Author: theellenwang

So the wait is over. I verbally accepted a job offer last week. (And got completely wasted on that same night semi-coincidentally, the sickness that stretched over the next 24 hours convinced me I’m too old to celebrate by over-drinking.)

I was really happy though, mostly becoz I do think it’s a positive move career-wise, but partly also becoz I was cathartically relieved the wait was finally over. For someone who hasn’t changed job in the past 4 years, I was indeed a bit rustic in the job market and had little idea of how difficult and agonizing the process can be these days, even from the side of being headhunted.

Let me start from the beginning.

Sometime last year, I was approached by a recruiter about a job, and I happened to start to have the idea of looking around at the same time, so I agreed to proceed with the opportunity without knowing what I signed up for. It was a very strong brand, let’s say Company P. The interviews went quite well, I managed to move to the next steps successfully after every round, and I managed to complete all ten rounds of interviews and one written test with all positive feedbacks.

In the end, I didn’t get that job. They chose another candidate over me. Things like this happen. But the annoying part is, I had to wait for literally one month for this piece of disappointing news. I remember receiving the email from my headhunter when I was alone in Bali during the new year break, right after a morning yoga session. I was sitting at a beautiful cafe facing a beautiful rice field, and feeling only deeply depressed. In fact, it wasn’t even about not getting the job (trust me, after one month of not hearing, you wouldn’t be still expecting anything positive anymore). It’s about feeling a concrete sense of loss, which only started to kick in from that moment, all the interviews that I had to go through, all those nights and weekends spent preparing for them, all the time and effort I had committed. For what? I’d be lying if I said there was no bitterness felt at all. From the first day I heard of this job to the last day I heard from this job, it took two and half months.

After this episode with Company P, and several other unfruitful interviews that my headhunter rushingly set me up with (I couldn’t tell if he was trying hard to comfort me or just can’t wait to cash me out), I just felt pretty exhausted and decided to put my job-hopping thoughts on hold. I was equally jaded in the job market as I was in the dating market, and turned myself into the “not-looking” mode all together.

Fast-forward to this June, I got an email about a role from the same recruiting firm. The role was with, let’s say Company A. I took a glimpse and forgot about it. I got several more messages from the recruiter chasing me over it, telling me Company A was really interested in meeting me. I relentlessly ignored them. (yes I was that jaded.)

Fast-forward to this August, I received another email from another recruiter, telling me about the same role of Company A and the same message that the hiring manager was really interested in meeting me. Now Company A had successfully got my attention. Why is Company A so obsessed with me? Out of curiosity I agreed to meet with the recruiter and hear him out about this job. It turned out that the hiring manager joined A from P earlier this year, and even though she didn’t interview me for that Company P job, she had heard good words about me from her ex-colleagues (who interviewed me), and thought I’d be a good fit for the Company A role she’s recruiting.

Everything after was pretty plain and straightforward comparatively. After only 2 rounds of on-site written tests, 7 rounds of interviews (including a final round of being asked about my political views on the current HK mess and I basically took a leap of faith by being truthful of what I think), two weeks’ nerve-wracking wait after all of the above and one round of salary negotiation, I got the job.

At this point, my friend, I guess you could more or less resonate with how relived I was, not even for getting the job, but simply for having proved that at least someone does fancy me, and I’m after all not completely un-hireable in this cruel cruel market.

And at this point, I guess I could finally go back to that early January morning in Bali, pat on the shoulder of that girl sitting in the cafe gazing at the rice field with dismay, and tell her that all those interviews she had to go through, all those nights and weekends she spent preparing for them, all the time and effort she committed…she didn’t go through them for no good reasons.

P.S. Ironically, I got an unexpected raise last week on the same day I got the offer. Even though it didn’t change anything, still, I just wanna look up in the sky and ask whoever is up there: dude, WTF?

I had to go through a long and agonizing process of waiting (for a piece of news) in the past two weeks. In fact, as of now, the wait is not over yet. But the worst time has passed. After knowing the reason why I had to wait longer than expected, I’m waiting in a very chill fashion now.

It’s more or less a shame, but the previous excessive anxiety and disturbance from the waiting, did trigger a sense of resemblance of what I felt when I was in an emotionally abusive relationship several years ago. The sinking heart when staring at my quiet phone as hours went by, the mix of disappointment, anger, self-doubt, paranoid speculations and damaged pride, the state of being completely seized by the uneasiness and couldn’t focus on anything else.

