Joan Didion once famously wrote: "Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends."

August is over. In some ways, it feels like the end of a very long year – a year filled with rainbow cakes and last goodbyes, pink forms and purple flowers. And when all that's said and done, life still goes on: texts and emails and cross-country flights, all reminders of the 3,000 miles between my head and my heart.

But my life hasn't stopped. I walked through my door to mail, a stuffy room, and a nearly-blind dog rushing over to say hello. Tonight, I will go to bed, and when I wake up, it'll be time to get back to work.

This is a reminder that life goes on. Some days will feel frantic, others will feel slow. All of those days will feel like a blur – but I'd like to focus my vision in these last months of 2016. I won't make any sweeping declarations on how I'll do it yet, but we'll see where my brain takes me.

I filmed this a bit ago, after the AAJA convention, but didn't get around to actually editing it because life's gotten a little (a lot) stressful. Also, as I was editing it, two things became clear: 1) the video quality is terrible, sorry (not 1080p womp womp); and 2) I spent half of this video just rambling about me being anxious at VidCon.

Which is what the video is about: social anxiety. This time around, I don't really have a rundown of "surefire tips" like I did on networking as an introvert, but I do have some bits of advice that I've gotten from other people over the years...

I'm a massive introvert. When I tell most people this, they try to tell me I'm mistaken because I seem quite extroverted. (As mentioned before on this blog, I guess I'd consider myself more of an...ambivert?)

One of the hardest things for me to do, as an introvert, is network. Walking into a room full of people I don't know makes me anxious and tired. They don't really teach you in school the "right" way to network, and I don't think there really is a "right" way to do it, to be honest. Everyone has different styles and personalities, and what might work for one person won't exactly be right for you.


That's my way of saying: these tips are not definitive, surefire ways to become a networking expert. Over the past couple of years, as I've gone through networking events and talked to other people about networking (particularly, with my friends who are also introverts), I've learned a handful of things that might be helpful.

Be OK with failure. Failure is a part of life.

I say this as someone who needs the constant reminder, I think, more than others. I've blogged before about my penchant for starting and not finishing projects, and even when I did finish a project, it resulted in me falling off the face of the earth for...well, arguably, I'm still hermiting.

I think when it comes to creative endeavors – particularly when there's nothing holding you accountable (like consequences at work or in school) – failure to see a project through hits hard. For me, when I begin something like a blog or vlog series, I'm putting 100% of my heart and mind into it. Or, at least, I want to put 100% of myself in it. When that energy starts to slip, I panic and then wait until I feel like I'm in the "right" place again. But that ignores the initial purpose of so many of these personal projects: to help put me in the "right" place.

I think my biggest challenge these past few years – and even more so these days – has been to create without consequences. Just...make stuff. And yes, that's advice I've written multiple times on this blog, but a reminder never hurts.

I wrote a blog post for my pal Phil over at Angry Asian Man while he's taking a much-deserved break...

"We never talked about it. The word "undocumented" was nerve-wracking, confusing, and -- as it's been argued in my grandfather's circumstances -- not exactly true. Growing up, my sister and I were told many stories about our family history, but we had also been taught a moderately conservative stance when it came to immigration, about the "right" way to do things and the hard word that comes with that journey.

Which is why when, during a visit to California in April, I sat down with my mother to talk about this in-depth, she didn't use the word -- at least, not at first. Let me explain."