Slightly more than a month ago, Sam Altman published a blog post, Three Observations, sharing his insights on A.I. development and some forecasts about the trends — of course, from the perspective of someone directly driving it. (By the way, it’s also one of my favorite reads this year so far.)

However, I'm not an A.I. developer.

I'm just an iOS engineer who might soon be replaced by A.I., who also loves writing in his free time—two skills that seem rather insignificant in the face of powerful A.I., in the near future.

But I’m actually somewhat excited about that future, and here are my three observations:

#1 Writing has never been this impactful.

I've always enjoyed writing, though for most of my life, it was merely entertainment or a way to express myself.

From cringe-worthy novels I wrote as a teenager, and the travel blogs in college, to the fantasy and sci-fi stories I’m writing in the past year or two—none of these brought much tangible benefit or meaning.

I wrote simply because I enjoyed doing it.

(And it helps me clarify my thinking. Sometimes, writing feels like meditating to me.)

But since LLM became widely available, and especially since I started coding with Cursor, writing has taken on a tangible, almost physical power — Writing suddenly feels like a programming language.

Words become images. Or videos. Or even an entire app, if you want.

Some of these experiences genuinely feel like magic—akin to Harry Potter casting a spell and immediately seeing the results in his world.

Everything—literally everything—I once dreamed of creating but couldn't due to the lack of skills, has now become possible, through writing and describing them clearly.

Soon enough, I'll just need to ask myself: "What do I truly want to create?" And ChatGPT, Cursor, ComfyUI, Vercel/V0, along with the tools yet to be invented, will increasingly make it possible.

When skillsets and feasibility are no longer the bottleneck, the ability to navigate — to think clearly about questions like who I am, what I want, and where I’m going becomes more important than ever.

Agency, willfulness, and determination will likely be extremely valuable. Correctly deciding what to do and figuring out how to navigate an ever-changing world will have huge value; resilience and adaptability will be helpful skills to cultivate. AGI will be the biggest lever ever on human willfulness, and enable individual people to have more impact than ever before, not less. — Sam Altman in Three Observations.

#2 Disappearing jobs?

Yet, precisely because skills are becoming cheaper (especially mine), I was also somewhat concerned about being obsolete.

In fact, Sam Altman specifically mentioned the example of software engineering agents in his blog:

Let’s imagine the case of a software engineering agent, which is an agent that we expect to be particularly important. Imagine that this agent will eventually be capable of doing most things a software engineer at a top company with a few years of experience could do, for tasks up to a couple of days long.

But thinking it through, I comforted myself by recalling the Industrial Revolution.

My ancestors—farmers, I think—probably felt a similar anxiety. Yet here I am, comfortably lounging on the sofa, watching Netflix over the weekend. They couldn’t have imagined this kind of comfort—hot water flowing instantly from a faucet, allowing me 30 minutes of unbothered resting in the bathtub.

Also, from another even more optimistic angle that I’ve been thinking a lot about — I chose to write code for a company because I wanted to create cool things I couldn't have built alone, or couldn’t have reached the economic scale to make the code impactful.

But in a future filled with advanced LLMs, powerful A.I. agents, and even more sophisticated tools that don’t exist yet, will I still need a company to offer me interesting and fulfilling opportunities?

I’m not sure about that to this date.

But I do wonder: Is it human labor that's at risk, or is it our dependency on companies that's truly dissolving?

#3 Be a good person.

Besides writing, I believe our "names," or identities as humans, are becoming more crucial than ever as well — because this is something AI simply cannot replace.

Ten years after AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol, we still watch human matches, and not AlphaGo versus BetaGo.

After seeing a Van Gogh painting, I’m intrigued by his life story.

After reading Brandon Sanderson’s "Yumi and the Nightmare Painter," I’m curious about how he came up with such a compelling narrative (turns out it has a lot to do with two of my favorite stories, "Your Name" and "Final Fantasy X"!).

Assuming bookstores still exist, I'd bet that even ten years from now, most of the top ten bestsellers will still be authored by human creators.

Because we respect and remain curious about each other.

