Dare Greatly

While walking aimlessly around Hong Kong with a dear friend one night, I spoke passionately of taking deliberate risks, especially in early career decisions.

Then he looked at me earnestly and said, "You can say all that about taking risks, but you've never really failed, have you?"

I paused.

I have been asked that quite a few times recently. Sometimes by siblings who feel the pressure of the supposed precedent. Many times by friends who are in a frustrating job-seeking low. Other times, it is implied by colleagues who speak with a mix of awed respect.

I am never sure how to respond. I know what they see. They see Sisi Messick. The girl who delivers time after time.

My reality is very different from theirs. In my mind, there are many days when I have failed. Then there are some worse days when I feel like I am a failure.

While potential investors praised me, my boss promoted me, my friends loved me, few of them understood how in the past two months, once my family took off to vacation in America like impatient migratory birds, I started having a hard time breathing. I would have a fantastically productive day when all of a sudden I would be seized by a cloud of debilitating uncertainty, weighing on my chest like a Gestapo boot coming down against the iron-grey concrete. My heart would beat faster, faster, faster!, until I felt that I physically needed to hold it down with my hands. But my hands were occupied, covering my face, encasing me, protecting me, trapping me, and there I would sit like that, torn between shielding my face or saving my heart. At first it happened only after 6 pm, when the office emptied out. Then it started happening between meetings. Finally, I had to run to the bathroom so people wouldn't notice that their boss was cradling her shreds of self-confidence so precariously.

Regardless of how things really turn out that day, to me, sometimes, failure is such an intensely physical  and tiring reality.

As a perfectionist, I feel the magnitude of each mistake, each weakness. So when people think that I don't know how failure tastes like, I pause and fumble clumsily for a polite response because the real answer is much too raw.

I won't go into it because this post isn't about failure. It's not even about perfectionism (that's for a different time) or being gung ho confident in your natural self-worth.

It's about how despite feeling so weak, I still dare. More importantly, I still dare to do great things.

I get up on stage and speak passionately about our solutions for blue collar workers, in Mandarin, shortly after I threw up in the bathroom. I own up to being wrong in front of my whole team to show them what it means when everybody is truly equal. I keep smiling when the potential client just yelled at me in front of her boss and our investors because we really need that sell as a startup. I lay bare how I feel about him even though that leaves me exposed and uncomfortable. I still dial that number, trembling, and leave cheerful invitations on her voicemail despite being hung up on more than five times. I choose to believe that love can be so fulfilling, regardless of how many marriages I've seen disintegrate into flames.

No matter how vulnerable I feel, how much I want to stay in bed, I consistently show up. It is a constant choice, day after day, but I show up and when it comes to it, I stand up too. In the grand tally, it's not about how I did, it's about the fact that I simply did.

And that's how I really want to explain it to people when they ask me why great things just seem to happen to me.

Ignorance is Bliss

. . . when you're riding a bike with a billowing skirt and all the men walking towards you can't take their eyes off you because a gust of wind just swept through.

The best part of the scene isn't that I might be flashing lots of unsuspecting strangers before breakfast (pretty much every other day given my skirt habits and the weather).

The point is that I can now ride a bike with one hand on the bar and the other holding down my skirt, while dodging fast cars/ bikes because I'm riding against traffic.

 I can now ride a bike. Boom, baby.

When I was 4, I was a high flyer on that tricycle. Then the third wheel came off and I started losing playground races.

When I was 14, I gritted my teeth and rode a bike to conform to the Messick stereotype of athletic, outdoorsy kids and crashed into a horse. A stationary horse hooked to a carriage. My face tasted horse sweat and my shins concrete. I narrowly missed the warm pile of grass green manure.

When I was 21, I promised a boyfriend a romantic day biking around Santa Monica to make up for past whatevers. He yelled at me because I nearly got run over by buses and nearly ran over old ladies. I thought I was already doing pretty good. That was the last time I saw him.

When I was 22, I mentioned casually to a friend that I would be running home to grab something. He tossed me his public bike rental card. Sheer embarrassment forced me to the bike rack. It took me 35 min to bike home when normally it took me 15 min to walk.

