Henry Nam

Dear blog,

All cliches forgiven, at the worst, this week has felt like a kettled filled with my repressed tears that has hit maximum capacity and subsequently boiling point.  The tears were mostly from today while the fire and heat came from frustration and stress.  I need an outlet. 

Granted, my life really isn't that bad.  I still have a roof over my head, jobs that I love, get to eat at least a meal a day, and am in this closed, idealistic place called college.  As far as I know, my grades are the best they've been in my time at school, phenomenal by comparison.  I seem to finally have gotten my act together.  I attend class regularly, stay on top of my work, and have not noticably ticked anyone off, save myself of course.

But if the worst day in a person's life is when (s)he broke a finger nail, as trivial as it may seem, it still is the worst day in his/her life.  That's not to say that this is even close to being the worst day of my life.  Rather, point being that I feel miserable even though I have it pretty good.  Here's my rant.

Sleep troubles mostly.  I'll go to sleep early and not be able to fall asleep for hours.   Tuesday was just one of those silly-stupid days where it felt like the world was trying to tick me off.  If I were religious at all, I would have taken it as a sign from God to not have gotten out of bed that morning.  After a tapas-portion of sleep, I wake up to find that the electricity had gone out in my apartment which meant that my alarm clock was out.  Somehow, I had the luck of waking up 10 minutes before I needed to head out to make it in time for class, but I'm certainly not the type to be able to just wake up and go, especially not when disoriented, groggy, and grumpy.  When I left, a garbage truck was blocking my driveway.  After I was able to get around it.  I got caught behind a slow-moving truck.  Literally after the truck turned onto a different road, the road I was on became a construction zone as who I assume to be either the phone company or the elecitcity people were doing major maintenance.  From my groggy, grumpy, self-centered perspective, it was simply another obstacle.  I turn onto another road.  THAT one is also blocked from construction/maintenance.  After I finally clear it all, I get onto the main road to get to school only to have yet another slow-moving, erratically driving truck pull up in front of me.  Later that evening, I was working on a paper.  I took off my glasses to read some text from a book and in my stupid, blurry-vision state, accidentally closed the Word Document without saving it.  So paper lost.  Great.  When I lost the ability to be productive anymore, I attempted to retire only to be greeted by several hours of sleeplessness from general stress.  I fell asleep by what I assume to be somewhere between 3-4am.

This morning, I received a wake up call wherein a few choice words from my generous caller put me in a further, terrible mood for the remainder of the day.  Even worse, it all turned out to be a misunderstanding leaving me with unjustified anger.  Said words proved to be absolutely degrading to my ability to function today.  My mind kept wandering in class (also not aided by the lack of sleep).  After getting through classes, I had plans to do some minor grocery shopping and gas up my car.  It was supposed to just be a quick thing but ended up taking two precious hours because of some unexpected developments with the plans.  I did what I could to not be as grumpy as I felt. 

I'm the kind of person who, when I've got developing beef/drama with another, cannot just do what's needed.  At least, it feels that way a lot of the time.  The talk with the aformentioned person kept getting delayed, only adding to my frustrations.  After that had happened, I found out from my mother that my grandmother is continuing going through struggles because of the situation in Korea and is also in rapidly degrading health.  I hate the communication divide between us and the general sense of being unable to help either of them in any way.  So here I am with a full plate, complaining to my online diary, trying to find the courage to just sit down and do what I need to.  My travel plans for the break ended up frustrating matters in regards to my midterms.  Since I won't have Internet over the course of the break, I have to get everything done by Friday.  Today was supposed to be my productive day, but it just melted away in a deluge of boiling tears and fiery anger.  I'd like to think that I'm usually not like this, but it's times like this that I really hate living off campus alone.  Argh, stupid college and forced moves.

And my computer is freaking out and not working properly.

So what's good in my life (since I could use a bit of optimism)?

I'm going to see friends and family and actually talk to people over Spring Break.
After break, I'm going to have four new students.
The electricity is seems to be mostly holding up now.
I'm excited about April: more gigs, one of them being the National Cherry Blossom Fesitval in DC!
I got permission from my teacher to skip class for said festival.
I'll be working with more musicians.
Evan and I are arranging "Shangai Gumbo" by Spyro Gyra. 
I had some really great friends who checked in to show they cared.
I'll have to do more drawing for my SMP, the thing I've looked forward to the most.
My father and brother seem to be doing mostly well.
I'm mostly satisfied with my love life.
My academics are still great.
I'm looking to get a new keyboard soon!
Once I get some free time, I have lots of things I want to do!
I can do this.  Just because I haven't been a strong finisher in the past doesn't mean I can't find it within myself, yes?

Taking a deep breath before diving back in,

Love and Peace,

Nam

(Boo to non-working YouTube links.)