It's the weekend!

And I am determined to not stay hibernating inside my apartment the entire time.

"She was damaged, and acknowledged it freely."

From the book Behind the Beautiful Forevers written by Katherine Boo. Page 72.

Comparing the timeline of your life to others is completely useless.

It's all in how it's captured.

"When I first started, I was helping with production. Because it was such a small company at that time, everybody had to do everything. Aside from me, there was a production manager, and a woman that cut all the samples by hand. When it came to shipping, even Anna was putting boxes together. After Anna did her first fashion show in fall 1991, the company got much bigger and Anna realized she needed to hire more people. She also realized that she needed somebody to help just her, so in 1992 she made me her assistant."

From the January 22, 2015 article from The Daily Front Row titled The Assistant Files, Vol. 62: Thomas Miller, Anna Sui.

Congrats to you, Thomas!

Saturday night at home.

"Look, Joe. If people thought about all the things that could happen, they'd never do anything."

Said by the character Corporal Joe Allen's father from the movie The Clock.

"Don't forget to thank me, baby. Don't forget to thank your Cookie on this historic occasion." 

Said by the character Cookie on the show Empire. Pilot episode.

It's funny that as I was just contemplating about if I should do this certain thing tomorrow, "A Gentleman's Honor" by Philip Glass starts playing from my music on random. It's like the right choice was so easy to see, but I was being lazy.

The solution to my extreme overthinking problem is to just not think about it.

It's going to be a good year.

The past week or so has been really cold in NYC. It makes walking the city by foot pretty much impossible, and I long for warm sunny weather.

About a year ago, I got on the subway one evening to go to this bar alone where some friends were throwing a party. Last winter was pretty brutal too in terms of the cold, and I remember this day being particularly miserable as well.

As I gripped a pole and stood in the shaky subway while it pulled out of Union Square, I noticed a friend named Anna Margaret sitting nearby bundled-up in many layers and with a bag of takeout food. We knew each other from working together at a restaurant in the East Village, and I probably hadn't seen her in close to 4 years. I immediately said hi, and it was so great to catch up with her for a bit. Then I told her that if she had no plans, she should come with me to where I was going because the people at the bar throwing the party had also worked at the same restaurant as us, so we all were friends.

That's when she responded with, "Tae, I'm old and cold," and proceeded to tell me about how excited she was go to home with her dinner in hand and stay inside in the comfort of warmth. Now, Anna Margaret is not someone I consider actually old because we're the same age. But when she said that to me, I completely understood what she meant and wished her a good night.

What she said, "old and cold," has really stuck with me since. I find it popping into my head a lot more nowadays. And in this winter's current New York deep freeze, I too feel too damn "old and cold" to do the many things I once really enjoyed.

Below are some pictures from my time living in Bangkok that I never posted. They were all taken while I was on the backseat of a motorcycle-taxi (motosai), and it brings me a little warmth to think about my days in tropical weather when this was the way I traveled around town.

"This is the number one rule for your set,
In order to survive, gotta learn to live with regrets."

From the song Regrets by Jay Z.

This is not my life. It's my story.

Trippy like it's 1968 inside of 80 Wooster Street.

Fake it 'til you make it.

It won't always be like this.