When the Going Gets Tough...

I get going!

Blogger, you have treated me well. With your easy-to-use format and simple maneuvers, I have had many a fun time updating on my latest antics and jaunts here.

But alas, I'm moving on. To something a little more complicated, a little more polished. I swear, it's not me, it's really Wordpress. With cool DIY customizing capabilities and users everywhere, from fashion designers to artists, photographers to tech geeks, how can I resist?

You understand, right?

Well, if you're ever in town, look me up. I'll be over here.

Don't cry. If it makes you feel better, my travel blog is still with you. I'm not completely disloyal.


For you readers awkwardly intruding upon this traumatic breakup, let me reiterate:

I've moved sites! I'm HERE now! New look, same attitude.

Daddy Issues

Today, I asked one of my friends, "so, are you guys gonna put a ring on it soon?" And then I was hit in the face with the realization, "oh crap, we're getting old if I'm asking this question!" I mean, wasn't it just yesterday that we were saying stuff like "boys have cooties," or at the very least, "he told me he liked me!"

I started accepting the fact that marriages are looming (not my own marriage, necessarily but marriages around me) when close shots of hands with rings on the fingers and pictures of beaming brides and grooms started filling my Facebook photos stream and friends left and right of me are celebrating 2nd, 3rd anniversaries.  But babies haven't come into the picture yet.

Yet.

I am not a very maternal lass. I don't coo over babies and spend my days doodling nursery sketches. I don't have my babies' names picked out (though Delia is pretty, isn't it?) and I cringe at the possibility of having another human being be completely dependent on me. (That includes you, needy guys)

I would drive my mom crazy when I one-tenth jokingly/nine-tenth seriously say that I never want to have kids.

"That means you don't want to make me a grandmother. You're being so selfish!" She would retort.

So my mother wants me to lose my fabulous pre-baby body (hah!), fabulous pre-baby life (hah!) and spend the next couple of years changing diapers, carpooling, and taking care of a snot-nosed little brat just so she can be a grandma? And she's calling me selfish?! Hah!

But today I re-stumbled upon MetroDad's blog and I might reconsider my family plans. For those of you unfamiliar with this NY Korean-American papa, he has one of the most popular daddy blogs in the blogosphere. Writing about his cute-as-a-button four-year old daughter, with the monicker, "the Peanut," Metrodad is hilarious, delightful and heartwarming. 

Every sentence is witty, (Ex: "However, I'll never forget spending a week in Paris (the city, not the vagina")) and every anecdote is charming.  With the shameless Jon Gosselin running rampant around the globe with his mid-life crisis heavily planted on his bulging belly and Korean dads notorious for being cold, violent, and old-fashioned, it's great to have such a nice father figure to look up to.

This particular entry that he wrote wishing his daughter a happy birthday almost brought tears to my eyes:

Thanks for coming into our world and filling our lives with more meaning than we ever could have imagined. You've taught us that, at the end of the day, the only things that truly matter in life are love, family and a bowl of chocolate pudding.

But in all seriousness, Peanut, I can't even begin to express how much your mother and I both love you. You've brought so much joy and happiness to our lives that it's changed all of us in ways that we could never imagine. I wish I were a better writer so I could better convey all of this. But I'm not.

Oh MetroDad, your writing can't get any better than this.

Tell Me About It

Heehee.

Thanks for making me smile, Anna Spiro!

Dr. Penelope

I came down with something last month.  It was a mysterious illness. One I couldn't immediately identify and wrap my fingers around.  

My parents tried to figure out what was up. They would be extra nice to me, and indulge me with special lunch trips and gentle soothing voices.  My sister shed tears for me, mourning my discomfort.  I genuinely appreciate their efforts and I am so grateful for their support but alas, it is still my own fight to face, my own wounds to heal.

I've been walking around with the illness, spreading it sometimes to my friends.  For those friends I've contaminated, I apologize but hey, misery loves company.  

Finally, I decided to do something about it; I decided to Google it.  And you wouldn't believe what I found.

Wikipedia best provided the words to my symptoms.  

Characteristics of quarter-life crisis may include^{[citation needed]}:

• feeling "not good enough" because one can't find a job that is at one's academic/intellectual level
• frustration with relationships, the working world, and finding a suitable job or career
• confusion of identity
• insecurity regarding the near future
• insecurity concerning long-term plans, life goals
• insecurity regarding present accomplishments
• re-evaluation of close interpersonal relationships
• disappointment with one's job
• nostalgia for university, college, high school or elementary school life
• tendency to hold stronger opinions
• boredom with social interactions
• loss of closeness to high school and college friends
• financially-rooted stress (overwhelming college loans, unanticipatedly high cost of living, etc.)
• loneliness
• desire to have children
• a sense that everyone is, somehow, doing better than you

Hmmm...13 out of 16.  Yep, I officially diagnose myself with "quarterlife crisis."  Alright! Identifying the cause is half the battle.  Now let's see what we can do about it.

Lucky for me, there's this whole world out there called, um, the internet and as I was browsing it one day, I stumbled across my doctor.

Penelope Trunk, no M.D. at the end.

"Don't worry, this isn't going to hurt. you won't feel a thing."

Penelope Trunk is a writer, entrepreneur, and blogger who gets that we young people these days will not end up with one career for the rest of our lives. She understands that we will graduate from college with hardly an inkling or a clue about what we want to do. Or that we want to do it all.  She empathizes our confusion over the booming technology trend, the ever-fickle, swiftly-changing industries. She knows that we're often so preoccupied with that flickering computer screen, answering emails from our cell phones and music blasting from the ipod to our ears that we can't see the big picture, the big idea, the big purpose.  

From advising us on how to talk to a friend who's just been laid off (asking "how's the job hunt?" might not be the best conversation starter), to How to Build a Career as an Artist (forget about being a starving artist), Penelope delves on many issues that we face today.  She's also witty, eloquent and damn relatable and I've been having a ball receiving consultations from her on a daily basis.  

Below are some of the other posts that I've found to be super-helpful.

• How to beat the system to get a great job (use other people's resumes to build yours)
• Don't try to dodge the recession with grad school (grad school pointlessly delays adulthood)

And... most importantly...

• How to figure out what you should be doing with your life (give yourself time to do it, time to fail, time to get lost)

I know these are all advice floating around my ears for the past couple of years but because they're all organized, categorized, bulleted, and condensed into one easy-to-read blog which I can access on a daily basis, print out and glance at whenever I feel the need to, little by little, I'm starting to breathe again, my brows are un-furrowing, and my heart is shifting from my stomach back to its original spot.

I understand this illness is stubborn and it's going to stick around for awhile.  But I'm a fighter so bring on the pain! (And the bandages.)