…and damn, is it wintry.
So, I escaped from the holiday season with nary a scratch, and a few resolutions. No, let’s not call them resolutions – too stigmatized. I came out with a mission. I’d known for months that I would be returning to the apartment early, and for two primary reasons: to make use of rent that I was spending on it, and to settle myself. And by that, I mean that I had recently decided to quit Engineering at the University of Illinois for good.
I’ve come to realize that the less I expect of myself, the more I do, the happier I am, and, ironically, the more productive I am. A poor fit for Engineering, which has a great deal of expectations to live up to, which I merely put off and in many cases simply didn’t do. All this created was anxiety, and not a productive anxiety. Let’s face it, I went into Engineering as an experiment to see if I could conform to these expectations, and I was headed for a disappointment, so I jumped ship.
Anyway, settling myself involves just that – being by myself in my apartment and attempting to maintain some sort of healthy, creative rhythm, balancing what responsibilities I do have with developing myself in the ways that I want to develop. Time to myself has meant that:
- I sleep early. Generally around 11-12 at night, though there are exceptions. Or rather, there has been one exception. Got caught up in video editing.
- I wake early and eat breakfast every day. I think about what to make for lunch and dinner. Then, I make it. Then, unfortunately, I must eat it.
- I make an attempt to play guitar…or rather, I pick up the guitar and see where that takes me every day. I also pretend to watch lectures on it. The bits and pieces of music theory that I learn, I learn in order to free myself, and liberating it is.
- I sing every day. But that’s not out of the ordinary. I guess following the directions on voice lesson videos is out of the ordinary, though, so that’s worth mentioning. I was skeptical at first with the Arceneaux Approach, but I saw immediate improvements. Anyone else have experience with this?
- I have been immersing myself in Chinese lessons (Pimsleur and CCTV Learn Chinese) and media (music videos, CCTV 新闻20分) a few hours every day. I really need to start studying next semester’s characters – hell, I need to study all the characters we’re supposed to know by now, because after a 2 year hiatus, there’s not a lot I remember. It’s strange, as a result of this immersion, my mind tricks me into thinking people are speaking Chinese when they’re not.
- I’ve been dancing most every day. I missed one, so far. Don Lee gave me a few bboy toprock videos to work off of, and I’ve been working on that. I’ve also been working on my dance sharingan, analyzing Taeyang’s Where U At. I wanted to get this before break ended, but it looks like that’s not going to happen. Oh, I think I’m on the verge of nailing flares and windmills. I just have to take days off between practicing those because my shoulder can’t take it. It’s a sign of poor technique – I don’t think my shoulder should be taking that much pressure. Naturally, I’ve also been enticed into doing some tricks, because it’s fun. Oh, while we’re on physical status, I injured my ankle last semester and I’ve been waiting for it to heal. However, after doing rehabilitative stretches and exercises while idling, I think my ankles are better than ever. They still twinge, a bit.
- I have ordered all of next semester’s books through interlibrary loan. I am about a quarter through the first one on Chinese poetry. I should finish it soon, because I have five more to go.
- But most of all, I’ve been trying to live up to one mission: To make something cool every day. Something that I think is cool, anyway. The Sean Hsu Diaries, the Apt21 video series (ep01, ep02, ep03, ep04, ep05), the making of which, by the way, made me realize how awesome my roommates were last semester, and the Mini Trick Montage linked above. Thankfully, I think that covers every day of this year. I was somewhat anxious to know if I’d truly lived up to my mission.
Living like this has given me hope for a future that I can look forward to, no matter what major I graduate with.
Well, that’s it. Just a little of what I’ve been up to.
Now to pay the bills, somehow.
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