10 years

I thought about putting this blog off until tomorrow (New Years eve), but then I realized that I've been putting off blogs a lot and then they simply haven't been happening.

Before too long, it will be 2010. Until recently, I almost forgot that this had significance. I guess the decade following the big 2000 is almost guaranteed to be overlooked. But no, 2010 is significant- just like any other decade such as the 90s, the 80s... and so on. There is so much culture that revolves around our decades- like if we're describing older music or movies we describe them with the decade. Each decade has it's own unique impressions and culture attached to it.

And we're about to say good bye to the one we've been in for 10 years and hello to a brand new one.

The '00s is/was, I think, a very significant decade for me. I think it was probably equally significant for other people my age- who started their teen years and became adults in this time period. Maybe my perception will change as I experience more decades, but I think this one will stand out.

When it became the year 2000, I was a home schooled 8th grader. I was bored and (since I did my schoolwork on my own time) a seasoned pro at procrastination. Due to the fact I was obsessed with anime at the time and didn't attend school, most of my friends were online. Due to a breakdown of sorts from my 6th grade year, I was anxious about the idea of being around kids my own age. Nevertheless, I was bored and I wanted to get out of the house more, so I committed myself to the idea of returning to public school for high school.

My mother told me that I could return to home schooling anytime and my brother told me that if I needed friends to hang out with, I could hang out with his friends. But, luckily, I never needed to return to home school and I only really met my brother's friends once. After a month long period or so of spending my lunchtimes with a kind of creepy group of people, I joined the group that I pretty much stuck with for the rest of high school.

As a kid who was bullied in elementary school and then spent junior high being home schooled, I was really nervous when interacting with my peers. I rarely made eye contact. I was 6th period drama class with my brother and I spent most of the class just sitting and watching the classmates walk around and talk to each other. Looking back, I think the high level of interaction terrified me. It got better when I had people in the class to talk to (Rachel and Dusty.)

2001 came and it was hectic. My (step)grandfather had cancer starting near the end of 2000 and my family was basically going through the chaos that -always- happens when someone is in the hospital for a long period of time. I was the only person in my family too young to visit him in ICU until Sam's family visited and I had him for company. He died in February and soon after, my grandmother's health failed. She spent her last few months in a convalesce hospital. After she died there, I had reoccurring, detailed dreams about the place that would always really distress me.

It was in the last of my "convalesce hospital" dreams where I was really upset and a woman came up and talked to me and I felt better- this was the first time I had a vision of who I wanted to be when I got older. After that, those dreams finally stopped.

During the summer of 2001, my parents divorced. At the time, I didn't really pay much attention to what I was feeling because I was more concerned with the feelings of the people around me. It wasn't until years later when I realized the effects that this change in my life had on me and I'm still discovering them.

As a teenager, most people seem to try to distance themselves from their parents and become more independent- I did the opposite. I focused on trying to strengthen my own relationships with my parents. I felt like it was bad timing to do the whole rebellious "teenager" thing. Watching things fall apart made me want to focus on putting whatever I could together.

Another significant event of 2001, of course, was 9/11. As terrible as that event was, it was kind of ____ (I wouldn't say "nice", but I can't think of a better way to say it) to feel that what I was going through was the same as everyone else in the country. Unlike the deaths of my grandparents and my parents' divorce, it was a grief and tragedy that could be shared by all. (I'm not saying at ALL that this was a good thing.)

I remember my feeling of unity being significantly fractured when the general population seemed to have switched their energies towards anger. Perfectly innocent people in the US were harassed due to their heritage and that was just the tip of the ice berg. I remembered watching the bombing in Afghanistan on TV and feeling absolutely none of the satisfaction (of vengence???) that I thought I was supposed to feel. Instead I just wondered "why?"

9/11 caused me to start thinking about politics, current events, etc. for the first time in my life. I feel like to this day, a lot of my opinions can be traced back to what I thought and how I felt around the time of those attacks.

Because of both my parents' divorce and the attacks, it became very important to me to want to learn to understand that thoughts and feeling of people on every side of a conflict- regardless if they were something I would disagree with or disapprove of.

