two or so weeks ago, after orientation, i went to gentle monster in soho and impulsively bought a pair of glasses.
i’ve had terrible vision (and astigmatism) my whole life, and i avoided glasses because my vision was so bad, the lenses were too thick, even when compressed, and made for heavy glasses. instead, i wore contacts for two-ish decades, putting them in once i woke up and taking them out right before i went to sleep, and it was one of my very inconsequential woes in life that i couldn’t wear cute glasses — until i got corrective eye surgery in 2020. now, i can wear glasses as an accessory, which i think i’ve earned after decades of terrible vision.
that is, however, not why i spent a stupid amount of money on a pair of glasses that friday. one of my ongoing emotional struggles this year is that i’ve been incredibly mad/sad (almost to an extreme) that i won’t be able to go back to korea this year, while almost everyone i know has taken (or will take) at least one international trip, and i wanted to feel a little better about it, if only in that moment of purchase. otherwise, i would absolutely never buy gentle monster at its U.S. price.
sometimes, i sit in my feelings and find the extremity of them amusing. i’m aware that i tend to Feel Too Much, and i learned a few years ago that that is a symptom of ADD, part of the dysregulation in our brains that means that something a normal brain might quickly process and move on from overwhelms us. that’s a very simplistic way to put it, but, generally, i expend a fair amount of effort everyday trying not to get lost in Too Much. some days are much easier than others, and, on others, thankfully less often than the easier days, i get lost in the feeling of the moment, whatever it is.
this year, one of my big feelings has been about not being able to go back to korea. i couldn’t make it work financially in the first half of the year, and school means that i can’t go in the fall. it would be the wiser financial decision for me not to go over the holidays, even though i technically do have the funds and would have enough time over the holiday break to be in LA for christmas and spend three weeks in korea. this is silly, yes, and not life-or-death, and i’ll be fine, but i still have big feelings about this.
a big part of this is simply burnout. i spent 2023 working my full-time job while writing my book, and, in the latter half, i added on studying [lightly] for the LSAT and applying to law school. the bulk of 2024 was dedicated to revising my book with my editor, and, as work on this book has been winding down as she moved into the production phase, i’ve been working on book two and a cookbook proposal. i haven’t had time off since i was last in korea in april 2023 — any PTO i took for work was to write, and i only took two days off between stopping work and starting school — so i am phenomenally burned out.
i guess i could not write, and, trust me, i’ve tried — half of my impulse decision to take the LSAT in 2023 was that i was majorly depressed and needed to do something to stop me from spiraling, but the other half was that i was so discouraged by a full year of having all my pitches rejected that i wanted to quit writing but knew my brain would need something else to do. this juggling is unfortunately just a common reality of writing, and i’m not unique in struggling with constant exhaustion — i dare say the vast majority of us write in the spaces between the job that pays our bills and provides us health insurance, our families and social lives, potential chronic illnesses, and any other responsibilities we have. we don’t have the finances, bandwidth, or, frankly, time to write full-time, go to residencies, and live that fantasy writer’s life, so i don’t say this to complain. there are deep systemic and cultural issues behind why it’s so impossible to make a living as a writer, but i know i chose this. i continue to choose this every time i work on book two and proposal. i choose this because writing is still important to me.
that doesn’t mean i can’t burn out, though. it just means that i will own that i have a part in it.
similarly, i know my emotions around korea are irrational, and i will own that, but the thing is that my feelings around korea will always be complicated, given that i have sought the approval and acceptance of koreans for most of my life but have constantly felt rejected by them. one effect of that is that i have long been incredibly jealous of friends who have some kind of connection to korea, who grew up traveling there, who have a sense of belonging there, not just emotionally but physically via family or friends or familiarity with korea as a country. i envy people who have favorite cafes and restaurants and neighborhoods, who can situate themselves in seoul or busan or wherever, who can have opinions about the country because they know it. it is a place that is real and tangible to them, not an idea or a place that exists only in their imagination from a distance.
once school settles down and book edits are completed, i plan to sit down and create a zine around my 2023 korea trip. i was so anxious in the lead-up to that trip because my trip in 2012 was a total disaster, and i didn’t know if i could actually make it through the month i planned to be there last spring. i honestly didn’t expect to fall in love with the country, to feel as comfortable as i did as i took a long road trip, to be able to connect my want with the possibility to have, which was really the most significant thing that came out of my time there. much like i’ve created lines between me and writing to protect myself against disappointment, i had also built up mental and emotional barriers out of fear that korea in 2023 would leave me feeling the same acute pain as i had in 2012, the same hollowness of deeply wanting to lay claim to this country but never being able to pursue that because of koreans’ rejection of me.
sometimes, i think life is just a constant cycle of navigating disappointment after disappointment and reconciling yourself to the life you have instead of the one you had hoped for, had dreamed of when you were younger. maybe that’s just me, and maybe that sounds overly cynical, but the problem is that now my feelings toward korea have the added complication of realizing that i could have a place in this world, that, sure, koreans might still not like me necessarily but i could still have a place amongst them — if i could get myself there. i can lay claim to the culture that is mine, that i love and am fiercely proud of, but, now, i simply don’t have the opportunity to be there, to see if i could maybe plant some seeds of a community there, to try to build the kind of physical connection i envy so many of my korean friends.
and, so, yes, i am often irrationally mad/sad that i can’t go to korea this year, and i am the one who will mute friends on social media when they’re in korea because of the colossal effort it takes to regulate my emotions, and i think it’s a waste of time for me to put myself through that effort when it’s smarter and more efficient just to set a boundary of not looking. i know that this is something pretty inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, like i know that, yes, i will eventually go back to korea, whether it’s next year or after i graduate and take the bar. the thing that i still fixate on, though, is … dude, how do people even afford to take multiple international trips in a year?!? where is that money coming from?!?