Because we're moved by each other's experiences, strive to become one another, and, sometimes, envy each other's accomplishments, pushing ourselves to work harder.

We also argue with each other.

I guess, this makes writing even more important.

Putting names, ideas, and stories out there provides opportunities for others to get to know you, and vice versa.

Finally, I want to remind myself to be a good person.

After all, the trust between humans—that shiny little thing A.I. cannot replicate—is something that will stay with me for a lifetime.

About 10 years ago, I started coding because it was fun.

Also, it answered my biggest question at the time: I loved writing so much, but what could I write to make a living?

Code. Duh.

Coding turned out to be the easier path to making an impact by writing – the only catch was that it’s in a different language. The more I think about it, the more I realize that software is basically a book written in computer language. Both are composed of text representing some arbitrary logic the author invented. Software users and book readers are very similar; they are the consumers of that logic. Our customers.

Bad code is like a bad story. It fails in the same way: it doesn’t translate the input into the right output or doesn’t do so efficiently.

This is great news.

It means when I improve my craft in one, I’m also indirectly improving the other. Every reflection strengthens both of my favorite skill sets.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to write a reflection post every year.

This is my attempt to jot down the lessons I’ve learned from coding and writing in 2024.

1. Figure out who you are. Not every creator is a good manager. Nor do they need to be.

There’s a myth that software engineers need to eventually grow into product managers or leaders.

“Delegate more; scale your impact,” the advice goes.

But what I slowly realized and accepted this year is that some people — including myself — love coding because we love being creators.

The more I delegate the fun parts to others and start spending my time on things I’m not excited about, the more I lose motivation. Coding feels like playing to me, and I want to keep it that way.

The other way to look at this is: No one in their right mind would ever tell Brandon Sanderson that he needs to graduate from being a successful writer and become a manager for younger writers.

That sounds absurd.

This mindset might change for me in the future, but for now, I’m clear about what keeps me engaged. I’ve even told my manager: please don’t promote me.

Let me play.

Let me stay the coding machine that solves technical problems, not human ones.

2. Everything is possible, but not everything is worth the effort.

It’s just code. Everything’s possible.

My tech lead said this to our PM in a planning meeting when I was an intern. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I wanted to be that person one day.

For the first three years of my career, I did just that. I said “yes” to every task. I delivered. It worked well.

But by the fourth year, I burned out. And needed to take a month off to recover.

Like writing a novel, I can technically avoid the “boring“ thinking or planning and just start typing — because that’s where the fun is. But if what I end up writing is just another generic AI-dystopia novel, I’m only going to find out in the end, that I’ve wasted months on a story that no one wants to read, and I’m not going to be very proud of that.

The same applies to writing code.

To create impactful work, I need to spend time distilling ideas first. Planning may be sometimes boring, but it is not optional; it’s how I protect my colleagues and my energy and maximize our output.

Sam Altman said it best in his blog post “How to be successful“:

Almost everyone I’ve ever met would be well-served by spending more time thinking about what to focus on. It is much more important to work on the right thing than it is to work many hours.

3. Be careful about the fun part! Don’t forget about the goal.

After deciding on what to prioritize, sticking to it consistently is just as important and sometimes harder.

Because coding and writing are fun, I often find myself sidetracked into enticing side quests when I shouldn’t.

If a scene’s goal is to introduce the protagonist. Do that efficiently.

Don’t spend 3 paragraphs talking about how fancy (or unfancy) the medieval bar looks like.

Similarly, if a project’s objective is to build some AI tooling, focus on that.

Don’t worry too much about how the button looks like, yet.

Make the core functionality work extremely well, release it, and test it.

In my experience, there are often unexpected bugs (I mean, bugs are never expected) and I’ll need to fix and iterate later anyway. I will have my time to improve the button later when that does get prioritized.

Or if it never gets prioritized, it never gets prioritized.

4. Learn to enjoy iterations. And yes, “kill your darlings” when necessary.

Feedback is a gift. Don’t fear it.

In my software engineering career, I’ve learned to enjoy code reviews for years.

