mental meanderings

hey, whadya know?

2005-11-26T18:32:00.000-08:00

You're Alaska!

You're big, bulky, and extremely wild. At the same time, you're rather
cold and standoffish, even a loner of sorts. Taming you may be one of the last great
quests of the people who do manage to find you or even seek you out. So many of them
just want to plunder you for what you have of value, but there are a few, the ones
who will stick with you, that truly value your rugged remoteness. As long as no one
is spilling stuff on you, you are truly beautiful.

Take the State Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

busy busy busy

2005-07-04T19:22:00.000-07:00

I'm walking around the Mission with A when he tells me about his Brilliant Idea. This Brilliant Idea gets tacked onto the hundredmileslong list of other Brilliant Ideas I have in my head. My temples start to pound. We go home. I feel overwhelmed. Too much energy and resources going out on unpredictable returns. New job after a stint of underemployment, means limited funding for materials. I vent. I chainsmoke. I'm stressed. I'm over it. Thirty minutes and three cigarettes later, I'm as good as new, except now I don't want to talk to anybody; I just want to sit in a quiet room with an open window and an ashtray, pen and paper. I'm currently having to settle for a noisy leather apparel company where I hear my name being called a lot and something that sounds like my name being said while the Chinese factory foreman talks with his cutters even more. I swear my name is the Chinese version of "like". Like, I hear my name, like, all damn day long. I need a new name.

Uh, where was I?

So I'm got a lot of projects going on. What am I working on right now? First of all, I'm designing and building three fetish outfits for a competition. If I get chosen as a finalist, the three outfits will need to be finished by July 30th. I keep designing and redesigning. Fetish is not my area of expertise, but hey, I'm always up for a challenge. Versatility is my name. So, doodledoodledoodle. This is not fetish enough. This one looks too "hard". How the hell am I going to construct that within the timeframe? You can sleep when you're dead. Can I cut such intricate pieces? Practice practice practice. Can I get that to hang right? Nope. Damn gravity.

August will bring custom costume projects for some people going to Burning Man. Coats and fur jumpsuits and wearable tables, oh my! (Yes, I have a client who wants to afix a small table to the back of a bodice. Um, no job too big, too small, too random?) After that, it'll be time for my 3-month review at my day job. My day job is very important to me and I want to do well. After that, website construction. During website construction, I hope to do some stuff to my house. Ten months in the Bay Area and my stuff's still in boxes. That'll teach me to give all my furniture to my dad before moving. And Shirley, my car, needs a new timing belt and rear tires. Why do you care about Shirley? You don't expect me to go to fabulous events in my fabulous outfits on a bus, do you? Tsk, tsk, child, how little you know.

Of course, my life is gonna make chaos look organized for the next few months. And you know what that means. It means it's time for an Excel spreadsheet. Oh, yes. God bless the anal retentive geek that invented Excel. Let us refer to him as the Excel God. "Go forth and filter."

i've been tagged

2005-05-24T10:31:00.000-07:00

sigh. i'm so not a music person. i mean, i love it, and i know what i like, but i don't know the hip new bands, i don't go see a lot of shows, i don't remember titles and names. interestingly enough, i've dated a lot of music people who've turned me on to some great stuff. not that i remember who or what they are...fuck...

1. Total number of records I own on CD (or vinyl or cassette):

around 100. a sad, sad number, considering i bought my first CD at the tender age of 11.

2. Total volume of music files on my computer:

none. i listen to internet radio sometimes. i have all the stuff i need to do it, thanks to A, (don't y'all just love my tech-speak?) but i don't have anything. none. pass the vapors, i think half my readers just passed out.

3. The last record I bought:

damn, it's been a long time. 2 birthdays ago, my dear sweet little sister bought me ludacris's then latest. chicken and beer? but, she was underage and ended up buying me the clean copy. i own a clean copy of a luda album! how fucking hilarious. other than that, i don't remember. people randomly burn me stuff sometimes. i think sometime last year i had to rebuy a jimi hendrix album that got lost cuz i loved it so much.

4. The last record listened to / song playing now:

some korean stuff. lines like "it's not simply a question of getting high" and "i got a pocket full of c-notes and food stamps" crack me up.

5. Five records that I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me (either singles or albums):

elliot smith's behind the bars--reminds me of some stuff i won't get into right now.

black eyed peas' elephunk--it was, for reasons i need not discuss, was the soundtrack of the summer of 2004. not a pretty summer. everytime i hear a blip of it now, all these weird thoughts and feelings start swimming around in my head, some good, some bad.

jacqueline du pre--she's this amazing classical cellist. blows my mind.

korean pop. takes me back to fun times. and i always try to keep in touch with korean culture.

maria callas, select arias. cuz she's a god. period.

6. Tag five people to do this meme...

A
Sally
W (c'mon--a guy who sings streisand's "a woman in love" at karaoke? gotta do this, man.)
my sister Chris (who doesn't read this blog so i'll have to email her)
Erika

nomadic hermit

2005-05-18T21:12:00.000-07:00

it's funny how your perception of what's going on in your life can change so swiftly, in a matter of mere days. sunday, i was feeling content; the edges of the fabric of my mind had begun to fray, but almost unnoticably to the naked eye. today, i am feeling...how do i say this without coming off whiny and insipid?...unloved, perhaps is the right word.

do not be so quick to reassure me that you're sure there are plenty of people out there who love me. i'm also sure that there are. but undeniably, every single one of us goes through that period, whether it be a fleeting uncertainty or entrenched belief for years on end, when you are doubtful of people and their love, intentions, words. when it's not a major crisis sparking the natural negative reaction, but a series of actions almost imperceptible to anyone outside your own mind. when you can't really put your finger on the base emotion word. (we are, by nature, constantly trying to name, categorize, identify things, aren't we?) when you're feeling like you're being taken for granted, not what you do but who you are, but not really being taken for granted. when you feel small, insignificant, but again, not really.

i am in such a phase now.

i have been using the moniker "nomadic hermit" for several years now, and i've encountered a person or 4 who have asked me why it is so. but z, you're a social butterfly. you love human interaction, even the most mundane. and you haven't really traveled to a lot of places either. what's with the name?

i go through these phases in my life when i want to be left alone. every year, i go through this phase. sometimes it lasts as little as week; it's been known to last 6 months. the sheer act of opening my mouth is loathesome and i want people to read my mind at work. i want to do all the normal things i do, but by myself. i don't want to go to parties. i will go to the occasional social event but i will not talk much. i'm hitting this phase again soon; i can feel it.

A once asked me what would happen if i hit this phase with him. would i not call or email or meet him either? i told him that i didn't know, since he's the first guy i've been with that really mattered to me. but i live with him now. i wonder what will happen.

to make a long story short, if you don't hear from me, i am not dead. don't worry, you'll hear from me soon enough.

i'll explain the "nomadic" part at a later time. this post is long enough.

life is good

2005-05-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

i have a boy that's crazy about me.
i have a job that i like.
i have a job that's opened up some real possibilities for me in the future.
i have been making a lot of progress in the family divorce front.
i have amazing friends.
i have a nutty crazy social life, in the best way possible.
i have a steady income that works with my current needs.
i have not-so-bad health.
i have all my body parts.
i have cigarettes.
i have internet access.
i have sex.
i have siblings i adore, who are no longer my children.
i have a working cell phone.
i have food and water.
i have a dependable car.
i have a comfortable bed.
i have been noticing that my insomnia is dying.
i have fun projects to work on.
i have fun out-of-town weekends in the near future.
i have a home, not just a house, but a home.
i have a tendency to forget stuff when making lists so i'm sure i have more stuff than this.

anniversary

2005-04-30T09:35:00.000-07:00

two days ago, on thursday, A and i celebrated our first anniversary!

i can't believe it's already been a year. it's been a great year. he's been the most amazing SO anyone could ask for. he's not perfect, but he's perfect for me. let's take a trip down memory lane, shall we? oh, come on, it'll be fun! i know you wanna...no? fine. go read someone else's less loveydovey blog. yeah. you. go. didn't like you anyway.

for the rest of y'all that are still reading:

i met A the first weekend of march. he says he had a crush on me then. i had a mild interest, but my attentions were focused elsewhere. we hook up april 28, 2004. cool! i have a great boy to boink in sf! yay! i heart sex. at that point, i was dating a dude in l.a., fritzing about with A and had a boy in san diego who was trying to get in my pants. a friend said "princess has a sexminion in every port..." uh huh. whatevs.

fast forward to june. A's first trip down to l.a. to visit me. i start hyperventilating. i think i really like this guy! ack! then late june, i have a mental and emotional breakdown in front of A cuz of some stuff happening at home. i tell him we can end things right there and then and i seriously wouldn't blame him. he doesn't budge. what an idiot.

july. he says he's in love with me. what just happened here?

august. things are going to hell in a handbasket on a tortoise wearing a pink ribbon down in l.a. so me and Shirley (my car) move to sf. divorce the family.

bingkabingka october. 6 month anniversary, also 2 months of living with A. why significant? cuz i told him i was sure we'd break up within 2 months of living together. i mean, who moves in together after 4 months of a long distance relationship? he didn't even know my last name until i started getting mail at the zoloft.

bingkabingkabingkabingkabingka now. and here we is. whoa. and i still get a goofy grin on my face when he walks in the door after work. i still get dizzy when he kisses me. i still feel my heart playing hopscotch when he tells me he loves me.

for your reading enjoyment...

2005-04-30T09:33:00.000-07:00

if you're on tribe, go read Mojave 66's blog. do it. now.

the hunt is over!

2005-04-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

i got a job. and i heart it. i've been babbling too much about it the past week and i'm tired to talking and writing about it, but here are the basics. (sorry for the vague blips.)

