Half Marathon Update: Weeks 1 & 2

I wrote some big words in my last post, a little bit bigger than I was comfortable with - I wasn't sure I would stick with it. But I'm two weeks in and haven't given up yet (a feat in and of itself)! I've been posting updates on my Instagram, but it's private and not everyone has Instagram, so here's an update post.

This first picture is right before I started my first run, on Week 1 Day 1 of the Couch 2 5k program I'm doing to train. (If you're looking to start running, I highly recommend the program and the app both. The app is about $2 to purchase, but it's worth it. You can play and control your own music in the app while you run, and it prompts you each time you need to move from walking to running and back. The program really eases you into activity, so they really mean it when they say "couch to 5k".)

...and this picture is me after my first training run. I forgot to turn on my GPS, so I'm not sure what my distance or pace was, but I did about two miles alternating 1:30 walking / 1:00 running per Couch 2 5K's program. I was surprised about how great I felt afterward -- I'd convinced myself that I was horribly, horribly out of shape and I would die doing even a little bit of running. So maybe I'm only one "horribly" out of shape.

W1D2, from my running log: "Cold, thanks to the snowstorm we had yesterday (RIP all the pretty flowers). Got up at the unholy hour of six am to go to the gym with my roommate. We climbed a few routes (thanks to my thesis, I haven't been in almost a month and my hands and forearms are feeeeeeeeling it), did some bench presses, and rowed for ten minutes. And all this before 8:30 am! I'm feeling so virtuous. And sweaty." I remembered my GPS, so I can tell you I did 2.03 miles total (0.61 miles running at a 13:08 pace). 

W2D1: I skipped W1D3 because it fell on a Saturday and I was feeling lazy. 31 minutes total, 2.62 miles, 0.91 miles run at a 9:54 pace. Proud of myself for running farther faster, and for ending on an uphill. But I'm proudest of myself because even though I put it off until almost dark and I reeeeeeally didn't want to do it, I got changed and forced myself out the door anyway. It feels good to conquer bad habits!

W2D2: This was a tough run. I was tired and my body wasn't loving me. Still, I did 2.56 miles, running 0.89 miles at a 10:05 pace. I climbed, lifted, and rowed with my roommate at our gym before I ran. Getting up at six am stinks, but it feels great to be productive in the morning.

W2D3:  I skipped my run on Saturday (note to self: Saturday runs don't happen), so I ran that workout Monday morning. I did a little more than 2.37 miles (forgot GPS during first half of my warm up). Climbed with my roommate and nailed a couple of routes I couldn't do last week, lifted 15lbs (3 sets 8 reps), and rowed ten minutes. Pushed too hard at the beginning of my run, so the last running segment was murder. My app says I ran 0.97 miles at a 9:19 pace - much too fast! But I didn't stop running (...jogging) until my drill sergeant told me to, though I was tempted. (That drill sergeant is literal, by the way -- well, as literal as an app can be. The C25K app has a drill sergeant trainer option. I liked him best, so he barks at me every segment change.)

Which brings me to W3D1, this morning: 2.05 miles total. I think I went farther than that - I don't think my GPS kicked in until midway through my warm up. I paced myself too slow this workout (0.81 miles running at 11:03), I think, but after yesterday I was worried about running out of steam, especially during the longer running parts. Better tomorrow. Went climbing with my roommate, but we passed on the lifting and rowing today. And how glamorous is my post-workout look today? Yesterday and today were cold, down in the low 40s when I was running before 8:00am. I made the mistake yesterday of just running in a t-shirt and my arms froze, though I wasn't actually cold. So this morning I dug out my (too-small) long-sleeved running top, and my arms were toasty like the rest of me. 

I'm also tracking what and how much I eat with My Fitness Pal. It's a sobering realization to see how much you can eat without realizing how much you're eating. Snacking is the hardest part -- I do pretty well at meals, but I'm an emotional eater, and it's hard to break that habit. I have to say, without my sister doing this right along with me, I'm pretty sure I would have given up after the first mildly difficult run I had, which would have been about three runs in. But the fact that she's doing everything I'm doing, and doing it with two babies in tow, makes me suck it up and get out there. This experience is teaching me that 85% of what's holding me back from being who I want to be is my own fears and bad habits. I'm in control of those things -- they're things I can confront and overcome. It's not easy, no, but I can do it if I make up my mind. And pray a lot. If anyone wants to know, prayer is my secret weapon, because I know I'm not doing this alone.

Journey to 13.1

Just about to start my first training run for the half.

A few weeks ago, after I turned in the final draft of my thesis to my advisor, my visiting teachers took me to dinner to celebrate. Sitting around eating burritos in Freebird in Sugarhouse, they asked what was next. I jokingly said I was thinking of running a 5k by my birthday. Both of them said no way - that's so much time, you can totally run a half-marathon!

Record scratch.

A HALF-MARATHON?!? 13.1 whole MILES?!

Well, long story short, I'm registered to run a half-marathon the day before my 29th birthday. Because I'm notoriously un-self-motivated (as the sixty pounds I've gained since my mission can arrest to), I roped my little sister into doing it with me. She had her second baby a few weeks ago and was just cleared to start exercising again, so I thought she would be a) up for it, and b) at about the same fitness level. (Except she's probably more fit than I am, ha.) She agreed, like a crazy person, so now we have 20 weeks to go from total dweebs to rockin' 13.1-milers.

