I appreciate that bucket lists remind us that we won’t be around forever, and a little memento mori does a person good! But, the flip side is that they often make us think of the important things in life as the highlight reel, when in reality the small bits matter just as much.
That’s why whenever I do a bucket list type of thing, afterwards I focus on actually savoring the most mundane tasks and ordinary things.
New Zealand has been at the top of my list for ages, so I wanted the moment I actually made it over to be a big one. Like… a ten-year-anniversary and first-trip-without-the-kids big.
Releasing the files!
Big rocks… also the battlefield set from the Narnia movie
Arthur’s Pass on the Day of our anniversary
House of Gamgee
Christchurch’s “Cardboard Cathedral” made after the 2011 Earthquake
Piha Beach… beautiful, but windy as
Within a few hours of arriving in Auckland, Deanna led us to the cemetery
Another round of L&P
Rhys has told us he wants to do an escape room in every country of the world, so in his honor, we escaped in Christchurch
Breakfast at Cordis in Auckland… in my top three breakfasts of all time, for sure
Sippin’ on gin and another flavor of gin
I underestimated how much I would enjoy the food in New Zealand, kinda shrugged at its cuisine being known for burgers and fish and chips.But New Zealand has an incredible international food scene.I could’ve eaten two dinners a night with the Riverside Market in Christchurch making it such a tough decision to pick a spot.
Some faves:
🇲🇦 Lamb, mint, & rocket pizza
🇹🇭 Lamb shank in massaman curry
🇳🇵Spicy & sour momo soup
🇳🇵Fried momo
🇦🇷 Morcilla & chips
I've been capturing stories and recording life for years! And while I love being able to craft videos afterwards, I never want getting the shot to get in the way of living the moment.
My process now prioritizes:
• Discreet gear that doesn't take long to set up
• A shotlist that keeps the amount of time I spend behind the lens to a minimum
• A process that allows me to focus on getting the right clips rather than trying to film everything Here's a bit about that!
Sometimes the path out of poverty starts with how we see people.
There are few countries I have as unique or a relationship with as Thailand. I recently made my fifth trip back, but each visit has introduced me to new communities and experiences.
This time around, I spent time with forestkeeping communities of ethnic minorities and got a good up close look at my team’s training center.
Have a look!
Ebru Baybara Demir began working with refugee women from Syria when its conflicts began to escalate. After the region was hit with massive earthquakes a couple years ago, she operated pop up soul kitchens in the affected area of a to keep people fed.
Since then she has been running an agricultural co-op, helping women and refugees further their culinary and business skills.
I appreciate how committed the Auckland airport is to telling travelers to relax.
New Zealand’s signature ice cream flavor: Hokey Pokey
Vanilla with bits of honeycomb toffee.
A fact I made up is that Tip Top might as well be New Zealand’s version of Thrifty Ice Cream. Feels like that could be true.
You down with L&P?
Pretty lucky this is what my business trips look like.
It was 2022 and I was giving a talk. I mentioned that I was quite optimistic when it came to climate action compared to most people I work with. I cited a few facts and figures, pulled up some infographics about carbon emissions trending down, and noted that two of the strongest bits of climate legislation in my lifetime were signed just that summer.
One of them–the Inflation Reduction Act was projected to result in a noteworthy drop in emissions, though it alone wouldn’t quite be enough to totally solve climate issues. Still, it would have given clean energy industries and infrastructure a boost for things to move in a positive direction.
Now it’s 2025, and that feels quite long ago, doesn’t it?
This month, those proposals were effectively gutted as part of the new Congressional Budget Bill. The projections for emissions no longer look that promising. The US also squandered its opportunity to be the world leader in the energy industries that will dominate the next century, a role China looks eager to take. But considering that the US is a massive country in terms of both land and population, it’s a pretty bad blow to the planet.
So, in the year 2025, I couldn’t possibly still be saying climate and optimist in the right sentence.
Right?
