howdy…
This is my first blog post, something random on a typically hot day in Bangkok, and not an overwritten and over-edited narrative about how I ended up in a tropical megacity in Southeast Asia and the life lessons I’ve learned along the way.
I’ll get into the stories and the cast of characters in due time. For now, let me explain where the adjective Wykovian comes from. A former colleague and current friend coined the word to describe me when we worked together in the mid-2000s in San Francisco, and to this day, I think it’s a good adjective of the indefinable quality that has made me who I am, for better or worse.
My goal is to unfurl what Wykovian might mean, in the past and today. After a June 2022 trip to California, I schlepped back crates and crates of old diaries, papers, letters, and other ephemera that I’ve been saving since kindergarten, including report cards, yearbooks, and scrapbooks that my mother painstakingly helped me assemble. I’ve had the intention of going through the boxes and pitching unimportant stuff and digitizing the rest. But that’s been mostly a failure, as I’ve only gone from eight boxes to six and have combined and consolidated as much as possible without really deep-diving into the past.
On this blog, I’ll tell some funny stories and share thoughts and opinions as we barrel toward the U.S. presidential election in November, white-knuckling it with still-fresh memories of late 2016 (when I wrote this piece on Medium). I’ll be examining how I got to a point in my life where I’m living a fairly eudaemonic life, focusing on intention, mindfulness, and studying the philosophy of Stoicism, which has helped with my control issues, something at the root of so many of the unkind things I did in the past. I’ll be casting my eye backward, to all the things I’ve done, the people I’ve met, and the situations I’ve encountered, all from a position of relative privilege, which colors my every experience.
Some topics I’ll write about include my mother’s sudden death when I was 17; the true back-stories about how and why I moved to San Francisco in 1993 and to Bangkok in 2010; my near-death experience in 2003 from a serious infection; how I’ve only lived in two apartments in 28 years; how I met my husband; and all about the incredible friends I’ve met along the way including one from kindergarten who is still amongst my closest friends. Who knows if any of this will be interesting, but I’m going to excavate my past and see what turns up. Hope you’ll come along for the ride. 🙌🏼
