StandardDeviate
Austin, TX, US

This is ongoing. People tell me all the time how they're drawn to my calming presence but I still honestly get knocked off my rocker all the time. The enemies are usually self doubt, guilt, shame, comparison. I'm actually beginning to be...

Done: Zig zagged up a slate rock face that my shoes kept slipping down because of the rain and then snow at the peak. On a 4 day trek, we hit the peak on the 3rd day. The peak was called Punta Union and was 4750m (15585 ft) high.Thank go...

I've always traveled with friends. Let's see how (and what) I do on my own.

Got gifted a guitar from my musician friend, Lauren. I tried several times in the past and it never stuck. I learned piano as a kid but I had my parents pushing me. Learning an instrument on my own as an adult and not making any progress...

On my birthday I like to take some time to reflect so this will be a little gift for myself.

I have limited Vietnamese speaking skills. I can't really read and I can't write at all. I am planning a trip back to Vietnam in about 2 years so I'll have time to practice.  Learned to speak by talking to my aunt and uncle regularly. M...

I've been to several now: Vipassana Meditation retreat in Kaufman, TX in Dec 2016 Anam Thubten retreat Oct 2019 Shambhala Level 2-Birth of the Warrior Dec 2019   It's really helped me deepen my meditation practice. I've learned some...

 Visited on December 21, 2019 but didn't plan to hike to the summit. I found out a permit is needed and an ascent in winter isn't a great idea so to try again another day.

I've sat for multiple people who have dealt with PTSD and have been raped. I don't know how these people keep finding me but I have been honored for them to share that with me and see it shift.

 Took my then girlfriend to Cypress Valley Canopy Tours by Lake Travis for our anniversary. Random place where you can stay in a nice treehouse and then wake up and take their zipline tour in the morning.

  Took my then girlfriend to Cypress Valley Canopy Tours by Lake Travis for our anniversary. Random place where you can stay in a nice treehouse and then wake up and take their zipline tour in the morning.

Was probably at my peak in 2018 because I was volunteering at Ying Yoga so I was surrounded by people and taking yoga classes almost daily. 

 Just wandered in looking for answers. Started looking for healthier ways to deal with mental health but it just stuck. Now I'm way deep and although I dont' consider myself Buddhist, I believe in a lot of the teaches and practices medit...

 Vipassana meditation retreat at Dhamma Siri after coming back from South America. Not talking didn't seem to bother me as much as it did other people. Probably 10% of the people dropped out by the 6th day

Done: Landed in a way that felt like my buttcheeks were being torn apart. Other than that I did really well. I got in the most rides of everyone in the group. Even just the riding part is not as fun as snowboarding but still fun. Takes a...

 Learned enough to speak conversationally after 3 months in South America. Probably had the grammar of a 2nd grader but I could speak with the locals and tell them about my life.

Wandered into Chachapoyas, Peru and formed a hiking party with David (from Spain) and Lize and Basille (from France). Found out about Gocta waterfall (771 metres/2,530 ft/18th tallest in the world - Read More

 An anaconda but my buddy Joel's snakes (Solid and Liquid) and going to reptile expos with my buddies Asher and Marina. I almost bought the pretty female Orange Glow.

 I'm afraid of sharks and deep water even though I've always been a strong swimmer. I would like to overcome that fear. Done: Swallowed a lot of saltwater. I was worried about sharks but fatigue and seasickness took my mind off it quick...

Came for an Ayahuasca retreat. Wandered through the jungle 

I would love to see some of the wildlife before it's gone. Went on an ayahusaca retreat and made some amazing friends.

 Took Spanish in high school because I was forced to thinking I would never use it. Then wen to South America in 2016 so "studied" for a few months using Duolingo and some other app. Struggled speaking Spanish through all of Peru. By the...

Ticket's purchased without a specific return date yet. (Paid with travel points thanks to Amex with a 23 hour layover that saved me another $140). To get back I'm going to have to use the new travel card I have from BOA.

Went to Peru to do Ayahuasca and traveled all through Peru down to Bolivia and into northern Chile. Made a lot of good friends Couch Surfing and staying in hostels.  

 There was a fundraiser event called Parkour for Sanitation to raise money to get affordable toilets over in India. My friend from BioHack Austin, Mach, invited me to this event. I loved it. We did warm ups and then learned basic vaults,...

