Merry Christmas

Was reading about how millenials prefer saying "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas" and all I could think about was this incident at the grocery store around this time last year:

Cashier, after handing me my receipt: Merry Christmas!
Me, in a frazzle trying to put away card and receipt while grabbing the groceries: Happy birthday!

. . .

Mourning the loss of work

There are apparently still some websites whereupon text is entered and it is not auto-saved.

I mean it makes sense when it's like FB or something where a comment is lost (I would imagine this happens... I'm a lurker and if I do comment, they are usually quite short, so I've never had this happen to me).

I was grading someone's work on Canvas (a course management site) and they've saved the comments I've made before, but for whatever reason, it did not save, and I am still processing the loss of work that this has caused.

Yes, I'm being overdramatic.

Yes, it isn't a big deal.

But yes, it is also a minor inconvenience, especially because I felt like those comments would have greatly helped the student and there was quite a bit that I said that I probably won't remember, so I am a little peeved. Just a little.

And I feel like I'm going through the five stages of grief:

Denial: Is it really missing? Where did it go? It couldn't have just disappeared...
Anger: How could I have forgotten to save it? Always save somewhere else first... Why didn't Canvas save it?! Stupid course management system... I am a fooool >:(
Negotiation: Maybe I can recreate the comments without having to read through the whole assignment again. It won't be so bad... will it?
Depression: I don't want to do this again... I'm a terrible teacher...
Acceptance: Okay, okay, I'll get back into it. Just gotta do what I gotta do.

Bah.

Simplify

I've always struggled with time management. I feel it more because I have what feels like an infinitely flexible schedule.

I realized that it's so easy to fill one's life with the useless. There's a lot of static and noise that we fill our lives with.

I've been (re)reading Charles Duhigg's The Power of Habit, and the first section of the book mentions habit stacking so that one can maximize one's time with all the planning that one must do, for home, for work, for family, etc. All of this to "maximize productivity" and "feel productive" throughout the day.

I understand and for the most part agree with his approach, but as I was reading it this time around, I found myself reflecting on the busy-ness that we all seem to have as we get older. Why have we put ourselves in such a position to have to be productive all the time? If I'm on my morning commute, why can't I spend that time reflecting on the beauty of the day (I have the fortune of driving by some beautiful mountains when I go in for work)? Or why can't I just sit and be still for a bit? I suppose one could fold that into one's stack of habits, but the approach seemed so... busy.

My friends and I are all busy working (or something like it) and we're always busy, but I'm beginning to wonder, what are we all so busy with?

Does cleaning and cooking one's home really take up that much time?

Where is this elusive free time that the previous generations worked so hard to achieve?

I wonder, if I cut out all of the "distractions" in my life, the things that I consider unworthy of my time, how much free time will I have?

Sometimes, with all the things that I've put in my life, all the things I want to do and accomplish, will I ever feel like I can truly relax?

But then, I wonder if it's really a matter of mindset. I can relax as I do whatever it is I set out to do.

My fingers itch when I listen to Bach's Partitas

I think the first Partita that I heard was adapted for viola. It was beautiful. I tried to find a channel for this on Pandora, but they only had Bach's Partitas (and Sonatas) for violin. Still beautiful, but not the same.

I was so moved by this music that I was inspired to buy the sheet music (again adapted for viola). However, it turned out that years without practice had created too much of a disparity between the beauty I had heard and what I was capable of playing.

The idea is to practice practice and practice again until I am not ashamed of the sound I make, but I pick up my viola once every year or couple of years, only to forget that I have such a luxury.

I think that I need to cut down on my hobbies. Keep the one or two and jettison the rest. Keep things simple so that I can breathe and enjoy the simplicity that life without clutter can be.

Publishing and privacy

I was reading a facebook friend's blog, and I realized that I'm a pretty private person. I think about publishing, or at least becoming known (somehow) through my writing, and it's daunting. I don't like people prying into my life, into who I am, into my inner thoughts.

And yet, here I am.

There's something alluring and cathartic about writing. I like sharing my thoughts, usually to a future me, because I can look back and remember or even pick up the strand of thought that I was having, or look back and think to myself "huh, that's a pretty interesting thought that the past-me had."

But I think the core of writing is as a form of communication. It is meant to be read, meant to be shared. Even this very act that I am undertaking, I am writing, knowing that it will be out there in the Interwebs, for others to read (though I do know how buried this blog is and how limited my audience is).

Conflicting with my desire to remain private and perhaps even anonymous is my desire to publish and become known. I think somewhere deep inside, I believe that the things I write that come out of the things I think about are worth reading. I think that I believe I have something valuable to contribute to the body of writing out there that we call literature, that more broadly, we call writing.

Perhaps somewhere, I believe that because my thoughts and words have value, I want to be published and be known.

But I have yet to reconcile that with my very deep desire for boundaries that I call privacy or perhaps the freedom that comes with anonymity.

A year and a half later...

Dang, I forgot about this blog.

Actually, it's not that I forgot, it's that I haven't felt like I've had anything worthwhile to say that isn't deeply entrenched in any kind of literary/narrative theory that I'm up to my ears in.

To trying to keep in line with the more ideological aspects of this blog (rather than the personal), I keep thinking that I've stifled myself in graduate school.

In some ways, graduate school has taught me to write in a certain rhetorical style that I may not be altogether comfortable. I think this kind of training is good, but I think that in trying to learn the foundations of good scholarship, my thoughts and what I like to think of as my creativity have become stifled.

It's an odd place to be right now.

In trying to become someone that I aspire to be, I think I've forgotten who I am at my core.

I write to process, and I process (life) to write.

Amidst all my struggle, I've forgotten why I do this at all. To write, explore, and most of all, to meander. I love the meandering.