But hey. 35 min turned into 25 and then 20. I'm still stuck at 15 min though. Perhaps I just bike slow. Or I just walk really fast.

Coke Folks

Several summers, and several cities, ago, I was sitting at a rowdy farewell lunch with some colleagues, who were toasting everything from the least expected work hook ups to the completion of the most mundane projects. Beer, tears, conversation were flowing. As somebody reached to pour some coke into my empty glass, another hand reached over to stop him. "No, Sisi is Mormon. No coke for her."

I didn't bother explaining the complicated situation of how coke was actually not officially outlawed, but instead it straddled a hazy line in the church between being explicitly forbidden and unambiguously accepted.

And I admit. I was looking forward to the icy cold coke alternative instead of the usual boiling hot water they served you in China. But rather than confuse them on the Mormon image, I just smiled, wiped the sweat off my forehead, and asked for the water instead.

I grew up in a household where drinking coke was a minor sin. It was somewhere up there with doing homework on Sundays, wearing skirts that were too high above your knees, and dating non-church boys in high school. Ginger Ale was on the black list too, since my mom concluded that it must contain alcohol somehow.

So as a teenager, I satisfied myself with coke-flavored gummies and flirtatious looks in the school hall ways.

It was a college boyfriend who first introduced me to the sensational experience of combining barbecue chicken pizza and a coke. While I limited my coke intake to the occasional California Pizza Kitchen, it felt deliciously rebellious, and yet satisfyingly safe in this good Mormon girl's fight against the imagined system kind of way.

At the recent family reunion, when my mom casually asked me what I was drinking, J cheerfully replied "Cherry Cola Slurpee." I squeezed his hand so hard. He thought I was being romantic. Jody's eyes and mouth widened, "Sisi, you drink coke now?!"

Silence. I slurped some more.

----

So today, when I saw that most of the Mormons on facebook were buzzing with the news that the Church had finally made a statement saying that it "[did] not prohibit the use of caffeine," I felt an irrational sense of disappointment. Bummed that the statement did not also pardon my favorite Tiramisu dessert as well (one I'd long given up long ago out of overwhelming guilt). And also a little miffed that my status as the only kid in the Messick household who dared to secretly sip coke once every quarter in a quiet personal rebellion had now been rendered . . . boringly mainstream.

Being a Lesbian and a Mormon

It's hard, but it's possible.

-----
I lived in the same hall as Bridey in my freshman year. Her room was several doors down from mine. She hung back most of the time. One night, in celebration of our Christmas countdown and several girls' first kisses, my roommates and I pounded on every door in that hall, pulled out mattresses into the hallway, pulled on our jammies, cranked up the music, and just danced. We dragged Bridey out too. She just watched. Later, exhausted but excited with the 3 a.m. glow, all of us sat cross-legged on the mattresses, and talked. I tossed my head and laughed at some story my roommate told me, and happened to see Bridey out of the corner of my eye. She sat, silent, but her eyes lit up. I think that was the first time I saw her happy and content.

I didn't realize, until last night when I stumbled upon an article about a gay students panel at BYU, what Bridey was struggling with at the time.

I won't comment on what I feel about lesbianism and Mormonism because it's not my place to casually blog about an issue that is very personal to each individual. But I hope that you will take a moment to allow Bridey to share her thoughts. She has showed how she is trying her best to reconcile her faith and her personal challenges because she believes in a God that loves each and every one of His daughters equally.

Bridey has been silent, but she is silent no more.




* China's censorship firewall has been stricter the last couple of days, so if you can't see the video on top, then click here for Bridey's point of view.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Many Christmases ago, Casey grabbed his hard-earned car washing/ soccer coaching money and went to Kennedy Town. Alone. Even though us older girls were constantly having these unintelligible conversations with dramatic "Guess what happened?" "Oh my goodness," and "Uh huh," which left him completely confused, he decided that he wanted to surprise his older sisters with something extra special under the tree.

That year, like most years, we woke up early and dashed to the tree to divvy up the presents. Chelsea and I both opened Casey's present at the same time. He stopped his unwrapping and just watched us with the biggest grin on his face.

Wow. It was a fur ball masquerading as a lady's purse. It looked alive. And it seemed like something that a storekeeper could convince a little boy to hand over quite a bit of money for.

