Welcome to the Blog
Take a seat traveller!
This blog was created in part for a school project, and serves as a place to get my thoughts out. To begin, I was tasked to write about the three stages of my life, and link my experiences through each of these stages with concepts from my Developmental Psychology class. I thought making this the start of my blog would be a good way to finally get working on starting this blog, since I procrastinate updating the site frequently. This will serve as a general overview to my life so far. As this is a publically published website, and I desire to retain some annonimity, I am hesitant to put any photos of my face on here (Sorry Professor!), and I may be somewhat vague with details of my life. But I have photos of valuables, and places that are near and dear to my heart, and I'll highlight the most important moments provided they don't give too much away. Hopefully that will make up the difference.
Despite how small this site is, to anyone reading this site, thank you! With all the chaos and instability in the world now, having this as a passion project has helped me cope with the depressingly dire reality we face. I hope that you, the reader, can find peace and fullfillment in your lives, and I hope that this blog makes your day a little better.
This blog was started on May 8th, 2026. Linked here is a fun fact about this day in time! Enjoy :)!
The links on the sidebar are placeholders that will remain constant until I figure out what to put there. Some good information on how to get started making your own website!
My Infant-Childhood Years!
I don't remember too much from my infant years, most people don't I believe. But, I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, to southeast asian parents. Growing up, my parents were somewhat reclusive, and introverted. We mainly kept to ourselves and made contact only when necessary, or with an extremely small group of friends. Living in this environment has impacted me greatly, as the way I communicate with others and how I carry myself in public was shaped by my family's reserved nature.
As a child, whether it'd be because of my environment or genotype, I was and still am very much an introvert. There are a couple of perspectives one can have on my upbringing. The passive view, for example plays with the idea that our tendencies and environment are influenced by our parent's genetics, thus shaping who we are as people. Another view, called the evocative correlation, states that our genetic tendies shapes the environment around us, while the final view called the active correlation, states that our genetic tendencies shape what we seek out environment. I believe there are some truths in all of these views. As a whole, my temperament has always tended to the more reserved and cautious.
My childhood was defined by my temperament, and I believe there are several factors that moulded me into my temperament. Beginning from birth, because of my parent's nature, I was always somewhat isolated from others. My parents never cared much for making friends with other families of kids my age, thus playdates, sleepovers, and sandbox shenanigans were somewhat rare. I'll be using piaget's model of development to give structure to my infant and toddler years. Pretty much the only people I saw during my sensorimotor stage (from birth to 2 years of age) was my parents or the caretakers I had. Vygotsky's theory of development states that the interaction between a variety of people with differing skills, opinions, and temperaments, are essential for the social development of the child. This is the area in which I was the most stunted, and it set how I've interacted with my environment for my life up to this point.
Outside of my sensorimotor stage, and moving into the preoperational stage (ages 2-7) and the concrete operational stage (age 7-11), my tendencies were set in as reserved and shy, and it was around these points where my tendencies and behaviors started to affect my relationships to the adults and other children around me. My tendencies made it hard for others to connect with me, and thus I was treated more of an outsider. This was a constant thing throughout my life. For example when I was a toddler, my mother recalls bringing me to the park in an attempt to help me connect with others. However, I was always very hesitant to join others. My mothers recalls that I would scan the park, looking for anybody who might be present, and will subsequently refuse to play on the playground if another child was present. When no children are present, I would happily play on the monkey bars and slides. My aloof nature also made the adults around me uneasy, which in turn negatively affected their interactions with me. It became a cycle. My tendency is reserved and shy, which in turn makes both children and adult uneasy, which then makes them more standoffish or cautious towards me, which then reinforces my world view, and thus my behavior. This is an example of the evovative correlation. A hereddity-environmental correlation that emphasizes a child's genetic tendencies in influencing environmental support.
