Billy Shih

Mar 28

Making it

Life has launched me into a totally new place. I feel unsettled, yet happy. Not quite comfortable, but looking forward to what things are in store.

In the span of a few months, I’ve changed jobs, fallen in love, moved out of my home of 2 years, co-founded and became CMO of a non-profit and now live with the love of my life.

All these adjustments have contributed to the most stressful and chaotic time of my life. It’s all good stress because these are things I’ve always wanted, but even too much good stress isn’t healthy. I’ve started having anxiety attacks and my chest tightness, which I got rid of awhile back, now has returned.

Learning how to adjust and then making those adjustments has been arduous but a welcome challenge. However, similar to how my life’s trajectory has seem to have grown at exponential speeds, I need to learn how to live a healthy life.

It’s simple right? More sleep, more exercise and less (bad) food.

I sometimes feel like those things are against me and my success though. It’s hard to live a healthy life. However with my health failing and impacting my day to day life, it’s now time for a paradigm shift that is obvious but now feels real: my health will bring me more success, rather than less.

Beyond my health, I still battle my old friend/enemy, time. There’s so much I want to do, yet so much of that is not related to what I want to accomplish. Trimming the fat (no pun intended) is now a necessity rather than a prudent choice.

All this points in the same direction though. I need to quickly decide what I want, what I need in order to succeed and how I can still enjoy life and smile everyday.

So here’s my game plan for the next 3 months: get my heart (the organ) back to normal and then follow my heart (the emotions) to get to where I want to be.

Oct 08

Patience

I’m eager to setup my life for success.  I want to direct my life towards where I belong.  Sometimes I wonder if I’ve been having too much fun and not taking life seriously enough though.  

Because of that, I was surprised by some advice from a friend telling me to be patient.  (He also advised that having fun was really important.  I honestly never thought of having fun as being important.  Is that weird?)

I’m 25 now.  I’ve never felt old but 25 sounds like a serious age; a point where I should be making bigger decisions.  And if not 25, then when?  

I don’t feel guilty for having as much fun as I’ve had the past few years, but it does make me feel like I’m further behind than I could be in terms of my goals.  Should I feel pressure for only taking baby steps towards my future?  Or is that a good way to live life?

Patience.  Hmm…

Holding on

I always took the saying “You can’t have everything” as a materialistic statement but have recently digested how this equally applies to relationships and goals.

I want to learn guitar. 
I want to become fluent in Chinese. 
I want to keep in touch with all my friends.
I want to have deep relationships with everyone I love.
I want to be closer to my family everyday.

Life has ultimately become a game where I choose what I want to flourish and what I decide to let die. I feel lucky to have choices like these but it’s disheartening that I can’t have it all.

It also frustrates me that some things aren’t a conscious choice, but it still impacts the way life unfolds.  Forgetting to call home, to ask a friend to hang out, to make time for passions.  I feel a bit lost in the shuffle of life.  I don’t mean to make anyone feel unimportant, but it happens.

The inability to hold onto everything has been a tough reality.  Perhaps the toughest part is that it’s making me face up to the world and define myself by my actions.  How you spend your time should align with what you think is important.  I need to start working towards that more.

Taking a look at what I’ve done in the past month, year, decade… I’m not sure if I’m happy with my legacy so far.  Not sure what to say, other than it’s time to roll-up my sleeves and just get things done.

Sep 21

If poetry is cheesy, get me my wine glass…

claracmusic:

HelloooOOooOo! I gymed it up for 2 hours, showered, took a bubble bath, turned on some Eels, Fleet Foxes and Kings of Convenience and read poetry. It was GLORIOUS. Here you go:

Yes, it’s longer than you may like.
Yes, I typed every letter.
Yes, that’s one of the lesser reasons to read it.
Here’s the greatest reason to read it:

“THIS COMPOST
by Walt Whitman 1819-1892

Something startles me where I thought I was safest,
I withdraw from the still woods I loved,
I will not go now on the pastures to walk,
I will not strip the clothes from my body to meet my lover the sea,
I will not touch my flesh to the earth as to other flesh to renew me.