These are two substantially different situations, apparently. But what makes me feel the resemblance, I know, is that the deepest insecurity inside me was triggered, and the reluctancy to face it. Different people has different source of the their no.1 insecurity. In the context of love and romance, some might feel most insecure about the financial state of their partner, some feel most insecure about the fidelity of their partner, some feel most insecure about the companion and attention they can get. In some way, I do more or less feel some of the above. But if I have to go full-on psychoanalytical and diagnose myself, my deepest insecurity lies in the quest I was dreading very much to face: what is my life without love, or the illusion of love?

It was the dread of the internal void that made me would rather entangle myself with someone who was clearly wrong for me for two years than letting it go, rather stare at a phone that didn’t ring and wound’t ring for hours than looking in the face of the void.

In the past ten months, I’ve been consciously staying single and focusing on filling up the void. I spent a lot of time being alone, not only becoz I realize it’s the state I’m more comfortable with relative to social occasions, but also becoz I see it as a necessary, repetitive practise. I’ve only spent time on meaningful human connections in my life and retreated from the others, acknowledging to myself that not every relation is worth keeping. I’ve rejuvenated some of my old-time hobbies. I write, I play music, I watch movies, I exercise, I take photos to document my state of existence, however ordinary it seems. I can’t say how successful I am at filling up the void, but at least all this time, I’m looking at it as it is.

My friend Jorge once told me, many people think they have to find the other half of their orange (don’t ask why, he always has some peculiar metaphors), that’s becoz they decide to see themselves as half an orange. But it’s not the case. One has to be a full orange first, and try to be a ample, happy orange. After that, no matter if you find another orange or not, or even another banana, apple, you’d at least have the power to make yourself happy. Then you make other people happy. —— That’s perhaps a cheerful Spanish version of my gloomy void theory, if one prefers.

I guess the bottom line to deal with insecurity is, there’s no shortcut, and you just have to be honest about it to start with. Of course, some people would easily resort to a temporary quick fix (e.g, finding a rich husband to oppose financial insecurity) or even slide into a sad state of self-denial/deception (e.g, engaging in a marathon dating game to maintain a perception of self worth). But there’s a difference between resisting insecurity and feeling secure. And it’s no secret that any sense of security can only come from within.

As of the reason lies under my most recent insecurity attack, well, I don’t wanna talk much about it yet to jinx the result I’m waiting for, (I’m insecure, remember?) but it did force me to look underneath the symptoms and to think hard on what to do with it. The first step is, unfortunately, wait.

P.S: A very important lesson I learned from recent piano practise: it’s more difficult to play lightly (and have perfect control of the finger strength) than to play it out loud and hard. When I realized this, it was like an “ah-ha” philosophical moment. The same rule can actually be applied to many things in life, isn’t it?

Last weekend I was practising piano in my parents’ home in Shenzhen, on the acoustic piano I played in my childhood. Since I resumed practising piano, the progress I’ve made and my relaunched passion at it have way exceeded my own expectation – I feel more attached to piano than I did when I was little. One key evidence, is Bach doesn’t appear distasteful anymore. He’s still a pain in the ass, but in a good way.

My father was pretty surprised at how “well” I was playing in such a short time and commented, “it seems all your childhood hardwork isn’t completely gone.” I joked back:” Yeah I think I’m pretty talented in Piano.” He said: “Well, you and I, we are both artistic people in the nature, with our talents wasted through time coz we didn’t stick with it.”

I was almost triggered and wanted to remind him that I didn’t stick with piano only coz you didn’t let me, which apparently is a forgotten episode for both of my parents, but I didn’t. I have no intention to risk the peace with them, and I’ve also passed the age to blame one’s parents for everything less than ideal.

But I can’t stop thinking about the “wasted talent” theory – did I really waste my talents? To be entitled to this statement, one has to be talented to start with, which, without some sort of obvious achievement or outstanding performance, is quite in question itself. Even so, throughout the process of growing up, I did hear people telling me of my potential talents from time to time: my language expression and writing skills; my singing voice and musical ear; my handwriting/calligraphy; my photography touch; my aesthetic and styling sense……and I did use to believe that I was talented in some, and was indeed quite passionate at each of the above at different periods of my life.

