Boredom
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about whether I’ve been living authentically. Authenticity became important to me around 2013, when I realized I had a habit of minimizing myself and passively going along with others rather than expressing my own…
2025 Update
It has been a long time since I posted anything on here – the last post was July 2024, over a year ago. When starting this post today, I noticed that I had actually started typing several posts during the…
To Photo or Not to Photo?
I’ve been seeing articles lately about the importance of documenting life, and others about how focusing too much on documentation takes away from the enjoyment of the moment. I tend to lean a bit more in agreement with the latter.…
Scattered
It’s been quite some time since I posted anything here; I suppose I’ve been feeling unmotivated and didn’t have anything in particular that I wanted to write about or share with anyone during these last 6 months. As with any…
No Action, No Knowledge
無為 wúwéi is an ancient Chinese concept basically meaning inaction or effortless action. I encountered this concept a few years ago when reading the works of Zhuangzi and Laozi, but I think I only understood it on an intellectual level…
Satisfaction
Humans are not meant to feel (much) satisfaction. If we were, then there would be no drive to continue eating, having sex, or improving our lives, which would result in the end of our species – this is a matter…
Welcome to Daxi
When my friends see the title of this post, they may think I’m going to be writing about the weather, since “welcome to Daxi” is what I always say when I send them a video of the heavy rain we…
I Am Stupid
From an early age, the only thing I remember being praised for was my academic performance and for ‘being smart’. I don’t recall being praised by anyone for being kind, generous, caring, compassionate, hardworking, humble, or any other positive character…
I Miss Being a Ghost
Sometime around 2015 I made a decision that would have a huge impact on my life. I deleted all of my social media accounts, and did not use any social media again until 4 years later. This was a difficult…
Individualism
I decided to write this post now because I’m currently sitting at work with nothing I need to do (it’s summer vacation) and can’t take leave because I need to wait until this afternoon to do some administrative thing. Although…
Thinking
Thinking is something that we do most of the time. Everyone thinks in some way, though our thought processes, foci, depth of analysis, emotional responses, and other related things may be different. Sometimes we may think in order to solve…
Garbage
It has been a long time since I wrote a blog post here. And honestly during the last 6 months I was probably more in need of relief through writing than I was when I wrote regularly last year. These…
Modern Life
The thing that prompted me to write this was a documentary I recently watched about Xanax and the ever-increasing mental health issues people face today. The documentary traced the earliest mentions of anxiety related illnesses on a fairly broad scale…
Swimming
I’ve been able to swim as long as I can remember. This is undoubtedly due to the five (or more?) years of swimming lessons my parents enrolled me in from a young age, and the fact that my childhood home…
Why Take Photos?
Several years ago I was living alone in Hawaii with few friends and no social media. I leaned into this by also not carrying my phone with me most of the time, or intentionally keeping it turned off and/or in…
Alone
As usual I’m typing this with no clear direction and only the general topic in mind, so we’ll have to wait and find out together what this post ends up becoming. I’ve felt alone for much of my life, sometimes…
Introspection vs Extrospection
The construction of a concept of self, and our perception of that self is a complicated and confusing issue, at least for me. Some of the world’s philosophies say that at our core, we have no innate self, only an…
The Joy of Missing Out
When I first thought of the topic and name of this post, I was unaware that there is a book with the same name, which I have not read. I only discovered it because I googled my title to see…
Information Obsession
I wrote this several weeks ago and forgot to publish it. As usual, I have been sitting around thinking too much about things lately. Several topics have been regularly crossing my mind: resuming my meditation/zen/mindfulness/whatever practice, practicing drawing, how to…
Product vs Process
I’ve recently decided to start practicing drawing (again). For me to say ‘again’ is a bit questionable because I feel like nearly every time I have drawn in the past, I was aiming to create a specific work, such as…
I Hate Perfectionism
“I am fucking sick of perfectionism,” was all I could think to write after frustratedly scribbling over the previous page of neatly written cursive in my notebook. I’m sure my frustration came from several sources, but in this moment the…
How to Improve Your Sense of Direction
I’ll start this post with a few of my experiences and then give concrete tips at the end. When I was a kid, my dad used to always ask me what direction was North when we were in the car.…
Suffering, Connection, and Realness
I have had a contentious relationship with social media for many years, but my initial experience was very positive. When I was young (around middle school), I liked to use social media (DeviantArt, Myspace, etc.) to connect and chat with…
Why I Love GR Cameras
If you know me (in a photography context) then I’m sure you already know how much I love Ricoh GR cameras. You can read more about my general journey into photography in my post How It Started, but in this…
Mindfulness, Wellbeing, and Smartphones
Much of smartphone usage is essentially the opposite of mindfulness; we use smartphones specifically so we don’t have to face the boredom of the present moment, or because we want to engage with ‘something else’ that is not our present…
Reflection on Chinese Language Challenge
This has been a very long month, and I intend to keep this reflection short (for a change). In hindsight, I think a whole month language challenge may have been a bit too ambitious, but I ended up completing the…
One Month Chinese Language Challenge
In my post One Week Digital Detox Reflection, I mentioned the possibility of doing a language-learning related challenge. As I am sure most of you who have read my posts are aware by now, I am not great at doing things…
I Got Covid
I’m not writing this because getting covid is in any way unusual these days, but it’s noteworthy for me because I’ve been waiting so long and it’s finally happened! By now it has been almost a week since my first…
Mediocrity
I am becoming acutely aware of the mediocrity of my photos. Earlier today (at the time of writing) I was thinking about how a lot of my recent blog posts are unrelated to photography (or only tangentially related), even though…
One Week Digital Detox Reflection
I started to draft this on Tuesday even though my digital detox will not end until Thursday. This is partially because I have already taken so many notes that I think it will take me a lot of time to…
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Austin Bai 