Appropriate extravagance

Today was my friend Aneika's birthday, and she had the most wonderfully indulgent ideas! Both of them were significant firsts for me:

1) My first real massage (outside of friendly shoulder-rubs).

2) My first deliberately extravagant French meal. I've been to France twice before, but was a student both times and stuck to the budget-safe tourist menus. It... makes a difference.

I always had the idea that spa treatments and expensive foods were pointless indulgences-- something rich people did to show off their excess money. I was kind of proud to be a non-participant. But this evening, combined with my first-ever pedicure a few weeks ago, is starting to change my mind. I'm realizing that treating oneself well is not a pointless waste of money. It has a real impact on quality of life.

I typically spend a lot of money on food. I love to eat. The things I buy, though, are not big-ticket items. I've tended instead to get a lot of cheap stuff-- little pastries, convenience-store sandwiches, candy bars (definitely a sweet snacker, here)-- and just graze on them throughout the day. Though the food is not the best, it provides a lot of cheap thrills, so to speak-- it's fast and easy and tastes good going down.

This evening's dinner was different. The portions were small-- my entree would have fit on a bread plate with room to spare-- but the food was so rich and the flavors so intense that all of us were stuffed before we finished. Every bite of it was perfect, and I felt no need for more.

One of the girls at the table had taken a cooking class on a trip to France, and was talking about how strict the French food regulations are. Even vegetables, she said, are classed differently depending on quality. Our (French) waiter, who looked about 25, seemed as knowledgeable and passionate about wine and food as anyone I've ever met. I felt really out of my depth listening to him talk about cheeses with the girl who'd taken the cooking class.

It made me sad, because that kind of knowledge and passion is something most Americans really don't have. We feed ourselves on what is cheap and easy, focusing on bulk instead of quality. I would guess that most of us are only familiar with a handful of ingredients, and can only prepare a handful of dishes using a handful of cooking techniques. (I'm going by my own experience, here: my non-dessert modes are limited to "steam," "boil," "fry" and "eat raw.") Junk-food companies are allowed to advertise more or less anything as "food." Beyond cookout fare and soul food, we don't really have a proper food culture at all, and I think that's horribly sad.

I know that this post is not covering any new ground. All these points have been made a million times (notably in French Women Don't Get Fat, which I think I put down because its suggestions seemed far too hard to follow). I was just struck by how dramatic the difference can be between top-quality ingredients well prepared and the processed stuff most restaurants will sell you.

I decided that this week, at least, I would try to move back towards high-quality ingredients and cooking at home. (I love eating out, and generally prefer it, but health food is not what you get at most restaurants around here.) Top-quality stuff seems really expensive, at first-- I just bought a carton of organic eggs for double what the regular ones cost. But when you think about what's necessary for survival, food is at the top of the list. I am hoping that eating more high-quality food is going to do me some good.

Who needs sleep?

A while ago, my aunt Emily posted a link to an article entitled "Sleep is More Important Than Food." (And may I say how much I love being able to type a few keywords and come up with an article I read weeks ago.) It's something everyone says, but I guess it had never been pointed out to me this starkly before. Since reading that article I've been trying, and mostly succeeding, to get at least something like a full night's sleep every day. I've pretty much been sleep-deprived since high school (late nights reading + early-morning church "seminary" classes = no good for a developing adolescent brain), so this has taken some adjustment. I'm still not 100%-- I have a particularly hard time when I've been at work late and haven't had much time to myself-- but I've improved my sleeping patterns enough to notice a significant difference.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I am an evil dinosaur first thing in the morning. Multiple cups of stimulant are required to get me functional (though at least I've switched to tea lately), and I'm prone to snap at anyone who approaches me with a question before I've had them. This remains the case, of course-- I love my caffeine much too dearly to give it up without a fight-- but I think the species of dinosaur is much less dire when I've had at least seven hours of sleep. Maybe down to a stegosaurus instead of an ankylosaurus. (Loads of F-bombs in that video; beware.)

