Inspiration. Words.

I want to write not for the sake of reaching the next period of the next sentence, but to meander and explore and craft, filling in the punctuations and blanks after the fact.

I want to write because it forces me to face myself and see my person laid out before me in a form digestible by another human being.

I want to write because I want to be.

But more than that, I want to write because I want to become.

Passion. Project.

I read an article in the Times today about the whole concept of "following your passion." The secret formula to success in the States has always appeared to be as simple as pursuing one's passion - and "the money/the rest will follow."

To be perfectly honest, I've long subscribed to this mentality - I mean, quite possibly every other entry in my journals has been about trying to find and embrace my passions with the hope of actually carving out a viable, fulfilling career path from them.

Simple, no?

What the article argued, however, is that sometimes (read: most times) the formula is not so easy. And not in a practical, logical kind of way either, as in making the decision to leave a full-time job to free fall into the uncertain abyss of "entrepreneurship," "freelancing," or that catch-all Generation Y phrase, "discovering myself."

No, the kind of difficulty many people encounter with this kind of mentality is more basic than that. They simply don't know what their passions are.

Because truth be told, not everyone springs from the womb knowing what they've been put on God's Green Earth to do.

Most people struggle to figure out what they truly want, and that's okay. It felt oddly relieving to read the piece, knowing that my uncertainties as of late haven't had anything (well, not as much anyway) to do with being able to recognize the next steps.

They've come from realizing that those steps aren't even yet formed because, well, how can you select building blocks if you don't have a rough sketch of what you're building? We're talking the difference between constructing a bridge and a skyscraper, really.

I've always thought that I've led such a blessed live. And I do. A loving family, great friends, and the relative freedom to live on my own terms. I'm working as an editor in New York City, getting paid to write, the thing I love.

The thing I love.

It sounds like living the dream - when in reality I sometimes wonder if maybe I'm just snoozing.

The author's argument was that for those who don't have a defined passion in life and feel frustrated that they're somehow missing something by not having an established goal, sometimes the best thing is to build skills and grow passion that way, the same way you might coax an avocado seed to sprout.

Sure, I'm passionate about writing, but it's always been more about storytelling, the unsolicited thoughts that turn into words, phrases, sentences, stories as they travel from my noggin down to my fingertips.

It's always been about the quality of thought, the satisfaction of learning and doing and being a part of the process while maintaining enough of a distance to be objective. Be a perpetual observer, eavesdropper, dreamer.

Romanticized, maybe, but this is what writing has always been to me, and what - by extension - journalism has always been to me.

Being able to construct sentences and transfer my emotions to another human being without having ever met them, know how they look or think or feel - that is powerful. That has been what I pride myself in being able to do as a writer.

So now the real question is this: how/where can I develop my skill set to become the kind of writer that can claim writing as my passion? I believe it's a talent that can (and will) be learned and I'm more sure now more than ever (just after writing this, oddly enough) that I know what I need to do to take that next step.

Then, maybe, the rest will follow.

Run run run

Every time I attempt to sit down and properly write a post about the why's and the what's and the how's of running, I get stumped.

But the other day, following an especially exhilarating nighttime tromp through my neighborhood park, the glow of distant streetlights and the moon's reflection off the lake guiding my way, I swore I could have kept running for miles.

There's something completely freeing about feeling the pavement under my feet, bounding and reconnecting and supporting and pushing as I gain momentum and almost free-fall into the darkness in front of me.

I feel like I'm cutting through the enveloping darkness, a cold wall of obstacle and fear and what if's as I push past the dull pain in my thighs, the gasping breaths in my chest, the blur of the broken lines on the road as I press on.

Beat.

Running is like a kind of therapy for the soul, and sometimes I will myself to run at a high speed so that I might break through the sound barrier into another realm, one of complete stillness and meditation.

It's a kind of mental separation, trying to pull apart the pain of the external from the calm of the internal. The faster I go, the more blindly I hurtle into the darkness, the quieter my mind becomes and the clearer I can think.

I distract my mind with a full awareness of my body, of my joints, of each muscle as I move forward, onward, forward, onward, right foot, left foot, right foot, left.

Breathe. In. Out. In. Out.

Out.

Catch my breath and bob my head to the beat of my own being learning its rhythm for the first time. In the darkness of a night run, there's no such thing as stopping, of stagnation, of rest.

At night, my mind comes alive so the body does also.

Running is not an escape. Running is an embrace. In the undeniably unique boom boom swish boom beat of each runner's pace, breath, pace, there is a release, an embrace, a release.

Pushing off the ground and touching down just to try again so that I might become a part of the night.

Running.

Beat.

Global soul

I've been reading this book "The Global Soul" by Pico Iyer, and it's causing me to really pause and ponder a bit in a way I haven't had the opportunity to in a while - most especially its remarks on the concept of "belonging" and "community."

"... the fact remains that humans have never lived with quite this kind of mobility and uprootedness before (indeed, the questions themselves may be the closest thing we have to home: we live in the uncertainties we carry round with us). A lack of affiliation may mean a lack of accountability, and forming a sense of commitment can be hard without a sense of community.

Displacement can encourage the wrong kinds of distance, and if the nationalism we see sparking up around the globe arises from too narrow and fixed a sense of loyalty, the internationalism that's coming to birth may reflect too roaming and undefined a sense of belonging.

The Global Soul may see so many sides of every question that he never settles on a firm conviction; he may grow so used to giving back a different self according to his environment that he loses sight of who he is when nobody's around. Even the most basic questions have to be answered by him alone, and when, on the planes where he may make his home, the cabin attendant passes down the aisle with disembarkation forms, it may be difficult for him to fill in any of the boxes: "Home address," "Citizenship," "Purpose of Visit," even "Marital Status."

What is it like to find community? The term has come to mean a kind of literal suburban white picket fence and PTA-filled society, or a decidedly alternative, tightly knit group of exclusive insiders. See: The fashion community. See also: The running community.

