Crossing off the Bucket Lists

Poor Kyo

2016 is the year of the Red Fire Monkey. I can tell because every where I go, every store I go to, is covered in monkey toys, monkey merchandise, monkey posters...Starbucks, where I'm currently sitting, has some hella cute mugs for sale all covered in the same little red monkey, smiling and looking cute. Before I came to this half of the world, "Lunar New Year" was a thing that existed on chinese food placemats and set up manga that fifteen year old me was absolutely obsessed with. Now it's become one of the only two vacation holidays I get with my job, and is a Really Big Deal.

A Long Time Coming

Every morning I wake up and say, "Today's Sam, you need to write a blog post today."

I always scrunch my eyes up and curse and continue, "you spent last year taking two trips to Japan, you're almost done with your second draft, you've developed a horrendous tea habit and even learned to drink it plain, what gives? You've had a real Christmas and even had a friend come visit you - look at how much you have to write about!"

Every night I go to bed and say, "God damn it. Tomorrow, then. Maybe tomorrow's Sam will be better."

And she never is.

I'm Bad at Titles for Important Posts.

I haven't really had the heart to post. I wasn't really sure how to pick everything back up after my last post, you know? "Hey guys, my dog died" felt kind of lame and a strange explanation for my absence. I accidentally stumbled across that silly Rainbow Bridge poem on Saturday and found myself bawling for a half hour while trying to put makeup on, that was an adventure in and of itself.

But I promise you, I am happy.

I guess in several regards, my life is wonderful. I have a stable job, cheap rent, a short commute. I live on my own working one job when most of my friends from home are working three or four to live in a city and have the kind of life I'm having. (I actually uttered "I can't handle partying this weekend" a few hours ago). I'm sharing this whole experience with amazing people and an even more amazing significant other.

When I travel, the world looks like this and I still put my book down in my lap to stare out the window like an idiot because even though I've passed by the same mountains and farmlands and rice paddies and sky a hundred times before it still wows me, it still makes me want to pick up a notebook and write something, anything, because that's what people like us do when we see nice things, I think.

I have been uncertain the past couple weeks, and the uncertainty led to silence, because I didn't want to admit that I felt like I had nowhere to go in my life. When you have a thousand different paths you want to take, you really have none. My contract here is for a year, and it is up in November. I wanted to go to grad school, I wanted to live some type of Bohemian cafe life. I wanted to see the world, I wanted to go to brunch in New Paltz. I want to be home for Christmas, I want to stand on the edge of the dateline for New Years. I wanted to work in editing, I wanted to work in publishing, I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to be eighteen again and redoing everything that went wrong because to be this uncertain has to mean I made a mistake, somewhere. I wonder what it was.

 I don't know if I'm making the right decision, and maybe I'm not really making a decision at all. Maybe what I'm doing is the complete opposite of making a decision and it's really just procrastinating the inevitable. Or maybe I'm learning that not everything has to be settled at once. Maybe one day I'll shake the feeling that I have to have an itinerary for every night out, every vacation, every year of my life.

Yesterday I re-signed my contract.

See you guys in 2015.

Busan Sand Festival, Or, The Last Time I Was Remotely Dry Was Next to the Ocean

Hey, everyone! A few days ago my amazingly wonderful friend Danielle posted an interview with me on her booklover's website site, Bibliosmiles! Go check it out, and all the other awesome articles there!

I've been sitting on these pictures for a long, long time now. We went to Busan's Haeundae Beach for a mini-vacation to definitely not drink, and ended up there during the Sand Festival. I didn't even know it was an actual Festival until after we'd already gotten home and I saw it mentioned somewhere else. (Duh?)

Yoboseyo, 2014!

"I'm making a blog.
Simplifying my resolution comes down to that. I am here, figuring out this bloggy software, trying to do what I've never done before: finish something... 

...My resolution is not to learn to cook, or to lose weight (all things I spent last year doing, with mild success, and will continue to do this year) but to finish Halfer. I spent 4 years in school learning the skill and discipline I need to make this happen, and I hope by the end of December 2013 I will have something to start shopping to agents. 

This blog is called Writerlust because that is what I have: a desire to write, really, and no direction. Maybe if I put everything I do this year on display for everyone to see, it'll guilt me into trying to actually get something done.

So here goes nothing."

Joke's on me I guess, right guys?

It's almost 2014. It'll actually be 2014 for me before it is for the most of you, isn't that crazy? 

Gangnam Style

I figured I would find a way to address the elephantine joke in the room - next to "say hello to Kim Jong-Un for me" the notion of somehow coming into contact with PSY might be one of the most frequent "what-ifs" I was presented with in the seven months leading up to heading over.

I don't know, you guys. What if I met PSY? What if you met Weird Al? 

