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 Love Song of J. Alfred Profrock, revisited.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats 5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question … 10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes; 25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate; 30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go 35
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair— 40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare 45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all— 55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways? 60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress 65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets 70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! 75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? 80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker, 85
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while, 90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”— 95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while, 100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen: 105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . . 110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use, 115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old … 120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me. 125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown 130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

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.

Wordplay

Heard something yesterday that kind of tickled my fancy (HA) and made me stop and think.

We should stop asking how we can get out of a challenging situation and instead ask what we can get out of the experience.

So concisely put but so true -- I think, regardless of whether the medium is religion, psychology or a blurry mix of the two, this truth, when delivered, has such a sobering effect. This is taking a given set of circumstances and understanding that nothing that has taken place is positive or negative; only our minds make it so. The concept of a person with "bad luck" versus someone who seems to have been born into good fortune -- that's all perception.

In navigating my way (both literally and figuratively) through New York City, I see that part of the reason why people can burn out here so quickly is that they fail to see the big picture, the impermanence of their situations. Stressful though a project at work may be, it too shall pass. Time waits for no one, and therefore, it's silly to assume that a bad situation will continue to be bad. The truth is, a bad situation stops being bad the instant you decide it's not. It's really that simple, and really that complicated.

Having a constructive attitude is something that I'm working on. The most valuable resource we have is (perhaps second to time) our psychic energy, and where we focus that really does determine how our days, weeks, years, and eventually, lives, turn out. Expanding focus is something like growing a plant, though. Leave it untouched and untended, and it becomes just a pile of dirt and rubble concealing a few kernels of potential.

Pretty unfortunate, ya know what I mean?

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.

Educational assessment

What is the value of education? Of universities and schooling and this abstract concept we like to term "higher education"? Several things have been happening recently that have me thinking about education and WHY it (dumb assertion, I know) really does impact everything you do later on in life.

The obvious answers are there - school teaches you a skill set, the building blocks with which to construct a career and hopefully, a life. Basic math, writing, vocabulary, reading comprehension - SATs and GREs would have you think that these are the things that guarantee success or job placement down the line. But what about those brain teasers, the logic puzzles and different games that we used to play in grade school, the ones that actually taught us more about creativity and problem solving?

I know that with the way the economy and the job market is now, the higher-ups are looking for ways to restructure the education system to better prepare students for the challenges of the real world. And likewise, students are turning toward more practical means of existence; better to sacrifice a dream now in favor of some stability and monetary compensation for the future. This is practical. This is the kind of mentality that will help graduating young adults grasp a more tangible reward for their years of schooling.

But call me impractical, but I think this is the kind of mentality that will hurt us in the long run.

I read an article in the New York Times that mentioned a change in curriculum at several universities, including the elimination of philosophy as a major because it lacks "practicality." My thoughts when I read this were varied - yes, "practially" speaking, it doesn't make sense to major in something that won't yield an immediate skill set.

But if you don't have those courses to learn to THINK and only learn how to do "practical" things, then you wouldn't ever question and invent and see the world in a different light, and then where would humanity as a whole be?

Kant? Utilitarianism? Will these words cease to have any meaning? Social engineering will become a kind of trade. Artists will create for a cause or a cost, but not just for the sake of creating. Writers will be funneled into law schools and textbooks, and psychology will give way to psychiatry. Meds over meditation. Hollow substances over concrete thought.

And then how will decisions be made? This all sounds a little too oddly Giver-like. Kids set into certain jobs early on, learning how to perform a duty in society, taught NOT to think outside the box except for a designated Giver...an elimination of feelings and color and difference. Smooth operations oiled by cooperation and standards of living.

If we don't think for ourselves, we cease to exist. We might have money in the bank, but we'll have lost purpose and drive. When we work for others, we'll not have the capacity to question the why or the how; we'll be too focused on the what.

The value of education is that it provides a solid foundation for creativity. We learn the rules to break them, know the fundamentals to build upon them. Looking back at college, I know for a fact that the classes I got the most out of inspired me to think in ways I wouldn't have thought to think (tongue twister) otherwise. Skills, I can adopt as I go. But thoughts and questions, I need to develop at the get-go.

Classrooms are only vessles, after all. It's what's in them, in the minds within them, that count.