Everyone's constantly in search of finding their place of belonging, of hitting upon a kind of assembly of kindred spirits who will act as an external reassurance that there are others out there who think, breathe, act, look, just. Like. Them.

And there's nothing inherently wrong with seeking community, of trying to build a family from the hodgepodge of acquaintances, errant family members and coworkers that inevitably becomes your "in crowd" upon graduating from college and moving across the country to begin a new career and a new life away from your old "community."

The problem that arises, however, is that by wanting a community, we are wishing for exclusivity. We are by definition excluding people who don't fit the criteria of our given "group." Because without exclusivity, there is no community. If you don't define your community clearly, and leave it open to everyone - which is the PC way of looking at things - then you are not creating a community, nay, not even a global community - you are creating a space.

I got to thinking a lot about the concept of community recently after an hours-long conversation with a friend about the idea of religion. Not religion itself, per se, but the idea of it.

The principles that Christianity teaches - and let's hope I don't overgeneralize or get this wrong here - revolve around the idea that there are the Chosen Ones (those who subscribe to Christian views) and there are, by default, the non-Chosen Ones. You are in, or you are out. It's pretty straightforward in that sense.

But, I asked, why is it not enough to have a personal relationship with God, with a higher being, and be a good person? Why is the community aspect, the organized religion aspect of it, necessary? It sounds blasphemous to even question this, but I don't mean it in a disrespectful way. I mean it in a human, questioning, wondering kind of way.

He responded that by creating a community, a church, there is a physical divide between those who are saved and those who are not. And then it becomes very clear that those who ARE saved are tasked with saving those who are not. Being on the ship, in the actual physical ship, means that you have the resources to reach out and pull someone to safety.

Fair. But, what of the politics that come with organized religion? The human aspects of deciding who is a good pastor and who isn't, of who to hang out with while at church, of the dramas that taint the message of God that is delivered every Sunday? That is a community, to be sure - as communities are not always peaceful - but it is also just community for the sake of community without deeper examination, and I'm not sure I'm okay with that.

When church or any community becomes more about the individuals - what she was wearing that Sunday, or who likes whom, or which mother cooked the best dish - than the greater cause, that community is lost.

So maybe the answer is to strive for a more solid sense of self first. Settle the internal before striving for external affirmation.

I guess the only problem with that, though, is that so much of your self develops as a result of outward influences, and to try to wait until one is completely rooted in his or her self would mean - never interacting, never living.

Thus is the dilemma of the Global Soul, of journeying, of belonging.

Day, shift

How do you describe what it feels like to rejoin society, to reconstruct what was formerly habit into routine into lifestyle? At times I feel like I haven't left the conventional daytime work hours at all, but at the same time - so much has happened in this past year that it's impossible to discount the memories.

It's kinda like this. Wandering through unfamiliar terrain in the pitch dark is terrifying when you can't identify what's around you. Your brain panics and it feels as though your imagination will run wild for miles into a million different directions. And you're literally just stuck.

It's hard to even tentatively move any which way because you don't know what the rules of this place that you occupy are - what if living in that space defies some law of physics? What do you reach toward when you're without direction?

Having an odd schedule, I often felt a mild variation of that. Working on a different timetable from the rest of the world was like being in the dark, with barely recognizable figures, reaching out into pitch black spaces. It's difficult to gauge where you are relative to everything, get a sense of rank or placement, when you are bound to one spot.

A starting point.

From there on, however, wherever you move to, it'd still be uncertain. But at least you'd know that it was okay to move. It didn't matter which way, but you could...MOVE.

This past year, whether of my own volition or because it really was the case, I've felt caught. Stuck. Immobile. And frustrated because I questioned whether I was the one who was creating and contributing to my own mental block without realizing it.

The thing is, if you can define the root of a problem as either internal or external, you can do something about it. But if you balance on the precipice of "it's you, not me," then you don't know the rules. And then you don't know how to react.

People say to react to how you feel. I say it's more important to feel how you act.

Really feel it.

Absorb all the consequences of what it means and why you did it and what will propel you to do it again.

This past year has truly been unlike anything I have ever been through before. I was at times lonely, frustrated, self-conscious, prideful, stubborn, jealous, possessive. I think I saw myself at some pretty low points, but I also think that forced me to venture out and feel my way back toward a semblance of a self-created path.

And though I'm treading lightly, at least I'm moving.

How bout them directions?

Just last year, a few weeks into my new schedule at the time, I wrote about how it felt to be living in opposition to the mainstream, to have my own bubble of New York life. And rereading it now, the sentences still ring true.

Solitude will be my best learning tool.

It's easy to get lost in New York City. But last night/this morning, as I glanced over my shoulder at bedroom lights flickering on in high rises as I crossed the bridge, people starting the day just as I was about to end it, I felt found. Their dawn is my dusk. My reality is only, really, in my head. And I was very much aware that I was coming home -- on my own terms.

Here's to personal realities, and redefining them over and over again.

The Ego of Journalism

Are true artists those who forgo ego altogether and just seek to inspire and influence other people's ways of thinking or is that just too idealistic, as art is at its essence tied to that person's self? The beauty of art and writing and any form of creative expression is not just that it exists, but that its creation is so intricately tied up with its creator's point of view.

What do you lose by giving up claims on your own work?

Being a journalist in this day and age is a constant uphill battle, and I don't say this in a "woe is me" sort of way, though I know it can come off as such. Rather, it's a time when ego and aggregate and production are all amorphous terms trying to describe this network formerly known as the news.

Part of creativity, admittedly, is ego, the ability to claim your work as your own without being too proud or pretentious, to demand a byline while still understanding that that's not the point at the end of the day.

But isn't this the debate that's raging on in corner offices all throughout the city? How do you keep up with the business-side demands of an industry that runs on timeliness, competition and "winning" while still producing quality content that people are willing to pay for? What's obvious, and what's annoying to said executives, is that quality takes time. Taste takes time.

