In my second post about my life and goals in 2026, I want to talk about going outside the box. I have a tendency to keep to a strict routine, in part because I have a bunch of allergies and health issues that makes it difficult for me to be around other people. I want to slowly expand my life, and I have a few ideas what I want to do. Here is the post from yesterday in which I talked about a few things I wanted to do in the new year.
I want to expand a bit more on Taiji and Bagua. I have gotten lazy with my practice, and I want to tighten up my forms. I also want to not scan my phone as I’m practicing. I have started the bad habit of scrolling on my phone whilst practicing, and that’s not something I want to keep doing. Not only is it bad for my concentration and form, I lose track of time and my regime takes much longer than it should.
I want to teach myself the left side of the Swimming Dragon Form. I’ve started doing it already. Initially, it was so I could do mud stepping on the left side, but now, I want to teach myself the form in the standard way. I don’t really consider that teaching myself a new form, though. I also want to make sure the 3rd part part of the 3rd section of the Solo (Long) Form (Taiji) is solid. My teacher’s teacher has changed quite a few things in the Solo Form, and I tend to neglect it for other more exciting things.
I also want to teach myself the Swimming Dragon Form with DeerHorn Knives, but that’s a bit more complicated than just adding DeerHorn Knives to the form.
I was talking to K, and she mentioned something called The Moth. It’s like slam poetry, except it’s short stories. She told me about it because she loved the stories I told her about the delusions I had in the hospital. At first, she said I should write a book of short stories about my delusions, and then she mentioned The Moth. Coincidentally, they were here in MN last night (when I talked to K). I took that to mean that I should look further into them. To that end, let’s continue my list.
4. Writing about my medical crisis. This is what I was talking about above. Yes, I will be including it in my novemoir (I AM going to make that a thing), but I also want to write something specifically about my medical crisis. It might be a bunch of short stories. It might be a screenplay. It might be a performance piece. I used to write and perform performance pieces when I was in my twenties and early thirties, which was draining, but very fun.
I should just write out the delusions in a humorous way and then see what I want to do after that. K mentioned that I was very funny in how I told them, and that’s true. It wasn’t funny at the time, obivously, but it’s funny in retrospect.
I will say it’s sobering to think about how everything I thought that happened in the hospital didn’t really happen. It was one, week-long hallucination that had me riding high as I left the hospital. I thought I was perfectly rational when I was bombed out of my mind. I can see why people like drugs because it was fucking amazing. I didn’t hurt at all, and I would have thought I could fly if I had the energy to do so.
I have wanted to write about it ever since I left the hospital, but I just can’t make it come out in an exciting and coherent way. I said to K that one of the biggest problems is that no one can relate to what I’m saying. The few times I have mentioned it, the response has been mild bemusement. It’s so unrelatable, I barely ever mention it. K did say that the way I tell the stories makes them engaging, which is probably the best I can do.
I want to have at least one sizeable finished creative project in 2026 that highlights my medical ordeal.
5. Getting out of the house. I don’t leave the house much because of my health issues. I still don’t feel comfortable being in a crowd without a mask (inside). I’m mostly fine with being by myself. To that end, that means I don’t leave the house for anything significant. Even before the pandemic, I didn’t go out much. It’s so much less now, though, and I would like to get out of the house for something other than groceries and the pharmacy once a month.
Related to that:
6. Finding a group (my people). I have a need to find a group of people with whom I feel a bond. In other words, I want to find a group of queer genderfluid/agender Asian people. Online, I mean. It’s a pipedream to find one locally. I really need that group to include agender/genderqueer people, though. Even nonbinary people tend to emphasize gender (which makes sense) in a way that is uncomfortable to me. For example. A video I watched with four nonbinary Asian people was very refreshing and inspiring–until the very end. One of them said that a good way to make nonbinary people to feel comfortable is to state your gender upfront when you introduce yourself. “Everyone has a gender!” They stated confidently and a bit angrily.
BIG sigh.
With that, I just shut down. The video had been so good until then, and with that one careless thought, it was all for naught.
I should not be surprised by the fact that people are flawed and limited in their viewpoint. Of course everyone is more focused on themselves than other people and just assume that what is important to them is important to everyone else. And, let’s not forget that people just can’t know what they don’t/can’t see.
It’s one of my flaws that I believe if someone is a minority in one way, they should be more sensitive to other minorities. Or, at least realize that maybe other minorities exist. I especially believe it when it comes to clusters of minorities. What I mean is, if someone is already a gender minority (nonbinary), they should be cognizant of other gender minorities, including agender. I know that’s me expecting too much.
Back when I was in college, I was very much a moody self-proclaimed cynic/pessimist. I had a friend who irritatingly insisted that I was an optimist. I was appalled and affronted. How dare he call me an optimist? He said, “You expect people to do the right thing, and then you’re upset when they don’t. That’s an optimist.” I opened my mouth to argue with him, and then I shut it again. He was right, damn it.
I do expect people to get it or to understand things that I understand. And that’s on me, I guess. But I still think people who are of a minority should understand that there are other minorities, too. I really don’t think that’s too much to ask.