Before I flesh out my answer, I need to highlight a few things I also said in that same talk:
Climate optimism shouldn’t whitewash the very real problem of climate change and the way it affects people. I spend a lot of my career talking to people like Albert, a farmer in Burundi, or Esperanza, a mother in rural Mexico and I’ve seen very directly how their lives are threatened by environmental problems. I may have a stronger sense of optimism around the environment, but that also comes with a stronger awareness of the stakes.
Optimism isn’t necessarily a virtue. Optimism is largely a function of privilege, brain chemistry, and the mysterious item of personality. These are things people have no control over, for the first part. I happen to be born with a set of circumstances and brain chemicals that make it easier for me than most people. I didn’t do anything to earn that.
Hope, on the other hand, is a virtue. I make the distinction between hope and optimism by saying that optimism is a feeling, but hope is where we plant our feet. I work with many people who feel like they’re fighting a losing battle but still show up to fight. That’s hope. Even without the optimism. Especially without optimism.
Climate ambition in the United States. has taken a huge step backwards. Most people I know working for a more sustainable future are extremely discouraged and they have reason to be. It’s a reasonable way to feel.
But at the same time, it’s not game over and the work isn’t done. If anything, there’s a lot more of it to be done.
The United States is an important actor when it comes to climate, and perhaps the most influential, but it’s far from the only source of impact.
Seven-eighths of carbon emissions are outside of the United States. The largest emitter, China, represents about a third of emissions around the world and clean energy is driving its number downward in a hurry. Its emissions have likely peaked this year. Russia and Brazil are also likely close to their peak. Japan, the UK, the European Union, Canada, and even the US have already passed their peak. As more African and South Asian hubs gain access to electricity, they are increasingly drawing it from clean sources.
Within the US, climate policy has several different layers. There’s federal policy, of course, which hasn’t been too encouraging lately. But state policy also has a big impact on things like land use, transport, and energy. Counties, cities, and other districts also determine a lot around transport, green space, farming, and housing, and this is often where people have the most success at getting involved.
And it’s not just government! Good thing, huh? There are so many other sectors that ultimately shape climate action. Business, industry, and marketing fields are incredibly influential, especially in the US. Working in tech, energy, or engineering opens up new opportunities to reach goals. Anyone working on farms or with food also has direct access to a very important sector. Consumers have a lot of influence through their choices and can often force governments and corporations to keep up with their preferences. Educators, artists, and communicators can help shape those priorities.
This isn’t to invalidate legitimate concerns people have. The urgency around climate action means that we need all actors to play their part. When they’re in sync, different levels of government can create a multiplier effect with each other. Different sectors can open doors for each other. All the things are in relation to each other.
Unfortunately, we likely won’t really have synergy on that level for some time, but it does mean all our eggs aren’t in that single basket. Real good news given the state of our current basket.
Over the past twenty years, there have been very few moments where all of the political stars have aligned to get anything done environmentally, at least at the federal level.
The amount of improvements in emissions reduction in spite of that lack of political support is actually pretty encouraging.
When Barack Obama took office in 2009, one of his biggest goals was a comprehensive climate bill. Ultimately, they never made it past Congress. The Waxman-Markey Bill and the EPA’s Clean Power Plan failed to get the support they needed. But what happened next is kind of interesting.
Based on projections made while these policies were being debated, they would have reduced emissions by about 1100 Mt CO₂ between 2010 and 2019. However, the US managed to reduce its emissions by 1,450 Mt CO₂ on its own, without the support of these policies.
It goes without saying, we would’ve likely fared better with the extra push, but still… things turned out much better than one might’ve expected when those policies failed to become law.
There are a mix of reasons why. The cost of wind and solar energy became way cheaper than anticipated, making them more accessible. The coal industry also collapsed, and while some of it was replaced by fracking, that still accounts for some drop in emissions. There was an uptick in electric vehicle use that seemed unproven in 2009. And while federal legislation didn’t go through, a lot of states passed bolder clean energy laws. When larger states like New York or California pass high standards, companies are especially incentivized to cater to their big markets.
On top of all that, there was a greater cultural shift towards people prioritizing sustainability. While little things like Meatless Mondays or reusable burlap totes seem really small, those signals add up and send a message to corporations and industries that these things are a priority for people.
