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.

Beautiful writing

From Thought Catalog, on How You Know:

You want to travel with them. You want to see what they’re like going
through airport security, on planes, in strange countries. You want to
meet their families and charm them to pieces. You want to nestle into
their childhood beds and look around in the dark at all their old
posters. You want to see all the embarrassing photos of them with braces
and socks pulled up mid-calf. You want to hear all the stories about
their drunken nights under the bleachers and their best friend’s jokes.
You want to read all their journals, see how they took notes in high
school. Did they use pen or pencil? What color highlighter? You want to
work with them, just to see them work. You want to go out with them. You
want to make out with them in the bathroom. You always want to touch
them; you want them to always want to touch you.

You find reasons to disentangle yourself from them; it’s only going
to hurt later, you can tell already. You stay up way past your bedtime
for them. You look at the clock and know their schedule. You neglect
other people and other things, and beat yourself up about it. But it’s
like they have a hold of your hands and your voice, and you don’t mind.
It’s like you’re trapped in an hourglass; you know your lungs might fill
with sand, but there’s something sensual and comforting about the
grains sliding down glass walls and pooling around your ankles, your
knees, your waist.

You like things about their appearance that the rest of the world may
cringe at and call strange, less than perfect. Their broken, reshaped
noses; their little teeth or the gaps in between them; the way they pull
their hair; their narrow hips; their wide shoulders; the depth of their
pores. You can laugh when funny things happen in bed. You usually want
to be in bed with them.

You think they’re smarter, better, friendlier, fitter, happier, more
productive than you are. You strive to be as much as they are, as good
as they are. You try to cheat and figure out what it is they’re going to
teach you, if they’re going to fall from grace, if you’re going to play
a part for them that you never thought you’d play before. You try and
pull patterns and threads of meaning from the conversation or the way
they looked at you the first time you met; what they did, what they
offered. An apple stolen from the bar. Notes from a guitar. Pitchers of
free beer. Pieces of bark with writing on them.

You cherish snippets of them; paste them up in your memories like old
faded scrapbooks clutched to chests for generations. Their skin glows
black and white in your head. They star in the little short films of
your life that sneak up on you when you’re not looking. Like the walk to
the South End for dinner on a quiet corner. The feel of the sun beating
down on you both at an outdoor concert. The way they ordered wine on
your first date. The slow swing of a hammock near a lake. The back seat
of their car.

You can see yourself with them in the future you can’t quite see. You
build apartments outfitted with all the right kitchen supplies and the
perfect bed with two nightstands, each piled with books and magazines.
You wait for them patiently while they chase their dreams; they wait for
you patiently as you chase yours. You sit in bed eating dinner late at
night, drinking tea and wine and whiskey as you tell each other all
about the chasing. You create adopted dogs and cats; you have awkward
conversations about money; you put up with each other’s crap. You see
what they look like standing at the end of a candle-lit aisle in your
grassy front yard and wonder if you’ll make it to the other end to meet
them or if they’ll just end up in the scrapbook clutched to your chest
or flickering on the screen in your brain.

Detachment

Just screened an incredibly gritty film "Detachment," with Adrien Brody and Christina Hendricks, for a piece I'm writing for the Daily News. A few quotes jumped out and struck a chord with me.

"To deliberately believe in lies while knowing they're false - that's doublespeak." This is also why we read, to cultivate our own beliefs.

"It is easy to be callous. It takes courage and character to care."

"Do you see me?"

"Some days, we have limited space for others."

"No one wants to think about the struggle it takes to be somebody."

"We guide our young so they don't become insignificant."

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.

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.

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.

On success

My post for this week's Avocado Jungle. Thoughts?

Success is one of those topics that can spark a countless number of debates, conversations and discussions — with others, but more importantly, within ourselves. Trying to define this amorphous concept is the root of both ambition and manipulation, the reason why some of us are able to be content without external reinforcement and why others who are superficially successful will never have peace of mind.

