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If stress could be measured on a richter scale, similar to the one used to discern and forecast earthquakes, I would decline to have my current stress levels measured. Sometimes ignorance is bliss. For unlike preparing for an earthquake, life at this moment feels too topsy-turvy to prepare for in any way shape or form. As for an anchor, the anchor, that usually assists in keeping me somewhat steady Well, let’s just say the anchor has been dislodged with a huge rip tide or two or maybe even three.
I have been waiting, sort of, to write about my adventures as I returned to the Big City and a different and new life ~ the life post-doctorate degreee. Waiting until I felt positive and centered and non-stressed. Why? I am not sure. Sometimes misery loves company. But not always. I think I wanted to report that the life fantasy of working hard and achieving short, mid, and long term goals was/is all worth the anxiety filled days and years. Today, my testimonial would not affirm the hard work/achievements = success and happiness myth.
Being without a home is unhinging to me. Home, having a place to sit down and sup some tea, to burn some incense, to thank the Universe for all that is good and abundant in life ~ home, the place where one’s bed roll can be spread out and one’s body can relax and a deep cleansing breath can be released. I have had many a home and I have had none. I can remember what a home feels like and I do not have a memory of delicious aromas of a rich bean soup wafting from the kitchen.
Tomorrow I am called on, once again, to get up and go forth and meet the challenge of beginning yet one more new job. I begin my postdoctoral internship within the next 24 hours. That means, my butt is back on the BART and the bus. That means, I will be putting my brave face on along with my Big Girl Pants. At least that’s what I hope it means because the alternative, staying in my Scaredy Girl Pants and not getting on the train, means not fulfilling my obligations, not moving forward toward licensure.
More to the point at this moment though is my longing for home. a home. my home.
Soon I will be called upon to figure out, decipher, and navigate my way around a Big City. This figuring out will not be limited to making my way around the Big City streets and freeways of the outlying fair-to-middling sized cities. No. The deciphering will include changing back into my Big City personae, the equivalent of putting on my Big Girl pants (as my daughter would say), and getting used to, once again, being alone.
These past few months, I have actually spent a goodly amount of time on my own. Time I spent studying or just hanging out at the Compound by myself, or as much by myself as one can be at a place dubbed The Compound. But as I have previously noted on this blog, there is a huge difference between choosing alone time and being alone because familiar faces and close relationships are not available, as in no where close by.
I figure I will survive the transition. I mean I am beginning my sixth year of this leaving my loved ones and arriving at my other life far from here. Other folks with different dispositions and personalities would have made friends quicker than me and there are many people who are more flexible who would have adapted and flourished with their adventures versus my slow pace of shifting my compass. But I am not the other, I am me. For better or for worse. For richer or for poorer. I am just me, myself, and I.
One of my Alaskan friends cannot really understand my lack of enthusiasm over the upcoming process of finding a new place to live. She has moved many times and has retained her excitement for the search for the ‘just right’ next abode. I wish I could siphon some of her high energies for my endeavor.
The truth is, however, that I will rise to the occasion. I will take the necessary steps to locate that next wonderful place to live (thank goodness for Craigslist). I will figure out my way around the Big City. I will take and pass my national exam. I will begin my postdoctoral position and do just fine. I will continue to be in relationship with my family, even from a far distance. I will find pleasure in the people and place around me. I will. I will definitely figure it all out. or as much of whatever can be deciphered.
This little blog has now been in existence for a calendar year. So this one year anniversary seems an appropriate time to reflect on my blogging experience and the what and where-for’s of the future of the little darling (my blog, not me ~ but I guess both). And come to think of it, maybe this is a good time to change up the scenery, the front page so to speak, the face of the blog ~ to go fresh and new.
A year ago I made a different big change. I moved from a very private blog that was only open to a few family members and friends to another blog provider/server and a more open forum. The change was brought on by my growing desire to write about broader topics that might not be as interesting or appealing to the limited readership. The topics included my experiences, curiousities, and continuing identity as a Korean adoptee, issues of race and racism, social class, and the meaning of belonging and mutliple identities that included my membership in the Queer community. I did not envision, nor have I created, a blog that explores these topics in an academic and/or research style of discourse. Instead at the time, I wanted to grow a connection with other Korean adoptees with the ultimate goal in that area to grow in my own personal insights and awareness of what being an adoptee meant/means in my life as well as share my experiences with others whose experiences were similar.
