Dear Girls: You're 100% the Problem

Ladies, please pause your hissing, retract your claws, and hear me out.

Relationships aren't about each person putting in his or her respective halves of 50% each. If you're really giving your "all" then you're giving 100%. So if there is a problem, it's perfectly fair to say that you are 100% a part of it. 

If this concept of a relationship as a two-way street is so rudimentary, why do I keep witnessing girls place the blame entirely on guys when things go wrong? Why are some girls dumbfounded about outcomes that could've been spotted coming a mile away? Why do so many girls have difficulty realizing how much influence they wield, and that too often they're abusing these powers or wasting them on the wrong guys?

Not convinced? Allow me to be more specific:

• The preoccupation with trading up. We look to external add-ons to ugrade the S out of our lives, but we don't upgrade ourselves. What's up with that? Who gave us license to use guys as a means to a higher end? Or to abandon good guys because we might be able to do "better"? The search for something better in itself is not flawed, but sometimes the preoccupation with something else can be. In our culture, we're overly socialized to embrace choice. We're empowered to delete, undo, refresh, unfriend, unfollow and reset at our heart's every whim. The result? Half-baked commitments and constant compulsions to find the next shiny thing -- instead of polishing what's already in front of us.
• Making guys jump through hoops. I totally get it. Guys these days are spoiled rotten with an overabundance of choice and, for the most part, suck at properly courting girls. We still just want to feel wanted. But does this mean we can turn the field into a circus and sit around expecting men to entertain us with showy displays of affection? Because I feel like we do that sometimes. We place so much pressure on guys to win us over while at the same time passively reserving the luxury of being able to back out. It doesn't make sense that we expect a guy to automatically know what we want when we ourselves don't even know what we want. Something's gotta give, because relationships aren't won, they're built.
• Using men to stow your baggage. He doesn't "complete" you, he never should, and he never will. No one is equipped to fulfill that role. Girls have been known to fold their insecurities up and lug it into a relationship, expecting a guy to carry their weight and assuage their bruises. We all have an Inner Fat Girl -- the fragile yet tyrannic voice within us that occasionally finds its way into our ears, making us question whether or not we deserve greatness. The same voice that also drives us to fear being held responsible for our own happiness. Why let an uninvited guest sabotage us?
• "Guys are intimidated by me." Sorry, but...no. Unless you asked a bunch of them to fill out an anonymous survey, it's simply one of three things: 1.) you're a flat-out, high-maintenance B and you need to soften up OR 2.) your beauty is of Angelina Jolie-esque proportions, in which case you should probably just shut up and stop talking about your physical form as if it's a curse OR 3.) something about you rubs a guy the wrong way because it reflects something in himself that he doesn't want to deal with -- a bullet you should dodge anyway. Whatever the case, this is a lame, cop-out excuse and it does little to illuminate the real issue. 
• Gaggles of girlfriends. It's hard enough winning the heart of one girl. Now multiply that by five. Perfectly decent guys get dismissed all the time because the girl's friends are too quick to disapprove. More girls need to ask themselves: Am I listening to my girlfriends because deep down inside I know they're right? Or am I agreeing because I want them to validate me? It makes sense to want our choices to be vetted by our most important allies. And your girlfriends to want the best for you because to them, you're the cat's meow. But let's face it -- sometimes we have so much fanatical, unconditional adoration for each other that no guy will ever be good enough. 
• Out-of-proportion reactions. If guys have wandering, excitable eyes, girls have wandering, excitable minds. We can churn out rose-colored imaginations and we can overanalyze. No, it's not okay to start planning your wedding three days after meeting him. It's not okay to be up at midnight lurking on his social media accounts. It's not okay to punish him by withdrawing intimacy. It's not okay to interpret something as silly as "I'm not hungry" to mean "I don't love you." It's not okay to make him jealous using juvenile tactics. And I say this last part with extreme caution because of this and this, but sometimes...you just have to reign the crazy in. 
• Delusions of scarcity. Perhaps it's in our DNA to fall to bouts of tunnel vision. Or maybe it's all the crappy romantic comedies and TV shows with the oversimplified punch lines that we consume. Regardless, we have to stop tricking ourselves into thinking that there aren't any good guys out there. And are they really all gay? It's a fatalistic mindset and it's a trap. Limit your beliefs and you're limiting your pool. Approach dating from a place of abundance and naturally you'll create a positive feedback loop. 
• Making excuses for guys. Ever heard of the quote, "We accept the love we think we deserve?" What you choose put up with reveals what you think you're worth. There's no reason to associate yourself with a guy who makes you question your worth. Ignore all the red flags you want, but at the end of the day he either likes you enough to secure you or he doesn't. He's not shy, he's not busy, he's not scarred, and he sure as hell isn't pining away out of fear of unrequited love. The right guy knows that fortune favors the bold and will act. It's in his DNA. We gain absolutely nothing by doing their parts for them.

I'm making jabs left and right but trust me, I know firsthand how confusing it all can be and that it isn't easy being you. And boys, I feel for your struggle to wean properly and assert your postmasculinity, but don't get too comfortable. You're not off the hook!

Our conversations -- whether in smelly locker rooms or over champagne brunch -- will always carry mildly sexist undertones. But they will also always allude to a vested need to connect with the opposite sex. Therefore, there's no point in perpetuating an "us versus them" mentality when in reality "they" represent a part of our humanity that we innately cannot do without. I guess what I'm trying to say is: we could all do a lot for ourselves and our futures if we stop using each other to stuff our egos, stop getting lost in the thick of it, and start owning up the fact that sometimes we stir our own shit. 

Here's to being 100% the solution.

My 25 Before 25

I recently turned 24. As I prepare to lay the first quarter of my life to rest, I wanted to make a list of 25 things to do before I turn 25. (I know you see what I did there.) Here it is in its full, overly personal glory:

1. Throw caution to the wind. Not saying I should go all Johnny Knoxville on life, but now is an ideal time to cultivate a massive reservoir of nutty, adventuresome bedtime stories for my future grandchildren. I usually play it safe, but I will deliberately take more chances, make more mistakes, and rub up more uncomfortably against the gnarly bristles of youth. And if anyone asks, I'll tell them it's all in preparation for responsible grandparenting.
    