It just took me a bit longer to understand the same applies to writing.

Beta readers, critiques – these are opportunities to improve.

Sometimes, this means cutting something I’m proud of to make the whole story better. With the right people and the right community, Write of Passage helped me see this. I just need to remind myself of this.

5. Rest is non-negotiable.

It’s kinda like swimming; you can’t finish a long swim without breathing.

And the way to overcome that is not by training yourself to swim longer without breathing, but by finding the rhythm to breathe while swimming.

I spent most of my 2024 doing my 9-5 (sometimes -6) software engineering job, and forcing myself to still write something after dinner every day. It felt “productive“ for the first half of the year, but was no doubt the main reason for my burnout.

Plus, my best work happens when I’m rested; when my mind is clear.

Sleep, breaks, and time away from the screen are not indulgences; they’re necessities.

Preview of the next essay…

Here’s what I’m working on next::

• My takeaways from Sam Altman’s How I Write episode about writing and A.I. I love this episode too much and have re-watched it too many times.

• Some random thoughts on how NotebookLM will replace my writing; and Cursor or A.I. coding agents like Bolt.new will replace my coding job.

• My thoughts on blockchain, after playing around with smart contracts & finishing the book Read Write Own.

If these look interesting, please consider subscribing to this newsletter!

I’ll (try to) publish 2 essays every month :)

This is my second attempt at being a writer.

The last time was almost 10 years ago.

I was just a high school student. No income, no real skillset to make a living, and my secret crush was on track for a successful career as a straight-A student. I loved writing, but you can’t blame an insecure high school kid for giving up on their dream. (More on this in my previous essay: A Love Letter to Writing.)

Now, nearly 10 years later, after putting (some of) my shit together—stabilizing my career/income and having married my secret crush—revisiting the writer side of me has become a priority.

Rehabilitation (mid-2023)

State of mind: 😍

I started my second attempt at a “writing career” by doing the easiest thing possible: rehabilitation.

I simply re-wrote “魔法狼煙“, the last novel I wrote 10 years ago, after a summer workcation in Budapest and finishing Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn series.

It was a half-developed fantasy short story meant to be the first part of a trilogy. I never got to the second part, but the story had elements I loved about Mistborn. Re-writing something I’ve already finished gets me easy and quick access to dopamine things like:

1. A reminder of what “writing a novel” feels like – Exciting and comforting. I could focus 100%, and completely immerse myself in the flow. Like it was what I was born to do.

2. A chance to focus on the craft without the heavy lifting of brainstorming a brand-new story.

The rewrite didn’t attract many readers, but it did what I needed at the time—it was a lot of fun (!!).

And I was reminded that “writing” is still something I love.

Learning the Craft and Starting a New Trilogy (early 2024)

State of mind: 🥰 → 🤨 → 🧐

Then in early 2024, I spent a bunch of time reading and nerding the craft of story- and world-building. If you’re curious, some of my favorite resources so far are:

1. Brandon Sanderson’s Creative Writing courses.

2. David Perell’s How I Write podcast. My favorite episodes are the ones on “ChatGPT and Writing” with Same Altman, “The Craft of Stories” with Amor Towles, and “Mastering Storytelling” with Shaan Puri.

3. Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

4. Timothy Hickson’s On Writing and Worldbuilding series.

In the meantime, I began developing a new story: a fantasy trilogy.

I was—and still am—excited about the story. But in hindsight, I think I started writing it too early and a bit too prematurely. I had rough ideas of the world settings and characters (but I don’t know them too well!), and hadn’t even had a complete outline of the plot.

I told myself I’d be the Gardener-type writer.

And I just started writing and explored the story as I wrote.

But soon, I realized there was an issue, that I’m actually an Architect-type writer. I needed an outline. Or, by the time I finished Chapter 2, there was already something I’d like to fix and re-write in Chapter 1. And when I get to Chapter 3, there would be something new I’d like to hint back at in Chapter 2, etc. You get the idea.

Eventually, I stopped feeling a sense of progress in writing this new story. The growth stagnated in both the word count and readership count.

