I grew up with sun-brewed tea during the summer. The sunlight had a special glow. I love the way the sun hit those days.  

When I was in middle school and high school, I was a theater kid. At sixteen, I got to go to New York City and even saw Hairspray on Broadway. I was in musicals and played Elizabeth from The Crucible as a teenager. It’s how I made friends. I’ll be back to New York soon.  

I thought math was interesting and could’ve sworn my brain was rewired by spending so much time with my aunt who would teach me everything I knew when I was small. So, in twelfth grade, I took AP Calculus. My plan was to major in engineering but I eventually decided to major in English Education.

It wasn’t truly until graduate school that I really felt at home. The community I had grown up in was known for being super industrial, near major freeways, and home to large refineries. I moved into my own place in a quasi-rural coastal community with panoramic ocean views and really started to flourish. I was attending California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) again and surrounded by students who had gone to all sorts of schools. Classes were often held in a conference room with twenty or less students. I learned how to read a dead language and discussed obscure subjects.  

As a teenager, I loved magazines like Teen Vogue, Allure, and Lucky. Back then, I learned how to think about money that way. It’s what I did over the summer. And read. This was back when you could score an entire wardrobe of $5 items at Urban Outfitters and tangible magazine subscriptions were a thing. I would also read the Shopaholic series over the summer.

These days, my hobbies are singing, journaling, and meditating. I’ve worked in civil service for over a decade and currently work as an Analyst.