2. Embrace the Rule of Three. Learn how to make 3 crowd-pleasing potluck dishes, concoct 3 go-to cocktails, pick out 3 solid bottles of wine, store 3 pieces of reliable fodder for small talk, identify 3 favorite movies/books/bands, etc. You get my drift. This is my way of incrementally crawling towards the booze-filled dinner party abyss that is adulthood.
    
3. Love my body, once and for all, which goes hand in hand with Enjoy the last year of being able to blame that lingering inch on baby fat and Develop a lasting exercise habit. I refuse to let a fear of mirrors and buffets tyrannize the rest of my life!
    
4. Give my cultural upbringing a big, fat, forgiving hug. Of the immigrant populations, Korean-Americans are a relatively new, rogue bunch. We may have found ways to elbow our way into the upper-middle-income bracket and onto your television screens at shocking speeds, but our collective identity still needs a lot of teasing. Though Korean-America's idiosyncrasies are often at odds with the general ebb and flow of things here in the States, they have made me who I am. I'm learning to embrace my cultural duality and the benefits of my heritage.
       
5. Ask a guy out. Preferably a stranger. By no means is reverse courtship my preferred method of interaction with the opposite sex, but I want to score once so that I can cruise through the rest of my life knowing that I'm perfectly capable of it.
    
6. Throw an epic goodbye party for any remaining resentment or unforgiveness I have towards my parents/relatives. I'm dead serious. Any venue suggestions? I'm thinking BYOB ("Bring Your Own Baggage").
    
7. Purge my life of toxicity. Toxic people who are quick to label, who are flighty or superficial, who engender spiritual infirmity, whom I can't seem to fully trust no matter how many good nights we share -- those especially. Also, no more mingling with people who've pressed the "pause" button on growing up and numbed themselves silly instead. Crowds of beautiful LA people are especially good at this as well as various forms of fraternization and social climbing. They may even do all the right things -- own major assets, practice spirituality, and hold down jobs advising others on how to live their lives -- but those embellishments can be deceiving. 
     
8. Start a travel fund. For two years I've been nursing a wretched hangover from taking too many swigs from the jar of blissful college-age ignorance. Somehow, in between gags, I began exploring what it means to "cover my financial bases" (which, given my meager salary, is basically code for: a laughable attempt at short-term security, as evidenced by a portfolio truly not worthy of any mention whatsoever). That's all fine and dandy, BUT I forgot something important: travel. Above all, traveling is what ultimately injects your life with flavor and a positive return on investment. If I want to make world domination exploration a priority, I need to start saving up. Now. 
    
9. Outlaw "Dude","Yo", and "Like" from my vocabulary. I cringe every time someone over the age of 25 uses these words. It won't be easy to shake off. Because I'm a Korean-American who came of age in the Greater Los Angeles area, such utterances are deeply embedded in my vernacular. Why this is I do not know.
    
10. Embrace alone-ness and loneliness. I'm comfortable with doing things solo but I'm not comfortable with loneliness -- which is strange given that "lonely" is something that I have felt with vacillating intensities my entire life while "alone" is a state I've rarely been in. As I move out by myself and proceed to graze heartily in the land of singleness, I will practice accepting when I feel lonely and discovering healthy ways to turn it into a growth-fostering sense of solitude.
     
11. Rid my closet of the outdated clothes I cling on to with a dogged hope. I'm giving myself 10 months to finally admit that I will never return to my pre-college weight. See #3.
     
12. Tweak my beauty routine. In order to age out of your early twenties with grace, you have to a.) cut down on minutes spent primping in front of the mirror every day by finding more holistic ways to accentuate your natural beauty, and b.) invest more time and money on periodic upkeep to maintain the health and texture of your hair/skin/nails/etc. Shortcuts are no longer sustainable. Try as I may, I cannot change the way I look nor can I always be Facebook Tag-ready, so alls I can do is focus on bridging the gap between Made-up Audj and No Makeup Audj. Currently they aren't on speaking terms.
     
13. Move out.
      
14. Grieve a permanent loss of control. During your first quarter century, you're brainwashed into thinking that anything is possible if you put your back into it. They never tell you that the next three are spent acquiescing to the reality that a) your ego is prey of the jumbo shrimp variety and that b) you can't control anything at all. It's not a bad thing per se, but it gets ugly when good people do bad things because they crave control, taking it out on spouses, children, coworkers, or their own bodies -- scrambling to dominate something, anything. We try to tip the scales in our favor either through these defense mechanisms or through hard work and vigilance, but at the end of the day, outside forces always prevail. You're only responsible for your response.
      
15. Become a playlist goddess. Mood-themed playlists? Not practical. Pandora? Fails me on the regular. How about some playlists for the real-life situations I frequently find myself in? For cleaning my room. For online shopping. For wrapping gifts for people I don't particularly like. For feeling invincible. For waiting for a text response. For forcing myself to get excited about going out. For pretending I'm an opera singing cowgirl stuck in outer space. For writing blog posts I will probably regret five years later. And so on.
     
16. Integrate writing into my weekly routine. Possibly to continue writing blog posts I will regret five years later. Hopefully while listening to a playlist especially designed for the occasion.
     
17. Come up with a good answer to "What do you like to do in your free time?"  My current answer: "Browse blogs? Exfoliate my body? Instagram my dog? Play air guitar to the Eagles? Peruse the aisles at Trader Joes?" I suppose I could say I like to hike, read, practice Korean/Spanish, snowboard, or handmake cards...but if I don't do it every 1-2 weeks, I feel like a phony. However, in sucking at answering this frequently asked question, I am doing myself (and the 150,000+ waking hours I've lived) a supreme disservice. I have to do a better job at cultivating my hobbies and asserting them with confidence.
    
    
18. Numb myself before it stops being socially acceptable to do so.  A few last huzzahs won't hurt. (I do realize I am contradicting #7 here. Clearly I am a complicated person.)
    