A purpose-driven life

There's a reason why we're not born colorblind. Life in black and white, and even shades of grey, would be undoubtedly dull. And yet, why is it that so many elements in our lives seem to be defined by just this - a lack of color, a seemingly resigned sense of dull monotony? Where's the vibrancy, the pop of hue that makes each day worth waking up to?

New York City is known for its corporate culture. Reading the paper on the subway, staring at a screen all day, eating nondescript sandwiches for lunch, vegging out on the subway ride home and passively watching TV before falling asleep to do it all over again. Not exactly the most impressive showcase of the romanticized City so many non-New Yorkers aspire toward, the one wherein each day is fresh and inspiring and different. It's easy to fall into the daily grind of working just to live, to make money, to save up, to be practical.

But I read a few of the "Most Emailed" headlines on the New York Times website today, and that got me thinking. The articles that have been circulated and shared the most are about retirement, old age, mental health and career changes. Clearly, there is a trend. People spend many of their waking hours worrying about their careers (how to get one, if they don't have one; or how to get out of one, if they do have one), thereby literally worrying themselves sick. Stress leads to a weakened immune system (and probably sleepless nights and accompanying pills), which leads to illness and disease and other stress-triggered problems.

This concern over what to do with life, how to apply our skills, never ends. That is, until it really does end, when we retire. At that point, according to the NYT headlines, we start to worry ourselves over what to do with all this free time now that we've just gotten into the groove of work-life balance. How will I while my time away, stuck in the house with a spouse, having been too busy during my work years to cultivate my interests and no longer young enough to enjoy some of the activies I used to? It's a legitimate concern.

It seems as though once one phase of life ends - the bustling 20s, the strategic 30s, the settling 40s, the midlife 50s and the retiring 60s - another begins; there is no overlap. Black. And. White. And a great portion of each phase is spent worrying about the next phase. Hence the monotomy for some semblance of "living in the present" while really panicking over the future and mulling over the past.

A few weeks back, I spoke with Jason Reitman, the director for Up in the Air. He was telling me about the inspiration behind the film, which follows Clooney's character around the country as he detachedly "eases" recently laid off employees into the "rebirth" process of job hunting. He told me that he went into the film with one goal in mind: to convey the importance of purpose by showing a general lack of it in the screenplay.

"My biggest fear isn't waking up one day and having no money," he said. "My biggest fear is waking up one day and having no purpose."

Because where's the motivation then? If you don't genuinely do the things you love, then life will fly by pretty quickly and if something comes a-trotting into your straight-and-narrow, black-and-white path, you'll be completely sidelined. You'll have a map and a place to go, but no reason to travel anywhere. And then you're really lost.

You. Are. Here.

And then you color outside the lines.

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.

The Roaring 20s

The 20s aren't meant to be easy - but that fact gets buried fairly often. Nestled somewhere between the trying years of adolescence and the feared complacency of routine that characterize the teens and the 30s, respectively, the 20s are supposed to be "the best years of your life." Old enough to drink, young enough not to care about mortgages and "real" responsibilities. Idealistic enough to believe, pragmatic enough to execute.

Tacking on that label, however, can mean that those who aren't yet out of college, and those who are too far removed from the 20s, soon forget just what a weird and tumultuous time it is. Gone is the security of familiarity, with friends and family scattered throughout the state, country, world. Gone is the dependability of routine, of knowing that even the worst circumstances will come to an end coinciding with the end of a semester or school year. And most importantly, gone is the degree of certainty that there is a "correct" next step to take moving toward the next phase of life.

Being in your 20s means that, ultimately, for the first time in a long time, you really have to evaluate what it is you want, how you're going to get it, and why you want it. Prior to this vast slate known as "the real world," everything in life was comparatively neat.

Everything could be traced back to expectations. After elementary school, you moved on to junior high and high school. You worked hard in high school with the knowledge that your standardized test scores (ick) and grades would promise you success in the form of a college acceptance letter. You spend four years (or more or less) in college trying to solidify your beliefs, your thoughts, your goals as a genuinely active member of society. You expect that this, and all the things you have learned in and out of classes in your 20-something years of life, will also guarantee some form of social success. You have, after all, paid an arm and a leg for it. And then...you graduate.

Everything from there on out has absolutely nothing and everything to do with expectations. With the exception of going to grad school (this is still being in a system, in a more managed chaos), college grads are then really hit in the face with the question they should have been answering all those 20-something years ago: What do I want to do in life?

