It’s Chinese New Year in Hong Kong, and I don’t have many people to spend it with. That’s okay. It’s a holiday for families, and I thought it was a good idea to move 8000 miles away from home. Historically, I’ve never felt good about this holiday. My mom would give me $100 or sometimes $200. I would feel bad, because she doesn’t have that kind of money to spend. And she has four kids. I would join her at the Chinese Restaurant, making $8 an hour, to help her stay on top of the grueling lunch and dinner rush that lasted hours and hours and you didn’t even have time to sweat. At the end of the day, the boss would unjustifiably keep some of the tips we worked hard for. Now here in Hong Kong, without any friends inviting me (except for Trevor, thank you Trevor), I stare at my empty wallet and think, "Shit. CNY money was supposed to pay for lunch next week."

So don’t tell me it’s not about money. Because it’s all about money. You can be a pack a backpack and find yourself during your 20s, hopping from country to country, kissing girls in clubs, drinking beer from bottles you can’t read and throwing up in a language you didn’t know you learned, finally begin your career in your 30s with the cushion of daddy’s money under your ass, and proceed to try your best to not feel bad about yourself. Or you work your ass off despite a far less favorable hand, get into an elite school, get a job in consulting or finance, and work your family out of generational poverty.

Or your me: you couldn’t bring yourself to do the corporate thing, though you tried with your first job, being paid a fair wage for only working 1/8 hours in the day and watching YouTube videos with the rest. After graduating from an elite school without paying a dime because of your family’s low income level, you did the country hopping too, because you wanted too wanted to "find yourself." And now at 25, you have consumer debt and medical debt, and you used to laugh at people who had debt. And you think, "How am I going to dig myself out of this?" So it’s about money. And you need money to solve money problems. And you need to build a fortune before you can say, "Wow I still feel empty even with all this money." But you still have to get there before you can confidently make that claim. So happy Chinese new year. May this year bring you dump trucks filled with dollar bills.

While my mom works at a Chinese restaurant again this year, more than ten years later from the first time I did with her, I sit on my keyboard, tap tap taping away at this blogpost, complaining about how little money I have. Sigh. I find it so unfair for someone to tell me that it’s not about money when they make more than me and give less than me proportionally. So I guess all my eggs are in this film thing, to break my family out of generational poverty that seemingly started with my parents. Then I get anxious. Of course like any high achieving child, I want to buy my mom a house that’ll be too big for her to clean and too, "Son this is nice, but you know I love you despite this." And I want to buy my dad a Tesla because he’s been riding a piece of shit on four wheels since he moved to the USA in ’96. And to get there requires lots of hard work and lots of gatekeepers saying yes to the work I make. And I think sometimes I’m not cut out for this, and I’m not good enough. So what do you do? Foot on the gas. Nose to the grindstone. Trade parts of your soul (or all of it) for some numbers in your bank account. That’s even if you have the chops to work work work and work. I don’t know if I do. Happy Chinese New Year.