I'm not going to lie. This is terrifying. I'm not a big believer in myself. I stay far away from hard things, and when I can't avoid them, I procrastinate and whine about them (see my Facebook page or my Instagram for proof of this re my thesis #annmarievsgradschool). But the other morning, I was lying in bed at my sister's house, with my baby niece snuggled in my arms, breathing slowly and totally adorably as she took a morning nap. I, having been awoken by her early-morning serenade and unwilling quite as yet to get up and greet the day, invited her to come lie in bed with me. As she slept and dreamed next to me, I lay thinking about this terrifying prospect of running a half-marathon. It was such a wonderful, precious moment - Baby J is so confident and full of life, so sure that she can do anything. I didn't want to spoil that memory by chickening out of something that would be hard but worthwhile. I didn't want to look back in ten years and admit to her that I didn't believe in myself but that of course she can do anything. I want her to think I'm the coolest, most amazing auntie on the planet, and part of that means I'm going to have to keep up with her - and since she's just like her momma, she's a 3-volt machine running on 90 volts.

So here's to doing hard things. And believing in yourself, even if only for the sake of others.

Here's me on W1D1 (stealing my roomie's mirror): 188.6 pounds, hips 43", waist 37", upper arm 14", thigh 27"

It's been a long time

A tranquil river that winds its way through the Korean Folk Village in Suwon, South Korea

It has been quite awhile since I have posted to this space. Not because nothing has been happening, or because I had nothing to say...more because not blogging about anything was a way to avoid articulating things I didn't want to confront. 2014 was a year I am glad to put behind me. I was looking forward to things being different in 2015, but alas, thus far things are continuing in very much the same vein.

An apartment building in San Francisco, California, near Chinatown

It wasn't that I experienced terrible tragedies in 2014 -- on the contrary, I had some amazing opportunities and experiences last year. It was that everything seemed to be piling on top of me all at once: school, my personal life (such as it is...), my home life, important decisions to be made, fears about my future, constant challenges and fears in my immediate family circle, significant financial worries, continual car problems, depression about my current struggles and challenges, etc. It was a constant barrage of small- to medium-sized things that slowly piled higher and higher and higher.

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California

I did some amazing things last year, though -- I visited California (San Francisco and Los Angeles) for the first time, I got to visit Seoul again for the first time in four years, my family moved across the United States to live the same state as me and I got to spend the holidays with them, I met amazing people, I learned a lot about myself and my Heavenly Father, I experienced in a very real way being carried by grace through trials and challenges that I knew were too big for me, but not too big for Him. It was a very instructive year, but it wasn't a very fun one.

Brightly painted beams support a tiled roof on the walls of the outer court at Gyeongbok Palace (the former imperial residence) in the middle of Seoul, South Korea

This is my last semester of graduate school (for now, anyway -- who knows, I may be crazy enough to go back to school and do it again sometime down the road), thank goodness. But that means two sources of stress coming to bear on me at the same time: 1) the aforementioned thesis, and 2) being finished with school means now there's a big fat question mark on every day after 9 May 2015.

North Korean guards on duty at the border of North and South Korea, Panmunjom, in the DMZ

Right now, the main source of my stress, anxiety, depression, fear, sense of inadequacy, and trepidation is my Master's thesis. (That doesn't mean that the second isn't also making its presence felt, however.) My thesis is about the first half of the first volume of Kim Il Sung's collected Works, which is supposed to contain speeches, etc that he gave from the summer of 1930 until the end of 1943. (The last half of the volume covers just a few months in 1945, following the end of World War II when the Japanese, who had been occupying Korea for the last 35 years, were defeated and Korea was "liberated".) Kim Il Sung would have been just barely 18 in the summer of 1930, and the events as they are narrated in this portion of the Works don't match up with the history most historians and Korean scholars accept. That being said, what the Works claims Kim Il Sung said was most likely fabricated out of whole cloth -- the topic of my thesis is exploring why that portion of the Works was written the way it was.

A South Korean soldier guards the door that leads to North Korea in a conference room that straddles the border -- he and I are both standing on ground that is technically in North Korea

I was due to turn in my finished draft to my committee this last week, but when I met with my advisor to give her a (very) rough first draft two weeks ago, she was concerned that I would need more time. I didn't want to move my date back because 1) if I did, I would no longer be able to graduate in May (but I could still walk in the graduation ceremony), and 2) I was afraid that with too much extra time I would just procrastinate everything until one and a half weeks before the new due date anyway. But to make a long story short, she (and the other members of my committee) won the battle and I'm now defending at the end of April, and due to turn in my draft to my advisor the Monday after spring break (~sob~ for my spring break turning into thesis-writing time...).

On the street in Sinchon-dong, Seoul, South Korea, an area popular with college students

It's a discouraging turn of events, but it does give me the opportunity to practice confronting my fears and sense of inadequacy and not procrastinate. I'm trying to look at it from that point of view and not be depressed about this stress continuing through the next two months of my life instead of being over in three short weeks. That will teach me to put things off...

The aforementioned Gyeongbok Palace at sunset

San Fran! (and the end of the semester)

This last week I spent traveling to and exploring the Bay Area. It's the first time I've ever been to California, actually (unless you count the approximately 45 minutes I was in LAX before getting on a plane to Korea once). I don't think I would choose to live here, but it's a wonderful place to visit! I came to see a friend graduate from Berkeley Law (which she did, this last Saturday), but I spent a few days exploring and sight-seeing before her graduation.