Short of hanging out with friends and exchanging woes and ideas about what it is that makes us happy, we are no longer armed with the leisurely time to really question things. There are no more classroom lessons, scheduled vacations, or discussion sections that will prompt us to think in these terms. Life after college can become pretty draining, pretty monotonous, pretty quickly.

But questioning...it's just something that needs to be done, else we toil mindlessly and just kind of drift into our 30s. And this is why the 20s are so tricky. Because the truth is, once you're out of a system, everything becomes a juggling act.

It's like piecing together a puzzle. All your years leading up to your 20s involved forming the pieces by means of learning about your likes, dislikes, interests and talents. Your 20s become, then, the years where you start to gather the disparate pieces and try to make out a discernable shape. You see what pieces you can use, which ones you can't, which ones are misshapen, and where they all fit together. But perhaps most importantly, you can, after attempting to mold all these bits together, see what is missing.

Living through the 20s is difficult because without the expectation that there is a correct route to take or a right way to piece together the puzzle, there is so much uncertainty. Life has given you enough experience and "wisdom" to recognize that you don't have all the answers and that you can't force things into place. But because the 20s involves honing and building and connecting, it's often difficult to take a step back and see that big picture.

And the missing pieces? They'll always be in the last place you look.

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.

Sifting through old writing

Found this from late 2007, and it still resonates with me:

Warmth.

The sun shines through small crevices barely formed by leaves and the thick summer air, shadows falling onto the packed dirt trail. My feet hurt from walking. My soul aches from being. Ahead, a broad river stretches across my view, left to right, north to south. It's more of a creek, really. The clear water rushes over stones and sand, pushing along debris as it surges toward its final destination, possibly a lake farther down the trail. I wait for them to catch up. I rest against the rough bark of a nearby tree, reveling in the tactile sensation of a solid something. The smell of wood and earth is overwhelming, and I melt into the safety of it all. From my place in the shade, I watch as the few people bathed in sunlight walk along the edge of the creek, looking for a way to cross it.

A man with a grey shirt stretched taut over his belly wipes the perspiration from his forehead distractedly. He bickers with his wife, a stout woman with a red visor resting atop her head. She wears hiking boots, worn from constant wear.

They gesture to a part of the creek that runs at a slower pace. A few steady rocks jut out from the glassy surface, providing a more reasonable means of getting across the body of water. It seems the logical choice. But even farther down in the distance, the creek seems to narrow to a point where it can be singlehandedly leapt over.

But it could just be an illusion.

In the heat of that August afternoon, sweat trickles down the sides of my face, heat from my forehead making its way down across my cheek and dripping along the length of my neck. I turn back to watch, expectantly, as I hear their footsteps approaching. My heart rate is slowing and I catch my breath as they join me in the shade of my tree. They look just like how I feel. Tired. I shift uncomfortably, pushing away from my tree trunk, stepping back into the intricate shadow designs that fall at the center of the trail.

Suddenly, I wish I hadn't waited.

"So?" I say, just for the sake of polite conversation as I wait for them to catch their breath.

"It's gorgeous," he finally says between a deep inhale and a wholehearted exhale. "Let's do it."

She seems less certain. She utters a wordless plea with her eyes. Exhausted. I know the feeling.

"It'll be good," I say, forcing a smile, knowing even as I say this that I don't know that it'll be okay. All I know is that at this moment, I need to start walking. And the good will catch up, or it won't.

He follows. She lingers by the shade.

I step into the blinding sunlight and reach the edge of the creek. I can feel the crunch of the pebbles and sand beneath my shoes, but I can't experience their smooth edges and grainy texture. So I sit down at the edge of the water and remove first my shoes and then my socks.

The water looks deeper close up.

I dip my toe into the creek. Icy cold, a stinging contrast to the suffocating heat of the afternoon. A welcome contrast. I feel their presence behind me, but I don't look back. I wade into the water, the sensation of cold prickling at my ankles, my calves, my knees. And then I glance over my shoulder. They're just testing the water. I'm somewhere halfway between the shores, and if I wanted to, I could crumple from the cold. Be carried downstream.

But I now long for that heat. So I plunge on, thrashing through the knee-deep water, making a scene and not caring.

And suddenly, the cold falls away from my body as I step onto the firm ground of the opposite shore.

I regain feeling in my feet.

And the sun warms me.

Countdown

Anyone who's ever experienced New Year's Eve (and that should mean everyone, sans those who fall asleep before midnight and just wake up in the next year) knows that the most important part of the night isn't the booze, the food, or even the umpteen number of resolutions that immediately follow.

