A 'Loveless' Valentine

Hello to all you lovebirds and lonely hearts out there. As you all know, today is Valentine's Day, a day that many of us have mixed feelings about. I've actually made a post about this specific holiday a few years back and what I said in there still holds true for me, so check that out here if you like.

Anyhow, this year's Valentine's Day has remained largely unchanged from prior years, in that I am still single. Except, for the first time in my life, I'm actually okay with that. If you've read my previous post you might be thinking "wait a minute, back then you already said you liked being single!" To be more precise, I was actually making the case that being of single status isn't necessarily all bad. And to be honest, I think I was trying to convince myself as much as I was trying to convince any potential readers at the time. I still meant what I said back then, and I was definitely grateful for the other kinds of love I had in my life, but being the helpless romantic that I was, it still felt like something was missing. For the next few years, I let Valentine's Day come and go without getting too wrapped up about its significance; but in the back of my mind I was still actively waiting to find that special someone.

This year for whatever reason, I'm learning to just accept that I'm single, and probably will be for a while. It's quite a liberating feeling, really. No more anxiously waiting and wondering if I'll ever find someone. No more bitterness every time that I don't. I'm embracing my singleness and enjoying it to the fullest! This doesn't mean that I've given up on finding a nice girl somewhere down the line; I've simply stopped waiting. Happy Valentine's Day.

Life In Limbo

From the very start I had had reservations about my enrollment in the DAP program at UBC, and about my future career path in accounting. It had been years since I studied a mathematically inclined subject. Throughout my undergraduate career I had deliberately distanced myself from the realm of business and science and focused my efforts on the arts because I knew my own strengths and weaknesses, and tried to tailor my studies toward the former. To be fair I was perfectly competent with most subjects in high school, regardless of their nature. But with math and the sciences, I felt like I was nearing my limit even back in senior year. And so returning to the world of numbers after such a long time was quite a jarring experience.

In my own mind, I had intended the DAP program to be a placeholder; something to keep me busy while I searched for my true calling, or even just a better alternative. I figured, if worse comes to worse, at least I'd still have accounting to fall back on. With this mentality in my head, I went through the early stages of the program putting in the same amount of effort as I did with my undergraduate studies. But as it turned out, the subject and intensity of the courses were harder than I had ever anticipated; much harder. Before I knew it, I was falling behind on even the lower level courses, and long story short, by the time the 3rd semester rolled around, my performance was so poor that I no longer met the minimum requirements to stay in the program. There was, however, a way for me to appeal the decision by submitting a formal letter. This letter, aside from giving me a chance to continue in DAP, was also a chance for me to sit back and seriously consider if this was the right program for me. At the time, I already had a pretty good feeling that this discipline was not a natural fit for me; but personal doubts and fears clouded my judgement, and made me second-guess myself. In the end, I convinced myself and the DAP office that if I really put in the effort and fully applied myself then there will be a marked improvement in my grades. And so, I dove back into the world of accounting head-first; determined not to let history repeat itself...

One Last Hurrah

After 5 and a half months of serving popcorn and watching free movies, I finally had to say goodbye to my first real work family. The reason being because I was going to the UK to visit my brother, where he was teaching at the time, and we wanted to have one last hurrah before our new lives as accounting students. So for the next few weeks we embarked on a mini-Europe tour which included Lake Garda (largest lake in Italy), Venice, Verona (home of the tragic Romeo & Juliet), Brussels, and even Amsterdam! Each location had their own unique charm but all were scenic beyond description.

For the Italian portion of our trip, we had joined a tour group which, to our surprise, mainly consisted of middle-aged or older individuals. They were all a lovely bunch to be with, of course, but the age difference made it difficult to find common ground in conversation. Fortunately, there were also a pair of lovely sisters who happened to be near our age, and we quickly bonded during our trip. We had breakfast, lunch, and dinner together almost every day and basically stuck together for the majority of the tour, and I came to see them as the little sisters I never had. Unfortunately, the tour had to end eventually, but it was fun while it lasted, and we still keep in touch on Facebook.

