It Was Not Happily Ever After in 2020 — Hi! I’m Cindy! You may know me as Cinderella. Though there may be some similarities, my story is not exactly how it was written in story books. My story begins in March 2020 when my stepmother gave me a long list of chores to complete. I don’t think I’m going…

Is Happiness Something That We Can Never Have? — In the movie The Pursuit of Happyness, the protagonist Chris Gardner was thinking about the Declaration of Independence and how Thomas Jefferson wrote pursuit of happiness. That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he…

A Safe Space to Share — I received a journal as part of a gift exchange and started writing in it in July 2020. I remembered the first entry was difficult, because I did not know what I should write about. Writing wasn’t that difficult before. I used to write what was flowing in my head…

My Personal Experience on Learning on My Own — The first musical instrument I learned was the violin. When I was in elementary school, I joined orchestra and played a few years. Fast forward to about 2 decades later and after watching countless TwoSet Violin YouTube videos in 2020 and 2021, I decided to get a violin online in…

A Haiku — The last time I wrote a haiku was in the 6th grade when I learned what a haiku was. I remembered the challenging part of writing a haiku was finding words that expressed what I wanted to say and still fulfill that 5, 7, and 5 syllables requirement. I would…

Chapter 16, 17, and 18 of ‘The Mystery of the Blue Book’ — If you haven’t already read chapter 15 yet, here is the link to chapters 15. The Aha! Moment Chapter 15 of ‘The Mystery of the Blue Book’catherine-academia.medium.com I don’t know. The idea of reconnecting with people I haven’t kept in contact with for a while felt weird. We lived separate lives for the past ten years, and we are not the same…

Distractions That Relieve Stress — I find that working on fun projects and hobbies help relieve my stress. Here are a few fun projects and hobbies I look forward to after work and on my days off: Working on a 550-piece jigsaw puzzle. This project was a great distractor. It was challenging enough to take…

What I Collected Has Changed Over Time — Throughout my life, I’ve collected different things. When I was in elementary school, I liked shopping at Sanrio and purchasing Hello Kitty stationary papers, stickers, notebooks, pens, and pencils. At school, I collected rocks and stored them in my school desk. I was fascinated by what can be found in…

Is it really downhill after 30? — I had a lot more ambition when I was younger. Lately, I’ve been struggling with the “where do I see myself in 5 years?” question. Where Do I See Myself in 5 Years? Way back when I was in 8th grade, one of my teachers had us write a letter to ourselves what we hoped to achieve in…catherine-academia.medium.com I’ve lost ambition over the years. Is it just me? I recently learned of the U-bend of life where the research show that people peak…