https://billy.dev/posts/ Recent content in Posts on Billy's Thoughts Hugo -- gohugo.io en-us Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/seeing-your-first-patient/ Fri, 05 Jun 2026 22:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/seeing-your-first-patient/ If you want to comment on this post, you can do so on my x-post on substack. A letter to myself from 1 year ago, who is just starting their PsyD program. First off, congratulations on making it to the starting line. As we both know, even getting here was a journey in and of itself. One year in, I’m happy to report that we made the right choice. This field is incredible. https://billy.dev/posts/attunement-and-chakras/ Sat, 07 Mar 2026 17:00:00 -0800 https://billy.dev/posts/attunement-and-chakras/ If you want to comment on this post, you can do so on my x-post on substack. This post is intended to be a rough sketch, a snapshot, and a series of trailheads to much bigger ideas. Attunement I like the word attunement. I’ve been thinking about attunement for a while now. Even before I started school. And now that I’m in school and doing clinical training it’s even more relevant. https://billy.dev/posts/2025-review/ Tue, 30 Dec 2025 18:00:00 +0800 https://billy.dev/posts/2025-review/ See my review of 2024 here. If you want to comment on this post, you can do so on my x-post on substack. A lot happened this year! I feel like I say this every year, and I think that’s because for the past few years I’ve been changing up a lot in my life; pursuing, shaping, adjusting, trying to be intentional.1 And 2025 was no different. This year felt like a 2-in-1 for me, with one chapter ending and another one beginning. https://billy.dev/posts/ive-made-it/ Tue, 30 Dec 2025 17:00:00 +0800 https://billy.dev/posts/ive-made-it/ If you want to comment on this post, you can do so on my x-post on substack. This is something that’s been on my mind since the end of 2024, and I’m still not sure how to put it to words tactfully, nor is it something I even fully understand. So this is going to be fairly messy, and we’ll see how far I get. Sometime during my sabbatical, and before grad school was even an option in my mind, I would get this feeling of “I’ve made it” bubbling up within me from time to time. https://billy.dev/posts/ai-therapy-2025/ Thu, 11 Dec 2025 22:00:00 -0800 https://billy.dev/posts/ai-therapy-2025/ Tested on: Claude Sonnet 4.5, in Dec 2025 Disclaimer: These are my personal tips; from a clinical psychology PsyD student, but also from someone who has gotten a lot of value out of LLMs as a tool for exploring and understanding my own thoughts and feelings. This post is intended to be brief, and so there will be many terms and concepts I throw out – treat those as hyperlinks if you want to learn more. https://billy.dev/posts/motivation/ Tue, 09 Dec 2025 23:00:00 -0800 https://billy.dev/posts/motivation/ Inspired by some teachings in the Bhagavad Gita1, and this Dr. K video. Here’s what happens for me 80% of the time: I’m motivated to do something, and so I go do it. Sometimes it’s easy, and I don’t have to think about it much; sometimes it’s harder, but I can still push through and get it done. The other 20% of the time, I struggle and don’t end up doing the thing. https://billy.dev/posts/ode-to-hiking-shoes/ Sat, 09 Aug 2025 17:00:00 -0600 https://billy.dev/posts/ode-to-hiking-shoes/ Ever since I laid my eyes on the Salomon ACS PRO shoes in black, I’ve wanted to own a pair (they’re like gorpcore but Wakandan??). But they never go on sale! At one point there was this big sale on the Salomon site, and while I was hoping this time the ACS PROs would be included, unsurprisingly they weren’t. I’d been thinking about these shoes for a while at this point, so in a fit of rage I revenge-bought a different pair of black Salomon shoes that were on sale – the XA Forces GORE-TEX – in an attempt to feel better. https://billy.dev/posts/csr2025/ Tue, 17 Jun 2025 23:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/csr2025/ I wrote a post in 2022 about the updates to the Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card. I thought that post was kind of cringe at the time, but lo and behold the credit card is updating again in 2025 and I went back to that post to reference some of the math. Who’s cringe now?? So let’s make another post. Credit card basics, like “downgrade, don’t cancel”, are covered in the 2022 post so we’ll skip those and get right