After returning from Europe, we still had one last adventure to look forward to: Hawaii. That's right, my family spent the last week of August in the virtual paradise of Waikiki! It was just as you'd imagine it, but better. Endless sunshine, friendly locals, and great food every day; we were in heaven. Of course, we weren't just there to enjoy the scenery. We explored a local zoo, visited the historic site of Pearl Harbor, and surfed til we were sore all over. We also fell from our surfboards a good number of times, so much so that we spent more time falling than actually surfing......it still counts.

Alas, September came too soon, as always, and my brother and I found ourselves back in academia. I was older and wiser, and I steeled myself as we entered this new chapter of our lives......

New Job, New Life

In my very last post from 2015, I'd talked about how I had just got myself a part-time job and also enrolled myself for further education. Having just reread that post, I realize just how much time has gone by since then......I've got a lot of catching up to do.

Now my writing's a bit rusty, so please bear with me. To begin with, I'd actually started my new job in February of that year. And since the diploma of accounting program (DAP for short) that I had signed up for wouldn't begin until September, I had half a year to settle into my life as a part-time theater worker. Prior to this my resume had consisted mostly of odd jobs for 1-2 day events and only 1 other real part-time job to speak of. This was due in part to me wishing to focus on my studies, but mostly because I was just reluctant to take up employment. The other part-time job I mentioned had only lasted a mere four months, officially because my availability was limited due to my course schedule at the time. But somehow I had a feeling it was due to my inadequacies as a sales person; I just wasn't engaging enough. So when I first started this new job, I was afraid that my withdrawn nature would cost me again. Turns out, my worries were quite unnecessary.

Life as a theater cast member was, for the most part, a pretty pleasant one. Everyone was welcoming and friendly from the get-go (even the managers!), and before I knew it I had formed some great new friendships. As someone who's both shy and introverted, I've always had trouble with making a good first impression, and also making conversation in general. So I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered the people that I worked with actually liked me for just being me; I never had to go out of my way to act more social and force idle chit chat. As a recent graduate, I was one of the older members of the work family, the majority of which consisted of high school and undergraduate students. But given my Asian looks and short stature, most of my coworkers automatically assumed I was around their age, and I wasn't about to needlessly correct their assumption. Of course, the shocking truth eventually came out and everyone reacted accordingly. That is, with initial disbelief and then acceptance.

The not so good part of the job was, as you've probably guessed, the nature of the work itself. When I first applied for the job, I had pictured myself printing, handing out, and/or ripping tickets, the usual work associated with a movie theater. What I had neglected to consider, however, were the other aspects of the industry, such as manning the concession counters or the cleaning of theater houses. Ultimately, I ended up in the concession division for my entire stay there, except for this one instance when I took part in some theater cleaning in the dark during an unexpected power outage. Let me tell you, concession duty is greasy, sweaty work. I've never paid much attention to their operations before as I wasn't a big fan of theater food, but after working there for months, I now have a much better appreciation of what goes on behind the counter. Besides having to handle buttery popcorn, the occasional grumpy guest, and the general rush of trying to help guests in long lineups as fast as possible, concession workers are also the ones who have the latest closing shifts. The clean up work at the end is especially long and tedious, and can make a shift that normally ends at 12:30am to end almost at 1:00am.

The guests themselves were usually a good-natured bunch. One of my managers once told me that people come to the movies to have a good time, so they tend to be in a good mood and are more forgiving than customers in other industries. This theory made sense to me and, after months of experience, I can safely conclude that it's true. All in all, I quite enjoyed my new temporary life, and it gave me hope that things were starting to look up.

It's Been a While...

To those of you who have been following this blog for however long, I sincerely apologize for my prolonged absence. I'm probably just talking to myself at this point but I still need to say it. Believe me, this ridiculous hiatus was unwanted and unplanned, but even so I should have made some kind of post about it and I didn't, and for that I am sorry. There wasn't really any sort of big event that brought about this hiatus, rather it was just that my inspirations had slowly dried up, and my motivation to write along with them. I had intended this blog to be a place for fun and interesting ideas, and I just figured if I didn't have anything interesting to say, then I didn't have any content worth sharing on this blog. Of course, this unintentionally created a viscous cycle where the less I thought I had to write, the less writing I actually got done, and without any actual writing I lost even more inspiration and motivation to do so. It's taken me more than 2 years to break out of the cycle, but I finally did it! For how long I can't say for sure, because there's always the danger of falling back into a pattern of passivity, but I'm going to do my best and stick to it for as long as I can.

