Month: July 2016

Work from the weekend: I finished up the draft for my thesis! It is very rough, needs edits, and the introduction and conclusion. But the body is there! I am pretty proud of myself, it feels real now. Now I get to hold the whole thing in my hand and do some edits of my own before I send it off to others for edits. Additionally I have started another book for my blog and found another to read after! Exciting stuff.

Work from the last week: This week I was able to do the majority of the edits for my thesis, I just now need to implement them. I think by the end of the weekend I should be done with my edits and then be ready to give people to edit. So that’s exciting! I didn’t do as much this week as I wanted, I wanted to be done by today. But there’s a lot of editing time needed to process and what not. So I’m not tremendously disappointed.

I’m sitting on the couch, reading, trying to concentrate on getting this thesis done and over with. Only faintly do I recognize the sounds of shouting and screaming. Earlier today I heard loud music and assumed there was some sort of event going on. Only a little later does he bring my attention to the noise, going out to the balcony to check on the sounds. He tells me people are running away from the mall below, no idea why, but that it looks surreal. Then we hear the gunshots. He immediately crouches down, tells me to get on the ground and runs inside. He shuts the shades and we turn off the lights, grabbing our phones. The police line is busy and we do not know who to turn to. We each write our parents a message of love, not knowing what is happening, if people will come upstairs, or what the threat is. It is too new to be on twitter or any news site, so we refresh anxiously trying to figure out what is wrong. We say a semblance of goodbye, being cautious and not knowing what awaits us. Then we wait. We sit in the darkness, scared of any noise and absolutely silent. It is completely dark, yet we can still hear shots and we discover a live feed of a man with a gun walking around on the parking deck above where we park our car. We don’t understand what is happening, why this is happening. That’s when I remember how I wanted to go downstairs and be in that mall then, how we were going to go all day to get some shampoo and this is what affects me most: the brush with danger and death. Seconds turn into minutes which stretch into hours as more people check in with us, call us, find out if we’re okay. Three hours later we leave our huddle spot underneath the table and sit on the couch, hearing helicopters as the hunt goes on.

We know the things people will say about this incident, true or not. That terrorist groups will take credit, that new medias and politicians will use this for their own agenda, that people will blame immigrants.

Yet this incident, while making me very happy to be alive, only makes me feel more empathy for those who have to live with situations like this everyday. Where gunshots are not uncommon, where the danger is directly in front of them, where war ravages and touches everyone they know, where there are no safety checks because that is reality. It makes me thankful that this is not my reality, but it is our world, together. The hatred, the pain, the suffering, and the senseless violence is our world. The misogyny, the racism, the desire to shut out all that is different, to guard our borders, and to close our hearts.

While our instinct reaction is of fear and anger, these do no good. It is only by opening our hearts that we can fix a world like this. To hermit up, to become isolated, to protect only ourselves is a world of individualism, of separation, of fear. It is not a world I envision for myself. We need to fight hatred and violence, with solidarity, the building of communities, and love. By closing ourselves off, nothing about our world is improved, it means we have given in to fear, a temporary solution, and one which denies our responsibility to this world, to humanity, to this planet.

The solution is not to draw away, but to embrace, to work together to fix the problems, to fight against the hatred and senseless violence. I envision a world that can be better, by only looking out for myself that world will never come to be.

I feel quite boring and a bit uninspired here on this blog. I feel like I only talk about how stressed I am and how much work I have to do, but it’s true. It leaves little time for introspection and inspiring posts. My time is taken up by thesis stuff, wedding stuff, my book blog work, and then household work/cleaning, and then my free time. I used to be able to watch a few youtube videos and catch up on social media. Now I only have time to do about half if that. My time is just taken up by work and various projects. That leaves barely no time. And in that free time I am just struggling to decompress, lower my stress and anxiety. It’s just to cope really with the amount of work and anxiety I feel about having things not sorted out. Don’t even mention after my thesis or wedding or what not. I haven’t had a moment in the last month to think about that, and if I do, it would throw me over the border of stress I think. Right now I feel up to my ears, but I’m still functioning. Any more and I don’t think I could cope. So please forgive me if my posts from from now till about October are less inspired. My book blog posts are when I can bust out my creativity, so I would say you could look at those. I guess for now these posts will be more about updates in my life about what I am doing. So we shall see how they go.

I love me a good sale. But it’s all about hype and generating a need to buy something at that time. I’m not talking about food sales or what not. I am talking about sales on clothes or what not. They promise the “lowest price of the season” or something similar all generated to make you maybe buy more than normal. Out culture is structure a bit around sales, Black Friday, Christmas in July, etc. I get at least one email a day from a different store that advertises its sales. I used to give into the hype a lot more, but as I am more refined about what I want and need, I have a better perspective about the hype and gimmicks. Additionally, I have done a lot of research over the last years about when the best time and deals are usually to get things, so I am also more informed. But that isn’t to say that all of a sudden it could all change, that’s the nature of things and retail.

This post doesn’t really have a point, it’s just something I’ve been thinking about from my intellectual high tower as I do my work. The way our lives and habits are societally constructed.