A Photo Of The Beach from Corpus Christi, TX
My Teenage Years
My teenage years were a strange time in my life. I hit puberty earlier than most of my peers and had reached my full height of 5ft 10in by the time I was in 6th grade, which did give me a slight boost in terms of social standing, at least from ages 13-14, which had a huge effect on my ego, and I began thinking myself better than I was. By the time highschool came around though, most everyone had caught up in height, and thus my short lived stint with "popularity" faded. To be frank, I think of the social life of my teenage years to be the culmination of all the behaviors I've learned throughout my childhood years, mixed with the unstable emotions that one normally succombs to during puberty.
Me and my family moved to California my first year of highschool. This period of my life was the lowest socially speaking, and the highest in emotion. Out of everyone in my family, the move seemed to have hit me the hardest. A combination of an unfamiliar place, no friends, the high emotions and lack of "breaks" during puberty, imbrued in me the most tumultuous storm of teenage angst my family has experienced before and since. Add on to this my lack of social skills, and it became a time of fustration, alienation, desparation, and loss of self esteem.
Socially, despite my best efforts, I had tons of trouble making connection in school. I was too caught up in my emotions and my lack of self esteem to notice others, and subsequently caused me to make "friends" with the wrong people. Perhaps because of my underdeveloped prefrontal cortex and my deperation to find acceptance, I often said and did things impulsively without consideration as to how I'm coming off to others.
In an attempt to chase acceptance and hide the flaws and insecurities I percieved I had at the time, I decided to play a character based off promiscuity. I decided the best way to be accepted in my group of friends was to act as if I was better than everyone else, and got more "action" than everyone else. Of course, in reality I never even had the guts to talk to the opposite gender, and without the breaks we have as adults, it never occured to me how pathetic this behavior was. It was a phase that still haunts me to this day, and I cringe immennsly writing this piece. Ultimately however, I think it was a phase that was necessary for me to go through. This part of my life presented major social challenges that although I may not have responded in the best ways, helped me develop some self awareness and empathy for others.
What really helped me get through this period of my life was with talking to others. I had very little friends I could talk to and my parents had gaslighting tendencies, which, as much as I love them, did much more damage to my self esteem. Fortunately, I did eventually manage to find someone I felt that I could confide in. They were older and much wiser than I was, and provided me the guidance and emotional processing I needed. I'm not too sure where I'd be now without them. I believe that even having just one other to connect with goes a long way in helping adolescence through angst of teenage life. Vygotsky's theory states that challenges are necessary for healthy development, but help is needed in times when the challenges we face are too great. Scaffolding is a term used in Vygotsky's theory of development that describes the support we recieve when such challenges appear in our lives.
Music also helped me throughout this part of my life. It was at this time where I started to listen and explore many different types of music instead of just listening to whatever my parents had on their cd collections and radio. I eventually found that I loved British bands from the 70s to 80s. Bands like The Cure, The Smiths, and Joy Division were my staples of my teenage and adult years. The Queen Is Dead in particular, was and still is, my absoloute favorite album of all time.
My (Early) Adulthood
I've come to adulthood at a very strange and maybe even unfortunate time. The world we are maturing in feels crazier and crazier by the day. As our leaders continue to devolve into corruption and greed, and corporations continue to milk every bit of happiness for profit, us young adults find ourselves jaded and lost in a world in which everything has become unattainable. We are lonelier, more pessimistic, and divided than many of the generations that came before us. I too have lost my way in the craziness to the chaos of the world right now. Back then, it seemed set in stone the path that one takes to be considered "successful". Those avenues for us are almost, if not totally gone for my generation. The challenges that me and my cohorts face is learning to navigating and finding stability in a world that we were never prepared for. All that we have learned, everything that we were promised, and all the faith we put into our leaders institutions have been broken down, and I feel we cope with this in different ways.
