Goodbye, Again: Essays, Reflections, and Illustrations

by Jonny Sun

The wonderfully original author of Everyone's a Aliebn When Ur a Aliebn Too gives us a collection of touching and hilarious personal essays, stories, poems—accompanied by his trademark illustrations—covering topics such as mental health, happiness, and what it means to belong.

Jonny Sun is back with a collection of essays and other writings in his unique, funny, and heartfelt style. The pieces range from long meditations on topics like loneliness and being an outsider, to short humor pieces, conversations, and memorable one-liners.

Jonny's honest writings about his struggles with feeling productive, as well as his difficulties with anxiety and depression will connect deeply with his fans as well as anyone attempting to create in our chaotic world.

It also features a recipe for scrambled eggs that might make you cry.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Poetry, Audiobook, Short Stories, Self Help

Kindle Edition

First published April 20, 2021

About the author

Jonny Sun is the New York Times and international bestselling author of Goodbye, Again, everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too, and the illustrator of Gmorning, Gnight! by Lin-Manuel Miranda. He is a screen and TV writer, and wrote for the Emmy-nominated sixth season of the Netflix Original Series BoJack Horseman. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and McSweeney’s. Time magazine named him one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Internet, and his TED Talk on loneliness that has been viewed online more than 3.5 million times. As a doctoral candidate at MIT and a creative researcher at the Harvard metaLAB, he studies virtual place and online community. He received his master’s degree in architecture from Yale and his bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Toronto.

Reviews

[Jonny Sun · Rating 5 out of 5]

uh, am i allowed to say that i like this book

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

While reading this book, I felt like Jonny Sun was speaking both directly to and from my soul, and with every page I thought, "Wow, he gets it." Yes, while many of these essays are short, they are so deeply impactful. In Goodbye, Again, Sun touches on his experiences with anxiety, depression, and surviving with the mindset that productivity equals value in a world where taking a break from the grind feels like failure. This is the book for the people that want to matter, make a difference and leave a mark, but at the same time don't feel like they've achieved enough to deserve it. Jonny's love of plants comes into metaphor often, revealing there's a lot we can learn from them-- growing takes time, rest is a necessity, and sometimes things truly just are the way that they are. Goodbye, Again is without a doubt a book worth revisiting again and again-- Simply and wonderfully healing, a blooming treasure.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I appreciated Jonny Sun’s openness about his emotions and thoughts and how he mentioned going to therapy in this essay collection. Other than that though I found myself pretty disappointed reading this book. First, I felt that the book contained a lot of half-baked musings that could have benefited from further development. For example, in one section Sun writes about how he uses work to cope with his anxiety and negative emotions. However, he doesn’t elaborate beyond that – so are you motivated to change that? If you’re not motivated to change that that’s fine, though what’s that about? Where in your life or in society broadly did you internalize these messages about work and what do you want to put out into the world about work? This deeper reflection felt missing to me.

I also found a lot of the essays very tell and not show. He writes broad sentiments about family, nostalgia, belonging, etc. yet does not use specific details from his life to make his writing more poignant or powerful. At points I felt like the underlying writing mechanism was like, “let me make this as vague and non-specific as possible so that as many people as possible can find it relatable” when in reality I think utilizing more descriptive content from his life, if possible, would’ve strengthened every essay.

There are many Asian authors who write with self-awareness and deep emotional intelligence, and to highlight a few here I’d recommend What My Bones Know , a memoir by Stephanie Foo, Kelly Loy Gilbert’s young adult fiction Picture Us in the Light and When We Were Infinite , and Jhumpa Lahiri’s fiction The Lowland and Unaccustomed Earth .

[Julian · Rating 3 out of 5]

A unique, heartfelt, and at times beautiful book, that maybe overstates its case.

The opening chapters of this book struck me very directly at this point in my life; Jonny writes about a combination of loneliness, desire, and alienation that is both vulnerable and relatable. You can sense the catharsis that he must've felt writing it in every page, and it's a great companion book for anyone going through a similar experience. The wall between narrator and author feels very thin in these pages.

As an actual book, it falls a little flat (I do feel pretty awful for saying that because of the palpable vulnerability and openness here). While the book is easy to sink into, halfway through I felt like I had read most of the ideas the book wanted to articulate, and the carousel of anecdotes and reflections started to feel like many similar horses painted slightly differently. I found myself skimming yet another section with a metaphor about plants for these themes, yet another anecdote about the difficulties of fitting in, another reflection on how an apartment is and is not a reflection of oneself.