-i heart my coworkers.
-i can wear flipflops to work, even though it's an office gig. (i'm a "project manager". um...yeah.)
-i've been training all week and i'm tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired.
-i take the bus.
-it's in tourist central of sf so everyday i step out for a cig, i get foreigner tourists asking me "where is denny's?" and "where is bus stop?" (both in plain sight of where we're standing when they ask.) but my work is very much NOT tourism related.
-even the ceo knows i'm poly, not quite vanilla, strange, and plan to run off with my boss and start a fashion company with her after she has a baby.
-they're 420/other friendly, as long as you do it after your shit's done. and while i'm not a stoner, it's nice to know they're relaxed about me taking a hit every now and again.
-it's busy, so i'm not sitting at a desk getting all drowsy and lethargic all day. i actually do stuff!
-they have an apartment in l.a., 6 blocks from the beach, that i can stay at when i go visit as long as no one else has booked it for that day already.
-they met A already and they really like him.
-the office demographic is very mixed (meaning different races, cultures, genders, sexual orientations, alladat...)
-they buy us lunch every friday.
-i will work a half day on weekends i think around a dozen or so times a year. my first of these is tomorrow.
-a coworker is an old acquaintance of A's. small world.
-the only sucky thing is the girl i'm replacing ROCKS and she's moving to scotland in 4 days.
-they make excellent coffee at the office.
-they have a full kitchen, so i can buy groceries at trader joe's down the street and eat all week on less money and energy and time than otherwise.
-the company is doing well and expanding every year so i don't have to freak out about yet another job lost because they went bankrupt. (2 under my belt so far...sheesh...)

and now i will open up the floor for questions...

cover letter

2005-04-14T19:17:00.000-07:00

so the ad was quirky, told us to tell them about our last road trip, that they like fun and irreverant people...

To Whom It May Concern:

Hello, my name is Zoë and I am sending my resume for the Logistics Coordinator position available at your company. I'm great. All that good stuff. But you don't want to know how I had 4 different bosses promote me after only a couple of months on the job, or how I've never been fired for performance reasons. You want to know about the last road trip I went on.

What kind of road trip are we talking about here? Because me and Shirley (that's my Honda) love going places. We did the move from L.A. to San Francisco by ourselves about 5 months ago—we don't need no sissy U-Haul.

When I lived in L.A., I had this habit of driving to Las Vegas on the weekends whenever the mood struck me—especially because I have some friends out there. My favorite thing to do in Vegas is to watch my tiny Korean girlfriend make off with all the poolsharks' money at the dive bars. Don't ever underestimate chicks with too much lipgloss on. That's all I'm saying. But it doesn't really matter where I go—I'm fabulous company, if I do say so myself, especially when I'm the one driving.

Focus, Zoe, focus. Last road trip...well, there was the one time I was meandering (okay, so I was going a little too fast to call it "meandering") on the I-5 and a cop pulled me over. He actually pulled a gun on me! I'm just a cute young Asian chick in a Honda! Why would he need to pull his gun on me? If you desperately need to know the rest of this story, call me. I give great phone. Oh, and we can talk about the job too, if you like.

Sincerely,
....

my korean is slipping

2005-04-12T11:55:00.000-07:00

i don't have any korean speaking friends here in sf. and i haven't been in the mood to chat with any of them elsewhere on the phone.

i've seen two korean movies in the past couple of months. one was heavy on the military terminology and fifties colloquialisms, and the other was oldschool 200 years ago korean, which was very formal and very different. so i can't tell whether or not my korean is slipping but my gut tells me it is.

if i were still in l.a., i'd enroll myself in one of those cheap korean language schools or get a tutor. but then again, if i were still in l.a., i'd be speaking in korean almost everyday.

sleep is for lazy people iii

2005-04-12T10:38:00.000-07:00

i've been sleeping very oddly lately. no pattern at all whatsoever. sometimes i'll get very little sleep, the tossingandturning kind of sleep that is full of disjointed dreams and i'll be full of energy all day. other times i'll sleep a nice 7 hours of good nowakeyinthemiddleofthenight sleep and i'll still be exhausted and need a nap midday. my theory is that my body gets so little of the nicesleep that when it gets it, it's so excited it wants some more and tells my brain that i am getting vewwy sweepy...you are getting sweepy...zzzzzzzz...

the nightmares are coming less frequent. the ones that recall scenes from my past are even more infrequent, replaced by dreams that A is trying to break up with me. nice. thanks, subconscious. loveyoutoo.

which brings me to my latest sleep dysfunction. (sigh. there are just so many...) physically, i'm more comfortable lying on the couch. otherwise (you know, that hippydippyemotionalmental crap) i much prefer sleeping in bed with A. we cuddle before we fall asleep, but our favorite position to actually sleep in is laying on our sides with our butts touching. so my nightly routine (more often than not) is to snuggle with him until he falls asleep, go downstairs, and do stuff laying on the couch until my eyelids are so heavy i can fall asleep anywhere and then go upstairs and pass out on the bed. it seems to working okay for my sleep health overall.

update

2005-04-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

so i'm still looking for a job. i'm tired of looking, but i'm more tired of bitching about it so i won't. my friends and SO get enough of it in the meatspace. i got news today that i didn't get yet another job i interviewed for. whatevs. i'm proud of myself. instead of moping around, i got on it. i sent out more resumes today than i think i ever have in one day.

things with A are good. our 1 year anniversary is coming up at the end of this month! it's proof that i'm not a numbskull and am capable of sustaining a healthy relationship for longer than a few months!

things are pretty quiet with me. just livin' life and stuff. jobhunting and upkeeping the zoloft during the day, hanging with friends and/or A in the evenings. excellent sex. more food experiments. we had a dinner party here a while ago and i have some new korean food converts! mwahahaha~ and all without MSG! but i won't tell you what else i put in there...

my mom's anniversary came and went with considerably less drama than previous years, thanks to A, mynx, and all my other amazing friends. i did the week of mopeydopeymoody crap. moving on. my mom would not want me being that way for too long. basically, whenever i feel sad about my mom dying, i tell myself it was all for the best. my mom finally got her rest away from cancer, bratty kids, a country she never wanted to move to, and a filandering violent husband. and for what it's worth, i got the life experiences that shaped me into the person i am today and i didn't turn out so bad. ;)

well, that's the update on my life. any questions? i promise to blog more exciting stuff in the future.

virgin suicides

2005-03-28T13:08:00.000-08:00

have you seen or read it? it's one of my favorite novels, favorite movies, favorite adaptations.

today is a virgin suicides mood day.

everything is in slow motion except the wind. the air is sunny and bright, with a dreamy candy-coating over the day's hustlebustle so thick and sweet that i'd like to slice the unbreathable skin open with a razorblade.

if you know, you know. otherwise, i see a netflix request or library visit in your future.

A has lost his mind

2005-03-10T00:56:00.000-08:00

late night conference call to germany.

he's all red and sneezy cuz his allergies are acting up and he's sitting there, with his headset on, plucking out eyebrow hairs with his fingernails.

he looks like a certifiable Crazy Person.

yes, ladies and gentlemen, he has just lost his mahbow.

i love him.

random lyrics

2005-03-09T22:38:00.000-08:00

i'm in love with the world
through the eyes of a girl
who's still around the morning after

-elliot smith

i can't stop singing this verse. it's so sad and so not at the same time in this weird, "uh- huh, i know what you're talking about" sort of way. hrm.

when worlds collide

2005-03-01T11:14:00.000-08:00

and did they ever last night in my head.

my dreams are usually pretty insane, but last night was just bizarre. i mean, the other night i dreamt i got rejected by a vietnamese midget circus performer and i still think this dream is weirder.

it was a long dream and i'll try to keep the description short.

illegals. tricked out hondas and bentleys(!). shiny chrome everywhere. underground hiphop thumping LOUD in every corner. an art gallery. drawings put up in quads (some of the shit was just AWFUL). judges picking 2 pieces--the artists had to race one another. and then draw again. and so forth until you hit the ultimate champion--of drawing and racing. (wtf?)

so yeah, i love bentleys (not tricked out ones--ugh.) and want to own one eventually, i currently own a non-rice-rocket honda, i listen to hiphop, my work has been in galleries, i've entered plenty of contests, i've been to illegals, dated a riceracer, i've got riceracer friends but obviously this is not everything about my life. more my past, but also not everything about my past--especially not the significant bits.

it was just weird. and why was that fugly chick that did that duet with fabolous running around in a blue fox gucci chubby hitting up all the boys?

desperate housewife

2005-02-25T16:06:00.000-08:00

without the ring. not that i want the ring. anyone else see the ring = mini-collar? hrm. maybe i see it that way cuz i've got such fat fingers.

anywhoo, so i played suzy homemaker today.

today i:
tidied up around the house
made up a grocery list
made up a to-do list for stuff i need to do around the house with A
checked 3 times for a package from FedEx

okay, that's not ALL i did today, but as i sit here with my sewing kit, neatly sewing on a missing button on one of A's shirts, i can't help but think--this is not why i learned to sew. this is the very opposite of why i learned how to sew. i learned to sew cuz i needed to know how to construct garments so i can become a better designer, not so i can offer up to my husband the results of my day's efforts.

i need a fuckin' job, dood. surely, i must be craig's list's #1 visitor by now.

what the fuck do i want anyway???

2005-02-18T19:58:00.000-08:00

damn my korean upbringing for fostering such a superstitious nature in me!

okay, not really.

i've been noticing signs everywhere--signs that i should open my own company. i talked to A about it, asking him whether he thought the signs i was seeing could be interpreted that way or i was just crazy. he said that he didn't think that the signs were pointing me in a certain direction, i was seeing them as pointing me in a certain direction because deep down that's what i wanted.

hrm.

i argued. it's not the right time for me in my life. it would be too hard. almost impossible to get started on a very practical level. reason after reason i gave him why i can't do it right now. later. i gotta take care of some stuff first.

fast forward to a dinner party a couple of nights ago. i was talking to the hostess, this amazing woman, T. T and i were talking and the conversation turned to my jobhunt. T asks me, "so what is it ultimately that you want to do?"

and without hestitation and to my absolute horror, the words "i want my own company" tumbled out of my mouth.

good news

2005-02-18T19:52:00.000-08:00

i got some good news yesterday. really really really good news.

often i think that life has dealt me a shitty hand. then i think that all of my small successes are all that much sweeter in the end because nothing was handed to me, i had to crawl on all fours with a gimp knee to get it.

5 years i chipped away slowly at this block of crap that was dead weight on my shoulders. yesterday, i found out that all my efforts were not in vain. i feel gooooooooood.

i'm alright...

2005-02-18T19:49:00.000-08:00

sometimes i forget to pat myself on the back. sometimes i do something good and i'm so obsessed with doing it better that i forget that it was still good to begin with. sometimes, it's okay to cut myself some slack.