O how can it be that the ground itself does not sicken?
How can you be alive you growths of spring?
How can you furnish health you blood of roots, orchards, grain?
Are they not continually putting distemper’d corpses within you?
Is not every continent work’d over and over with sour dead?

Where have you disposed of their carcasses?
Those drunkards and gluttons of so many generations?
Where have you drawn off all the foul liquid and meat?
I do not see any of it upon you to-day, or perhaps I am decei’d,
I will run a furrow with my plough, I will press my spade through the sod and turn it up underneath,
I am sure I shall expose some of the foul meat.

Behold this compost! behold it well!
Perhaps every mite has once form’d part of a sick person-yet behold!
The grass of spring covers the prairies,
The bean bursts noiselessly through the mould in the garden,
The delicate spear of the onion pierces upward,
The apple-buds cluster together on the apple-branches,
The resurrection of the wheat appears with pale visage out of its graves,
The tinge awakes over the willow-tree and the mulberry-tree,
The he-birds carol mornings and evenings while the she-birds sit on their nests,
The young of poultry break through the hatch’d eggs,
The new-born of animals appear, the calf its dropt from the cow, the colt from the mare,
Out of its little hill faithfully rise the potato’s dark green leaves,
out of its hill rises the yellow maize-stalk, the lilacs bloom in the dooryards,
The summer growth is innocent and disdainful above all those strate of sour dead.

What chemistry!
That the winds are really not infectious,
That this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me,
That it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues,
That it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it,
That all is clean forever and forever,
That the cool drink from the well tastes so good,
That the blackberries are so flavorous and juicy,
That the fruits of the apple-orchard and the orange-orchard, that melons, grapes, peaches, plums, will none of them poison me,
That when I recline on the grass I do not catchy any disease,
Though probably every spear of grass rises out of what was once a catching disease.

Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient,
It grows such sweet things out of such corruptions,
It turns harmless and stainless on its axis, with such endless successions of diseas’d corpses,
It distills such exquisite winds out of such infused fetor (a strong, foul smell)
It renews with such unwitting looks its prodigal, annual, sumptuous crops,
It gives such divine materials to men, and accepts such leavings from them at last.”

Aug 18

Ryan Freitas: 35 Lessons in 35 Years -

My father always told me that the day we stop learning is the day we die. I wrote this as a sort of preparation for my 35th birthday last week. Some of these are poignant, others are simply trite; I attribute the latter to my growing sense of sentimentality as I age. That, and I need an editor.

…

Hopefully I can put together something as insightful as this when I hit 35.  Or at least have internalized these 35 lessons :P

Aug 12

[video]

Aug 02

one forty plus: Hit -

Listening to Train play “Hey Soul Sister” from backstage. What a massive hit. Yea, it’s on the radio pretty constantly, but a hit song is all about the way the crowd reacts to it. There’s nothing like the reward of making the air swirl around thousands of people with one of your songs. Better than any of the spins or chart positions. I think people would write better songs if they aimed for the religious concert experience rather than the top 20. Train’s now playing “Drops of Jupiter,” a song that succeeds and succeeded at both, respectively.

Artistry is about the ability to connect.  Agree?

Aug 01

Wild flowers

At the last leg of a run around my neighborhood I passed a fenced-off empty lot that was filled with wild flowers. It was surprising, strange and very beautiful. Some Googling revealed someone decided to plant seeds in the lot.

I can’t help but imagine someone thinking up the idea, getting really excited, planting the flower seeds and then coming back everyday to see if they’ve grown or not. 

This small idea and it’s execution, made me smile inside and out.

There are countless things we don’t have to do but can do. The occasional opportunities that we do choose to do a bit more than expected is what seems to separate the great from the everyday.

When I think about my life, I really just want to show people that taking an extra step, even if small, makes a difference. Whether I’m doing or will do a good job, I don’t know. However seeing others succeed at it, makes me feel like I can do it too.

To the stranger that planted those flowers, thank you. You made me smile and many others as well.

[video]

Jul 26

“Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations. You have to pay attention to money, but it shouldn’t be about the money.” —

Tim O’Reilly

Found on Ben Casnocha’s amazing blog.