We did our sisterly duty and got ourselves super excited. We posed with the creatures slung across our chests. We gushed about them to Casey and messed up his hair affectionately.

Then we ran to our rooms and laughed about it. Casey was the cutest. But these little purses needed to be hid. Fast. So we buried them underneath our old stockings and pajama dresses and forgot all about them.

Another year went by. Christmas rolled around again.

Chelsea and I found ourselves opening another big surprise from Casey.

This time, it was a fur ball hat.

You know, to go with our favorite purses.

-----

It's officially Christmas over here! I just got done wrapping the presents for the kids. They're all in bed already. I'm also temping as Santa this year. Let's just say that I'm delivering the goodies and the coal. Got to teach kids about taking consequences right?

The Easiest Question

Last night, I was interviewed by AMCHAM Shanghai (American Chamber of Commerce) via skype.

Luckily, they couldn't see how much my legs were shaking because the camera only locked in on my upper body. My apartment was just so darn cold.

Just when I thought that I survived the bulk of the interview, they warned me that they were going to enter into the "hard-hitting" part of the interview.

So with a brave smile and clenched fists (which thankfully they also couldn't see), I fielded questions on raw materials export restrictions in China, told them about the three main issues that riddle U.S.- Chinese business relationship (and I'm not allowed to mention Google!), and planned a hypothetical working group on wind energy development in China.

Surprisingly, I sailed through that part (sort of). And they looked impressed that I could even come up with a coherent answer. Apparently previous interviewees couldn't even tell them what newspapers they read daily.

Then with a smile, the lady asked me,

"What are your hobbies?"

I froze. Then slowly,

"Baking and reading?"

I might as well have told them that I am a cat lady and am scared to go outside in case I have to interact with people.

And yes. I posed it as an apologetic question. And I've been asking myself that same thing all night long.

I am forced to wonder: Am I a boring person? I'm passionate about my work and I love burying myself in the library researching. But twenty years later, when I want to take a break from my job, what will I have left that I love to do?

This is when I realized this: I love writing snippets that make people laugh. I obsess about traveling. I browse recipes in my spare time. And I collect personal items from different corners of the world.

But apart from that, what makes me me? What do I have that classifies as a bona fide "hobby" that is socially acceptable as "fun" and "interesting"?

I don't know. And honestly, that scares me.

Alter Ego

Meet Jessica.

She's my alter ego.

There is this random boy who knows me by that name.

He is convinced that he's been to my house.

Apparently I made him laugh at a party once by telling a Titanic joke.

I don't know any Titanic jokes. 

I swear that I've never met him.

But now I bump into him at least once a week.

And more than once, I've answered to the name Jessica. Accidentally at first. Later, purposefully.

We're sort of friends now.

He even knows what kind of bagels I like to eat.

I guess names aren't important anyways.

Confession

It's been a tough couple of days.

Every time I wanted to blog about how I was feeling, I hesitated. And faltered. Somehow, my sunshine-yellow blog background didn't make space for anything not optimistically bright. I saw no resolution, and was not particularly seeking one, but that meticulous green bow on the top corner pressured me to provide a neat solution. I was stuck in a funk, but couldn't write about it because I had boxed myself in with a funny/ cheerful/ travel-crazy / mildly sarcastic blog personality that didn't allow for those days when I just want to be dead serious/ dramatically sad/ unreasonably whiny/ stressed out of my mind.

So here it is: it's been a little rough.

And I have no idea why I'm feeling this way either.

Perhaps it's my darn thesis. Maybe it's the anxiety of not knowing exactly what I'm going to do in the year between graduation and law school. Or probably it's just the never-ending to-do lists, the things I inadvertently forget to put on my list, the jobs I feel pressured to accept, the piles of work, the conversations I need to be having but never seem to have time for.

Who knows?

But two quotes from this week really helped me.

From Sister Beck at Regional Conference: "It's not about perfection. Instead, it's about precision and prioritization."

From my Organizational behavior textbook: "People with negative attitudes concentrate on all the things that they can do better. People with positive attitudes know that the best solution is the one that is good enough."

I guess it's time for me to conquer my perfectionist demons again. And along with that, my thesis.

Bring it on.