    
19. Develop a habit of indulging in aesthetics. I want to weave the consumption of live performances, readings, literature, exhibits, and other intellectual productions into my monthly diet. Sounds glamorous and easy enough, but I've learned the hard way that it's not -- especially when you have a gazillion competing interests and little (to no) friends who are into the same things you are. But it's adapt or die, peoples. Must routinely engage all five of my senses before I keel over from sensory-cultural malnutrition.
     
20. Enjoy the last year during which it is completely acceptable to eat a Snickers bar for brunch, Lean Cuisine frozen meals for dinner, and Thai delivery for a 2:00 AM supper. Relish every last diabolical bite.
     
21. Memorize the things I do even though I know I will regret them afterwards. (Some examples: Pasta. Responding to his texts. Triple Patron shots. Buying too-small articles of clothing thinking that I will lose weight. All-nighters. Obnoxiously large birthday dinners.) Ingrain this list in my mind and review it every day, because I always seem to forget that the last ten attempts were promptly followed by remorse and self-loathing. Magical selective amnesia?
     
22. Stop crowdsourcing my life decisions. Suppress the instinct to validate my behavior through others' advice. Advice F's S up all the time. Mind you, I've gotten some of the BEST advice from my sage friends, but when I'm constantly comparing what I did or want to do with what people think I should do, I'm forgetting how to fend for myself. 
     
23. Perfect the act of professional gift giving. When it's not just your parents who are sending season's greetings to their caregivers, community contacts, and professional networks, you're starting to make some headway towards true adulthood. I'll do a practice run this year.
     
24. Try not to fall in love...unless it's with myself. My friend and I use "RFP" to describe a girl who has evolved to become "Ripe For Picking" -- ready for an awesome relationship because she is self-assured and mature enough to be one kickass girlfriend and one hell of a good time. A girl that no guy in his right mind would snooze on. I am not her...yet. Until then, I will try not to become too intertwined with anyone. There's no way he'll be the best since I myself am not yet at my best.
     
25. Take stock of all the shameful, messed up things I've done. Stop to think about all the people who love me nonetheless. Thank God. Do something nice for each and every one of them. 

Why is Finality Such a Hard Pill to Swallow?

I was having an interesting conversation with my friend when she mentioned how she was struggling with the finality of a certain loss in her life. This got me thinking...

Barring death, divorce, legal impositions/settlements, and other more undeniably "official" examples of finality, why is it that we have such a hard time stomaching irreversible endings? Most of the time, it's not even about the specific person, place, or thing we can't revisit -- it's the entire idea of chapters completely closing without any chance of a rewrite that rattles our hearts. Even when faced with the most resolute of conclusions (with the utmost certainty of closure), at one point or another we have to reckon with that tiny part inside of us that doesn't want to let go.

So, I started mulling over a few possible answers:

• Maybe it's because we fear the feeling of abandonment that often accompanies finality. Sometimes we're just slow to catch up with reality. When we don't expect an ending, it feels like the choo-choo train of life took off without us. No one likes feeling like someone who's one slip of a step behind. 
• Maybe it's because finality imposes on us, over our meekness, as an unwelcome external authority figure...and as a society we're far too used to defying and questioning any form of authority outside of ourselves. 
• Maybe it's because when finality is not what we ordered, we're so offended by our loss of control that we become busy reeling in the aftermath (perhaps even retroactively pretending we actually wanted or meant for it to happen). So busy that we can't seem to sit back and accept that it's over.
• Maybe it's because we don't want to hurt others with our finality. It's so much easier to think "I can't do X anymore" than to actually assert "I won't do this thing with you anymore", "I won't love you anymore", "I won't work here anymore", "I won't be that person to you anymore", etc.
• Maybe it's because we all secretly want to have our cake and eat it too by keeping some doors open...even when we're fully aware that by keeping that door ajar we're potentially losing out on other chances.  
• Maybe it's because we're so great at coming up with alternate endings. We all want to create the Director's Cut version of everything...even after production has clearly wrapped up. It's a shame we'll never really get to direct our own lives -- that's a fantasy that society has effectively perpetuated. (You can, however, leave a fantastically-written memoir in your wake, but I'll go over that option later...)

Well, after all that mulling I still don't really know why and there's only one appropriate way to end this post:

The End.

My Not-So-Secret Christmas Wish List

Let me preface this list by first saying that 2012 has been an awkward year for holidays:

• New Year's Eve was a ridiculously random night spent at a clifftop resort, an evening during which I rode PV Transit for the first time with a bunch of my hooligan suburbanite friends. Between the ~24 of us, we made about 57 bad decisions.
• Valentine's Day was spent with three of my best wing-men, movie-going and consuming wine and black noodles. The consumption of black noodles is a Valentine's Day tradition for single people in Korea; the consumption of wine on Valentine's Day is, well, a tradition for single people...everywhere. Moving on...
• Memorial Day was unfortunately spent fighting (rather emphatically, might I add) with my family on the strand in Hermosa Beach, an otherwise adorably bro-infested little coastal town.
• Independence Day: a group of us spontaneously decided to picnic and watch fireworks at Hollywood Bowl. This sounded like a great idea until we arrived and realized Barry Manilow was headlining. (Barry Mani-who?) An unacceptable blunder in this Information Age. Needless to say, the fireworks were lackluster.
• Labor Day consisted of a whole lot of laboring away in bed with a fever and cold sweats. The one day I'm allotted a reward for working what often feels like a thankless job, I get sick. Thanks, Universe!
• Halloween is a bust this year because of work and sitting duties. On this very same day in 2011, I was hand-sewing feathers onto a makeshift tutu, test-running creepy contact lenses, and packing for Vegas. This year, however, I find myself wrapping up my seventh consecutive 13-hour workday. Growing up bites. After resetting my expectations about holidays, I'm finding that I'm honestly more stoked for Election Day than I am for Halloween. What a mindtrip.
• As for Thanksgiving, it will be spent hauling my wheezing, asthmatic arse up the treacherous ascent to Machu Picchu and taking baby wipe showers. I'm definitely looking forward to what will be an epic trip, but right now I'm too scared of two very inevitable things: my physical unfitness and an insatiable longing for pumpkin pie a la mode.
• (Insert apology for not disclosing sooner that Negative Nancy was guest writing for this post.)
• So....where does this leave Christmas? (It's 56 days away, by the way. But who's counting? Definitely not I............) I will probably spend it again with my maverick family in tobacco odor-tinged opulence (aka Las Vegas), surrounded by massive hordes of Persians and Chinese folks in designer garb and with nary a branch of mistletoe nor a mug of eggnog in sight. 'Tis the season!