Confusion, fear, and nihlism are common setiments amongst my cohorts, and we cope with these feelings in different ways. Some turn to hustle and self-improvement culture in an attempt to either distract themselves from, or "gain the system". Others give in to anger and resentment, become "incels" and misandrists, or succomb to political polarization. As for me though, I gave in to the despair, and sought to isolate myself from society. For a couple of years after my 18th birthday, I did the bare minimum to survive, only speaking to others only when necessary for my survival. I went to university and struggled in my classes because I just couldn't find a reason. Why contribute to a society that serves corruption and provides us, the younger generations, with close to nothing? Will I be able to even find a job with the incredibly saturated major I was taking, and the non-existant job market? Will I even live to see my 30th birthday with all this talk about climate change, ecological collapse, and birthrate crisises? Even as I write this, I still haven't really sound an awnser for most of these, but what has worked for me was following my heart.
What I mean by that is doing what makes me happy, rather than following the path that society demands. For example, I got accepted at 18 to a decent university. I had to move away and live on my own for the first time. I was away from family, friends, and my home. Society considers this a sign of independence. A milestone that leads to the making of a sucsessful and productive member of society. However, with the depressing times we live in, having a good support system with people who'll be there for you emotionally is much more important than it has been in a long time. Moving away and living on my own meant that I missed the emotional support that we need, and beause of my temperament, I didn't make any friends or form any relationships that I could be emotionally reliant upon. Consequently, my performance in school declined, and I started to become much more depressed and anxious. By the end of the school year, I had failed several classes and got put on academic probation. Repeat this cycle for four painful semesters and you've got a recipe for a massive blowout which almost resulted in my hospitalization. I physically and mentally could not give any more, and so I took a break for half a year to figure out how I wanted to proceed with my life. I thought about it for a long time, and soon decided to move to a community college close to my families home to be closer to them. I also change my major to something with more stable job prospects. Even though it was seen as a "downgrade" compared to the universities in the eyes of society, I think for me it was the right decision. With the support of my friends and family, my performance in school has improved significantly, but more importantly, I finally have a reason to keep pushing forward.
My early adult life is defined by confusion, but that's not to say that it's been all bad. As I've grown from my late teens into my early twenties, I feel as though most things don't "affect" me as they once did. For example, as of right now, I have experienced a significant drop in friendship shortly after highschool. As I write this, I don't think I have even one friend I can reliably call upon or talk to. This used to be devastating for me in highschool, and was part of the reason why I acted in deperate and embarassing ways. But whether through experience, or the change in emotional processing we go through as we transition from adolescence to adulthood, I am not as emotionally affected as I once was. I have a more mellowed approach to life now. To summarize, I am much more stable in my emotions and can think a little more logically compared to when I was a teenager.
Going hand-in-hand with the last paragraph, I feel a lot more confident in myself. I am not as concerned of being judged, I say what I need to say, and I speak my mind a lot more compared to when I was a teenager. Some theories suggest that we reach postformal thinking, a way of thinking that is gained as we mature from adolescents to adulthood that is considered to be more reflective, provisional, and realistic. I would have to concur that lines up with my overall experience with adulthood.
I've also moved into a farm recently, and having animals to take care of may have played a part in the bettering of my mental health.
A photo of a chicken I am taking care of.
Final Thoughts
Reflecting on my life so far, overall I feel as though I've went through it fine. I'm alive and live comfortably. My biggest worry now is how my future is going to play out. With all the uncertainty in the world, it's easy to get lost in the spiral of misery. As much as I can today, I try to get though it by avoiding social media, and confinding in those closest to me. Vygotsky's theory states that in order to develop as a person, we need challenges that push us just enough for us to overcomb on our own, called the Zone of Proximal development. As I've reflected on my own life, I've noticed that all of the challenges that life has presented me has molded me into the way I am today. I know where my priorities are, what my weaknesses are and what I value most in life because of what I've lost, gained, and experienced throughout my life so far. While I still have a ways to go in navigating life, and more ways to develop as I continue to mature, I feel that as of writing today I am content with how things are going in my life, and I hope that as I age I'd age with grace and fulfillment.