I also have a much easier time getting up-- I still pull the covers over my head at least five times before getting up, but at least I feel like I'm capable of getting up before that. In the past I've slept through multiple alarms, and even been late for work, because I went to bed too late. (My brain has developed a nifty self-defense mechanism wherein it says "FU" and ignores alarm clocks if I haven't been getting enough sleep. For several years I went to bed paranoid every night that I might be about to oversleep again.)

Someone on Twitter linked in passing to this article-- Arianna Huffington's "Sleep Challenge 2010." I read it and thought it had a good point. It prevents sleep-deprivation as a feminist issue-- citing stats on how women in the US tend to get less sleep than men do. I'm sure that's true, but I'm also sure that this is an important issue for everyone.

 The other big thing-- and something I've only concretely noticed this week-- is that when I'm really tired I eat way more junk food. Like, follow a full meal with a muffin and a cream bun, or down a whole bag of cookies or four donuts or three slices of pizza in a sitting when I'm not even hungry. This is something that goes way back with me, too. As it happens, the HuffPost article links to this one from Glamour. While I would ordinarily roll my eyes-- "pfft, Glamour"-- I think I'm starting to have anecdotal evidence that you can "Lose Weight While You Sleep": I'm starting to lose weight.

Not a lot, so far, and certainly not enough to write home about (though apparently I'm doing that), but... it's encouraging. I shall follow this trend and see how it goes.

And, as it is a Saturday night, I happily resolve to sleep as long as I can tomorrow morning, with all the alarms turned off. (This is something I fantasize sometimes during the workweek.) I hope that all of you can, and will, do the same. Sweet dreams!

It's been a while. Again.

I keep starting drafts here and leaving them to languish. I feel like sometimes my thoughts go stale-- I feel less passionate about what I was writing about, or find something new to focus on-- and then it seems dishonest to post about them as if I still believed what I was saying. I'm going to try keeping things short, simple and regular-- if I visit both blogs every day, I can try to keep things moving off the cutting board fast enough to still be relevant when I post them.

As proof that I mean it, I'm going to post this right now. Here's hoping the next one will be longer and more scintillating.

New things

I'm home again, for the month of November, and considering my options.

I had almost decided to start graduate school. I'd even aspired to a voice Master's from UNC Greensboro. It's supposed to be a very competitive school, but I thought that the competition might motivate me to try harder.

Then I had a voice lesson. My confidence deflated like a balloon. It's amazing how much you can forget in four years away from singing! The slump passed quickly, but it was too late: I'd already let the doubt in.

I love to sing, and I never want to stop, but I'm pretty sure now that voice is not the ideal career path for me. To succeed in the performing arts, you must be absolutely positive about what you are doing. There is no room for self-doubt, and you must be 100% committed. I've tried to take it that seriously, but in truth I've never been that resolved.

The problem is that my real ambition-- and I know, I've waffled a lot on this blog, but this is the real one-- was always to be an author. Not a writer. An author. If you'd asked me at age five or six what I wanted to be, that's what I would have told you. If you'd asked me at age seven, eight or nine, I would have said the same thing. It wasn't until I hit middle school, and started hearing about how hard it was to succeed as a writer, that my career ambitions started to waver.

I once heard that the job you dream of at age six is usually the best one for you. I'm sure that in most cases, that's not true-- "fairy-princess-ballerina" comes to mind. However, I have always wanted to write. I've littered my life with notebooks half-full of stories I never had the steam to finish-- and they're fascinating stories. I find them and want to keep reading, even though the ideas were eaten by moths a long time ago.

I've never given up on this. I've let my music slide-- I've let my languages slide-- I've let everything else slide, but I've always had a story going. I guess this should have been a sign to me.

I knew, though, that it was hard to make a living as a writer. Anyone you ask will tell you that. I've always tried to have some solid career trajectory in mind to keep my loved ones from worrying. "Oh... I'm going to be a teacher. I think I could be a pretty good teacher." "Maybe I'll be a nurse. Do you like being a nurse?" "Urban planning. It should be fun, and it's compatible with my talents..." My most recent scheme was to come home and become a wedding singer.

I still might do some of that, if life works out that way. I love to sing. I love weddings. I love to dress up and be fancy.

I just don't think I can make my life out of it.