The thing is, I grew up in a culture that worships success, and sees a talent only worth celebrating if the value of it is maximized, ie, either one is living on a talent or making a name out of it; otherwise, an “unfulfilled” talent is merely a situation to sigh over with. These values have indeed caused me anxiety over those “wasted talents”, I can’t even begin to describe how much guilt and disturbance I had to live with for not pursuing them, for not trying harder, for not risking things for them along the way. For years, I couldn’t write anything and didn’t write anything, only becoz I cared too much about it that I thought if I don’t have the luxury of doing it perfectly, I’d rather not do it. My therapist after hearing me once pointed out: “You have a very unhealthy relationship with writing.”

These days, standing in my early 30s, it has more or less come to my realization that the intrinsic value of a “talent” lies in the fact that it brings you sensual revelation, unconditional pleasure, fullness at the soul and eventually, peace of mind. This shouldn’t be compromised with or without a worldly-defined success.

Am I really talented? Who knows. And I’m certainly less assured than my younger self, a girl who had little idea of how much it takes to call it a talent. Have I really wasted my “talents”? Maybe. But the least I have achieved so far is that I have made my peace with all my wasted “talents”. And I’m grateful that they are mostly still with me in my life, in the form of “interests”, supporting me through the daily mundane, completing me as the person I am.

P.S. My father is probably more talented in many ways than I am. He resumed his calligraphy passion after he retired a few years ago and here is the work he did for the mid-autumn festival that just passed, which is a traditional poem verse presented with a creative character. I am truly impressed.

I went to pick up a second-hand digital piano I bought earlier yesterday. On the same night, some random stranger came and picked up the dinner table I gave away on AsiaXpat.

On my way back home with my piano on the mover’s van, I was feeling both excited and slightly embarrassed. Excited as it feels like the start of a new journey, embarrassed coz it’s not really a new journey. I played piano for 5 years when I was in primary school and junior high, and have obtained a level 8 certificate. But after 18 years of obsolescence, if you put me in front of a piano now, it’d be the same as if you put a cow in front of a piano. I simply can’t play anything anymore. One may think playing piano is similar to swimming, the kind of skill that once acquired it would never be lost. Well, it’s not, at least not in my case. It’s a skill I used to have, witnessed it evaporated through time, and am now trying to regain.

After the mover left, I sat in front of my “new” piano and pressed the keys rigidly, I simply couldn’t believe a younger version of me used to be able to work her fingers fluently on this instrument. It somewhat saddens me. I always thought I’ve evolved in a continuous way, in a way that every frame of me is perfectly stored in a safe place. But sitting in front of the piano and not being able to reconnect with the skills I used to have, I realized I’m old enough to feel dislocated from “the past”. The memories are there, but you look at it like you’re looking at someone else’s life.

And if I’m being honest, most of the memories of my piano-playing days feels pretty blurred now. I only remember a few things. I remember my first piano teacher lived in a commercial building where the basement was a McDonald’s, every weekend after my piano lesson my dad would take me there for a happy meal and my fondness for chicken nuggets was deeply rooted since then. I remember losing my temper when I was practising Bach that I used a pencil to stab the score book, tearing the page off, crying, wishing to end the misery. I remember feeling very precious of having a piano at the beginning, I was 9. One day shortly after I got the piano, my father turned up in the school out of blue looking for me. My first thought was, something bad must have happened, oh no, my piano must be stolen. It did turn out to be some bad news, not that my piano was stolen though, but my grandmother had passed away. And I remember when I was in the first grade of high school, I told my parents I wanted to resume learning piano (after one year’s break due to highschool entrance exams). My parents objected the idea without any hesitation and told me I should focus on my schoolwork. I was 15, top-notch in my schoolwork, easily convinced.

During the period when I grew up as a kid, in China, especially in Shenzhen, having their kids learning piano just started to become a thing. Almost every child growing up in Shenzhen has learned a bit of piano. I remember my father used to always say, (as he likes to put a good reason to everything) that they wanted me to learn piano not in the hope that I’d achieve anything as a piano player, but to enable me to have a musical tool to find some consolation if one day I happen to need it in my life. And here I am, after 18 years of not touching the piano once, echoing what he used to wish for me. In my shock, I realized if I have to explain why I wanna pick up piano again, there’s no better way to answer it than my father’s initial intention. I guess I simply wish for some musical consolation as a 30-something woman living alone in a hectic city. And I need it so badly that I have to get rid of my dinner table to make room for the digital piano.