If you want instant, quick-fixes, you have Twitter. You have typos. You have news feeds. You have questionable sources and shoddy reporting. You get email interviews, not in-person, shoe-leather investigations.

The ease with which everyone is able to find information and regurgitate it for all to see these days makes journalism a lesser-regarded form of art, and I think this is just so unfortunate. When people make off-handed comments about how "anyone" with a computer, an Internet connection and two thoughts in their head can become a journalist, I'm pretty insulted.

The truth is, the days when journalists only knew how to write and report and edit are over. Storytelling isn't so much the focus any more so much as it is a certain kind of afterthought, or so it feels like sometimes. Nowadays, being a journalist is more about competition, hits and clicks, the number of papers sold each morning. It's about "winning" but not in the classical way - it's not so much who's the best, who has the most depth, as it is just the most mentions, retweets, page views - numbers that are the driving force behind the industry, but also, really arbitrary.

What is quality journalism? And can the craft survive in a world that is quickly rendering it a trade?

Thoughts on a rainy Thursday

Just a few thoughts, freeflowing, something to come back to:

I am 23. Things are starting to gain a strange type of momentum now, the kind that I wish I could control, but which -- inevitably -- I can't. That's what real momentum is, though. So maybe what I was experiencing before was but a wayward tug. This is true release, I think, what I've needed to have all this time but couldn't. I scramble about so much in my daily life, trying to balance a set of priorities and people that just ask for too much of my attention and responsibility. And not to say that I don't genuinely care about each and every one of these pieces of my life -- but Mom knows best (and somehow she always gets the timing just right) -- in saying that I can't have everything.

Grab for too much and you risk losing what you already have.

And maybe that's a generational thing -- I'm not sure. But I've been raised to expect the world, to reach for the stars, to -- any number of trite sayings to fill in the blank, phrases that tell of pushing limits, expanding, growing, breathing. And I've always believed that the only person standing in the way of your success (however you might define that) -- is you. Just. You.

What most everyone wants and needs in life is not material. This much I know. The pursuit of happiness, that's something more tangible to me than chasing money. Money -- it's a concept. It's paper. It's the luxury and the status and the illusion of exclusion that's appealing. All because, really, those ideas are so tied up in the concept of happiness. It's become assumed that money will act as a catalyst for better things. A push in the right direction.

And so when I sat in a cab, homeward-bound, at 5:30 in the morning earlier today (yikes), heading home from work as the rest of the city shook itself awake, I had an epiphany. I need to once again embrace this feeling of trust that I can't control my circumstances, but I CAN control what I make of it. In a world of stumbled-into, accidentally-met happenstance, I want to know that after an initial push, I have to let things be. Steer, but only when I need to.

The one area of my life that I am wholly in control of is my mind, my mentality, my hyper-awareness of my own thoughts. I think I need this jolt of irregularity, strange schedule, a weird kind of isolation, in order to really see what I value and where I put in my time and effort.

My days are so much longer now. I wake up on my own accord, spend time with myself, my body (hello, gym and yoga) and my mind (hey now, NYTimes) because I know that this entire experience will make me that much mentally stronger. So much of society today is cast in a glow of interactions, outside reinforcements, chasing signs that we're okay, and I want to look deeper into that.

We bump into people, update our status feeds and blog about our days because it means that we're alive, that someone out there will think of us, talk about us, remember us.

I was once told that humans are born with one fear -- a fear of falling. This was meant in the literal sense, about the kind of falling that endangers our lives and develops into a fear of heights and vertigo. But in a broader sense, fear of falling means fear of failing, of tumbling from the social consciousness.

We blog because we want to stay relevant. We tweet because we want to reach out -- listen to me, see me, hear me. This is what I want to share with the world.

But what happens when the world stops listening? Radio silence.

What happens then?

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear or see it fall, has anything really happened?

We focus externally, look outward because sometimes (most of the time) that's so much easier. I want so much out of life, but I really want, more than that, to know why. Why am I constantly filling my days answering emails, meeting up with aquaintances, blogging (HA) about my thoughts to an anonymous audience?

Solitude will be my best learning tool.

It's easy to get lost in New York City. But last night/this morning, as I glanced over my shoulder at bedroom lights flickering on in high rises as I crossed the bridge, people starting the day just as I was about to end it, I felt found. Their dawn is my dusk. My reality is only, really, in my head. And I was very much aware that I was coming home -- on my own terms.

The Beat of New York

"Sometimes it really takes a visitor to capture the essence of home."

THE BEAT OF NEW YORK from tim hahne on Vimeo.

Hustle and Flow

It's only been a brief two weeks since I've been back in the flow of, vibe of, feel of the work pace of life in NYC and it's a pretty stark contrast to the relatively lackadaisical days I've been having for the last three months. This isn't to say, of course, that the change hasn't been welcome, just that there is such a distinct difference between residing in New York and really living here.

Summer was filled with sun-lit afternoons pounding the pavement, lounging in parks, being drawn into the beat and pulse of living in a -- pardon the trite phrase -- urban jungle. Given the number of tourists who flock to the city, cameras and maps in tow, trying to haphazardly match their footsteps to those of the stiletto-heeled women around them, it's no wonder that the buzz of the city was particularly pronounced in the summertime. But more than that, the crowds that positively melted into place in parks, at cafes and on subways were somehow more vibrant than the standard monochromatic workweek fare.

The only responsibilities I had during the week were to myself; my appointments were my own. I operated on my own daily schedule, and any deadlines I set and met (or didn't) would be of my own volition. Study for the GREs, search for jobs, work on freelance assignments, develop my knowledge and skills by reading everything I could lay my hands (fingertips?) on and by writing constantly. There may never be a time again in my life where I have the luxury of only worrying about, well, myself.

Now the weather is cooling down, summer "lasts" are plentiful, and the reality of bracing for another go at the NYC work life is rearing its daunting head. But though I will miss summer and all the mental acumen it provided, I'm equally excited by the prospects of a new season and its consequent shift of energy.

