5-minute word vom #6: failure and consistency

 Date: January 20, 2023
Start time: 12:30 PM
What I'm thinking about: what is failure and the challenges of consistency

Also, how to be gentle with yourself - had the thought this morning about the challenges of consistency after I fell off the wagon (is that the right term? The more time I spend living abroad in a different language, the more I seem to mix up my English idioms --- for example, I ordered eggs "easy over" the other day) with my daily Bible verse challenge (more on that if you'd like later). But this morning I told myself that consistency is not about succeeding every day; rather, it's about patiently but persistently coming back to pick up something even after failing and/or dropping off. That's how I comforted myself. 

If I'll be honest, the only thing I've managed to pick up and maintain consistency with over the last 3? years or so is flossing and brushing my teeth every single night before going to bed. (Yes, it's a habit I should have developed years ago so bite me.) All the things I've tried to pick up - blogging, instagramming, duolingo, programming, running, even daily yoga and quiet time -- I've only managed to maintain for a maximum of a few months before getting overwhelmed by life's distractions. And each time I try to pick it up again, I have varying degrees of success. 

Coming back to this blog after a hiatus, I read the previous two blogs and saw what a stunning failure my self-challenge for a blog a day for 28 days was. And again I felt disappointed in myself, a little embarrassed by my attempt to hold myself accountable via a public declaration which evidently had no impact on my performance, and not a little relief that this is my personal void on the internet where not much attention turns this way. 

Thanksgiving 2022 (T-27 days)

 Post is going up late but it's still Thanksgiving in the States so I'm still giving thanks. 

A few things I'm grateful for this year:

1) Having the resources to be able to travel and to see the things and people I seen this year. Even in the midst of a recession, being jobless as a student, having time, savings and minimal expenses is a privilege that I recognize and am so thankful for.

2) The unconditional generosity that I have received from so many people around me. Whether in emotional support, friendship, food, a place to sleep, and so many more, I have received so much (my karma is so deep in debt, I need to settle down soon so I can begin to pay it back heh). In other words, I am so blessed. 

3) Family - hopefully one day we won't be split across 4 different time zones spanning 18 hours of time differences, but I'm eternally grateful for the bonds that still somehow remain strong even with the years and distance apart. 

4) Ultimate Frisbee - this community has provided an international family and connections (as well as exercise!) wherever I go. This year I had the privilege of playing the most ultimate I have in quite some time: making new friends and seeing old friends, representing some countries in some cool tournaments, and having a blast in general.  

There's so much more, but I'm bad at lists. 

Call Me Old-Fashioned (T-28 Days)

Almost exactly 4 weeks left in this journey. 

I've been recommended by so many to start a blog, become a content creator, share my story -- and I've been so afraid to create something and put it out there to the big wide world. I'm also a recovering perfectionist that still feels like I need to create this beautiful complex website that will drive up user visits. In the meantime, while I don't get anything set up at the end of the day, I placate myself and my small following by posting stories on my newly created Instagram account (after getting my old account hacked many months ago) and by telling myself that I'm accumulating these photos and videos to tell my story one day, some how. 

Excuses, I know. 

And while I've considered creating a substack or some other easier-to-find and digestible mode of information distribution, I find myself reluctant to start all over from scratch, at least until I have something that I know I want to stick to for good. I already have so many half-finished projects that I started and abandoned for other new sites and technologies and ideas. 

So in the meantime, I'm back here on my very old blog and documenting some thoughts and experiences in my last month in Korea. I'll try to be dedicated to posting one reflection per day for the last 28 days, although I already know it's going to be a challenge with friends visiting and upcoming travels. But there are so many stories and memories in me that if I'm afraid that if I don't record them down somewhere (if I try to write everything in my journal I will definitely run out of space and my hand will continuously cramp -- yes more excuses but the truth!), I will lose them eventually to the gray fog of forgotten memories and that vague sense of loss and nostalgia that is all that remains. 

On the other hand, I've been thankful for the conversations I've had with friends who have touched in to see how my journey has been going. These conversations revive my experienced sentiments and have forced me to coherently articulate the swirl of emotions and thoughts that I've been constantly undergoing during my nearly two months here.

So here I am, mumbling into my corner of the void of the internet. One day I will have SEO, a beautiful layout, a great URL, and a huge devoted following (tbh, do I really want that? or do I just want this space to share my story and to help others who feel equally lost navigating their way through this confusing adventure called life?). In the meantime, Reader - if you're there - thanks for sticking it out with me amidst the messiness of my brain's products, and give me a shout! it would be a nice motivator / accountability spur. 

5-minute word vom #5: unrealized crushes and fevers

Date: September 12, 2022 
Start time: 7:21 PM 
What I'm thinking about: unrealized crushes

I passed this past weekend (read: from Friday night til Monday morning) in a feverish state of coughing (until my abdominals were cramping in pain), chills interspersed with clammy sweats, pounding headaches, vivid dreams, and crazy mashups of thoughts. It was, to date, possibly the sickest I've been in quite some time. (According to the antigen tests I took on Friday afternoon pre-this wild weekend and the one I took this morning after I finally felt well enough to venture a few steps without feeling dizzy, it wasn't COVID, so hooray?) 

But in the midst of the various crazy dreams that I had throughout this weekend, one of the ones which stuck out to me, perhaps because it was so unexpected - was that of a dear childhood friend of mine. I usually dream of people from different aspects and periods of my life in various places that I've lived in or traveled to; however, one would assume that those that show up in your dreams tend to be the ones that are closer to one's waking thoughts. However, the person that appeared in this dream was quite unexpected. I don't know - perhaps his name had popped up while I was casually scrolling through my Facebook feed a while ago? 

The thing that I was surprised to realize both in my dream and outside, once I awoke, was how attracted I found myself to this person. And upon waking and being in surprise that he had showed up in my dream, and that I had been so attracted to him in the dream, made me wonder if I had subconsciously been attracted to him so many years ago (I haven't seen him in maybe 15 years?). And when I think of our relationship back then, he was truly a cherished and trusted friend, somebody who was warm and I feel like I could trust no matter what. He was somebody who was a genuine friend without expecting or asking for more (and perhaps that was why I didn't realize that I could be attracted to him, or perhaps it is my now adult self finding myself attracted to that version of pure trustworthy companionship/friendship?)

It was a strange but beautiful and slightly nostalgic feeling. I would be curious to ask him what he thought about our relationship back then, but I think that at this point, after having been out of touch for so long and given that I believe he's happily married with children, it would be unseasonable to contact him out of the blue with such a question. 

5-minute word vom #4: hearing loss

Date: August 21, 2022 
Start time: 4:20 PM 
What I'm thinking about: hearing loss

I just saw an article that showed that researchers have been developing potential forms of gene therapy that can help prevent genetic hearing loss. 

As somebody who has genetic hearing loss (hey friends, fun fact: I'm borderline medically deaf - does that make me eligible for disability benefits...?), this is super exciting news to hear. Although I suppose it should be encouraging on behalf of potential future children I may have, I was more excited for potential future development of this treatment and/or others that might be able to help improve my own hearing. 

As somebody who first failed her hearing exam at 8 years old and who has lived her entire life with moderate to severe hearing loss, the hearing aids that I've been more or less consistently wearing since 2019 have been both a huge improvement to my quality of life but are still annoying to deal with - my ears hurt after wearing them for a long time; I deal with feedback noise on a regular basis; I'm constantly afraid that I will forget backup batteries or that I will leave the aids at home when I'm on my way to an important meeting; so on and so forth. It's definitely been a love/hate relationship with hearing aids (I had my first pair in college, but the microphone was positioned behind my ear, resulting in a lot of noise coming from behind me --- not good when 5'2" and therefore positioned in the front row of a choir. I only wore those during lectures and eventually stopped wearing them altogether. I also had my first traumatizing experience with the financial system when I got charged 2 years' worth of interest in one go on the price of my hearing aids due to not paying off the entirety of the cost within 2 years. Thankfully there was eventually a class-action lawsuit against the bank for not providing sufficient information to its clients several years later, but the amount of stress I experienced in that moment has scarred me to where I am extra careful about reading the fine print when signing up for payment plans and loans -- and try to avoid them as much as possible altogether). I hate being dependent on anything, and being dependent upon these hearing aids causes feelings of frustration, particularly when I have to make sure I have them on, or that I am extra careful with them (particularly when around water). I also hate playing Telephone (that game where you whisper into people's ears and pass a message down a line of folks), maybe for obvious reasons now. Even with hearing aids, it gives me a lot of stress.

On the other hand, there are some benefits of having hearing loss - I sometimes wonder if I don't remember experiencing much bullying as a kid because I couldn't hear the other kids whispering during class. Some "friends" used to have a joke in which they would just whisper my name really loudly until (if) I finally heard and turned around, but asides from that, I was largely unaware of whispers, rumors, if people were saying things in class, which means I was unresponsive -- thereby making me a boring target. I am also blessedly able to sleep through higher amounts of noise than others, since I don't hear a lot of background noise (I didn't realize the extent of this until my first pair of hearing aids, holy cow what a difference!) If there is a screaming baby on the plane, I will still unfortunately hear it, but it will be much softer and less painful to my ears when I take out my hearing aids.  #silverlinings

I ended up rambling a bit longer about this subject, but that's the life of a nearly?half? deaf person.

End time: 4:34 PM