the creative route

the road less traveled

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

sunset in phoenix, june 29th 2025

when i look at broadway and film, i now see all the gaps. gaps from everyone too scared to take their life by the reins and tell their story. gaps from wasted piano lessons spent climbing the way to the top. gaps from six-figure starting salaries out of college, where every other path suddenly disappeared. gaps from no exam, degree, or competition guaranteeing success.

i spent the last few years trying to untangle myself from being the 'typical immigrant child' and i'm really lucky to have had friends who've been by my side who get it, who believe it as i do, that we can do something besides consulting, swe, quant, or whatever pre-destined asian parent approved path.

i've seen friends amass wealth to try to run away for awhile, just to go back to it again. i've seen others try to skip it altogether by making enough wealth to not have to think about it ever again. both these approaches don't seem particularly appealing to me.

to me, the only path that is fulfilling is a path where you consistently work hard and reap the rewards for your lifetime because you know that you would not have chosen to live your life any differently.

i heard someone say recently: 'the view from the mountain is only beautiful if you took the effort to climb it.'

though very few of my friends are brave enough to climb the mountain too, i'm lucky have friends who still believe in me. it's this believing that's really scary because now i'm not only disappointing my parents, but also everyone who subscribes to this substack and my friends if i don't actually succeed at climbing the mountain. every time i slip, it feels like i've failed. it's really easy to look at someone who hasn't 'made it' yet and say that they shouldn't have climbed the mountain. success in a creative field isn't exactly measurable until you make it to the top and there's not really a way to determine if someone will make it until they try.

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what i've been up to

the last two months have been a flurry of moving from one apartment to the other, visiting new york for two weeks and filming a reading of a steakhouse musical by a musical theater workshop, cultural exchange with my new indian housemates, deciding if i should take another leave of absence, and realizing quite literally where the bamboo ceiling is. it's hard to say if i'm actually making any creative process or if i'm just distracting myself by having fun. either way, my interests in writing, film, theater, and the arts are a lot more clear now that i tested it by moving to a new state and still loving it despite not knowing anyone in the field. it means i must love it even if i was in another civilization or galaxy or lifetime.

i work with my hands a lot now. i sew, i cook, i buy full chickens to section into parts. i light up seeing raw materials combine to become something new. something about making things from scratch makes me feel like i'm rebelling against the tech-centric world i grew up with. it makes me realize how much of the real world screens leave out.

when you've strayed so far off the trail you stop caring where the original path was. even if you found it you wouldn’t care to walk on it anymore.