just another one of those end of the year reflections

mm.. i think 2009 was the best year of my life so far
it was full of pain and suffering and abuse
but in the midst of it all i was able to swallow my pride and depend on God
and there is nothing more wonderful than that

what have i accomplished in 2009?....

i met some amazing people, amazing teachers. i fell more in love with jesus. i gained a more intimate relationship with art, with my drawing pencils and hands. i learned that pride is my biggest flaw. i met and conversed with a homeless man who gave me a pack of gum. i stayed single the entire year and refused to get immersed and distracted in silly infatuations (haeyoon would laugh at this). i realized what the biggest regret of my life was. i smiled a lot, especially at strangers who looked like they had a bad day. i questioned my motives and intentions alot. i completely surprised myself by opening up and sharing something so personal at a retreat. i became amazingly close with people i never would have thought i would even get along with. i nosebled every single day for three consecutive weeks. i spent three whole weeks in baltimore studying art history. i understood, or i think i did, how lucky i am for having the most wonderful parents and brother ever. mmm.. i think the biggest would be discovering more about myself, and just starting to embrace myself for who i am, along with all my flaws and imperfections. i'm not quite there yet, but i'm learning :)

2010, what do you have in store for meee

it's the best feeling in the world to come home late from a long day and right when you walk through the door the first thing you see is a lighted christmas tree in a dark living room..

it's kind of like, you're living in darkness, battling struggles everyday, but there's always a bit of light, hope, something to look forward to and hold on to, if you tweak your perspective & attitude
because after all, you can't see stars unless it's pitch black

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

-Mother Teresa

self respect, emily

if you don't have it,
the world will walk all over you

how can you expect people to respect and love you if you can't love yourself?
foolish girl

today, i

discovered something really cool, and i thought i should share with y'all :) i was talking with my mom and naturally i was looking at her while talking, but she was looking straight ahead, not at me. so while i was looking at her side view of her face i realized that lips are shaped as a heart if you tilt your head to the left. did anyone notice that before? to clarify what i'm talking about:



right? the lips are shaped as a heart. and being the weird analytical person i am i tried to piece together a possible underlying meaning to this. the immediate thought that i came up with was that our lips are shaped like a heart, thus symbolizing compassion and love because that is exactly the purpose they (the lips) should serve. simply put, our lips are shaped like hearts because we should use our lips to speak only loving, encouraging words. when we open our lips (hearts) to speak and communicate, only loving words should flow out. how beautiful is that? it's just so weird and fascinating how this all ties together. another example of how amazing God is, how he tucks little things like this into the most unexpected places for us to find and awe at his awesomeness. i doubt when he created the human body, this was a coincidence. and this is so relevant to our society today... when's the last time you heard someone say loving and encouraging things and actually mean it? i actually can't remember the last time someone dropped random encouraging words just for the sake of doing it, not for any self motivated reasons. so this small discovery reminded me once again of the real purpose of why we have lips/mouth.. to speak compassion and encouragement. i'm trying to avoid using the word "love" because what many people think of the word love is the secular, worldly definition of love which i think is disappointing and shallow. but anyway, i just thought this was purdy cool. 8D

need to vent

so stressed and frustrated i want to just run away from home. my life seems so meaningless, every new day is filled with just studying, art competitions, viola, volunteer, ensembles, hagwon, ugh... so much that needs to get done, so much pressure to win this competition and that competition and get into this program and that program and .. my life is pretty much screwed. i'm always so tired, getting nosebleeds on a daily basis because my body is like completely iron deficient and weak from lack of sleep.... i feel like everything i do is based on 'will this look good on my college app? will this help me with what i will freaking study in college...' college college coooooooooooollege i don't even want to go to college. not because i don't enjoy learning, because i do, but i wanna gain real knowledge from living in broken countries and unfamiliar conditions than gain worldly knowledge from textbooks and lectures, the kind of knowledge i'll probably forget in 20 years anyway. this doesn't mean i'm not ambitious, i just simply want to live with goals that for once doesn't have to do with getting ahead of others, climbing the invisible ladder to get to the top by stepping on everyone else ...

i wish i can wake up one day without forming a mental checklist in my mind right away for that day... what needs to get done, which is high priority, which is low.. the checklist is perpetual and never ending. for real... if one task is checked off a new one enters and alot of times i find myself wondering if the checklist will still be there implanted in my mind when i die and how sad would that be... because the checklist and its presence makes me feel like i'm not truly living... i'm living but i'm living within certain limits and boundaries, i'm living in accord with some stupid checklist that has taken complete control of me. k that's a scary thought D:

i feel happy

for no reason. i shouldn't be, actually, because my life is going downhill and i am always running out of time. nonetheless, i feel happy that i can blog on a computer like this, that i can go to school, that i have parents. i'm happy because i have people in my life who love me, i'm happy that i wasn't born in a rich family because i have attained the wonderful skill of frugality. i'm happy because i have access to education, i'm happy that i'm going through so many struggles right now. i'm happy that i have the best brother in the world, i'm so very indescribably happy that i have the most selfless parents. i'm happy to be an artist, i'm happy that i'm always underestimated and disparaged just because i'm in visual academy. i'm happy to not retaliate when people bring me pain. i am a happy child

you know, i still think about you everyday
i don't think i'm supposed to but it just happens
just when i start to forget about you,
i always encounter something that reminds me of you

you changed alot, do you know that?
you seem like a completely reborn person.
even though we never talk anymore,
i can see it in the way you walk, interact, and just carry yourself

i'm happy that you've found what you were looking for in not me, but in Christ
even though i'm not part of your life anymore, just know that i'll always be on the side, out of your way, cheering and praying for you as you bring him glory :)

my life just got better

because we're studying neuroscience in one of my art classes at school. finally! i have an absurd obsession with the brain... and i love how a seemingly distant field like neuroscience ties in perfectly with visual arts :) we have to study it to understand visual perception and the two hemisphere modes.. it's great. i like this part of visual art, the analytical, rational aspect. yay i look forward to the class now (:

exactly how i feel at this moment

just a thought at 4 in the morning...