Given the above, I figured I'd poke even more fun at my state of holiday affairs by revealing to you my Christmas Wish List. I should probably keep it under wraps (no pun intended), but hell, I've already started to paint an ultra-cool picture of myself and my glamorous lifestyle so far. Why not take it one step further and reveal to you my equally ultra-cool and glamorous Christmas list?

1. Carl Kasell Autograph Pillow. NPR's "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me" (aka "The Oddly Informative News Quiz" Show) is one of my life's greatest guilty pleasures. So much so that I was seriously considering attending a taping in Chicago when I was in town for a conference. By myself. Carl Kasell's voice is rumbling (yet modulated), warm and smooth -- like what slow bubbling, hot butter would sound like if transformed into a human voice. This pillow just takes my geek-out to a whole new level. I love it. Problem is, it's one of those things I want someone else to buy me. To buy it for myself seems...off. Believe it or not, my oddness has limitations.
   
   
2. Rollerblading Partner. I take it back. There are no limitations. Last year I shamelessly invested two benjis in new blades, a carrying bag, and protective pads. I've been on the hunt for someone who is willing to rollerblade with me and teach me how to brake properly but no real luck yet. People have responded with comments such as "no way / that's social suicide / you're so lame" and "why would you want to do that / it's not even that fun / again, you're so lame." Are you kidding me? Have you forgotten the awesome feeling of the summer wind in your face as your feet glide across smooth surfaces? I understand that at least for guys it's not the coolest thing to be caught doing these days, but I thought we were past the age of caring what people thought! (...I'm kidding. That last statement was tainted with delusion.)
   
   
3. Justin Beiber concert tickets. Now this one I know many of you guys can get down with -- especially considering his recent collaborations. The show will most likely be overpriced and teeming with screaming hormonal teenagers (screaming because they find themselves surrounded otherwise only by awkward, overgrown boys and thus have no choice but to fantasize about a distant ideal). But try as I might to fight off the infectious Beiber Fever, I know in my heart that I will have the time of my life. Maybe because there's still a screaming hormonal teenager in me somewhere. Or maybe because I'm still surrounded by awkward, overgrown boys and left with no choice but to fantasize about distant ideals. #SadButTrue
   
   
4. Cuddle buddy. For watching long-arc tv dramas and eating rummy bears (gummy bears soaked in rum, naturally) while posted on a comfy couch together. I was introduced to this amazing pasttime not too long ago (but with the wrong candidate) and I am now a shameless lifelong fan. The catch here is that you are restricted to watching dramas, not enacting them. Sweet nothings are optional. 
   
   
5. Rap ghostwriting gig. Problem: The use of a rhyme scheme in poetry is now considered passé. So where else can I channel my love of end rhymes? Solution: ghostwrite verses for rappers! Half of the stuff they come up with is shite anyways. Employ me and I will elevate your craft to a perfect mix of veiled intellectual references, hints of undergroundsiness (blended with the ability to sell out whenever convenient, of course), humor, bombastic gloating, emotional vulnerability, and the occasional profanity/playful vulgarity. How do I know I can do this? Because I basically just described me in a nutshell. It's perfect because I have no desire to actually be a rapper. This arrangement allows for you to enjoy the flashy lifestyle perks as long as you funnel some of your earnings my way and give me VIP access to concerts galore. Win-win. I even came up with the pseudonym I want to work under: Prinsass. (Get it? Don't even try to tell me that name is not totally befitting.) 

I think I'll stop there for now. You will be the first to know (whether you want to or not) if I think of any more.

Trust me, I'm normal at the end of the day. And I'll stop making Christmas wish lists when I turn a quarter century old. I promise.

In Case There Was Any Question About the Veracity of My L.A.-ness

Today, I...

• woke up and debated with a friend one of life's age-old questions: Which is the better flea market? Rose Bowl or Fairfax? 
• hiked Runyon Canyon in my neon-colored Nike Frees and (subtly-marked but still overpriced) designer shades 
• visited my friend at Park La Brea and saw a lady pushing a double stroller around in 5-inch stilettos
• semi-successfully parallel parked 3 times and self-fived myself each time for doing so
• chatted it up with a Mid-City homeless lady about the deliciousness that is Arizona's Mucho Mango on a hot summer mid-October day like today
• strolled through The Grove in a USC cap and yoga pants...and renewed my love/hate for Rick Caruso
• ran into a friend who was holding hands with a mystery girl and wondered whether they were really a couple or not because, well, people avoid commitment like the plague in this town 
• deeply philosophized about the need for a Topshop in L.A., remembered they're opening one soon, and then proceeded to get unabashedly giddy about its pending arrival
• filled up my gas-guzzling, tinted and sports-packaged mini-SUV with $80 worth of soul-sucking commutes and got harassed by (literally) the umpteenth family who supposedly "ran out of gas and needs $20 to go back home" 
• ate at Mendocino Farms and actually listened to the overly peppy cashier's 3-minute explanation about the chef's mission to serve only local farm fresh ingredients
• lamented the fact that I'm just another option to most guys within a 30-mile vicinity in between forkfuls of my salad -- a dish I ironically chose over a hearty carb-laden sandwich with the twisted hope of capturing said guys' attention
• came home to my parents showing off their latest purchases from a shopping binge at the Century City Westfield

Ugh. I am so L.A. 

Wait, Why Don't Colleges Offer These Kinds of Courses?