If this book is half as long, is it a more effective one for the reader, though perhaps less therapeutic for the author?

This may be more of a coffee-table/flip-through-at-your leisure book rather than one you want to read, in order, during a set period of time. There's an arc here, but it's loose. While you certainly can't fault the honesty within, I was left wanting more. The narrator doesn't grow/change as much as he accepts (fitting for the themes, I'll concede), and his many detailed descriptions about anxiety and meaninglessness are at times a bit suffocating. His writing is soulful and at times beautiful, but lacking sentence variance to keep me fully engaged.

To borrow Jonny's metaphor and infuse with plant-based puns, I'd say buy this book, keep it out in the open where there's plenty of air, and leaf through it; let it nurture you when you need it to; and if there's a moment where you're wondering if you're over-attentive to it, maybe you've given it all that you can for the time being, and it's OK to set it aside.

[emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

“When my plants grow, it feels like they are teaching me to experience my own happiness in slow motion, not over the course of a few seconds, a few moments, but over the course of weeks, months. And when my plants die, when they start to dry out, or wilt, or rot at the root, they die slowly, too. Even in sadness, I have come to appreciate that there is something peaceful about how slowly that panic and hopelessness and frustration and guilt unfurls, every morning and every night, over and over again, and how slowly the plant teaches me to feel it, to accept it, until one day it cannot teach me anything, anymore.”

Like a very generous, steaming mug of camomile tea – this was such a chill/feel-good read. It’s hard to review a collection of essays that are so personal to the writer. I feel like creative non-fiction can only go either way of the rating spectrum. One can either like the writing a lot or think it’s a completely waste of time. I read the book and listened to the audiobook at the same time – which made for such a brilliant experience. I enjoyed the illustrations very much as well. And as a plant parent (albeit a rather half-arsed one), I love, love, love the plant references and of the way Sun had talked/wrote about plants in his life. Surely, this is the most ‘soothing’ audiobook I’ve ever listened to.

[chantel nouseforaname · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most thoughtful, calm & relatable books I’ve ever read.

It’s one of those books that lifts up the veil on our current insecure “if we’re not productive, we’re lazy” self-punishing, always-on, always-hustling realities and shifts the focus back to the truth of the matter which is that:

You’re only human.
We’re not perfect and that’s okay.
We need to spend more time and care more about that which we love, whether it be our plants, our friends or our families.

This is a wonder of a book. So many metaphors.

Jonny Sun highlights that there is so much to be learned about life if you slow down and take a look around you at all the things that you are blessed to have. Also, he’s a plant god, killing and saving plants, bringing plant lives back from the brink of expiry. Inspiring.

I loved it. Highly recommend.

[Mr. Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Screw good or bad.

For me, personally, this is an all-timer and one of the most meaningful reading experiences I've had in years. There are like 50 sentences that say things about me that I've never been able to articulate, even to myself.

I'm shook.

Will be revisiting many times over the years, and I have TONS of new writing prompts and projects for class from Jonny's craft.

[Zander Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

It feels rude to rate this any less than five stars. A collection of honest essays on living through the pandemic, toxic work culture, and being able to navigate a world that constantly pressures us to be something “more.”

Really appreciated the essay that ranks and goes through the hypothetical last 15 minutes of your life before the end of the world.

I will also attempt to cook many forms of eggs thanks to Jonny’s detailed instructions.

Last but not least, I am here for all of the plant content!

[Ali AbdulKarim · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Feeling lonely is for people who have arrived somewhere, I tell myself, not for people still on the way there."

[Camelia Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of Jonny Sun’s reflections and memory flashbacks of his life. The author is an artist and writer. He strikes me as a Highly Sensitive Person (see HSP), and a combination of a high achiever and a sufferer of severe social anxiety. For those who never know what severe social anxiety feels like probably would find some of his ruminations hard to relate or even understand.

Majority of the pieces are very short, 2 to 5 minutes. The longest one, How to Cook Scrambled Eggs (18 minutes), is an essay on his Chinese Canadian upbringing, beautiful and heartfelt. I Am Trying to Decide If I Should Buy Two Rolls of Paper Towels or Three is a hilarious piece about the difficulties of making decisions.