But first! A quick summary of the end of the Spring 2014 semester, aka the worst two weeks of my entire life (and it was my own fault). The last week in particular was pretty terrible -- maybe even more terrible than the last week of the Fall 2013 semester, and that one ended with a 30+-hour drive home to Tennessee after only about 15 hours of sleep the whole week. I am so relieved the semester is over! My longest paper was due Monday (April 28) afternoon, but was just less than halfway finished by Saturday night. I started working on it at about 12:30am Sunday morning and it was finished about eleven hours later -- or rather, it was done enough to turn in so I could get started on my other responsibilities. Tuesday I wrote my last paper, for my Research Methods class, and Wednesday I turned it in, met with two of my professors to discuss my other papers, and then spent the afternoon frantically packing up all my things so I could move them into a storage unit. Luckily, my cousin came to help me out. It took the two of us about four hours to finish packing up everything and get it into the storage unit. Unfortunately, in the rush I managed to forget the one thing I have to have to go to Korea -- my passport! Thankfully, I remembered (whilst almost having a heart attack), I was able to make a quick pitstop to pick it up at my storage unit on my way out of SLC the following Monday (May 5). That night (April 30), after dropping everything off at the unit, I drove up to Layton and spent the night at my cousin and his wife's new house, and spent most of May 1 with them having a great time! I'm so grateful to be friends with my cousins, because you have to see them anyway, so you might as well enjoy it, right?

The evening of May 1 I drove up to Logan to my grandma's house and stayed there for a few days. While I was there I got to hang out with my friends and I even got to see my little brother graduate from college! I also "got" to help him move his stuff out of his apartment and clean it, but hey, I love him and he paid for the movie we went to afterward (The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - awesome!).

Monday morning, bright and early, Mr. Farmer came and got me and we started driving west. We got on I-80 and basically drove until it dead-ended into the ocean. We stopped in Reno for the night on the way, where the place we were staying was hosting a bunch of bowlers. It turns out that's because the National Bowling Stadium is right across the street (and was visible from my room window). We didn't stay there long, though; we packed up and left by 9am the next morning and made it to the Bay Area by lunchtime. On our way to where we were staying that night (on an old Navy base that's now been taken over by NASA), we drove past Facebook's headquarters. Their sign doesn't have their name all big on it, just the "like" symbol and the address.

While we were staying on Moffett Field, we saw the skeleton of an old airship hanger that must have been at least twenty stories high, if not thirty, and the door were massive! They moved on what were essentially railroad tracks, they were so big. (I have pictures of most of these things I'm talking about on my Instagram.) We spent that evening and the next morning exploring Palo Alto, which is about twenty miles south of San Fran and were a lot of rich people live, it seems. That afternoon we picked up Mr. Farmer's nephew, Jim, at the San Fran airport and checked into our hotel in downtown San Fran. The view was great! It's just as hilly as all the movies make it out to be, too. And windy! I think the weather's been amazing, but there are a lot of people walking around with coats and scarves on still, which confuses me, but apparently they think it's cold.

The next day, Thursday, we got up early and went to explore the pier area, specifically Pier 39 (which is basically a massive tourist attraction). We saw the seals that live on the docks, ate some yummy bread from Boudin (they even make bread in the shape of animals!), and took a lot of pictures. Then around noon we hopped onto a ferry boat and headed out to Alcatraz in the middle of the bay! It was the only thing Jim insisted on doing, and I was skeptical, but it was really interesting. It was also very, very sobering. Not that I've ever wanted to commit a crime, but now I really, really don't want to. Alcatraz the island was actually not that bad -- windy, but gardens have been carefully planted and tended (as they were during the time it was a prison island), and you can't beat the view from the island. And the prison wasn't exactly dank and dark like dungeons in old movies -- but it would be damp with all the fog SF gets and I'm sure it would have been cold with all the wind whistling around and the entire structure being made out of concrete and steel. They have a really great audio tour of the cell-house that has some commentary by actual former prisoners and guards and they talk about what it was like and some of their experiences. It was definitely much more compelling because of that; otherwise it would have been a slightly chilly concrete room with a lot of empty cells. Hearing the men talk about it made it much easier to imagine what living in those cells would have been like. So all you kids, stay in school and don't do drugs and obey your parents! Trust me, you don't want to end up in prison.

Thursday evening we stopped to see the Golden Gate bridge on our way to meet up with Mr. Farmer's daughter and her boyfriend (who was also graduating from Berkeley Law). We had dinner at Chevy's and had some yummy ice cream for dessert. By the time we got back to the hotel we were exhausted, but it was a fun day. Friday we met her in Berkeley (we took the BART (that's the name of the subway! Bay Area Rapid Transit, BART for short) and she showed us around the law school and the Berkeley campus and some of the area around the school and the downtown. We ate lunch at a pizza place downtown called Jupiter, which was wonderful! Then we came back to San Fran and I left Mr. F and Jim and went shoe shopping (they wouldn't have enjoyed it) and spent some time in my room until we ventured out into Chinatown for dinner. We ate at a great Chinese restaurant, House of Nanking, which unfortunately was not a dive but actually pretty clean and well-kept (dives are my favorite, and usually have the best food, but this place was still really good, if not as atmospheric).

