🌊 Riding the Waves of July

Letter 222: A reflection on my month

Aloha fellow learn-it-all!

Greetings from Honolulu, Hawaii 👋

Last night, I swam with the big dogs. After ten months on the University of Hawaii Masters swim team, I’ve finally moved up to a faster pace of the practice on the 1:30/100-yard pace. My heart raced the whole 3,117 yards, and my face felt like a bloody hot tomato, but I felt smooth and challenged. And that, my friends, is one helluva feeling.

Anywho, onto the docket of today: a reflection on July. What a full one it was.

Before jumping into this email, Substack said I’ve added too many photos, but I kept them anyway. Click the top of the email to see it in your browser and enjoy it all. :)

Now, let’s dive into letter 222 from a learn-it-all. Enjoy!

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❓Question to think about

What happened in July? What did I love, learn, get surprised by, and notice beauty in?

🤔 Reflecting

❤️ Ten things I loved

1. Swimming to swim rather than to win and complete my North Shore Summer Swim Series of races. My final race was 2.3 miles from Pipeline (Ehukai) to Waimea Bay. I felt like I was really flowing in flow during that experience. I didn’t want it to end. I swam about 7 miles across the series' four races.

2. I hosted Miss Emily Rose and shared my home with her. It was delightful. We camped on the North Shore, and my ohana felt even fuller.

3. I participated in the 30-Day Book Writing Challenge and connected with the creative doula Kelly Wilde Miller. The message I received from my book on day one of the challenge was, “You are one of many. I invite you to be imperfect.”

   

4. Loyal friends who tell vivid stories about white snow leopards in small cages in Nepal

5. My gratitude practice is steadfast and grounding and snaps me out of a scarcity mindset. No matter what future changes bring, that’s not one of them. This is what grounds my book with certainty that I need to publicly share it.

6. I finally fixed my surfboard dings on the nose, tail, and rail of my 8’0 hard top surfboard. A 75-dollar investment to make it more surfable. Cheee hooooo! I even loved have sore shoulders from surfing, even if that means poorer sleep.

7. Finally, muscling up the courage to bike without my hands on the handlebars

8. Singing “Hey there, Delilah” in my rental car when it came on the radio in Molokai

9. Trying coconut fluff from a coconut a local chopped off a tree and star fruit from a fruit stand. The first tasted like air, and the latter tasted like crunchy citrus cucumber.

10. I asked for kind words from readers and put them on my book’s sales page. I appreciate you all so much!! Kelly Wilde Miller, Lyle McKeany , Jason Shen , Michelle Elisabeth Varghese and Alex Liebscher <3

🤓Ten things I learned

1. Surrendering to a season as a caffeine creature is okay.

2. I like the prompts: “I want to feel…”, “How am I really feeling today?” and “What do I need?”

3. It feels good to check my phone later in the day, past 10 AM. My phone is not a friend greeting me in the morning. Rather, it’s a cascade of messages all at once.

4. My kitchen sink garbage disposal broke. It can be quite chaotic with pesto and blueberries stew in your sink.

5. “The work is the way.” — Paul Millerd in a book writing workshop. You cannot plan everything. This a refreshing reminder.

6. My book is a form of self-trust, and sharing my heart is more than enough. I can trust my taste.

7. On this island, the cheapest dinner is $1.57 at Costco, which includes a hot dog and a soft drink.

8. I can redefine marketing as openly sharing. It doesn’t make me a bad guy or cringe to want to share what I’m working on.

9. For a dog-walking gig, I watched the coexistence of anxious energy within Scruffy and Mango as a straight chiller. This is similar to my first time playing a fiddle. My left hand is a control freak, very detail-oriented on the strings, and my right hand is delicate and relaxed on the fiddlestick.

10. I want to find a healthy balance of self-preservation and vulnerability. Of grace and discipline. I believe I can find a way because of my will.

    

    

    

😯 Eight surprises:

1. Orangatang is originally a Malay Word

2. I quite like the experience of drinking NA champagne. Especially at polo matches or celebratory camping weekends. The bubbles are fun.

3. the video from Summer 2024 North Short Swim Series and I can barely see where I was swimming in the ocean:

3. How applicable the movies Inside Out 1 and 2 are to life and my wheel of emotions

4. Sea Shanty music is fun.

5. I want to create a memory box.

6. Prose poetry is a format I am writing in.

7. Eating chia pudding. It’s yummy for breakfast or an afternoon snack. Especially tasty with a bit of vanilla extract in it. Chia seeds are native to Mexico and Guatemala have been around a long time since Mesamerican cultures and have some cool health benefits!