Quotes:


On nostalgia
“I have a certain nostalgia for happy moments from years and years ago that I do not remember feeling happy during. Perhaps happiness flees so quickly after a visit that I forget that it even visited at all, and so I am just left remembering happy moments as time where I should have been happy, forgetting I actually did feel happy but I came and left so quickly that it was as if it didn’t come in the first place. Or perhaps, what’s close to the truth is that I didn’t feel happy in those moments at all. Instead, what I can only seem to remember is the anxiety and worries I felt during those moments. The happiness comes much later. It is what comes now years later when I can convince myself that I can finally, safely feel happy about those moments, because all those worries and anxieties didn’t seem to bear any fruit. The good thing that was really happening didn’t fall to pieces or get taken away from me or get crossed out by something I did or something bad happening the following day or the following month or in the following years. The memory is still standing. The good things still really happened. And enough time has passed to be safe to say, yes, you would have been justified in feeling happy at that moment, and that feels pretty close to having a memory of actually feeling happy back then. It feels pretty close because it is to look back and try to reassure myself that now that it is over and it has happened and it is safe to feel the happiness you want to feel about it. Now you can feel happy because now your happiness will not get in the way, will not change your outcome. It can’t ruin it somehow in the way you think that happiness might, because it already happened. It’s locked in the past. The memory has finally hardened into stone. So this nostalgia is what, an echo of happiness, or a long delayed one? Is it an outline of one for trying to remember the happiness I knew I should have felt in the moment that most likely it wasn’t really there? Or maybe nostalgia is to feel happiness about something that is over because it is over, that in order to feel happy about it, it must be something you can’t go back to and in fact, you can’t mess up from where you are now but also that you can’t really feel at all.”

[Madison · Rating 1 out of 5]

go to therapy

[Deborah · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book of musings on work, creativity, angst, self-doubt, family, plants, and more interspersed with drawings. Drawings are “a portrait in first-person, through what they’ve noticed and how they see.” “To draw is to visually manifest one’s attention and care.” Jonny is a workaholic. He worries too much and looks at the glass half empty. The self-imposed pressure to produce is relentless. He focuses on the negative, guilt, and disappointment and believes he is not good enough. He believes that happiness is earned and not a state of being. Real conversations are difficult. He takes introspection to a new level when he questions if he is worth “the time or the attention or the friendship.” Plants bring him anxiety and comfort. He is constantly striving for perfection. He must spend a lot on therapy. A least he has a strong support system of family and friends.

Happiness in the form of a cat endeared him to me. However, I found reading him exhausting and could only take partake in short spurts. He and I are polar opposites. While I work a lot, I value and celebrate my free time. Where’s the joy and spontaneity? My advice is let loose, live in the moment, and just enjoy life. 3.5 stars.

[Michelle | musingsbymichelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Thank you NetGalley and HarperAudio for this book in exchange for an honest review.

Jonny Sun is a delight and this book is delightful. Through what I can only describe as musings, Sun describes the world in his careful and descriptive way– filtering from quick snippets of interactions with friends and advice from loved ones to stories of his family through recipes and restaurants to taking care of various plants throughout his life and the lessons those plants have taught him. In addition, and what, perhaps, makes this book easier to connect with, is his invitation to how his mind works, anxiety included. I listened to the audiobook and it is narrated by Sun. I plan to buy the physical copy to see the illustrations, but highly recommend the audiobook! Although some sections made my heart speed up as I felt my anxiety get triggered, Sun’s voice is incredibly soothing and it’s nice to hear his thoughts in his voice.

[Beth Mowbray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sun’s writing is powerful and touching, and I really enjoyed the mixture of brief essays and illustrations in this collection. I was hoping for a bit more range in the content, though. To me, the pieces became repetitive over time, with the majority focusing on different aspects of his near-obsessive focus on productivity. Sun is insightful in dissecting his anxiety and depression, as well as how these issues fuel his need to always be generating something productive; however, I would have preferred to read a few pieces centered on this, rather than an entire collection.

[Lisa K · Rating 2 out of 5]

Blog post-like essays on friendship, plants, life. A couple of relatable ones, but mostly felt like I was visiting the foreign land of people younger than me who really like to name and talk about their anxieties.