The best thing is, there’s no objection anymore. There’s no one there saying something like “No Ellen, you should focus on your career, it’s not the right time for piano.” I guess this is the beauty of being middle-aged. You have a better idea of who you are and you make your decisions at your well-earned discretion. If you want some consolation, you play some music. If you don’t have enough room for the piano to play that music, you sell your table to make room for that piano to play that music. And you tell yourself, it’s a right decision. You know it’s a right decision. Becoz you’ve only used that table 4 times in 3 years.

Now, I can’t wait to have my first piano lesson.

P.S. I’ve been using the same mover since 5 years ago. We never really had a real conversation, I only keep going back to him becoz he has great moving skills and reasonable price. And of coz, it feels good to “have a guy” for something. This time as usual I contacted him to move the piano. When we met at the pick-up place, he said: “I’ve known you for so many years and I never know you play music.” I laughed embarrassedly and thought to myself “of coz, you don’t know me at all.”

But I couldn’t stop thinking about what he said. He does know me for many years. And he was always there when I was in need. He helped me move from Taiwai to Sai Ying Pun, from Sai Ying Pun to Tsing Yi. He helped me move many pieces of furniture here and there and he assembled my wardrobes both times, which is literally the center of my life. I couldn’t help marvelling at how strange people’s relationship can be. How easily I grant my loyalty to this random skinny mover guy, how familiar and dependable to me he feels in a certain way, how well he knows about me and how little I know about him. For Christ’s sake, I don’t even know his name.

Last week we had a very unexpected typhoon day in Hong Kong. Usually people would be aware and words would be spreading a day ahead if there’s a chance it could be a No.8. But this time, we didn’t hear anything until the morning of that day. Maybe the observatory did give a notice, but everyone in the city was too preoccupied with all the protest-related news these days, in their own biased way.

Anyways, I had an unexpected half day off in the afternoon of Wednesday. And I love unexpected day off. (who doesn’t?) It feels like stealing some extra unofficial time in life and if it has any practical significance, it means I am entitled more than any other day to “waste” this day, it means I can indulge all my guilty pleasures, binge-watching tv series, having McDonald’s, listening to music and dancing uglily, and mostly, simply doing nothing.

I love doing nothing. But it makes me feel guilty. I’m not exactly sure why is that. Maybe coz we live in a time and society that fanatically celebrates “doing stuff” and silently shames the opposite. Maybe coz there is a fundamental anxiety rooted in my blood by my parents, my father particularly, who wouldn’t miss any chance lecturing me, urging me to always think how I could be better in something, as if me feeling at ease gives him a feeling of unease. Maybe one of my ex-boyfriend also contributed to the growing of this guilt when he asked me what I like to do and I said I just like to chill and he seemed to find this answer utterly unacceptable.

To be honest, I’m pretty good at doing nothing. If you have a chance to chill with me you’d know it’s true. I have this talent of making doing nothing a very fun thing to do. At least to me, it’s (almost) never boring. By doing nothing, I can casually grab any one of the New Yorkers scattered in every corner of my apartment and read a random story that I didn’t know I’d be interested in. By doing nothing, I can play music at a ridiculous volume and discover my hidden dancing talent in front of the bathroom mirror. By doing nothing, I can lie flat on my bed staring at the ceiling, sink into memories and cry if it happens to take me there and take film photos of myself crying. And thanks to social media, I can even share all these online and see who has viewed me doing absolutely nothing.

Jokes aside, I do admire those who seem to always have the energy of doing stuff. I have also fantasised that my life would probably be substantially different if I have that kind of energy. But unfortunately, I’m not one of them and I have to accept that. For me, doing nothing, or not feeling compelled to do something, is an ultimate pleasure and probably the only way I can truly relax and charge my battery up. Everything other than doing nothing, is more or less a consuming process.

I guess everyone has their own portfolio of guilty pleasure. Some people like watching corny Rom-Coms. Some people like eating chicken nuggets (and we all know who). Some people play Candy Crush. Some people chase celebrities. And some people (assuming I’m not the only one) simply like doing nothing. The bottom line is, we all need some sort of guilty pleasure to keep it going.

Who knows. Maybe one day, doctors will prescribe “doing nothing for 3 days” for a patient suffering from overstrain. Maybe one day, when someone ask me what’s my weekend plan and I say “my weekend plan is to do nothing, nothing at all” and that someone will go “oh wow, that sounds terrific”.