Another word comes to mind: wanderlust. Do I still have the spirit to travel? The spirit of adventure? I do and I don't. I think the uncharted territory for me has become the habits I need to break in order to succeed in this thing called graduate school. It's over for now, but I realize in all of this struggle, it's still something I want to do.

I see that glimmer, and I want more of it. I want to contribute and grow thoughts that influence society. It's so crazy how influential all the things I study are.

Gotta do what I feel like I've been meant to do. Gotta take steps to become the person I aspire to be.

Excellence doesn't happen overnight. Excellence is habit. Let's go and be good (I got the inspiration from the following video):

Profiling

If we were to take out the elements by which we profile people in America, specifically race, how would we start to categorize people?

One of the arguments for racial profiling is that we often profile people so that we perceive those who are similar to us as non-threatening and those who are different as threatening. It's some kind of evolutionary development so that we can protect ourselves (because trying to be on the defensive all the time would be too taxing on the brain) by simply and easily categorizing people based on an in-group and out-group mentality. In-group people are non-threatening and thus approachable while out-group people can be threatening and thus must be approached with caution. This defensive mechanism with all the negative media portrayals of (mainly) black men as criminals and suddenly this group is automatically the out-group.

I use my experiences from living in Korea as a standard of measure to see if this is something that could translate in Korea and if so, how it would play out. It helps give me perspective on whether or not there's validity in such biases.

Korea has a fairly homogeneous society and culture. One BIG caveat that I want to bring up is that despite its homogeneity, there is definitely a wonderful underground culture that pushes back against these norms in surprising and creative ways. This is something I had to come to terms with because I always thought Koreans mindlessly followed trends and what Society taught them to do. This is very much not the case and there is very much an active engagement in mainstream culture (honestly, I feel like there's a more active dialogue between mainstream culture and how it is consumed in Korea than in America). But such discussion is for another day.

Going back to this in-group/out-group thing, racially, there is very little diversity in Korea (yes, there's a fairly large ex-pat population, but Korea cannot compare to America in the sheer number of ethnicities represented; it's one of America's distinguishing qualities).

So, if we were to apply the in-group/out-group mentality to Korean society, where race is not a determining factor of whether or not someone is threatening or non-threatening, what happens?

I realized what Americans do for race, Koreans do with dress and facial expressions. Let me elaborate.

If you dress like a thug, Koreans will assume you are a thug. I got kicked out of a jewelry store at the age of 14 because the employee (very possibly the store owner) thought I looked suspicious. I was going through a phase (in the 90s when this was cool) where I thought over-sized jerseys and baggy pants were cool.

I looked like Aaliyah in the top left, except... y'know, Korean and 14 years old.
From http://hip-hop-fashion-evolutionx.blogspot.com/2013/04/90s.html

I looked suspicious based on the way I dressed and the guy at the store read that. I also walked with a slight swagger and I was also wearing a bucket hat, which covered my face (the more I explain this, the more I realize how ridiculous I looked but that's all in the past...). I can understand the guy's suspicion, but at the time, I was simply and innocently shopping for a gift for my sister and it was incredibly disconcerting and infuriating to be judged solely on what I wore.

That takes me to the next criteria of judgement in Korea: facial expression. That's an oversimplification but I haven't yet decided on a good way of describing this. Koreans read people's expressions but this is combined with how one carries oneself as well as one's resting face (so the resting-bitch-face problem would be far worse here). There's this belief that one's personality and/or qualities as a person is manifested in a person's face. I don't mean if you've been having a bad day and you have a sour expression on your face, someone will look at you and think you're a mean or bitter person. If someone has been through a lot of hardship and has a marked bitterness or strength (bred through suffering) in their face, Koreans detect it (or try to) and use this as a way to determine whether or not someone is threatening, friendly, hardworking, etc. I think the idea of the vibes a person gives off kind of encapsulates what I'm getting at. While it's an imperfect practice, I've noticed that this way of determining in-group/out-group worked. I wonder if this could be a better way of determining how to approach someone. That man in the store couldn't see my face because I think he would've realized my age and my intent and maybe would have approached me differently. However, looking at my form and dress, he had to come to the conclusion that I was a threatening entity in his store because someone dressed like me did not buy jewelry.

I do realize that there are a lot of problems with doing this too. At the root of it, no one wants to be judged and no one wants to be perceived as threatening or as a bad person. However, there are people out there with bad intentions and to blindly withhold judgement from such people is, in my opinion, foolish. While I like to think that all humans are capable of good, I don't believe many choose it.

The opposing argument may go something along the lines of "it's better to withhold judgement so that people aren't hurt and there won't be the vicious cycle of judgement, negative reaction, etc." There is truth to this, especially in light of all the distrust between police and the black community. However, one must also realize the stakes. If person is walking toward me is dressed like a gangster and looks like he or she is carrying a concealed weapon and examines me like he or she is going to rob me, I'm going to cross the street. All the more so if I'm with people I don't want to see get hurt. (It's a defensive mechanism, remember?) However, notice how race is not a factor in my scenario; the person's dress and carriage has me on high alert. I wonder if this is something that police training can embed. There are obviously larger issues with all of this, but I wonder if this is one of the many ways we can change things.

So I guess what I'm gleaning from this and other times that I've been judged by my appearance is that when you take race out of the equation, other things start coming into play that perhaps are more indicative of whether or not someone is threatening or not. I don't think that the solution as simple as saying "well look at his/her expression, carriage, dress, etc." but I think that there's something to be said about how things can change beyond just looking at someone based on race and gender (I know I didn't say anything about gender but that's because that's something else I'm marinating on and it's a slightly different conversation). To say "stop judging" is to ignore an automatic function of the brain. However, how we react based on our judgments and whether or not we choose to let certain flawed biases control our reactions is where real change can happen.