Autumn is soothing because it marks the do-over, restart phase of the year, a grounding calmness with a running stream of conversation underneath. It's the perfect kind of weather for a little hustle, a little flow. So it begins again.

Mind over matter, matter over mind

The last two weeks have been a little bit chaotic, to say the least. In the span of less than a month, I've learned so much about myself, what makes me tick and perhaps most importantly, that the sludge that had built up to prevent said ticking was a congealed result of...me. I had let my thoughts, and my perception of how others might interpret my thoughts, take over. Rather than being confident in my abilities and constructive about my shortcomings, I was slowly filling with doubt and unease, two things I have worked so hard to avoid.

But avoid no more. Doubt and unease are two things that make us all human, and by trying to suppress them, I was essentially trying to fill an always-bottomless cup. Denying the existence of the two is, basically, going against nature and really only fooling myself. As such, I've figured out, life is more about embracing those thoughts briefly and letting them go rather than ignoring them altogether.

Two weekends ago, I ran my first half marathon. Thirteen point one miles. I'd been training for it for a month and a half, and lo and behold, it couldn't have come at a better time. Riding the subway deeper into Queens early that Saturday was such a heartening experience, with other racers casting sideway grins at each other with their telltale orange tags flashing from their shoes. It was like a secret sign, a kind of signal we were all giving each other, an acknowledgment that we were all bracing for impact. Thirteen point one miles. I think, had I been in a different mindset, I would have been more doubtful of my ability to pull it off.

But in the end, it was mind over matter. My one goal (aside from finishing, of course) was to never stop running. And this was all fine until mile 10, when everyone around me started to slow down to a jog and then a walk. I felt a fleeting moment of discouragement. Well, if everyone else is giving themselves a break, why push myself so hard?

But as luck would have it, there came a sign. A young-ish guy, maybe around 30, jogged past me, clearly exhausted and panting, but with his feet bounding off the pavement. What energy! I was encouraged. Then I looked down and noticed that he was hitting the ground at an uneven rhythm. He had a prosthetic leg. Really? Really. How was I thinking of slowing down when this guy was just picking up speed? I sped up.

And I finished all 13.1 miles, no stopping, no walking, just pure adrenaline. And it felt so good, to know that my mind had overcome my body's weaknesses, that I had succeeded in my own race, at my own pace.

Then last week, I embarked on a very different personal journey, to upstate New York for a three day silent meditation retreat. No reading, writing, email, phones or talking. And it was glorious. One would think that a retreat like this would be all about the mind, but in fact, it was more about the body. Matter over mind. The focus was on the body, on being aware of breath and footsteps and small subtle movements that we take for granted. And by focusing in on the tangible, the intangible, the mind, started to clear.

In the silence of the retreat, I heard my own thoughts louder than I had ever imagined them to be. There was so much noise, so many stray thoughts, no focus. And no distractions. So I sat and I meditated and I learned about connecting my breath with my mind and stilling my thoughts not with force and suppression but with gentleness and calm. And I was soothed.

These past few weeks have been a little chaotic. But I wouldn't have had it any other way, else I wouldn't have learned to feel so deeply, hurt so openly, or think so freely. The thing about lessons, though, is that they should always be followed by change. So I'm working to change the patterns of my life to make way for an existence that fuses matter and mind, taking care to pay attention to both. It's the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end.

Why she writes

So. I don't even remember how or why I came across this, but I somehow ended up enraptured by this Joan Didion piece titled "Why I Write" while at work today. I've read bits of it before, but never the piece in its entirety.

I've been thinking a lot lately about WHY I want to pursue journalism (especially in this financial, and let's face it, social, climate), because my answer used to be pretty basic. Because I love to meet new people, and I love to write. I feel more comfortable expressing myself through writing than speaking. I'm not a math whiz, and my desire to have a standard 9-5 is negligible at best.

But those aren't good enough reasons, really. I'm still trying to figure out a more solid answer, but until then, these are the bits that really gave me pause:

"During the years when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley I tried, with a kind of hopeless late-adolescent energy, to buy some temporary visa into the world of ideas, to forge for myself a mind that could deal with the abstract. In short I tried to think. I failed. My attention veered inexorably back to the specific, to the tangible, to what was generally considered, by everyone I knew then and for that matter have known since, the peripheral."

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want to what I fear."

"Grammar is a piano I play by ear, since I seem to have been out of school the year the rules were mentioned. All i know of grammar is its infinite power. To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning ofthe object being photographed. Many people know about camera angles now, but not so many know about sentences. The arrangement of words matters, and the arrangement you want can be found in the picture in your mind. The picture dictates the arrangement. The picture dictates whether this will be a sentence with or without clauses, a sentence that ends hard or a dying-fall sentence, long or short, active or passive. The picture tells you how to arrange words and the arrangement of the words tells you, or tells me, what's going on in the picture Nota bene:

It tells you.

You don't tell it."

"Who was this narrator? Why was this narrator telling me this story? Let me tell you one thing about why writers write: had I known the answer to any of these questions I would never have needed to write a novel."

In the Heights

Just saw In The Heights yesterday and it has by far the best soundtrack, best performances, best storyline...ever. Okay, well that I've heard in a while. Check it:

New. Year. Thoughts.

Time for the all-encompassing, reflective blog entry that speaks of lessons learned, progress made, goals reassessed in my time at home over these past two weeks. To a large extent, I was hit with a lot of things at once - returning to L.A. for the first time in six months (nay, almost 6.5?), going home for the holidays, ringing in a new year (and decade) and ultimately, figuring out what type of relationships I was establishing with my loved ones now that I have the experience of this tricky thing called "distance."

This wasn't quite the same as London, simply because that had a timeline, an impending deadline so that it was permissible for me to fall out of contact or let things ride out their course overseas because I would be back in the States in a countable number of days.

But because I've now moved to New York and made this my primary residence, I can't rightly just assume that it's okay to let relationships fall through. I realized this break just how terrible I am at keeping in touch with people - and that it's inconsiderate on my part to just hope that other people will make an effort to touch base.