Until that day, I will keep this pleasure and live with my guilt.

P.S. Talking about that ex-boyfriend, one major reason I liked him a lot was that he always has the energy of doing a lot, is always full of ideas and up for adventures. With him I’ve done the craziest things, I’ve adventured every weekend, I’ve partied like I never will again. Those are still very vivid and treasurable memories. He came over to my place one night and the next morning there was a typhoon No.8, so we were literally trapped in the apartment for the whole day. There weren’t much to do, we chilled and talked, he worked a bit on his laptop as I read myself to sleep. We ate. We talked more. We took a walk when it wasn’t raining anymore. We had a heavy dinner in a corny restaurant in the mall. It was probably the most uneventful day in our volatile relationship and I’m sure he has forgotten about it. I don’t remember many details either but I remember feeling very happy that day. Thinking back, oddly, it was probably the most satisfying day in our relationship for me, a random typhoon day on which the two of us did nothing together.

Last week I finally received the painting I bought almost two months ago. It’s a painting I bought in the name of “birthday present to myself”. It’s also the first time I bought some serious art, serious as in, it’s not exactly a small amount purchase.

Since it’s a first time, it’s more or less a symbolic event for me. As one grows old, one would realize the “first-times” in life happens less and less. What made me make the decision of purchase? I guess there’re two very important reasons. The first is, I can afford it. The second is, the moment I saw this painting on the social network of the artist, I felt a real connection and I knew I wanted it, I wanted to own it. I guess those are the two most important conditions if anyone is to buy any art, or at least to people with very limited budget as me.

The process of buying this painting, though, is more dramatic than I expected. When I approached the gallery at the beginning of June, the painting was on an exhibition in Berlin. The gallery owner at first told me he could ship the painting from Berlin, which would be cheaper than if he brought it back to US. After two weeks’ wait, I asked about the shipping and he said he had to bring the painting back for some documentation’s purpose, which made sense. After some more wait, the gallery owner told me he’d finally wrapped it up and built a box crate for it and it’s ready to be shipped to me! We talked about the options of insurance level of shipping and stuff and I thought, finally, it’s happening. Except that it wasn’t.

Two days later the bad news arrived, the gallery guy’s car was smashed and the painting package he left in his car was stolen. MY PAINTING WAS STOLEN. It took me a while to register this information, like, what on earth are the odds of that? Is this some kind of joke? Why is this happening to me? I was seriously upset by this unexpected turn of event for a few days and was ready to get refunded for my 50% deposit.

Three days later, in mid-July, when I was on a business trip in Shanghai and woke up one morning feeling I have nothing good to expect on that day, I saw a message on my phone saying that the painting WAS FOUND. The fliers that the gallery guy posted and handed out actually worked. It took me another while to register this information, like, what on earth are the odds of that? It better not be some kind of joke! I was so happy instantly and rolled on the huge hotel bed for 3 rounds.

It took another two week’s wait for it to be shipped to me but I didn’t mind waiting anymore, not at all. It’s funny how we only learn to truly appreciate the simplest things that we usually take for granted after it’s almost taken away from us. In this case, I simply couldn’t be more grateful that the painting was found and I really got to own it at some point. And my gratitude was at its maximum the night I received the package, opened the package, met the painting for real for the first time, held the wooden frame on my thighs, and walked around with it in my apartment trying to find a nest for it.

There’s a Chinese saying “好事多磨”, which means good things would take more setbacks to realize. I guess this is one of those cases. And thanks to the whole series of events, this painting is now officially a painting with a story behind.

So there it is, my story of buying art. I guess people buy art for many different reasons. Some buy art with a clear investment thinking. Some buy art more for the emotional and aesthetic value of it. Some buy art simply becoz the buying itself is an act that brings them satisfaction. I only started to have the intention of buying art in recent years (since I started to have a little saving), and I’m happy I finally acted on it. If there’s anything that my story reveals, I hope it reveals that buying art is not only a rich people thing.

I don’t know if it counts as a rough start for a first-timer in the art market. As volatile as it turned out to be, I guess it means my art karma is not that bad after all. I wish I can afford to buy myself a piece of art that I really appreciate every year. And more importantly, I wish I can always appreciate art as art is.