into the meat. https://billy.dev/posts/burnout/ Mon, 16 Jun 2025 14:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/burnout/ I’ve published thoughts on burnout that are scattered across the internet, and so I thought it would be nice to connect everything together in one hub post. If I had to pick just one post This video is my most recent post, and has my most up-to-date broad thoughts on burnout. Topics include: Context, conditioning, social bloatware Mechanics of burnout What to do Introspect Tactical stuff (expanded on below) Rest Reconnect to Fun Keep improving your discernment Ideal vision - the day-to-day is enjoyable most of the time AND you’re moving in the larger direction you want A deep dive A lot of my core thoughts on burnout I wrote down in this twitter thread from 2022, after watching this fantastic Dr. https://billy.dev/posts/indecision/ Sat, 31 May 2025 00:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/indecision/ Inspired by these two Dr. K videos Preamble: The impetus for this post was that early this year I was in the thick of indecision myself, deciding between if I should stay on sabbatical or apply to grad school (two very different routes!). This post is intended to be a sort of “technical reference manual” of the thoughts and learnings that eventually helped me resolve my own indecision. And then hopefully it’ll make writing my own personal account easier, which I plan to do next. https://billy.dev/posts/meditation-early-notes/ Sun, 18 May 2025 20:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/meditation-early-notes/ There’s a thought that pops up in my twitter sphere every now and then that I’m partial to, and it’s this: more beginners should write a quick 500 words about their experience with a new activity. Then it’s not just experienced folks talking about the thing in a way that’s detached from the beginner experience, as they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be a beginner. So here are some of my notes on meditation as a beginner, having looked into it for a few months now. https://billy.dev/posts/drawing-vs-sf6/ Sun, 09 Mar 2025 19:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/drawing-vs-sf6/ Drawing is one of my hobbies. Drawing gives you the opportunity to snapshot beauty. Drawing can generate beauty. Drawing gives you immediate feedback. Drawing leaves you with an artefact, proof of your efforts. Drawing is inherently iterative. Drawing shows you your limits, every session. Drawing does not necessarily lead to any destination. Drawing usually includes an “ugly phase”. Drawing demands focus. Drawing demands letting go. Drawing for more than 1 hour (for me) can be tiring. https://billy.dev/posts/2024-review/ Thu, 26 Dec 2024 10:00:00 +0800 https://billy.dev/posts/2024-review/ See my review of 2023 here. If you asked me what I did this year, I wouldn’t be able to tell you without having to step through month by month and tug on whatever wisps of memories might still be around. “OK January… where was I in January? OK now February…” Maybe this is just what it’s like to get older. Memories are less sticky and more ethereal. Blink, and a year has gone by. https://billy.dev/posts/100-books/ Sat, 16 Nov 2024 18:00:00 -0800 https://billy.dev/posts/100-books/ Here’s a fun little synthesis of thoughts: I enjoy reading and I read about ~10 books per year After 5-101 years, if I reread an old book, it’s almost like I’m reading it for the first time.2 Thus: If I can find 50-100 books that I absolutely adore, I could just rotate reading through those books and be set for life!3 And wouldn’t it be fun if I had my list and my friends had theirs, and we could compare notes? https://billy.dev/posts/how-was-your-trip/ Sun, 29 Sep 2024 22:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/how-was-your-trip/ It happens every time now, when I return from traveling. The moment I step out of the uber and onto the street below my apartment, I feel like I never left. Like I’m resuming a game that I paused so I could use the bathroom quickly. And it’s not just like I’m picking up where I left off, but it’s like I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have been away. To have been someplace different. https://billy.dev/posts/masculinity/ Thu, 19 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0200 https://billy.dev/posts/masculinity/ I am working on a full blog post about Masculinity, but the scope of that post