My baby's back!

My baby (aka my Macbook) is sporting a sassy new hard drive (the nice people at Expercom were able to retrieve almost all of my files!) and it's back in my loving and anxious arms. After almost three weeks of separation, I have to say I'm pretty over the moon about it. ^_^

We interrupt your Friday evening for an important news flash...

So every once in a while I get on a kick. An obsession kick. Where I listen/watch/eat/read one thing over and over and over again. These last few days it's been SHINee, specifically their latest music video (see above - sorry, no English subs, since I couldn't find any good ones). It's called Sherlock. But it's catchy. And SHINee always has great choreography. When I watch their MVs I almost want to stop being lazy and ignore my abject fear of looking stupid and learn to dance like that.

First Day of Work

This is my new office. I suppose that's a bit of a misnomer, since it implies that there's an "old" office, when in fact this is the first office I've ever had. A bit of a thrill went through me when I reported for work this afternoon at one PM and heard, "You have your own office over here." I almost feel like a real grown-up!

To back track just a bit -- Obviously, the kick in the pants I got last week, combined with my computer biting the proverbial dust, did the trick. A good friend told me about this position, but I was initially reluctant to apply because it's not full-time, but half-time instead. I was wanting a full-time position for several reasons, but one of the most pressing was my upcoming 26th birthday (a month from today! crazy!). Turning 26 means I can no longer be on my parents' insurance, and gaps in insurance coverage can cause problems down the line. But when you're starving, metaphorically speaking, you can't afford to quibble with the available food not being 100% organic health food -- you've got to take what you can get. Plus, I knew they would seriously consider me because of my background and experience, and I wasn't getting a lot of consideration (*cough*or any *cough*) the other places I was applying. So I applied, and I interviewed last Thursday, and just a few hours after my interview they called me up and offered me the job and told me to come in Monday.

Here's the skinny on my current place of employment. I work for the Intensive English Language Institute at USU. The name is pretty self-explanatory -- it's a place where people come to learn English. Intensively. It serves mostly international students, but there are a few students who are US residents, mostly immigrants and refugees. My job is to do the "grunt work": filing, answering email inquiries, spending time on the telephone with insurance companies trying to straighten things out for students, copying, compiling orientation packets, scheduling catering for some events, etc. I work half-time, so basically I show up after lunch and close up the office at 5pm. Sadly, I only get three days off for Christmas (which I admit I'm a little puzzled about, since there are no students around).

Since there is currently a workshop going on that is being run by our faculty, I haven't really met anyone besides the IELI adviser, the IELI director, and one or two faculty. Oh, and the IT guys who came to help me get my computer set up. The only real work-y thing I did today was answer a phone while everyone else was out. I'm not yet in the system and I'm still fairly clueless about everything, so I spent the day reading the orientation packet and figuring how to get my (Windows 7 - ugh!) computer to let me type in Korean. I'm excited for the semester to start and for the students to get here, because I love students. And because presumably I'll know a little more about what's going on and be more comfortable in the office and know more people. I'm really excited about this job, even if I am doing "grunt work", because I feel so passionately about IELI's mission to help international students learn English and have a wonderful experience at USU and in America. I'm also hoping to be able to keep working my old job at the high school, since it's only in the morning and this job is only in the afternoon. That way I'd be working 35 hours a week, almost full time, which would keep me busy and stop me from sleeping too late in the mornings. We'll have to see how that works out, though.

Mourning My Baby

Remember my last post about how much I hate uncertainty? And the one a few more before that when I shared my "compelled to be humble" moment? Well, here's another wrench thrown into the rapidly deteriorating machine that is my life.

Just a few hours after my uncertainty post, as I was surfing the net and watching an old Japanese drama (*gasp* Yes, I do watch other kinds of dramas), I saw the light on my charger change from orange to green, indicating that my computer was fully charged. Since I'm not a fan of leaving my computer plugged in when it's charged (it's bad for the battery and for the environment and your electric bill), I immediately unplugged it -- only to have it suddenly die without warning. I admit to being more than a little confused, since my little battery icon had clearly stated it was fully charged. So I plugged it back in and attempted to reboot it. After an unusually long time, it finally booted, but up popped a little message that said the computer had reset to a date before Jan 2008. So I figured I'd reboot it again and it would hopefully straighten itself out. It never rebooted after that, instead getting stuck on the grey Apple screen that shows up while the computer's booting. Normally it's there for a few seconds, then transforms into the login screen, but it was perpetually stuck in grey-Apple-screen-land.