Saturday was Chris's graduation! It started at 9am, so we left our hotel at 6:30am to make sure we weren't late (we were more than an hour early). As far as graduations go this one wasn't too bad, but there were so many people! After the reception, we all went our separate ways and I tried to find a Korean restaurant in the area Daddy told me about. I wasn't able to find it, but I did find another Korean place that looked almost exactly like it had been transported intact straight from Korea to Berkeley. I had some yummy bibimbap there and did a little more exploring before I headed back into San Fran, where I did a little shopping (but I couldn't really buy anything because I only have my carryon) before going back to spend a little time in my room. Then I had a fun adventure! Someone must have tripped the fire alarm (accidentally or not), because I was happily updating my Instagram with pictures of my adventures when it went off about 9pm~ish. At first I thought it was an accident or a joke, but all of us pounded down the stairways to the pavement outside nonetheless. Two honest-to-goodness fire trucks came racing up the street, sirens blazing and lights twirling, and some real, live firemen went into our building and checked everything out. Thankfully, there was no fire, but it did make last night the most interesting and exciting Saturday night I've had in a long, long time!

Which brings me to yesterday. Ever since the semester ended, I haven't been able to sleep past 7:30am, and coming out to an earlier time zone has made it worse! I wake up rarin' to go between 6 and 6:30 and can't get back to sleep, and this morning was no exception. So I got up and packed up all my stuff, then walked about 1.5 miles to the nearest church building for church. It was a lovely service and the people made me feel so welcome!

Right now I'm in the LA area enjoying hanging out with my darling Julia! So I'm going to go do that now. ^_^ Thursday morning, bright and early (7am!) I'll fly off into the sunrise, headed for Korea. My friend Sooyeon will pick me up at the airport Friday night (Korea-time) and I'll stay with her for a bit and also try to visit as many of my Korean friends as possible before my classes start on 3 June.

Why I'm Depressed and Not Lazy

Avoidance has long been my method for coping with overwhelming and/or difficult things. Things I didn't want to do. This list is long, but (part of) it looks something like this:

waking up in the morning

doing my homework

doing my chores

cleaning my room

paying my taxes

practicing (anything)

finding a job

making a decision about health insurance

deciding on a topic for my thesis

applying (for anything)

etc, etc, etc

Here's the thing about avoidance: It's not a great coping mechanism. It doesn't get things done, and it's not productive. (Though, to be both honest and fair, some times when I'm avoiding one thing (i.e. a final paper), I get a lot of those other things done, like cleaning my room.) It makes the last minute incredibly stressful. (Take, for example, the time ~cough~lastsemester~cough~ that I was finishing up my last week of classes, taking all my finals, writing all my final papers, and packing and preparing for a marathon cross-country drive home. All in the same week. Yeah, I didn't get much sleep and I was pretty much a wreck. It wasn't a good time.)

I had an epiphany just now, while boiling water to cook up some ramyun for my dinner. Two of my non-shared New Year's resolutions were to be more self-compassionate and to try to deal with hard things promptly instead of avoiding them. My epiphany involved the intersection of those two goals. Right now, I'm really struggling with that second goal. 

My life is exceptionally hectic-feeling right now. I'm trying to juggle making some professional contacts, nailing down a research question for my thesis (thankfully I think I've finally found a topic), dealing with getting the ball rolling so I can do research for my thesis, four classes (each with a not-insignificant number of expectations), homework, a new church calling, beginning research for important papers for each of my classes, new responsibilities in regard to a possible (unexpected) future career, finding something to do and some way to support myself this summer, and all the other mundane stuff like taxes and healthcare insurance and feeding myself. Honestly, I think at this point it might be a tender mercy from the Lord that I'm not in a relationship, because it would just be one more thing to juggle.

But...do you know what I did yesterday with my day off from school? Instead of catching up on all the things I'm responsible for, I went to Home Depot and dropped some cash on some materials to make myself a headboard. Yup. That happened.

Here's where my epiphany (finally -- were you getting bored? sorry) comes in:

I'm depressed.

Okay, that's not the huge epiphany. I've been struggling, off and on, in one way or another, with depression for a long time. The epiphany came when I realized, Maybe I'm not lazy. Maybe I can stop berating myself with that label and realize that my procrastination and avoidance are symptoms, not part of who I am.

That being said, there are definitely times when I deliberately make poor choices with my time. ~cough~all-nightkdramawatching~cough~ But right now? Struggling to finish or even start my Korean homework (normally a class I love)? Not answering emails for days and dreading checking my inbox? Starting decorating projects instead of catching up on work? Making ramyun and grilled cheese and eating cereal at almost every meal because I can't work up the motivation to cook? Falling off the wagon on my calorie-tracking and not even wanting to try to get back on? That's depression. Situational depression, yes, thank goodness, which means that at some point it's going to have to end. But what an amazing moment of self-compassion to realize that all that stuff I'm not doing? It's not me, it's my situation. And I can fix that. I can get help to fix it. And it can end.

How grateful I am to know that my Heavenly Father loves me, because lately, that's just about all that's getting me through the day.

(For more on this topic, I suggest reading Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's talk, "Like a Broken Vessel". It's marvelous, and gives me a lot of hope and strength.)

Where Am I?

Healing Hurts

My name is AnnMarie, and I'm a TV addict.

This is probably not news to any of you reading this, assuming that the set of all those reading this is a subset of the set of people I know. If I don't know you and you're reading this (how did you get here?), you might actually not know this. But that's beside the point. The point is: I'm a TV addict. I watch way too much TV and it's bad for my physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual health.

