Saturday, December 29, 2012

A Good Thing



So it's December 29th. Glad we all survived that apocalypse. Although many of my spiritual friends have told me that it isn't necessarily an apocalypse, but a rebirth. So...Happy Birthday?

2013 is upon us and I have to say that I was grateful for 2012. I grew more as a human being and I am thankful for the experience. I accomplished a lot in the allotted time (more writing, more focus on what I want to achieve, etc) and I am proud to say that I made it through yet another year.

2013 will be a year of even more abundance and growth, and for that I am thankful. I did say goodbye to some amazing people in Korea in 2012 but I am hopeful for the new friends I will meet in the upcoming year. Not to mention the equally wonderful people I met and have gotten to know this year. 2013 will also be a year of transformations. I have slacked off considerably on working out, and I feel it. But I am ready to begin anew when the clock strikes midnight. And yes, I can start now, but I like the idea of starting fresh. I also like procrastinating. Surprised? Hardly.

I'm starting to think of what I want to resolve in 2013. Last year, I came up with 12 resolutions:
New Year Resolutions:
1. Learn to read/write/speak more Korean
2. Keep up with my fitness goals
3. Travel :)
4. Relax
5. Be financially free
6. Get closer to God
7. Fall in Love
8. Put myself first:)
9. Sing
10. Write :)
11. Be proactive
12. Fulfill my purpose

I did learn more Korean, kept up with my fitness goals (up until the last few months), I travelled to Cambodia and Vietnam, I relaxed more, I feel I became closer to God, I sang, I wrote, I was more proactive than I had been in years, and I finally came to terms with my issues of being a writer. I didn't actually become financially free or fall in love...unless I can count falling in love with me.

Falling in love...with me. Yes, I said it. I've always had a love/hate relationship with myself...mostly I loved to hate me. I had this idea in my head that degrading myself made me more humble, and that's just not the case. Then I would make myself wrong for putting myself down. And that's not right either. But then I came to realize that I was never comfortable being me, because I never allowed myself to be me. It was always some version of what I thought everyone wanted to see. I was an actress in my own life. And I guess I was convincing--to most people. But there were a few who knew me well enough to call me out on my bullshit.

To be honest, that is one that I've always hated--being called out. It's forcing you to take responsibility where you just don't want to. I do have a good friend who always calls me out...and I'm never comfortable with it because it makes me reexamine myself. Which means time for inner reflection. Which means I have to mull over my actions. It's like editing. I start second guessing myself and it makes me feel terrible.

But all in all, it is what good friends do. They hold you accountable for being you. Because they love you and they strive for truth. And because I love now love myself, or at least I am trying to (sometimes I don't make it very easy), I too am striving for truth. And that, my dear readers is what Martha Stewart calls "a good thing."

Happy New Year!

Hugs and Kisses!
c



Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Home



So next week marks a pretty big milestone...Two years in Korea. I remember telling my mom that I would only be in Seoul for a year and then I would head straight off to grad school and then begin teaching in a university setting....

Two years later, I am still sitting in the same Starbucks, drinking a venti Christmas Blend (at the time I was drinking an Americano, I'm certain--and they didn't have venti here yet) and I have never been happier.

I have met amazing people. I laughed at what I used to think was vital, who I once was, and squealed for who I am now. I have laughed until I thought I was going to pee. Then I peed.

I have cried. I have cried oceans for the person I used to be, the departures of amazing people, and then, cried some more.

But it feels just as magical as it did the first time.

I can only imagine that this is what true love is. When you look back over the years and realize that you still feel the same as you did when you first came together. That, while time has certainly forged on, and you have changed, you've grown together at a similar and compatible rate. There is hope. There is light. Even in the darkest of nights.

And there is a comfortable sigh there. Because you're home with this person. It's safe but not boring. It's familiar yet new. Comfortable yet exciting.

This is true love.

Maybe one day I will find it with a wonderful man...until then, Seoul, you have my heart. Do with it what you will.

Get it drunk and have it stumble in the streets of Hongdae. Take it to eat Egyptian sandwiches at 4 am in Itaewon. Bring it to Namsan Tower to overlook the city. Invite it to drink coffee and smile as it takes cute pictures with a smart phone. Bring my heart to Gangnam and take sticker photos making kissy faces and victory hand gestures. Go to the 63 building together. Wander around the Co-Ex. Take my heart by it's hand and walk through the streets of Insadong. Take it out to a noraebang, a PC bang, screen golf, and then to a love motel. Admire it while it basks in the blue light of electric sex. Let it sing. Let it dance. Love it as it loves you. Again and again and again and again.

My dear, dear readers. I am home.


Sunday, December 2, 2012

Oooo Also...

One more thing.

A friend posted this link on FB and I thought I would share it with all of you. It gave me chills and made me feel whole.

For all my girls who read...


YOU SHOULD DATE AN ILLITERATE GIRL BY CHARLES WARNKE
27 June 2012
An original piece by Charles Warnke that, at its heart, urges one not to settle but to embrace life and the challenges of a good woman.

“Date a girl who doesn’t read. Find her in the weary squalor of a Midwestern bar. Find her in the smoke, drunken sweat, and varicolored light of an upscale nightclub. Wherever you find her, find her smiling. Make sure that it lingers when the people that are talking to her look away. Engage her with unsentimental trivialities. Use pick-up lines and laugh inwardly. Take her outside when the night overstays its welcome. Ignore the palpable weight of fatigue. Kiss her in the rain under the weak glow of a streetlamp because you’ve seen it in a film. Remark at its lack of significance. Take her to your apartment. Dispatch with making love. Fuck her.