S, thanks for reminding me.

morning meanderings

2005-02-16T09:25:00.000-08:00

i got my alumni newsletter via email this morning and a few things came to mind:

1. i went to school with some frickityfrick talented muthafucks.
2. i went to a school with a lineage of frickityfrick talented muthafucks as alumni.
3. what the fuck am i doing?

which brings me to my jobhunt. the jobhunt has been giving me no love. no love at all. but that's okay cuz i'm loving life. no, really. how could you not love life? life has such a great fucking sense of humor. only life could be so riproaringly funny as to send you phone interview after phone interview and the one time you have to go on a face-to-face interview, you get a big ugly coldsore on your upper lip.

untold scandal

2005-02-15T11:50:00.000-08:00

it's a korean adaptation of "Dangerous Liaisons". here's the official blurb first: beautiful cinematography, perfectly cast, actors all did brilliantly. the story, of course, is flawless. the ending is a leetle different, but not really.

sigh. the movie is so ripe with sexual tension you don't realize you've been breathing very quick and shallow exhales for 2 hours until it's over. you'll want a cigarette even if you don't smoke.

watch it. you'll thank me. if you're currently seeing someone, they will thank me too.

why A is the best

2005-02-12T08:16:00.000-08:00

i'll spare you all the many reasons, BUT, i HAVE to post this.

yesterday was pretty fucking miserable. crappy morning, crying. (I'm not really a crier.) A tried to make me feel better but i was pretty inconsolable at that point. he went to work. my crappy day progressed, spiralling downward and upwards a little bit with some phone calls.

so guess who comes home an hour early from work. with fresh orchids. and a valentine. and a bag full of groceries to make one of my absolutely favorite meals (did i mention he rocks the poo in the kitchen?). and a DVD of a movie i've been dying to watch for over a month now. i've never had anyone take care of me like that before.

needless to say, the movie remains unwatched. priorities, dood, priorities. after a pick-me-up like that, you gotta thank a man properly, ya know?

what do you do with your anger?

2005-02-11T17:50:00.000-08:00

what do you do? how do you not let it consume you? how do you not let yourself lash out at other people? i tend not to lash out at other people (anger displacement is SO 1999) but sometimes it takes all i have to not punch a pillow or scream or something.

i had a really bad morning and ended up crying myself back to sleep. i had the most horrific dreams i had in a long time. in the dream, several things were happening. i had a millionaire boyfriend, much older than me. a rhett butler type, tall, dark, handsome, clever. he and i were having a great time. then i went back home, which was the 4 bedroom apartment i used to live in in junior high. nice back then, but in the dream, it was too cramped--there were too many people living there. my rhett butler boyfriend ended up dying of an illness he kept hidden from me and i ended up finding out about it from his wife, who he also kept hidden from me. there were some other crazy things with family drama and my stress-activated claustrophobia and i was getting angrier and angrier in my dream. finally, something my kid sister C said was the straw that broke the camel's back and i ended up beating her. i threw her to the floor and started kicking her over and over and over again and picked her up by her hair to throw her across the room. she was screaming "no, unnee, don't, not again, please not again..." over and over and i woke up.

for those of you who don't know, C is my pride and joy. i love her unconditionally. i love her above all other humans, animals, inanimate objects, social causes, and places. she is my sister, daughter, friend, confidante. i would, if it came to it, joyously and unhestitantly kill whoever hurt her, and in my dream, i was the one hurting her.

i woke feeling really messed up. really disoriented. i called my best friend G. she doesn't coddle me, but somehow, she always manages to say the right thing, even if she doesn't think she is. she is also my cousin. we met when i was 4 and she was 8 and we've been through so much crap together and separately we could write volumes upon volumes. we pretty much grew up together. i didn't tell her about the dream, but after i got off the phone with her, i felt better. the thing with G is that i don't even have to explain things cuz she already knows. we have so much history together and she is the only one in the world who knows the complete truth about me. (no, A, you can't call her--she's loyal to ME. but she did say "hi" to you earlier.)

i don't know what i'm typing anymore. sometimes i push myself too hard and i get dissapointed in myself and get angry. sometimes, shit happens beyond my control but i get angry with myself anyway. sometimes i forget i'm only 25. what do you do with your anger that doesn't hurt other people? i'm not the type of person to hold grudges (except with myself and my dad) and usually, the next day, i feel better and move on. but is that the healthiest thing to do? just wait until it passes?

happy humpday!

2005-02-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

most people get the mondays. i get the wednesday humpday stickyickyickies.

i like mondays. and tuesdays too. they are overall my most productive days. regardless of how much or little rest i got over the weekend, i feel all energized monday mornings and get tons of stuff done.

this past monday and tuesday, i: cleaned the house, did my taxes (federal and state, all on monday and tuesday), sent out a dozen resumes, did all my banking and billpaying for the month, organized my event calendar for me and me-and-A, photoshopped and collaged a bunch of pictures from a party on sunday, ran errands, picked up a check from across town, drove a sick friend on an errand across town, made grocery lists for 3 different stores, blogged, tribed, returned all necessary emails, planned a dinner party and still managed to squeeze in a nap on tuesday, have sex and go to 2 different get-togethers last night.

today, i feel blah. not depressed, not sad, not even remotely blue. just blah. not productive. i'd sit in front of the tv if ours worked. today, i cleaned the kitchen, bookmarked some jobs to email resumes to and had sex. that's it. i realize it's only 12:30 right now. i should have more stuff done, considering i woke up 7am. bah.

okay, i'm gonna stop typing now. i'm gonna pick the lint out of my belly button and let my eyes glaze over the computer screen.

he gets an "A" for effort part iv

2005-02-08T15:15:00.000-08:00

my dad has these ideas on what makes a good father and thinks that he's done an okay job overall. one could say these ideas are outdated, but considering his background, it makes sense to me. his idea of being a good father and husband is providing material comforts. he's not a nurturer, he's a provider. you don't need to worry about where your next meal comes from, he does. you don't need to worry about bills, he does. you need a computer for school? daddy will take care of it. you need new winter shoes? daddy will take care of it. you got a cut on your knee? daddy will buy you iodine and bandaids but mommy will have to help you with the rest. in return, you should respect him for being the head of the household and be grateful for everything he provides for you. antiquidated? sure. unreasonable? not really.

in this day and age, women are supposed to be nurturers at home as they've always been and now also (at least partial) breadwinners. men, who were used to just making money and letting their wives take care of the rest, are now put upon by society to be just as active in household and family duties. it is only in recent years that society demands and cultivates mulittalented multitasking in parents and in korea, it's most certainly even slower in this section of social progress. i never expected him to change and "modernize" himself. but lo and behold, guess who's cooking dinner at home? not my 17 year old sister--my dad. i can't ever remember a time when he cooked a meal two nights in a row.

i have mixed feelings about this. why couldn't he have been more helpful around the house when i was living at home? why is it that i worked so hard and so long to get him to slowly change and mature and cope better as a single parent and now my siblings are the ones reaping the benefits? i took their beatings for them when we were younger, while pleading with him to work on controlling his temper and now i feel like the cubicle worker who got their overtime pay and christmas bonus sent to the wrong guy.

and other times i'm not quite as angry. most times, i'm just really glad that the violence ended with me. i'm stronger than my siblings are. i can handle it and move on. i'm glad that i don't have to worry too much about what happens at home while i'm not there. there's a peace of mind that comes with that that has been *my* overtime pay. if my siblings can look back at their childhoods with more fondness than i can muster, it will be worth it to me in the end.

there have been many moments in my life when i have thought that people like my father should never have had kids. and i've told him that before. yes, i realize that that means i would never have been born. it goes to show you how much i used to hate my life. at this point, i'm hoping that my dad will be able to take away some good from our old conversations, lessons from his anger management classes and church and apply them to his life. i hope that some day he'll find that peace he so wants and needs and that he'll live long enough to enjoy it. i fervently hope some day he'll find calm as easily accessible to him as his rage is. he has a good heart and optimism going for him. part of me hopes that someday he'll realize how much heartache he put me through and apologize and another part of me hopes that he never knows that he was the one who made my life such a living hell and that i'm still recuperating. did i mention that my relationship with my dad is rather complicated?

i also hope for the same peace for myself. one day, i'll be able to let go of this rage and bitterness pounding against each other inside my head. one day, i'll be able to forgive him. i'm almost there. almost.

he gets an "A" for effort part iii

2005-02-06T13:01:00.000-08:00

during my mother's first round with cancer, my dad started leaning on me heavily for help around the house and with my sister. when my mother died, i became the 2nd adult in the house, a role i had been assuming for a couple of years already. even with an actual 2nd adult in the house, my father repeatedly would come to me to vent, discuss, seek advice or a second opinion, use me as a sounding board for ideas regarding the household and his businesses. i was his housekeeper, nanny, administrative assistant, business partner and english translator for years. at some point, i forgot to be his daughter. oops.

it's easy to dismiss him as an abusive father who demanded more and more from me as the years went on, to hate him, to to mock him for his many shortcomings. but it's precisely those conversations and discussions we had over the years that his smarts and sense of humor, his good intentions and sincere efforts, deep love and sense of responsibility for his family were revealed to me. his rage issues and addictions to gambling and drugs have hindered his ability to follow through with those good intentions, especially in most recent years, it's true, but he's trying to do better. as low as he goes, he'll always come to a point where he reflects on his behavior and tries to improve. that's why it's impossible to hate this man completely. he's currently going to anger management classes. he's recently started going to church. i'm starting to see real positive changes in him.

he's a complex man, and i have quite the complicated relationship with him, to say the least, but at the core, he is constantly battling with himself to be a better father and that is how i can still love him while at times i absolutely loathe him. he's made mistakes, some he sees, others he doesn't. he sincerely believes that the way he raised me was not abusive, but merely harsh disciplining, but he also admits to being harder on me than my siblings because i've always been his favorite, the one with the most potential. he had this dream of helping his "favorite" become "perfect".

how do you make sense of that kind of logic? do you know how many times i've asked myself whether or not all this verbal and physical abuse was something i was overexaggerating in my mind? it's only been in the past 2 years or so that i could confidently without-a-doubt say, yes, my father abused me. you do not discipline your children by throwing household appliances like vacuum cleaners at them and telling them they're too fat to find anyone who'll love them. i know it sounds ridiculous, but that sort of realization came slowly, stunted by my father's very persuasive reasoning being interpreted in a mind warped by loyalties to keeping the peace at home at all costs. i never fought back; i didn't want my siblings to hear yelling for any more than they had to; i didn't want them to think they could disrespect their father by talking back to him.

bragging time

2005-02-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

just got off the phone with my sister, C.

she fucking rocks. even if she wasn't my sister, i'd want to know her. but this post is not about how great her personality is.