The truth about success, in my view, is that it is more about personal goals and drive than it is about finding a place in the human rat race. We’re taught at an early age that there is such a thing as winners and losers — labels that are ultimately arbitrary, since the process is more valuable than the end result. This black-and-white rationale can act as blinders for how we view personal achievement, and it takes some unlearning to even begin to define success.

Take something as simple as a marathon, for instance. I recently ran a 10K race through Central Park as part of my preparation for the full New York City marathon. Without a doubt there was a runner who finished the race first, and by definition, he or she was the “winner” of the run. Likewise, there had to be a person who finished last, and by definition, was the “loser” of the race. But you would be hard-pressed to find somebody who wouldn’t agree that each person who crossed that finish line was still successful in his or her own right. The mental endurance and emotional poignancy that is associated with training for a marathon is blatant proof that success is an individual experience.

How is it that this very literal example, however, often fails to translate into other areas of life? If the workforce really is the rat race we believe it to be, then why worry about finishing ahead of other people, about making more money than, owning more things than, having more power than others? It should matter more the lessons we learn, the skills we acquire, the positive changes we see in ourselves in our quest toward a finish line. Having a goal and working toward it and actually embracing all the experiences along the way — that is success.

Blindly reaching for institutions and social levels that we’re told are benchmarks of success is the surest way to ensure personal frustration and failure. It is only when we learn to let go of external expectations and begin to enjoy the process of life itself that we can truly grasp what we personally define as success, be it raising a family, giving back to the community, or even just learning a foreign language.

It’s not so much what we do that makes us successful. It’s how we go about striving toward our goals and why we choose to do them. Everything else is just details.

Self-promotion

Part of my "job," if you will, for this next month and a half, is to really rediscover my voice as a writer. Easier said than done, right? I've been sorting through old clips and pieces in order to compile them into one easy-access site for future reference, and I think doing this has brought about several conclusions.

First, I have a long way to go to get to the point I want to be at (story of life, right?). And the first step on this unpredictable path toward voice is practice. I'm going to try to push myself to write and produce more than I have before, take a more active role in the process.

Second, the reason why finding my voice is so important is so that I can better communicate my ideas; what good are thoughts if you can't share them and bounce them off others? What use is a concept that isn't brought into fruition? A thought is a thought is a thought if you never do anything about it.

Third, and perhaps most important of all -- this break in the past month has caused me to reevaluate a lot of things, chief among them, what skill set I can bring to the table. I admire so much people who've created for themselves an entire library of "Things I can do" and am just now starting to realize that I've spent too much time on the bookshelves and not enough time on the books themselves. I'm preparing but not doing, and while luck favors the prepared mind, I want to be sure I can take that next step once luck comes a-courtin'.

All this to say -- I'll be updating a lot more regularly from now on, and keeping my word too. Count on it!

P.S. -- If you can spare a moment, several of my pieces for The Avocado Jungle. Thoughts, in ordered format.

I wanna hear...

Old, but this still inspires me. (:

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."

EATS, up!

After much delay, I've finally posted and will continue to regularly:

http://manhattaneater.wordpress.com/

Enjoy!

Also, if you're in the City and have a place you'd like to try out...let me know. (:

Timing is everything

Back in the summer between sophomore and junior year of high school, I remember spending five out of seven days of the week in a cramped two-story building that only occasionally sputtered AC through its dusty vents. In the sweltering heat of that summer, I, along with some 30 other unlucky (or fortunate, depending on how you looked at it) high school students scratched numbers in margins, broke down analogies and word roots and filled in standardized test bubbles until our eyes began to glaze over.

Ah, the SATs.

Somewhere in the middle of all this cut-and-dry testing was also the preparation for a much more amorphous aspect of the dreaded exam: the essay. The prompts were, for the most part, broad enough so that each of us was able to tie a pseudo-personal experience to the theme. These cut-and-paste prompts consisted, without fail, of a profound quote followed by an all-inclusive question about how said quote was applicable to our lives. Looking back, given that we were mostly 16-year-olds in the classroom, it was ridiculous to think that we actually had the kind of experiences necessary to relate to some of the quotes.