Had I known what postgrad life would really be like (emotionally, relationally, professionally...just everythingly) I would've gotten a degree that covers the following crucial, real life preparatory subjects instead of slaving away at law, statistics, urban policy, comparative literature, and the like:

Health & Lifestyle

• Responsible Partying: You're Not a Sorority Girl Anymore
  
• Feigning Disinterest in Costume Parties
  
• Overcoming Your Red Solo® Cup Dependency Once and For All
  
• Surviving Your Twenties Without Doing Irreparable Damage to Your Body or Your Dignity (Whatever Comes First)
  
• How to Dance at Weddings
  
• Ridding Your Body of the 10 Alcohol- and Desktop Snack-Laden Pounds It Put On During Your First-Ever Year of Employment 
• Intro to Gerontology: When Memorization of Popular Song Lyrics, Boy Band Star Names and Other Such Inanities Stops Coming Naturally

Relationships

• How Not to Be The Low-Hanging Fruit OR How Not to Be The Destination at the End of the Path to Least Resistance (Depending on Your Metaphorical Wording Preferences)
• Making New Friends, Non-Creeper Style
• Identifying the Greenness of the Grass on Your Side
• Game Theory: #Winning Despite Your Hatred of Having to Play In The First Place
• How It's Done (Although No One Really Knows What They're Doing): Pre-DTR, Gray Area Casual Dating
• Intro to Urban Planning: Erecting Airtight Friend Zones and Circles of Trust

Career

• Reading Between the (Email) Lines
• Advancement 101: Delegating Work to Underlings Despite Still Feeling Like One Yourself
• Effective Pain Management Techniques: Networking & Mixers
• Outwitting Passive-Aggressive Coworkers With -- You Guessed It -- Even More Passive-Aggression
• The Art of Powering Through 1,497 Unread Emails After Getting Back From That Vacation You Took Precisely to Avoid the Cesspool That Is Your Inbox
• $3 Sake Bombs and Other Happy Hour Fundamentals 

Culture

• Cultivating a Political Backbone Without Irritating Your Loved Ones/Facebook Friends With Your Newly Minted Opinions
  
• 50 Non-Reddit-Sourced Ways to Exude Coolness Given Your Dwindling Pop Culture Prowess
  
• Coping Skills: When Reality TV Is The Closest To Reality You Get
• Emerging Household Trends: Repopulating the Empty Nest
• Intro to Civic Participation: Perennial Under-informed Voting (If You Even Make It to the Polls) and Jury Duty Avoidance Tactics

Technology & Social Media

• Zen Basics: Teaching Your Parents How to Use Technology Without Imploding
• Proper, Adultlike News Consumption When All You Want to Do is Read BarStoolSports, ThoughtCatalog, or PerezHilton
• The Art Of Wasting Precious Time On The Interwebz
• Self-Rescue Techniques: When You Find Yourself in the "Weird" Parts Of YouTube
• Post-Limewire Age Music Acquisition for Dummies
• Explaining AOL, MySpace, GeoCities, Friendster, and Xanga to Today's Youth

Everything Else

• Acclimation 101: When Nothing Surprises You Anymore
  
• Suppressing Shame and Schadenfreude So No One Notices It (Or So You Think)
• Data Skills: Managing the Unnecessary Overabundance of Choice in Practically Every Aspect of Modern Life
• Personal Finance Fluency By Way Of Cheesy Self-Help Blogs & Books 
• Advanced List-making: When You've Lost the Ability to Form Cohesive Paragraphs of Interconnected Thoughts

Who's with me?

The 12 Rules of En-gauge-ment

Thanks for lying to me, Universe.

You know, you had me for a while. You with your tendency to force-feed me shitty cultural standards and overly-romanticized definitions of love and greatness. But I'm onto you. I am sick of you telling me to buy into dizzying displays of machismo and sprezzatura. Of bravado and charisma. I am sick of you insulting the awesome aspects of my womanhood by shoving some of my layers into a bio-hazard waste container marked "Hormonal Madness" and gaslighting me into believing that I'm just a creature wrought by feminine hysteria. You can really derail a good girl with your bush league values, you know that?

So, I decided to come up with my own Rules of En-gauge-ment when it comes to relationships:

1. I will gauge his strengths based on how aware he is of his weaknesses.
2. I will gauge his confidence based on how comfortable he is with being utterly vulnerable.
3. I will gauge his humor based not on the jokes he tells, but his ability to laugh at himself.
4. I will gauge his ambition based on how willing he is to fail. Publicly.
5. I will gauge his passion not by his fervent, posturing displays but his quiet, consistent prayers.
6. I will gauge his command not by his influence over others but by the ease with which he relinquishes control. 
7. I will gauge his character by what he does for me even when I'm not around or may never come to know.
8. I will gauge his true awareness of self by his mindfulness of others.
9. I will gauge his wealth not by his earnings but by the bounty of his empathy.  
10. I will gauge the strength of his hold on me by his willingness to let go.  
11. I will gauge his love for me by his love for God.
12. I will gauge his extraordinariness by the way he handles his own mediocrity. 

Super original? No. But counter-intuitive enough for me to have to actually work against my misguided instincts and/or push back against what the world is sometimes telling me to want? Definitely. What about good enough to serve as a blueprint for my own self-improvement? Totally.

What Losing a Friend Taught Me

So. I realize this list is ridiculous. Ridiculous in that I'm basically just regurgitating a bunch of cliched life lessons. Ridiculous in that I managed to reduce such a powerful experience down to these platitudes. But you know, the most ridiculous part of it all is that it took losing a friend for me to really understand these simple truths: 

1. Love infinitely. Love ruthlessly. 

Give love richly, as if you'll never, ever run out. Cradling it safely in my arms and doling it out only on special occasions as if it were a prized possession got me nowhere. This seems obvious. But one fateful day you might also be confronted with the overwhelming reality that you had the capacity for more, yet you hoarded the love you could have gifted to others as a false love for yourself instead--an unnecessary barricade of pride--because you thought the supply of love in this godforsaken world was finite. Because you didn't want to escape the comfort (read: confines) of your own narcissistic self-preservation.

...and it will crush you.

Safe? Safe is a good word for high-schoolers. And superficial, surface-level friendships of convenience. But safe is not a good word to fall back on when the big, the bad, and the ugly rear their heads. Ironically enough, safe won't save you when the going really gets rough. Safe will abandon you, betray you...only to reveal the fleeting insignificance in your relationships and the dooming frailties of your heart.