And I burned myself out (will talk about this again later).

I felt like I was making motion, but not progress.

Blogging, Personal Essays, and Write of Passage (mid-to-late 2024)

State of mind: 🥰 → 😓 → 🤯

Separately, I also started blogging about my life.

I know I’m incredibly lucky—working in Silicon Valley with my dream job—and I want to be grateful for that. I mostly am. But there are times I can’t, because I’m also far away from family, witnessing them and myself age, and spending time writing novels that nobody reads.

Writing personal essays is one of my attempts to make progress, towards finding peace with all of these.

I started off writing one post every month on Ghost (ended up migrating to Substack in December 2024).

I had 9 subscribers, all of them were different accounts of myself, my wife, my parents, and some close friends.

But, again, during that process, I learned something new about myself. I needed to feel a sense of progress, even for these personal essays in my blog. With the stagnated growth of readers and purpose, it felt like I was writing into the void.

It became clear to me that I needed a community I could write with.

Then I found Write of Passage. You can read more about my experience in the writing bootcamp in my previous post: My Write of Passage Experience: Lessons, Community, and Favorite Essays.

In short, Write of Passage gave me what I needed to keep going and improve.

I found my people.

But it also contributed to my burnout.

Burning Out, Taking a Break, and Looking Forward to 2025

State of mind: 🫥 → 🙂

By late 2024, I was burned out—balancing work, writing novels and blogs, and spending 10+ hours weekly on Write of Passage.

I lost the motivation to do things I would normally see as playing, e.g. coding, writing, and having conversations with friends and family about “what’s good” because there was nothing good.

I restarted my mental therapy, and fortunately, I also had the luxury of taking almost all of December off work.

My wife and I went back to Taiwan for a month. We did a few things to reset.

1. We spent time with our family.

2. She paused her YouTube content, and I stopped writing novels (though I kept writing blog posts to help process my thoughts).

3. I also talked to a few friends/experts about “writing”. All these conversations make me more convinced about how I want “writing” to be a part of my identity.

4. Knowing that I’m an architect-type writer, I also restarted outlining the fantasy novel. I decided to treat the 60,000 words I wrote in 2024 as a blueprint, and outlined a brand-new 3-act structure plot.

With the new outline, I will need to restart writing this novel, but I think it will be quicker (and more satisfying) since most of the 60,000 words are reusable, and I can finally fix everything I’ve wanted to fix for a while.

Knowing what I need (i.e. an outline for my novels, a community of writers, and a more sustainable writing system) and having met these demands with a somewhat solid outline, the community and friends I make in Write of Passage, Penana, and Substack… I’m very looking forward to 2025.

(I think) I’m mostly recovered from the burnout now.

I’ll know more about that next week after I’m fully back to work and writing. But things are looking good.

And I’m just really glad that I restarted writing, again.

Recently two things made me feel pessimistic about turning 30 next month.

No more ice cream.

Last month, my wife and I visited our favorite all-you-can-eat hotpot restaurant in the Bay Area. The wagyu and pork slices were great, as usual. But we noticed the dessert bar was empty.

Empty!

There used to be a mountain of Haagen Dazs ice cream cups.

My wife, the optimist, said, “They must’ve just changed how they serve it. Maybe we need to ask the waiters for the ice cream now.”

So, we asked.

And soon, the waiter confirmed my pessimism. They were no longer serving Haagen Dazs to reduce costs.

After the waiter left, I turned to my wife with a half-smile.

I said, “Everything’s only going to get worse.”

It was meant as a joke, but the words somehow lingered with me. They’ve only grown louder as my 30th birthday approaches.

What if that was actually true?

The coding machine has a cooldown now.

And the reason why we visited the expensive all-you-can-eat hotpot place?

That was because I wanted to compensate myself for completing a seemingly impossible mission: I had just finished a complex 4-week Android project in just 2 weeks – because that’s how much time our team had left before the code freeze1, not because I randomly wanted to challenge myself.

I mean, I wasn’t even an Android engineer.

Coding 8 hours straight every day used to be a blast for me. Getting to do that and having a legitimate (and even glorified) excuse to push off meetings was the main reason I decided to take on the project.

