exploration

Now that my 3rd year of college has come to an end, I'm feeling antsy about what to do next.  I've suddenly quit feeling exasperated about the seemingly pointless aspects of life and about what life has to (or fails to) offer.  I still have no idea as to what I want to be when I grow up, but I am becoming more open about exploring the unusual and thinking off the beaten path.

I think it's rare that we really find what we are truly passionate about and the perfect outlet for it.  Yet we don't realize this.  We are surrounded by success stories projected onto us through media, through word of mouth, through textbooks and feel pressured to do as they do.

Maybe we aren't supposed to be finding the perfect environment in which to settle.  Maybe there is so much unhappiness because we are never happy with where we have settled.  But perhaps the point of our living is to constantly partake in the act of exploration itself.

quit it

My body is rebelling.

craving

All I want is a big bowl of my grandma's miyeok guk.

Instead, I'm sitting here eating peachy-os.

re:

I gravitate towards The Bigger Picture.

I easily lose interest once conversation turns into the nitty gritty details of What and When, getting caught up in the crisscrossing of conflicting technicalities.

I want to understand the How of its origin, the Why of why it is what it is.

There is always a need to fully step back to reevaluate and recontextualize, to refresh.

good morning

I woke up this morning with a renewed spirit, so to speak.

I have been an absolute mess the past couple weeks:  I have given up on academic learning, my eyes have been bloodshot upon awakening each morning (mostly due to allergies), my body is not cooperating, and my mind has been elsewhere, questioning everything I've done up until now.  In short, I've been experiencing the teenage angst that I never went through in high school.

Yet, when I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, the sun was shining, it was cooler but not raining (I'd rather be a bit chilly than to be a bit warm), I took a leisurely shower in the stall with the drain that doesn't clog up, and had a leisurely chat with a friend that I had not spoken to in a while.

It seems that I've been so worked up about my "future" -- the thing that everyone is so worried about and constantly discussing, that thing that goads my peers and parents into a frenzy.  I have long forgotten to enjoy the present, as cliche as it is, thinking only about the papers due in such-and-such days, the lack of summer plans, what I am to do after graduation in a year.

Perhaps this feeling is only a passing thing, but I am determined to enjoy it.  Yes, I'll still be working on papers and the finals late into that night that will unavoidably crash over me in the coming week, but some things are inevitable.  

Whatever happens, happens.

manipulation

I dislike poetry.

Hidden meanings are omnipresent, but in poetry it is amplified to an enormous degree.  Within a single line, it is so convoluted and twisted within the letters that it must be read over and over and over--

Things should be kept simple.  Straightforward.

It has turned into a rigid academic discourse, focusing solely on the words in its literal form, deconstructing its supposed structure, analyzing its very bones, criticizing deviants, categorizing what is and what is not, assigning it meaning.

"How many lines in a sonnet?" asks a professor.

The class chants the answer.

Some things should be left alone.