Like most addicts, I've been in denial about this for quite some time, but something I read tonight hit me hard enough that I finally couldn't rationalize my way out of it. Or rather, I could have, but I was finally humble enough not to. I finally admitted to myself that TV-watching is not just a casual hobby, that it's not not having an effect on my life and well-being, that it's actually keeping me from things that I want in the long term.

It's ridiculous to say that watching violence and immorality or hearing vulgar language and jokes on television has no effect on you. If you saw those things in person they'd affect you; why not if you see them on television? After I watch something violent or vulgar I always feel dragged down. My mood becomes dark and brooding, and the effects can linger for hours or sometimes even days. I'm not sure what science would conclude, but for me that's pretty compelling evidence. I have enough problems with depression, anxiety, and self-loathing from my wacky hormones, I don't need anything exacerbating the problem.

To quote something from the article I read tonight: "When we are not doing what we know we ought to be doing, and when we are not living the way we know we ought to live, we have a tendency to be unhappy." Well, I'm unhappy, and it's because I'm not doing what I know I should be doing, and I'm not living the way I know I should be living. My time is spent on "that which is of no worth . . . [and on] that which cannot satisfy" in the eternal world (2 Nephi 9:51).

What am I going to do with my new-found hours and hours of unspent time? I'm going to do family history. I'm going to learn to cook healthier food and actually sit down at my table, hopefully with a friend or two, to eat it. I'm going to attend the temple more often. I'm going to pray more sincerely, read my scriptures more diligently, and ponder the words of living prophets and apostles more carefully. I'm going to be more active. I'm going to cultivate and strengthen relationships. I'm going to go to bed earlier. I'm going to serve others.

It's going to be really hard. I know, because I've tried it before. And it was hard. And I eventually (sooner rather than later) fell back into my TV-watching habits. I want this time to be different. I want to be healthier, physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, and spiritually, and I can't do that without removing this negative influence in my life. Obsession and addiction, in whatever form they may come in our lives -- harmful substances, people, activities, seemingly-innocuous foods -- are not healthy. They become crutches that hold us back instead of helping us move forward; they prop us up in our brokenness instead of helping us to heal. Have you ever healed from something? Healing hurts, but it's the only way to be whole, and I want to be whole and not broken.

I would love your encouragement and support. I don't need a watchdog to tell me how disappointed in me they are when I slip up, but I could use a few cheerleaders. If you volunteer I could bring brownies. ^_~

T-47 Days

This is me almost six (!!) years ago in July 2007.

This is me a little more than six weeks ago in March 2013.

This is me today at approximately 5:25 pm, getting ready to go on the first run I've run deliberately...and felt motivated to run in a long, long time. 

This is me upon returning from the aforementioned run, approximately 5:53 pm.

And this is me, sharing how I feel after finally quitting making excuses (no running shorts that fit, my shoes are too old and worn out, I'm tired, I've had a hard day and I just want to sit in bed and eat ice cream while watching TV, etc, etc) and just doing it. 

I think Nike is on to something.

So what's the 47-day countdown to, you ask? 

This.

Go here for more details.

That's right, I've decided to stop making excuses, stop procrastinating, stop pretending I'm happy being a couch potato and run a 5K. Not a timed one (not yet), but a fun one. Hopefully that will keep me motivated and excited to run, because I've got less than two months to whip myself into shape (well, a shape that isn't squishy, anyway) for it. I'll be following the Couch-to-5K running plan, which has many enthusiastic adherents and seems to have worked for more hopeless cases than mine.

Hello, 2013

Do you remember when the US Mint started issuing the states quarters, way back in 1999? Like probably most every other family in the US with kids, our family started collecting them, albeit a little late -- maybe late 2000 or 2001. I remember my mom bought a case-book-thingy for each of us to keep ours in. I remember sitting on my bed in the attic of our house in Tennessee and looking at the slots for the year 2009 when the series would be complete and thinking it was so far away.

Oh, Time, how fast you fly! It's now been more than ten years since I was sitting on that bed, four years past so-far-away 2009. Just the other day while I was home for Christmas, my barely-8-year-old little brother announced, "People born in 2000 are old." My parents and I were sitting in the same room engaged in various other activities, and we all just laughed and laughed. But the evidence that the people around me are starting to be old is mounting. Both my grandfathers died in 2011. Neither of my grandmothers are as hale as they used to be, and both are facing ever-increasing health concerns. My father's beard has much more "salt" in it than it used to, and both he and my mother are a little more creaky than I remember. I have four younger brothers, but only the youngest can properly be called my "little" brother, and my youngest sister will probably stop being my "littlest" sister in just a few years. Craziest of all is that in just a few weeks my parents will be transformed into grandparents and my sister -- my baby sister, the one who is still always just barely 14 in my head -- will have a daughter.

Tomorrow marks two years since I moved to Utah, and that fact sets my head reeling, just a little bit. It seems impossible that it could have been that long. It seems like not too long ago that I anxiously prepared for my first day of "normal" college in more than four years, worried that somehow I wouldn't do very well or have problems adjusting. Now, two years later, I smile a little at my anxious past-self. I wish I could tell her she'd be fine, that she'd fall right back into the rhythm of class-homework-quiz-presentation-paper-test. I also wish I could tell her to start thinking beyond her all-consuming goal of just graduating and getting her undergraduate over with, and spend a little more time (seriously) planning for the future and discovering what exactly it is she wants out of life.

Which brings me to the cliched part of this post.