But it turns out, that after the first week, I already had headaches after work.

I needed to massage my head while driving home with sore eyes every day.

The soreness upset me. But what pained me more was the fact that I’m no longer the coding machine I was. Not anymore.

Not physically.

Looking for an antidote…

I hate to be pessimistic.

But how can I not when both our favorite restaurant and my proudest skillset are regressing at the same time.

Or, is “becoming a naggy person” yet another symptom of getting old?

“Getting old”... Did I just say that?

30 isn’t even that old.

But I guess, after 30, part of me feels like I’m getting old instead of getting mature.

But, man, when I think back to turning 20, I remember something else.

I remember the excitement of having unanswered questions and getting closer and closer to the answers2. There was joy in the not-knowing, in figuring things out, and in making progress.

And maybe that’s what I can focus on – Questions I can promise myself that I’d make progress towards. Maybe, instead of worrying about how things will change for the worse, I can and should focus more on the questions I still have for the world, for myself, and for the future.

And that means,

I know what I’m going to gift myself for my 30th birthday.

Questions.

Just a bunch of questions.

In the next month or so, I’ll intentionally jot down the thoughts and questions I have. Then, I’ll publish them in January, and revisit them in ten years.

Will there be answers?

And, perhaps more importantly — will there be new questions at 40?

Thanks

Thanks to , , , , , and for sharing early feedback and spending time on this essay!

Preview of the next essay…

My plan for the next essays is to explore some of these topics:

1. Who am I in 2025?

2. Questions I have at 30 years old.

3. My favorite books in 2024; and the books I want to read in 2025.

If these look interesting, please consider subscribing to this newsletter! I’ll publish 2 essays every month :)

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Whoa, that’s it. The final cohort for Write of Passage just ended this week.

I’m so glad that I joined — for the three essays completed, for the emotions I finally let out, and for the incredible people I met along the way.

Write of Passage

Write of Passage is a 5-week writing bootcamp led by David Perell. It included live sessions where he shared everything from “what to write” to “how to distribute”, alongside workshops by experienced writers. But the real highlight for me was the community – a group of people who genuinely love writing, and committing to these 5 weeks to focus on it, together. 

Writing used to be a lonely and daunting journey for me, especially in the Bay Area where we engineers are more fluent in Java than in English.

But Write of Passage changed that. I found my people.

We drafted essays, shared them with the group, and received feedback from professional editors and the community before we published. I thought I would hate that process. After all, I hate (receiving) code reviews — especially when people ask me to redo or restructure something.

But I was wrong.

Turns out, feedback has become my favorite part of writing. It does two things for me: first, it gives me the freedom to write anything. The simple idea that “what I write now isn’t what I’ll publish“ allows me to just vomit my thoughts onto the page and overcome writer’s block. Second, the “feedback exchange“ is the best kind of social interaction for introverts like me.

There were more than 300 amazing people in the cohort, and I could get to know them just by reading their writing and sharing feedback. And in return, I got to broadcast my raw ideas — sometimes, vulnerabilities — to them and connect with those who resonated with them.

It’s magical. Truly life-changing.

My Favorite 6 Essays From Peers

Six is an odd number. Not catchy at all.

I wanted to get to five and say, “Here are my top five favorite essays.“ And I tried, but I couldn’t let go of any of these six. I enjoyed reading each one of these too much, some even influenced how I think about certain topics. In no particular order, they are:

• On Taiwanese Names or: Call me Cheng-Wei, not Cheng, thank you by

• Education is a Niche, Not a Profession by

• Save toilet time by

• The issue isn’t awkwardness—it’s a lack of curiosity by

• The Antidote to Writer's Block is Friendship by

• Burning Man stories: How to figure out the unknown unknown by

My Favorite Essay From Myself

Has to be “A love letter to Writing“.

Writing this piece gave me so many surprises. I did not even start with the idea to talk about the similarity between writing and coding.

I simply wanted to write about how I fell in love with writing as a kid.

