2020 was not an easy year, so each one of these pieces of writing is a little victory.

I started the year off thinking I had cleverly tricked myself into writing on a regular schedule because I convinced Catapult to give me a column. It’s called Pain in the Brain and it’s about my chronic headache.

For the first column installment, I wrote about the meaning of keeping a headache diary. In the second, I wrote about my uneasy relationship with a body in constant pain and learning a meditation called the body scan. In the third, I wrote about weathering chronic pain in the pandemic without the one thing that consistently helps me, swimming. It’s also about how chronic pain has given me a kind of resilience.

For the San Francisco Chronicle, I wrote about a place I love, San Francisco Chinatown, and how the community is faring in the pandemic.

I also contributed to Resy’s Chinatown USA series with an essay about my love of honey walnut shrimp.

Lastly, my flash nonfiction piece about aunties at the YMCA found a home at Jellyfish Review. I think about the aunties often. I hope they’re doing OK.

Artwork by Jeannie Phan for Resy