All of this wedding stuff is a lot of planning. I knew it would be, but I didn’t plan on having to write my thesis on top of it. It is exciting to think about, but then all I want to do is think about it, get the planning done and do my thesis. Which is unrealistic since I’ll won’t be done for a while, so I can’t do that. So it’s a struggle of work for me between wedding stuff, thesis stuff, and book reviewing. I find I spend a lot of time doing work, reading/writing, and being tired from all this work.

I enjoy planning it, I just always feel like there isn’t time or I have to do a thousand other things, so phrases slip out of my head like water (and sometimes I need them!). It’s so frustrating, but I know the end is in sight. I just need to finish the draft of the thesis this week and then I can send it for edits and calmly work on my intro/conclusion. That’s my goal. Then I can also focus on wedding stuff next week. I always do well on my book reviewing work because I love it and it keeps me sane.

I’ve been delving into a lot more accounts of adoption, and also books that deal with China and Asian American experiences. Growing up I felt a bit like an outsider, not in a conscious way, but knowing that I looked different to most of my peers. I tried to blind myself to this difference and assimilate. I felt resentful and angry towards my birth mother. I rejected the parts of myself I couldn’t come to terms with. So now looking back and trying to re-assimilate, to re-know, to remember, is a slow awakening process. To figure out how I feel.

Something that stuck with me was that these girls felt that there was a lot of pressure to be ‘scarred’ because of their adoption. Something they never felt. I wonder how that would feel. While I cannot piece apart each experience and say where it all came from in certainty, I can guess. I can guess because I know how I have felt in the past, abandoned and unworthy of love. Being so self sufficient that it almost became a curse, a survival mechanism. Almost daring people to leave, pushing because all relationships seem so fleeting. The process of letting people in and trusting they don’t leave, putting work into relationships that fall apart. Feeling invested much more and grasping onto straws.

While things have changed a lot since I was younger, every day new things pop up, rocks turn over. Everyday is surprising in that way.

I hear a lot of people reminiscing on their childhood memories. When they used to stay out late, or do that thing, see life that way. Yet it’s not these specific experiences that they miss, but an attitude towards life. A time when they were less jaded, more trustful, less aware of their mortality, more open to new experiences. They view this attitude as unclaimable, lost forever to cynicism, suspicion and fear. And perhaps in some ways that’s true, we cannot forget the sting of betrayal, or the experience of mortality. They give us perspective on the truths of life that it is fleeting and that we must make the most of our time. The transition from childhood to adulthood is a journey of experience of learning and of pain. Pain either because of an experience or because of saying goodbye to that very childhood mentality. As with all growing and change, we need to experience a little pain to grow.

I would say that this attitude is not lost forever. We can be more trustful, less jaded, and more open to new experiences. We can look at mortality with acceptance instead of fear. Knowing all will end is not an excuse to put off the inevitable but a call to action, not to fight, but to experience life for what it is. The knowledge that survival isn’t enough. Trying to make the most of the seconds we have as they tick onwards. We can be more trustful, more forgiving, more compassionate, we can find it in our hearts to not let bitter experiences sour our lives. To try new things, to go outside of our comfort zone. We can gain back what we really miss, which is not to go out late, but to live in the present and we can bring something new to each moment: the knowledge that we should treasure these moments.

Today I will get back on track for my thesis. Last week I had to do a lot of nursing (cutting food, opening bottles, etc) and taking care of the majority of the home tasks, not to mention extensive planning for the fall. So this week, which is a week behind my schedule, I will get back on track in terms of writing the thesis. I did some more background research on the weekend, but I need to make headway with writing and add in my secondary sources. But I think I really needed this time to get my head together and write an outline (and do some more research). So while I felt guilty about not doing the work, I am back and ready to go!

Yesterday was the two year anniversary of this blog. Wow, two years is such a long time and yet it seems like it has been so fast! I love that I have this blog as a memento about what has happened in my life, I only wish I had started sooner, maybe kept a journal, but it only inspires me to keep going, knowing that it pays off, it is important and wonderful to document my life and experiences. My life is so different now and it’s almost totally mindblowing where I am and who I am now. So I suppose we will see what will happen in the next year!

Now that I am really getting into speed with my book reviews, I am having a hard time focusing on my thesis. I am so passionate about reading these other books, to challenge myself, but also to share my opinions. I love it. So perhaps this gives me a bit of clarity about what I want to do. I still really enjoy working on my thesis when I do, but the things I can do forever is plan my reviews and what not. I am now involved in a few different sites where publishers invite bloggers to read the book and review it before it is released, how cool is that! I have about four books on my shelf as of now for this, 2 of which I have already read and 2 I have not. I have even already written the reviews for the other two that are ready to go. I know this may not present itself as a viable career option or not, but it does make me happy and I like it a lot, so that’s something. Plus I’m beginning to be more involved in other types of literature, historical and normal fiction. So even if science fiction isn’t your thing, I really think you might find some reviews you would like on my blog. I have a list of about 4 books on my immediate to read pile and that I’ve planned out in my planner when to read them and review them. It just takes some organization and determination. So I hope this really does well!