But the epiphany that I had a few months ago about how similar writing and coding are just came naturally to the flow.

Also huge shout out to my editor and my peers for helping me complete the piece!

What’s Next?

Although Write of Passage has come to an end, this is only the first chapter of my writing journey.

I will keep writing. About tech, about writing, about my experiences in both.

After all, I’m a writer having an affair with programming.

Finally,

Something I’m experimenting with is at the end of each essay, write a short description, a prompt, of what my next essay is going to be about. If that prompt sounds interesting to you, please subscribe to my substack to read it when it’s published!

And if you have some thoughts about that, please feel free to comment below to share!

The next essay is going to be about “Turning 30 next month. Here are the 10 questions I have right now about the world, about my future.“

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We grew up together.

Even before pencil and paper, before laptops, and definitely before homework, we were already spinning tales to my younger sister about her Disney Stitch plush toy and the imaginary adventures he had while we were asleep.

I remember the time Stitch died from an alien attack we just made up. He died a hero, protecting us two little kids from the aliens during an escape. My sister and I both cried – a true sorrow generated from a fictional plot. That moment remains vivid in my mind.

That's when you conquered me.

We went on to write fantasy novels in middle school, casting my best friends as characters in our stories. That was our best time together. Then, in high school, unfortunately, I – we won a novel competition.

We won $60 for our 30,000-word novel.

At that moment, someone put a price tag on you, and everything changed. I realized that you weren't a productive business partner. Probably never going to be one.

You were a leisure.

And I… was too smart to not do Computer Science.

Our breakup was silent.

I didn’t even say goodbye.

I just stopped seeing you one day.

But admittedly, programming has been hella fun. So, I even stopped thinking about you.

15 years flew by. Hey, you’d be proud – I married one of the characters from our novels: Alice, the middle school classmate who we included in our story with a different name, just so she wouldn’t notice. Programming and this software engineering career have given us a stable and happy life.

I miss you, Writing, but I don’t regret leaving you.

Then one day, while debugging a particularly frustrating piece of code, I had a strange realization. An epiphany, really.

As I traced through the function calls, followed the data transformations, and pieced together the story of why our production system was failing, I felt that familiar excitement you used to give me when plotting a story.

5 years into my software engineering career, I finally understood this: It’s you.

Programming is you. Both are about creating something from nothing. Both challenge me to build worlds with internally consistent rules. Both demand revision after revision until the flow is just right.

When I refactor code, I'm really just editing.

When I write project specs, I'm world-building.

When I name variables, I'm developing characters.

And the same evil cursor blinks at me whenever I start a new file in my VS Code workspace – just like it did when we would begin a new story in Microsoft Word. 

I’m so happy, realizing that you never actually left me.

You simply augmented yourself, and changed your shape to fit what I needed.

Every day now, we write two different types of stories: one in code that machines can understand, and one in words that humans can resonate. One pays the bills, and the other feeds the soul. But they're not as different as I once thought.

You’re the best business partner, actually.

To the 15-year-old Kevin who wanted to be a writer: Don’t be sad or guilty about the path you took. We never really strayed from the path. We just learned that stories can be told in many languages, some of which happen to run on computers.

And to writing: Thank you.

The cursor is still blinking on my Google Doc, right next to my VS Code window. This time, I'm ready to make both of them move. No more guilt from having an affair with programming.

I think I’m fine now, finally.

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My wife and I had just finished dinner and were walking around the neighborhood. Then, I saw her – an old lady squinting at mailboxes in the dark. She was trying to find her mailbox. But the street lamp above her was broken.

I thought I would help her.

But instead, I froze and heard a voice in my head, “Why bother?“

And I know where that voice came from.

Earlier that day, during my weekly call with my parents, the conversation started very joyful, delightful, and recharging. I already knew that they had taken my grandparents to Japan for the week because they had been sending photos every day. But I pretended I was busy, and didn’t check the messages during the week, so they could continue and talk about all the stories.   

We were laughing, and eventually, my dad told me this fun story: My grandpa was singing in a karaoke bar for too long. It was over the business hours, and the staff had to politely ask them to leave.

