05 January 2009
03 January 2009
Passion. Play.
I’m horribly behind with my goals for winter break. Or, really, the one major one that I had initially been hoping to accomplish by this point of break: establish a website with my resume, all of my clips, a blog, photos and other ridiculousness. And design a business card to go with it.
The thing is, I’m really hoping to pursue freelancing in the future, and I know it’s a tough market to break into, especially now. Hence, it would only make sense that I solidify an image and a product (my thoughts and writings, essentially) while I am able to take the time to think it through, so that I know how to pitch my ideas to different magazines.
It’s just that, with winter break came a whole slew of responsibilities, and I have yet to really focus and hone in on the one really important thing that could help me take that next step toward professional freelancing (is there such a thing?).
It’s just so hard to focus!
I know it’s a stereotype that writers are scatterbrained and forgetful, but to be fair, that stereotype is there for a reason. Because while I am definitely passionate about taking my ideas to the next level and carrying them out, I also get distracted easily by the upkeep of day-to-day life. Meeting up for coffee here, grabbing dinner there, sending out miscellaneous emails in between – I’m obsessed with this concept of “quality of life,” and even though time probably doesn’t permit it, I can never say ‘no’ to spending time with friends and loved ones because my passion for writing is really just an extension of my passion for stories.
So I’ve come to a conclusion (read: justification).
Hanging out with people, for me, is not an extracurricular, a burden or a way to pass the time. It is research. For my own insight. Which will lead to writing. Which, if done right, will lead to learning for both myself and for my readers. And possibly money.
Maybe lots of it.
Okay, that’s a stretch.
But really, it’s a win-win situation. My mother’s been getting on my case about why I always rush from one place to the next, or have to sit for hours in front of the computer cleaning out my inbox and returning emails. It’s because, as she says “you’re enjoying life too much” – which, by her standards, means that I am having meals with friends or chatting on the phone.
I don’t really know how to respond to that, except to say “yep, I’m enjoying it.” And now that I have a justification for my doing so, I feel a heck of a lot more productive than I did at the beginning of this post.
But seriously, I’ve got to find a way to focus in these next few days. I’m posting this in hopes that seeing my ambition in print will help me hold myself accountable for whatever actions I do or don’t take in this last week.
Here’s to honing in on the prize. If these first few days of January have been any indication, it's going to be a busy semester, a crazy year, a blur of 2009.
The thing is, I’m really hoping to pursue freelancing in the future, and I know it’s a tough market to break into, especially now. Hence, it would only make sense that I solidify an image and a product (my thoughts and writings, essentially) while I am able to take the time to think it through, so that I know how to pitch my ideas to different magazines.
It’s just that, with winter break came a whole slew of responsibilities, and I have yet to really focus and hone in on the one really important thing that could help me take that next step toward professional freelancing (is there such a thing?).
It’s just so hard to focus!
I know it’s a stereotype that writers are scatterbrained and forgetful, but to be fair, that stereotype is there for a reason. Because while I am definitely passionate about taking my ideas to the next level and carrying them out, I also get distracted easily by the upkeep of day-to-day life. Meeting up for coffee here, grabbing dinner there, sending out miscellaneous emails in between – I’m obsessed with this concept of “quality of life,” and even though time probably doesn’t permit it, I can never say ‘no’ to spending time with friends and loved ones because my passion for writing is really just an extension of my passion for stories.
So I’ve come to a conclusion (read: justification).
Hanging out with people, for me, is not an extracurricular, a burden or a way to pass the time. It is research. For my own insight. Which will lead to writing. Which, if done right, will lead to learning for both myself and for my readers. And possibly money.
Maybe lots of it.
Okay, that’s a stretch.
But really, it’s a win-win situation. My mother’s been getting on my case about why I always rush from one place to the next, or have to sit for hours in front of the computer cleaning out my inbox and returning emails. It’s because, as she says “you’re enjoying life too much” – which, by her standards, means that I am having meals with friends or chatting on the phone.
I don’t really know how to respond to that, except to say “yep, I’m enjoying it.” And now that I have a justification for my doing so, I feel a heck of a lot more productive than I did at the beginning of this post.
But seriously, I’ve got to find a way to focus in these next few days. I’m posting this in hopes that seeing my ambition in print will help me hold myself accountable for whatever actions I do or don’t take in this last week.
Here’s to honing in on the prize. If these first few days of January have been any indication, it's going to be a busy semester, a crazy year, a blur of 2009.
02 January 2009
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.
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.
30 December 2008
Where I Need to Be
The song that best sums up life at the moment (now THAT's a bold statement). Listen and love it.
25 December 2008
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.
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.
24 December 2008
LOVE.
I think my friends are some of the most amazing people I have ever met. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Must elaborate later.
16 December 2008
Home stretch
"The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can."
- Robert Cushing
Inspiration for this very last part of the semester - three stories to revise and you can stick a fork in me because I'll be DONE.
...diving right back in...
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