C is 17 and is a senior at one of the most competitive high schools in the greater L.A. area. she has a courseload that includes 3 A.P. classes and has a 3.7ish GPA. she is also involved in different volunteering programs and worked part-time jobs involving cleaning beaches, canvassing money for greenpeace and helping out at elementary schools in poorer districts.

she is in college application mode lately. she's still waiting on responses from a few schools and different scholarships and things but, as of now, she has been accepted into 4 of the 6 universities she applied to (she's still waiting on 2 schools), including her top 3 picks, AND just received a letter awarding her a $20,000 scholarship from her top choice school.

i'm so fucking proud of her.

he gets an "A" for effort part ii

2005-02-04T13:06:00.000-08:00

they were vigilant in proving to themselves and their families that they could succeed in america. damn, some of the rat infested hellholes we lived in during the poorest years...we moved a lot, once a year for a while, to better and better apartments to better neighborhoods as our financial situation improved.

all their hard work rewarded them with a temporary respite. in 1991, he had 2 kids and a beautiful wife, who was thankfully in remission from cancer. his business was thriving and he was immensely proud of the fact that he had enough money to have his mother live with us (which she had for about 4 years by then), present her with a healthy monthy allowance and send her to korea every year for a month at a time. we lived in a 4 bedroom apartment in a pretty nice neighborhood and for the first time, my dad was looking at the possibility of buying his own house. even in that apartment, being able to afford a place where his kids and his mother each had their own room was huge source of pride for my dad because it's a luxury the majority of middleclass korea can't afford. (korea is a very small, very crowded country, making space a highly desirable and expensive commodity.)

his happiness was short lived, however. his wife and mother died within a mere 15 months of each other ('92 and '93). after multiple funeral expenses, his dreams of buying a house was put off indefinitely. (his mother died and we had a traditional korean 3day wake at the house, entertaining and feeding guests who came to pay their respects. then he took his mother's ashes to korea for another funeral. my mother only had one funeral. :P ) while sick, my mother managed to have a baby boy, almost literally in between rounds of chemo. he was suddenly a single father of 3, including a 1yearold baby he had no idea how to care for.

life has not exactly heaped blessings on this man, even after the initial intense grieving period was over. (how do you even fully recover from such close deaths in your life in such a short period of time? can you even fathom what it must be like to be making dual funeral arrangements for your mother, whom you absolutely adore, while trying to take care of your wife who is getting sicker by the day?)

after all the things that have happened to him in his life he is still almost blindingly bitter about one thing: they, especially his wife, passed away *just* when things started getting good. during her illness and after she passed away, the store started doing really well and he made a huge profit selling it. he still speaks bitterly about how he really wished she could have at least tasted some of the outcome of all of her hard work. when they were poor and struggling, he would try to make her feel better by promising her that someday they was going to be rich enough that she wouldn't have to work, she could stay home decorating the beautiful house he was going to buy her with the flowers from the garden she so wanted to have and would be able to plant in their backyard. he ended up buying that beautiful house while with a woman who was so incredibly spoiled that she appreciated nothing.

yeah, he made a lot of money. the money from the malpractice suit he slapped on my mother's doctor didn't hurt either. (um, hi, you know how i had cancer before? now i have this weird persistent painful cough even though i'm not a smoker. what do you think that is? oh, a cold? um, are you sure? really? did i mention i just got over cancer barely a year ago?) he was in a relationship with a substance abusing woman who encouraged his own addictions for three years, who in turn used that as leverage in their fights. later he met and fell in love with a wonderful woman, who later became my stepmother. when the money went away, so did my stepmother's respect for him and i don't think anyone deserves that kind of shallowly conditional respect.

feel sorry for yourself day

2005-02-04T10:56:00.000-08:00

i declare today as "feel sorry for yourself" day.

everyone needs one once in a while. it's rather good for you, really.

i will spend a day wallowing in my misery. i will let myself mope and cry and tell myself it's okay to feel like shit sometimes. i will remind myself that life can get rough and i'm human and it's fucking impossible to be upbeat and optimistic 24/7/365. sometimes you can't feel good about other people's victories. sometimes you can't smile. sometimes, you just DON'T FUCKING WANT TO. when life throws a smackdown on your ass, sometimes it feels good to just lie there, licking your wounds a little before you get up again.

the point is, i WILL get up again. just not today. tomorrow i will get up and jobhunt and network and take care of life's errands. tomorrow i will be hopeful and optimistic and love life with all of its ups and downs and loopdeloops and tangents and swerves all over again.

tomorrow.

cuz today, i am beat. i am beat down and feeling sorry for myself. i won't go into all the reasons. i will sanction this day to pour out and wallow in all my negative energy so i can be in submerged in it so thoroughly that i will tire of it by tomorrow. then i'm going to take all that negative muckitymuck and chuck it all out the fucking window.

do you believe in reincarnation?

2005-02-03T19:32:00.000-08:00

i do. okay, not really. but i have reason to believe i'm my father's sister reincarnated. okay, not really. just check this: my dad and aunt totally think i'm their dead sister.

my dad has one older brother (the oldest) and 3 sisters. (he's the youngest.) the oldest of the three girls died when she was in her early 20s, years before i was born.

unbeknownst to me for the longest time, but beknownst to my dad and his sister, i am very much like the dead sister. looks, body type, mannerisms, interests, speech patterns (when i'm talking in korean, anyway), the way i sit, the kind of foods i like to eat, all like her. they would whisper to each other about it all the time. at restaurants, when i would order her favorite dish. at home, when i would sit on the floor just like she would. they never told me about this for the longest time.

then my father went bonkers on me. okay, not real bonkers but kinda.

when i was in high school, i decided i wanted to take russian for my foreign language credit. when i told my dad of this plan, he gave me this really spooked out look. he started telling me about his sister. apparently, that sister i resemble so much worked for the government as a korean-russian translator and was on her way to work one day when she got run over by a car, killing her. he thought i was his dead sister, reincarnated, and if he let me take russian, then i was going to die in the same way.

i told him he was crazy and that i was gonna go ahead and take russian anyway. he told me he realized he was being irrational but it was really spooky. i told him not to worry--i had no plans in a career in translation work.

see, dad, i'm in my mid-20s now and i'm not dead! (but my russian skills are. yeesh.)

he gets an "A" for effort part i

2005-02-03T19:22:00.000-08:00

he's a good guy, my father. so for those who have read my entire blog, you may have come to the conclusion that i hate my father and he is indeed a despicable guy. not true and i apologize for making things seem that way.

i have a very complicated relationship with my father and the reason why i decided to "divorce" him was because over the years, we had unwittingly built this codependent relationship between us and i finally put my foot down to end that. i still love him dearly, and worry about him and his health. my youngest sibling is only 13. my mother passed away almost 12 years ago and my stepmother has run away. i want him to stick around not because i need him to for my brother's sake, but for his own sake. my father has not had the most happy life and i want him to stick around so maybe at some point, he'll live long enough to find some of the peace he so desperately sought for so long.

there's this saying: "those who face hardships in their youth will be blessed in their latter years". or something like that. i remember this because my unnees and opbas (big "sisters" and big "brothers") growing up would tell me that whenever i was feeling depressed about my life. and i held on to that hope, that almost flippant little quote that could only be spawned by a culture so fully steeped in superstition.

i think the opposite has been true for my father. my father was the youngest son of an incredibly wealthy man in korea. he was treated like a little prince growing up. my aunt, his older sister, tells us the most ridiculous and ridiculously funny stories of the 2 of them as kids. the end of high school brought for him the end of it all. by the time he was 20, there was nothing left of his father's empire--all had been invested poorly, lost, gambled away, or poured into medical expenses for my dying grandfather. my father spent a few months at the hospital, sleeping in the cot, taking care of his dying father while his siblings went off to live their own lives. even then my father had an immense sense of responsibility to family. finally, his father died and he could no longer sleep at the hospital. he really had nowhere to go.

being poor is hard enough, but being used to limitless money and then suddenly being virtually penniless is in my opinion even harder. he's the only one out the 5 kids that was denied college. (in korea, there wasn't much in the way of financial aid. you're either a genius or you have money. no in between.) working crap job after crap job, bouncing around from relatives' houses, he was on the verge of homelessness because he had no work ethic and no discernible skill set from being a rich man's son his whole life until the army recruited him for his mandatory service.

he got married and then shortly after the honeymoon, he left his bride and newly born baby (me) to try to make things work out in a new country. hearing about my dad's financial problems, my aunt had him come out to orange county, where she owned a grocery store with her husband. off he went, eager for anything that would change his luck. i strongly suspect that it was about this time when he started dabbling in drugs that would later lead to addiction.

once he got to the states, he rented a small studio in L.A. and "sublet" his couch and floorspace (just enough for 2 bodies) during the night to people who needed a cheap place to crash. he added that money to the savings from his day job as a stockboy to bring us over to the states. he was finally able to bring us over when i was 4. my mother never wanted to come to the states. she loved her family and her home very much and had no desire to leave. their marriage had extreme highs and even more extreme lows. things worked for a while. a lot of struggling. a lot of hard work.

disjointed dream

2005-01-31T11:27:00.000-08:00

nothing too freaky and dark, but so strange and disjointed and funny and absurd i had to share. there's no cohesive storyline, but flashes of my dream last include:

frisbee was married to my dad
and then she told me she was gonna have an affair
and then i got mad at her
so she changed her mind
and decided to leave for a year long trip around the world
with his money
without telling him
but with telling me
and i got even madder and she didn't understand why that upset me
so she left

all of a sudden
frisbee is wearing a blue jacket and ivory tulle skirt and pointy toe shoes
a la the derek lam outfit i just read about in the article trouble got me to read
(the article is in real life--yeah, i read stuff on paper.)
and then
there's paul, the bartender from thieves tavern
sitting in the back of a station wagon
with the back door open
frisbee gets in
and gives me a dirty look

then i'm in an architect's studio
an ex is working there
he's showing me his work
apparently
according to him
i am an extreme "yang" as opposed to "yin".
whatever the fuck that means.
he tells me he never meant to leave me but he had to because he had to disappear cuz of tax problems at the studio he works at
what the fuck? he never left me in real life--we just sorta drifted ways.
anyways, i cry and i say okay and we kiss passionately
which is weird cuz i never kissed the guy
well, on the lips, anyway. *snort*
(you guys know my kissing thingie)

and then i'm sleeping on the couch in a yellow kitchen
and the tv is on too loud
it's raining outside
and then i look at the clock
and then i roll over and turn to A
and tell him it's time to wake up
and then i go back to sleep

oh, and for the peeps who don't know this, "frisbee" and "trouble" are actual names of my friends.