“That’s… crazy,” I said, “I’ve never seen Grandpa like that.”

“Yeah,” my dad replied,  “He also said, we should go with Kai-Chun next time.”

Something stunned me in that sentence. A bitterness rose in my heart from the laughter. But it wasn’t immediately clear to me why. Then, after we hung up the phone, I went to my wife, still having this strange feeling. I tried to initiate a newer conversation with her to reboot the weekend.

But instead, I just started crying.

She asked me what happened, but I couldn’t articulate the reason either.

I went on to cry for… I don’t know how long; until I finally understood. I was just sad, saddened by the fact that not only had I missed witnessing this rare, joyful side of my grandpa, but even at that moment, he was thinking of me. Me – the grandson who had chosen "exciting opportunities overseas" that he didn’t understand, who hadn’t thought about him while chasing all those dreams.

Now, as I watched the old lady struggling to find her mailbox in the dark, the cynical voice in my head continued to yell at me: Why bother? I am not even there for my own grandparents.

Why should I care about someone else's?

As I grappled with this dark thought, I felt my wife's hand slip from mine.

She walked towards the old lady, with a smile on her face.

"Excuse me," my wife said, "can I help you find your mailbox?"

The old woman's face brightened, relief evident in her posture as she accepted the offer. I watched my wife patiently help locate the right mailbox. When they were done, the old lady turned to us both – inexplicably including me in her thanks – before parting away.

Throughout this exchange, I remained frozen, a spectator to a simple act of kindness that simply did not make sense to me at the time.

As we resumed our walk, my wife's hand found mine again. Its warmth contrasted the cold shame I felt. She didn't say a word, but I felt the cynicism that had been building within me begin to crumble.

Slowly, I started to think about all the things that didn’t make sense.

I thought about my grandfather, 80 years old, having a great time at a Japanese karaoke bar, still reserving a place in his heart for his absent grandson. I thought about my wife, giving me the space to cry without knowing why.

I guess… Maybe, love and kindness don’t make sense.

And maybe, that is because they don’t have to.

Just like that, that simple act from my wife reminds me of this, something important, dumb, but will be sufficient for me to be brave enough to be kind again.

“What? Huh, why?” I asked.

“You’re good at this job. That’s great, but then… you’re enjoying the reward too much. Unless someone forces you to stop, you’ll not stop and experience your life.”

Ever since that conversation, I’ve been thinking: what’s the reward she’s referring to? A little extra bonus? Sure, but that alone won’t make me retire sooner. The trust and reputation I’ve built with the team? Uh yes, but my manager – she’s leaving the team.

What else does exceeding expectations give me, really?

Nothing.

As this realization sank in, emptiness followed. It turns out the ratings I used to receive were not trophies – they were warnings. Warnings that I might be missing out on life’s other expectations.

I started to see that the “life” in the phrase “work-life balance” is more than “I still have a life” or “I can still catch a breath”. It’s about abundance in life. And If there’s extra time and energy to exceed expectations at work, shouldn’t I instead channel them on something else? Writing, playing basketball with friends, listening to my wife about her master plan for her next YouTube videos, and calling my parents. Oh gosh, there are so many things that I’d rather do once I start listing them.

As I grappled with this realization, an experience earlier this week crystallized this shift in perspective.

It was my mom’s birthday. She’s in Taipei, so I had to set an alarm at 9 am, to wish her happy birthday at exactly midnight her time. I wanted to be the first one to wish her a happy birthday.

“Hello?”

“Happy birthday!” I said, feeling a warmth spread through me.

Then, her voice cracked, and I could hear her fighting back tears, “Oh, sweetheart,” she said, “you remembered”.

At that moment, I realized I had just exceeded an expectation that was far more meaningful and lasting than any workplace metric. I made my mom happy and created a moment we’ll together cherish for years. No performance review could ever capture this kind of achievement.

So, here’s my new philosophy: Meet expectations at work. Figure out what that means and how to get that. Then, go and exceed other expectations you’ve always had in life. Write that story you’ve been putting off. Listen intently to your loved ones’ dreams and aspirations. Travel to that place in your YouTube search history.

