About Little. Yellow. Different.
Your dad died May 6. You had a certified death certificate. You called AT&T’s bereavement line twice — a line that exists for exactly this — and both times agents refused to touch the account without his four-digit PIN. A dead man’s PIN outranked California’s official record of his death. Resolution required physically driving to a retail store, twice (you forgot the certificate the first trip), to close a $251.38 balance on a line he’d had on auto-pay for four years.
Nobody tells you grief comes with a filing system.
Hi. I’m Ernie.
I’ve been publishing on the internet since 1999, back when we called them web logs and everybody had a strong opinion about their RSS reader. Little Yellow Different started as a twenty-something Asian kid in tech writing about his family. It is currently a forty-nine-year-old Asian guy in tech writing about his family. The perspective improved. The family got older. (So did I. Nobody warned me about that part either.)
Here’s what’s actually in here:
Taking care of your parents when you don’t make a million dollars a year
The doctor’s appointments you drive to. The forms nobody explains. The specific math of how much time you can take off before it becomes a problem at work, and then the separate math of how much guilt that generates.
A reader named Eric said it better than I have:
“As one of many who are also dealing with aging parents and figuring out how to balance their needs with my own, I appreciate your sharing your experiences there.”
There are a lot of us. We mostly don’t talk about it, because it sounds like complaining, and because the person you’d be complaining about is somebody you love.
Asian American family stuff that will not fit on LinkedIn
Immigrant parents. The old ways and the new ways, arguing in two languages inside one apartment. Mental illness in a family that does not have vocabulary for mental illness. Mom’s English, which is better than my Mandarin and which I will be quoting for as long as I write.
Grief, with paperwork
My father died in May. I have learned more about county records offices this year than in the previous forty-eight combined.
The funeral is the part everyone shows up for. Then everyone goes home and you’re left with an envelope on the kitchen table you haven’t opened for six weeks, and a discount he qualified for, and a customer service rep who needs you to say it again.
I write about that. Not because I’ve figured it out. Mostly because writing it down is the only filing system I’m good at.
Twenty-five years of receipts
Somewhere north of 1,400 posts, going back to when this was a blog with a hit counter. I’m slowly restoring the archive here. It’s a strange thing to read your own twenties in public. Some of it holds up. Some of it makes me want to lie down.
I also write about tech, because that’s the job — Yahoo!, Rackspace, eight years of Code for Miami, one CTO gig, and now building AI things for people who’ll pay for them. But the tech writing has people in it or it doesn’t run.
How This Works
Every Thursday, one essay. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s the other thing. Usually both, because that’s how the week actually goes.
It’s free. It stays free.
Some of you pay anyway. The word for that is patron, which makes it sound like I have a premium tequila from Mexico. (You are thinking Patrón.) But I do have thirty-something patrons, for this I am grateful. I know all of your names.
Here’s what the money does: it keeps Thursday happening, and it pays for the slow work of dragging 1,400 posts out of a dead blog and back onto the internet. You also get the comments and the subscriber chat — less a perk than a side effect of being in the room.
That’s the pitch. Keep this guy writing.
(If I ever land a sponsor, I will sell out early and often. You’ll be the first to know.)
What some people who’ve been here a while have said
“You have a gift. Always have had. It’s why we always loved your blog. Now it’s just in newsletter form, and less often, but no less compelling.”
“You remind me of the early Internet with that special mix of TMI and tech info.” — Heidi
“I read your blog for years and I was happy to find you again. I read about your love life, your mom and your sister. I want to know that you are ok and thriving.” — Mukta
I’m okay. Thriving is a strong word. We’re working on it.
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