P.S. I’ve been running 20 mins for more than 30 days now (not everyday, like every other day). As expected, my body doesn’t really want more, and it’s not really getting easier. I’m going to extend this experiment to 100 days.

I started going to a therapist more than two years ago. I have never been secretive about that, while I also have never really talked about this experience in details with people, even with those who are/have been close.

I’m not going to disclose the details of my therapies here, for apparent reasons, but after two and half years, I do feel like sharing two cents of why I feel it necessary to go to therapy and what can be expected from it.

Being an oversensitive kind of person all my life, I’ve always been very drawn to the act of psychological analysis of people and their behavior as I need to rationalize things to counter-balance the “too-muchness” constantly felt. And out of all the human beings, the most puzzling piece for me is, inevitably, myself.

I remember planting the seed of wanting to see a therapist when I watched Annie Hall by Woody Allen decades ago, in which Woody Allen’s character was mumbling about his therapist anecdote in his signature bourgeois self-mockery fashion. I must be in my early 20s when I first watched it and I thought, “wow, what a dream it is to be able to start a sentence with ‘my therapist said…’ one day.” (Yes, I fancied being one of the bourgeoisie and Woody Allen certainly contributed to it.) But back then, seeing a therapist feels more like an immature fantasy, something intriguing and might even be “fun” to try. It came from a curiosity about my undiscovered self, instead of an urgency to deal with real pressing issues.

When I started to seek for professional help more than two years ago, the most straightforward reason was, I guess, the relationship of that time wasn’t going well. And it agonized me a great deal. But I know clearly, deep down, that this was just a symptom, the agony that I was experiencing from that failing relationship. It was the symptom of about 30 years’ accumulation of unanswered questions, uncleared emotions and unearned experiences. I felt that I was drowning in my 30 years of life and I couldn’t resurface by myself anymore, not without a firm pull from another hand. And I felt that that I couldn’t go on anymore if I don’t pause to make sense of my pain, my anger, my sadness, my edges, my misplaced love, my destructive behaviours and my incompatibility with the outside world. That was the real reason why I started to see my therapist, Julia.

It’s been quite a ride over the past two years. In front of Julia, I’ve shed tears a million times, I’ve lost my temper, I’ve argued aggressively, I’ve been triggered badly, I’ve told stories I’ve never told anyone and there’re still more I’m not ready to tell yet and I don’t know if I ever will. I’ve spit out unedited thoughts and I’ve looked hard into my behaviors and decisions over and over again. And I did have my doubts. I’ve wondered if this is really helping anything but I’ve also questioned myself what do I really expect from it. Looking back, it’s a rather slow progress but there is a progress. (I’ve bragged about it pretty recently so I’m gonna skip this part here). Maybe this is a progress that’d happen anyways, but having someone who’s (paid to be) there to have witnessed it and is probably more aware of my progress than myself, is after all, a pretty assuring thing.

The other day I was watching a show, in which one of the characters (starred by Nicole Kidman) was testifying on court for her custody of her children. She was asked by the judge why she wasn’t even confessional about some of her destructive behaviors to her therapist, and she said it’s especially hard to tell her therapist, I quote, “becoz she’s worked so hard on me and, I think I just, I desperately wanted to see myself through her eyes and see progress.” And exactly that line, it simply struck me. I couldn’t resonate more with it becoz there have been many times I struggled to confess to my therapist of things I feared that’d disappoint her that I almost didn’t wanna go to a session.

Today I don’t go to therapy that often. Even when I go, it’s more like a regular dusting instead of some serious digging around or urgent salvage. But still every time I’d prepare myself for the confessional mode and the uneasiness that comes with it. It’s not all comfortable, becoz being 100% truthful about ourselves is not always in our nature. And with the busy urban life that keeps rushing us forward, we’ve more or less grown into the habits of covering up the messy part that we subconsciously wanna shy away from. We probably won’t even realize that if we’re not paying someone an expensive hourly rate to specifically uncover that. And just by being truthful as much as we can, in front of another person’s face, is in a lot of ways, already a significant progress.

I can’t give anyone any advice if they should seek therapy help, as it’d be a completely different journey for different people. And throughout the whole time, I’ve never seen myself as a patient, at most, I see myself as a temporarily lost person seeking for directions. But I guess the least I can say is, therapy does give one a chance to tell the truth about oneself, to chew on the truth, to acknowledge the truth and eventually, to work on the truth. Some people spend their whole life seeking for the truth, some people spend their whole life running away from it. But either way, after all, it is only the truth that matters.