✨ Four Beautiful moments

1. Swimming with dolphins in Waimea Bay. I’d just swam 1.2 miles, but I think I swam even faster after the race out to the dolphins in the bay. In particular, this playful dolphin kept going back and forth, rubbing on a teeny, tattered piece of loose seaweed. I picked it up, and the dolphin came and played with me and the seaweed. It was joyous, and I could play for days. Life is about playing. It means so much more than working all the time.

2. I heard my Molokai host, Rhy,, play Amazing Grace on his fiddle brought tears to my eyes.

3. Leading my letter-writing workshop hosted by Foster and writing with others. Here’s the recording from my workshop. I got to overcome my fear. It keeps telling me that letter writing is bogus even though I love it. So I love the bogus. Let me live and love it because I do, and that’s okay.

4. Watching the most plump chickens waddle around the yard like they own the place at a Zen party’s backyard in Kaneohe

🤭 Eight times when I laughed:

1. “Are you in puberty again? How is your hair so curly?”

2. While playing Bonnie Blunder Blenkinsop at a Pirate murder mystery party, I discovered that the limit on how many sour gummy worms I can eat definitely does exist. Also, I cannot hold a pirate or foreign accent, but acting like someone else is fun.

3. “Jenny, this isn’t new that you’re lost. Have you ever felt found? “

4. I made some art with my limbs lying on the beach and made a sand angel. My friends accepted me and admired it with awe.

5. When kids came with their flashlights to crab hunt at night on the beach and my friends started dancing like crabs to blend in with our surroundings

6. I am a juicer because I can eat the whole apple, even the core.

7. savage friends who don’t butter their toast or put cream in their coffee

8. When I won the Airship dot com hat at the local watering hole in Molokai

🖌️Things I created:

I shared pieces on:

1. My book launch!

2. A letter to my home of three years

3. A letter to my grandma Omi who showed me to stay spunky

4. A letter to my younger self in a bucket

5. A reflection of June

Watercolored some postcards with friends:

• Banana bread loaves. I learned they don’t taste as good with cacao in it. Also, don’t fill the pan too full, otherwise they won’t cook evenly.

👏 Seven Favorite affirmations:

1. I can feel fear of the unknown and rejection of the uncertainty of the future, but I can keep going because I feel safe in myself and my spirit. I know I can get through no matter the tribulations life throws at me.

2. I can cultivate joy, community, and a sense of home anywhere I go. (h/t to Kelly Wilde Miller for this one)

3. I will sail where there is wind in my sails moving me forward closer to my spirit.

4. I can be a ball of goof.

5. I can be radically myself. No one can change me otherwise.

6. Treating myself like a special object will make me strong. (h/t Julia Cameron in Artist’s Way p. 126)

7. A vow to myself: I will not become addicted to the dopamine hits of media wanting more and more. I am using it rather than it using me. I am in control. (8/1/24)

🔭 Looking Forward in August

1. To launch the advanced reader copy of my book Letters to My Life

2. A celebration with all my friends I’ve made in Hawaii in my friend’s garden with poetry reading

3. Backpacking in Kauai

📜🖋 Poetry Corner

✌️ Two by Two in Molokai

I came with two friends to Molokai— Maddie and Jenna.

We ate two hot breads— strawberry and cinnamon cream cheese.
We swam at Two mile beach— got pelted by sand too.
We played two card games at a pizzeria— Go Fish and Seven Card Gin.
We hiked to two waterfalls— both equally majestic.

I tasted two new foods on the trail— kukui nuts and mountain apples.
I ate two new fruits— coconut fluff sprout and star fruit. 
I sipped two cups of watermelon mint tea in the morning. 
I slept in a king sized bed with two friends for two nights.

I would go back to Molokai for a second time.
:)

📖 Three Reading Highlights

1. Tommy Dixon’s spectacular piece on the end of our extremely online era: I read it a few times and gee whizzz!! This is quite a compelling speech. Tommy expresses so much of my own truth and experience in his words. A few of my favorite passages:

   1. “I think we’ll learn. That we'll find more connection in communal meals than any number of comments and likes. That a quiet walk in the woods is more nourishing than watching someone else’s trip through Tokyo. That talking to our Mom or Dad or best friend is infinitely better than listening to Tim Ferriss' inflamed ego on air. That things look better in real life than on a screen.”

   2. “I hope we look at social media one day as we look at cigarettes now: "You still scroll? Really?? Like… don't you know how bad it is for you?" “

   3. “Most days, my phone is off, my laptop shut. I check messages from family in the evenings, and attempt to write some mornings.

