13. Certain professions are defined by how much work they require, and the workload of medicine is well known. For my second novel, “Joan Is Okay,” a story about an Asian American doctor who works a lot, I interviewed my Asian American doctor friends. I asked them why they’d gone into this field. One said, “Because I consider myself a serious person, and a serious person does serious work.” Another, an M.D. physician-scientist, said something similar, but went on to call medicine “busy work,” meaning that it took time away from the real work, which, in her opinion, was research. But to both medicine and research, she, like the others, has committed nights and weekends. I saw the same behavior in college and grad school, especially among the most ambitious and those vying for establishment-level jobs. The tacit competition was who can work the longest, the hardest, and, in exchange, be the most self-righteous about it. Was there ever such a thing as a day off? No, and the more you showed up when you weren’t supposed to, the more respect you could earn. To overwork is both to self-aggrandize and to catastrophize. The former: no work is more important than your own, and no one can do what you do, not even another doctor. The latter: if you were not allowed to work, then what? A lack of structured demands on your time would induce anxiety, because, if you aren’t actively contributing to something, then why do you even exist?
14. The trick to balancing five jobs is to never, ever procrastinate. What you can do right now, you have to do now. When a new request files in, you address it immediately, like a burst pipe. Question from a student? Reply within five minutes. Question from your boss? Reply within two minutes. Grading papers? Start the moment they’re turned in. Other miscellaneous stuff? Squeeze it in whenever you can, but finish it by the end of the day. I’ve taken only a dozen or so yoga classes in my lifetime and, though I like the general process of stretching and flow, I feel a debilitating stress at the end of class, when I am expected to lie there for ten minutes, breathing, and thinking about nothing. I think about how many e-mails I could have sent in that time.
15. Oddly enough, I’m envious of those who can procrastinate. On weekends, when I tutor, I sometimes find my husband on the couch, with no laptop open, no electric guitar in hand, just on the couch, petting our dog. Wrong of me to, but I might ask, “Hey, what are you doing right now?” He smiles at me and says, teasingly, that he’s thinking about doing work. Even when I try to procrastinate, I can’t. Immigrants, by definition, arrive in a new country with nothing, no capital—economic, social, or cultural—and what’s ingrained in these people and their children is a sense that they’re already behind, so there’s no time to waste. In my STEM classes, I met a lot of people like me—type A, utilitarian, very good at information management and getting tasks done. In writing classes, there are fewer of these students and, in general, fewer people of color and immigrants. The kind of person I frequently run into is one who relies more on talent than on work. These students never bother to start a project early or to revise; they spend more time arguing with the teacher or critiquing other people’s sentences than writing their own. The moment has to be right for them to finish something of true brilliance—otherwise, why risk draining the tank? Before I started taking writing classes, I’d never met anyone like that. I didn’t really understand how working harder at something could destroy it instead of improve it. But, somehow, the spark of writing was delicate, and either you had it or you didn’t. There was no point in overextending yourself to find out. Here I think back to my skeptical writer friend who thought I wasn’t taking my writing seriously because I was working too much and not letting my mind go fallow—not letting it fill with big ideas, per his diagnosis. Like many of the writers in my M.F.A. program, he was talented, well-read, and knowledgeable, far more so than, say, someone like me, who had come to writing late. But, while I admired his work, when he got it done, I did not respect his approach. I did not respect his laziness.
16. The only time I can’t bring myself to work is in the evenings. From around 6 P.M. to bedtime, my brain shuts down. In college, I was forced to work at night because the classes that I took had weekly problem sets and, at night, often late at night, was the only time when classmates could gather and check answers. Now I use this time to read, watch television, or study Chinese. Language study is relaxing for me because it is methodical and something I can commit to doing every day. Despite the fact that Chinese is my first language and mother tongue, I speak, read, and write it with half the confidence that I have in English. I find it terrifying, actually, how fast my generation of Chinese Americans and the next are forgetting Chinese. There was a fear among our parents that, if we didn’t grow up in an English-speaking household, then we wouldn’t assimilate well into the workforce. Not so surprising—the loss of language enables the loss of identity. And, at least when I was growing up, it was never good to seem too Chinese. Perhaps we absorbed the negative stereotypes levied against us and became, ourselves, apologetic for them. Sorry that we’re Chinese, sorry that you have to deal with us, sorry that we’re here. When I was younger, assimilation seemed incredibly desirable. Of course you want to blend in, because you want to be liked and have cool friends. What is Chinese American identity if not at some point suffering from the acute embarrassment of being Chinese American? I hate that I used to be embarrassed by myself, but I would be lying if I said that that embarrassment doesn’t come surging back. On the subway from Canal Street, I hear snippets of loud Chinese from an old woman shouting into her phone and pushing a large trolley of plastic bags. I recoil instinctively and loathe myself for it. The old woman turns to the closest Asian person and asks what the next stop is. The girl holds up her hand to say she doesn’t speak Chinese or points forcefully to the subway sign and responds in English. Poor form to assume that anyone who looks Chinese can speak the language, but I also have friends who are fluent in Chinese but refuse to speak it. Chinese, for them, is the language of Sunday Chinese school, public shaming, cultural wars, and an unrefined past. It’s as if to become adults in America, they had to renounce the language. I’m thankful that my parents couldn’t speak English well enough to keep it going at home and, without any siblings, I was forced to speak Chinese with them, their friends, and other relatives. When I left for college, I went from speaking Chinese daily, continuously, to maybe twenty minutes a week. For a few years, I let the muscle go, and then I decided that I couldn’t just do that, because I had obligations to myself, to my family, and to my heritage. So, for an hour each day, I work through HSK textbooks, listen to Chinese podcasts, and review flashcards. To memorize characters, I write them over and over again with a gel pen on small white writing pads, during my Amtrak commutes to work. Each week, I converse with a tutor about random topics, like electric cars or modern architecture. I pay a tutor because I wish to speak Chinese to someone who’s not related to me. The idealist in me hopes that I can master the language enough to explain to my family what it is that I do and why, with the same depth with which I can express these concepts in English, and on the page. Impossible, as some thoughts and ideas are untranslatable, but I’m bound to try.
17. I don’t foresee taking the next few years lightly or allowing myself to rest. I’m fortunate to be able to do the work that I do, to the level that I can do it, and with the autonomy that I have. When one project ends, I think, Now I have some time to breathe and to travel somewhere and to do nothing. That time of doing nothing has yet to arrive, and why should it? Most of my career is still ahead of me, and, if I’m not putting in the work to achieve it, then who will?