Monday, January 3, 2011

to infinity and beyond!

My first post of 2011.

I want to wish you all a belated new years. I hope you rang in the new year with great pomp and circumstance!

This is all a little late, but the holidays never leave me with much time, so now that it's all over, I want to share a few reflections.

2010 was so good to me. I loved and loss. I visited London for the first time! I went back to Paris! I finished my thesis! I graduated with my Masters! I went to Philadelphia! I got my butt kicked at UPenn and by Greek. I applied to teach in S. Korea. I laughed a lot. I cried some. I hugged and made small talk. I ran with my arms stretched out.

I came back home and have been idle. Or, I suppose I am taking a much needed break. My days are everything and anything I want them to be. As great as that is, I think I'm finally ready to get back to doing something productive. I enjoy a certain amount of routine in my day. And ultimately, when nightfall hits, I want to be able to think that I've been productive. I know that there are a lot of ways to measure productivity, and it's not just about being able to pat myself on the back for having checked off all the things on my daily "to-do" list, that there are innumerable ways to be productive, everyday. I understand this, cognitively, at least. But I remain, at heart, a person who loves to make to-do lists, loves to see things checked off of them, and that is how I measure my productivity. As sad as it is, reading 60 pages in a book, sure makes me feel good that I've made progress, but I didn't finish the book. Thus, I can't cross it off my list, and that doesn't make me feel good. It's sad, but there it is, nonetheless.

Like I said, I'm ready to start actually "doing" things again.

This, however, puts me between a rock and a hard place, because while I would love to start getting back to, I dunno, working for a living, I am still, waiting to hear back about whether or not I have a future living in South Korea. This is driving me crazy, because it forces me to live in a sort of limbo. I would just like to know, to have an answer, whatever the decision may be. Because then I could actually start to do something, start to plan for the rest of the year.

On that note, I've been thinking a lot about the direction of my life. It may be because it was the end of the year, and at the ending of the year I'm always forced to take stock of my life, for all it's good and bad, and of course, face my own mortality. I'm 25 years old now. And as misguided as it this notion is, mostly because it was formulated when I was much younger and much more susceptible to the brainwashing that happens when being socialized in school, but I sort of thought that I should have been a grown up by now. That I would have a "real" job and a "real" house and a "real" relationship. --oh gag me -- and it's not that I believe in any of that now, especially the relationship part, but sometimes, just sometimes I wonder just where it is that my life is heading.

I mean, I have all this "education" and all this "life experience" and yet, I'm not really doing much. Nothing really for the betterment of the world/humankind, nothing really to share anything with others about what I've been able to ascertain from the world, not sharing my time to make any sort of positive impact. I know that the answer is that if I am so worried about it, then I should just do something about it, but let me be just a tab bit more specific.

I'm struggling to discover how to make my life meaningful in the greater scheme of things. Beyond just myself, and my closed circuit of friends. Is my life doomed to be a series of fragments, ultimately fleeting, inherently transparent and temporal? With nothing weighty to ground me? WIth my life having no true purpose? No true meaning?

But then again, why is it that I believe that having a life of fragments means less? What's wrong with being temporal, if, in reality, that is hat my life truly is?

So you see my dilemma.

Perhaps this a response to my own mortality? I couldn't argue that it isn't. That wanting my life to mean something somehow makes it worth something, and that I can somehow transcend the bounds of my own physical life.

Still something I'm struggling with.

For now, let me end with some resolutions for the year:

1) cultivate a more meaningful prayer life.

2) learn korean.

3) be healthy.

did anyone else make resolutions? I'm curious to know. Anyway, that's it for me, for now. Happy 2011!!!! (doesn't that sound like we should be driving around in spaceships and/or teleporting?!?) :D

1 comment:

  1. I made one resolution: think less, do more. haha

    I hate our 20s. Let's skip to our 30s. I'm serious. I feel more confused than ever!!! haha :)

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