just keeps growing and growing… so in the name of publishing more, I’m putting out this brief outline of points in the meantime.1 A while ago I saw someone asking about masculinity on threads.net, and here was my own general answer: Maybe this is really all that needs to be said. Focus your time and energy on what you want to see more of. https://billy.dev/posts/walls/ Sat, 14 Sep 2024 15:00:00 +0200 https://billy.dev/posts/walls/ I’ve started to notice a recurring set of Walls I keep running into in life, a bit like level caps on a video game character, though not exactly. In a sense they are self-sustaining, in that they are sustainted by me (or part of some past version of me that I hold onto that was adaptive but has now become maladaptive). I run into these Walls, recognize them, greet them and say “Hello again. https://billy.dev/posts/overthinking/vacation/ Thu, 29 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0200 https://billy.dev/posts/overthinking/vacation/ Since its inception, my France trip has sort of been a plan of conflict. A chance to watch the Olympics live? Hell yeah! 1 A chance to live out a childhood dream of residing in France for a couple months? Hell yeah!! Except August is also the most excited I’ve been to go all-in on spinning up a coaching business… which I can’t really do while I’m on vacation in France. https://billy.dev/posts/overthinking/comments/ Mon, 05 Aug 2024 20:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/overthinking/comments/ I like my static HTML generator blog. It’s slick, it’s lightweight, I think it’s cute. I can render it on my local without an internet connection and write posts on airplanes like I’m doing with this one. But one thing this blog doesn’t have is a (nice and easy way to set up a) comments section.1 But also, who tf is even reading this blog lol such that there would be a lively comments section. https://billy.dev/posts/what-you-like/ Tue, 25 Jun 2024 18:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/what-you-like/ Inspired by this post, and the question “What do I love?” (If you like, you can skip ahead to the prescriptive stuff.) I feel like some people will find this question absurd, because to them it’s obvious. “You like what you like,” or, “you just know, you can feel it.” But you only ask the question when it becomes a question; there are times when the answer is very not-obvious. https://billy.dev/posts/becoming-a-fit-person/ Mon, 15 Apr 2024 19:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/becoming-a-fit-person/ All my life I’ve struggled with losing weight and working out consistently. My motivations have varied from parental pressure, to self-pressure, to wanting to look good naked, to wanting to jump higher when I play volleyball so I can absolutely slam down the ball. But I was never really able to make significant progress. I was stuck. Two years ago I thought I’d found a path to cutting weight consistently and I was optimistic about the future again. https://billy.dev/posts/the-stages-of-change/ Sat, 23 Mar 2024 16:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/the-stages-of-change/ One of my absolute favourite mental models is the one that describes change, called Prochaska’s Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change. Essentially, it describes the stages of change as: Pre-contemplation Contemplation Preparation Action Maintenance Pre-contemplation is when you aren’t even considering making a change, or you’re not aware that you are. Contemplation is when you’re thinking about change, toying with the idea, making pros/cons lists for fun, etc. “What if I was like this instead, what would that be like? https://billy.dev/posts/love-the-grind/ Mon, 11 Mar 2024 16:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/love-the-grind/ There are generally two hurdles to overcome when you’re trying to Do The Thing: Getting started Keeping at it (without burning out) It’s easier to start Doing The Thing if you have an idea you’re excited about, an idea that sounds Fun to you. Similarly, once you’ve started, it’s easier to keep Doing The Thing if the process is Fun. If the grind is Fun. This is, I think, what’s actually at the core of the popular quote: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. https://billy.dev/posts/2023-review/ Mon, 15 Jan 2024 22:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/2023-review/ See my review of 2022 here. I’m writing this in