WHAT'S YOUR MAJOR?

Get the reference? No one? Sigh.

But hello again! It is that time of the blog where we reflect, plan, and share.

This set of achievements felt a little bit different to me. I feel like I'm breaking out of this box I've been putting myself is and just putting the ideas that desperately want to be expressed out into the world. Lots of self-healing through these things. I think this blog will see a shift accordingly. I'm going to write about what I actually want to write about... instead of forcing in elements because I should be writing about them, by some nonexistent standard.

• Got 10 subscribers to this blog :)
• Strangely, began to ponder what it actually means to live and die. On a biophysical level. Volunteering at a hospital makes me feel like pain is eternal but that healing is also eternal. Shoutout to my poor journal for hosting all these reflections...
• Met the Consul General of Cyprus and a former WTO officer in a series of international affairs networking events! This, in conjunction with my international affairs intro course, have really changed the way I see diplomacy and navigating global affairs in our transitional age. Thank you Network 20/20 for sponsoring my membership this season!

• Drew my first self portrait in years. My art is largely private now, but it was an interesting benchmark for how my personal sense of expression has changed over time.
• Had my first steak that was not well-done. Game changer.
• Joyously went with the speech team I coach to Princeton invitational! If any of you are reading this: hi, I am proud of you, but also, how did you find my blog?
• Sang at my first a cappella concert ever. I can't say it was my best performance, but it was a lot of fun, and I will never stop being moved by the way music-making brings people together :')
• Started running again. Actually, this break, I finally started running outdoors... whole different beast! Though I took a break from working out for finals week, I don't think I'll ever be comfortable being so sedentary again. Hopefully.
• BOOKS. BOOKS! Oh, to read over winter break! I finally got to finish Henry Kissinger's "World Order" and the classic financial literacy book "Rich Dad Poor Dad." Yet I've also been diving into comedy, self-improvement, and the classics/foundational-contemporaries because I realized I read too many global affairs books! Special note on the classics: oh my, I can't tell if I'm just becoming pretentious, but they truly change the way you view literature and expression. You could call it a foundation, but I think of them as the tales that stuck, the chosen ones that transcended generations to delivery universally applicable messages. Current favorite: "To the Lighthouse" (yes, I went in for a re-read, that book is too good to leave in high school).

Okay, okay, I won't beat around the bush anymore. There are two new projects consuming my time and excitement!

• My chemistry-based sticker business! We're soft launching in NYC. Finally. I've wanted to turn my doodles into stickers for years now and kept coming up with practical reasons why I couldn't. But now, it's actually unfurling, with a great business partner/chem aficionado, and people who are actually buying my designs? This is fantastic.
• A mentoring program. For South Asian youth. I spent the entirety of my teenage-hood trying to find a South Asian community that understood my goals. I often felt like I knew I had great ideas and spirit, but no guidance to help bring that vision to life. That's why I've spent a couple of months devising this program. I want it to be the platform I wish I had growing up in very non-South Asian spaces, where the only role models I saw were in healthcare (which is also AWESOME, I just mean that there is more to South Asian-American success than the doctor-engineering-maybelawyer route). And, I'm happy to say I was raised to feel connected to my culture, but was definitely missing some things that should have been in my history books. There's more to us than the old spice trade, partition, and Gandhi. So much socio-cultural context that got lost. I would want a younger person to realize this way earlier than I did.

Surprisingly, it hasn't felt like a lot at once. Probably because I'm so eager to do it. Probably because it's been waiting and waiting to happen and I finally just said, "I don't care if it's not 'practical,' I want to try."

Before anything else: why make a business as a freshman in college?

I stopped making art for a while in high school because, well, time? Those who have followed me from the start may know that I used to have an art account, usually for K-Pop fan art, before converting it to my private personal with 0 posts.

But I still doodled the weird ideas that came to mind. Case in point: Carbon Chad!

My AP Biology teacher was going on about the cruciality of carbon to life. Four valence spots! The skeleto of biomolecules! The very beginning of CHNOPS, or the 6 fundamental elements of life! I envisioned him as a strong, buff, noble young lad, and proceeded to draw just that: the carbon atom... with some SERIOUS abs. And thus my doodles began, with an audience of my very confuzzled classmates.

As I've gone through my STEM studies, I've always imagined these minuscule molecules as characters. Single bonds are situationships, triple bonds are basically marriage. Sulfur is an architect; it likes bridges. And hydrogen is SO hyperactive... just look at her RMS speed at room temperature! Biology and chemistry continuously remained interesting to me so long as I built their stories in my head. And kept my TI-84 charged.

Why start selling them now?

Money.

Kidding. I honestly wasn't predominantly thinking about profit until our first batch of sales came in for our NYC soft launch... man, dollar signs change you.

Well, if you've been reading my blog, you'll know that last summer was a period of profound change for me. I started thinking of all the ideas I'd put off for later because I wanted to find joy in the now and in investing lots of effort into things I actually wanted to. One of those things was sharing my doodles and newfound iPad abilities with the world!