[Jessica Park Rhode · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like some essays more than others but that’s expected. But the best ones are like soft explosions that pierce your heart. Flowers blooming in time lapse. Small satisfied wiggles.

[Anna Avian · Rating 1 out of 5]

Series of chaotic thoughts thrown together in a book.

[Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh, Goodbye, Again is super short but is such a bore and slog. The author writes a series of short thoughts on different parts of his life, but it is so repetitive: plants, anxiety, work, shallow philosophy, repeat. I feel for the author - he struggles with anxiety, and it seems hard. He puts work into it, but it still seems hard. But throwing out these scattered, sort of related semi-thoughts is both dull and not cohesive. It doesn't even feel like a book. The author describes his process for this book as him writing down a bunch of thoughts to try to deal with burnout, to try to take him away from work. Then he decides to turn this not-work into a book. This series of notes meant to take him away from work into work. Huh? Well, it reads like a bunch of random thoughts, exactly as it was created. So... success?

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful meditations on family, belonging, anxiety, burnout, and most delightfully, house plants. Highly recommended.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Look, I'm not a workaholic. I definitely don't consider myself an achiever in the conventional ways acknowledged by society. My brand of anxiety is different from Jonny Sun's. The mere idea of taking care of a plant makes me want to run away screaming. Because of those reasons, I wondered if I'd be able to relate to the experiences he shared in this book.

I'll tell you now that in many ways, I felt seen. I got through all the sad parts because I was learning things about myself and gaining insights from a different perspective. It's like I got +10000 wisdom and mindfulness points after reading this, which is awesome. Thank you, Jonny Sun.

[Gary Shen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Relatable short stories about

* Being scared of blankness
* Feel like I should be doing something with time
* Nothing feels like enough
* Instead of turning to people or to hobbies or to going places or to seeing things easier to turn to doing work
* Idea of working is comforting because I can always do something
* Keep at bay the emptiness
* Food and love and family
* Ways parents show love - go slow means walk slowly means don’t hurt yourself means take care
* Shorthand small talk for love
* You have no consistent version of yourself because you can only construct who you are in the context of another person that you can only be someone by being who you think the other person would like to have around - this is changing for me, I show more of myself to all groups now

[Bijuri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so beautiful. Jonny Sun took so many of our racing thoughts, slowed them down to 0.5x speed, and wrote them down. The essays were so soothing to read. And gods, the plant metaphors were stunning.

[Toshita · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. I related to some of the experiences that the author has been through but I was not able to relate to all of them. This is relevant because I am struggling to rate this book. On the hand, this book deserves five stars because it is the author's reality that they have put out into the world and who am I to criticize that? On the other hand, because I was not able to relate to everything in this book, I wouldn't classify it as a book that I loved or a book that I believe the whole world should read.








I guess, since this platform is a way for me to track my reading and how I felt about the book, I shall be going with my rating.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

There were so many thought-provoking moments in this short book. It was highly enjoyable and also very comforting in a way, because the tone overall is positive and hopeful even when Sun is speaking about some rather grim subjects. The book covers many different topics that are personal to the author, from struggles with mental health to loneliness to houseplants, and so much more. I listened to the audiobook version and highly recommend it, though I am curious about the illustrations I missed out on.

4.5 stars.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book’s only flaw is that it had to end!!! I loved every second of reading this book and it made me Feel Things and it was so beautiful and special and I’ve never read a book like this before and it was perfect. I usually fold the bottom corner of pages that are my favorite when I read and for this book I think I probably bookmarked like, a third of the pages, seriously this was so special.

[Caroline Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

definitely different than my normal read! making me have lots of feelings about houseplants and cooking eggs

[MissBecka Gee · Rating 2 out of 5]

A highly realistic stream of consciousnesses.
This was not for me; too much reality.

[Anna Snader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sept. 2022: I love this book with my whole heart. I mean, this is the third time I read it THIS year! It always speaks to me in a way that is incredibly funny (in a kind of dark way), wholesome, and beautiful. All the emotions of moving away, changing, and growing are things that people constantly experience in their life, but I felt these things more prominently this year than in other years. So, this book comforted me. It reminded me of the people I love, the places I love, and the version of myself I loved too. But, it also gave me hope that I can grow into myself in a new place, and that those old things aren't forgotten, just may mean something different.