Right now I'm thinking seriously about taking a CELTA course after my current contract is up, and using it to find a job somewhere new and interesting. I don't want the best job, or the most prestigious job, or the most glamorous job. I want a solid, reliable, low-stress job, where I can get all my work done and have plenty of time left over to write. ESL jobs are great in this respect-- and have the added advantage of taking you to exciting new places. I don't have to find A Perfect Thing; I just need to find A Thing That Works For Now.

I was talking to a friend about this yesterday, and she pretty much got it.

"All of this," I said, "is pretty much a way to bide my time until I start finishing and publishing books."

"But you no longer feel guilty about this."

"No."

And that seems to be the crux of the matter. I no longer feel guilty about devoting myself to the one kind of work I have always known I could do.

I've set up a writing blog to document my progress, and am using National Novel Writing Month as a way to kick-start a new project. It's not easy: I've finally, finally realized that serious writing is hard work.

But I'm up for it.

Life updates

I've decided to stay in Korea for now-- and at the same hagwon I've been with for three years now. It wasn't an easy decision, and required a full pros-and-cons chart and everything, but in the end it came down mostly to not fixing what ain't broke.

I'd decided to move to Seoul, actually, so I could spend some time seeing more of the city, and had launched a full-scale job search after telling my current school I wasn't going to renew. I went on a number of interviews, met some nice people and saw some pretty nice places, but never did get an offer that was better than what I've got now. That, plus the hassle of moving-- and a month of personal vacation for signing on again here-- made leaving seem like a poorer and poorer choice.

I'm quite happy with my decision-- I was actually kind of elated when it was finalized. I'd thought I was looking forward to moving, but coming closer and closer to the day when I'd leave all my students and coworkers was apparently depressing me, because I bounced right back up when I got to tell them I was staying. Now that I know I've got the rest of the school year with my current crop of kinders, I've been getting much more involved with their development and am doing my job much better.

Since I've decided to stay here, at least for the time being, I've also decided to feather my nest a little bit. Since moving in three years ago I've treated my apartment as temporary housing, like a hotel, and haven't really done a lot to personalize it or make it nice (beyond the requisite Home Plus flower decals on the walls). Since I initially thought I'd only be here a year, I didn't really see the point of making it a "home" and loading myself down with stuff I'd just have to mail or get rid of at the end of the contract. The same reasoning carried me through years two and three, each of which I thought would be my last. The whole time I've been here, I never really bothered to make my apartment a "home."

It's understandable, in one way. Expats are in a weird position: you don't want to get yourself too involved in where you currently are, because the more entanglements you have the more difficult it is to pack up and go home again. Friends are one (good) entanglement, and romances are another. Putting lots of time and effort into a home or apartment is like admitting that you expect to be there for the long haul, and for some people I'm sure that's scary.

I don't plan to be here "for the long haul" (though, again, I've already surprised myself three times), but I've started to think that people need a home-space that they can fully occupy, even if it's only for a little while. Maybe that's how you become an adult-- take charge of what's around you, decide how you want things and take the steps to make them that way. It's more than I ever really did as a child, it's much more than I did in college or right afterward, and until now it's more than I've done with my apartment here. Having a few things I like also inclines me to take better care of them than I do of the ragbag bedding and plastic dishes left behind by former teachers. By viewing this place as temporary, I absolved myself of a lot of housekeeping responsibilities-- but I also missed out on a lot of the privileges of having my own place.

So, from now on, things to do:

*Translate all the controls on the washer and thermostat, rather than using only the buttons the former tenant pointed out to me when I moved in.

*Hang posters on the wall.

*Get rid of all the crap I've accumulated since moving in here, keeping only the things I need, like and want.

*Etc. I'll post pictures if I ever manage to make the place sightly.

Yours, Kate

We had a lot of surprise snow last week. We'd gotten so many false predictions that I stopped paying attention to the forecast. Then it snowed off and on for about three days. It was very pretty, but the air was too warm for much accumulation. Probably that was for the best.

---

I'm really torn about what I'm going to do when I go home this summer. I've considered a number of possible jobs-- tutor, TA, copy-editing assistant-- but none of them has really caught my interest. If I'm honest with myself, the idea of settling back into a regular job and niche at home is a little depressing. I also feel like it's a little silly to leave a proven, steady source of income and step back into the uncertainty of the US job market right now.

