Whoa, We're Halfway There

...Whoa, livin' on a prayer!

Sorry, I can't help thinking of that song every time I hear or say"we're halfway there." Love Bon Jovi and Rock Band 2.

Anyhow, I'm already halfway through my 30-day posting spree! The time is kind of flying by and it really is recharging me as a blogger. It makes me feel guilty that I'm posting so much stuff without sharing any real content, so I'm looking forward to getting the writer wheels spinning again.

I do have a shameless plug though -- I'm getting ready to launch a new blog (I know, you hear this from me all the time) about professional development. It will cover the old topics of networking, resume-building, etc. and also talk about how to grow as a professional and a leader. If you or anyone you know is interested in becoming a contributer, please shoot me an email.

I'm looking forward to pulling this blog back in the direction of home and lifestyle, although I realize that a lot of my "lifestyle" portions are pretty geeky. What can I say, I like nerdy things.

15 more days!

This is the Sound of Settling

I’ve never been good at doing things I hated to do.

I think it stems from a childhood of being pretty spoiled as a result of being an only child. When I was a child, my parents had tried to get me to do a lot of things I didn’t like, such as piano lessons. The only thing they never relented on was my Chinese, which I’m grateful for now. For everything else, if I protested or resisted, they simply told me I didn’t have to do it.

As a result, though, it seems that I am really bad at just putting my head down and plowing through things I dislike. I’ve always managed to get by on just the bare minimum. In P.E., I walked a 30-minute mile and just tried to look busy by standing around in the outfield or just running up and down the bball court instead of actually playing the sport. I was interested in learning, not sports. But I had to take PE so I scraped by with the least amount of efforts to get credit.

Side story: I once had a conversation with someone who told me, “You were one of those girls in PE! I hated those girls! I always wanted to win.” To which I replied, “Well, I always wanted to not play. So either way, it isn’t fair.”

I bet there are a lot of people who don’t settle or put up with things they dislike. I bet it can swing either way – they can be really successful because they go straight for what they want and never settle for less… or they can never succeed because they aren’t willing to dig through the dirt to find a diamond. What about the people who flounder around in the middle, like me? Some say you gotta do what you gotta do. Some people tell you that sometimes life forces tough choices and you have to do things you don’t want to do in order to survive. Some people say to never settle, even if you’re hurting.

Did you know that after 10 Things I Hate About You, Heath Ledger was offered many more teen romance roles? He turned them all down because he didn’t want to get type-casted in those roles his entire career, instead living on ramen and cereal while waiting for other opportunities.

Being this type of person means that at some point, you have to drawn a line between being confident and being stubborn. When do you know that you’re not getting what you want because it’s not fair or because of your ego? Are you fighting to fight or fighting to win, just because you hate being wrong and hate letting other people be right? Or, vice versa, are you trying so hard not to be stubborn and egotistic that you are letting people walk all over you?

Are you selling yourself short by settling or hurting future opportunities when you don't?

P.S. 5 points for naming the band in the post title.

Facing the Real World

As you know, I've been trying unsuccessfully to find a job since my college graduation in June of last year. Today, I went for an interview and tentatively accepted a staff position at an academic academy that does tutoring and standardized testing (SAT, ACT, etc.) prep. It's a 6-day work week and pays $9/hour.

She told me she wasn’t trying to lowball me, that it was the standard rate of pay for college-level or above education. Was that okay for me?

I wanted to say no, that I wanted the $36,000 average that UCSD claimed their new graduates made straight out of college. I wanted to protest about how my $40,000 education was only worth an extra dollar an hour compared to a high school education. I wanted to say that my internships were just as valuable as, if not more so than, any other work experience.

I wanted to cry, because I had always been taught that college was the fast track to success... that because I was smart enough to get into a good school and complete a degree there, I was supposed to have some kind of an advantage in the world.

And I know that I should consider myself lucky to get a job at all, because anything is more than $0/hour, especially for the experience and resume content... and I know that everyone has to start somewhere and that I will (eventually) move on to bigger and better things.

And even though I know, I know, I know.... that what I do as a job or how much I make isn't actually a reflection of what I'm worth as a person....

...it really hurts to feel like I'm not worth as much as I thought I would be.

The real world is pretty harsh.

Growing Up?

I'm going to try really hard not to turn this post (or the rest of this blog for that matter) into an angsty emo diary... but it's quite hard moving back into my parents house. I feel like I'm back to being a teenager, in that awkward stage between no longer being a kid and not quite being an adult yet. It's starting to make me wonder what exactly it's going to take to make me feel like I've grown up and become an adult.

A lot of things have emerged over the last few years, living in apartments off-campus and away from my parents, like all my thoughts about what to do with my own space -- i.e. when I have my own house -- like composting and solar lights, or painting my walls colors in deep colors unlike the drab slightly-off-white I have been looking at all my life. Or my style of cooking, or my need to cuddle as I sleep (or else you have poor Percy and Pooch), or having a drop-off zone when I first enter the place...

At any rate, will being able to do all those things make me feel like an adult? Or will I go on for many more years trying to figure out life as I go and wondering if I can stand on my two feet? (On legs! On human legs! 10 points if you guess the movie.)

Or will there be some defining moment that makes me realize that I'm kinda old? O.o

What do you think?

Goodbye Dinners, Part II

Tonight, I went out with a gaggle I call "the guys" for a goodbye dinner. Simple, low-key Korean BBQ followed by a quick expedition to Mitsuwa for more giant pocky.

