Category: #30postsbefore30

Today marks one year since Ryan and I started dating. Before I met Ryan, I had only been in one other relationship where, although we said to each other daily, “I love you,” the relationship was anything but that with mental, emotional, and sometimes physical abuse. Maybe I was in love then, but it was twisted love.

After the previous relationship, I was very hesitant to try dating again since I was hurt by the mistakes I had made in that relationship. I took some time off from dating so I could reflect on my choices in relationships, to think about what I really wanted out of a life partner.

In my past, I had the tendency to be the pursuer, not the one pursued: growing up, I had many crushes and, after summoning enough courage, I would tell the crushes that I liked them, but to no avail. None of them felt the same way for me, only wanting to be friends. That long tail of rejections followed me throughout college and my early 20s, with me wondering “What’s wrong with me?”

I remember talking with my sister-in-law about relationships and my hang-up over my less-than-stellar dating life. Why hadn’t I found a great guy yet? She knew about my history of being the pursuer, and gave me this piece of advice:

When you find the right guy, he will pursue you: when he says he’ll call you, he’ll call you.

She told me this probably back in 2012 when I was venturing back into the dating scene again post-breakup. That year, I was seeking a better relationship than the one I had had before, but the guys I briefly dated came up short (or had some drama attached to them). After that venture, I decided to pause my dating adventures again.

Most of 2013 I spent focusing on other parts of my life instead of relationships, despite still pining away for a great guy to be with. At the beginning of 2014, I decided on a whim to jump back into dating again with no high expectations: just see where it went and go with the flow.

When Ryan had first messaged me on the dating site we were members of, I remember I had just been virtually “dumped” by a guy I was to meet that weekend but that guy had anxiety over “all the women who were messaging him” and decided to take a break from online dating. I was disappointed, but didn’t feel too hung up over it–oh well!

Ryan’s first message to me was talking about my date idea, trivia night, and, despite some grammatical errors that we still laugh about to this day, I found his message sweet and thoughtful. We made a date to meet up the following week at trivia night and had a great first date answering silly trivia questions and getting to know one another.

After that date, I remember I was so anxious to possibly hear back from him regarding a second date. He had said to me, “I will call you in a couple days” and I took that as a sign to test out my sister-in-law’s theory. When the days passed and I hadn’t heard from Ryan yet, I lost hope and cried to my best friend Katherine about my dismal luck with men. Little did I realize that later that night Ryan would message me, and we did end up going on a second date, which would seal our fate as a couple.

Over the past year, we have had many wonderful moments together, exploring Colorado and going on our special “photoventures” around Denver. We’ve joined a church in town and volunteer regularly in the worship band and guest services. We also go to the gym regularly and are now working on running a few races this year.

Ryan has been my loving support this whole past year and I couldn’t have asked for a better man in my life.

This item on my list, “30 Things to Do Before 30”, was one of the first things I put on my list. I was bit by the entrepreneurial bug at an early age: when I was a kid, I wanted to sell stationery items to other kids. In college, I did a brief stint with an online shop, selling some of my Japanese pop/rock paraphernalia that I no longer wanted. But I’d always dreamed of having my own company doing more than just what my little kid mind wanted to do.

I thought I needed an MBA in order to start a business “correctly”, so I started an MBA program in the Fall of 2011. Near the end of that quarter, I also started getting coaching sessions with an acquaintance in Denver. He helped me develop the concept for my first company, TAOpivot. By the end of that school year, I left the MBA program and went full-time with TAOpivot.

When things didn’t pan out too well with TAOpivot, I was at a loss over what to move on to next. What people don’t understand about entrepreneurs is this: they’ll always be entrepreneurs! I considered going back to working for other businesses, but I still couldn’t shake that voice calling for me to start up another business.

So then I turned to baking and Ms. Kwong’s Baked Goods was born in the summer of 2013. At first, I wanted to focus on French pastries, but then I expanded my menu to include other unique baked goods not readily available in the Denver area, such as gourmet marshmallows and Snickerdoodles.

These days, I still have Ms. Kwong’s Baked Goods, but I am also placing more focus on my social media marketing business, Hashtag Hustler.

What I’ve learned from starting my own businesses is that of course it’s tough to strike out on my own. Having a great, supportive network is so crucial to my entrepreneurial success. Of course,  I have to believe in myself, but having the belief of others in my own success is so helpful as well.

I do like knowing that I am the one calling the shots on how the business is run, though. That keeps me motivated along with my passion for all my businesses.

(Video featured above is of a TV anchor’s response to cyber bullies regarding her weight)

Yes, I was bullied as a child and still on occasion am bullied as an adult.