P.S. I titled this piece as “In Treatment” in dedication to one of my favourite shows, In Treatment, produced by HBO more than 10 years ago. It’s definitely not thrilling to watch, with its overly simple setting and characters. It’s like a “salad” in shows, but provoking in its own tasteless way. I’d recommend it if anyone wants a “free therapy.”

In the past week I tried a meal plan service after a colleague told me about it. We are both single girls who doesn’t cook, so a meal plan sounds like a perfect solution of one tricky problem in life for our kind. It works for her, so I thought I’d give it a try.

Since the point is to eat healthy and in balance, I chose the low calories meal in small portion (becoz by default I just assumed small is the size for me). It is a mistake, it’s too little food for me, and too healthily plain that it upsets me everyday when I opened the food box. But It’s already ordered for the whole week, I had to stick with it. So everyday, when I sat in the office pantry having my sorry-looking meal box, feeling sorry for myself, some colleagues would pass by, see it, and feel sorry for me, hidden behind comments like “Why do you even need to eat meal plan?”, “Are you trying to lose weight?”, “You’re already so skinny.”

At first I’d try to explain myself. But after a while I stopped trying, it’s not necessary to share my single girl’s eating difficulty and it’s not anyone’s obligation to relate to a single girl’s eating difficulty. And mostly, I don’t even know why I’m eating a meal plan myself.

To be clear, I’ve never been the kind of person who’s cautious of what they eat all the time – partly coz I do look skinny (*this topic is worth another separate piece), but mostly coz I just don’t wanna bother. Eating, as much as it appears to be a tricky problem for my case, is after all at least supposed to be an enjoyment in some sort. And I simply don’t enjoy eating a lot of those trendy healthy bullshit food. In the universe of food, the love of my life is chicken nuggets, and my all-time comfort meal is the “sharing box” from McDonald’s, which includes 4 nuggets and 4 wings and I literally would never share it. In fact, one day last week I forgot to bring my dinner meal box home, I was quite annoyed at myself and decided to maximize the failure by having McDonald’s instead. It feels like cheating on my meal plan when I’m supposed to be committed to it (for the week) . It feels like acting out when you’re on a rehab of something. I’m not proud it. But honestly, that’s the only meal I enjoyed eating in the past week.

On Friday night, when I was eating my chicken breast and broccoli in the empty office pantry with 6pm sunlight shedding through the gigantic office building window, (I was hungry since 4pm) I can’t help but reviewing the reasons behind a meal plan. Besides the obvious convenience of never needing to fuss over “what/where to eat”, and the hypocritical satisfaction of eating healthy (and overpriced) food, it’s really more about a sense of control, something people are kinda obsessed with and is probably oversold in our modern society. Control over what we eat. Control over how many calories we intake. Control over how many calories we burn. Control over what materials we wear when we burn those fucking calories. Control over how we look. Control over what shade the skin glows, what angle the brows tilt, what degree the hair curls. The scary thing is, the level of control would only keep escalating. There’d always be products, services, professional advices that match up with or promote a higher and broader degree of control.

To be honest, I’m doing most of the above, if not all. By all means, I do think well-being and making informed decisions are pressingly important. And I’m trying to train myself to become a more self-disciplined person in all areas. Therefore, while I’m already making so much effort trying to control so many aspects in life, the meal plan is kind of like the last straw that crushed my “I’m living a healthy balanced life” fantasy and threw me into a “absolutely joyless camp”. I stood in that camp and thought, wait, I didn’t sign up for this, did I?

Healthy or not, I guess the bottom line is being able to see myself as a fleshed human being, instead of a hinged machine. And having a meal plan makes me feel the latter (whilst having chicken nuggets makes me feel like the former).

At the end of the day, there is only a certain degree of things we can control in life, and a lot more out of our control. For me, what I eat, I decide, is something I’d rather leave it in the “not meticulously controlling” category. I’m not sure if I’d order the meal plan again, but if I do, I’d at least make sure to order a larger portion and to pair with a glass of wine when I eat.

That being said, I am perfectly aware that I should really eat less chicken nuggets.

P.S. Talking about self discipline, I binge-watched Stranger Things S3 until 4am on Saturday. What can I say. I’m just a human bean.