 Not only did I get to attend the film festival but I volunteered for it. I worked as part of the site crew so I went around setting up panels and getting to sit in on some of them too. I like volunteering for events like this because I ...

 Short lived. I bought a red Honda CBR 600cc for $2.7k during my Junior year in college. I had been riding for a couple months before that. While we were in a parking lot, a friend's friend (Integ Bryan's cowoker Royceton) ended up sitti...

I've been wanting to go to an official ayahuasca ceremony down in the Amazon. I haven't gotten around to doing that yet but I got a chance to do it up here. There is a group with the Pachamama Natives that held the ceremony not far from ...

 Messing with my roommate Brenda when I lived at Jacob Glen

Some people from the acro yoga community showed me the basics of juggling. I can juggle a little and my record is about 15 catches. I'm still working on learning to throw at the perfect height to the perfect location. I can't juggle effi...

I didn't volunteer at Burning Man but I volunteered at a Burn which is as close as I think I'm going to get. Austin has an event called Burning Flipside that takes place about an hour NorthEast of Austin by the San Gabriel River....

I heard it gives an alert type of drunkness. Seeing as how I don't drink alcohol anymore (and was never really able to) this an interesting experiment to try.  I sometimes suffer from social anxiety (anxiety that is environmenta...

EDC   

I live in Texas now! It's nice to get to start over and see what you would do differently. It's actually a little scary to think at some point I had become complacent and stopped changing living in one place all my life. Since I&...

By now I've had 3 dreams where I became lucid albeit not for very long.  Dream 1) I hit someone with a shovel because I knew it was a dream and I could get away with it. I took the most ridiculous 360 swing too because I knew th...

06/26/2010: Started at a rave in EDC 2010 2012: went to therapy 2014: went up to Vancouver 8/20/2014: moved to Austin 2015: Aya in the Austin 5/23/2016: Certified iPEC Life Coach 2016: Aya in the Amazon 1/26/2017: 10 day silent Vi...

Red Cross gives you a donor card with your blood type on it. I'm O Pos 

It's not unaffordable. In Palo Alto there is a clinic called the Gronowski Center that charges on a sliding scale. You pay depending on your income.

I used to weigh 130. At my max weight I hit 153 but it was too difficult to maintain. I have come to terms that I'm an ectomorph. 

Ongoing but it's becoming routine. I DO miss days.  

To be happy you have to minimize the influence of others. You already know the answers and there are no right or wrong ones. When someone gives you advice it's from their point of view. Happiness to me is being authentic to myself.&n...

I saw a comedy musical called Triassic Parq. It was hilarious and damn they can sing. My friend wanted to take me for my birthday because he knows I have an obsession with Jurassic Park. The story follows the dinosaurs perspective of the...

When I first stepped foot on a Buddhist temple looking for answers for mental health and confusion. I was having an overall life crisis but specifically a spiritual one. Looking for books to start reading and tryign to find out if I was ...

 Went to Vancouver looking for a new place to live when I needed to get out of the Bay. Drove up from Milpitas with my buddy Steven. We had to smuggle stuff across the border and sure enough our car got pulled over at the Border check. T...

This was a pretty interesting experience. I hate needles but it isn't like anything I thought it would be. First thing I have to mention is there weren't 100 needles in my back like I thought there would be; there were 12-16...

Recommended to me by an acupuncturist. She had a book of his in her waiting room and as it turns out the author, Baba Hari Dass, started a retreat in the Watsonville mountains at the Mount Madonna Center.  

For a Korean Karaoke bar. We sang "Pop Goes My Heart" from Music and Lyrics and "Yesterday" by the Beatles. The bar owner called us the Backstreet Boys and gave us free appetizers for picking songs the crowd liked.

Birthday ambushes but never enough cans of silly string. Breathe through your nose.

in a pool it's actually kind of gross unless you regularly eat chlorine flavored mints. Have to try this again.

It can be fun if you do it with the right people but it loses its novelty over time. I used to own a hookah and people would never finish the session. Sometimes they just want a couple puffs but they don't realize the effort/costs pe...

Some campsites have these set up already if you're lucky. Some are a bit sketchy. Try not to land on anything dangerous.

