Karen Cheng

Therapy is for losers. For rich kids whose parents send them to therapy for their rich people problems. For the weak who don’t have the emotional or mental strength to deal with life on their own. I’m way too strong to ever see a therapist.

… which is what I thought, until I decided to see one. Three years ago I graduated college, moved to a beautiful city (Seattle), and had landed my dream job (at Excel). I knew a lot of people my age and partied every weekend.

It seemed like I had all the pieces of the puzzle to be happy – but I wasn’t. This went on for about a year, and I wasn’t getting any happier. So I decided to swallow what seemed like a huge amount of pride and book an appointment with a therapist…

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The best way to get a job is to know someone who works there, or know someone who knows someone. That’s how I got the job at Exec – A mutual friend made the intro to the Exec team. But what if you don’t know someone?

I spent the last few months job hunting, sending out resumes and emails. For most of the companies I applied to, I had no connections. But I did discover a pretty reliable way of getting a job (or at least an interview) with zero connections.

Actually, I did what the women on The Bachelor do…

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Here’s my resignation “letter”:

This is Penn and Teller, performing a trick*. First they perform it, then they show you how it’s done. Watch the video again, and it doesn’t feel magical anymore. Yet this is how Penn and Teller must feel about all their tricks. It’s not just the second time they’ve seen it – it’s the thousandth time they’ve practiced it. For a magician to create magic for someone else, he must destroy it for himself. This is the artist’s paradox.

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I love Apple products. But it comes with a cost. This is a poster design for The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a monologue by Mike Daisey. Listen to a chilling excerpt from the monologue on This American Life. To be fair, it’s not just Apple that uses Foxconn, the factory responsible for these conditions. Just about every consumer electronics company does.

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I’m going to try something different in this post. Up until now I’ve kept anything personal out of this blog, cause it’s meant to be more of a “professional” blog. You know, to keep people at arm’s length. My friend Amy recently pointed me a short article which says: when you have the choice between doing the scary thing or the safe thing, always do the scary thing. That’s how you grow as a person.

So here I go.

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520 or 90 is an app that helps Seattle drivers decide whether to take the 520 or 90 bridge by calculating time and cost. The first screen you see is simple. When we tested it, people knew how to use it. Looking at it, it seems pretty obvious that it should be designed this way, right?

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Back in 4th grade, I remember the teacher made us do a class exercise to write New Years resolutions. The kid next to me had written down a few, and turned to ask me how many I’d written. As I was furiously scribbling, I smugly announced: 27.

I guess I’ve always been pretty competitive. Sometimes it means I completely miss the point of what I’m doing. I doubt I followed through with any of the resolutions that year – if I did, it was probably by accident.

So how do we fare as adults? What percentage of people would you guess actually stick with their resolutions all the way through the year?

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