-Plants are already there, too -> "But sometimes I see that same type of tree in different cities, in different countries. It makes me feel at peace. It reminds me that I once found a home where that tree grew, and so if that same tree can grow somewhere else, perhaps so can I" (170).

-On remembering through others -> "From time to time, you will hear their voice in someone else's words. This is how they tell you, 'I was part of the world and the world is still here'" (168).

-Removing (a different line) -> "But of course any act of leaving creates that hole. Every act of moving is also an act of removing, leaving an empty space where what moved is no longer there. It's just, the problem with leaving is that you're never able to stick around to see what you've left behind" (158).

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May 2022: This one spoke to me so strongly as I was leaving high school and was saying goodbye to my favorite teachers and friends, and perhaps myself as well.

-On Mourning -> "Mourning does not only apply to death. You are allowed to mourn change, as well. You can mourn an old home that is gone, or a world around you that has shifted so imperceptibly until one day it no longer feels familiar anymore. You can mourn your own changes, too. That you are no longer the person you used to be is, in my opinion, a good reason for mourning. It may be a cause for celebration, sometimes, too. But you can always give who you once were a send-off, a memorial, before you move on from them" (161).

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March 2022: My heart may be on the verge of collapse, sadness, and resolve. It was such a beautiful and reflective collection of writings and illustrations. It’s just what I needed right now.

I loved all the essays but these three were my favorite.

-On Attention —> “a conversation is a gift of somebody’s time and attention. The person you’re talking with decided in that moment that you are more important than everything else they have going on, and they chose you—and you chose them—to spend some amount of time with” (134).

-On Proof —> “In person, too, conversations felt so intangible. They disappear after they happen so they leave nothing behind to show for them. We have our memories of them, but I was always left with this fear that I had remembered a conversation with someone so differently than the other person had” (141).

-Removing —> all of it resonated.
“People will go on with their lives. That place you were a part of, that you are now just some visitor to, will continue operating in your absence, will continue picking up more visitors, will continue to continue. It must” (157).

[Sean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favorite pieces:
-On peace

-Is it living or is it alive?
"I am trying to catch myself more whenever I think about work as something that's alive. When work is 'pressuring' someone, or 'growing,' or 'needs attention,' what does that mean? I am all for giving life to inanimate objects, but to anthropomorphize work feels different, more dangerous to me. I think that maybe I imbue or I have learned to imbue work with this idea of life because I need to work to survive. And if I have to work instead of live, the work itself might as well live, since I apparently cannot" (40).

-"Go slow"

-Farm game
"Many of my friends have fantasies of quitting their jobs and owning an actual, real-life, physical farm--which is to say that most of my friends are city people, who don't know anything about actual farms. If the fantasy isn't a farm, it's a flower shop, or a garden, or a greenhouse, or, in one case, an arboretum (a fancy name for 'tree museum'). So many of my friends are fixated on something to do with nature, involving something that grows, or more accurately, something that *they* can grow, based on the belief that it will be relaxing, and straightforward, and linear, and predictable. I find it curious that these dreams aren't about simply living in and among nature, but they are dreams in which nature is the project we work on. We cannot seem to escape the desire to feel productive with our time. I'm not sure if that's by choice or by trauma, that this pressure to produce has been so engrained in us that our deepest fantasies are still tied to some idea of working on something" (78).

-Wave fact

-Playlist for a funeral

-Your last 15 minutes before the end of the world, ranked from worst to best
^probably my favorite
"2. Minute one: Reaching a state of calm and accepting that all you've done with your time on earth is enough, because it must be enough, because it is all that will ever be" (202).

"Goodbye, again"
"Every goodbye after our first should remind us that we've done this before.
Instead of Goodbye, I'd like to start saying Goodbye, again.
See you later cannot be promised, but Goodbye, again reminds us that we've done this before.
And after the last time, at least, we both came back" (208).

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not to expose me, but if you're someone who deals with anxiety, self-esteem issues, and generally is introverted, you'll probably love these silly little essays. So heartwarming, so validating, and so cute. I would just read a couple now and then; they're short and made me feel like someone gave me a hug. Also feeling very called out, but in a good way??? IDK, feeling very ~ reflective~ because of this read

Anyways, please read it; heart is very full, feeling very validated by someone I've never met. Also, succulent drawings, SO cute <3

This review makes no sense, but whatever, does life make sense? I THINK NOT (takeaway from this book xoxo) so just vibe