Like every time I have hung out with these guys, there wasn't much planning but we always think of something to do. Or we sit around and rib each other. There is only one other girl who hangs around this group of guys in a purely platonic way (any other girls who have entered this circle have joined with the girlfriend tag and have since exited) is also moving out of San Diego at the end of the month.

I've known these guys since my first year of college and the group has grown and ebbed, drama with other people caused splits in what used to be a large group of friends... and through these events, I've learned a lot about the nature of friendship. Through the friendships and the more-than-friendships (or sometimes, I found, less-than-friendships) associated with the extended group, I've learned a lot about myself as an individual and as part of a relationship.

I've learned that no matter how tough I act, or much they insist that I am just one of the guys, there is more to me than what I present in one setting. I will never really be one of the guys, no matter how girly I'm not, just from the sheer fact that I am a girl. It's given me a lot to reflect about regarding platonic male/female relationships, even though by now I'm well aware that same-sex friendships can have the same levels of easiness and difficulty.

Are any of you gals "one of the guys"? Do you really feel like you are treated like one of the guys, or do you think it's an excuse to not be on their best behavior (like they would be around a significant other) around you?

Saying Goodbye to San Diego

I went on a late-night drive around the areas I've lived near UCSD and went around the campus loop one time. As I drove, I thought and I reminisced.

Like high school, college held a lot of good memories mixed in with regrets and mistakes. But in college, I felt like I had made every single one of my own decisions, good or bad. And that sense of independence, the freedom to make my own mistakes, is what kept me here after graduation despite having no income.

I realized that I had a quite a bit of regrets about my college years but that I also couldn't keep those thoughts from escalating into regrets I have had throughout my life. Maybe, I thought as I drove, I could visit those memories - fond and otherwise - one last time and put all of them away. Like my regrets, I think about the what-ifs and the woulda-shoulda-couldas. But, at the risk of sounding cheesy, I wouldn't be who I am today or where I am today. I can never go back and all my hypothetical futures are just that -- hypothetical. Why think about the then and there when there is plenty in the here and now?

So, I'm coming to terms with leaving San Diego. There is a Chinese proverb about how not moving forward is the same as moving backward. There is no such thing as standing still. We are innately afraid of change but it is exactly that change that keeps us going. When nothing is changing, nothing is happening.

I'm trying to make arrangements to see as many of my San Diego friends as possible before I go, but time is short and they are busy people. I'm going to miss them, the city, the campus atmosphere, all the perks of a college town, and -- most of all -- the person I got to be when I was on my own in college. But that person is only a part of who I'm going to be.

I read somewhere that those who say high school or college was the best four years of their lives led very sad lives. We should always look up and forward, for we never know what the future has in store for us.

Goodbye, San Diego. I'll miss you but I won't be sorry for leaving. Thanks for the memories.

What Changed?

Yesterday, I went shopping for a new pair of jeans. It's been a while since the last time I bought new jeans so I was really uncertain about my size. I got my second very pleasant surprise when I found out that I was, once again, a size 3. (My first very pleasant surprise came last week while cleaning my closet, where I happily found a pair of size 7 shorts that were now too big for me.)

I excitedly exclaimed to my friend, who had come along for the ride, that it felt good to be a size 3 again. She (mostly jokingly) flipped me off in response.

As I returned to the dressing room to change back into my own clothes, I had to wonder… “What changed?” This friend was a girl from high school who once shared my problem of not being able to find size 0 pants in a sufficiently petite length.

I was one of those people in high school that could eat whatever she wanted and never gained a pound. Once I hit 20, my jet-engine metabolism turned into a little water wheel machine. Everything I ate went straight to my hips. Unwilling to admit defeat to biology, I rejected the ideas of changing my diet and taking up regular exercise on the simple basis of never needing them before. But when I went up yet another size, I realized it wasn’t just me filling out anymore… I was just plain getting fat. I just wasn’t who I used to be and I needed to adapt.

Even though I still don’t exercise as much as I ought to, I’m extremely content with the changes I’ve made to my diet. I rarely eat anything fried, almost never drink soda (usually opting for water), and frequently choose vegetarian options. I cook at home often, using olive oil instead of corn oil and trying to make things from scratch.

A couple months ago, I went to In’N’Out and ordered myself a Double Double with animal-style fries and a vanilla shake, since I so rarely went there to eat. Halfway through my burger, I realized that the milkshake really wasn’t cutting it as far as thirst-quenching went. Then I thought, “I really just want some water to wash this down. Why did I even buy that milkshake?”

That’s when I knew that I had become a changed person.

“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us." -John Dryden

Don't Stop Believin'...

When people say that life is a journey, they really mean it. It's been 5 years since I started my college journey and I've learned a lot about life, love, friendship, and, most importantly, myself. But even with everything I have learned, I've still got a lot to learn. Even with a direction to go in, I still don't know exactly what I want to do or how to get there. We never stop learning, never stop finding out new things, and never really finish becoming who we really want to be.

And no matter how tough things get, sometimes there is nothing we can do except keep chugging along because not moving forward means moving backward. And sometimes we have to take a step back, because leaping forward may require a running start.

You don't always start where you want and you don't always end up where you think you will. Either way, that's okay. That's life.

As Danette's mother says, "This, too, shall pass."

Que Sera, Sera