Growing up in Radford, Virginia, a small town in the southwest part of the state by the Blue Ridge Mountains, I was surrounded by mainly caucasians and African-Americans. To be outside of that binary, well, was to be bullied. It didn’t help that I was also a chubby kid, so other kids made fun of me for being both Chinese AND fat.

There was a bully who kept picking on me from about fourth grade to eighth grade: he and his friends would laugh at me, call me names, and make jokes like “Hey, hey…he wants to go out with you!”

One time, while doing homework at the public library, I caught him staring over my shoulder. When I looked up, he said to me, “What the hell are you looking at?” At that moment, I realized that all the years of his bullying me was more of a front to hide that he admired and respected me. There I was, being a diligent student and doing my homework; perhaps he knew that I had a future of leaving our hometown, while he didn’t feel like he had much of a future.

Even though I have endured bullying and have been angry over these injustices, I can also see how these experiences made me stronger: I didn’t let them take me down in their cruel words. I went on and did my own thing and made sure I was taking care of myself and keeping myself strong.

And like my post on forgiveness pointed out, I have moved on from these experiences and taken what I’ve learned from them going forward.

Throughout my life, I have always stood by the saying, “Treat others the way you want to be treated.” When I was a kid, I knew I was different from others (being Chinese after all), so I sought to be as kind as possible towards my classmates, hoping they would also return the favor.

That mission went a bit overboard at times, as I began to bring huge bags of candy to school to share with my classmates. During one school year, I even went out and bought a lot of gifts for my friends and classmates, hoping that the gesture would inspire them to also bring me gifts as well.

But I was wrong: throughout my school years, I became known as the “candy girl” and people began to take advantage of my kindness. I noticed I was also bitter about nobody ever showing me the same kindness I showed them, at least with the gifts and all.

Granted, once I got into college, I didn’t do the whole candy bit anymore, but I showed my kindness in other ways, like giving friends rides, paying for meals, etc. Essentially, throughout my life I have always bent over backwards for others.

I don’t know when I learned my lesson, but it was within the past couple years of my life, though. That bitter feeling I once felt as an adolescence has dissipated though, as I have come to realize that to be giving and kind to others, I needed to let go of that feeling that others “owed” me something in return. Sure, it was a nice feeling to have someone return a kind gesture to me, but I no longer needed that validation to feel that I had done the right thing.

I have also learned to set boundaries on my level of kindness, knowing that I didn’t always need to bend over backwards for others. I shouldn’t feel obligated to do more than I need to do, especially if it makes me feel uncomfortable.

Being kind and selfless really does mean giving and doing for others with no need for anything in return after all.

I find it appropriate to write about this life lesson on the 39th anniversary of my father arriving in the U.S., which changed our family’s destiny from living a peasant life in China to living the American dream. My father’s story will always inspire me to be a better person (more on this in another post, perhaps).

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Growing up, I always knew family was most important in my life, but living a typical adolescence, I also strayed from spending time with my family during my teenage years. Ah, those growing pains of not wanting to be close with family anymore at that point; my friends knew me better than my family did! Or so I thought.

As I matured and watched supposedly close friends drift in and out of my life, I see that the constant in my life has been my family: whenever I go home to Radford, it’s always to see my parents and rarely anyone else. Granted, I’ve only really been home over Christmas during most of my 20s post-college, but still: the only reason to be back in Radford is for my parents and my siblings, who fly in from all over the country to spend Christmas altogether.

When that freak accident occurred in 2010, I was already with family: two of my female cousins and my younger brother, Adam. However, I had blacked out before impact and was unconscious until the early morning of my 25th birthday. The first person I saw after I finally came back to consciousness? My brother, Adam. He had stayed by my side the whole night, unsure of whether I was alive or dead.

During my intermittent periods of being conscious/unconscious, I remember seeing many people visit me in the ICU: my co-workers, my friends, my cousins, and then, last but not least, my parents and my sister, Lisa. They immediately booked tickets to San Francisco and arrived at the ICU on February 1st. When I saw them, I remember waving at them in my stupor and then blacking out again. Later, my sister Lisa told me how, when they all first saw me in that hospital bed, she and our mother started crying and our dad was furious, wanting to find the man who hit me and give him a piece of his mind.

My parents stayed with me that whole month of February, not even questioning what to do about our family restaurant back in Radford. They stayed with me to make sure I would heal well; to take care of me and Adam during the tough time post-accident. My oldest sister also visited during that month; my older brother helped Adam and me out with expenses so we wouldn’t have to worry about things while I was incapacitated.

Five years later, I still think of that accident as a prime example of my family coming together and reminding me that family is most important. There are many other examples I could write about, but that one rings the truest in my memory.