My goal in high school was always to never let the kinds of things that other kids obsessed over become my life, but there was more to it- I wanted to learn how to communicate confidently with people, I wanted to do more than pretend to have myself together, I wanted to become someone that no one would have to worry about, and, most importantly, I wanted to learn to like myself.

So, I spent a lot of my high school years in my head. Sorting through things, organizing, and trying to throw things out. My mind was a chaotic mess and, to this day, I am glad that I took the time to do the housekeeping.

Little by little, with the help of theater and classroom debates, I became better and better at talking to my peers and became a little more outgoing. I tended to be a little depressed and I didn't really care much about my grades or appearance. Then one day in junior year, I had a revelation of sorts that ended my depression and I started to try harder to achieve things. I became a lot more cheerful and talkative, too.

The summer before my senior year (2003), I went to Japan for the first (two) time(s). The Salinas Kushikino sister city association was the first time I interviewed for anything and I felt good about myself when I was chosen. (Although one kid was mean and told me that I was only chosen because someone else she knew couldn't go.) It was a very inspirational trip for me- going to Salinas' sister city made me want to move to Japan and teach English and visiting Hiroshima helped me make sense of my post-9/11 feelings towards war.

Hiroshima made me feel like pain and destruction doesn't need to be countered with more of the same thing, but can instead be used as experience needed to be constructive. I felt extremely motivated to help spread what I learned, but then back in the US, I felt my ambition crushed by people who had a different opinion and my own lack of self confidence was too afraid to try to recover the pieces to put back together. It really hurt to have something that I was really passionate about treated that way. It's because of that, to this day, I have a lot of trouble talking about things that are really important to me.

Meanwhile, my desire to teach English in Japan still thrived. I continued studying Japanese. I already knew I wanted to take part in the JET programme. I told people that afterward I would probably move back to the US and become a Japanese teacher, but I never entirely felt like that I was what I really REALLY wanted to do.

Senior year of high school was a kind of crazy time for friends. There was a lot more drama that year than in previous years. I realized that our friendship was mostly based off of just laughter and goofiness and that, in reality, these friendships didn't help me feel better about myself. So, as the year drew to a close, I learned that almost everyone I hung out with was going to Hartnell, I decided to go to MPC instead. Best. decision. ever.

Sure enough, the lack of proximity to the old high school friends pretty much disintegrated all interaction. MySpace came about around this time, but really it was inevitable. I was sad at first and talked a lot about it to Danny. During the spring semester of 2005, Danny and I met Bethany and Krystina in our English class. The four of us became a super tight group of friends.

Krystina and Bethany (they'll notice the order of their names, so I should make sure to switch) are quite possibly the best friends I've ever had. I don't want other good/best friends of the past to see that and to feel bad, though- but hanging out with them (even in stressful times) has always been a positive thing. I have a good life long friendship and I refuse to ever lose touch with that person, but that was built upon lots and lots of not-so-good things I shouldn't mention here and lots of energy that I put out for the sake of that person. I have no resentment and I am glad I did it, however- but the friendship had very little room for issues or things I was going through. My high school friends (blame lack of maturity, I guess) didn't exactly make me feel like I was important or wanted. Unlike all of those experiences, it was always positive, fun, and uplifting to hang out with Bethany, Krystina, and Danny.

This groups value to me was tested and proved when Krystina suddenly had to move up to Washington around New Years 2007- it was a hectic and emotional three days that left me both emotionally and physically drained. I was actually unable to function properly for the next 24 hours or so (no joke ^^;). But unlike the high school friends who I lost contact with by just going to another school, we kept in touch. Bethany went to study at Oxford for a semester and we're still just as much friends as we always were. Because of this, I wasn't afraid of losing their friendship by moving to Japan. In fact, I probably talk more to Krystina than to any other person on Earth these days.

That year, 2007, Aya came to live with my family to study at North Monterey County High School and I started going to CSUMB majoring in Japanese. During this time, I was just kind of rolling with the direction my life was going in (Japanese major, wanting to do JET) and nothing was too extraordinary about that time. I started applying for JET around November 2007 which was the most stressful application process EVER and has forevermore made me unfazed by application processes (...I hope.)