Being busy isn't an excuse, and my not getting back to emails, calls and texts asap translates as exactly that: an excuse. Not only do I need to organize my life - I need to maintain it. I let so much maintenance of my living fall to the wayside in favor of just getting by day-to-day. This is the easier route. And I know that nothing that's worth it is ever easy, so why not act accordingly?

Something else I've rememberd over break (thank you, psych classes...):

In the short-run, people regret the things they've done.

In the long-run, people forget about the stupid things they've done and regret the things they haven't done.

The reasoning makes sense - you realize in retrospect that you learn from dumb mistakes. You move on and endure the consequences. But when you don't do something, you'll only learn one lesson, which is that if an opportunity arises next time, you grab it. You'll always wonder "What if?" otherwise, and that's just exhausting.

Being home really affirmed how blessed I am, to be in NYC doing what I love at such a young age (yes, I'll still call it young...); I really can't live life with excuses. Now is the time to hustle, to learn to live life through the ups and downs and really explore all your options. The 20s is the time for roadtrips, heartbreaks, marathons, new jobs, bad jobs, too many commitments, no commitments, solitude, too many people, new ventures. Settling into your life - well, you can always do that later.

This isn't to say that life needs to be lived recklessly, but there are definitely things that you can get away with when you're younger. Like dreaming. Life is short. One of my mom's dear high school friends passed away just a week ago from a 15+ year battle with cancer. She was just past 50. A month ago, my great-aunt passed away after five years of being extremely sick. She was 80. A family friend recently had three heart attacks and died suddenly on Christmas Eve. He was in his 40s. Not to be morbid, but life. is. short.

And they all lived good lives, but I wonder about the different phases that they've each experienced in life, the multiple lives they've touched, the tasks they've left unfinished. At the end of the day, isn't quality of life most important, since quantity is never guaranteed?

Life never has to get stagnant. It can, of course, all too easily, but it doesn't have to. The system. Comfort. Security. These are the things we're always taught to abide by. Living a life by a certain structure - people who deviate don't exactly fall into the categories of success we have set before us. Some rare few make the crossover, blazing their own trail and accumulating a following enough so that they end up leading the pack.

But these are the exceptions. Because while schooling teaches us to think independently, creatively (well, depending on what field you were schooled in), it also focuses on teaching us about guidelines.

Organized chaos.

Writing with lines. Art inside a structure. Jobs that follow a preset path. And while I know it would be naive of me to lambast these standards and call them foolish - that would be ignorant, for that kind of structure and system lets society function properly - while I realize this, I also know that the reason why fantasy and rebels and criminals and celebrities fascinate us so much is because they have so much abandon.

Artists, musicians, risk-takers, they live the life that we all want. They have the kind of freedom I'm sure most of us simultaneously envy and fear. But why does there have to be a separate them and us? Why can't we live these lives? Take the best of the worlds that we know and really have a hand in shaping our existence?

I like labels. On food condiments, hair products, items that I purchase. Mostly becuase this gives me a way to judge the standards of the product and item. I know a brand like Sara Lee will have quality bread. I know the store-brand bread might be just as good but will cost me less. I know about brand loyalty.

But I also know that if you remove all labels and preconceptions, these items can taste identical. So why not apply this to people? Why not stop trying to fit the mold of what it means to be an engineer, a law student, a journalist, a guy, a girl? Why not try to create an identity and avoid the labels altogether? It's scary because there are no means of comparison that way; no means, that is, except to yourself. But sometimes this is the best way.

By doing something so dramatic, you're willingly isolating yourself so you can self-examine, have no one to live up to, no expectations to meet but your own. This is what New York has done for me. It's stripped me of my labels, allowed me to figure out my own constitution, my strengths and weaknesses and how to deal with them.

Going home this holiday season showed me that life is too short and too precious to wait on the sidelines, to keep a distance between them and us. I can honestly say that I'm growing and changing every day that I write more, read more, talk more, observe more. And tradition and structure are great and all - you can't break the rules until you know them - but they're not the only way to form your existence.

Life is for living, and part of the game is figuring out on whose terms you're playing.

Thoughts, unfiltered.

I woke up this morning with a thought in my head, a strangely blissful in-between of sleep and awake and awareness. And so instead of really trying to grasp at the details of that thought, which I think would have ruined the moment, I just grabbed a pen, my journal, and wrote. And these are the thoughts coursing through my head:

I'm in New York City. I live, breathe, smell this town in a way that I never thought I'd get a chance to. Every November, as the holidays draw closer and the prospect of returning "home" begins to fade back into my consciousness, I stop. And think. About how a whole year has gone by, and what I did last year at this point in the semester (because back then, my life was measured in semesters) and what I was most concerned with at that point in time, what made me happiest and what I had envisioned for the future. Because I think what you worry about at a given stage of your life tells a lot about what's the most important thing on your mind at the moment.

And this thinking makes me grateful. Because at this time last year I think I was starting to unravel a little bit. There was the stress of trying to stay on top of classwork while interning in Beverly Hills at a job where I could tell the other employees were miserable; the impending panic of being able to find a job or have a more defined direction before graduation; the creeping feeling that I was running on empty because my mind was just veering in too many directions at once. I remember the break-in in San Francisco, the break-down in my apartment, the unabashed tumble of emotions as I tried to figure out why I was so internally stressed and still so adamantly in denial.

To say that a lot has happened in the past year is perhaps a moot point - of course it has. So perhaps a better thing to say is that a lot has simultaneously shifted and solidified within the last few months. As of the end of October, I've been in NYC for just over five months, and there are so many emotions associated with that anniversary of sorts.

Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.

I was so focused on other people's lives and helping them out so as to avoid taking a good hard glimpse at my own life and figuring out how to fix any outstanding problems. Spend time catching up with friends over dinner or a drink? It was preferential to actually studying for exams or finishing up projects, or heaven forbid, reflecting. I've always grown up as a nostalgic child, looking to the past and trying to figure out how to recreate it in my head so that it fits the mold of the steps that have taken me to where I am now, if that makes any sense. In other words, seeing my current position for what it was - at the time, on the brink of meltdown - meant that I wanted look back on my upbringing and my personality and see what it was that caused me to be so discontent at that point.