At the same time, the part of me that sounds like my mother says that I should get started making a "real career" for myself. I'm 26 now, which is a bit too old to be acting like an indecisive college student. Maybe I should be "making connections," meeting people, building a resume that American employers would be able to relate to.

But 26 is really young, too, and I want to travel more.

I miss my family and friends, and seeing them more often is a big reason to go home. How often would I see them, though? They have their own lives. I might not even be able to get a job close to home. Then what? I'm also terrified of ending up in another stifling cycle-- barely treading water, watching my free time slip by in an exhausted daze while I struggle to put gas in my car. The year before I came to Korea was, in some ways, my most miserable ever. It was certainly the most hopeless and frustrating. I never want to return to that, and I'd do a lot to avoid it.

I've been thinking a lot about Japan in the last week or so. I'm reading Speed Tribes right now, which has renewed my interest in returning to the places I saw there this summer. Tokyo, in particular, captured my interest, and I'd love to see more of it. I'm not sure about living in Japan, though-- it's hideously expensive, and I'd just be staying afloat (if not losing money. Still, it would be an adventure, and I'm not ready to give up on those.

I do want to spend some time as a person before I go back to being an alien, though. When I went home for Christmas this year, I couldn't get over the simple miracle of being able to speak in my own language to anyone I met without coming across rude. I want to eat familiar foods, use a dryer, have a social circle of more than a handful of people. I need to spend some time reconnecting with home before I start in on a new kind of "away." I'm just having a hard time visualizing how it's going to go.

Six months? Really?

I can't believe it's been so long since I updated this. I knew it had been a long time, but did not realize how fast the time would fly. Since July, I have:

1. Won NaNoWriMo for the first time in five years of trying.
2. Gone home for a three-week visit.
3. Decided-- or realized-- that what I have always wanted to be, and all I will ever truly want to be, is a writer.

What happened to Urban Planning? It's gone the way of all concessionary dreams. I'm told it was a nice post I wrote about it, though.

Anyway. I know only one person is following this, but it means a lot to me that I'm picking it up again. I've had a post sitting in my notebook since September that seems to have been blocking the chute, as it were, so here it is in all its slightly-vintage glory:

9/7/09:

I love K-pop music.

My aerobics instructor always has the latest hits on the workout routine, so I always want to dance and sing along when I hear them on the radio out in public. Do I look silly? Yes. Do I care? Not really.








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I don't know what I'm going to do when I leave Korea. It's going to feel like tearing out a piece of my heart. When am I going to come back here? When am I going to stroll around in Gimpo on a lazy Sunday, go "eye-shopping" in Hongdae, have dinner out in Itaewon? I've come to recognize and welcome the changes in the seasons here. One of my favorite things is the fruit-- strawberries, apples, grapes, tangerines, most of them fresh from the field and sweeter than I've ever had. You can buy them by the bucket from street stands or the backs of pickup trucks.

Want to hear something truly sick? By the end of this summer, I'd come to enjoy the incessant noise of cicadas buzzing outside. (Korean word: maemi.)

My Korean language study has been going better, and I'm starting to enjoy the language more. When I first got here, it sounded mushy and dull to me-- endless strings of mumbled syllables, impossible even to separate into words. Now I can recognize a kind of music to it. It's got an underwater sound, in a way-- the words rise up like clusters of fat bubbles before dropping to a murmur again. The vowels and rhythm actually remind me of French, in a way-- so much so that when I try to speak French now, my meager Korean invades. Mais becomes hajiman. I want to keep studying and using Korean after I stop working here, and I wonder how I'm going to do that when I go home. I briefly considered going for my Master's in Korean, but realized it wasn't practical. Seems like a big loose end for me to drop, though.

The real problem is that I fall in love with any place I stay in for very long. When I see sunlight slanting off green mountains, I want to be back at Western-- doing what, I don't know. Even Cary has a big draw for me, though I spent most of my adolescence complaining about it. Granted, the draw is mostly familial, but in a big way it's still my home.

