James Hsu

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Sorry for the abrupt intrusion, my friend.

It’s me, James, back from the dead (of the internet).

The last time I blogged about something, it was December of 2020. What was it? Oh yeah…my year-end retrospective.

I figured it would be nice to not make you wait another full year before I sent out something else.

I feel the need to build up my writing habits again. Mind you, it’s not that I’ve stopped writing stuff. It’s just that the “stuff” is contained in 2 places: (1) my private journal; (2) schoolwork, a.k.a. assignments.

I’m now 7 months into my part-time Global Executive MBA program at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai. 

I feel like a student again…because I am a student again. Just like the days when I worked at Amazon, the days are long and the writing is a-plenty.

The reading is a lot, too, which is why I’ve only read FIVE books in 2021. This is a five-year low. But all things will pass.

Anyways, there’s a certain je ne sais quoi in writing for pleasure and without boundaries. So I will treat this as my warmup and then slowly get back into focused pieces in the weeks/months to come.

Let’s do a test.

****** drumroll ******

Are you ready?

All of these things have happened to me over the past 6-7 months:

1) I became the proud parent of 2 cats. I am officially a cat person / fanatic / lover now.

2) I realized that this game called Magic: The Gathering was creating unhealthy effects on my life, and decided to do something about it.

3) Ironically, I feel like I’m really starting to hit a groove in my Magic podcasting journey. I changed my approach and created some of the best episodes in Humans of Magic‘s 5-year lifespan…in 2021.

4) I grew quite a bit as a person just by hanging out and interacting with my b-school classmates, in unexpected ways.

5) I became much healthier. Or I should say—I was less healthy than I was at the beginning of the year, and created habits to change myself in the past 2-3 months.

6) My perspective on work has shifted, and I’m more optimistic about the future than ever when it comes to my startup journey.

7) I began meditating after having a super meaningful 1-hour conversation with a friend.

The test: which one of these 7 topics do you want to hear more about? Reply to me, or comment on this post, and let me know.

I want to write about them all in the future, but I figured it might be good to take a vote.

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That’s all, folks.

Take it easy and hope to hear from you soon.

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Peace,

James