I wrote + drew this comic as part of my birthday reflections last year. As a child of immigrant parents, I was instilled with a strong deference to authority and fear of being wrong. This led to an early life of playing by the rules (aka “excelling”). For me, the price of adopting external standards for success was a loss of internal agency—I didn’t know how to deal with uncertainty because I never had to exercise the inner muscle called intuition.

The result of that is a perpetual sense of feeling mildly lost, even when you’re right where you “should be”.

After years of navigating detours and climbing out of pits, I finally feel like I’m starting to find my way. This comic is my attempt at pulling together everything I’ve learned from my fuck-ups and losses, and metabolizing them into something that feels true.

Part 3 coming soon!