I don't think there will ever be a perfect solution for this problem. I'll always miss most of the places I've traveled. A short visit is never long enough, and a long visit just builds more ties: I've been to France and Japan twice (briefly) each, and the urge to go again is stronger than ever. Traveling is like making Horcruces, except less messy. You leave a piece of yourself buried in every place you go, and every place changes you irreversibly in one way or another.

---

End vintage post. Wow, tl;dr. Anyway, I've more or less decided to go home for a while as of now, but I'm still not sure what I'm going to do there. Now that this is out of the notebook and up in the ether, I'll try to keep you posted a bit more regularly. Thanks for reading.

This is not really my field, but maybe someone will read it.

I am not the most environmentally conscious person on the planet, but I try not to create too much excessive destruction. I carry net grocery bags in my purse. I don't leave more than one light on at a time. I've been trying to shut the hot water off whenever I'm not specifically using it. I only use the air conditioner for a few minutes at a time, and feel guilty while doing it.

I do generate trash, though. My recycling pile is full of packaging, mostly plastic: bottles, wrappers, baggies, whatever. There seems to be no end to it. A big part of the problem, of course, is that I'm a lazy so-and-so and don't bother to cook very much-- I eat far too much processed food. But even fresh vegetables often come in a plastic box.

There's definitely a recycling system here, and a lot of people are pretty good about separating the recyclables from their regular trash. Sometimes I even try to keep the plastic and cardboard bits separate, like I'm supposed to. (Okay, I totally would do it at home, but it's hard to take the system here as seriously when our drop-off point is a haphazard pile of garbage underneath a tree.) I'm not sure how good the system is, or how much of the stuff we hopefully put out can even be recycled, but it's better than nothing.

Still, I'd rather not generate the trash at all. Why don't manufacturers focus more on refills and reusable packaging?

I'm not talking about "refills" like you can buy in the store now-- new cartridges for your pen, or plastic pouch of laundry detergent you can put into your bigger container at home. The average "refill" package contains almost as much plastic as the original. Worse, all of the packaging is thrown away as soon as the contents are dumped into the old container. I'm talking about a real refill system: collecting, sterilizing and reusing the containers that already exist, rather than using more resources to make a new one.

With the current attention on our (vast) environmental problems, I wonder why reuseable packaging hasn't taken off. Is it a vested interest of the plastic manufacturers? Is it too much trouble to set up the infrastructure? Those are the two reasons that spring immediately to mind. For the first, there's no answer except to vote and demonstrate and stay informed, as with any political problem. For the second: everything's got to start somewhere.

For a good refill system to work, packaging should be durable, easily sterilized, and (eventually) recyclable. You'd need some kind of collection-and-exchange system-- maybe even something like the way milk bottles used to be reused. Some refills-- nontoxic products in small packages-- could probably even be done at the same store where the products were originally sold. I hate throwing away empty pens, for example, because aside from the ink there's nothing wrong with the pen. They're made to last for years, but are useless in weeks or days. How much technology can possibly be involved in refilling a ballpoint pen?

We already have a refill system for propane tanks: take the empty tank to the store and trade it for a full one, paying only for the gas and the service. Buying a new one every time would be wasteful and stupid, when the old container is perfectly good and can be reused for years. Why not use the same attitude when designing smaller things?

Our culture admires the shiny and new. You can't have a consumer economy without a consumer base that likes to buy things. Many people would probably be reluctant to use a system like this at first. There's no reason, though, why a few companies couldn't try it with a few products-- a kind of novelty for a while, until the idea caught on. Government subsidies could help them with the setup costs. When the infrastructure was built, I imagine a refills system would catch on pretty quickly. How much cheaper is it to sterilize and relabel an old bottle than to make a new one? The old dairy companies had it right.


There is endless room for this. It could be adjusted for almost every product. Shampoo, ketchup, nail polish, whatever: turn in the empty bottle, get a full one at a lower cost. It would be even easier for something like a produce container: just design a sturdy basket that could be dunked in boiling water befor new plums (or whatever) were loaded into it.

There is nothing but possibility here. There is no argument, except for immediate convenience, that could make disposable packaging seem like a better idea. (Although if some packaging were made immediately biodegradable, I might change my mind on that one.) I wonder what company will be the first to start experimenting with this.