No, the most important part of New Year's Eve is the countdown, the anticipation of the ball dropping in Times Square, the feeling of hope that accompanies those last few seconds before a new year arrives.

Five.

I just got back last night from my spring break trip to New York City, and I'm still reveling in the remnants of what had to be one of the best decisions I've made thus far in life. New York felt like a dream not just because it was a whirlwind of interviews and coffees and dinners and wanderings, but because it was a snapshot glimpse of what my life could be like in just two months' time.

Four.

I bought the tickets for the trip back in January with the idea that it would be a great way to explore NYC and really discover what it was about the city that drew me to it ever so much. I wanted to prove to myself that the city I was always drifting toward had more to offer than just a romanticized escape from the familiarity of Los Angeles. And I discovered that indeed, the two cities are too different to compare, and it's not that I prefer one over the other, just that one is probably better for me at this point in life than the other. I'm going home.

Three.

In two days, I had five interviews, and each one of them went a lot more smoothly than I had expected. The reality of actually picking up and moving to New York really set in when every one of the recruiters/editors asked when I would be coming to the city. It wasn't even an "if." It was a "when," and I didn't miss a beat when I told them: "June." There. I said it. There's a time element to this move and I'm going to make it happen.

Two.

Regardless of what happens in the next six weeks as I try to secure an internship or job out on the East Coast, I'm content to know that making that first move is a very viable possibility, and beyond that, a very real next step toward a city that is bustling with promise. Chalk it up to circumstance, destiny, luck, hope. It's not every day that I find myself talking to the news director of TIME or giving an elevator pitch to one of the executive editors at Entertainment Weekly. Or that I tap Elle's creative director on the shoulder and strike up a conversation. Or have coffee with the executive editor over at Time Inc.

These things aren't meant to happen, but they do. It's positive thinking to the extreme.

In NYC, and in life, anything is possible. Whether you think you can or you can't you're always right.

One.

I can.

Rest & Relaxation

Just got back from an amazing Daily Trojan retreat out in Palm Desert, and I'm feeling pretty dang refreshed. It's been a while since I've been able to literally sit and just vegetate without feeling any guilt whatsoever - and it's a feeling I think I'm going to chase in this coming semester.

Or, I mean, a girl can dream, can't she?

Time's going to fly in these coming months, I can already tell. Granted, I already feel as though I've been back in the groove of classes for some time, and I know 14 more of these weeks will whip by before I really have a chance to react, so I'm filling every moment with something meaningful - perhaps too well.

It's probably not the best thing when your fingers start itching to check email while you're sprawled out on a couch in a luxury home, thumbing through a magazine. Or when you jot notes for story ideas on your notepad while shopping for burger patties and chips. It's probably not healthy, maybe even borderline ridiculous, to mumble about lists and tasks in your sleep.

And yet, there it is: my waking hours and sleeping hours have merged to form a singular consciousness during which I plan and pace over a never-ending list of things to do.  

I think working is relaxing to me. Productivity is the key to my happiness. That, and cold leftovers and touching Christmas cards and gummi bears. I'm simple, really.

I find out tomorrow whether or not I've officially been accepted into Teach for America, so for the time being, I'm just savoring this limbo, this waiting period, and trying to relax. Tomorrow, no matter what the decision is, I'll have to buckle down and really start figuring out what I want to do with my days post-college.

Obama's inauguration speech is tomorrow morning, and I can't wait for the inspirational push I know he'll give our nation. Change never came about in times of comfort and ease, and I think Obama's perception of nonstop work toward progress as a positive thing rather than as a burden is admirable and should be touted as fact throughout the nation.  

I love rest and relaxation, but I'm ready to carry on with the rest of my life. Tomorrow's going to be a big day, and I think today's lull is something we'll be hard-pressed to find after tomorrow morning, so I'm savoring it.

New York, New York

I want to escape to a city that never sleeps. As I've learned over this past winter break, my mind is what keeps me up at night, nothing more and nothing less. It's not stress, work, or insomnia. Not really. What keeps me awake is this constant influx of ideas - with the last semester of college fast-approaching, I'm realizing that there are just so many things I want to do before college stops and real life begins, and I can't sleep because I simply can't wait.

