This is my first entry and I'll be using this as my journal because very few people I know will actually be reading this and I find it useful as a tool to vent. If you are the one of three people that I know will read this, I must first apologize that this first entry will not be very entertainining, but I hope the subsequent entries will be more interesting.
Well, it's past midnight so I guess I'm officially another year older. I just got back from watching fireworks at a friend's house and a late dinner in Japantown. It was a typical San Francisco night with heavy fog, so the fireworks were barely visible. There were over a hundred people at the party and a it was a very diverse crowd. I was able to catch up with a couple of old friends and met a few new friends as well. Not much interesting happened at the party except one of my friends wanted to introduce two of her single friends to me. While I am always honored when my female friends thinks I would be a good catch for their friends and certainly very appreciative of their efforts; lately it's been such a bust that I usually just decline their offers and don't even bother meeting their friends. Maybe I'm getting old and I no longer look the way I do when I was younger, because the last few girls that they wanted to introduce to my were definitely less than aesthetically appealing. Now, I've tried not to be shallow, and have gone out one dates with a couple of these girls but it never worked out because I had zero physical attraction towards them. Maybe I need to be hypnotized like the guy in that movie "Shallow Hal". Anyway, enough ranting about that and back to me being older. At 35, I'm basically at the half point mark of my life . That's why I've been doing a lot of self reflecting in the last few days. I feel like I've accomplish so little and have not been able to be truly happy because of my need to plan and be logical all the time. For example, I studied art from elementary school through high school because it was something I was passionate about. I even got to appear on a telelvision show which featured the special art program I was in. However, when it came time to select colleges, I decided to pursue a degree in business administration at a regular university(which is an even more useless of degree) insead of going to art school. My thinking and also my parent's thinking at that time was that art can never be a profitable career and I would starve to death as an artist. Now, in the last 10 years, I've pretty much been stuck doing the kind of job that allows me to live comfortably but makes me miserable the majority of the time. In 2005, I also made a decision to move back to the US after living/working in China for 3 years. It was a rational decision, but one that I think about all the time. I still ponder whether or not I should move back to China or stay in the US. Even though I was born in Taiwan and have lived in the US since I was young, I just felt more at ease in China. I was able to make friends with both local Chinese and expats, and had friends that encompassed business men, people in the entertainment field, artists, and regular office workers. People there are also warm and really make an effort to be friends, which is usually not the case in the US.
To be fair and also to end on a positive note. I am thankful to have my parents and younger brother in my life. For this coming year, I hope to do more things that affect other people's lives in a positive way and also act on what's going to make me happy instead of worrying about the future or rationality of it all.