Some lent themselves to insightful essays, others to meandering tirades about the way systems like school and the SATs were inefficient and inaccurate.

"Distance makes the heart grow fonder."

"Whether you think you can or you can't, you are right."

"Luck favors the prepared mind."

Of the many famous quotes we were instructed to scale down to a personal level, this last one always struck me as particularly interesting. I remember staring at the prompt for a good amount of time, trying to figure out, for the life of me, what it really meant.

Luck favors the prepared mind.

So, essentially, to capitalize on promising circumstances (luck), one has to have been able to forsee it. Right?

When it came time for me to teach these same SAT writing classes two years later, I always pulled this as the sample quote for the class to discuss. Was it that people who could "predict" their good luck got the most of it? Did that mean that optimists were statistically more likely to be lucky? What exactly do people prepare for?

And now I think I know a little better. Luck favors the prepared mind. So much of what is happening right now at this point in my life is a good intersection of preparation and happenstance. It's already July, and the nerve-wracking searches for an apartment and a steady job aren't quite as stressful as I thought they would be. I've done the research, I've put shoe to pavement, and now it's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

Very few things in life are guaranteed - health, family, career, friends - even the most basic aspects of our existence can be taken from us in a second. It's not being pessimistic, I don't think, but rather, being realistic. I think you discover this a lot more post-college because there is less of that structure and built-in community that so distinctly characterizes the college experience. And so all a person can do is prepare. Not necessarily for the worst, but just...for life.

It's like the reason why they always tell SAT test takers to bring two pencils. Likely you'll never need that spare one, but the way things happen, the one time you decide you don't need that spare pencil, your only one breaks. You're out of lead. And you're left staring at a test with no means to fill in those dreaded bubbles.

Then all I guess you have to do is raise your hand and ask. And sometimes, if you're lucky, the proctor will have mercy and hand you a pencil and help you out.

Because even though so much of life, of luck, is being in the right place at the right time, to get yourself out of a sticky situation, sometimes all you have to do is raise your hand and ask.

Someone will be over shortly.

Big spending

So many things come down to two factors: how much you spend, and how you spend, period. Time, money, energy, life. How you utilize your time is just as important as how much you dedicate to a given task. The quality of the things and experiences you pay for are just as significant as how much you dish out for tickets or a meal. I never wanted to see life as a transaction like this, but at a very basic level, I think I'm finding that it's true.

I tell people that I've never really liked math, but I actually (spoiler alert!) do. Given that I've found a passion in the written word, in uncertainty and crafting out the "right" answer (as well as accepting that most of the time, there IS no "right" answer), math seems to be the furthest thing from that mentality. It's regimented, exact, defined. There are rules and theories and very meticulous steps to be taken. You can't solve integrals and create your own answers, really.

But I think so much of math and economics can be used in journalism and in figuring out the ins and outs of daily life. With something as purportedly "unstructured" as writing, it's necessary to create frameworks and lists and deadlines, else I would be completely lost in a deluge of ideas, projects and distractions.

Time.

In these past few days, I've had more free time than I've had in quite a while, and it's strange on so many levels. I can see now how simple it would be to just rest easy and watch one day slip into the next, dusk turning into dawn, curled up in bed just thinking about getting things done without actually doing anything. That was my first day of down-time, simply planning out what I had to do in the coming week, and then calling it a day. But then, the unsettled antsy-ness set in.

And then, what little analytical mind I have set in (I don't have much common sense, but if I scrounge I can feign some). If I want to justify the fact that I'm paying this much money to be in the city, that my parents are putting this much faith behind my endeavors, and that I've pretty much been working toward this goal for a better part of my academic career, then I would need to get myself in gear.

Input, output.

Money.