ah, irony

2005-01-29T22:48:00.000-08:00

gotta love it.

i write what i think are interesting posts and no response. then i get sick and start rambling incoherently about stupid shit off the top of my head and i'm starting tribe threads. maybe i have a screwy sense of what's interesting. as long as we're on the subjects of A and my family, a bit of a conversation about A with my siblings, ages 17 and 12 and 12 at the time. they know a teeny bit more about my love life than my parents do. just for those who didn't already know, i only dated around before A. he's my first longterm.

so you're gonna live with this guy?
yeah.
what's his name?
A----
i don't like it.
well, he's not your boyfriend. you don't need to like it.
i'm gonna give him another name. i'm going to call him "sleeps-with-zoe".
he's israeli, not indian.
oh, unnee, you're so un-PC. that's "native american".
he's not that either. he's not even an american citizen.
so i have to meet this guy.
why?
i have to meet the guy who got my player sister to settle down.
settle down??? i ain't no married with children old hag.
yet.
bugger off, bitches.

somebody stop me

2005-01-29T20:33:00.000-08:00

i have GOT to stop blogging tonight. drunken rambling. shit.

drunkeness

2005-01-29T20:26:00.000-08:00

when i'm sick, i act like i'm drunk. i slur my words and randomly call people and get horny and drink lots of water and walk funny. just thought i'd share.

damn, i miss drinking.

stupid doctors. what do they know anyway?

korean girls

2005-01-29T19:46:00.000-08:00

at my favorite coffeeshop. drinking coffee with A. we both have our laptops. clickityclackity interspersed with chitchat and kisses. yes, we are the reigning king and queen of PDA. if you don't know us, you'd be surprised who the king is. *snort* (thanks, liz--i'm diggin' the promotion.)

2 asian girls sit down at the table next to us. when they start talking, i realize they're korean. talking about skincare, haircuts, boys. one of them has a date that night. oh, what to wear, what to wear. apparently, the other girl is familiar with the date-girl's closet.

i wanted to say hi. i have no korean friends in san francisco. i miss their presence. i still talk to my korean (and non-korean) friends in new york, l.a. and anchorage, but it's not the same. not to say that my friends here are inadequate by any means; there are just some things only other korean immigrants understand.

i'm afraid to become whitewashed. i have a love/hate relationship with korea and i want to hold on to as much of my koreaness as possible--the language, customs, holiday celebrations, while shucking the crap like the obsession with perfect skin, anorexic figures, selective racism, putting too much importance on status and money, oh i could go on and on.

i really like having a boyfriend who appreciates the korean side of me. he loves the food (thank the good Lord almighty, i don't know what i'd do in a kimchi-less house.) and laughs at my weird korean superstitions and the fact that i curse in korean a lot. it's just sounds more angry, ya know?

where was i going with this again?
oh, right, brain is fuzzy. i need more tea. where is that boy? the king wants her dinner.

i'm sick

2005-01-29T19:19:00.000-08:00

warning! warning! this will not be a very exciting post!

my body aches all over. i'm sneezing and sniffling. i've had a mild stomachache since yesterday. with the help of A, i am armed with chamomile tea, emergen-c, 'puter, cigarettes, lighter, ashtray, blanket, cell phone, fuzzy oversized robe and fuzzy slippers.

my brain is also fuzzy.

A is out. he's buying groceries. we're out of eggs and lord knows that's not good for any household A lives in. i think someone played a joke and told him when he was kid that eating 2 eggs a day is the definition of kosher cuz the man takes his eggs seriously. oh, who are we kidding? A? kosher? the man's favorite lunch is a BLT.

it reminds me of when i was telling my parents about A. now keep in mind, my parents know almost nothing about my love life, but considering i was moving in with him, they wanted to know some basics.

what's his name?
you can't pronounce it.
hm. not korean.
nope.
why not? is he black?
no, he's israeli.
does that mean he's dark and really hairy?
mom!
well?
you know i'm shallow. he's cute.
wait, if he's from israel, is he jewish?
yeah.
is gonna try to convert you?
i'm more jewish than he is.
how old is he?
he's year of the pig.
what's he do for a living?
computer stuff.
does he make a lot of money?
enough.
how much money?
enough.
are you gonna marry this guy?
i'll talk to you later.
i don't want you to marry a poor man, you know.
i know.
i'm just watching out for you.
i know.
so is he rich?
mom!
okay, okay...

ah, korean parents. they'll never change, ya know? and sometimes, it's best that way.

birthday orchids

2005-01-28T19:50:00.000-08:00

the last of my birthday orchids from A died the other day. doods, my birthday was last month! 45 days! and i ain't got no magic green thumb or some shit.

exorcising old fears

2005-01-28T18:25:00.000-08:00

i used to be ashamed of telling people about my family. I don't come from a happy-go-lucky home. But as of less than a year ago, I started to notice a change in me. A new sort of defiance. my family isn't me.

during a conversation I had with A and a friend, we were discussing the notion of being crippled. the result of that conversation? this sentence: being without a limb is a state, but being crippled is a state of mind. I choose to think in those terms regarding my childhood.

i'm writing this entry not to make you feel sorry for me, but to exorcise my demons. I loathe pity. Do not write me comments like, "aw! poor baby!" if you wish to resume our friendship.

i've found in the short while i've been writing in this blog, that whenever I spit things out onto a post, I feel much better about said issue. (i'm actually slowly getting over my issues with sleep. but more on that later.) so in effort to kick these games my mind has been playing on me, i'm going to spit it out onto this post. continue to read if you dare.

my father has, to the day, major rage issues and used to physically and verbally abuse me (when he wasn't neglecting me) growing up. I adamantly refuse to be a victim. I have not and will not in the future involved myself in abusive relationships. I am not conditioned to think pain=love; I am not a painslut, like some abuse victims tend to become. I do not need to be coddled every moment of the day. but I do have low points when I relive moments in my past and there are certain idiosyncrasies (for lack of a better word) to how I perceive and do certain things as a result. some examples:

I don't like electric fans. I have scars on my legs from being hit with them. twice, while still plugged in and running, my father ripped them out of the wall and threw them at me. I don't use them; I avoid going near them in other people's homes.

I hate vacuum cleaners because my father threw one at me once. I vacuum all over the house with a tiny little dustbuster as much as I possibly can.

I like power tools but I hate hammers. one time, my father started yelling and throwing the contents of his toolbox around, aiming at nothing in particular. a hammer came too close to me for comfort. I use screws instead of nails whenever I can now.

I hate big umbrellas because that was one of my father's weapons of choice. he's broken several on my back. I now carry a very small foldable umbrella.

I hate the sound of the garage door opening because that used to mean my father was home. I hate sudden loud noises; my father had a very silent-before-the-storm approach. I hate loud male voices. I avoid people with hot tempers. I date quiet, mellow, even-tempered, soft-spoken guys.

all those things I just listed, as well as some others, are rather easily avoidable. there is one thing that plagues me daily. in a previous post, I mentioned the fact that I spent a lot of time in my room but didn't feel comfortable because I was always listening for another storm brewing. I kept the music not on at all or very quiet. I didn't make a lot of noise in my room. I tiptoed around the house. the minute I would hear something, I would pop out of my room and gather up my siblings. I never let him hit my siblings. ever.

there have been numerous times when i'd be showering and i'd hear something. i'd finish up as quickly as I could and run out in my robe. sometimes they would be false alarms. other times, my father would be banging on the bathroom door, screaming at me. (I always locked the bathroom and bedroom doors.) to this day, with my father 400 miles away, I still hear distancing banging when I shower.

everyday, I climb into the shower and do my thing. and everyday my mind plays these tricks on me. I hear some faint and distant banging or yelling. my heart skips a beat and I pause mid-shower. I remind myself that he is very far away and I don't need to be scared anymore. And then I resume showering.

the other day, I made a huge breakthrough. I noticed that whether or not anyone is home, if I shower in the evening, I don't get scared. thinking about it, I realized that it was because my father was out of the house in the evenings and home during the day; my brain was conditioned to think evenings=no dad=you can exhale loudly now. i'm not entirely pleased with this, but I consider it significant progress.

or so I thought.

yesterday, I took a shower in the evening, when it hit me like a ton of bricks. I heard the noises again and I jolted. I started to relive the last time my dad hit me, which was 4 years ago, when I was 21, which was pretty disastrous. he pulled huge clumps of my hair out and broke 2 umbrellas on my back that day. I started crying and yelling at myself. what the fuck is wrong with you? hey fucktard, he's 400 miles away and it's been 4 years! he can't touch you anymore!

what the fuck am I going to do--stop showering? not bloody likely, thank you very much. I like non-greasy hair and fresh pits. I like smelling good, even though I can't smell myself. i'm hoping that writing this out will help me. venting does a body good, right?

tail of a dragon?

2005-01-22T13:34:00.000-08:00

There's this old Korean saying: “It’s better to be the head of a rat than the tail of a dragon.” Or was it the other way around? I forget, but I’m leaning towards the former. In this day and age, across the Pacific, on that rinky dinky peninsula stub I have such a love/hate relationship with, it is still important to get the parents' approval before getting married and the term "salary-man" is not a compliment. (But, on the other hand, Koreans sometimes make absolutely no sense to me.)

I’ve also heard people tell me “Aim high, higher than you think possible because even if you fall short, you’re still higher than you would be if you had aimed lower,” or some such to that effect. But if you don’t reach your goals, wouldn’t you just feel like you failed, resulting in poor levels of self-esteem? Or could this be read as you just feel like you haven’t accomplished that much because of your low self-esteem and not the other way around. Hrm.