This over-performance in spite of legislative support is something that Robinson Meyer has written about, labeling the phenomenon The Green Vortex. It’s a surprisingly encouraging report and one that I think holds a lot of relevance for where we are right now. Without top-level support from the United States, it’s still very much possible to keep moving the needle in the right direction. It has happened before.
In spite of the setbacks, coal and fossil fuels remain risky investments. Renewables and clean technologies continue to grow, even within the United States. The economic scales have already been tipped in favor of the future.
Lately I’ve been seeing a post from a highly regarded environmentalist and academic who has essentially said “It’s too late to stop climate change. Game over.” It’s tough because this is somebody who I respect a lot, but can’t get behind the sense of defeatism.
In some senses, he’s not totally wrong. There are aspects of climate change that are already in effect that are irreversible, at least practically speaking. But far too many people see climate action in a very black-and-white, pass-fail sort of way.
It’s not like that.
Yes, we have this target of keeping average annual temperature change under 1.5ºC. But if we fail at that, it’s not game over. It means we work to keep it under 1.6ºC. Or better yet, 1.51ºC, or 1.500001ºC… you get the logic.
Within each of those slivers, fractions, and decimals are places, people, and forms of life you love. Things worth saving.
It’s more like a house fire. If your stove catches fire and you fail to save the kitchen, you don’t just give up. You protect the dining area and the living room. And even if you lose that, you work to contain the damage as much as possible for the sake of things worth saving.
That’s why in spite of every setback, I think it’s necessary for me to remain a climate optimist. Not everybody can access optimism as easily as I can, and that’s fine. What matters more is that people spring into action, so if I can leverage just enough optimism to catalyze that, so be it.
After all, the thing that keeps me the most optimistic isn’t some hypothetical political pendulum swing. It’s not the numbers, or the Green Vortex. It’s the others. People like Esperanza in Mexico. Albert in Burundi. Mesfin in Ethiopia who excitedly tells me about his plans to replant an entire hillside.
I’m grateful that I get to work towards a healthy planet shoulder to shoulder with people like Mesfin. Or organizations like BEDS building eco-villages in the Sundarbans. Or my friend Jamie who has a knack for pitching sustainability towards business leaders.
For me, climate change often looks like numbers on paper, but for Mesfin it looks like food for his family. And yet, he hasn’t given up. If he hasn’t, I don’t think I have any right to.
I finally got around to doing my NYT Reader’s Ballot for the best films since 2000… I’d say my selection’s all over the place, but these are probably the stories that made the most lasting impressions on me for a wide variety of reasons.
I dropped out of film school 15 years ago and still have no desire to watch everything like a 🧐 proper critic.
Hot Rod – Because the list would feel dishonest without one of the films I’m most likely to spontaneously quote, 18 years after the fact.
Paddington – I know Paddington 2 is the Rotten Tomatoes darling, but I have a soft spot for the bathroom scene here.
Into The Wild – The emotional grip this film had on mid-2000s high schoolers! Hits even harder having later gone to sites like Salvation Mountain.
Everything Everywhere All At Once – A film that manages to pull meaning and sweetness out of chaos and absurdity, I think in retrospect we’ll be amazed at how this relates to the time it was made in.
Arrival – Perhaps the smartest film on the list.
Spirited Away – We needed at least one representative from the Ghibli delegation, and I think Spirited Away best captures its mix of sweetness, weirdness, and world-building.
Sinners – Convinced this isn’t recency bias. So, many, layers!
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – I’ve long cited this as my all-time fave, and have found no reason to think that’s not still true.
Big Hero 6 – Honorable mention to Up, Coco, & Inside Out, I could’ve easily made an entirely animated version of this list.
City of God – Brazilian epic. I really like stories told at a generational scale like this. If you’ve seen this and liked it, check out Jerusalema: Gangster’s Paradise from South Africa.
Attack the Block – Creative British bit, criminally underrated. Takes gang logic of Protecting the Block and applies it to an alien invasion.
Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara – One of my favorite travel movies, an Indian made road trip film set in Spain.
The Big Sick – No frills, and a ton of heart, and between the chronic illness and Asian-American pairing, found so much relatable.
Coherence – This is the film I point to when telling people about my fondness for puzzle films.
Boyhood – Again, a story told at generational scale hits my sweet spot.
The Worst Person in the World – An unlikely Norwegian film that makes me appreciate life
Before Sunset – Love the whole trilogy, and Linklater.
Hunt for the Wilder People – Taika at his best.
And the two that NYT wouldn’t even recognize…
Son Of Rambow – This is a very good and very cute British film that introduced the world to a very young Will Poulter. I used to use it as an ace-up-the-sleeve for date night. Ironically, Deanna didn’t care for it as much. I think she was expecting a literal Rambo sequel
Swan Song – You know how there are seemingly a ton of stellar shows on Apple TV that you never hear about because they don’t advertise? This is the movie equivalent.
TEN YEARS
Three kiddos, a pair of careers, a cheeky rescue dog, dozens of trips, Oregon to San Diego… and all the unpictured stuff like holding each other through health scares, long waits, and putting in the work.
What a decade!
2015 - The year it all began.
2016 - The year of a big health scare and bringing home Beignet.
2017 - The year we left Oregon for San Diego.
2018 - Iceland, England, Italy… The last time we managed an international trip with just us two… until now! Why’d it take so long? Because–
2019 - The year we became parents.
2020 - That one year. But hey, Deanna got her social work license!
2021 - The year we became parents to three. Hello twins!
2022 - The year of three under three and attempting a few trips with them.
2023 - The year of then bringing that crew to the Philippines.
2024 - The year of Rhys starting school, Portugal, Spain, and learning how ruthless flu season is with a house of three preschoolers.
2025 - Celebrating all that in New Zealand!
Pro-tip: If you ever find yourself anywhere near Mesa, Arizona, swing by Hope’s Frybread.
Great Dinè owned joint with a creative menu and bright art all over the place.
6/21 – Proper summer feels have arrived, capped off with a good boat ride the kiddos loved over the weekend.
7/6 - I love how much San Diego has proven itself to be a great soccer city. Finally went to an SDFC match with Kai last night.
We ultimately lost to Houston 3-4 during the 17(!!) added minutes, but since we left around the 70” mark, we kinda saw a customized Director’s Cut in which we won 3-2.
7/13 - My friend’s memorial orchard on her Alma Mater campus was relocated and rededicated this summer, so some of us were able to gather and remember her four years after losing her so suddenly and unexpectedly.
We grieve together, up front. But more often, the long haul is felt individually and in waves. So I appreciated the chance to remember her four years later as a team and family.
She would’ve loved these past four years. All the new teammates. New babies. Adventures in her 30s.
Love loudly.
7/18 – Movies in the Park with the kiddos are quickly becoming one of my favorite summertime rites.
SD Parks & Rec does a pretty good job of making a whole thing out of it, with shave ice trucks, inflatable playgrounds, etc.
7/21 – BREAKING: The Blue Oysters have sprouted.
7/28 – Quick little meet-and-greet with Melissa Villaseñor after her set the other week.
Gotta love a true feel-good stand-up act. And voices!
7/30 – I took a chance on signing up for a Dinner-With-Strangers platform. Figured it’d make for a good story, however it went down.
I do wonder if these things are gonna end up being singles mixers in disguise, but thankfully my group just ended up being a quirky bunch of people in search of make-ya-think questions to mull over. Also surprised to run into an old HS classmate, but he ended up being the other dad at the table.
Would try again in another part of town, or maybe another town. Or country.
8/8 – Looking forward to a bit of improv this weekend! Finest City tonight with my Quichemates, then freestylin’ tomorrow at The Brooks Theatre in Oceanside with Optimus Rhyme. Never played that venue before but I’ve heard good things. Hoping the new Clipse & Tyler albums keep my rhymes sharp.
8/11 – First time having five days a week of school for all three kids. New achievement unlocked.