Let the anxious contract you’ve unwittingly written evolve slowly and uncomfortably into a relationship. Find shared interests and common ground like sushi and folk music. Build an impenetrable bastion upon that ground. Make it sacred. Retreat into it every time the air gets stale or the evenings too long. Talk about nothing of significance. Do little thinking. Let the months pass unnoticed. Ask her to move in. Let her decorate. Get into fights about inconsequential things like how the fucking shower curtain needs to be closed so that it doesn’t fucking collect mold. Let a year pass unnoticed. Begin to notice.

Figure that you should probably get married because you will have wasted a lot of time otherwise. Take her to dinner on the forty-fifth floor at a restaurant far beyond your means. Make sure there is a beautiful view of the city. Sheepishly ask a waiter to bring her a glass of champagne with a modest ring in it. When she notices, propose to her with all of the enthusiasm and sincerity you can muster. Do not be overly concerned if you feel your heart leap through a pane of sheet glass. For that matter, do not be overly concerned if you cannot feel it at all. If there is applause, let it stagnate. If she cries, smile as if you’ve never been happier. If she doesn’t, smile all the same.

Let the years pass unnoticed. Get a career, not a job. Buy a house. Have two striking children. Try to raise them well. Fail frequently. Lapse into a bored indifference. Lapse into an indifferent sadness. Have a mid-life crisis. Grow old. Wonder at your lack of achievement. Feel sometimes contented, but mostly vacant and ethereal. Feel, during walks, as if you might never return or as if you might blow away on the wind. Contract a terminal illness. Die, but only after you observe that the girl who didn’t read never made your heart oscillate with any significant passion, that no one will write the story of your lives, and that she will die, too, with only a mild and tempered regret that nothing ever came of her capacity to love.

Do those things, god damnit, because nothing sucks worse than a girl who reads. Do it, I say, because a life in purgatory is better than a life in hell. Do it, because a girl who reads possesses a vocabulary that can describe that amorphous discontent of a life unfulfilled—a vocabulary that parses the innate beauty of the world and makes it an accessible necessity instead of an alien wonder. A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, goddamnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived.

Date a girl who doesn’t read because the girl who reads knows the importance of plot. She can trace out the demarcations of a prologue and the sharp ridges of a climax. She feels them in her skin. The girl who reads will be patient with an intermission and expedite a denouement. But of all things, the girl who reads knows most the ineluctable significance of an end. She is comfortable with them. She has bid farewell to a thousand heroes with only a twinge of sadness.

Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the cafĂ©, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life so goddamned difficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life of which I spoke at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being told. So out with you, girl who reads. Take the next southbound train and take your Hemingway with you. Or, perhaps, stay and save my life. ”

— Charles Warnke (via Thought Catalog)

Happy Holidays. Schmappy Schmolidays...

Ho Ho Ho Dear Readers and a Merry Almost Christmas to you and yours.

Updates updates updates.

Where to begin?

When we last spoke, Mom had finished her visit here, and that was in the beginning of October. It's now December 3rd. Yikes. November, as you can imagine, friggin' flew by. Time, as we know moves very quickly, and for some reason, time in Korea feels like it goes faster than it normally does.

During the month of November, I spent a lot of time editing this story that I am writing. I spent some quality time with friends. I drank a little too much. Stopped smoking. And found every excuse not to go to the gym. Sigh. I'm still upset about that last one. I wasted an entire month not working out--although, to be fair, I was quite sick for the last three weeks of November. It still hasn't completely left my system--making this week four. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuudge.




So's anyway...here I am, sitting in my beloved Starbucks across from my apartment. My apartment...there was another headache. My washer broke. My hot water heater stopped working. Thank God that I had heat. Heating in my apartment comes from beneath the floorboards, which totally makes sense when you think about it. Heat rises. Duh. Also, many Korean people sleep on the floor, so it's quite toasty. Not to mention the fact that it is SUPER effective to dry your jeans that you wash the night before (because Koreans generally do not have dryers).Hey Girl Hey!

Thanksgiving was great--I spent it with my E-Spirit family and had a glorious meal. We played a rousing game of celebrity afterwards and in a gracious fashion, it came out to be a tie. No tie breaker. It's a Thanksgiving miracle. One love. One team.

Yesterday I went out to Insadong to do some Christmas shopping. It made me happy that it's gotten so chilly here but on the other hand, it makes me sad that I am not with my family and friends for another Christmas. I was just remarking to Jess that throughout the year I am fine. I'm about 70/30 "missing" home (70 being "I'm in love with Korea, I'm totes fine" and 30 being "Ooo I miss Chicago style pizza/friends and family"). But once Thanksgiving hits, it's the other way around. It will certainly pass, it just takes a little while.
I remember hearing people getting the Holiday blues and I would think, "oh come on!"



But I totally get it now. And I'm sure the their situations were not exactly similar to mine--but who knows, maybe they were? And who am I to judge?

So I suppose that is all for now. I would like to make a commitment to update the blog every month to let everyone know my thoughts and whatnot. I think that is a decent commitment.

Also, I need to start thinking of my NY resolutions. This past year I had 12. I completed 9 of them. Holla! Usually if I have 1, I will fail at meeting that expectation.

Alright. This is me. Signing off. Perhaps I'll write another blog entry on the Christmas break. Until then...

xox