To follow the metaphor, wouldn’t you rather be the head of rat and work your ass off so that head has the biggest brain ever? (Random thought: is that why I’ve never had much of an ass? Kidding.)

What good is a tail anyway? To look pretty? If I wanted to just swish about and look pretty, I would have married the first guy who asked me years ago and been his trophy wife (which sounds tempting when you’re broke and frustrated at the job market but whatever. I have standards, dammit!) Some animals use tails to swat at the flies lingering around their butt. Literally or metaphorically, no thanks. I’m shootin’ for head of the dragon; I’ve never had much of a self-esteem anyway.

for all you late bloomers

2005-01-21T20:14:00.000-08:00

"'Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace.' And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast, Because sweet flow'rs are slow and weeds make haste." -York in Richard III

six inches

2005-01-21T16:40:00.000-08:00

no, you perverts, i'm not writing an entry on penis size.

i'm talking about my hair. i went to go see martina yesterday. snip snip. snip. snip snip snip. six inches of my hair, straight into the compost bin. six inches of split ends. my hair is now shorter than i've had in years. i thought it was about 2 years, but after thinking about it, it's more like 4 years. that's almost 1/6 of my life.

i'm trying to love it. don't get me wrong, i LOVE the cut. she cut it so that it feels and looks fuller, which is great for someone with such baby fine hair such as myself, but...it's...so...SHORT.

okay, i'm obsessing and being retarded. it's still 2 inches past my shoulders. and it's black now. it's healthier and healthy looking. i'm really happy with it but it still feels funny.

btw, as a result of all this, i'm going to be a model. okay, i'm so kidding. martina wants me to help her with her portfolio by modeling various hairstyles for some photos. i'm trying hard not to laugh at the thought of me modeling anything. this is not me being self-deprecating. if the photos turn out good, i'm going to ask martina for some copies so i can send them to every person in my life who would tell me i could model only if i lost some weight. yes, i do have that incredibly immature side to me. admit it. we all do.

i'm so sexy

2005-01-17T15:38:00.000-08:00

no, really, i am, despite the funny face i'm making in my photo. i swear. i'm a goddess in person.

*snort*

so i wrote this whole entry on why i don't think i'm sexy and feel kinda cute only when i'm in full regalia and how the boys in sf seem to like me sans full regalia, much to my disbelief and almost-horror.

*poof*

and away it went, like so much murky water flooding the sewer.

crap, all of it. those explanations don't matter. what matters is that i'm here now, starting to build a new life for myself in this new town and i'm finally starting to acknowledge my sexiness. perception is everything and ignorance is bliss.

i'm sexy. believe me. yes, i'm talking to myself now. are you listening to me, you? i'm sexy! and it's got nothing to do with your big boobs!

new face

2005-01-16T02:14:00.000-08:00

so A helped me diddle with the format to suit my tastes better. nothing major beyond the available templates, but i made the text wider and added a picture and stuff. yay for in house tech support! cuz i suck at 'puter shit. thank you, A!

question: y'all like the wider text or no?

botched dinner

2005-01-15T21:04:00.000-08:00

i fucked up dinner. too salty. i'm pissed as fuck. i know i'm being irrationally pissed. one lousy messed up dinner. whatever. i know i'm too hard on myself. i always am, so what else is new? but how does one improve on oneself if they're not hard on themselves? the whole balance of realizing one's faults and trying to improve on them without beating oneself up over it not exactly something i'm good at. whatever. i'm plenty good at other things and it's because i'm hard on myself to improve.

fuck. argh.

meanderings of the day

2005-01-15T19:04:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting at my favorite coffeeshop on a nice, albeit grey, dry day. I just had a blt with avocado and am now sipping a really strong cup of coffee. The coffeeshop is unusually full today. A woman just asked me for an extra chair. One is empty because A just went to put the clothes in the dryer at the laundromat across the street. The other is occupied with 2 computer bags and a coat. I wouldn’t have minded if she weren’t so rude. Just as I figured out how to assemble everything sans chair, she snipes at me, “nevermind” and walks away. Okaaaaaay.

There is some heinous repetitive can’t-tell-one-song-from-the-other music playing. No, it’s not some of A’s weird housy shit. It’s live. An acoustic guitar, a banjo, a fiddle and something that is obscured from my view and I don’t care for the music enough to try to decipher what it is by listening to it. If anything, I’m trying to block the music from my head entirely. I love this coffeeshop and nearly everything about (for example, this is the one isolated incidence of rudeness I’ve experienced in the 9 months I’ve been coming here and I come here all the frickin’ time.)

oh, someone else just asked me for a spare chair and they were really polite.

And another, also really polite. Did I mention it’s unusually full in here today?

Hey, dudes, the poster said you were supposed to be done by 4pm! It’s 4:03!

The man on the fiddle is facing me. Not bad, but the way he holds his fiddle under his chin looks like it’s about to slip off at any moment. And he’s choking the neck, literally. He reminds me of this guy I once knew, Mike, also a fiddler. Skinny skinny always wearing grungy t-shirts 2 sizes too big, outdated glasses that slide slowly down his bony nose as he plays, both of them. Mike was a fantastic fiddler, much better than this guy here. Mike could make doublestringing sound like sex, although at the young age we knew each other, I doubt either one of us realized that. Also reminds me of my musical days.

I met Mike in orchestra. Yeah, like every other 1.5 generation Korean girl, I played piano and violin for a handful of years. Unlike most of the others, however, I enjoyed playing immensely and, if you’ll allow me a moment of ego here, rather good for my age. (I was concertmaster of my junior high orchestra.) When I dropped the music lessons and orchestra classes and symphony auditions and rehearsals and recitals to concentrate on visual arts, my old orchestra teacher hunted me down, demanding answers. I felt special.

Ooh, ooh, the band is leaving. Cue decent music.

I’ve always wanted to be a fashion designer. When I got to high school, there was only one slot open in my schedule for an elective so I chose a drawing class. Why didn’t I keep playing anyway? Because I hate the way I sound by myself.

Ooh, ooh, Max is here! When Max and A get together, inevitably the talk turns to tech goodies. It’s all German to me. You know, that language that I recognize but don’t understand beyond a handful of phrases.

I’ve always loved the way an entire orchestra or symphony sounds, but me, solo, or any violinist solo, for that matter, not so much. Too shrill. If I wanted to hear myself solo, I would have picked up cello instead, but my mother didn’t think the instrument very ladylike, with the leg-spreading and all. And I picked up violin because I wanted to play more of the melody parts in ensemble pieces. And I was a short kid who walked to school and then later took the bus. Lugging around a huge cello in either scenario was none too alluring for me. I was such a practical child—what happened?

I’m going to make Max my Geeklish to English translation tutor. Why does stuff make so much more sense when Max explains stuff to me as opposed to A?

My favorite part about playing was the sound of the group together, especially a 100 piece symphony. At rehearsal or right before a performance, the sound of the concertmaster or first flautist calling out the first perfect A, and then the entire orchestra calling back with their As and the strangely melodious cacophony of musicians tuning. The brusque sweep in the air of every handheld instrument being placed from resting to playing position in unison. Everyone in their crisp performance black-and-whites. The uniform bowstrokes of each section of strings. Sitting surrounded by the glow of softly oiled violins in a range of warm wood colors (so much more luscious than the crassly shiny brass of the horns).

ew, is Max wearing PURPLE nail polish? Oh, honey, honey…

All the appeal of playing violin, for me, was in ensemble work so when I had no time for the rehearsals and performances, I dropped violin entirely. I have no regrets. I have warm memories from the years I played. They are not marred by the difficulties of playing as an adult—the petty comparisons that develop with better trained ears, the decisions involving whether or not to pursue music professionally, the time management. My love affair with playing was perfect; sweet and young and simple in its beginning, duration and end.

Bye, Max, enjoy your walk home and try to stay warm! You’d better leave before I steal those mittens I’ve been coveting ever since you showed them to me.

sleep is for lazy people ii

2005-01-13T16:30:00.000-08:00

warning! warning! super long post to follow!

So I’m obsessed with sleep. The topic, not the action. Or is it inaction? Basically, that’s what my obsession boils down to: is sleep an action or inaction?

I’m going to be writing a few more entries on sleep and eventually touch on this question, but in my meandering, I feel like I should give you a background story first.

I’m obsessed with it all; everything from the scientific explanations of REM cycles and increasing productivity in our 24/7 world through understanding employees’ needs for regulated day/night cycles to the social ramifications of sleeping too much or too little. I blogged earlier about how other people’s misinterpretations of the sleep patterns of my youth has affected my views on sleep. I seem to have opened a can of worms within myself and with others with that entry.

Assfluff linked to another blog entry on sleep. (It’s posted in the comments page in the previous “sleep” entry.) It was definitely a more scientific spin on studying sleep. I found the read fascinating and I want to touch on a few things the writer addressed here, as well as some other things I’ve wanted to get down on paper.

The blog discussed the idea of “extreme larks” (those who get up at the asscrack of dawn) and “extreme owls” (those who decide the asscrack of dawn is not a pretty place to be and that’s when they want to go to sleep) and touched on the idea of how that affects relationships, especially relationships between people who live together. The writer talks about how 2 people in a relationship with a newborn can thrive in taking care of the baby in shifts but otherwise it would be a problem. (Please excuse my horrid sweeping generalizations of a thorough and beautifully articulated essay. I’ll be doing more of that later and I apologize in advance.)

My dad has a very irregular sleep pattern which I have apparently inherited. We like to sleep from about 3am to 7am and then take a 3 hour nap in the afternoon, approximately 12 hours later. (That’s our ideal but what with different responsibilities, not easily met. It works better for my dad, who has owned his own businesses for the past 15 years.) This sleep cycle makes me happy, productive, and energized for more awake hours than any other cycle, even though I’ve been able to do pretty well with “average owl” hours.

My dad’s been married twice, with a live-in girlfriend for 3 years in between the marriages. All 3 of them were larks of different extremes. (Well, 2 of them were larks and one just slept a lot.) I have lived with him almost the entire time, until I left home after college. When he was married to my mother, it worked. They were young, they were new to the states, they had small children, they were struggling to achieve the American dream, they worked in shifts, stayed at home in shifts. When they got enough money together to buy their first business, it was a convenience store open 6am-12midnight. My mother opened up shop, my dad closed up. Their marriage had other problems and who knows if they would have stayed together if my mother had not passed away when I was 13, but at the time, their sleep cycles being so different worked to fulfill their needs at the time.

