So This Is Christmas...

Well folks, it's that time of year again. Colorful lights fill up the night as friends and families everywhere celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, and/or some of the other holidays around this time. They may have different names, but the one thing they all have in common is a celebration of togetherness.

I promised myself that I would make a post for Christmas day, and usually I don't like to make posts in which I cannot contribute any significant insights or otherwise interesting thoughts; but I guess this can be an exception. Honestly, I don't think I can tell you anything about the holiday spirit that you don't already know, so I think I'll just give a little snippet on how my own Christmas turned out this year.

Let's see here. On the down side it's been almost four months since I've begun my job hunt, but sad to say I still remain in the population of the unemployed. On the bright side, my family is here with me again, just like they have been every year. But unlike in years past, this reunion will be a fairly short one. Since my brother has found a teaching job in London, he is only here in Canada on a two week break. Likewise, my mother will return to Hong Kong after a month's time here. Two weeks really isn't a whole lot of time, and it'll be at least another 6 months before I see my mother again; 7 months for my brother. Because of this, I find myself cherishing our time together more so than in previous years. So my troubles may not be miles away; heck it's not even out of sight, but I'm having a merry little Christmas this year nonetheless because I've already got what matters most. I wish a Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Observations on Love

Here's an article I've written about some things I've learned about love. For the record, I have felt and experienced love in my life, so the title isn't quite accurate...not sure why they went with that. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy!

http://elitedaily.com/dating/6-lessonsobservations-love-dating-virgin/823723/

(Please comment on the site itself if you can, thanks!)

Blog Hop

I really should have made this post two months back, my deepest apologies for the mega-delay. Anyhow, here it is, my little contribution to this Blog Hop!

First I'm supposed to answer this question: Why are you working on the project you are writing now? Why is it important? (to you, or to the world, or…)

Well technically there are several projects I'm working on, but most of them are just small-piece articles so I'll stick with my first original work: this blog. I started this blog in the hopes of refining my writing skills, create more exposure for my writing, and to share topics and thoughts of interest with the world. So far, I'd say things have been going pretty well. Thanks to a blog share group on LinkedIn, I've been able to share my blog with plenty of my fellow writers and bloggers while enjoying their literary works as well. The comments I've received have been very positive and encouraging, so I hope I'm doing at least something right! As for why I think it's important to me, it's probably because of my strong belief in the power of words. To create something from nothing, to convey meaning from such meaningless characters, I think, is a privilege that should be used to its fullest potential.

Next is the honorable mention of the lovely Robin. Many thanks for introducing me to this blog hop and for jump-starting the whole project! You can find her blog here: http://leave-the-frigging-marshmallows.blogspot.ca/

Finally, I'm going to nominate two delightful bloggers I've had the pleasure to meet to continue the blog hop:

Kelly Boyer Sagert is a freelance writer with a great sense of humor.
Chris Rose is a writer who also works as a translator. Naturally he's fascinated with language.

Go check out their blogs! I promise you won't be disappointed.

Existential Struggles

So recently I've become a contributing writer for the Elite Daily and I'm very excited to share my first article with everyone! Hope you enjoy it!

http://elitedaily.com/life/existential-struggles/795250/

Heart So Jet Lagged

Once again, summer has come and gone much too quickly and I am still struggling to process that fact, except...this time it's a whole different feeling.

From elementary school to high school to post-secondary education, students of all ages are guaranteed a summer holiday (though the length of that may vary depending on factors such as part-time work and summer school). The point is, no matter how short summer vacation always seems to be, these students can count on next year to deliver another one. Alas, my time as a student has finally passed me by. Having graduated from university this June, this summer may very well be the last time that I have a guaranteed, official, no-strings-attached summer holiday. What comes next is anybody's guess.

It's been nearly two weeks since I came back from my two months vacation in Hong Kong, and yet I still feel like I haven't fully come back in some way. The jet lag is gone, but it seems like my heart is still jet lagged to Hong Kong-summer mode. It's not just the freedom and lack of responsibility that I miss (though it did feel pretty great), but it was also all my friends and family over there, the atmosphere, the lifestyle, everything. I stumbled upon this quote some time ago by the writer Azar Nafisi that I find to be quite true:

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place. Like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again."

I guess you can say I'm still recovering from post-summer-stress-disorder, but really, it's more than that. In a sense, this summer had marked the end of my 'childhood', and I don't mean childhood in the conventional sense. By that, I mean it's the end of all my official education (for now at least), the end of having a reason or excuse to hide and protect me from the real world.

What I just said may sound a little familiar, since I did make a similar post about graduating a while back, but it's different in that right now I'm not actually too worried about the future. Instead, I'm feeling a massive wave of nostalgia for my entire life up to this point. Up until now my life has always been more or less structured, with a regular, daily routine to things. Sure, I've had difficulties along the way, but there'd always been a clear, specific goal in overcoming them. Given that most of the problems in my young life has been academic, it was always clear to me what I needed to do in order to solve them. No matter how bad things were back then, there was always an objective, some sort of solution to work towards; an end goal. But the real world doesn't work like that. You're thrown out there after all your learning and somehow, through all the noise and confusion, you have to find your place in it. I knew from the start that it was never going to be easy, but what I didn't know was how woefully ill-equipped I would when the time came. It's a little too late for regrets now, but damn...I sure miss the good old days. I guess that's all the more reason to get my life together, so that I'll have even more good old days to look back on.

Well, I think that's all for tonight. Sorry if my post got a little depressing, but I do feel better for writing it. And to any of my fellow readers/writers out there struggling through life for whatever reason, or maybe just having a bad day, I wish you all good luck, and goodnight.

New Blog!

Just so you know, I have been blogging lots since my last post. It's just taken longer than I thought to publish new posts. Anyhow, here's my little surprise as promised! I hope you like it.

http://keithsguide.blogspot.hk/

Writer's (Lack of) Block

I know it's been a while since I've blogged, again, but I've got reasons...um...well...okay maybe I've been just a little lazy. The truth is I actually was working on this article that I just submitted to the SFU newspaper, but unfortunately I missed the deadline for this semester's submissions, so I'll have to wait until September to try again. I had actually started writing it about 2 weeks ago, not that I worked on it everyday, but every time I did I felt like what I've written so far wasn't quite good enough, and I'd even considered scrapping the whole thing and starting over on several occasions. For some reason I kept revising and editing and couldn't finish the damn thing no matter what I did. And it wasn't only the usual "perfectionists' problem" that was holding me back (I've had plenty of experience dealing with that), but something else as well; something new.

That something, I now realize, was the fact that the article would be my first 'official work' as a fresh-grad, and subconsciously I felt the need to make it different. Different how? I couldn't really say. I just wanted my writing to be more informative, more precise, and more polished in general. I had a strong feeling that this new piece should reflect all the knowledge and experience I've gained during my undergraduate career, and maybe that wasn't a bad thing in itself, but the feeling was so strong that it became paralyzing and hindered my ability to write as well as I could have. Ironically this was not a case where I suffered from lack of inspiration or creativity, but quite the opposite: I had so much I wanted to say and convey to my audience that I couldn't properly translate it onto paper, no matter how many times I reworked it.

Probably due to the factors listed above, my article didn't turn out quite as well as I had hoped. But now that I have another month until resubmission, I'll have plenty of time to resolve all the self-imposed restrictions and expectations that I've placed on myself and just let my writing flow freely. If all goes well, my writing should be able to speak for itself, metaphorically that is.

P.S. Now that I'm feeling back in the game again, I'll be blogging lots for a while, at least for the upcoming month. Plus, I've got a little something special planned for my next entry so stay tuned!