So I took it into our local Apple dealer to get it looked out. The woman helping me ran a few tests and determined that the battery had exceeded its lifetime of 1000 charges (by 51) and had just died, nothing too strange about that, and would just need a new ($120) battery to work again. Still, that didn't explain why my computer wouldn't boot, because it should work just fine as long as it's plugged into the wall. To make a long story short, I left it with them to examine, and got a call from them last evening. I went in this morning to the very bad news that the hard drive was shot and I'd need a new one ($183, at the very least). The sort-of-not-bad news was that the techs said they'd most likely be able to recover some/most/all (?) of what was on my old hard drive, but of course there's no guarantee that they'll get everything or that they'll get the most important things if they can't get everything. I've been meaning for a long time to get an external hard drive to back everything up on, and it was literally at the top of my list of things to purchase when I finally get a job, but I've been mostly living hand-to-mouth for the last...well, always. If it just could have held out another three or four months! ~tears hair out~ Thankfully, the very most important things, my mission pictures, are backed up on a flash drive, so at least I have those even if I lose all my music (~sob~) and all my documents from high school and college. And I'm pretty sure I have backups of my mission emails somewhere.

Really, though, I can't have imagined a worse time for this to happen. Maybe this will become a good thing when I look back on it a twenty or five years from now, but right now I'm very upset. The only real things I own at this point in my life are my books and my computer, and most of my books are at my parents' house. I suppose I used my computer A LOT in the last two years I've had it, but still. If it could have just held on another year or so, that would have been ever so much more convenient. But I suppose life and challenges don't happen when it's "convenient".

Uncertainty - I'm not a fan

I'm not a big fan of uncertain things. I like things -- my life, especially -- to be tied up nicely and neatly in a smart little package with a bow. I'm the kind of person who likes to be on very solid footing before taking the next step.

Unfortunately, that hasn't been working out too well lately. Or ever, really. I don't think life usually works like that.

P.S.

After rereading my post from yesterday and talking to my mom about it, I think I came across much more petulant than I was actually feeling. I was feeling pouty about the whole prospect of life not working out according to my plans / ideas of how it should go, but I think it was more frustration at my own stubborness and childish clinging to unreasonable expectations than a temper tantrum. I'm still not thrilled at the prospect of doing things I don't want to do (who would be?), but I'm happy to report that after a few days of reflection I'm feeling a little more willing to do them.

Stubborn

I'm a little mad at the world right now.

Doesn't that sound so petulant? Sadly, I think petulant -- "childishly sulky or bad-tempered" -- is the most appropriate word for my attitude right now. I shared yesterday about my "compelled to be humble" experience, but apparently I'm still struggling with the humility, because the logical and grown-up part of me is rather appalled at the bad attitude of the rest of me. And it isn't that impressed with stupid excuses I'm making, either.

See, the thing is, the solution to my current situation is simple. It involves getting a job. As it was pointed out to me yesterday, people who are much less qualified and much less intelligent than I am have jobs, so obviously my hang up is not getting a job, but getting a job that I want to get. The humility part of this is in acknowledging the truth of that statement. Admitting it's true puts responsibility for my current state of unemployed-bum-hood squarely on my own shoulders and breaks up the little pity party I'm throwing for myself. People will feel sorry for you if your woes are inflicted on you by the Universe or the vagaries of the economy, but they tend to be much less sympathetic when it's your own fault.

The cause of all this stubborn pride is an assumption that's been lurking in the back of my brain for years and years -- probably since I was old enough to realize that "one day" I'd be grown-up and out of school -- that my life at 25 would include a husband, a kid or two, a house, and me at home taking care of all of them. I went through a "I want to be a fighter pilot / astronaut / ballerina when I grow up" phase, but by high school I knew I wanted to be a domestic engineer -- a stay-at-home mom. It wasn't that I didn't have any dreams, or that I was somehow less ambitious than girls who wanted to be doctors or the next president of the United States or small business owners. (See this for a fantastic post on the topic.) I firmly believe that the greatest good I'll ever do and the highest calling I'll ever have is as a wife and mother. That doesn't preclude any other contributions to society, of course. But all I have to say on that subject is a post for another day. The main point is that I never expected to find myself in this position. I don't really want to be in this position, either. 