My dad’s live-in girlfriend had major problems with his “sleep ethic,” as she liked to call it. (I have serious issues with this term “sleep ethic”—more on that later.) He owned a hotel then, she rarely helped out. She didn’t see the need for him to sleep such odd hours. She thought he was lazy because he slept so much during her awake hours. She didn’t do the math; he actually slept a normal amount of hours, just not when she chose to sleep. (Actually, she slept much more than he, sleeping from 11pm-9am pretty much every night.) My dad was very wealthy during their relationship. She couldn’t fathom how a person so incredibly full of sleep and lazy could be so successful, how he could have acquired so much money at such a young age! Identifying irony was apparently not a particular strong suit of hers. (He had millions to his name by 42, but not all from his businesses. God bless this litigious country called America.)

My stepmother married my father, without a doubt, out of love, but that love, as it turns out, had certain conditions. When they met, my father still had a lot of money and a successful business, a beautiful home, and a live-in housekeeper. As the years wore on, the money went away and then came back and then went away again, for a multitude of reasons, both within and beyond my father’s control. My stepmother didn’t like this. She liked the quality of living her ex-husband could no longer afford her and that her new husband once could. She was a hard worker, both at home and at my father’s businesses, and when the family went through financial problems, she blamed it on my dad’s perceived laziness.

My dad is no more or no less lazy than any other average man in his forties (now fifties), but there were some habits of his that my stepmother picked on as examples of his laziness—his inclination to indulge in sedentary hobbies such as watching television, reading books, going on long drives, gambling, and recreational drug usage (oops, I’m not supposed to talk about the last two. My apologies to my former stepmother.) and his weird sleep pattern.

Being a lark is still perceived as the normal sleeping pattern. (That is, unless you live in Vegas, where you wake up with the setting sun. ah, Vegas, my third hometown. More Vegas stories later.) early to bed, early to rise, makes you wealthy, healthy and wise, right? (or am I getting my Korean and American nursery rhymes mixed up again? No, I’m pretty sure I got it right this time.) my stepmom viewed her sleeping hours as normal (10pm-6am) as normal while my father slept “too much”, even though they slept pretty much the same number of hours.

Their marriage eventually dissolved over other issues, but my mother’s disdain for my father’s lack of productive day hours was a running theme in their arguments for years. I put the blame on neither party. Yes, my stepmom could have been more generous in her thinking, but I tend to allow some room for social stereotypes warping the minds of Korean adults of generations previous to mine. They were brought up with more social rigidity, so to speak. They were told what is right and what is wrong, whereas this generation, and particularly Americans of my generation, is more about finding what’s right for themselves.

What I had the biggest problem with was my father’s hypocrisy. As I noted before, I inherited my father’s weird sleep patterns. You would think that because my father and I were alike in this fashion and that he had to suffer so much grief for it over the years, that he would be more understanding of my needs to sleep those weird hours. You would think wrong. One explanation could be that my father always considered his bedroom for 3 things: changing clothes, having sex and sleeping. I did not. I considered my bedroom my haven away from loud demanding children and yelling fist-and-dish-throwing adults. He always thought the minute I entered my room, I was going to take a nap. Whenever he worked from home at all, he left the bedroom door open. He figured if I was in my room working, I would also leave the door open, just like him. My father and I are alike in a lot of ways but very different in others and sometimes he forgets where our similarities end, despite many reminders.

To my dad, his ex-girlfriend, his ex-wife and all the housekeepers over the years (we could never keep one around for more than a year or two), I sleep a lot and also, because I sleep a lot, I must also be lazy. I’m not going to waste my energy in trying to prove to you otherwise by making a long list of my accomplishments over the years. I try to save that schpeel for my job interviews. Trying to prove to you that I’m not lazy is not what I’m trying to accomplish with this. I’m trying to get rid of my hang-ups about sleep and hoping to do that by verbalizing what I have in my head regarding the subject.

To be continued…

the zoloft

2005-01-13T16:26:00.000-08:00

Not the drug, but a different sort of antidepressant.

If you don’t know the story behind the name, here it is:

So I got involved with this guy. And he lives in a loft. And then I moved in with him. My name is zoë. When I moved in, my rather witty friend Kathryn more-or-less christened the place “the zoloft”. The name makes no reference to his name, so it’s kind of a running joke among our friends about how I’ve taken over the place. I like to think that I haven’t really (oh, who are we kidding?), but that’s the story.

When I first moved up to San Francisco and into my SO’s loft, it was supposed to be temporary, but as the months go by, I’m finding myself more and more at home in the zoloft. I like it here. You’ll have to drag me out of here kicking and screaming. (Are you reading this, babe? Kicking and screaming!)

When I first moved in, I didn’t consider the zoloft my home; I considered it a place to crash until I got on my feet. Several conversations with my SO and some mental adjustments on my part later, I’m seeing it more and more as home, my home and the home I share with him. This has nothing to do with whether or not there is a sense of permanence in the current situation; this has to do with my feeling of being at home in this loftspace and this headspace with him.

There are things specific to living here with him that I’ve grown to love. The tiny clear blue bits of glass that are the contacts he discards every night, littering the floor around the bathroom trash bin. (I figure once the contacts are out, so is his aim. Sometimes his socks miss the hamper too.) The fact that my SO stocks up on a cure for every ailment under the sun that can be treated at home. Also the fact that his jacket pockets and laptop bag are similarly stocked in individual size packets of everything that overflows the bathroom drawers. The burned out bulb in the living room that I’ve given up all hope of ever getting replaced. (It’s a weird bulb.) The fact that we’re always talking about buying a nightstand to put all our sex stuff in but we’re too busy actually having sex to go shopping. (Yes, I’m a girl who would much rather have sex than go shopping, any day of the week, any hour of the day, hands down. Yes, my SO is lucky, lucky man.)

We have an interesting diet of melding our preferences together; getting the other to fall in love with stuff we’re already in love with. He makes me pastas and salads and foccacia and other European and Mediterranean fare. I make him Korean bbq and noodle soups and stews and various rice dishes. We go to the Korean supermarket in Daly City and stock up on cute Korean snacks. We go to fancy shmancy groceries for organic this and that. He shares with me his version of “poor college student food”; I share mine. Our kitchen has multiple personality disorder.

I can cook and clean until the cows come home (and quite willing to, because I like things neat around the house and love to cook. Scratch that, I love to conduct cooking experiments—quite the different thing.) but he knows I hate taking out the trash and would much rather he do the bulk of the laundry. I’ll just tag along and help him fold. (I used to run the laundry at my dad’s hotel while in high school and I’m rather particular about how you should fold towels. He found some internet site that shows you this really cool, efficient way of folding t-shirts. I heart division of labor.)

Babe, you said you wanted me to feel at home here. Well, you got what you wanted.

Kicking and screaming, you hear me?! Kicking and screaming!

writing ii

2005-01-12T19:05:00.000-08:00

somehow I managed, in between silence and conversation, to stay up until almost 7am last night/this morning, finishing what I planned on finishing by the end of the week. Good for me, maybe not so good for you, because when I woke up this morning, I decided I would spend this day putting into semi-coherent sentences the things that have been rambling in my head for the past few days.

First, I made the idiot mistake all self-deprecating princesses like me make: I went and read other people’s stuff and felt stupid. Now I’m the first one to admit I’m not a very good writer. And I’m okay with that. I’m plenty good at other things. I think. Anyway, I don’t need to be a good writer, I need to be just good enough to black-and-white the haze of grey in my head. What I suddenly felt embarrassed about was the content of my writing.

among the gurgling verbiage known as my writing, I had hoped to address some topics that would lead to conversation, twisting minds, sparking enthusiasm to respond. I had hoped to address topics of a more universal appeal. Yes, this blog is about me, but I wanted it to be the part of me I can share with others. I didn’t want to make presentations about my thought processes, I wanted to cast the first opinion on topic x.

When I read my own blog compared to other people’s blogs, I read pretentiousness and self-absorption. Hey, pretty pretty princess, do you really think anyone else really cares what you’re thinking? Are you doing anyone a favor by writing these things down? Can’t you just scribble in a journal and keep that shit to yourself? “dear diary, today I woke up after 4 hours of restless sleep and then I cleaned up around the house. And then I made my boy breakfast. I like cooking for him. Teehee.” Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaah. Uh huh. Stick to the one-liners on tribe, kiddo, at least you can get a few laughs that way.

After about 10 minutes of self-pity, i decided not to care.

love me or hate me

2005-01-07T15:35:00.000-08:00

talking to a girlfriend today. talking about this that and the other. one of my favorite things about this girl is when she asks "how are you?", she's not being polite, she really wants to know. and so with this girl, i never gloss things over with "fine", but i really tell her. she's the kind of girl who will tell you when she feels like shit, she will also tell you when she's on cloud 9 and everything in between.

but i'm getting sidetracked again. so we're having this conversation. she says at one point, "you know what just occurred to me? i think you're one of those people who people just love or just hate."

this is not the first time i've heard this. i have my own views on this, but they're not fully formed yet. she told me why she thinks that but i don't want to write about that yet. i want to read what y'all have to say first. i realize blogging generally isn't an outside participation required activity, but what the hey. it's my blog and i'll demand answers if i want to.

hello~

2005-01-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

if you got a message from me of any kind to read this, you are under no obligation to do so, or to comment, it just means i like you and you are the kind of person i want reading me and providing commentary, even if i haven't spoken to you in a while. if i forgot you, and you just happened to stumble upon this, it doesn't mean i don't like you, it means i smoked too much pot in high school.

remember, i'm not articulate. i ramble a lot. the title is "mental meandering of an egotistical jerk" not "essays of the eloquent".

oink

2005-01-06T16:07:00.000-08:00

oink, went the little piggy, hogging up the main stage of the conversation last night. oink, oink, listen to me, listen to meeeeeeeeeeeeee.

and they listened. after the week i had, i really needed it. they listened and they still love me. and for that, thanks.

being alone

2005-01-05T19:53:00.000-08:00

i love being alone. growing up in a house full of people, my alone time was cherished. it's probably one of the key reasons why i love to go on long drives by myself so much. i won't go into all the reasons why i love being alone so much. not today. because today, i did not like being alone.

i'm still adjusting to the fact that i spend so much time alone now. i work from home. i live with my SO and he's at work all day long. i usually enjoy having the house to myself. but not today.

i had a rather weird day, full of too many thoughts and too many fears congesting my brain. fear really is paralyzing. today was not productive because all these fears and thoughts running through my brain were blocking me from the fluidity with which i usually work.

someone asked to have coffee. i jumped at the opportunity. mynx is coming over. she should be here in 10 minutes. i'm very impatient right now because i don't want to be alone with my thoughts right now.

what are these fears and thoughts? i won't even bother you with the inanity going on in my head. basically, i was cruising through and i had these unspoken fantasies of where i'd be in 20 years and certain events and conversations i've been having lately are just smashing it to smithereens. and i had another conversation with someone today that just ended up making me feel worthless, even though that was not that person's intent at all. they probably don't know that they had that effect on me with what they said.