the early days of January 2024, and it feels… odd. The energy at the end of the year that I love so much, the kind that makes you want to hug your loved ones tight and reflect on life, that energy is dissipating. It’s almost all gone now, in favour of vivacity for the new year and new beginnings. But I really wanted to reflect on 2023, so in spite of the timing we’re doing this now. https://billy.dev/posts/emptiness/ Sun, 10 Sep 2023 23:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/emptiness/ A few nights ago I found myself sitting at my desk with this vague sense of discomfort and uncertainty. I’d made some progress that day on a blog post I’d been writing and rewriting for a few weeks now. The progress was good. But I also felt like I had pages of notes and drafts and rewrites scattered all over the floor, and all I was doing was adding new notes and new drafts to the pile. https://billy.dev/posts/tokyo-2023/ Tue, 27 Jun 2023 21:30:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/tokyo-2023/ Last updated on Feb 20, 2024. Sections Logistics before (flights, lodging, mobile data) Logistics there (transit, cash, restaurants, laundry) Districts Tsukiji Market specifically Food recs Coffee recs Personal Colour Analysis Shopping Logistics before Flights There are two airports you can fly to: Haneda airport (HND) and Narita airport (NRT). I’d recommend HND if you have the choice. HND is closer to Tokyo (45 mins to 1h for ~¥600 by subway) vs NRT (1. https://billy.dev/posts/new-game-plus/ Tue, 30 May 2023 22:30:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/new-game-plus/ There’s this feature in some video games (usually single-player action/adventure RPGs) that allows the player to start a new playthrough of a game after beating it once, but with some added twists the second time through. When you begin a New Game+ you venture back out into the game world, but you get to keep some of your progress, items, abilities, or upgrades you acquired during your first playthrough. Coupled with this, the game also becomes more challenging: enemies are stronger, dungeons are harder, and there might be hidden bonus content that becomes available to you. https://billy.dev/posts/are-you-gonna-travel/ Sat, 29 Apr 2023 15:30:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/are-you-gonna-travel/ When I tell friends I plan to take a sabbatical later this year, their first question to me is almost always this one. (If it’s not their first one, then it’s definitely their second.) And I get the feeling that my answer is a bit weird. What I want to do is kind of the opposite–I want to stay home, hunker down, and create. I jokingly liken it to grinding skill points in a video game. https://billy.dev/posts/5-25/ Mon, 27 Mar 2023 20:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/5-25/ This one goes out to those of us who are constantly distracted by shiny new ideas. One guiding rule I had in my 20s was to focus on doing (1) things that I wanted to do, and (2) things that brought me joy (some things were both, some were only one); plus, be very conscious when I chose to do things I didn’t want to do (but maybe had to). https://billy.dev/posts/letter-29/ Wed, 15 Mar 2023 20:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/letter-29/ Dear early-20s-me, May you find some encouragement in these words, that they may ease your journey a little. But also feel free to ignore anything and everything that doesn’t land! To the big questions on self-discovery and meaning and fulfillment, unfortunately it looks like there might not be any actual succinct answers, not really. There’s only the journey, there’s only the present. I know this sounds vague as shit, but it’s starting to sink in for me more and more I think. https://billy.dev/posts/comparisons/ Sat, 04 Feb 2023 14:00:00 -0800 https://billy.dev/posts/comparisons/ “This guy has literally been pumping out writing, consistently, for 10 years. And here I am with my scatterbrained 14 blog posts, I have so far to go to even get to some semblance of competence.” “I wish I practiced piano more when I was a kid.” There are of course comparisons that are positive and productive, ones that are feather-light and don’t cause any feeling of tighness in the chest, yet they expand our taste or reveal something to us to get us unstuck. https://billy.dev/posts/journal-work/ Sat, 14 Jan 2023 16:45:00 -0800 https://billy.dev/posts/journal-work/ I feel like