Ah, resolutions. They have such a bad rap, for an admittedly deserved reason: we're almost universally horrible at keeping them. We set lofty goals and then fall off the wagon by mid February. Sometimes we make it to March if we're diligent. I've been pondering off and on over the last few weeks how best to approach making the changes I want to make in my life. I've read a couple of great posts from some good friends (Autumn here and Kelsey here are lovely examples) that have inspired me to try approaching making resolutions from a different angle than I would normally. I've sat down and tried to work through things logically, attempting to hew to the wisdom that you need written goals broken down into manageable, accomplishable steps to actually change. I've tried just spontaneously writing down whatever came to me. The problem is that there are just too many darn things I'd like to change in my life.

I want to learn to enjoy cooking. I want to be more active and eat healthier. I want to improve my mind and learn new things. I want to take up new hobbies like photography and rock climbing. I want to be a  kinder person. A more organized person. A more financially responsible person. A more-fluently-Korean-speaking person. A better dressed person. A person who does her hair in more ways than just a ponytail. A person who can shower in less than half an hour. And I'd really like to finally not be the person that becomes paralyzed and gives up on any change in the face of feeling overwhelmed by all the things she thinks she needs to change.

Really, how do you choose only a few things to resolution-ize in that long and not-comprehensive list? Not to mention the discouraging reality that making permanent changes in our lives and habits takes an incredible amount of energy, time, and patience. It's almost enough to resign yourself to being a hoodie-and-jeans-wearing, ponytail-sporting, longer-than-20-minutes-showering, often-sarcastic person for the rest of your life. (At least if you're me.) Almost.

Honestly, I'll probably never really learn to shower in less than 30 minutes. I'll probably always prefer wearing a hoodie and jeans to wearing a blouse and skirt. I might never learn to French braid my own hair and wear a ponytail every day for the rest of my life. I might always have to grit my teeth a little when the time to make dinner rolls around each day. Thus I have decided to not resolution-ize any of those things -- not because I'm likely to fail, but because I see a larger theme in what I want in life.

My resolution -- or goal, if you'd rather -- for 2013 is to love myself. To forgive myself. To respect myself. To be kind to myself. To be understanding with myself when I make mistakes, and to encourage myself to do better next time. To rejoice with myself when I do succeed, even if the success is small. To not undermine myself and set myself up to fail. I want to be friends with myself, and to enjoy spending time with myself. After all, the one person you're stuck with the rest of your life is yourself, and if you're not particularly fond of yourself it won't be a very fun or rewarding rest of your life.

Of course, that's a pretty broad goal. To be honest, I'm not even sure how to go about tackling it. Any ideas or suggestions would be welcome, particularly if they're things you've discovered working in your own life. Right now I think I need to start with establishing good habits in place of old, entrenched bad ones: going to bed on time, waking up early to pray and read my scriptures daily, being more active, and eating more regularly and better. Not all at once, but one decision at a time. It's overwhelming to think about overhauling your entire life all at once, but deciding to make one good choice at a time, independent of past or future failures -- that I can do.

A Journey Without a Destination Is More Like Aimless Wandering, Part II

Here I am. I'm 26, barely graduated from my undergrad, working two part-time jobs (but thankfully with insurance), and I've got a GRE Analytical Writing score that could very well keep me out of grad school. (At least this year.) The kicker is that when I checked, I saw that I only needed another half-point (or a 4.5) to jump all the way to the 73rd percentile. Basically, the difference between my reader being in a good or generous mood and s/he being anxious to get home or go to lunch. When there's a-- wait, let me do the math...29 percentage-point difference in just a half a point on your scale, you need a new scale.

Mostly I'm just mad. But there's another part of me, a not-very-small-and-in-fact-growing-increasingly-larger part of me, that wonders what the heck I do now. To be honest, I decided to apply to grad school more because I'm not too keen on continuing to do what I'm doing now more than because I finally know what I want to do with my life. Having an MA at least means I can start looking for work in my field, or I could move on to a more prestigious program and get a Ph.D. I figured the U would be a good choice; I could finally take some formal Korean classes, deepen my understanding of the culture and history of the region, and yet the tuition wouldn't totally break the bank and I'd have a decent shot at a fellowship, not to mention friends and family who live in the area. And the U is thankfully in a bigger city than Logan. It would be a leap of faith, but not a huge one.

So...now what? I could take the GRE again, but that's another $175 and I'd have no more time to prepare than I did last time. Not to mention, because I waited so long to take it the first time, now I have only about two dates I could even take it -- and that close to the application deadline, there's no guarantee that they'd receive my scores in time, anyway. I could call up the ETS people and keep squeaking until they give me some grease and take another look at my writing score, but let's face it, the probability of that happening is slim to none. I could throw myself on the mercy of the admissions committee at the U and try to explain my way into getting them to admit me. Or I could just give up.

Honestly, that last option was my first inclination. Just throw my hands up and say, Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it and resign myself to being a 26-year-old BA working two part-time jobs in a small city with no real job prospects in her field (but thankfully with insurance). But isn't that too pathetic? I already feel like I'm a pretty amazing failure, but that would really take the cake, no matter how much I just want to sit down and have a good cry. It's hard to feel upbeat when I look at so many of my friends and peers and they're working on their Ph.D.s or Master's, or traveling the world, or living and working in other countries, or gainfully employed and have cars and houses and kids.