And everything pointed to two things. First, I was raised to be a perfectionist - follow-through and initiative were drilled into me from a young age. If I didn't know the answer to something, I just had to ask. And there was never any question about whether or not I would be able to accomplish something I put my mind to. I was fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by positive influences and strong role models. Failure was not something I knew, though potential was. Too many teachers, too many people always saying that I had "potential" - untapped potential - to do something. It took all the way until high school to fully understand what that meant. Potential. The only thing stopping me? Myself.

I was shy beyond words. I would hide behind a book, prefer silence and awkwardness to trying to get to know other people. But while I might not have gotten to know other people very well, I knew my own personality inside and out. My likes, my dislikes. My fears, my talents, my weaknesses. All this plays into the here and the now, the fact that I'm striving to become a journalist, a profession that thrives on, honestly, learning about yourself through other people. The focus, on the outside, is off me. I'm a reporter: I absorb, I learn, I teach. Who would have thought that a profession that's so notoriously people-friendly would in the end begin to turn me introspected again?

The point is this. At this time last year, I was doing a lot of reflecting, about how I had become the type of person that I was, just mulling over my shortcomings, questioning my own motives to stay busy and stop thinking, but today...today, so much has changed. This year I reflect on being in New York and about how my experiences have shaped me. How being independent and stubborn in my beliefs, naive at times to the ways of the world, has gotten me this far. I know people say it's a combination of luck and skill that guarantees success (and what does that word mean, even?), but I also know that I can only control one half of that equation. Sometimes I do genuinely wonder how I got to where I am, able to talk to celebrities and big-shot editors without so much as a flinch. How did that even happen?

I do know this, though: I learned early on that if you don't ask, you'll never know. So these days, I'm just asking myself more questions than usual.

Family & familiarity

This might sound really trite and dumb of me, but I hadn't realized how much I had underestimated the value of family until this past weekend. I spent the better part of yesterday out on Staten Island, visiting the extended family - people I haven't seen in nearly 10 years, all of whom still remember me in pigtails or jumpers or both.

My aunt and uncle (Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul, my closest relatives back in LA) flew out to New York for a weekend of reunions and meals and reminiscing. They're both just past 70, but are as active and social as ever (this is a common thread in my family, the longevity and the activeness). They've never had children and therefore take on any kids - that is to say, anyone in a generation past theirs - as their own.

My cousins and I all have fond memories of spending summers and weekends at their house, watching cartoons (theirs was the first house to get cable, and later, the first to have AOL back in the dial-up days), eating lots of candy and essentially having free reign over our days. They were the aunt and uncle who would say "yes" to extended bedtimes and "no" to homework, and we loved them for it.

What we didn't realize was that, along the way, they were building the kind of trust and bond between their generation and ours that would prove essential as we all began to grow up.

I got a phone call from my uncle on Thursday when he and my aunt landed in the City, and he insisted that I make the trek out to Staten Island with them yesterday, that it was important that I reacquaint myself with that side of the family. They all want to see you, he said. You've grown up a lot since they last saw you.

So I went. My aunt (recovering from some pretty intense physical therapy post-surgery), my uncle (exclaiming every two seconds about how much New York has changed), my cousin (just about to start his senior year at NYU) and I boarded a ferry in the early afternoon. Destination: memory lane, Staten Island.

A ferry and train ride later, we were in the heart of Staten Island, surrounded by trees and homes with dusty white picket fences and cars that hummed down small tarred roads. The aunt and uncle we were visiting were actually old college friends of Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul, a wonderful couple that might as well have been family, if not by blood.

I hadn't seen either of them in ages, and sure enough, they made comments about how tall I've gotten, how much I've changed, how glad they were that I've decided to move out to the east coast (But don't tell your mother I said that). It was eye-opening to see the age in their eyes, the wrinkles that crept up around their smiles, the grey that shone in their hair at certain angles.

Clearly, we had all changed.

It wasn't until their daughters, Susan and Linda (my adopted cousins of sorts), joined us, that I really felt the weight of the change. I finally met Susan's 5-year-old son Michael, autistic and so charismatic (half-Chinese and half-Irish is a beautiful mix, his dad Kevin pointed out), and Linda's fiancé Chris (she had had a different boyfriend last time we met).

Knowing that these cousins had built a life for themselves in the interim between now and when I had last visited was an unexpected shock. Usually, visiting relatives means seeing physical signs of aging, but not complete lifestyle restructuring.

From their perspective, they couldn't believe that I had already shorn my pigtails and glasses, let alone graduated from college. It boggled their minds that I was old enough to drink, when the last time they had seen me I was still disgusted by the bitter taste of coffee.

We all went out to dinner, and I just couldn't wrap my mind around the generational shift that had taken place. Michael was calling me Auntie. Aunt Jane and Uncle Paul were now Grandma Jane and Grandpa Paul. My cousins, one nearing 30 and the other nearing 40, weren't the young, flighty girls I had remembered them to be. They had something solid, something established. They were creating their own sense of home and family.

But though the change was startling, it wasn't scary. Because honestly, seeing all the interactions at the dinner table - Linda dumping grape leaves on Susan's plate, Kevin talking football with Chris, a long-lost uncle catching up with Aunt Jane - made me see just how important those initial bonds still were.

In the middle of all the craziness of moving to New York and trying to find a foothold in the journalism industry, I had forgotten what it felt like just to spend an afternoon with family. And just...be.

I've always contended that if you have your family and your health, then nothing else really matters. Things fall into place, problems work themselves out, and the world keeps turning. This weekend confirmed that. At the end of the day, what I decide to do in the coming years and where I ultimately end up will be more than fine no matter what. I've been blessed with a loving family (and an intricate network of extended family), and that support is immeasurable.