Packed lunch for a beach in Santa Barbara when we were both students there and and other places that have nice scenic hikes nearby or jog on the beach.

It was more like a masquerade rave with Swedish House Mafia for their tour stop in LA. Zedd also played. Wore a blue mask

Done this in my college years. Have done this in the Santa Barbara beach, a lake and a pool all as dares.

Did this for a field trip when I was in elementary school and again with my first girlfriend. 

We go all the time. There's a great drive-in in San Jose that has 5 screens. Save the frequencies for the screens you've seen to check out other movies! Also don't let your car battery die...I use old smartphones with radio a...

Planned an 18 day trip and flew to Europe on my own because none of my friends had the time or money to go. Was worried I wouldn't have time to travel on a significantly long trip in the future. Visited Denmark, Holland/the Netherlan...

2010: Went to Japan without knowing Japanese but had a "tour guide" in my buddy who studied abroad there. 2013: Also went to Denmark without knowing Danish, the Netherlands without knowing Dutch, Germany without knowing German ...

Went out on my own in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Hamburg, Germany. Amsterdam: We tried shrooms (legal there) in our hotel room and my friends were too messed up to go exploring. I wandered out a bit to a park near our hotel and took ...

When flying Korea Airlines to Japan, I got bumped up to first-class. My friends poke fun at me saying she probably thought I was cute. Sat next to really wealthy Korean chicks and had a lot of legroom.

Went as a child and again recently for my friend's 30th birthday. Lines are just as long as I remember and the turkey leg can feed several. Still it is fun. Also one of our friends was on LSD so he was running around like a lunatic a...

Tried in Japan. I don't have much to say about it. Tastes all right. Overrated.

Participated in one near Pleasanton, CA. They didn't check our ticket so we really could have gotten in for free but we went in with the Groupon deal. We wore white so we got jumped. One of my friends brought football gear for some p...

Rating will always be company dependent. It would have scored higher but we wanted to BBQ and weren't able to. There have been times when we had to swoop on a bonfire someone else was finished with because it was already pitch black....

On the registry for Be the Match  

 Mental Health advocate. I volunteer for ACT for Mental Health and MySahana.org regularly as well as for charity runs like the Color Me Rad and the Color Run (you get to participate f...

Just a basic smoke ring. Can lead to other tricks like rapid fire O's to an O inside a bigger O.

Ran and volunteered by myself for both the Color Me Rad and the Color Run to prepare for going to Europe by myself . Walked some of the way but I was inhaling a fair amount of paint. Me with volunteers on left at the starting l...

Never knew anything about sports as a kid. Just got into it recently and it would be cool to beat my friends who got me into it.    1st place: Head on Collusion, Womack Smack 2nd: Optical Collusion

During my 4 country Europe tour in Summer 2013. I spent most of my time in Berlin and Hamburg where I got to go to the zoo, try real German beer, visit various museums and shops, Obama came into town to give a speech at Bradenberg Gate d...

It actually does feel really good to do. Sometimes I get depressed and don't feel like I'm worth much as a person but this makes me realize that I can be needed if I want to be. Plus you meet positive, inspirational, interesting ...

Not fun but I feel much better. Should do this periodically.  

Practiced mindfulness and now I have enough focus to sit there and meditate. I practice 7 chakra meditation. This guide makes it simpler but research should be done at each level. There are colors, symbols, scents, strengths, weaknesses,...

Donating blood lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease. I will try to donate roughly every 2 months.

I have a fear of heights

Meditation/mindfulness exercises didn't quite meet my needs (diagnosed Bipolar II: I have episodes of depression) so I was told Yoga, particularly Bikram could help me attain a higher level of focus and mental awareness.

Looks fun

Coolest looking smoke trick in my opinion. Learning on a vape because I try not to smoke cigarettes anymore. 

Got my M1 in 2006. Many people said in my M1 license photo I looked like an Asian Eric Matthews. I then bought a motorcycle that my friend crashed a month later.

When I was in college I preferred to smoke over drink

Health and fun plus some of the proceeds go to charity for lukemia.

Went with 3 friends to stay in Japan for 2.5 weeks. One of them had studiend abroad so he was able to translate/show us around.