I was going to give a little summary of what's been going on in my life for the past 2 years, but I've got a final exam coming up soon, so I'll save that for the next post, which will probably be out sometime during the weekend.

Thank you for reading......it's good to be back.

The Peter Principle of Life

The Peter Principle is based on the idea that in the workplace an employee being considered for a promotion is evaluated based on his performance in his current role rather than on his qualifications for the new position. This results in employees being promoted only until they "rise to the level of their incompetence." That is, until they reach a position that is beyond their skills and/or qualifications.

After months of fruitless job-searching, it felt like I've reached my own level of incompetence in life: being stuck as an unemployed university graduate. It's not an entirely unfamiliar feeling, really. Throughout my life, whenever I was about to graduate from one "life stage" into another, a part of me would fear that perhaps I didn't deserve it; that maybe there's been some kind of mistake or oversight and that I've somehow just managed to slip through the cracks and was woefully ill-prepared for the next stage to come. Of course, it wasn't always this way. I remember a time way, waaayy back when I believed myself to be fully capable of facing life's challenges, just like everyone else. In fact, I had even harbored some hope and ambition that not only would I survive life, but I would excel in it. The kid me was ever confident that I could be a shining example of goodness and success for all to follow.

So yeah, I had a pretty positive outlook on life back then, but it didn't last long. Looking back, I think a large part of my optimism was due to a seriously erroneous notion I had when I was a kid: that school, and life in general, would progress at a more or less consistent rate. In other words, I thought that my level of learning and personal development would run parallel with the difficulty of the problems that I will be facing. Take math for example. When I was a child I was under the impression that by the time I began learning algebra, it would be as easy as when I was learning multiplication and division, or addition and subtraction before that. It sounds pretty stupid now, but I really used to think that our minds would be able to simplify the complexities of the world into child-like manageability by becoming more complex themselves. What I didn't realize until later was that life's complexities actually progressed in a more exponential manner, while our own development appears to be stuck on linear growth. The result is that while we may be able to navigate through life after childhood, the effort required to do so becomes increasingly taxing on our minds.

And so it was that I went through life living in fear that I would one day reach a point when the problems of my exponentially growing world would become too great for my linear growing mind to handle; the day that I reach my level of incompetence. With every new stage in life, I felt more and more certain that I wouldn't be able to make it through to the other side. It started to feel that way in high school, grew stronger when I entered university, and after my graduation the feeling became so strong it threatened to leave me paralyzed at an existential level; the feeling that I have no idea what I'm doing here with my life and that I'll never be competent enough to figure it out. We're all familiar with the saying "fake it til you make it," but so far it feels like I've been faking it all my life, like an actor perpetually stuck in rehearsal and never ready for the real thing.

But just as I was beginning to lose hope, a little something happened last month that changed my daily grind of job-searching: I got myself a part-time job at the local movie theatre. It may not sound like much, just a minimum wage position designed to give high schoolers and university students some extra income, but it's definitely better than sitting at home watching my days waste away; plus it does come with some pretty neat perks (free movies for this movie-lover? Yes please!). Of course, I've no intention of making this the final destination of my work life. Instead, it will serve as the first stop in what I hope to be a rich and rewarding journey to finding a career that holds true personal meaning to me. In addition, my brother and I have both been accepted into an accounting program beginning this fall, which we hope would help our prospects in the future. My brother and I have never shared a class together before, so this should prove to be a most interesting and unique experience for us; something I very much look forward to.

Post-graduate life may have started out as underwhelming and depressive, and it may continue to stay that way for a while yet; but now I am no longer trapped in the fear of reaching my level of incompetence, because I know now that it is up to me to define that level. The best is yet to come.

Multiple Selves

This one took a bit longer to publish than the others, but here it is, my third article for the Elite Daily.

http://elitedaily.com/life/many-multiple-selves/884442/

If you're so inclined, please share it with others, it would really help me me out. And if you feel like commenting, please comment on the article itself if you can. Thanks a bunch!