At present, I can see two months ahead of me, and how I spend those two months will greatly impact how the rest of the year/rest of my time in NYC plays out. I started thinking about all of this because I've opted to create a running excel sheet of expenses - you know, something old, "grown-up" people do. Just to see, honestly, how much I can afford to keep trying new restaurants around town.

And that's when I realized why sites like Yelp and Timeout reel in so many users, and why reviews will always garner readership. People want to ascertain that the money that they're spending is going toward good product, even if that means that they're spending more. The majority of the things I find I spend my money on (thank you, excel sheets), are experiences, not tangible things. Concert tickets, dining out, marathon fundraising (and here I plug for anyone willing to donate to a good cause).

Energy.

And maybe this is because with experiences, you can ensure that however much money you put into them, you'll always win out because you can choose to enjoy the moment. The same way internships are only as good as the effort and energy you put into them, most life experiences are only worth as much as you make them. Hence, the things in life that are most valuable are the ones that you have to work toward. The more energy put in, the more energy is given back.

Math speaks leaps and bounds more than numbers on a page - definite answers are reassuring sometimes because they prove that there is some semblance of equilibrium to be found in our daily efforts. Spend quality time, money and energy on a project, and it's bound to give back an equal return.

Or at least, that's the hope.

That's Life.

APA gradumacation speech

After four years of college, everything's finally done. Over. Ending. It's a bittersweet emotion we all have rising to the tops of our throats now, knowing this. We've each absorbed different lessons from our classes, our family and friends, our mentors. Our experiences and our mistakes. For me, from these past four years, the most valuable lesson I've learned is this: I know absolutely nothing about everything.

College has taught me that I know nothing about life, love, or all the things that fall in between. I thought that at the end of receiving a world-class education, I would know without a doubt what friendship, love and life really are. Turns out, though, I really don't. I don't even know what this ambiguous thing we call the future is.

It has been a whirlwind of late nights, long weeks and lazy days, and now, four years later, I don't know that I'm anywhere closer to being a full-fledged "grown-up" than I was four years ago when I first set foot on USC's campus.

These are terrifying realizations to come upon at the end of a four-year journey, I know, but there's an explanation for all this nothingness that I now know so well. Really. I hope (and secretly know) that I'm not the only one who is doubtful about how the knowledge and skills I've acquired at USC will play out in the "real world." Four years, umpteen all-nighters, countless papers, a few strands of sanity and several tens of thousands - scratch that, hundreds of thousands - of dollars later, how much will my ability to properly write a lede or a lab report translate into success in my career?

A whole lot, the way I see it - though not necessarily how you might think.

******

The truth of the matter is, is that college teaches you to embrace your ignorance, and more than that, to use it to your advantage. I'm a sucker for quotes - the cheesier the better - and the one that I have tacked on my wall across from my desk is the one that's stuck with me all these years.

“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.”

Let me say this again, as the Win Borden quote does, in my opinion, bear repeating.

"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."

In other words, acknowledging that you know nothing is the start of a beautiful journey to discovering everything. You have to break down a little bit to build yourself back up. You have to jump into things uncertain, or you'll never really jump at all.

******

Let's go back four years. Imagine: it's the beginning of freshman year, and we were adjusting to a lot of new experiences. We were meeting people from all corners of the country and from a wide range of different backgrounds. You shake a lot of people's hands those first few weeks. Name? Major? City? It felt like a never-ending parade of "hi's" and "how are you's." In those first few weeks, you feel like you know a lot, that you're very sure about where you came from and what you want to experience in college.

You define yourself by your major (or lack thereof), because somehow in the gap between high school and college, you were told that you had to be a certain way and a certain type of person in order to succeed. You have to be sure of things before getting started. I know for a fact that for my first few papers for Writing 140, I would research everything, map out my outline and write draft after draft, convinced that what I knew worked in high school would translate into college.

Wrong.

My first paper back was drowned in a sea of red marks, scratches, and that ominous grade at the top of the paper. Didn't I do everything right? Hadn't I gone by-the-books, followed the step-by-step formula of Writing 140 paper success? I had just finished stacks upon stacks of college application essays. I knew myself. I knew how to plug in the parts of an equation to get the answer I was looking for. I knew.