8 more minutes and she'll be here to save me from my alone-ness. then assaf will be home shortly after that. and i'll be in the company of people who love me.

pet peeve #1

2005-01-05T13:09:00.000-08:00

so what's a pet peeve anyway? something that annoys you, right? so when does it cross the line from petty grievances to pet peeve to serious annoyance to downright loathing of a particular thing or quality of person?

for me, for the purposes of this blog, i'll quantify "pet peeve" as something that makes me go "aaarrrrgh!!!" and try to avoid at all costs. not exactly something that will kill me. alright, let's not get into a semantics discussion here, pez, but just tell your lovely readers what's on your mind. but what if the definition of "pet peeve" is what is on my mind? then maybe this blog's pet peeve #1 is people who get into semantics debates to distract the other person from the real issue at hand. maybe it's people who get into semantics debates with themselves because they lack the skill of the artful segue.

poo, i say.

i don't need no artful segue.

so pet peeve #1:

people who think "different is wrong".

i've lived in small towns and big cities and wherever you go, they're there. i'm not talking about the ignorant white trash who litter the midwest, spouting their KKK propaganda, but the more subtle version. the people who, because they are smart, witty, charming and of a minority sexual orientation or race or whowhatzit, fly under your radar as people to watch out for.

judgmental people who insist that they're not. people who are smart and know they're smart and have come to the conclusion that then they, as smart people, should be right about everything. people who flock towards those who only agree with them.

i lack eloquence so i'll stop there. you know what i'm talking about and you probably know someone like that. and maybe you're okay with that. i don't give a rat's ass. but i don't like it. to me, different means not the same, not wrong.

who's reading?

2005-01-04T13:00:00.000-08:00

as far as i know, it's just mynxie and as of today, assaf. and whoever happened upon this blog. please feel free to comment but if it's more personal, you can always email or call me instead, of course.

as the new year approached, i had been doing some scribbling in my journal and winding around some topics i had rambling in my head. i hate new year's resolutions. i like to think of it in terms of plans for the new year. the word "resolutions" denotes that there is a problem you need to "resolve" and for me, it's not always about that.

one of my plans for the new year is to be faithful to this blog. write my thoughts, get feedback, reread what i wrote before, do a self check-in, rewrite, rethink, recheck-in. the purpose? to find out more about myself.

i'm in this new and exciting and scary as all fuck phase in my life. my life is now presenting choices to me, instead of having changes thrust upon me as a result of things i was pressured to do. no pressure, just me. and when it's just me doing the decision making, i have to know more about me and i think this the best method i can think of to do this weird mental exploration. oh jeez, i hope i'm not coming off too hippy-dippy new agey. that's what happens when you live in cali for too long, i suppose.

so readers, feel free to write me comments. i will probably reveal this blog to others in time. if you have something to say, say it. i appreciate bluntness. no, really.

sleep is for lazy people

2005-01-04T00:01:00.000-08:00

i used to think that people who slept a lot were lazy. correction: i still do think that. no, i don't think that anymore, but it's my gut instinct to think so and i have to correct myself each time until this damn conditioning unconditions itself.

i used to sleep a lot growing up and my parents and housekeepers would always come to conclusion that it was because i was lazy. even while i was going through this period, i knew distinctly that i wasn't sleepy, tired or lazy. i was depressed. it was cold and dark outside. alaskan winters. i hated my life. so i slept. being awake meant you had to face reality. you know, textbook analysis. i knew it then and i know it now.

somehow, it seeped into my brain that more sleep=laziness and less sleep=productivity and that because i slept a lot, i must be lazy. i've fought with myself about this a lot over the years and i still argue with it.

take assaf. that man loves his sleep. don't wake him up unless the zoloft is on fire and it's reached the upper level where the bedroom is. he isn't lazy. he gets his shit done and then some. and then some more. one of my sisters is the same way. all she does is sleep when she has the time and that girl's got all her ducks in a row. maybe i'm using the wrong expression.

and then take one of my other sisters. she thinks sleeping is a big waste of time. she sleeps about 6 hours a night, even on weekends and she ain't got nuthin' together. what exactly then does she do with all these awake hours? watch tv, go shopping, laze about with her boyfriend, surf the web, get her crunk on. all good things, but not when you got shit you're neglecting.

so i've had elders tell me i'm lazy because i slept a lot. so i cut back. even when i would drift about sleepy, i wouldn't sleep because that meant i was lazy. being the depressed kid that i was, i spent a lot of time in my bedroom alone, with the door locked. sometimes i slept. most other times, i wouldn't be. didn't matter. everyone thought the minute i entered my room, i was sleeping.

i began to see taking naps as a bad habit. when i finally moved out of my parents' house, i began to relax about sleeping and that's when i started sleeping less. at home, i would take these long 3 hour naps but i slept so poorly that i never felt rested. i slept poorly because i was always "at the ready" to hear the slightest noise or change in the atmosphere outside of my room to "go take care of things". living alone with my sister, i slept less but i still had hangups about it because of my sister's "sleep is such a waste of time" attitude. i always felt she was watching what i was doing and judging me and then turning around and reporting what she "saw" to my parents.

assaf and i have had several conversations about what constitutes a "home". a home is where you should feel like you can be yourself. at ease, not worry about being watched and judged over every little move you make, not having to worry constantly about explaining your actions to everyone. so in essence, i never had a home. (not to be confused with my bout of "near homelessness" this past summer--more on that later)

i still have hangups about sleep. i still see taking naps as a bad habit. but mostly i just think those thoughts about my own behavior. i still can't fully ingest the "if you got everything taken care of, it's okay to nap. fuck that, it's okay to nap when you're tired. fuck that again, when you're tired, you should nap" pattern of thinking. i have to force it upon myself. i need to stop waking up and count the hours i slept and feel guilty. it just leads to poor sleep and needing more sleep and more guilt...ah, the vicious cycle...

i'm finally in a home where no one judges me. now i just have to work on not judging myself.

all ears?

2005-01-03T18:41:00.000-08:00

what you say isn't necessarily what someone hears. and it is so annoying!

writing

2005-01-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

i am trying to become a better writer.

i have no aspirations to be published or to actually write anything publishable. i only want to be understood; not in the teen angst sort of way, but in the "you need to hear what i'm sayin' cuz i ain't sayin' it twice" way. do not be surprised if future entries are rewrites of old entries.

communication is important. thank you stating the fucking obvious, pez. and i am loathe to admit that i actually swallowed and digested this information rather late in life. okay, make that relatively late in life. i am, after all, only 25.

i'm korean. and i'm female. and when you've got quite the traditional, overbearing father i had, being korean and female means you do not communicate; you serve. you don't smile, you grin and bear it. as i was approaching my mid 20s, my father and i would have these conversations critiquing my behavior. odd, i know, but it was preferred over his previous method of critiquing my behavior, which was to smack me upside the head. (to this day, i can not stand it when someone hits me on the head, even jokingly.) one of the last of these conversations i had before i left l.a. was that i never effectively communicated my intentions to my stepmother.

there are 2 lessons i learned involved here.

1. sometimes, silence doesn't say much. sometimes, silence speaks volumes. sometimes, silence is just silence. sometimes, silence than make you look like a self-serving, lazy, ingrate of a human, apparently.

2. when someone doesn't effectively communicate with you, it is not an excuse to jump to conclusions.

i'm not making much sense in this entry. i'm not even going in circles. i am weaving my way slowly towards making myself heard. at some point, in some later entry, i will come full circle and this post will mak some sense. this is why i need to write. practice doesn't make perfect, practice just makes you more aware of your errors.

it's a new year

2005-01-02T21:02:00.000-08:00

around this time last year, i was terribly ill. i went to the hospital 5 times in one week to check my progress. i missed work. i never miss work. if i miss work, it means my world is about to fall apart. and it really was about to. 9 years of neglecting to take care of my diabetes hit me like a ton of bricks. it was a real eye opener for me. stop abusing yourself. stop subconsciously trying to kill yourself. it wasn't until then it hit me that that was what i was doing.

my life hasn't been all that grand. and it wasn't getting any better, despite my efforts. i wasn't happy. i became a workaholic to distract from the disasters that were other compartments of my life. i paid little attention to my diet. i smoked. i drank. i partied a lot. i tried every means of escape but i decided suicide attempts were for teenagers and losers and i was definitely neither.

looking back, i think 2004 was about cleaning house. i divorced my family and moved to san francisco. i allowed myself to not care about things instead of caring about everything but my own welfare. in retrospect, i was running around like a chicken with its head chopped off because i thought it was for my welfare, but that was subconsciously self-loathing brain that was preventing me from seeing the things i really needed to do. i allowed myself to reach out for help and accept it. i learned not to ashamed of my history.

2004 was hard. i almost died. i lost my job. my stepmother decided she hated me. i spent an entire summer living out of suitcases and my car in a state of near homelessness because of i told myself what was good for my family was good for me. i refused to see that drawing certain boundaries around me wasn't necessarily selfish but in fact, life-preserving. but i held on to the one kernel of hope i had left for dear life, gritted my teeth and dragged my near-dead carcass into autumn. autumn heaped blessings on me like i had never experienced before.

i am learning to love. if that's not the cheesiest sentence in the english language, i don't know what is. but it's true. i rang in 2005 tired and happy and blessed and in love with the boy and for the first time in my life, in love with myself.

princess is taking baby steps forward.

ahem

2004-11-23T18:27:00.000-08:00

So here we go. I think I will just write a little bit before I start telling people about this.