Deciding to move to Japan kind of came with a long term worry(?) that I had most of my life that I had to conquer a little bit each and every of the 4 times I visited Japan previously. I've always had a sort of guilt in leaving people behind. In elementary school, I always worried that something would happen to my friend if I went out of town and after my parents' divorced, my dad had a weird blacking out episode and my brother had to take him to the hospital while I was out of town. Although I liked going to Japan, I always kind of felt like it was a selfish thing for me to do.

I don't really have a lot of a "sense of self" to begin with. I didn't get good at liking myself as much as I do now until I started almost regarding myself as another person. I felt like it was a very big thing for me to do something "selfish" that I wanted to do ENTIRELY for myself. The people around me, of course, friends and family alike were very (almost overwhelmingly) encouraging.

I moved to Japan in the summer of 2008. I figure it's just like me to take such a big leap as going from living with my mother to living alone in a foreign country. It was very tough, stressful, and often lonely, but because I spent so much time in my head in high school and, through many years of hard work, grew to love myself, I always knew even in the worst times that I would get through it.

This time in Japan was also very good for my confidence- so much that I've even picked up my previously discarded passion from my visits to Hiroshima, reassembled it stronger than ever, and I'm planning on going to grad school to learn how to use it.

...But grad school's in the next decade.

2000 to 2009, thank you very very very much for everything. The highs, the lows, the boring middle points, keeping time fast enough to stay entertained, and slow enough to grow and learn.

things you probably didn't know

1) I like a lot of pop songs when they are covered by people with just vocals and perhaps a piano or a guitar a lot better than the originals. I guess the "pop" elements are just kind of distracting for me and sometimes kind of annoying. A good example being Lady Gaga- I think her songs are ok, but I absolute LOVE some covers I found on youtube of her songs. Most currently and notably, this one! You might recognize this guy as the one who made a cover of Glee's ([much better] cover of Journey's song) "Don't Stop Believing". Actually, I was meaning to show Bethany this youtube account because there's a webseries on there called "College Musical" (as well as other really good covers, etc.)

2) At any given time, I probably have about two or three crushes. They're not anything I take seriously, but instead I just enjoy the fun, goofy aspects of having crushes. Come to think of it, I think I only have one right now. Anyway, these guys are never much more than yet another excuse to feel like a dork.

3) I figured out how to make paper snowflakes today. Virtual snowflakes are much easier to make look pretty, but it's fun to actually do it yourself. I don't really know why I never tried before.

4) I intend to continue this list and repost it with more super fun facts(!!). ....I don't know if that will actually happen. Right now, I have to get to bed.

go go (stop and smell the roses) and GO!

I finished my application to grad school today and submitted it over the internet.

I realize that I haven't even really directly mentioned grad school on this blog... which is a definite sign that the way I use blogs is very different from how it was.

The application was a bit stressful to pull together- especially trying to figure out the quickest way to get transcripts from MPC and CSUMB from another country. There is really no urgent hurry, but I want to know for sure about grad school (MIIS) before I decide for sure about not staying in Japan another year.

(I am about 98% sure now that I'll be moving back to the US this summer either way.)

The whole transcript craziness might be over now, but I am waiting to know for sure.

The application process made me remember how much a thrive from being stressed and busy. I used to know this feeling well when I was a student, but the ALT life very rarely feels hectic or busy.

Even now with nothing to do, the "high" from getting things done earlier has yet to fade. I am just sitting here in this desk and I might seem outwardly content, but I'm inwardly restless. I'm glad to have things done, but I kind of feel like I want more.

I had a dream that I was back in the US and going to grad school. It seems my brain is so stuck in the future that I don't even dream in the present. I was like this before I moved to Japan- I didn't really feel like I could get into anything because my mind was already moved onto the next step.

So... once I am sure that everything for my grad school app is taken care of, I'm going to try to refocus on where I am now and enjoy it.

the climb

When you're a child, very few things are more enticing than a playground structure that towers high above the ground.

As you progress higher and higher towards the top, the desire to stand at the top and look down at the view only grows more and more.

But then, this way of feeling isn't something you grow out of... at least not in your early 20s.

Then one day you're 23 years old and you're walking up the stairs to your apartment. You realize suddenly that you're doing the exact same action that you found exciting and fun before, but you've done this action time and time again and found it really bothersome and dull.

Elevators... escalators... so many things people do to avoid climbing, but many people go out of their way to climb.

So confused.