And here I thought I knew how to write! I thought I was going into journalism. I thought I knew. I thought, I thought, I thought.

You learn, jumping from high school to college, that a lot of the things you thought you knew - don't apply. College isn't a new chapter of your life - it's a whole other book. And more than that, a lot of the things I discovered I didn't know, I didn't know I didn't know prior to USC anyway.

Confusing? Case in point:

******

That first semester, I was still under the impression that I was going to be expanding upon my activities from high school. I'm from Cerritos, California, which has a whole lot of Asian Americans, so when I heard about APASS, I thought, "Here's a good way for me to start college with some semblance of familiarity. These are my people." And I didn't think there would be very much the department or the programs or the organizations could teach me that I didn't know already.

This couldn't have been further from the truth. The only thing that I had been right in guessing was that being around Asian Americans would be a form of familiarity. After being involved with Connections!, through which I found two lifelong mentors; PEER Mentoring, through which I was able to act as a mentor; APA Student Welcome, where I was able to engage new students with the USC campus; and Bamboo Offshoot, my pet project of sorts, bringing APA issues to light through writing and reporting - after being involved with so many programs under APASS, I discovered that I really didn't know there was so much I didn't know before.

But just because I didn't know everything didn't mean that I couldn't take action and start to do something.

"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."

Having APASS as a home base has meant that I gained the foundation and the confidence I needed to venture out and put words into action.

Serving on the APASA board showed me that communication was key to getting programs, events and progress on the roll. It wasn't enough to learn about how the APA community is notoriously silent on campus. I wanted to strengthen my writing skills, my voice, to bolster it.

Speaking with younger students as a PEER mentor made me reflect on my own struggles to balance home life just 20 minutes away and college life here. It wasn't enough to learn about the difficulties of being Asian American and balancing Asian conservatism with American values of individuality. I wanted to help the next incoming classes know more about it.

More than that, I was learning about my own collegiate career as a journalism major. This showed me that it definitely wasn't enough to learn about glass - er, bamboo - ceilings and being a model minority. I wanted to turn that frustration into motivation to do unconventional things, to push boundaries and to succeed in uncommon fields.

So even though I wasn't entirely sure that it was the right step to take - especially after that first paper left me questioning - I knew that the best way I could service my community and myself would be through writing. And these last four years have allowed me to do so.

******

As I look out over the graduating seniors tonight, I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about when I say, too, that we've all spent a lot of long hours in activities and organizations and practices and meetings for things outside the classroom, for things we didn't know would pay off in the end. There is no guarantee that any of the steps we've taken during our four years will lead us to where we want to be. But remember:

"If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything."

A part of the quote that I didn't explain earlier is that, in addition to having to know nothing to learn something, you have to trust that regardless of what comes next, you'll never know completely that what you're doing is right. And that's the beauty of uncertainty. Graduating at this point in history, at any point of history, means not knowing exactly what you're getting into. Looked at more positively, that means that the world is just full of possibilities. How's that for glass half full?

It's been a long journey, to say the least, to try to figure out what you know, what you knew, what you will discover in the coming years after graduation. It's going to be an amazing adventure, one in which we all learn so much about ourselves and the world we're about to jump into.

USC didn't teach me absolutely nothing, just that I need to recognize that, stepping into the real world, I'll need to embrace that lack of knowledge. It's okay to be unsure. Take risks, ask questions, and enjoy the view when you take that leap of faith.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”

Congratulations, class of 2009, and thanks for listening. It's been an honor to speak before you, and I wish you the best in everything life has to offer.

After four years of college, everything's finally done. But it isn't over, ending, el fin. It's just beginning.

Silence

... is beautiful.

Currently studying up in law and soaking in all the knowledge this little alcove has to offer. I've never felt more collegiate, har har.

I think I want to remember this for a while.

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.