i think we're all cars
no, we are the drivers and the actual cars are our lives
i can go as fast as i want, i can go ahead of others
but if i go too fast, i might get a ticket
in the end, it's not about being the best, being most ahead
it's about being steady and keeping by the rules

sometimes when i drive too slow, people behind me honk
sometimes when i stop to enjoy life, people get annoyed
they're in such a hurry to get things done, to do this, to do that

and sometimes, my car may get into accidents
accidents that may have been fueled by the my own recklessness
or they might have happened accidentally,
maybe it was because the car behind me

in the same way, i face adversities
i might have caused them upon myself because of my own wrongdoings
or they might have just happened,
and i'm just a victim of circumstances
or just like the car behind me hit me, maybe someone else caused the dent in my life

either way, the dent in my car is nonetheless a dent
the struggles i endure are struggles, it doesn't matter what caused them, as long as i have the right perspective to overcome them, as long as i take care of the damage/dent it doesn't matter how they it appeared

sometimes a parking lot is all filled,
every car has its own place
and i'm just circling the lot, waiting for an open spot
in the same way, sometimes everyone's settled in their lives
and i'm the only one standing, just waiting for my life to get better
so after all that waiting, i finally get a parking spot
but guess what? i have to leave eventually anyway

i have to stop at red lights to let others pass
if i don't stop and keep going, i'm gonna crash into cars
so in my life when i get impatient, when i get selfish
and do what i want to do first,
i end up hurting not only myself but the other car, the other person/people

and lastly, undoubtedly the most important
our cars are all different, mine's a dirty old pick up truck,
her's is the new bmw, but guess what?
they're still all cars
in the end, they're simply just vehicles that allow us to get from point A to point b.

= we are all human; our lifestyles are different of course
but essentially we are all the same
and just like cars ultimately just serve one purpose, our lives also serve just one purpose

insomnia sucks

it really does :( my lack of, or rather inability, to sleep detriments my life in every way, siiiiigh. it's only 1 am, so probably in a couple of hours i'll be able to sleep.. until then i guess i'll just.. mope around and try not to do anything mind stimulating so i can go to sleep easier. wait but writing is mind stimulating.. oh whatever :(

anyhow... i earnestly, seriously, desperately wish there was a magical pill i could just take that would erase insomnia from my life forever and i would never have to worry about falling asleep during class. how wonderful would that be :( sleeping pills don't work well for me since i'm under 18.. sucks. how did i even develop insomnia? i don't even know... oh probably when i was struggling through some hardships last year and couldn't sleep at all because anxiety and pain completely consumed my mind.

i hate insomnia, not only because i can't focus right in school and all, but because i hate what it's doing to my body.. to a body that's supposed to serve and love and worship. i hate that it's hurting my body by not giving it the necessary rest it needs to function. i know this will sound extremely low of me but sometimes i can't help but attribute my occasional laziness to love and serve others to insomnia. it's like a scapegoat really, for my inexcusable actions and torpidity.. i convince myself that my insomnia is not something i have control over, it's just the way i am, therefore the effects it produces (aka my laziness with serving, etc) are not my fault. same with say, getting a disappointing grade on a test. so because i blame almost all unfortunate circumstances on my insomnia, i just realized it is the same thing as blaming God because if i claim that insomnia is something i have no control over, it is under the control of God so God is responsible, thus in the end, i am just blaming God for my laziness, for my lethargy in terms of serving and loving and living the way i should.

and this makes me wonder... if i'm using insomnia as a scapegoat, as a 'cover-up,' what is the real reason i am so lazy/unwilling to do what i need to do? to serve and love God and others? i feel slightly afraid to probe for the answer... i'm afraid of what i'll find. sigh this is frustrating.. not being able to sleep is frustrating. but hopefully tomorrow (or rather today) in school i'll focus better :)
God, please let me go to sleep before 3 today

hm

hmm i've never blogged online before, just journaled on paper, but this is so much more convenient! but then again, we should still preserve the old ways... sigh anyway this is a good way to let go everything that goes on in my puny mind. i shall write about today :)

so the huge choosuk parade was today in manhattan and because i was a participant of the choosuk pageant i had to be part of the parade too and let me tell you, after two hours of being up in the carriage waving my freaking hand off, my mouth was on the verge of just sabotaging itself... holy mother. no, it actually felt numb from smiling for two hours straight. nonetheless it was fun. but more importantly, when i was up there i realized... man this is what my life has been about the whole time. people put me on a pedestal and expect so much from me, and all the while i plaster a smile on my face until my face gets numb, until my face and body are decieved into believing that the smile is SUPPOSED to be there.

when you're a pageant girl, you have to smile, and keep on smiling.. and smiling. it's probably the golden rule of pageaning.. if that's a word. you have to smile no matter how you feel. it's the one thing, besides posture, that conveys (or fakes) confidence, something that is just seen first by the judges.

is it a coincidence that that this parallels so perfectly with my life? i've realized.. no actually i've known this all along but i've always dismissed it, that i've never really shown someone how i really feel in terms of anger, disappointment, dispair, etc.. i've always covered it and suppressed it with a smile and what not.

how come i always rummage through gloomy thoughts like this! the next one will be happier, i hope :) i should go do my english hw now