I've pretty much been born and raised around New York City my entire life. Currently, work in the finance industry. Boring, I know. But, you know, outside of that, I'm really into sort of photography, videography lately.

I don't know. I just do whatever I'm really interested in at that moment. I'm really into film, things of that sort. So, somebody who's in finance who has a really creative mind is like the worst combination. I didn't realize until it was too old, but we're here, we're here. I think when especially in American school systems, you're sort of pushed to like, you know, once you graduate high school, go to college immediately and whatever, right? And you don't really know what you want to do when you're 18. You just sort of have an idea. And so when I was 18, I was thinking, investment banking, like I'm going to make a lot of money. It's going to be great. And then halfway through college, I realized how investment bankers work and how they are. Like, I was just like, not that sort of person. And I didn't really want to go down that route, but I was already halfway through college. I couldn't really change things or whatever. So I just stuck with it and I went into consulting, which is more, working with different clients and doing different things for those clients. So my dad was, he was a lawyer, so obviously not finance, but he was like a businessman, the same sort of vibe, like he came into the city to work, blah, blah. So I think growing up and especially applying to college, I was looking at finance programs and obviously he was super supportive because that was the lifestyle he lived.

My Identity, it's definitely New Yorker. I've always been around New York, even when we were living in New Jersey, my dad worked in New York still. When I was about 11 or so, my dad started taking me to get my haircut in the city where he would go. And so we go for a haircut, like once a month and he would show me around the city. We go to the city, get a haircut, eat lunch somewhere different, walk around, and then get dinner somewhere else different. He always kept me cultured and knowing what the city was without me having ever actually lived in Manhattan. He was really good about that when I was a kid. So I was always around New York. And obviously, I went back there for college. So I always felt like a New Yorker, I always had that sort of common sense of, "Oh, let me not walk on the street on my phone at 3 am and not look at what's going on around." I always had that sort of sense, which I know a lot of my friends don't have. So it's, it was always, I always had that New York identity

I love just looking at things. I just love looking around in the city. It doesn't matter if I walk across that street 20 times. New York City is a city that always changes, a shop that's there one week is gone the next week. You know, that's how it works. Things are always changing, things are always being built. And there's people coming and going. And I love that the city keeps itself refreshed because of that. This sounds weird, but it's not, I love it when you just look up and you see all the apartment windows and you see what's going on in every window. I think those tell a story sometimes. It was a building on like 50, I want to say 53rd and 7th. And I was walking down and I see this building and it's got like old cast iron fire escape and the window has a bunch of books just crammed up against it. And I'm trying to take a picture of it. I'm like, it looks crowded in there and let's take a picture of it. For me, it's just, that I love seeing that in that diversity and that difference throughout just looking at things. You take in so much from just using your eyes and paying attention. Even walking down Jersey City, we have a bunch of old, beautiful brownstones and on one of the streets, I always walk by and I look at this one window every time. Cause sometimes there's a pair of cats that are just sitting out there and they just stare at you as you walk by. It's just a little thing like that. It's like funny. I literally took a picture of them earlier because they were just both staring at me. It's just a bunch of soju bottles on the windowsill too and they're just looking super funny. I don't know if you can see this, but if you don't pay attention, you won't see them.

It's important, very important to be curious. Even for my fashion, it was my first day traveling in Tokyo. And I went outside and it was like 70 degrees and was high humidity. I went outside in a T-shirt. And I went to Shibuya with my friends and I felt so fucking out of place wearing a T-shirt. And I was like, "Why is everybody dressed so nicely?" I thought everybody was dressed so cleanly. I was like, I was like jarred. I'm like, "Hold up, What? What's going on here?" I felt way out of place. Like, I don't, I don't like this. I remember we were lost in like Shibuya station, whatever. My friends looking for directions. And I'm just people watching, you know like I people watch all the time. But I'm just looking at everybody walking by and I'm like, "God, everybody looks so nice. What? What? What am I doing wrong?" So then I just started like, buying just different clothes. I had never really updated my wardrobe. Obviously growing up, my mom just bought me clothes and I just wore them. I never buy new clothes for myself most of the time. I was like, let me, let me reevaluate what I'm doing here. Then I started sort of exploring different fashions, obviously, getting on Instagram. There, that's a whole different ballpark of social media fashion, but just seeing different things and seeing different styles and different fits. And I was like, okay, let me buy some pieces here and there and just put stuff together. And that's sort of what I've been doing for the last few months. I just buy different new clothes that I want to wear a lot. I was changing my fashion sense or changing my hair. That, that was, that was the big one because my hair was curly and then I did a Brazilian blowout to make it straight. And obviously I wanted a wolf cut and then I made it silver. So I did all that within like three months.

You know, there are common emotions within everything, right? So love, right? That's, that's the, that's the emotion everybody likes to talk about. But, the portrayal of love in Italy is different than the portrayal of love in Korea. I mean, you see the way that they sort of direct movies and sort of portray a story for love differently. Because if you are in a very homogenous, homogenous sort of upbringing and culture, you become very stuck in whatever that culture expects. You become very stuck in those standards, and that way of dressing, that way of speaking, and things of that sort. And, when you interact with somebody who is not from that culture, it's probably a big shell shock to you. It's very jarring, like, you don't really know how to interact when you sort of push them away because you think they're weird. And you see that everywhere. It's so important to have that diversity because it introduces you to different ways of thinking, it introduces you to different ways of, of expressing yourself, of, of doing anything. And it keeps you, it keeps you interesting. I sort of do my own thing and I appreciate the fact that I can just do my own thing because I've had that, diverse upbringing and those experiences.


I think long-term, I don't really want to be in finance as much. I love filmmaking. I love photography. I love camera sort of related things and the creation of art and production. It's like, one day I'd love to be in that. And I'm currently learning how I can get there. You know, maybe I still am figuring out who I am. I just bleached my hair three months ago for the first time because it wanted to go silver. I know it's like a midlife crisis, but it's it was just something I wanted to do forever. And I just did it. And it's like, Okay, I mean, it is what it is.