Even worse than the (not inconsiderable) blow to my pride is the lack of direction, the shattering of expectations. I don't know what I want to do with my life. The pointlessness of it all is inciting an existential crisis. I want to do something, but it's eternally frustrating that I just don't know what. I wish I had that clarity of purpose and utter conviction I had as a three-year-old who wanted to be a ballerina. I'd settle for the naive confidence of the high school sophomore who was convinced she wanted to be a biochemist. (Whew, dodged that bullet.) Heck, I'd love to even have the optimism of the brand-new college freshman who wanted to become an English professor.

What am I doing with this time I'll never get back? Nothing very fulfilling. Please don't mistake me, I am so grateful to have a way to support myself, somewhere warm and dry to live, good food to eat, a little expendable income for fun things and to pay down my student loans a little faster, a family who loves and supports me, and an education. I am tremendously blessed, and even if that was all I had I'd still be one of the richest people alive. I've been trying to concentrate on those things, and I've been glad to be here in Logan for some things happening in my life and in the lives of people around me, but I feel like I'm stagnating here. The problem is I don't know where I want to go, let alone how to get there, to get myself moving and cease stagnating. I have no idea what the future holds or why this happened to me when everything suggested it wouldn't. I don't know what I want. I don't know what God wants me to want. I feel like every time I think I do know, it turns out not to be the case...? At this point I just want to stay in bed all day and stare at my ceiling.

A Journey Without a Destination Is More Like Aimless Wandering, Part I

The annoying thing about life is that it's impossible to do perfectly.

As much as I would like to be able to, I can't. And sometimes, Life throws you a curveball just to drive that home.

When I graduated earlier this year, I had no idea what I was going to do next. I'd kind of decided to move to Korea to teach English, and so I hadn't worried about doing silly things like taking the GRE or filling out a FAFSA. Well, Korea didn't pan out, much to my disappointment, and so I spent the summer pretty much lollygagging around until I finally got my act together and found a job. Then I got a second job because the first job was only half time. I vaguely figured I'd work for a year, pay down some of my student loan debt and regain my sanity, then plunge back into school the next fall.

It was a good plan. Okay, at least it wasn't a bad plan.

The only problem was, I forgot that grad school is not something you decide to do and just do in the spur of the moment. You have to plan ahead, waaaaay ahead, and do silly things like take the GRE and fill out a bunch of applications and ask a lot of people to write letters of recommendation and fill out the FAFSA. By the time I realized, Crap, I have to take the GRE and start looking at schools stat if I want to go to grad school in the fall! it was already early October. But the whole thought of that (and all the money it would require) was so overwhelming I procrastinated dealing with it. Finally, in early November I bit the bullet and went for it...but many of the places I was looking at had application deadlines on 1 December or in the middle of the month. If I wanted to even have a shot at applying to them I'd have to have my GRE results in to them by then, which means I'd have to take it in the middle of November at the latest. So I registered, paid my money (watching $175 go out of my bank account just for the pleasure of taking a test hurt a little bit), and took the test on 15 November at 8:00 in the morning.

I spent the lion's share of what little prep time I invested reviewing math concepts I was supposed to have mastered in middle school and the first couple years of high school. I'm sure this will not come as a shock to any who know me, but my mastery of math concepts basically stops at multiplication...if that. My grasp of even basic math was pretty rusty at best. I was not terribly worried about the vocabulary sections, since I knew about 90% of the words on the vocab lists in the prep book I borrowed from the library. (Let's face it, with my parents and my bookworm childhood, I'd be worried if I didn't.) Likewise, I was pretty confident about the analytic writing portion; if I managed to procrastinate every single paper I'd ever written at USU (some pretty spectacularly) and still not lose any points, I figured a half-hour to write one one-page essay was not going to be terribly taxing.

What's that scripture again? "Pride goeth before the fall"? (More accurately, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. But it still applies.)

The morning of the GRE I wasn't feeling too bad about life. Nervous, but confident. I'd said my prayers, and I figured any Asian Studies program probably wasn't going to look too closely at my math score anyway so I'd be okay. The analytical writing section came first, and I felt like I did a good job on the two essay prompts I'd been given. I asked the Lord for the inspiration and guidance of the Spirit and for His help in doing my best, and I felt like I'd received it. I moved into my first math section feeling confident. (I didn't end it feeling confident, but that's a whole 'nother ball game.) The rest of the GRE went pretty quickly, especially the verbal sections -- I finished those with almost half the time to spare. The new computerized version of the GRE tells you your raw scores for the math and verbal sections as soon as you're done taking the test, so I knew I'd done okay with a 163 in verbal and a 154 in quantitative. I left feeling pretty upbeat, which was only confirmed when I looked up the table that converts your raw score into the percentile score grads schools use for admissions. I was 91st percentile in verbal and 60th in math, definitely good enough to satisfy admissions requirements. I was sure that when I got my writing scores I'd get a 5.0 or a 5.5 (out of 6.0) and be fine.

I realize that sounds incredibly cocky, but nothing in my education to that point had ever given me reason to disabuse myself of that notion, so you can imagine my utter shock when I opened my official scores Sunday morning to see a glaring "4.0 -- 49th %ile" staring back at me. I've never been hit with a 2x4 before, but I imagine the feeling of stunned bewilderment and disorientation is somewhat similar to how I felt at that moment. In case your math is as bad as mine, the 49th percentile is 21 percentage points shy of the 70 I needed to be admitted to the program I was most seriously considering, the Asian Studies MA at the University of Utah. The 49th percentile is average. Average. I went down to my room and sobbed.

