Stay Soft, Stay Open

In this episode, I read the newsletter I published on December 31, 2024 called, "We survived the year." You can read it on Substack: https://jieunandgreg.substack.com/p/we-survived-the-year.

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This episode is about how magical thinking and creativity can create a bedroom. We moved our bedroom to the kitchen, and now we have a nursery-storage-room-closet-office! The options are endless!

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This episode is about my second Asian American Art Club gathering and the indescribable magic that I'm discovering that comes from artists coming together and sharing their ideas, experiences, and art with each other. We talked about the balance of routine and spontaneity in life, the impact of scale on our perspective on life, and the importance of believing in ourselves as artists. A woman (documentary filmmaker) who was listening into our conversation thought David and I were rehearsing for a live interview. She really enjoyed listening in on our conversation. That felt really validating.

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This episode is about a hard f*****g day, internalizing the garbage that was thrown at me, fighting to climb my way out of a 500-foot canyon with the help of my solid, fierce community, and how immensely proud I am of myself, for all that I am and all that I've done.

Listen to this episode on a future garbage day, Jieun. I believe you. I'm sorry. You didn't deserve this. You will survive this.

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This episode is about my 12-year anniversary with Greg and the honest difficulty of this year's anniversary, the grief of our relationship ending in the way that we've known it now that we have a child, and the gratitude I have for Greg and our 12 years together.

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This episode is about how hard it is to hold onto our dreams because we will face adversity and experience failures on our journey towards our dreams. In the pursuit of our dreams, there are no guarantees — I can try and succeed, or I can try and fail. But if I don't try, I am guaranteed to fail, with no chance of success. Our dreams are worth pursuing, even if they don't come true in the way we wanted or expected.

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This episode is about believing that I deserve to get paid for the work that I do, and the three communities I'm going to grow this year — Asian American Families of Brooklyn, Gajok, and Asian American Art Club.

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This episode is about the beautiful experience of my first Asian American Art Club gathering with our first club member — my friend, David Pham — and how astrophysics led him to finding his family in Sweden. Our dreams are worth pursuing. ♡

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This episode is about the difficulties of traveling with a baby, and the challenges of coming back to New York after being in Virginia for two weeks.

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Happy Gregorian New Year! This episode is about my 2025 bucket list, the importance of holding onto our dreams, and speaking our heart's greatest hopes into existence.

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