Category Archives: Personal

Thirty so far

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While I’ve been restraining my personal blogging efforts of late (due to my increasingly public profile), I figure a brief navel-gazing stint wouldn’t hurt. This is my “personal blog” after all. So indulge me, if you will, in a personal retrospective of this year thus far.

It’s only September and I already feel like 2009 has been the year of great personal improvement. I made new friends and met some very cool people. I learned to drive and earned my driver’s license. I learned to ride a bicycle for the first time ever. I expanded my knitting skills. On a rather nerdy and fulfilling note, I somehow found myself as a guest on two of my favorite podcasts. I also somehow managed to lose almost 20 pounds through a series of diet and exercise (I do have more to go though). You know how some people have their “life list”, the list of things they want to do before they die? I feel like I’ve knocked about 50% of that list in this one year. It feels that amazing.

And yes, I realize it’s only September, and things may go all pear-shaped before the end of the year. But for now, I’m seriously having a ball. If this is how turning 30 feels like, then all I can say about the rest of my thirties is: Bring. It. On.

That concludes my brief personal-blogging effort. You may now return to your regular Internet programming.

When it rains, get an umbrella

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2008 was the year when hope began. In the midst of economic downfall and environmental lapses, we were given the gospel of hope. Sure, I was one of many who was skeptical, but I eventually bought into it. Because, really, what choice do I have? When my friends get laid off, when unemployment rates skyrocket, when the house I’m living in is barely worth the land its on, what else do I have but hope?

My career sputtered along in leaps and starts, and my finances are slowly but surely getting in shape. Brandon got laid off some time in mid-2008 but then rebounded in a satisfactory fashion by the end of it. I was involved in an emotional turmoil or two (as is my nature), but it was nothing too big to handle. I also started on my path to citizenship, which was kindly supported by many of you. Much love for that, of course.

The biggest changes happened to the people around me. Friends moved away, moved closer, got engaged, broke up, got hired, and fired. Which is pretty normal, of course, but all of it happening within the span of a few months is a little jarring, especially when you have a relatively small pool of pals in the first place. I also learned that I can’t please everybody all the time, and that my happy-go-lucky socializing days are largely behind me (Although I’m still down for the occasional beer at the pub).

I’ll be 30 years old in 2009. And if all goes well, I’ll also be an American citizen. It’ll be a pretty momentous year, in more ways than one, and already I’m feeling the nerves of it all. I’m in the waning months of my Saturn return, and I’m steeling myself for further probes into my delicate psyche. I already know a large part of the karma issue has to do with my family in Malaysia, whom I have been quietly neglecting. It’ll all come to haunt me in 2009; I can feel it (PS. Dad? Will you please let me know your email address?).

As I write this, it is the second day of the new year. It’s raining and gloomy outside, and it’s not even ten in the morning. The soft gentle glow of daylight persists through the gray sky, illuminating the wet pavement. Everything is strangely beautiful.

And so starts my cautious optimism for the year ahead.

I have no desert island playlist

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With the talk of mixtape nostalgia and the new iTunes Genius random playlist generation, I am once again revisiting my seemingly unusual indifference toward music. I like music, really, I do. I have a last.fm account, I listen to Pandora occasionally, and I have a healthy music collection in my iTunes library.

But I’ve never obsessed over it. If I hear a song I like on the radio, I don’t really care to find out the artist, or the name of the song. If one day I happen to lose my entire music collection, I really wouldn’t care too much about it. I am horrible at music trivia, because I also don’t care to remember song lyrics, and I don’t care to remember who sings what. I just know I like songs with good rhythm, decent lyrics, and preferably a great musical hook.

(As a disclaimer, there are certain artists I tend to gravitate to. TMBG and Jonathan Coulton, mostly due to the geek factor and I like the lyrics. I also like catchy pop/techno tunes, like a lot of Daft Punk stuff. Indie pop is satisfying as well, but I can’t remember any artists names right now. See, this is what I mean by not caring enough to remember these things).

I’ve never ever created a mixtape. Of anything. I just never cared enough to do it. I do create playlists for running, but that’s a very different sort of thing. I also don’t have the quintessential “desert island playlist”.

It’s strange, but I think that this characteristic is probably one of the most isolating factors of my young adult life. Just like being a geek separates me from the jocks, just like being a minority female separates me from the white male majority, it’s this indifference toward music that has isolated me from involvement in typical twenty-something behavior. I don’t attend concerts (I have no desire to), I don’t read liner notes, I don’t know the difference between young Bowie and old Bowie, etc. I’m just mostly lost when it comes to this stuff.

And because I don’t get involved in this subculture, in this sort of community, I think I miss out on critical youth bonding moments. I think I miss out on the sort of thing that binds people together. You might say that I have other “bonding mechanisms” like pop culture and geek stuff, but music is such an integral part in so many people’s lives that it’s quite a different thing. Music is lifeblood to many people. To me, it isn’t.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I guess what I’m trying to say is I think part of why I’m sometimes weirdly neurotic and feel oddly outcast-ed by society, is that I don’t really “get” the way most people think. And maybe part of this is fueled by things as intangible and as out-of-left-field as my indifference toward things that matter to a great majority of people.

Or maybe, as Sam in Garden State would say, I need to listen to The Shins.

Daily distortion fields

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I dip in and out of distortion fields on a daily basis. Some days I feel as if I’m the happiest and luckiest person in the whole world. Other days I somehow trip and find myself falling into a pit where only my darkest thoughts go. I weave in and out of these zones, pushing up to see the light of day, and pulling in to feel the warmth of despair. Occasionally, I find myself wandering the valleys of nostalgia, laced with melancholy, and I see my past selves stumble their way through tribulations and triumphs. I try to call out to them, and tell them everything will be okay. But I’m never sure if anything’s okay.

Also, I live too much in my head.