I’m wasting away. I spend ~10 hours each weekday within the world of Work, and I no longer enjoy it (but oh how I used to!). I scramble around, I’m in meetings, I help with planning, I get pinged and pulled into conversatons. I get annoyed with people and their incompetence, and my own incompetence. I avoid the work I need to do (Why? Don’t want to face reality. https://billy.dev/posts/2022-review/ Sat, 31 Dec 2022 21:30:00 -0500 https://billy.dev/posts/2022-review/ One of the things I’m starting to realize as I get older is that I have an absolutely abysmal memory. Like, my brain is terrible at storing thoughts and experiences into long-term memory. (My working theory is that this is an adaptation to my overactive brain incessantly running and making connections. So lots of signals come in and then must immediately get chucked once they’re done with in order to save on RAM, and only certain things make it to deep storage. https://billy.dev/posts/losing-weight/ Mon, 12 Sep 2022 00:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/losing-weight/ I’m currently writing this post in Singapore, at the beginning of a vacation in Southeast Asia to attend my close friends’ wedding, and also to enjoy lots and lots of yummy food (Hainanese chicken rice, curry chicken noodles, kaya toast, nasi lemak, mee goreng, roti canai, chili crab, etc.). Prior to the trip I’d finally started making consistent progress on losing some weight. I reached a low of 180 lbs, a milestone I’d only been able to hit a few times in the last 10 years. https://billy.dev/posts/csr/ Thu, 30 Jun 2022 21:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/csr/ The US credit card game is a fun little optimization problem where the rewards can include free* travel, fancy hotel stays, and first-class flights. Here’s an example subproblem from the midgame. Downgrading my Chase Sapphire Reserve Why? I’m paying to keep the Reserve (or CSR) and I’m not getting enough value out of it for what I’m paying. And I can downgrade the card to a Freedom Flex which has no annual fee (meaning I can replace this expensive card with a no-cost one, without needing to cancel the card). https://billy.dev/posts/turning-30/ Sat, 25 Jun 2022 21:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/turning-30/ All the worry floating around in the public consciousness around Turning 30 was always so confusing to me. I didn’t get it. It felt like a meme. Like everyone was afraid of the concept of 30; because everyone older than you had also been afraid of turning 30. Whenever I asked friends about it, why they got chills even coming to the realization that we were no longer in our mid-twenties but now in our late-twenties (meaning: almost 30), the answer was always something vague and unsatisfying like “I don’t want to be 30” or “then I’ll be old” or “life ends at 30”. https://billy.dev/posts/brain-and-ego/ Mon, 02 May 2022 02:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/brain-and-ego/ I recently finished reading What Happened To You?, a dialogue between Oprah and Bruce Perry, a psychiatrist who specializes in understanding adverse childhood experiences and trauma and how they impact human behaviour. Besides offering an invaluable reframe from asking “what’s wrong with you?” to asking “what happened to you?” when trying to understand why we might behave or react in the ways we do, another huge takeaway for me was the neurosequential model of the brain. https://billy.dev/posts/taxes/ Mon, 21 Feb 2022 00:50:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/taxes/ Here’s a tip worth a thousand dollars: if you earned supplemental income in the US, then you may owe (a lot) more taxes on it than you think. TL;DR: for high earners, especially those with stock grants in a public company, there’s a difference between “taxes withheld” and “taxes owed” on supplemental income, and you’re responsible for paying that difference. This can be as high as an extra 15% in taxes (! https://billy.dev/posts/nfts-dec-2021/ Mon, 10 Jan 2022 23:30:00 -0500 https://billy.dev/posts/nfts-dec-2021/ I spent a sizable chunk of my December diving into NFTs and NFT communities. I didn’t expect to, beyond maybe doing some cursory digging into smart contracts and trying to understand what “web3” actually meant (feels prudent, idk). But NFTs turned out to be one of those vortexes that latched onto me and just didn’t let go. I turned into that guy in my friend circle. And