I’m not the biggest County Fair-goer, but the kids and I were all off yesterday and it had been years… so here’s all the weird stuff we ate!
Boy That’s Nasty Award | Mac & Cheese Stuffed Turkey Leg
I don’t mean nasty in terms of taste… a single bite of this was actually quite good. But in terms of concept and the pile of calories that ends up staring back at you halfway? Eish. I bought this as a frugal Asian dad move so I could harvest its Mac & Cheese to feed three preschoolers, tbh.
Best in Show Award | Tres Leches Cinnamon Roll
The easiest way to screw up a cinnamon roll is to make it too dry and dense, and that problem is solved by the liquid delight of tres leches. People are calling this their fave of the whole fair and I might agree. Concept is a 10/10. Execution? It’s up there but I could have gone for a little more leches. Maybe even a fourth leche. Could that be rum? That might be real good.
It’s the Simple Things Award | Potato Chips
There’s something really underappreciated about a freshly made, homemade potato chip. A little softness in the middle of the chip is a feature, not a bug. Here’s a good fair snack option that goes for under ten bucks and won’t make you need a nap afterwards.
Weird Kid in School Award | Pickle Lemonade
Every year has an item that is an unabashed pick-me to go viral, and pickle lemonade is the 2025 edition. I just so happen to have a five year old whose favorite food is pickle and drink is lemonade. So when I poured him a taster? He told me it was disgusting! Instant DNF. But to my more mature palate? Not bad. It’s weird but it works more than it probably should. The first few sips were actually pretty refreshing.
Pretty excited for my upcoming New Zealand and pregaming by rewatching one of my favorite films from the last decade… Taika’s best IMHO.
Peekaboo. Somewhat recent Seattle adventure over here.
I lock ‘em in a tower, whenever they get caught
But they break loose and zagamoose and now you know the plot
One travel booking made in error, one last-minute dogsitter… even that time when FinnAir misdelivered our luggage in the winter and I had to splurge on a whole new snow-wardrobe for a four year old. No major mishaps, but just a bunch of things here and there that cost extra. I remember sharing with some friends, things are good, but man, it’s been a pretty expensive stretch of life.
If I thought this time a year ago was expensive, they’ve paled in comparison to things the past couple weeks. I’ve had some pretty serious home repairs I’ve had to take care of. Those repairs, more often than not, are the things that seem the most likely to turn into sudden pocket holes. They’re really expensive, and unlike spending on a new car you get to ride around in or on a vacation you get to enjoy, the big fancy treat is not having drops of water leak through your roof. Having a house is a privilege in the first place, but oof.
These things happen. Like untimely celebrity deaths, they often seem to happen in clusters. And they range in disruptiveness from ugh, fine, I’ll pay it to where the hell am I gonna get the money for that?!
Even though these aren’t especially fond memories, I’m actually glad I have them as memories. The reason why is that while these things were pretty bad financial gut-punches at the moment, looking back, they seem like pretty minor blips. Once the dust settles, I’ve walked away realizing that I still have enough to meet the needs ahead, and in life, money comes and goes like that. Much like how cuts and bruises heal, financial gaps tend to close one way or the other.
Things always feel a lot worse in the moment than they seem in retrospect, which is really important to remember the next time you’re in the moment.
We only lived in it for two years before having more kids and needing more bedrooms, but it was an experience. It was honestly a pretty good place, but not necessarily in the best part of town. We’d have people rifling through our dumpster almost nightly.
We had to deal with a roof leak, and although insurance took care of it, it meant there was a chunk of time when we all had to move into the nursery.
We had mice in the walls, which we could only do so much about since the unit was attached to others. This is how we learned our dog’s animal instincts were practically nonexistent after years of suburban living.
We were there for the pandemic lockdowns.
So even though we were only there for two years, we picked some memorable years.