Having that knowledge is invigorating, inspiring. From a solid base like that you can really go anywhere. Like I'd been taught by the great Sumi back at USC, roots before branches.

Roots before branches.

Stranger advice

The beauty of being able to talk to random strangers for a living is that you get a heck of a lot of unsolicited advice from sources you wouldn't otherwise peg as purveyors of truth. And because you're constantly asking questions, you start to adopt a "talk to me" expression on your face that invites even the most seemingly unfriendly faces to spill their secrets and tell you the story of their lives.

I wonder if this is a phenomenon that happens often to writers or journalists in the City. It's been happening on a pretty regular basis throughout the past few months, and I think it's kind of a fantastic thing, but sometimes it's more than that. Just last night, as I was sitting on the subway on my way home to Astoria, a man in a three-piece suit sat down next to me.

Two guys hopped onto the train just as the doors were about to close, looking pretty flustered. One of them asked me for directions to Penn station, but with my headphones in I didn't hear him the first, second or third time he asked. And then when I did hear him, I didn't understand what he was saying in his flustered state.

So the three-piece man (hereafter known as the TPM) got him to calm down and gave very detailed directions not once, not twice, but three times to make sure that he understood where to go. After the two men got off at the next stop to switch stations, thanking them, the TPM turned to me and said:

"Those can be dangerous, you know."

"I'm sorry, what can be?"

"The headphones. There's been a series of robberies from passengers either sleeping or zoning out with headphones this past month. Especially on the F train. So make sure you watch your things."

"Right, thanks," I said, smiling at the nicety of a man giving helpful, unsolicited advice on the subway.

"I think those guys were trying to take your things, actually. They were just checking to make sure you couldn't hear them."

Thank you, TPM. Thank you. That could have been bad. HA.

Forget regret

The worst kind of frustration is the knowledge that you didn't do something that you should have done. Nay, the worst kind of frustration is the kind that stems from the fear that you might have missed out on something great because you chose to go a different route. You know you should do differently, but you don't.

You're to meet an old friend for dinner, but you're tired and even though you know it's a horrible thing to do, you bail on the reunion.

You have every intention to respond to emails as soon as you receive them but instead let them back up for months at a time.

You cram pet projects onto the back burner because you don't have the time for them, though you optimistically believe that the results will somehow magically appear.

Very little of long-term, lingering regret comes from things that you did do - it's what you didn't do that sticks with you long after the deed has been done. And down the line, a buildup of these regrets make you feel like a pretty crappy human being.

This past weekend, I spent a good chunk of time reorganizing and prioritizing all the bits and pieces of my life thus far in the City. I answered emails dating back through June (guilty), sent apologetic messages to important people I've neglected (guilty), and began to revamp my plans for pet projects that have been buried under an influx of everyday busy "stuff" (guilty guilty guilty). I hadn't realized how horrible of a to-do pack rat I had become, shoving everything into a "to-do in the future" pile that was slowly overwhelming my life.

It was like a toxic spill of past "didn't dos" had begun to permeate my day-to-day living.

In being able to clear out my clutter from these past few months, however, I finally began to feel like I was able to start anew with the opportunities I have set before me. Forget living life with no regrets. I want to live life with no excuses. Trying to live with no regrets is only half of the equation. Having no excuses means being able to gauge a situation and acting on gut instinct or careful calculation or both - for the sake of no regrets in the future.

It's retrospective and projective all at once.

Part of this newly cleansed agenda and style of living means I need to clear my conscience on both ends and just focus on the present. Without focus (which is what I think I lost along the way), this transitionary period can mean a lot of pulling too much in one direction or the other, and ultimately, a lose-lose situation.

You get caught up in the past, and it's hard to move into the next phase of life. You worry too much about the future and you miss out on the present.

I get nostalgic about a lot of things, but the best memories are the ones that I've left alone, not the ones I dabble in and wish I could change. In looking toward my future, then, maybe it's best to apply the same approach: stop making excuses now for things I can't predict will or won't happen down the line, and just do what I feel is the "right" decision at the moment. The understanding being, of course, that everything happens for a reason and will pan out okay in the end.

Being more direct now means saving grief down the line, and more than that, it means being able to live without excuses to justify my regrets, or any regret about my excuses.

Live life daily. Rinse. Repeat.

Why journalism?

Given the current economic climate and the state of the publishing industry, I feel like this question is being addressed in an increasingly urgent manner - by not only its consumers but also its creators. Why spend money on print material in the form of newspapers and magazines when you can just as readily (and more inexpensively) access the NYTimes online or surf your favorite specialty blog? What's the point of having a profession dedicated to a written report of the news when people are becoming their own news aggregators via Twitter and Facebook?

What's the big necessity of quality journalism these days anyways? Who cares?

I've been thinking a lot about this for a while (as I'm sure every recent J-school grad has been), and I hope I don't sound too naive or dramatic when I insist that journalists are as necessary to society as, say, politicians. Or doctors and lawyers. Or engineers and celebrities (yes, the latter are necessary too...usually).

These past few weeks, I've been working on several projects that require me to dig deep into the archives of People and unearth some articles of prominent American figures and other huge news events. And there's definitely something to be said about holding a hard copy of a 1979 magazine, poring over the pages in search of the one detail in the presidential interview that could make or break a major news story now.

There's such a sense of history and weightiness to having a solid product that just can't be replicated by shoveling through piles of e-magazines and archived digital files. When things are written for magazines or newspapers, they're out there for good. There's a sense of credibility to the words that writers use when they put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) that can't be undermined by a few strokes of the "delete" key and completely changed (or deleted) online.

And seriously, this is literally news in the making. It's a huge responsibility and a huge thrill to think that the decisions made around the table at each morning meeting - what will go on the cover, what stories and photos to run - these are the decisions that will help to shape a generation and a culture.