NFTs are becoming more than just an online-only fad or a hobbyist thing. https://billy.dev/posts/a-leisurely-weekend/ Tue, 26 Oct 2021 23:30:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/a-leisurely-weekend/ I spent the past weekend in absolute satisfaction. In Flow. Time rushed by, yet I was immersed in each moment. I cooked multiple meals with my roommate (Indian bread rolls and Bombay sandwiches), started and finished season 1 of Ted Lasso, played tennis, and watched the Come From Away musical. I even had time to run some errands, draw, zoom call a twitter friend, and redecorate my apartment a little. https://billy.dev/posts/competitive-games-are-fun/ Tue, 19 Oct 2021 01:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/competitive-games-are-fun/ “This game is bullsh*t!” Anyone who’s played video games competitively (League of Legends, Counter-Strike, Fortnite, Street Fighter, etc.) has yelled this into the void at least once. Maybe you were having an off game, maybe your teammates looked like they had no clue what they were doing, or maybe you got stomped by your opponent and you had no idea what you could’ve done differently to win. Go through this experience enough times (and you will end up here, a lot, given enough time) and you start to question all the hours you’ve put in, grinding solo queue. https://billy.dev/posts/coffee/ Sun, 31 Jan 2021 11:00:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/coffee/ Last weekend I attended a wonderful Interintellect Salon on Talking about Money, where we talked about everything from the philosophy of money, to why there seems to be so much financial illiteracy, to the credit card ecosystem, to the US Tax Code. A recurring point was that good financial advice can be hard to find, and you might not even know where to start looking. And personal finance has been something I’ve wanted to write about for a while now. https://billy.dev/posts/vtubers/ Thu, 01 Oct 2020 01:55:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/vtubers/ I recently stumbled upon the phenomenon of VTubers, and honestly I’m a bit obsessed. "Eekum bokum." -Inugami Korone, 2020 pic.twitter.com/DEL4krzKFy — Tylor (@theSirToasty) September 1, 2020 VTubers, short for Virtual YouTubers, are what you’d get if anime characters suddenly came to life and also became Content Creators. They’re real people playing a persona using digital, anime-like avatars (not to be confused with influencers that are CGI + ML models). With 3D animation and face/body tracking tech, VTubers livestream themselves hanging out and chatting, playing games, singing, and sometimes collabing with other VTubers. https://billy.dev/posts/exponential-growth-and-viruses/ Thu, 05 Mar 2020 19:45:00 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/exponential-growth-and-viruses/ “On Day 1 you start with 1 penny. On Day 2 you double it and have 2 pennies. On Day 3 you double that and have 4 pennies. Repeat. How much money do you have on Day 30?” Most people have been asked this question at one point or another. It’s memorable; in part because the idea of doubling the size of your bank account day after day sounds like something you’d sign up for. https://billy.dev/posts/tokyo-2019/ Sat, 30 Nov 2019 14:00:00 -0800 https://billy.dev/posts/tokyo-2019/ 2023 Update: Check out my latest recs here! In the span of two weeks, 3 friends asked me for Tokyo recommendations from my trip earlier this year. So I’m putting those recommendations here as a sort of log / for future reference. Here are some general tips on how to travel to Tokyo. The rest is all about food, coffeeshops, and games (the majority of time spent during my recent trip). https://billy.dev/posts/minimum-viable-blog/ Mon, 02 Sep 2019 22:26:03 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/minimum-viable-blog/ I’ve always been fascinated by how great writers can break apart complex systems, stir up emotions, and build worlds. Writing is an especially important skill now, as we live and breathe email, iMessage, and Slack. Where you can find friends, and even a tribe, solely via Twitter. As with anything I find interesting, I wanted to try doing it myself. With writing, though, I wasn’t sure where or how to start. https://billy.dev/posts/coming-soon/ Sat, 06 Jul 2019 02:54:36 -0700 https://billy.dev/posts/coming-soon/ I’m currently working on a first post! In the meantime, here’s a bit about me and here are some of my favourite links.