Dream Big

If there were ever a time to dare,

To make a difference,

To embark 

on something worth doing, 

It is now.

Not for any grand cause, necessarily

But for something that tugs

at your heart,

something thing that's your aspiration,

something that's your dream.

You owe it to yourself 

to make your days here count.

Have fun.

Dig deep.

Stretch.

Dream big.

Know, though

that things worth doing 

seldom come easy.

There will be good days.

And there will be bad days.

There will be times when you 

want to turn around,

pack it up

and call it quits.

Those times tell you that you are pushing yourself,

that you are not afraid to learn by

trying.

Persist.

Because with an idea,

determination,

and the right tools,

you can do great things.

Let your instincts,

your intellect,

and your heart guide you.

Trust.

Believe in the incredible power 

of the human mind.

Of doing something

that makes 

a difference.

Of working hard.

Of laughing and hoping.

Of lazy afternoons.

Of all the things that will cross

your path this year.

The start of something new

brings the hope of 

something great.

Anything is possible.

There is only one you.

And you will pass this way

only once.

Do it right.

- author unknown

Compassion, comparison, competition

Two heads might be better than one, but beyond that, life gets a little bit crazy. Being part of a team or staff means not only working toward a common goal, but also figuring out what role each person will play in the journey toward achieving said goal. It's a delicate balance between being assertive and attentive, being a leader and a follower at different points throughout the group relationship.

I think leadership style is a lot like trying to jump into the middle of someone else's conversation. You wait for the right moment to contribute your own two cents to the topic of discussion, and successful integration is a tricky task to master. The ideal situation is that your comment or follow-up to a point made will add to the conversation rather than cause an awkward gap of silence as the previous conversationalists try to figure out how the heck you fit into the picture.

The catch is that joining a conversation means, first of all, knowing the context, and second of all, gauging the banter and tone of the talk from a distance. Jumping rope, timing the entrance just right.

Being visible without being overbearing. Deliberate without being controlling.

Diving headfirst into this leadership role is really proving to be a test of how I think, how I interact, how I can speak in a way that actually enhances the conversation.

I'm working on getting this timing thing down, that's all.

Quotables

"The clock is running. Make the most of today. And remember that time waits for no one. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. But today is a gift. That's why it's called The Present."

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.

Chasing Pavements

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.

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.