I realize that I'm not saving lives. Or creating energy-saving household goods. Or impacting society in a way that is deemed "heroic" - but at the end of the day, I spread knowledge, and that's the best way I know to contribute using what skills I've acquired over the years. And I know that writing, from an outsider's perspective, isn't really a "career path" to take; it's more of a hobby. But I've discovered in my four years at USC, and again now as a reporter for People, that honing the craft and being able to relate otherwise untouchable subjects in a clear, honest way to readers is something that's rewarding in and of itself, paycheck aside.

In questioning the future of journalism, and to a more selfish extent, my own future with journalism, I talked to a lot of seasoned editors and writers to get their take on starting out anew at this point in time. And the thing is that they were optimistic, encouraging about the possibilities I would come across in this ever-changing journalism landscape.

Being a part of the transition means helping to shape where journalism is going, and helping to shape journalism means helping to create the boundaries and safeguards that dictate where society flows down the line too.

Call it power-tripping or realistic revelation, but either way, it's a good way to go.

Another thing that journalism vets always emphasize is this:

There's no reason to do journalism and stick with it if not for the passion.

There's not a whole lot of money to be had, save for a select few who have paid their dues and worked their way up. The hours are insane - news doesn't sleep when normal people do. It's easy to fall victim to the workaholic syndrome because stories and reliance on other people can so inexplicably take precedence over your social life and family life. Really, if you take the genuine passion of conveying a human story, an emotion or a reaction out of the journalism equation, the picture looks pretty dang grim.

So when people ask me, "Why journalism?" I really take it to heart and think about why I'm investing so much in an industry that seems to return so little.

And the truth is that the same way completing a study or watching a class graduate is rewarding for scientists and teachers, respectively, being able to constantly learn and grow as a person "for a career" is more a return than I could have ever asked for.

Despite everything that's shifting and changing in society right now, none of it would matter if it weren't documented. And I don't mean in a quick Tweet or a few Facebook photo albums. I mean in publications that have continued to reinvent themselves and fight against critics who say that the new wave of "journalism" is all user-based and unmanageable. When you look back 20 , 30, 40 years from now and want to remember what happened when Obama won the presidency, you'll look to old Tweets and status updates and blogs to see individual reactions, sure.

But it's up to journalists to capture the mood of an entire nation and society at a specific moment in time.

...and that's why, journalism.

What next?

Graduation slipped into June slipped into July fit perfectly into August. And now, more than two months after walking across the stage and accepting my (fake) diploma on the lawn just behind Doheny, I'm looking at the next step. Now that summer internships are wrapping up and people are moving out of the City and back into the realm of "normal" life and routine, I'm left with a creeping feeling that this really does mean that I have to (and I hesitate to use the phrase) "grow up."

The more permanent aspects of life here in New York are finally starting to fall into place. I'll be moving into my apartment in Astoria, Queens in just a week's time. And though my internship should be up just one day prior to moving day, come the following Monday, I'll be starting my first stint as a full-time temp. Exciting? I think yes.

I went bed shopping today. It was pretty telling, I think, that I've never had the privilege (chore?) of shopping for a mattress - not for myself, at least. Growing up, a lot of decisions like that were never mine to make. At home, all the pieces of my house, save for the more personal (read: ridiculous) parts, like old craft projects or awesome-but-useless posters and pillows, were selected for me. In college, I never moved outside of university-owned housing because I didn't want to have to deal with furniture or finding people to sublease my place when I went abroad.

Now, all of a sudden, I'm building my room for scratch. And this time around, I don't know how long I'll be there. Everything else always had a time stamp. High school, six years (this was Whitney and we smooshed junior high and high school together). College, four years. London, one semester. Everything was set in manageable chunks. This...this is different.

It's exciting, don't get me wrong, to be able to construct in my head what I want my little piece of New York to look like, and even the most trivial things seem to be important, but it's also a daunting task. It's hard to prepare for something without a more definite end date in sight.

Without classes to return to in the fall or a projected date of return to California and "home," the things I decide to fill this room with will become my own little kind of home. The semi-permanence of it all is exhilarating, because after the more transient nature of summer in NYC, I'll finally get a chance to experience what it's like to live on another coast, with another kind of culture, in the company of other people who have decided to call this City home.

I've said from the start that I fell instantly in love with NYC, that it just felt right in a way that no other place had before. And while this is still true, looking at being in the City for the next few years or so seems like such a huge commitment that the best thing I know to do right now is just enjoy it in the present moment and not worry too much about things coming down the line. Otherwise I might just spazz a bit with the finality of it all.

Fitting, isn't it? The commitment-phobe who's afraid to commit to her own life.

I reached a point a few weeks ago where I let doubt venture into my vision of New York. My mind was pretty clouded, looking out at the people around me and starting to let suspicion encroach upon our relationships. The City can be very dog-eat-dog, after all, and I think listening to enough people tell you that you have to be strong and preemptively keep away from opportunists can make anyone a little bit paranoid. Then I took a breather and realized that spending my energy focusing on the negatives really wasn't getting me anywhere.

If things get tough, I've always been taught, then do something about it.

And if you're not doing anything to actively change your situation, then don't complain.

So I literally sat down and wrote out a list of things I want to accomplish in New York, ranging from the small (find the best rooftop bar) to the big (get published in the NYTimes) to the fantastic (train for next year's NYC marathon). And I realized that, open-ended though this jaunt is in the City, I just don't have enough time in the day to waste on negative emotions.

Being put in a different context and learning to adapt is something I've gotten used to over the years, and this New York experience is none too different. The key, regardless of situation or location, is to stay hungry and to stay humble. Everything else will follow. With so many things up in the air, though, I'll admit that it is comforting to know that I'll at least (as of next week) have a place to call home for the next few ______s.

And in looking toward the next step, that's all I can ask for, really.

I love love love.

Today was such a good day that I just don't know how the rest of the week will top it.

I know these blog posts seem to be nothing but positives, but honestly, things just keep better each day. It's a little bit ridiculous.

Life, I am humbled. Just when I thought you had peaked, you surprise me yet again.