So empty yourself daily. Take risks daily. Because God's infinite pours of grace and wisdom will refill you. Learn to dwell in the uncomfortable zone. Tell them you adore them. That you're thinking of them. That you'd do anything to save them from their throes. Even if you can't. Even if two years later -- after they're taken away from you and after it's too late -- you find yourself point blank with the harsh reality that you couldn't possibly have done anything to save them.

2. Pray together.

Good friends are earthen vessels: they are the handiwork of the potter's hands, they have the capacity to hold a lot of good things for you (or become cesspools of muck if untended to...but that part goes without saying), and most importantly, they can turn back into dust at any whim. To pray together in good faith means to mourn together, to dream together, to fill voids together, to face the good, the bad, and the ugly together, to abound with hope together...and to cling to a life-giving truth in a dying world together.

3. Never, ever, ever be lukewarm.

Lukewarm people scare me now. Their subdued enthusiasm, their bent on maintaining neutrality, their false sense of contentment...all sacrifice truth and the blasé attitude is often just a lack of empathy brought on by blinding self-interest. Cold people are insecure people who project their crippling fears and unconscious deficits in self-esteem onto you. Well-known fact. But lukewarm people take those same fears and deficits to another level with their denial of meaningfulness (our raison d'être). This isn't wrong as we're all entitled to our own unique experiences--but if it's meaningful relationships that you're after, the day you allow yourself to be a lukewarm person should be the day you breathe your last dying breath. When you'll have no choice because your body will literally go cold.

4. Be tenderhearted. Be vulnerable.

...which brings me to the next point: say every warm thing you need to say, want to say, and feel compelled to say. Those times when you withheld genuine compliments or words of kindness or concern because you didn't want to seem sycophantic, let them roll off your tongue like thick molasses. Let it hang in the air, even if it makes you feel awkward or oversolicitious. There really is no time to waste on these follies. Rejection is terrifying, yes, but remorse is worse.

5. Wrestle with the ugly.

If you want your friendship to last, you have to be willing to allow your friend to a hold a mirror up to you. For the longest time, this was too scary for me because I didn't want to confront my fear that I wouldn't like what I saw. And I didn't have the guts to do it to others. But the good friend sits with you and shows you the beautiful, the scarred, the lovely. The good friend helps you wrestle with not just the evils around us, but the devils within us. What's more is this: I realized that if you're lucky enough to even have one person in your life who can mimic God's grace and do this for you with unconditional patience, you really can't ask for more. If you have one, go hug this person right now because some people don't get to have this experience...and it literally kills them.

6. Forgiveness is salve for the soul.

Work every kink out in the open, forgive others' selfish inroads, and relentlessly seek forgiveness for your own slip-ups. I learned the hard way that the second secretive thoughts begin to simmer below the surface, the friendship develops a rotten subterranean layer that neither of you will want to dig up later. And little did I know--what seems like just a silly little release of emotion (a head game, even) is actually a highly effective problem-solving solution with measurable results. My only regret is that it came a day too late in the case of my friend and, rather fittingly, I had a hard time forgiving myself for it. But the important thing is that forgiveness did eventually come to liberate...as he always does when you invite him in.

rip ysl ♥

Liquified Brain

Vagrant tears have been rolling out of my left eye nonstop, interrupting my evening and playing tricks on my otherwise sunny disposition. My eye is clearly malfunctioning because I am not sad! Why is this happening?

In any case, I immediately thought of this quote:

“the tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. what makes me weep so? from time to time. there is nothing saddening here. perhaps it is liquified brain.” (Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable)

Beckett fascinates me -- his life, his literature, his lore... He's just way too much amazingness for my little mind to handle.

Existential A-Musings

The following article spoke volumes to the still-developing, angsty, postgrad-limbo-trodding pollyanna in me:

"It's Not About You" by David Brooks (NY Times Op-Ed Column)

While he misses the mark on a few points and makes a few overly sweeping generalizations, I couldn't agree more with his prescription for self-effacement. In other words: Screw the narcissism. Throw out the platitudes. Give me grit and give someone else the glory.

I wanted to write a response on how I feel and what this means for my own personal struggle(s) with my choices regarding the future, but I stumbled across this passage a few nights ago and I don't think I could explain a part of it as well as Kierkegaard does:

"Our early youth is like a flower at dawn with a lovely dewdrop in its cup, harmoniously and pensively reflecting everything that surrounds it. But as soon the sun rises over the horizon, and the dewdrop evaporates; with it vanish the fantasies of life, and now it becomes a question...whether or not a person is able to produce--by his own efforts as does the oleander--a drop that may represent the fruit of his life. This requires, above all, that one be allowed to grow in the soil where one really belongs, but that is not always so easy to find. In this respect there exist fortunate creatures who have such a decided inclination in a particular direction that they faithfully follow the path once it is laid out for them without ever falling prey to the thought that perhaps they ought to have followed an entirely different path. There are others who let themselves be influenced so completely by their surroundings that it never becomes clear to them in what direction they are really striving. Just as the former group has its own implicit categorical imperative, so the latter recognizes an explicit categorical imperative. But how few there are in the former group, and to the latter I do not wish to belong. Those who get to experience the real meaning of Hegelian dialectics in their lives are greater in number. Incidentally, it is altogether natural for wine to ferment before it becomes clear; nevertheless this process is often disagreeable in its several stages, although regarded in its totality it is of course agreeable, provided it does in the end yield its relative results in the context of the usual doubt. This is of major significance for anybody who has come to terms with his destiny by means of it, not only because of the calm that follows in contrast to the preceding storm, but because one then has life in a quite different sense than before."(taken from one of Kierkegaard's early journal entries, found in The Essential Kierkegaard)

And just like that, I realize I've already decided. I want to have life.

Open Letter to My Future Kidlet(s)

Dear Spawn,

If you're reading this, yay! It means you've made it in one piece to this developmental stage. I didn't drop you on your head, accidentally poison you, or sell you to the boogeyman...at least not yet. 

I'm writing this to you as a 23-year old overgrown child who has long been wrestling with the concept of parenting. No offense, but I never really liked or wanted kids. But just in case some powerful otherworldly force possesses me to carry a zygote (or two...or three) to term, I feel compelled to warn you, my (hopefully adorable) future kidlet(s), about a few very important things. This is my mommy disclaimer. My hope is that it will help you meet all the twists and turns of our relationship and other inescapable courses of parent-child fate with the open mind and open heart you'll need if you want to stay sane. Especially if you're anything like me....which to some degree you will be. 

