Acceptance

My life BEFORE my transition period.
When I started high school, I was quickly placed into the nerdy, un-cool, less than socially intelligent category, and was thus excluded from the “cool” social circles. I was, from the outset, never able to feel completely accepted. Like any exclusive club, the more I was shut out, the harder [...]

Traditional Asian Values: Corrective versus Instructive

_I_ used to go through life always thinking I was doing something “wrong.” My mom’s way of parenting was to only point out when I had made a mistake to strike me down, rather than provide instructive teaching.
My life before my transition period
I went through life in a constant state of being afraid that [...]

Emotional Expressiveness

_I_ was once emotionally non-expressive. I was a master of what the Asian Playboy likes to call “the Asian Poker Face.”
My life before the transition period.
My mom raised me with very traditional Asian values– values that she learned from her parents. These values stuck with her from her formative years (somewhere around 1965). Even though [...]

Pessimism

My name is William, and I’m an Asian American man. I was once overly pessimistic.
One of the greatest flaws in me was my pessimism. It is a character trait that began to develop in me somewhere around my middle-school years (6th, 7th, and 8th grade), where, when I got a 98 on an exam, my [...]

Confused by Traditional Asian Values

My name is William, and I’m an Asian American man. I was once confused by Traditional Asian Values.
Traditional Asian Values have previously intervened in my life, and once influenced my decisions to place the following mental barriers on myself:

I once thought that I should not express my individuality.
I was once satisfied with living a mediocre [...]

Afraid to lose a “friend”

My name is William, and I’m an Asian American man. I was once afraid to express my romantic interest in a girl because I was afraid to lose a “friend.”
I can recall one girl that I knew over fifteen years ago. I was very much attracted to her and I really wanted to find out [...]

An Asian American Man Beholden To Circumstance

My name is William, and I’m an Asian American Man. I was once beholden to circumstance in the social/dating food chain.
Back in the olden days of ancient China, match-making and introductions-to-girls-by-your-parents were all the rage. This sort of mentality prevailed when my parents were married in the mid-1900’s during the uber-traditional days of Taiwan. Taiwan [...]

Inaction, Mediocrity, and the Asian American Man

My name is William, and I’m an Asian American Man. I was once satisfied with mediocrity and inaction.
I was once satisfied with living a life of mediocrity, and I once made excuses upon excuses to rationalize my total inaction– inaction in terms of aggressively pursuing various professional aspirations, and inaction in terms of meeting the [...]

The Better Asian Man’s Worst Enemy

My name is William, and I once had no preferences.
That’s right, I had zero preferences– for anything. Music, books, television shows, movies, famous people, etc. When asked what kind of music I liked, I would simply say, “whatever is on the radio,” or “whatever is on Z100.” Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, [...]

One reason why individuality is a no-no for Asian Americans

My name is William, and I’m an Asian American man who once had mommy issues.
My mom is a super-traditional Asian mother. In keeping with her super-traditional nature, she lives by a strict Confucian code of ethics. At the core of this value system:
* The morality of one’s superior shall always super-cede the morality of oneself.
This [...]