thoroughly aware that it is not everything – it is possible (even common) for deeply corrosive and flawed people/entities to show up draped in something aesthetically resonant.
I’m not particularly a fan of the “How can I set a higher standard?” framing with these things. As someone that has been burned by standardized testing, dating dynamics and the startup tech ecosystem, the phrase “high standards” carries a deep sense of spookiness.
So instead I will think about this as how I can tune myself to better resonate with my own values. Among the things I’m dissatisfied with, there are two broad themes: either they are things I used to be good at until I wasn’t; or they’re things that I failed to get good at despite all the effort. So ways to do better in future would have to involve a way to emulate an older (better?) self without jeopardizing who I am today.
Another recurring theme in my notes so far is the striking realization that motivation for self-improvement is steadily dwindling given how little I get out of life in exchange for it. I'm not sure if anything I do will necessarily address this. Regardless, some ideas:
This list is aspirational, but I’ve tried to be as specific as possible in an attempt to set myself up for success. We’ll see how far I get in the coming months / years.
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