      The days are slow, the evenings long. I'm reading more than ever. Work feels good and effort is a joy. We never seem to hurry but get a lot done. Conversations come alive. Sleep is deep.

      It feels like reclaiming ownership for my life that I'd somehow lost.”

2. Venkatesh Rao’s 2011 piece The Las Vegas Rules II: Stuff Science. It’s fascinating to zoom out and put my relationship with “stuff” and attachments in perspective. Venkatesh goes through intentional “stuff shocks” to keep his stuff smart and useful since it inevitably adds up over time. A few quotes:

   1. “In lifestyle design, your relationship with your material possessions — “stuff” — is perhaps the central issue. Digital stuff is stuff too, since it has to physically live somewhere. Stuff is the locus where theories meet reality. It is not particularly hard to think about money, careers and investments in reasonably clear-eyed ways. If it weren’t for stuff, execution on those fronts would also be easy.”

   2. “Stuff-shocks are the rewrites of your life. And as with any editing processes, by default you should assume that cutting stuff is smarter than adding stuff.”

   3. “your stuff is actually a complex system of interacting parts that embodies a lot of your thinking”

3. Level’s CEO Sam Corcos shared An Exact Breakdown of How One CEO Spent His First Two Years of Company-Building and it inspired me to experiment with more time blocking. (h/t Matt Yao for this rec). A quote:

   1. “Killing my to-do list [with calendar time-blocking] has also had the unintended consequence of substantially reducing my personal stress and anxiety — it’s been one of my biggest mental health wins of all time.”

🎬 Watching

Chasing Mavericks is a movie that brought me chicken skin and moved me to tears. Jay Moriarity was one of the most driven and determined people imaginable. It is based on a true story.

"Fear and panic are two separate emotions. Fear's healthy, panic's deadly." -Frosty, the surfing teacher

This movie inspired me to fully send it and get my board repaired to catch some waves!

🎧Listening to five songs

1. Inside Out by Spoon

2. Clair de Lune by Flight Facilities (shoutout to Emily Rose)

3. Home by Mike Posner

4. Evergreen by Richy Mitch & The Coal Miners

5. Vienna by Billy Joel

🔍Twelve words I looked up

1. Morphology: (n) the study of the forms of things

2. Amorphous: (adj) without a clearly defined shape or form

3. Spunky: (adj) informal courageous and determined

4. Capricious: (adj) given to sudden and unaccountable changes of mood or behavior

5. Copacetic: (n) slang word to describe a situation, mood, or relationship as being without problems; Okay, satisfactory, agreeable

6. Penultimate: (n) last but one in a series of things; second last

7. Lexicon: (n) the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge

8. Impassioned: (adj) filled with or showing great emotion

9. Parlay: (vb) turn an initial stake or winnings from a previous bet into (a greater amount) by gambling.

10. Circuitous: (adj) turn an initial stake or winnings from a previous bet into (a greater amount) by gambling.

11. Idiosyncratic: (adj) having strange or unusual habits, ways of behaving, or features; peculiar or individual

12. Hellacious:(adj) very great, bad, or overwhelming

🌟Five Quotes that inspired my month

1. “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” — Jane Goodall, the chimpanzee women

2. “That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.” — Joan Didion

3. “In my early 20s, I wrote a list of ambitious things I wanted to do in life. Go bungee jumping. Create a movie. Start a business. That sort of thing. I did a few of them, but not most. Looking back, however, that list was incredibly valuable because it taught me the usefulness of chasing bold ideas—even if they never materialize. The dreams that didn't happen changed shape and led me down other interesting paths. The important thing isn't to achieve all your dreams, but to keep dreaming. Your desires change as you learn and grow. Old dreams will spawn new dreams. And eventually, one of these newer, more refined visions will find their moment and become reality.” —James Clear

4. "As soon as my age permitted me to pass from under the control of my instructors, I entirely abandoned the study of letters, and resolved no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of myself, or of the great book of the world.” - René Descartes

5. “There’s someone living in your head besides you. You think you’re calling all the shots—that you’re in charge of your thoughts, feelings, and choices. You’re not. When it comes to how you think and feel your way through life, at best you’re the copilot. At worst, you’re along for the ride, at the mercy of a part of your brain that’s overwhelmingly powerful but entirely unseen, influential but utterly secret from you.” —Daniel Z. Liberman

📸Photo of the Week

These were scattered throughout my piece. Gratitude to photos. I quite like them. A lot.

🙏Shoutouts

• to everyone mentioned above for being a part of my month and many more <3

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I appreciate you reading this!

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Keep on learning 😁

Mahalo 🌺

Jen

PS - in case you missed, last week I launched my pre-order for my book Letters to My Life

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