Without a doubt, at times...

• I will hurt you. And disappoint you. When I drop the ball on you, you will feel jaded, lonely, or forlorn (or all three).
• I will be terrible at expressing my unconditional love and affection for you -- sometimes when you need it most. 
• I will use and abuse the "I'm the adult" card and forget to listen. 
• I will make you wonder if you're really living for yourself or if you're just living for me. 
• I will underestimate you. I will overestimate you....all the while missing the point to stop estimating you at all and instead smother you with love and awe.
• I will make you cry - in front of me, behind my back, and maybe even in public. Even worse, I will berate you for crying, when I should be hugging you tight.
• I will forget how young you are. I will forget how old you are.
• I will have unreasonable expectations of you, and will thus douse you with a slew of unwarranted social comparisons.
• I will embarrass you.
• I will never be good enough, yet I will sometimes treat you like you're the one who will never be good enough.
• I will contradict myself. Better yet, I may not even make any sense. 
• I will give you a hard time for not being independent, but at the same time I will not want to let go.
• I will be retributive with my anger towards your mistakes, instead of purposive.
• I will clamor to shower you with gifts when I feel especially guilty (probably about something on this list). 
• I will be so busy making sure your tummy is fed that I will forget to ensure that your soul is being nourished.
• I will, one day, stop being the all-knowing adult figure you needed. You will realize I am no longer leading the way -- we are now walking alongside each other.
• I will never quench your thirst for mothering (maybe even fathering, if you're especially unlucky).

With that said, it only logically follows that:

Anything good I do, anything I get right...will have been orchestrated by the pure grace and mercy of a God. 

I refuse to take credit for it. Because I am not a perfect person, nor will I ever be. Though I will undoubtedly be bursting at the seams with love and good intentions for you, it doesn't erase the fact that I am a broken human being. We all are. I will try my very best to give you an amazing life and help you soar. But please don't ever for a second fall into the trap of idealistic modern family constructs and think that I will be the perfect provider. More importantly, don't ever fall into the trap of thinking that you yourself could be perfect. And I say this with the wisdom of experience: God is the only perfect mother and father, so lean on Him. I will help you, because it's what I do also. And just like that, in imperfect harmony, I hope we can go forth creating beautiful, fruitful, and meaningful lives.

So yea. Perchance I make the bold/senseless/irreversible decision to have kids, this is what I'd want you to know.

With love,
Your crazy mom

p.s. I really hope I got to have my way and that your name is Soren. Or Egypt. Or Emery. Or Cyan. Or Krav. If not, please look away as I go strangle your father for taking away my lifelong dream.

p.p.s. Seriously, make your bed.

요이땅!

몸이 망가질 직정 ㅠㅠ 한달째 지독한 감기를 앓고있음. 으읔.

그래도 기죽지않고 죽도록 열심히 사는 내 모습...숨통이 트인듯한 이 색다른 느낌...참 반갑다. 애매한 골치 덩어리들은  깨긋히 아웃시킨 후 쉴세 없이 빛을 향해 달리다보니...나도 모르게 오래간만에 다시 환히 웃을 수 있게됐다. 뿌듯하다. 

언뜻 보면 무조건 바쁘게 지낸다는건 좋지 않지만 이렇게 여러가지 활동으로 인해  많은걸 배우고  써클을 넓히고있으니...성장하고 있는게 틀림없다. 또다시 주저앉는 날도 물론 오겠지. 근데 생전 처음으로 내 행복을 위해 진심으로 응원해주는 사람들과 어울리니 힘이 생긴다.  이런거구나...늦었지만 너무나 필요했던 깨닳음. 새로운 경험들, 설레는 내 가슴. 맘에 쏙 들어.  

빨리 낳고  계속 달려야지. 

The Lady or the Tiger

Everything I hated about myself in the past, I'm having to learn how to love. If there's anything that the past few years have taught me, it's that I'd rather tackle the rest of my life from a place of self-love than of self-abhorrence. But that doesn't make it any less terrifying. I guess in a sense I am a creature of habit...and that's why?

My dizzying compulsion to over-empathize and to make squalid attempts at mastering a God-like omniscience of all things under the sun; beating myself up for not understanding why I deserved the bad things (at some times) or the good things (at others); allowing destructive, verbally abusive people to hijack my inner monologue one too many times; playing frenzied versions of the blame game (attributing my blunders to the failings of others vs. punishing myself too harshly for the failings of others); this mountain of guilt and unworthiness that I'm particularly wired to feel as someone who is just as much a product of privilege as she is a product of dearth -- which drives everything that I do and manifests at times like a twisted penchant for pain...none of this gets me anywhere. Somehow I have to redirect all this energy towards a more self-soothing endeavor.

Soren Kierkegaard, a bona fide Danish stud muffin, said that life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. So, yea, I can connect the dots of my past to groom myself to be my present and future utmost. But to a certain extent and that's it. I can't try to connect the dots of my future because I will never understand everything -- nor will I be able to control the journey or the outcome as much as I'd like to. And I'm gradually accepting this because I'm realizing that the more I yearn to, the less I give myself the wiggle room I need to live faithfully and fearlessly.

Photophilia

Everything of this world loses its luster. Places, possessions...even people. As humans we were uniquely gifted (burdened?) with the cognitive ability to know better, yet we are the first to squander any and all traces of brilliance on earthly escapades. "We" including me.

Lately, too many things have been losing their luster. 

The problem is, we have lives to live out during the remainder of our stint here. And we're restless light-seeking creatures by nature, like moths to a flame.  Scrambling from one illusively shiny thing to the next will only exhaust us and take us for a ride (or two, or three...or 586,237).  How do I deal with the fact that everything in this world will lose its luster?

Perhaps...if I redirect my energy towards polishing and re-polishing myself from the inside out -- rather than from the outside in, and teach myself to stop scrambling, I can start to chase a true brilliance bright enough to sustain me until I get to bask in the eternal afterglow...

Just a tiny perhaps.