And, call your mom.

She misses you. And you miss her too. 

I thought I’d kick off my new blog by sharing all the stories about the wedding planning, the wedding day, and just being surrounded by loved ones and having the perfect excuse to bring family and all the old friends together.

However, I still haven’t received all the wedding videos and photos from the photographer. So I figured I should start by reflecting on why, after many years, I’ve decided to start blogging again.

In the past few years,

After graduating from Cornell Tech in 2020, I moved to the SF Bay Area and began my software engineering career. Everything just fell into place. I worked hard and my efforts always paid off — whether it was the dopamine rush after solving hard technical problems, receiving recognition from my team, or even more practical rewards like salary increases and promotions.

Outside of work, life was also busy. Especially in 2023, Alice and I spent the whole year preparing for our wedding in Taipei, remotely while we lived in the Bay Area. It was again all worth it. Revisiting the photos last week, I still relish every moment of that day (except for the last 20% of the day after I was just drunk 🙂)

In short, everything over the past few years has been simple: I put in the effort, and reap the rewards.

To make things even easier, I did not even have to make the decision to put in the effort. Life just chased me, to make money, to finish the “important projects“ for the team, and to host the wedding now that COVID is no longer a concern. Things just come up to eat up my time.

Then, in our first 1:1 this year, my manager asked (again)

“Hey, what do you want to do next?“

At this point, I’ve just been promoted for the second time in the first 3 years of my career, and just married. This time, the question finally hit me.

It was not the first time my manager threw this question at me. She’s a great manager who just keeps on encouraging me to be intentional with how I spend my time.

But I didn’t get that.

How could I?

I didn’t have the time. I had just always told myself that. I already have that 4-week project to finish in the next two weeks, one more wedding video to edit (yes, Alice and I filmed and edited our own wedding videos!), and a few more phone calls to make sure our teacher from the middle school would come to our wedding.

But now, I’ve finally run out of excuses.

Then I got scared by the potential future where in 10 years, I’d still be a software engineer who just earns money. And that would be the only thing I can give to my children. Not the interesting stories of interesting things I’ve done in my life to convince them that life is going to be interesting, and that growing up would be a worthwhile journey to look forward to.

That is exactly what my parents did for me.

And I want that for my children.

So, I told my manager (and more so also myself) that this year, I want to learn to become more intentional with my life.

Be intentional with life

I started to list down the things I wanted to do:

• Write a fantasy novel.

• Exercise more.

• Learn Japanese.

• Design and build a board game.

• (And some more random things that I’m not ready to share with the Internet 😛)

And I just read more about intentionality, annual plans, and building writing habits (highly recommend the books Build the Life You Want, Atomic Habits, and the podcast series How I Write).

As I start making plans for the next month, the next week, and every tomorrow. There are a few things I noticed for myself quickly just changed:

1. I just started to look forward to tomorrow. There are so many things that I want to get to, that I know I can get to do tomorrow.

2. And almost like how tech founders wear the same clothes every day to reduce cognitive load, making plans have freed me from thinking about what to do and streamlining the process to “just do the next exciting thing on my list“.

3. Because I’m getting more things that I want to do, that just brings me joy from seeing the progress. This to me, is a lot like writing a novel where the protagonist is myself. Readers (and writers themselves too) just enjoy seeing progress made by the protagonist.

This blog

And because I’m reading more, and starting to record voice memos while I read to capture my thoughts, there are just more thoughts that I need to write to distill.

This post for example, just helps me solidify the concept of living a more intentional life and how I got to this action item myself.

Also, I just enjoy writing.

The keyboard feedback when I type something, whether it’s machine code, English, or Chinese when I write a novel or a blog post like this, is just satisfying.

So here I am, after a few years when I used to write blog posts about my journey in learning to code, I’m back to what just feels natural for me — writing on the Internet for fun and capturing my values. And just hope that while doing that and having fun, I’m also producing stories that may be interesting or useful for the strangers on the Internet (or perhaps, my own children in the future!).