These days, even when I try to wind down with my book of the moment before bed, I find myself jotting down notes about what I need to do tomorrow or ideas for future pieces that I harvest from the literature before me. Had a long chat with the mumsy today, something that's become quite a rarity, and she actually said that she'd given it some thought, and it might be good for me to experience life on the East Coast, if I was really that bent on pursuing magazine journalism.

"It's not that I want to get away from here," I said. "It's just that I want so badly to go there."

And that's the best way to venture out to a new place or try something new, isn't it? Not because you want to escape from something or are sick of your current condition, but because you want to move toward something new and curious and beautiful.

New York City is somewhere I want to be because there are just so many stories to be told in that small area of space, and its contradictions are so intriguing to me. How can a place so full of human interaction also be one of the loneliest cities in the nation? And how do so many different social enclaves work together and coexist given their turbulent history?

In a day and age when integration and acceptance are not only PC, but expected, I want to see what it's like to be in the center of this melting pot of cultural, economic and political thought.

I know it's cliche for writers and artists to want to venture over to NYC, but I really do see the appeal, and I'd love to experience the city while I'm still in my 20s. Romanticized? Maybe. But all the same, how can you not love the Big Apple?

Amazing food.

Beautiful parks.

Theater and entertainment.

Coffee shops.

I want to stay awake and dream with eyes wide open. Not like I get nearly enough sleep here anyway, right? Har har.

Aging Backwards

It’s interesting just how much Barack Obama and Brad Pitt have in common. Well, relatively speaking. Outside of good looks, charisma and a lovely voice, the two men have kept me thinking for quite some time now about a number of the same issues, and for this, I think it’s safe for me to draw the comparison, however random it might seem.

Prior to the start of the New Year (aka just yesterday), I had just seen The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which I semi-recommend, if nothing else than for the fact that the casting and makeup were amazing), and was in the process of reading Obama’s The Audacity of Hope. The theme of age and passion were mainstays in both of the works, and it got me to start thinking about 2008 in a very peculiar way.

In most senses, it would be logical for me to say that I think I aged a lot since the beginning of the year – back in January, I was still packing up the bits and pieces of my life here in the States for what would be 4.5 of some of the best months of my life in Europe. I ventured to London, learned about the backstreets and best pubs, jet-setted and country-hopped, and began to acclimate myself with a lifestyle I had only imagined before. This was my real “going away” to college experience, and I loved every minute of it.

It was a taste of independence that stuck with me throughout the rest of the year.

Come June, I began working full-time at a daily paper in Woodland Hills and lived with my brother and his roommate over in Westwood for three months. From the experience, I saw my own future laid out side-by-side with my brother’s, an investment banker, and his roommate’s, an assistant sports coach at UCLA. The summer gave me time to reflect on what exactly I was doing with journalism and with my career goals as a whole. Would I get sucked into the daily grind of work, home, sleep, repeat?

Not that my brother or his roommate were unhappy, but I couldn’t honestly say that they were excited about the work that they were doing either. It was a means to an end, and I think it scared me a bit to see two such capable people so devoid of passion for their work. When I initially began working in June, I too, saw just how easily I could fall into routine and the status quo, and I went through a lot of internal turmoil (melodramatic, I know I know), trying to figure out what exactly I could do to keep each day fresh, lively, inspiring.

It took a whole lot of writing and a whole lot of reorganizing for me to get back into the groove – finding a happy balance between my life and structure prior to London and the renewed sense of idealism I had picked up across the pond.

At the end of August, classes began in a flurry, and I literally keeled over in my attempt to hit the ground running. There were far too many ideas, projects, tasks floating around in my head, and the result, even at the beginning of the year, was a less-than-appealing mess of all-nighters, missed deadlines, dropped classes.
This wasn’t the formulaic collegiate life I was used to, and it was far from the kind of senior year I had hoped to have. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing the bigger picture in favor of rushing here and there to finish up tasks that I had half-started, but even so, I kept running on empty with what I can best describe now as denial.

November meant the annual dragon boat tournament up in San Francisco, and with that came a whole barrage of responsibilities that caused me to come to a temporary standstill. Post-tournament and post-break down, I decided I needed to just take a few days to reassess and process what I had been doing wrong for the entire semester, how I had let so much pressure build up to this breaking point.

It was an eye-opening, supremely honest look at my own shortcomings, and seeing those problems laid out before me made see that I had forgotten two important things:

1. I needed to take care of myself now, while I was still young – the repercussions and rewards for my actions today would manifest themselves later on down the line, and I needed to act accordingly.