Enochlophobia

You know when you have to push through a big crowd? You want to just close your eyes, clench your fists, and ram right on through, but can't because you need a strategy? Every second spent stalling or calculating the next step you're filled to the brim with anxiety as you eagerly await the next possible moment to thrust yourself forward again? You chance a few glares, a harsh word or two, a stubbed toe, a spilled cup, whatever. And you chance brushing up uncomfortably close to someone along the way? But you gotta keep moving or else you'll be STUCK in a place you don't want to be? You sacrifice some of the fleeting highs that come with stopping to mingle or enjoy all that's abuzz...just for the sake of getting. the. hell. out? Because you feel like you're suffocating? Because you want to be in a space you can call your own and breathe?

I feel like that in life right now. But there is no crowd. There are no people involved. It's just me against a bunch of intangible forces. How unsexy is that.

But in a way ("glass half full" moment coming right up), everyone with a dream or passion to be anything even remotely resembling a dynamo in life SHOULD (ironically) have enochlophobia, or fear of crowds. I read something along these lines somewhere: if you want to lead the orchestra, at one point you have to turn your back on the crowds.

Weird day.

Today was a weird day. It was full of pangs.

Main Entry: ¹pang

Pronunciation: \ˈpaŋ\

Function: noun

Etymology: origin unknown

Date: 15th century

1 : a brief piercing spasm of pain
2 : a sharp attack of mental anguish

Pang #1. It is dark, and I'm wrestling with Sleep in my mind. My nighttime ruminations create a fortress so tall--so impenetrable, that those zzZ's have a hard time pinning me down. I'm about to admit defeat when I am startled silly at 1:00am by the ring of my phone. I've received junk email from my old friend's Yahoo account. It must have been hacked. Nothing alarming right? Wrong. This friend took her own life four months ago. What's worse? The subject line:

Hello.

The hairs on my spine stand at attention. I pinch myself. I know there's no way she could have sent it, but I have to admit: for a fleeting moment, a tiny part of me felt hope, eagerness. I half-imagined the gibberish in the rest of the email rearrange into loving words of reassurance. This has got to be a sick joke, I think. It has become harder to sleep. Sigh.

Pang #2. I woke up to the worst bout of joint pain I've had since March. I curse my body and decide to spend the rest of the day trying to relieve the stiffness. I try an epsom salt bath, yoga, and Aleve. None work, so I finally drag my sister out to go on a light hike with me. We make a few stops first.

I've just paid the cashier at Stop #3. The little one and I head straight for the exit...and straight into Shitty Run-In With Heartless Lady And Her Elderly Mother. Basically, my sister made a run for the exit while the door was slightly ajar, brushing gently past Elderly Mother. Heartless Lady throws fit because my sister didn't hold the door open for her mother. Heartless Lady deliberately complains loudly for us to hear as we walk towards the parking lot. An unbearable minute passes...we are almost at our cars now. She does not stop complaining to her mother about what a manner-less child my sister is. So I confront her:

"Um. Excuse me. I'm sorry. but my sister is mentally challenged and doesn't understand the situation. Social cues like holding the door for others don't come easy for her because she is autistic. Do you think you could you stop talking about her like that?"
Heartless Lady is pissed. "Miss, I was talking to my mother. Not you. This is between me and my mother. Why are you butting into our conversation."

"I'm not. You were speaking loudly for us to hear, and it was very rude. Trust me, she didn't mean it. Please stop."
"That does not excuse your sister from holding the door for elders. Or you could have stopped her from running out like that. And you know that I can have a conversation about it with my mother if I want, right?"

"She didn't know better. And I can't control her. It's not that big of a d---"
Heartless Lady cuts me off coldly. "Then you shouldn't bring her out. If you can't control her, what are you doing out with her? If she has behavioral issues, she belongs at home." She shakes her head disapprovingly and walks away.

Speechless. I'm so offended, so outraged...that I don't even notice the tears falling. People are so backwards sometimes. Anyways, what a sight we must have been: Girl holding groceries, crying in between a nail salon and a candy store at 3pm in a suburban strip mall. Can't forget the aloof young girl beside her, patting her chest and making neighing noises. Sigh.

Pang #3. After collecting myself, Sis and I head to bluff top trails in PV, near the Terranea Resort. With neatly manicured lawns, gorgeous oceanfront cliffs, vacationing families, trails heading down to the beach...I figured it'd be a perfect way to get my mind off the negativity and grease my hinges. But as soon as we hit the main trail I see a freshly created memorial for a lady who jumped off the cliff, exactly one month ago.

Unbelievable. Of all the beautiful sights to see, I am led to this--visions of another stint on earth abandoned. Charles Hansen Towne's words from 1922 dance back to life again:

"When he went blundering back to God
His songs half written, his work half done,
Who knows what paths his bruised feet trod,
What hills of peace or pain he won?

I hope God smiled and took his hand,
And said, "Poor truant, passionate fool!
Life's book is hard to understand:
Why couldst thou not remain at school?"

Then, a visitor. A guy not much older than I was came to visit the memorial. He stared long and hard into the ocean ahead. I left to give him space, but for a second, I had this urge to approach him. We were strangers, but we must share a similar pain. We had to---I mean, after all, we shared real estate on Bereavement Blvd. But why didn't I? Could have been a moment of mutual comfort, however brief. Sigh.

Pang #4. I drove home feeling off-kilter. My mind was stuffed to the brim with thoughts. I cursed to myself realizing that my joints were in no better condition than they were in the morning. When I pulled in to my driveway, a group of girls from the eating disorder treatment home next door were piling into a van. Maybe an outing? Either way, more thoughts of her, and of a potential healing that didn't occur. Of my unfinished therapy. Another pang. Sigh.

Today was a weird day. You know, those feeling days. It reminded me of all the time I have spent clawing hard at my surroundings and deep within me to try to find a strength I don't have, but pretended to have. Along with the overall unreliability of positivity and hope. I don't like days like today.

There must be a reason why God tends to massage bruises like this. So I'm patiently tuning in to the airwaves. And tomorrow, I will reenter the normal world of California summer sun + weekend laziness. In other words, tomorrow will be better.