Overall, I made the change to a more open public blog to see what might happen, what would come of the bold move. Thus far, I have enjoyed the process, mostly. There have been days when I felt varying degrees of guilt from not posting daily or regularly enough and/or not having scintilating or even close to interesting to a broader audience posts; blog envy of those other bloggers whom I perceived to be much more dedicated, electronically knowledgeable and interesting; and, occasional why bother to post/who cares anyway thoughts.
Other than the new look to my blog page, I am not planning on altering the course any time soon of content or style. I have some ideas, on the back burner for now, of what I might want to do in the future with either this blog or a different one altogether, but enough awareness to understand that presently I do not have the available time nor the free’ed up mind space or energy to endeavor a more challenging blog. So for now, my little blog and I will continue to post on a semi-regular basis about the everyday life of me and my small universe of curiousities.
I have appreciated, most, the opportunity to meet other bloggers and have benefited greatly from their/your blogs, comments left on mine, and their/your camraderie. I have been comforted, cheered on, and challenged to expand my ways of thinking and I appreciate the readership, the entertainment, and the opportunities to meet and connect with other folks who are consciously living their/your lives.
I am excited to see where the next calendar year will lead us, individually and collectively, and what I/you will bring to the table to discuss, rejoice and commiserate over. Happy New Blogging Year!
Blueberries. madness. must pick. OMG. Look at that patch of blues! Race you to it. Not really. Too many mossy stumps, devil’s club, and slick slippery fallen trees to get a good run going. How about we carefully step, climb, slip and slide our way to the Blue Nirvana?
Yesterday my niece and I made our sometimes annual pilgrimage to the Land of the Blues, the place south of here in a little hamlet snuggled in right at the base of Mount Alyeska, the Land of Ski’ing and Snowboarding Delight. Now there are multiple sites all around the hereabouts that qualify, highly qualify, to be called the Land of the Blues. Some Blue Nirvana locales are high above the tree line on moss covered mountain sides. Here one finds the low bush blueberries among the mountain moss, alongside bright red low bush cranberries, shiny black crow berries, orangy-red bunch berries, and garnet colored dew berries. I have spent many a sunny and not so sunny day, hunched over, sprawled out, vertically climbing but always picking those alpine blues.
But the sometimes annual blue’s pilgrimage of yesterday, is located in a rain forest behind a world class ski resort at the foot of a very tall and awe inspiring snow capped mountain. I cannot be more specific than that with the locator information. Well I could. But as the saying goes, then I’d have to kill you. Not really. The location is not really a secret. Well sort of it is. Suffice it to say, that my niece and I picked blues till our berry picking hearts’ content, in Alaska.
On the drive south, around the Turnagain Arm we sped by the Cook Inlet’s high tide and the rains and the wind started to pick up. I think nature’s elements were welcoming us to our day of Blues chasing with a thunderous ovation. It is, indeed, the rains that keep the rainforest in this little area south of our fair to middling-sized town, verdently and deeply green. Deep inside the forest, where we were immediately miniaturized by the trees towering above us, we were protected from the big fat rain drops falling, quite loudly, all around. Plop. PLOP. Thunk. THUNK. and then there was the occasional heavy wind gusts that would blow through after a period of silence.
We were probably fifty-percent soaking wet by the first hour and thoroughly sloshing wet by the second from our efforts of slipping, sliding, climbing, hoisting, reaching and plucking among the decidedly wet vegetation of the forest. But neither my niece nor myself minded. We did not care that we were wet. We did care about the Blues.
Rain forests are so alive. Little water ways, rivulets of water splash along, making their way to tiny tiny ponds and we try and reproduce the water’s soothing musical notes and tones in manmade fountains. It’s not the same, not even close. In a rain forest, green mosses of varying hues grow everywhere. On the fallen trees, on the still growing upright trees, and on the ground. The ferns, are still green and it is the devil’s club, this thorny multi-leafed plant that lends autumn-colored shades of yellow to the bright colored scene.
Soon the little skiing hamlet will be filled with the shouts and whoops and hollers of downhill ski’ers and snowboarders. The open meadows will be the cross-country ski’ers and snowmachiner’s paradise. After all, this is the Land of the Mostly Frozen North Land. But for now, at least as of yesterday, this land was the Land of the Blues.