2. My passion, my writing, had fallen to the wayside, and without a physical list of goals before me, I had succumbed to temporary solutions when I should have been searching for long-term goals.

Following my revelation, things in life began to fall into place once again. I heard back from Teach for America, I was elected into the editor-in-chief position for the Daily Trojan, I reorganized my role with Bamboo Offshoot, I finished off long-term stories for my journalism classes, I began to thrive on the adrenaline of getting things done because I finally had an end-goal in mind.

It was the last stretch of a long semester, but finishing out fall 2008 meant that I could start anew.

And now, just two days into January, I feel ready to start the cycle over again, sans the stress and the break-down and the horrible sleep schedules. I’ve had to replace a lot of things in my life in the last few weeks, but this also means that I get to pick and choose what I want to take with me in this last semester of college.

Packing up the bits and pieces of my life, full circle.

Home for the Holidays

Christmastime and the holidays are the best time of year to write. There’s something about the combination of cold weather, family and those cheesy Christmas commercials that feeds directly into my urge to blog, har har. After what has been one of the most stressful, ridiculous semesters of college thus far, I’m savoring home-cooked meals, hours-long catchup sessions, and best of all, sleeping in. It saddens me to know, however, that break is going by so quickly – it’s already been a week since I’ve been home. Time really needs to slow the heck down, because this is pretty much the last “official” winter break of uh…life. Fo serious.

Winter breaks have changed so much from what they used to be back in the day. I still remember celebrating the holiday season in elementary school – performing dances, songs and other shenanigans with the rest of the class for the school’s annual Christmas concert. Even high school had its winter band and choir concerts. It was embarrassing then, and would probably be embarrassing now, but having those traditions really got everyone into the holiday spirit, and I do miss having solid benchmark events like that throughout the year.

I think I even miss ugly Christmas sweaters, not gonna lie.

The family and I used to be big on the multi-family holiday get-togethers – you know, the ones with lots of food (read: rice), fruit (read: sliced Asian pears) and frenzy (read: a chance for the parents to gossip and reminisce, also an excuse for them to throw their kids together and learn to deal with awkward social situations). There were potlucks in San Marino, karaoke nights at relatives’ houses, gift exchanges and Christmas feasts at an ever-changing array of homes.

Christmas music, lighted tree, TV blaring.

Kids’ tables, apple cider, intense Nintendo and board game sessions.

It was a great way to grow up, and over the years, these family friends became part of the holiday routine. Since we only saw each other once a year, there was always something to catch up on, some new news to share, a random story to tell. It was comforting to see these families parallel my own, and in a lot of ways, act as projected representations of what was to come.

I remember when the first of the “kids” stopped showing up to our holiday dinners – he went away to college, then graduated, then started his first job. It was jarring to know that such huge life changes were happening to people we had grown up with. We had all gone from sharing toys and candy to talking about boys and the latest video games to swapping college and career advice. Parents started to move away after their kids moved out. The gatherings became more infrequent as each family got more wrapped up in their own holiday plans.

It was surreal and we almost didn’t see it coming, but apparently, we were all growing up.

Then, someone got married. It wasn’t just my imagination then. Life really was speeding by, and the days of careless candy wrappers and shoes piled high in the foyer were over.

Just.

Like.

That.

Nowadays, the holidays are spent with our own immediate families, and I kind of like it that way, though it took a while to embrace this new holiday tradition. It’s a lot quieter without hoards of children running up and down stairs and parents yakking away around a half-cleared dinner table, and the lack of Christmas chaos feels a bit empty sometimes.

But at the same time, even though I miss the kind of winter break we shared growing up, I couldn’t ask for a better one than the one I’ve been having so far this year. It’s rare for the four of us in our immediate family to be in the same place at the same time anymore, and that’s what makes this holiday season so much more poignant.

My parents are always going between the States and Taiwan to visit my grandparents and take care of family business there. My brother’s starting a new job in January. I’ll be graduating in May, and moving to New York (fingers crossed). Who knows how the family dynamic will shift again then?

Kind of makes me think of one of my favourite quotes, however cheesy it might be:

“You'll see when you move out, it just sort of happens one day. One day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.”

…except I know what I miss is real.

This holiday season, I’m savoring break for what it’s worth because seriously, for the first time in the four years since I first moved out, I feel like I’m home again.