I was also lucky enough to find a cohort of people who genuinely love indulging each others ideas, whether the script for a Christmas special (oh boy) or our little wins. I felt comfortable to take certain risks, including selling. Because art is so personal! The idea of people not wanting it is really gutting if you're not ready!

And finally... call it luck, but I happened to reconnect with a friend who was just as big (or... actually, even bigger) chemistry nerd than I was. Hi Mahir! Thanks for figuring out the Etsy! Knowing he loved my designs and wanted to add more scientific accuracy into them, I saw an opportunity to create this thing for other enthusiasts.

And thus, after MONTHS of brainstorming, Elemental Emblems was born.

How's it going?

Oh! Uh, we got suspended on Etsy the day we made the shop. Don't know why. Figuring that out...

HOWEVER.

We just launched in NYC and are in the process of fulfilling those orders for friends :) we are so thankful to everyone who's investing in my beloved designs!

I've also learned that hand-making stickers every week is a lot of work. But it's good work. Meditative work that makes me happy because I know it's going to be loved by someone.

Some other things I've encountered...

• Cutting circles is hard. An automated sticker cutting machine is hundreds of dollars with the appropriate supplies, though? Expensive. I now understand the concept of needing the profits to justify fancier investments in your business! For now, just me at a desk with scissors and a nice printer is enough.
• I've been a social media intern in different contexts yet I now understand how much value they have as a business owner. I would LOVE to flood my own feed with content, sharing the process of designing and the late nights I spent brainstorming new ideas. This is how people discover your business! This is how small business creators I've loved reached me from across the world! But I've got things to do and tests to study for... so Manaal the beloved social media volunteer will help with that part.
• It is really, really rewarding to package something with so much love. I know it's extra ink to make thank you stickers but I just have to.
• Communication? ALSO hard. This was a bit surprising to me because my whole life I've hailed myself as a very clear and direct communicator. But, in the context of starting a project from nothing, I had to really rework the ways I motivate and compartmentalize the million moving parts as I bring them up to my team.
• The Etsy delay may have been a blessing in disguise! Delivering to a small number of people made me realize the tiny things I hadn't considered, like what kind of thank you notes to put in, or how to organize them all, or even how I would end up shipping them someday!
• My ideas are worth something. I think that's something that's really sticking to me.

For now, we're preparing to launch our official online shop. And I'm quite excited to apply everything I've learned!

Whereas my fist set of habit implementations in the summer was largely for my own self-improvement, I spent my monthlong break reexamining what I needed.

And then I saw the state of my sticker-ridden desk. AH! ORGANIZATION!

Some things I've started to do and hope to stay consistent about...

• Deleting files I don't need. I was a little surprised to learn that "digital clutter" is a thing, but I seriously feel so much more productive online after getting rid of everything unnecessary. I've been keeping my inbox at 0 for years, but when I followed by deleting now-useless screenshots, unpinning built-in desktop apps I never use, and going through my gallery every week to delete pictures I'd never need again, the game truly changed!
• 5 items away before I sit down. Whether I got up for a break or am just getting home, I don't let myself sit until I've tidied up five things around me. I found that I used to organize in big weekend bursts, but the second a few things got disheveled, I sort of let them continue spiraling. No more! A little every time! Even if it's something as small as a pen, it feels like getting a strand of hair out of my face.
• Organizing functionally, not aesthetically. Another reason my bursts of cleaning didn't work was because I would be putting things I used every day, like my sunscreen or bedside journal, in places that weren't immediately in reach. If I wanted these things, I'd have to go through all the other items I'd organized needlessly and too often. So I keep the everyday-use items on the counters where I need them (e.g., winter scarf right by the door), even if it doesn't fit in with the rest of the "system." Is it the prettiest option? No. Does it make me more efficient and neat? YES.
• Organizing my thoughts, too. That was sort of the reason for making this blog, haha. But I've made it a point to make bullet point of my thoughts every day in a PHYSICAL journal. There's something about ink on paper that makes you really consider what's being written. It also helped me identify what I would overthink at night (e.g., I realized via writing my thoughts down that I mostly stressed about packing orders at night, so I shifted my schedule to do them in the morning instead). Also, COMPARTMENTALIZING. If I've set the afternoon as chemistry time, then I have no business fretting about chemistry and getting in the way of another responsibility I should be working on. Procrastination by doing other tasks... too real.
• Checking in on my personality. This isn't as organizational as it is a reflection thing. I always end up with some philosophical questions in my journal, but I like to occasionally check in on the basics. What's my favorite color? What do I believe? Who is my role model right now? I think that we change as people quite continuously, especially when we're trying new things, and I want to keep track of myself because if who I am changes, then what I need to keep myself efficient, happy, and curious changes as well.

Hoping to stay consistent about these as the new semester starts. The most important part of habit-building is to not miss it just because you're tired or busy - those are the times you should hang onto them most! And boy, will Ibe busy... lots of exciting changes to write about in the next update once I've settled into them.

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