The thing is, I realize that I'm being compared to other takers of the GRE, who are on average a smarter  bunch of people (or at least better test-takers) than your average US citizen. I know that, I do. Yet I find it utterly incomprehensible that my math score could be higher than my writing score, ever. Maybe back when I was two and learning to count but couldn't read yet. Definitely not now, not after not taking any math class for more than two years and not having a "real" math class since my second semester at UTM taking college algebra (and I got a B, by the way) more than six years ago. I felt like calling up ETS then and there and demanding to know how the heck this had happened. But I'm a chicken so I didn't. Now I'm desperately scrambling to find a way to fix this and I feel like my life has just been knocked into a flat spin. This post, however, is getting long, so I'll talk more about that in my next post.

I'll Tell You What I'm Not Thankful For

...the GRE. Specifically, that I have to take it in T-6 days. The Quantitative Reasoning sectioning is gonna kick my booty. Just reviewing the properties of numbers -- you know, with those fancy ones like exponents and roots thrown in for fun -- is giving me headaches. And obviously my times tables have suffered a little since I memorized them in second grade and was quizzed on them in fourth. And it's been ten years since my last geometry class. Well, okay, only five and a half technically, if you count Euclid freshman year at SJC. Which was awesome, but it's not algebraic geometry. Sadly, the GRE isn't going to ask me to construct an equilateral triangle using only circles and a line. (I probably couldn't do that, either, but I bet I could make a decent go of it. A better one than remembering the rules of exponents or roots.)

2 + 2 = ...4? Really?

If the GRE tested on Korean pop culture, I would totally rock that section.

Life and Timing and Lack of Control

Not long ago I was talking to my dad on the phone. With a very few, rare exceptions this is an activity I enjoy immensely. While I no longer think my dad knows everything, he has the advantage of years of experience and has struggled with many of the same things I do. On this particular occasion we were discussing life, and how it never seems to go the way I want/expect/hope/plan for it to. I am hard-pressed to come up with even a single example of life working out that way. On the other hand, the list of things that have gone in a completely different direction than I thought they would is long. 

During this talk with my dad, I brought up something a friend and I had been talking about previously, about how very little of what we want for ourselves seems to be what the Lord wants for us. We both confessed to being concerned about this -- are we too stubborn? too prideful? not in touch with the Spirit enough? Surely I should be concerned that every single big life-changing event in my life has included a long period of denial before I finally resigned myself to it, and that none of my life plans have unfolded remotely like I wanted them to.

Just a little while later, that same friend was teaching in church and shared this quote from this talk by Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:

"How fundamentally different my life is than I had sought to plan. My professional life has changed. My personal life has changed. But the commitment I made to the Lord -- to put Him first in my life and to be ready for whatever He would have me do -- has carried me through these changes of eternal importance... It never ceases to amaze me that even when we plan out our lives to match up what we think would please our Heavenly Father we very rarely get the plan quite right. It's a good thing he is willing to make changes to our plans even when we don't understand the changes. It allows us to grow and become so much more than we ever would have made of ourselves had we stuck to our original plan."

It struck me upon rereading it today: If an apostle of the Lord hasn't had his life work out the way he expected, I'm certainly in good company.

The difference is, I'm sure he has handled it with much more grace and faith than I have. Particularly lately. I have been struggling so much with finding purpose and direction in my life when I know whatever plans I make will ultimately just get interrupted or derailed. I struggle with flexibility and adapting myself and my goals to situations that are thrust upon me. I feel overwhelmed with the magnitude of the choices facing me and paralyzed at the thought of somehow screwing up and loosing opportunities I desperately want, personally and professionally. But, as my father has told me repeatedly throughout my life, making no choice is still making a choice. The irony of the situation is that by procrastinating or shelving making decisions I end up losing all the opportunities before me I'm delaying having to decide on and am forced to choose things I would never have wanted for myself.

The truth is that no one's life works out exactly the way they thought it would, because no one can know what's waiting for them just ahead, invisible around the bend in the road. We cannot control the decisions of others or the Lord's timing, both of which have tremendous impact on our lives.

However, Elder Oaks addressed this in another version of those same remarks:

"Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ prepares us for whatever life brings. This kind of faith prepares us to deal with life's opportunities -- to take advantage of those that are received and to persist through the disappointments of those that are lost. In the exercise of that faith, we should commit ourselves to the priorities and standards we will follow on matters we do not control and persist faithfully in those commitments, whatever happens to us because of the agency of others or the timing of the Lord. When we do this, we will have a constancy in our lives that will give us direction and peace. Whatever the circumstances beyond our control, our commitments and standards can be constant."

As much as I'm resisting what I'm being taught, I know that this is what I'm supposed to be learning. To let go of my rigid, detailed expectations and trust that the Lord knows what is best for me, and the best time for those best things for me.

"It is not enough that we are going in the right direction. The timing must be right, and if the time is not right, our actions should be adjusted to the Lord's timetable." 

Not that that faith and trust is a passive thing. It requires me to make those preparations so that I can take the opportunities that the Lord would have me pursue. And I also need to remember something my father said wrote:

"The lesson for me is that, certainly the Lord shapes us, but he does so chiefly within the circumstances we are handed and we choose. He helps us make the best choices based on his vision and our willingness to be shaped and to be patient. The lesson is that “this is a test,” and that as a test, it will hurt sometimes. In the end, however, the atonement is large enough to “wipe away all tears.”"

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.