"I wouldn't meet Weird Al," they'd say, and then I'd just give them a long, level look, and go back to passive aggressively pretending there's something more interesting in my pretend text that I just got on my phone.

Dawn of the First Day

Oof, you guys. I am exhausted.

It's Sunday here, which is strange because when I left it was Friday. Time zones are weird.

Here Goes Nothing

Today's the day, you guys.

By this time tomorrow, I'll be in the air on my way to Seoul. It's been a ridiculously fast 7 months...has it really only been seven months?

I'm trying to finish up my last-minute packing, a feat that ended up being a lot more difficult than I anticipated. I feel like I've packed too much and not enough all at the same time.

I don't really have much to say right now, I'm sure I'll be all chock full of interesting things come Saturday. They said I'd be able to buy an adapter for my laptop at the airport, so I hope they're right, that way I can sit right down when I get to the hotel and tell everyone I'm actually alive.

Time to go take a shower and try to fall asleep amid my luggage for a couple hours.

Love you guys, see you on the other side of the world.

Happy Halloween!

안녕하세요, gals and ghouls! What scary things happened to you this week?

I'm back from Pennsylvania, and in 7 days and 11 hours I'll be on a plane on my way to Seoul. This year has gone by so fast! That's pretty scary, in my opinion.

It's the Final Countdown

In less than 14 days, I'll be in Seoul.

That's absolutely terrifying, you guys.

I picked up my visa on Thursday from the consulate, after having already trekked down there earlier

that week, waking up at 6AM and rushing to catch the earliest train possible, expecting I could get it back in the same day like every website on the internet was telling me they could do. What I didn't expect was the paper sign hanging on the door that said "just kidding, come back Thursday now."

Full of Fall

As of today, I am no longer a barista.

It's the home stretch for me. I'm supposed to be in Seoul on November 9th - that's so close! I've been running around in a tizzy trying to figure out how to make everything work out in time.

Fall is my favorite season. Hands down. There's something about the not-too-hot, not-too-cold weather that I love. I love sweaters and boots and scarves and I'm such a sucker for everything seasonal. I could mainline apple cider at this point and be a happy camper. So imagine my anxiety when I realized there are no pumpkins in Korea.

No pumpkins? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to get through autumn without my continual imbibing of pumpkin spice lattes, devouring of pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin anything I can get my hands on? 

Slowing Down

I woke up this morning at 10AM.

I rolled out of bed and quickly found the envelope of visa photos I had misplaced in the mess of papers on my desk, also uncovering my Starbucks card (which helps because ever since my iTouch was stolen, I haven't bought Starbucks due to not having the app anymore - I know, tragic, right?)

The second I found the photos, I turned around, and crawled back into bed. I was awake for all of five minutes.

1PM.

I woke up again, my mouth still hurting from my wisdom tooth surgery despite it being almost two weeks ago, and my head still stuffed up and fuzzy from sleep. I debated going back to bed. 

I compromised, hauled my laptop up onto my lap, and opened my 3DS to play more Pokemon because it feels like the only thing I want to do anymore.

3:45PM.

I finally slid out of bed. I grabbed a bagel, and now here I am, still wearing the warmest leggings I've ever owned and the Starbucks hoodie I'd gotten last year when I first started my job. For the first time in weeks, I feel like I finally got enough sleep. 

I'll be in Seoul on November 9th.

I don't really know what to think about that. If the alternative is staying here, working at Starbucks, that's not really much of an alternative. And all my reservations are internalized - what if I can't do it? How am I going to keep myself busy for the next year without my computer? How could I ever make friends? I've never taught before. Hell, I might not even get past the training. I might not even ever see Jeonju - the city where I've found out I'm going, which specializes in something called bibimbap which frankly looks delicious and I think I could eat for the next year of my life and not complain.

I taught myself how to read Hangul. Not the language. Literally just the word. Hangul. 한글
It's something, and I think I want to at least learn the entire alphabet soon. Already knowing how the words are structured makes it look less like a bunch of boxes and circles (which is how I had always seen it before) and more like a language. I may not be able to know what the words mean, but maybe if I can at least read them as such, it'd be a lot less scary.

And this whole thing is scary. It's terrifying. But I'm the kind of person who's nver taken a risk in their life about anything. For full disclosure, I didn't even drink until I as 21.

But now, ask anyone who's ever seen me up on a chair or trying to make friends with fat raccoons - it's a risk I'm glad I took. So i'm going into the city tomorrow to go to the Korean consulate and get my visa. And then once that's done, I can buy my plane ticket.

And then, maybe, I'll be brave enough to pull my luggage out of the cardboard it came in.

Good-bye, Summer, Hello Asia!

You probably noticed I haven't updated.

When I was little, I used to be annoyed by the very existence of August. Aside from my two best friends' birthdays, there was literally nothing good about August. It was everything that stood between me and the end of summer vacation, the next year of school. I hated it, and I hated the overwhelming sense of dread that grew and grew as the days passed.