It's not that I don't want to do other things, because I do. I'd love to be able to travel all over the world. I'd love to live in a big city here in the States for a while, maybe NYC or DC, and explore all it has to offer in the way of food and museums and parks. I'd be ecstatic to move back to Korea and eat all the Korean food I ever want and finally become fluent. I want to have an environmentally friendly car, a small but nice house with a yard someplace safe and quiet, all my student loans paid off and a nice cushion in the bank, a fantastic bed, and one room in my house devoted totally to books. I most definitely do not want to stay here in Logan and work some boring job that isn't very stimulating, rewarding personally or financially, or likely to set me on the fast track to some amazing career if I don't end up getting married and having a family. I don't want to be paying off my student loans until my oldest child is 16. I don't want to live 1.5 hours from the nearest city and have no car. I don't want to live in any more apartments or in someone else's home. I want my life to follow my plan for it.

But it just doesn't work that way, and sulking about it isn't going to change anything. The AnnMarie I dreamed up when I was 12 doesn't exist. She never existed. She's never going to exist. Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do, and being jealous of someone else's opportunities is not very becoming. Neither is refusing to deal with reality. It's one thing to realize all that intellectually, and quite another to actually believe it and act accordingly. Of course I knew all this, I'm not stupid or totally ignorant of the way the world works. I certainly don't lack examples of these principles. If I came to me with my attitude, I'd've given me the same dressing down I got yesterday. Quit whining and just get a job, moron. Unhappy with a paycheck is better than unhappy without one. (I paraphrase.) At least then you'll be able to pay your bills and be independent. 

Life is unpredictable. I think that's been pretty well established, and shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. It shouldn't come as a surprise, either, that sometimes the best experiences of our lives grow out of other experiences we might not be so thrilled about having. We lack the perspective to see, in the moment, how our difficulties and challenges will make us better people and perhaps even bring us greater blessings than we could have ever imagined. I am reminded of a Chinese proverb I learned in some of my classes at USU: 塞翁失馬焉知非福 (Saiweng Shima, Yanzhi Feifu). Since that probably means nothing to 99.9% of you, I'll share the story of the old man who lost his horse. (There are several different versions of the story, but the one I quote here you can find here.)

     "During the Han Dynasty—in the third century B.C.—an old man living on China’s border one day lost his horse. His neighbors all said what terrible luck that was, and sympathized with the old man. But Sai Weng said: “Maybe losing my horse is not a bad thing after all.”
     Lo and behold, the next day the old man’s horse returned, together with a beautiful female horse alongside him. All the neighbors exclaimed: “What great luck!” But the old man responded: “Maybe this is not such good luck after all.”
     The old man had a strong young son. The boy fell in love with the new horse and rode her every day. One day the new horse got spooked by a wild animal and threw the boy from her back. He broke his leg very badly and was permanently crippled.
     All Sai Weng’s neighbors said: “What a tragedy, your strong son will never walk without pain again.” But the old man again said: “Maybe this is not such a bad thing after all.”
     And so it went that when the New Year came, the emperor’s army passed through the border region and recruited all able young men to fight in the frontier war. Because the old man’s son was crippled he could not fight and was left in the village to farm with his father.
     Sai Weng said to his neighbors: “You see, it all turned out okay in the end. Being thrown from the horse and breaking his leg saved my son from fighting in the war and almost certain death. So it was in the end a lucky thing after all.”"

I admit, I don't like it. I'm not thrilled about possibly having to get a job doing something I don't love. I'm not excited about staying in Logan. I'm not happy at maybe having to spend the next ten years of my life making small payments on my student loans and worrying about insurance and living in rented apartments or rooms. I'm mad at myself for not doing unpleasant things earlier that would have put me in a better position right now, financially, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, educationally. I hate the thought that I might never get the life I think I want right now. I'm still feeling stubborn about it all. It's not like my attitude about all of this is going to change overnight, but I hope some of the compelled humility will worm its way into my perspective and I'll be more willing to do what I need to, rather than stubbornly holding out for what I want.