Filed under: Frontal Lobe, Garbage | Tags: boredom, cleveland, experience, fomo, Life
A long over-due post. Before embarking on an intense adventure through the Webiverse and having my raw, vulnerable, hungover-induced brain impacted by floating words – I shall write my own.
Finally, a lazy Sunday that I can just think the day away. I have been in Cleveland for 2 months now, obsessed with DOING and EXPERIENCING as much as I can in as little time as possible. Still living in a state of panicked urgency – a quality of life I oftentimes bring upon myself after recently being plugged into a new location. I thought this part of me would change after living in Cleveland, but despite my lowly expectations of an unexciting city, I’ve still been been able to take on any action that seems the least bit exciting and have a great deal of fun with it. Duel road trips to Chicago, Niagara Falls in Canada, fusing music with the experience, churning the corporate life, taking on a film class, kayaking in a dirty human river, fighting inebriation, cooking, exploring social media as a tool to connect, learning the intricacies of splitting an identical life with another, succumbing to impulsive materialistic indulgences, and acting upon random spontaneity most of all! I haven’t changed.
Every once in awhile, I will take a step back and observe this infuriatingly exciting life. Once learned, and repeatedly learned – my life is a series of forced actions driven by a maddening paranoia of time and long spells of boredom. BUT THE MOST INFURIATING PART IS: not all experience, is good experience lived wisely. What do I mean by this? I move and breathe as if I am this object in space traveling at a constant speed. And once another force strikes me and knocks me off the path I was currently traveling on, I shall naturally continue in that new direction – only to be knocked again by other forces into other directions. All this energy, all this life that I try to capture, squeeze, and condense into minutes – has no known purpose except to achieve the act of doing. What is so important that I see in this act, that drives this strange sense of maddening urgency? As my roommates likes to put it, I have an extreme case of FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out.
I have to willingly change my way of thinking. Perhaps I should stop conjuring magical thoughts and outlining outrageous goals that dissipate the moment I get distracted with the mundanity of a structured life. The fun game in victimizing myself as one whose sole purpose is to play against the grain. It’s like I’m trying to catch water with my hands. Within the last hour, I’ve dreamt of moving to Germany for a few years to study spoken German and sign language, whilst simultaneously studying Carl Jung’s Red Book in its native German language. I’ve thought maybe I could drop the whole business marketing thing, and stay in Cleveland to organically nurture my creativity and bring my visions alive through film. But I mean, I’m on the corporate fast track and I could potentially find a belayer to catapult me into piles of money – or at least die trying to fill out the gaps of a cookie-cutter life. Perhaps I will rot the day away with silly little thoughts and post them onto this blog and earn some money through Google ads. But, I love the idea of moving to Thailand to become a scuba diving master! Essentially, I want to mold and shape the earth as if it were playdough, making it into anything I wish it to be at any given moment in time. But the somber reality (and what perpetually drives my fear) is that the playdough I have in my palms today is nothing but liquid water, slipping through my fingers and evaporating into stale air.
I digress into the midwest, the fields of green await me but no. 35mph stretching roads sprinkled with traffic lights, most likely populated with GE bulbs. I’ve settled in, comforter has come to me in the mail to replace my cardboard corporate-bought blanket.
Shopping malls and chipotle make it slightly comfortable. Downtown Cleveland comprises of sticky divey bars with shiny fore-headed men. Picture dancing light bulbs with un-buttoned shirts and hair flowing out, dancing and intermingling with the glittering gold medallion necklaces, short skirts, brown leathery boobs – welcome to cougartown – my competition.
My sole purpose for the next 6 months is to make consumers like you care about light bulbs. CARE. carecarecarecare. I’ve joined the company softball team. I drink Leinenkugal and redbull & vodka. We make fun of ketchup stain who always wants two pizzaths! Rain, sun, cloud – who knows what pattern mixture of weather the day will bring?
Yes, interesting. Very, very interesting, Cleveland is.
Greetings! Is anyone there? No….? Nothing.
Oh well. I enjoy writing to myself. So it was mind-boggling to read the last entry I posted right before I left for China. I am glad that I did that, to document the things I was doing in LA. Because you see, I’ve been back for 2 weeks and it’s as if I never left at all. I find I am doing the same things, leading the same lifestyle.
Anyway, why the silence while I was away in China? The Chinese goverment blocked me from my own blog! So I had to start a new one, JUST for CHINA. Read here, if you care. The latest post is very shitty, thrown together for the sake of the study abroad assignment required from Northeastern. But there are some good depictions in there.
I’d talk about China, but that was SO 5 months ago. INTROSPECTION SEGUE: Today, I am surprised to identify myself (as identified by others, although I shouldn’t rely on others’ opinions to identify myself) as a person who simply cannot sit still. A world traveler, jet-setter, nomad, transient, blah blah…I am waiting for something to STOP ME. Ok, moving on.
I’ve basically been living it up in LA, soaking in the wonderful AMERICANNESS & CALIFORNIANNESS before I have to move to Cleveland for 6 dreary months for my 3rd co-op job. Honestly, I am scared. Yes. I will hop on a sleeper train in China by myself, and couchsurf with people I don’t know in Inner Mongolia; I’m completely willing to go to Africa and run around the jungles, I’ll bungee jump off a helicopter in Germany…anything along those lines, because these things don’t scare me one bit. But the prospect of moving to the MIDWEST for a 9-5 cubicle job….that terrifies me. It does. Rattles me to the bones. Gives me nightmares. I already feel suffocated to the point of death.
Everything is going to change, has been changing, things will never be the same. Family is planning to sell the house, to move further inland, further east and further away from Los Angeles. Bu hao. And parents are expecting to move in with me by age 25. WHAT?!
Highlights of LA, to remember as I sulk away in Cleveland:
Tokyo Tables Tuesdays w/ Ronny, Derrick, & Co.; SD trip for graduation & clubbing at OnBroadway (hey hei-se-ren!); Gold Room Combo w/ Duo Jenny & Tommy and meeting Zack Morris; Talia’s visit to LA(!!!); 35cent cock-tails at The Edison in Downtown LA; Redondo Beach: getting pulled over (drinkin’) with 4 ppl in the back seat, after two pen tests and a breathalyzer I get off the hook with no ticket & no warning; falling asleep at the wheel hitting a curb – missing hubcap and ID credit cards which were later brought back to me; stepping in Gizmo’s dog poo; MJ’s death & FF’s anal cancer according to Tammy; Father’s day with the Chang family and using some Chinese; visiting United Auto 5 times in one week; spontaneous surfing adventure at Venice Beach; Yoga w/ live music and the couchsurfer; catching up with all sorts of people; and now I’m in my last week to look forward to here in LA!!!!
People often ask me where’s my next adventure? Where will I end up? Here’s my answer: I have seen many things, been to many places, but I will always come back to LA. LA is where my home is. It’s my town.
YO.
Currently listening to the soundtrack to Across the Universe. It’s like listening to the Beatles on broadway.
Tomorrow we greet the new year of the Ox. It has been a long weekend of reunion festivities! Friday night was spent in Manhattan beach with some co-opers and then in Silverlake with Tony, Ronny, & Matt at a hipster bar called Cha Cha Lounge! I must say it is one of my favorite places to drink in LA, you could tell just by looking at my face 
It was crazy because I ran into a Billionaires band member who I had met awhile back. Then I ran into two fellows that I used to go to University of Redlands with. Randomcity. We topped the night off with Alberto’s. Bleh in the morning!
Chinese new year festivities came shortly thereafter with Grandma’s famous pancakes and plenty of red envelopes. It had been rainy out so I wore my blue peacoat. We talked about how my uncle is livin’ rich in Hanzou (8 hrs from Shanghai) in his impoverished village, just chillin’ in his skyscraping 4-story complex. I don’t think I’ll be able to make the laborious trek out to his town. I hope I meet him and his family one day.
That night I snatched Jenny after beeranddumplings had contacted me & we ventured out to Pocoima for a random-ass party. We never made it because the cops had already broken the soiree up. Feeling slightly ashamed for almost being at “one of those parties” we sped on the highway to Koreatown to meet Peter at Izakaya! I had my first souju shots (yuck) and yummy pineapple souju. Ronny, Derrick & Company where there as well. Stegasaurus will never get old. Then Jenny & I went to pick up one of my college friends at USC and headed towards Peter’s studio, which is amazingly close to Jenny’s flat. I got home at 4am.
The next morning I took Mama Chang to Little Tokyo for some Sunday morning shopping and mother-daughter bonding. I bought a new pair of orangey-purplish adidas so that I could look like a fob in China and fit right in. Then we had Chinese New Year’s part II w/ the Chang Mafia. Let’s just say that we came shorthanded and I am exhausted from feasting at 888 restaurant for 4 hours. I gave my aunt plenty of Neutrogena product and lots of pictures were taken. A slideshow of my grandfather’s 100th birthday extravaganza played in the background. Satellite tables, distant families.
Now I am listening to ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” Immunization shots tomorrow and last week of work. Shanghai in 9 days. Looking back on my LA experience, I must say it was a very good one.
Highlights to remember: Star parties, half-day fridays and quick trips to the beach, good ol’ traffic, free yoga, new house, big fat brown couch, Gizmo barking at every whisper of a sound, Jet-skiing, Jeeps, Chipotle, Blingin’ grill on the Camry, Photoshoot in Angeles Crest w/ Jesse, Nike Race & Kanye West, sailing around Marina del Rey, Genarts fashion show, Halloween in Weho, Neutrogena craziness, tandem biking, rollarblading w/ R&D, Sharkeez happy hour, Hotel Cafe, Hyperion Tavern & Rock Band night, and so many moreeeeeeeee adventures I can’t think of right now!! Good times but now it’s time to say good-bye.
Happiness is a warm gun.