I don't know where I got the idea that nothing happens in August, because it seems to me right now that everything happens in August.

I've been busy, you guys. Horrendously busy.

"With what?" I'm sure one of you just asked. And I'm pretty sure that one of you is just my mom who really only reads this blog to probably make sure I'm not doing anything illegal.

One word: Paperwork.

It's time, I guess, to make the official announcement. As it stands right now, in two months time, I'll be (hopefully!) moving into my brand new dinky little apartment in South Korea, ready to start pretending like I know how to teach English to a room full of kids. This is, honestly, the most terrifying, nervewracking, relatively spontaneous thing I've ever done.

The fact that I've gotten this far is impressive. I've backed out a million times, including six hours ago, only to be reeled back in by the increasingly-more-annoyed-yet-still-impressively-patient Dan. I don't do things. I especially don't do cool things. I work at Starbucks, I stare at a blank MS Word window, I play video games. That's been my life for the past two years.

Basically, if I don't do this, I'll never do anything.

So I'm doing this. I'm taking a 26 hour flight to the other side of the world to live for a year in a country I only know through various comic books scattered around my room. 

However, this brings me back to my original point: paperwork.

All my friends have gone abroad. I'm the last one to set foot outside the country and I've never had to mess with passports and visas my entire life. So the past two months or so have been hellish, August in particular, as deadlines and mistakes and postage has consumed my life. I'm writing this to you in the lull between Paperwork and Embassy Visit, while I'm waiting for someone to decide they want someone to teach English for them that blushes when she makes eye contact with someone.

It's been nonstop. And on top of that, it seemed like every time I said to myself "you need to update your blog," something happened.

First it was the second degree burn I got, that looks like it's permanently marked my hand and was very, very messed up for a while.

Then it was the sprained wrist, that still hurts when I touch it.

I'm barely in one piece, now that we're into September, and suddenly what was "Oh, you want me to leave in November? That's so far away, of course!" back in April is now, "Oh shit, I'm leaving in November, and I don't even know how to ask where the bathroom is."

또봐요, you guys!

Old Books and New Clothes

I saw my friends this past weekend, and loved every minute of it.

It's strange to see people outside of college, but doubly so to see them on the other side of graduation. Everyone seems to have this same aura of "what the hell am I doing? What the hell are they doing? Maybe I should be doing what they're doing?" insecurity that permeates every conversation about getting out from under our parents' thumbs and finding "grown-up" jobs and coping with not being in a fishbowl of parties and schoolwork. At the same time, it's comforting to know that we're not all alone in this blind scrambling around for some kind of place to exist in.

New York - Or, the Best Milkshake I Ever Had

I live for my days off at this point. They are far and few between, and generally never when I actually need them to be - I rarely get to see my friends and often just sit and watch the photos and statuses pile up on Facebook of all the things I wish I was doing. But this past week, I had enough. I got fed up from work and stormed into the back room for a moment, just long enough to send out a single text message.

"Let's go on a date this Friday."

It was a little more ballsy than I normally get, but a few minutes later my phone buzzed again.

"When and where and how?"

And so that Friday, Dan and I met in the middle. We spent the day in NYC.

Taking a Necessary Break - a Review

I've reached a point in my editing where I'm almost done with a first pass-through, and really I just want to get writing again.

I think that's really exciting for me, because it's been so rare the past few years where I've actively wanted to write, and not just felt like I should because I hadn't in a while. I have ideas I'm excited to get down on the page and it's killing me that I made this dumb rule. I'm actually thinking about discarding the dumb rule - I'm editing stuff at this point that is going to change completely once I start fixing the things in the beginning.

But I've gotten so much done with it that I decided to take a day off. I was planning on going to to edit yesterday night, but a Facebook message completely derailed any plans that I had. I ended up heading out with a college friend to a trivia night at a local brewery - a brewery I didn't even know existed until a few months ago, and had never been to.

Newburgh Brewing Company is definitely one of the coolest places in my relatively inconsequential area. I wish all my friends lived closer so we could go there on a regular basis...the great big taproom has a dozen heavy wooden tables, ping-pong, Donkey Kong, and a stack of board games in the corner that would be perfect for pulling out and nursing a beer over. I don't even like beer that much - any other time I've been given it it's been a lot of sipping and making funny faces like a dog licking a lime. But I ended up drinking an entire glass of their riverBREW Crown Maple Irish Red, sampling the Chile Lime Stout (which burned like chili chocolate and is one of the weirdest/coolest things I've ever consumed) and tried a sip of my friends Brown Ale. Honestly I wish I had had more cash on me, because the Brown Ale was delicious and I should have at least bought a growler of it. I'm disappointed I didn't. I might go back soon and get one anyway. I've never been this into beer before.