🧠 How I Stay Creative in the Chaotic Lifestyle of a 9–5 Parent

I used to stare at a blank screen for minutes at a time.

There wasn’t a whole lot that was going on in my head when I first started learning how to write on the internet. These days, it’s like a cat that’s hopped up on too many treats in a laser tag arena. My mind can’t stay silent for even a moment (like my children).

The price of creativity is that it’s feast or famine. When it’s off, you could hear a pin drop in your head. When it’s on, it’s the Grand Prix, and you’re standing right up at the barrier as the cars scream by.

I don’t know about you, but silence can be deafening in its own right.

I’ve been working on a three-part series to piece together to share how I operate to keep myself present despite all the challenges of being a kiddy resort manager.

Here’s Part 1: my take on the whole self-actualization journey and what I’ve done to customize it for my life.

My Philosophy: Identity, Values, and Purpose

It’s far from “Hakuna Matata”.

I’m a test engineer for a multinational manufacturer company of electrical components, neurotic husband, father of two children and six fur babies, and content creator all balled into one.

I didn’t stumble into all of this with both eyes wide open, but this sea of thumb tacks does have a way of waking you up.

Over time, it’s evolved from a comical juggling act to a system of intentional focus.

For years, I struggled with the same question most high-performance parents face:

Easy: just add more hours to the day.

Barring moving to another planet or having your own personal Hyperbolic Time Chamber (IYKYK), it hasn’t been easy to build flexible, customizable, and versatile systems.

The answer came to me through:

• sleepless nights staring into darkness as my baby inhaled ever-increasing volumes of formula.

• mindless moments in the lab waiting for data to trickle in from the test setups I spent hours cobbling together.

• walks with my two dogs that were more akin to a drunk, blind man on roller skates clutching a doggie bag, the mail, and two leashes.

What emerged from recording my thoughts and ideas was a clear philosophy of self-mastery that I could live by (or at least survive on) that integrated my previous life as a single yuppy with my current one as a manic 9-5 father rediscovering how it all fit together.

They basically break down into three pillars…

🔍 My Three Core Beliefs

I’ve gone through a number of labels for this newsletter.

Each explored an aspect of my core beliefs:

• mind miner

• knowledge theorist

• prismatic and critical thinker

It wasn’t until I came up with the concept of the “Digital Heirloom” that it all came together.

I didn’t do it alone.

This clarity would not have been possible if not for the connection and relationships that I’ve slowly cultivated with a very small group of people who have followed and supported me from my Twitter days to Medium, and now to Substack.

Along the way, I’ve put up affiliate offers and a handful of Notion worksheets, but my main products have been the 7-day sprints around the following three pillars:

1. Creativity: the byproduct of clarity

I started this journey as a gaming YouTuber.

Most in this category post random gaming sessions and Twitch streams, never garnering more than a few hundred views. The ones that built great channels were the ones that had the most colorful, the most relatable, and the most memorable for their target audiences.

They knew exactly who they were playing for, and the ones who did this especially well could play anything they wanted and post any game they were working through. From watching these content creators, I learned a very important lesson that I’m only now beginning to truly understand:

Come for the gameplay, stay for the personality.

After three years, and recording over 250 videos of my own, I came to a rather depressing realization:

I wasn’t one of those people.

However, what I did go through one game and share my tips, tricks, and strategies on how to complete it on normal difficulty (which was already brutal by most standards). In that space, I could play around and explore different ways of sharing my ideas.

I was clear on what I wanted to do for my audience.

When I stopped uploading to the channel, I had 300 subscribers.

Fast forward three years, and it’s now at over 800, without me uploading a single video since then.

I took the lessons I learned from that phase and applied them to writing.

Now, I write, learn, and create not for fame, but to develop a Digital Heirloom for my kids and others like me who are re-discovering themselves and integrating their roles professionally and personally as 9-5 parents.

When you know why you’re doing something, the how follows naturally.

2. Discipline: a form of love both for myself and my family

Execution despite overwhelm is something that I’ve done all my life:

• doing 100 push ups a night for over a year

• writing this newsletter between the hours 12 and 3 AM

• never missing a single event for my children at school, regardless of the state of affairs at work

I show up every day, not because I feel like it, but because it matters.

Discipline is how I give structure to my values.

• It’s the reason that I’ve managed to practice Tai Chi for nearly three decades starting from an age when most people are beginning to worry about pimples, girls, and body odor.

• It’s the reason I’ve consistently spent at least three to seven years at a time exploring and studying music, dance, theater, visual art, and writing.

• It’s the reason I can maintain a household of one wife, two children, two dogs, and four cats even though it looks like a typhoon ripped through the house when I come home from work.

In every aspect of daily life, strive to maintain execution and create space wherever you can. 

3. Identity: a choice from within, not a label from without

As an Asian American growing up in the Deep South of the US, I’ve experienced my share of racism and bigotry, not to mention every stereotype and assumption that came with it.

At some point during my adolescence, I decided to embody the best of the them:

• Good at math? Check.

• Good at music? Check.

• Good at martial arts? Check.

• Passionate about technology? Check.

• Pursue a doctorate or engineering degree? Check.

While it didn’t fulfill my parent’s wildest dreams of the model child (ew), my pursuit of overwhelming the zone of proficiency lead to me being:

• one of the youngest tenure-track professors in the state (for a moment)

• a martial artist trained by not one, but two masters of the discipline

• an artist with a unique perspective having first-hand experience in multiple areas

• an engineer who contributed to part of the internet and a good portion of smartphone technology

• a writer and content creator forging a legacy and sharing his insights from life experience

You become the sum of what you practice, not what you’ve been labeled.

🌱 What I’ve Learned from the Process

• You don’t need to quit your job to build a legacy.

• You don’t need to sacrifice your dreams to raise a family.

• You just need a philosophy that keeps you grounded while you create.

In the next part of this series, I’ll share the exact systems I’ve developed to:

• Write and cultivate my critical thinking

• Stay fit despite a 9-5 and kiddy resort management

• Maintain a home with two kids, two dogs, and four cats from falling apart

All while cultivating the creative energy to write across three social media platforms.

It’s far from perfect (lots of fishing line, duct tape, and Elmer’s glue), but each one is guided by what I’ve shared in this issue based on my values and my beliefs.

Until the next part of this series, reflect on the following: