[Title of Blog]

It frustrates me, a little, that earlier today, I was bursting with thoughts that I would later write in this blog.  Thoughts about… what to do, and who I should be, and… I’m not sure, anymore.  But my thoughts, my words, they just kind of drift away.  Like a dream…

I’m like this.  I think a lot when I’m by myself.  Or when things are quiet, or I’m… just doing something mechanically, placidly.  I just start thinking about everything that goes on in my life, and about the people in it, and what those people must feel, and what I’ve done, and what they’ve done, and… everything.

When I walk by myself, it’s like I can uncover everything about the world around me, and everything’s clear.  And I know why my family is the way they are, and I recall conversations with my mother, and how my brother might be too pressured to be like me, or what my father might be going through as he goes to work every day.  I imagine the talks that they must’ve had about me, how worrying it must’ve been when I turned quiet, so quickly in middle school.  How I lacked the most basic sense of confidence.  I think about how my friend drove me to my internship every day in High School, and how I never paid her for gas, or took her out to a dinner.  Or how it’s my fault that I’m awkward around strangers, because no one really judges you that harshly, and because people might be the same as me, waiting for the other person to take interest in them, but acting distant on the outside, because they don’t want to look too desperate for friendship.  (How silly).  When I’m alone, I can see all these things.

It fades, though.  It might just be my memory, or that I have slight ADD, or that it wasn’t too important to begin with, or something else.  Even now, only a few hours later, it’s not coherent enough for me to put in sentences.  Just things like “I ought to be more emphathetic with my mother,” and “you really aren’t all that you’re cracked up to be,” and “I really should draw more.”  It might be because I’m “connected” now.  I’m connected to all these people on IM, and there are my RSS feeds to check, and my music is playing, and then reddit, and so on and so forth, until there’s no room to concentrate anymore. There’s always something happening, and I just get pulled along for the ride.

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A little space.

I don’t think this is actually the life I want to lead. One that’s so bustle-y, and with so many distractions, and “hahaha”s flying around.  I don’t really want to be plugged in.

There are just a few pictures that I imagine.  Faint little things, really.  A quiet day by some trees.  Playing a soft piano (I want to learn).  Sketching people as they walk by in the park (I want to learn).  Cooking a steaming hot meal, and serving it to happy faces (I want to practice more).  Watching ducks swimming by from a bridge (I did this today, and it was beautiful).

There are two things that I always say to “what do you want to do in life?”  I want to live a good life.  I want the people around me to be happy.

I hope, I hope that this path is getting there.

Well, this is it!  Summer is pretty much over, and I’m getting ready to head back home.  It’s been a pretty good experience thus far, and even though I’ll save a comprehensive wrap-up entry for the future, here are some of the fascinating things that I’ve done this summer, with their source of inspiration.

- From watching the Celts dominate in the NBA finals, started playing a little bball again

- After seeing Mike Forbes’ little moleskin of handy-dandy notes, I’ve begun carrying around my own moleskin, to keep track of those passing ideas I have when there’s no desk at hand (or to serve as a shopping list, at least!)

- NBC.  Olympics.  Phelps.  Yeah, pretty much.  Swimming is fun again!

- Crystal Mao’s mother has taught me+curtal to make delicious stir-fry (complete with a biological perspective of the process of cooking!)

- Biking, because it’s a scenic and completely relaxing way to get to work

-Reading math in my spare time - because an afternoon at Oracle can only get so exciting.

- Started making “to-do” lists for myself.  I don’t know why I did, or when, but it’s been a great help in getting myself organized for upcoming days.

- Played far fewer starcraft.  Mostly because there’s only so much you can do after “GEEGEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”

What a summer it’s been!

I’ve had a great youtube experience today!  From the magic school bus, to Bill Nye the science guy, here’s a small sample of videos that you might want to check out.

Magic School Bus

Happy days!

Mama, the angels,

and some just lie there for him to come and find them

I spend the day wonderin’ what you do, where you go

I believe, I believe, I believe, I do believe

And all, shall know, the wonder

Just a few lines from Spring Awakening, that were in my head, is all.  They’re not even from the same song, but at this point, I don’t know the soundtrack well enough to distinguish between them.  Oh well.  The songs are good regardless.

As a side note, my eyes are burning, because I didn’t change out of my ashy clothes last night, after bonfiring, and so my sheets and the clothes lying in the corner of the room are very ashy.  It hurts me eyes.

I have actually been meaning to write this for a while, but never got around to it.  Another sign of my faltering memory, or dying attention span (though the two are most likely the same exact thing).  But, at any rate, that’s that.

I grew up listening to life stories from my mother.  She’s a naturally talkative person, and loves to squeeze in anecdotes with us.  Just regular little tales here and there, about growing up with four siblings, and the wolf that she saw when she went xia xiang, and this guy who distracted his barber and lost an ear (this was when she was cutting my hair, and I was squirming around because I itched).  She’s always been good at it - I can’t remember a single time when she stopped in the middle of a sentence to search for a word.  And she did this for pretty much my entire childhood, and continues to do so, during the small stretches of time when I am home again.

To be honest, I didn’t pay too much attention to these stories.  Blame it on youth, but I was more interested in my immediates.  Of course, themes would creep in here and there.  I remember a story, back when I was more than overweight, about an obese boy whose parents were leaving for a week.  They cooked him a huge bing, cut a hole in the middle, and put it around his head.  It was made in proportions such that it would last him the entire week; on day one, he would eat say, a sector of this many radians, and so on.  Everything was measured out, he had enough water, and things were all fine.  Well, when the parents got back, they found their son dead on the ground, from starvation.  The bing was only half-eaten: the front was entirely gone, but the back was left untouched.  The boy in this story was too lazy to turn it.

Now, of course this story is beyond unrealistic, but both it and the moral still stays with me.  I think about it sometimes when I rouse myself from sloth.  And that was the point, after all.  I mean, the reason she spent so much time telling me these things was to try and guide me, mold me, into a better person.  Now, not all of the things that my mother tells me have lessons.  Much of the time, she just tells me stories that really happened. What it was like growing up.  The way she took care of my youngest uncle when they were both in school, how she was a ban zhang, and how my youngest uncle would throw pebbles at the feet of annoying girls (okay, this was an anti-lesson, but it was still funny).  I think, actually, that almost everything I know about the rest of my family, I’ve found out either through living with them (which doesn’t happen often, me living in the U.S.), or through my mom.  And that’s helped a lot, too.  It makes me feel closer to this family I never see, all those thousands of miles away in Shen Yang, Liao Ning shen.   Me, I got pretty jealous when I was watching Arthur back in Elementary School, and he had a family reunion with all those cousins and uncles and aunts.  That only happens when I go back to China, a trip that has happened a grand total of three times.

I got thinking about these things a few weeks ago, when someone else told me parts of their life story.

I feel very sad when I hear people talk about their lives.  Because, well, so much happened.  There are so many parts to the lives that we lead, so much time spent in between.  Just wow, you know?

I think that’s it.  Just

wow

In the last two days, I was with groups of people in varying sizes, where, predictably, people talked.  I don’t really do this often - usually, my day-to-day consists of interacting with one or two people, where conversation moves at a much slower pace.  Now, it may be that I’m too reserved, too anti-social (yeah, I can definitely see it), but it just seems that this larger groupspeak is just so much more aggressive.  People jump in right after others finish.  Some don’t even wait for the end to come.  And how well-received things are correlates with the level of the speaker’s insistence.

I guess this isn’t really surprising.  This is how communication happens, right?  And, after all, when others don’t know what you’re thinking, it is your own responsibility to get that across.  Speak up.  Be quick.  That’s all.  After all, how do you get people’s respect when you don’t have any for yourself?

There’s nothing unfair at all about this whole deal.  It’s life, it’s how things work.  I guess I’m just uncomfortable, is all.

Be a better person.

Dreams are so lovely, aren’t they?  Here’s to making some happen.