The exterior of the place was managed by an HOA… a pretty awful one that I could never get ahold of to get me the right documents when making that roof repair. Within a few months of us moving in, they determined that the roof seal on the upper units had worn down and that they needed to replace it. Since our reserves were drained, they had to pass an assessment for a rather large figure. I love that you think I have all that just sitting around waiting for you, I thought. Since we just bought the place, it felt like I had just made the financial stretch to get in there.
It was a rough blow at the moment, but these days, I don’t think about it very often. Wouldn’t be thinking about it if I weren’t writing about the exact topic. You bounce back from that sort of thing.
There’s the actual math of what’s going in and what’s going out. In theory, this should be simple. Have the former number be larger than the latter, make sure it can keep that pace for the future, and things should be okay.
The other half of the equation is one that’s a lot more complicated, and therefore more interesting… at least to me. It’s people’s relationship with money.
This is one of those things that comes up a lot in couples counseling, and for good reason. Two people who might have very similar backgrounds, interests, education levels, lifestyles, and values can still have wildly different relationships with money. One person may have been raised with a sense of scarcity and a tendency to hoard. The other might have found it normal to spend-it-if-you’ve-got-it.
Seeing someone with a vastly different relationship with money than my own strikes up so much curiosity. I know somebody who psychologically struggles to not spend all their income as it comes. How? I have no idea, that would cause me so much anxiety. To them, though, it’s almost as if it relieves anxiety. I’m glad I have running, instead. But I know these things are deep rooted, and are baked into us as muscle memory.
One thing I’m working really hard to avoid in my relationship with money is a scarcity mentality. I’m extra motivated to avoid this mindset as my relationship with money kind of sets the groundwork for my kids’. I typically save and manage carefully, and I’m on the frugal side. I like that about myself. I just never want it to get to the point of excess where I start living out of a sense of scarcity.
So how does one walk that line of having an abundance mindset while still exercising careful stewardship?
I have one practice I suggest.
If you get hit with a sudden medical expense in the thousands, perhaps there’s someone out there for whom $50 of support would go a really long way? It doesn’t have to be a 1:1 ratio. It doesn’t even need to be financial support, necessary, if that’s totally not possible. But I do think being generous in a way that runs parallel to the unpleasant surprise you were dealt is pretty key to this practice.
The idea is that if your instinct to a financial gut punch is to immediately start looking for someone else you can help, you’re really helping to protect yourself from a scarcity mindset around money.
You’re also doing something else really cool. You’re shifting your own focus off of yourself and onto somebody else. You’re creating a worthwhile safeguard against ego, which tends to be fed by a sense of scarcity or threat.
If instead you’re asking, hmm, who can I help? You’re back in a position of agency, and back in a position to remember how much you really have been given and where that sits in relation to much of the world.
Doing a lot of work internationally has also provided a lot of helpful perspective. What might seem like very modest support coming from me can be a real game-changer for somebody else. And that’s true in a lot of areas domestically, as well. Whenever I look at stats around median income by state, and so on, it’s my reminder that a lot of people really are mid-struggle. In spite of whatever setbacks come my way, I’m still in an advantaged situation in a rather unequal world.
There’s nothing within it to support the first half of the financial equation: making sure you’ve got more coming in than going out. But it can work wonders with the second, elusive, psychological part.
I’ve usually been on the more frugal side, at least in a strategic way where I’ve realized being cheap in areas of life I don’t care about so much allows me to splurge.
When I was younger, this went to such extremes as couch surfing my way through a semester of school or living in my car… since skipping a few months of housing would save me thousands. That money could go much further when spent on enriching travel experiences abroad.
These days, those instincts might look more like realizing that the differences between a $20,000 car and a $60,000 car are rarely worth $40,000 to me, especially as long as the cheaper option goes between point A and B just as reliably. Cars never were a big priority to me. Traveling with my kids? I’ll be much more likely to splurge in that area.
Frugality for the sake of frugality, efficiency for the sake of efficiency, is not a virtue. It only makes sense if its in service of allowing you to pour more of your resources into something that matters. And that’s why I think it’ll always be a matter of importance to avoid seeing things through the lens of scarcity.
One of the best ways to go beyond that is to tap back in to the fun of being able to help someone else who needs it.
