June-July 2018

Last summer, I promised myself that I would finish up one more year at work, and that would be that.

And so, I finished up one more year at work, and that was that. 

I can't believe I lived in this tiny 10'x12' closet of a room for almost 4 years. It's really kinda crazy. I feel like so little had changed-- my bedding was the same, my clothes were mostly the same, my job was the same, I felt the same-- and yet, many things changed. People came and went. There were engagements and weddings and deaths. Did 4 years really pass, just like that?

To be honest, life in this little room had been really good to me. Especially this past year, getting older maybe, I felt like, yeah, this could be okay. I have an active social life with friends I respect and love. I know all the regulars at the gym and can always climb with a familiar face. I love my job and its mission and its work-life balance. It would be selfish to ask for anything more.

So why did I leave?

It's a hard feeling to describe, but I think as I got more comfortable and settled in this life, I also developed some deep anxiety. 

Working in the central office of a school district, most of my coworkers are older and nearly all of them are married and have children. This makes complete sense-- a huge part of education is building community, which means creating stability and permanence which means owning a house and getting married and having kids. This has been great, because I've been able to see some really beautiful moments between families and I've come to appreciate the really joys that come out of parenting. But I've also seen the phone calls from school and coworkers suddenly leaving to pick up sick kids from school, and I've heard all about the troubles of finding affordable daycare or summer activities. 

At some point, I may want all of that. I may want the embarrassing and funny kid stories and the magical moments of seeing your child learn and the wonders of parenthood. I may want all of that one day.

But before that, I have to know what I'm letting go of and I have to know that I'm okay with that.

Maybe I still love travelling. Maybe I still love the long simple days where I didn't know the date but I knew the timing of the tides and the phase of the moon on any given day. Maybe I miss that feeling of not knowing where I will be tomorrow but also not being afraid because the entire world is open to me. Maybe there are places and people I love and I just don't know them yet.

Or maybe not. Maybe all I want is to curl up in a bed I call my own in a room I call my own. Maybe I like the mental challenges of work and the comfort I feel when I enter the gym on a weekday night and I recognize half the people there. Maybe there's still a lot for me to learn in the city I live in. 

I don't know the answer to these maybe's, but I want to find out.

Moving out, as always, turned out to be a bigger task than I had expected, especially given that my car is a Prius C, the smallest model of one of the smaller cars out there. By this point, I had already moved about half my stuff to my parents' place in SoCal in the spring. I thought surely, I would only have maybe 4 boxes of stuff left.

But after donating a mid-sized box of books to the bookstore, a very large box of clothes and some furniture/other stuff to Goodwill, and a bag of electronics to an e-waste center, I still ended up with 8 boxes.

The biggest struggle was getting rid of the mattress/bed. Most people can call for one free mattress/large waste pickup every year from the city, but your name has to be associated with your address. Renters typically call their landlord to schedule this pickup, but my landlord and I are not friends and I don't ever want to talk to him.

So I opted to drop it off at the dump myself.

The people at the dump were very bemused by my setup and my tiny car. Everyone else there was driving a very large truck. 

Anyway, the real story here is that I bought this tub of kimchi back in January and by the end of July, I managed to get it down to a little mason jar! I am extremely proud of myself. It took a lot of work and dedication to eat this much kimchi in America but I did it. If you can dream it, you can achieve it, truly. 

I actually think I had enough photos to make separate albums for June and July, but thematically, I felt like they fit together well. My last two months in the Bay, I tried to focus more on spending time with people. But I don't really like to take or post pictures of people that much, so it ended up mostly being pictures of food, like this delicious matcha passion fruit tiramisu cake we bought from Cafe Madeleine. Oops.

And these delicious Japanese crackers and cantaloupe Kit Kats and moss-inspired jellies.

I stopped by Davis on my way to get some visa paperwork done in Sacramento.

Davis is an incredibly cute town with incredibly cute little bits of art and pretty good food. It's actually quite similar to Alameda, so maybe that's why I've become fond of it. 

But it's also super hot in Davis sooo...

We wanted to find something amazing.

A secret wedding in the woods.
Vibrant flowers.
Blue skies.
Warmth.

It turned out the most magical things were in the most mundane. We only needed to look. 

I'm not sure what was happening, but they played and sang beautifully and also the woman was wearing a unicorn horn on her forehead, so how could I not stop?

I can't conceive of all the different things people are working hard on at any given moment, but I'm glad they're working on it.

It's part of the magic of humans. 

We went on a trip to LA because I've never hung out in LA as a tourist, as an adult.

It was a lot of fun. I honestly fell a little bit in love with LA. I love the fashion, the food, the bars, the music. It's so exciting. 

I also love 순대 (soondae). In English it's called blood sausage, and visually it looks awful but it tastes delicious. It's one of my favorite Korean dishes. My theory is that people from Western countries don't usually like animal intestines and organs because they don't know how to prepare them properly (hot dogs, for the record, are questionably acceptable). In Asia, people have learned how to make organs wonderful.

We also got delicious macaroons from a posh shop in downtown. Yommm.

I love that being in California, I get to enjoy both of these things in one afternoon. These two shops are located just a few miles away from each other. There aren't many places in the world where you can do something like that! 

I also climbed during this time. We made a few trips out to Emerald Pools. 

We may have taken a nap here or there too.

I didn't get a picture of the pools, but they're really beautiful. Really beautiful.

I reached a high point on my project, but did not send it. I'm okay with that.

Two of my younger cousins stayed with me for a week.

It's the closest I've come to parenting in my life.

It's a weird feeling to be responsible for someone. While at work, I wondered if they were okay. And rather than just thinking about getting myself to/from work, I had to also think about how/where/when I would pick them up or drop them off and how that would fit in my work schedule. On the weekend, I planned and made decisions on what to do. It wasn't so easy to just fly by the seat of my pants like I usually do.

There are all these little things-- adjusting my bike for them to ride, finding extra keys, making sure they had enough money to go around by themselves. And then there are the expenses of keeping them fed and entertained. Thank god both of them are tiny, so they didn't need to eat that much!

In some ways, it kinda made things easier. Rather than having to create meaning/purpose behind my day (training at the gym, working on my writing/photos, studying or reading, building community with friends, etc.), it was very clear what my purpose was-- to make sure these kids were healthy and happy. 

In that sense, I can see the appeal of getting married and having kids. While raising kids is by far no easy task, it's at least clear what your objective is. Even on days when work or life sucks, there's no question as to why you suffer through it.

There were a lot of things I learned too, because I'd forgotten what it'd been like to be a kid.

At one point, I suggested to my cousins that they should use Yelp to find restaurants to eat at while I'm at work, and they just looked at me blankly. They never used Yelp before. Of course not-- I'd forgotten how meaningless food is when you're a kid, especially the kid of working class immigrants. You just eat whatever your parents prepare for you, and when you eat out with friends, it's fast food because you don't have money. Of course they didn't know how to use Yelp-- they were too young and broke to be foodies.

I also realized adults must spend a lot of time humoring kids. I listened to one of my cousins explain internet forums to me for five minutes even though I had spent my entire high school life hanging out on forums, just because she was so excited to talk about them. 

And there were cute moments too. Like when they bought a bag of Takis because I'd never tried them before. The two of them went through the bag, picking out the best chips for me to try. 'Oh, this one is reaaalllyy good. Eat this one!' 

Besides all of that, it was a nice excuse for me to go through all the touristy things in the Bay before I left. We biked across Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and took the ferry back. We went through the Ferry Building and Fisherman's Wharf. We got chocolate from Ghirardelli Square, loitered in Japan Town and went vintage shopping in Haight & Ashbury. We watched the sun set from the beach in Alameda.

It was a really good memory.