In with the New...

It's been a long stretch since I last checked in and alot has happened since. For starters, another new decade has crept up, it's already 2010 and I remind myself of this with a staggering disbelief. I'm still living in the city I grew up in but don't feel I belong in. It is about to host the winter Olympics here which has been plagued with controversy not to mention an unseasonably mild winter that is closing down the ski slopes.
On the personal side, I finished my B.A. last month by completing an online Science course to fulfill the credits needed to graduate. This last year I became better at taking care of my matters although external situations more or less thrust that upon me. I, like many of my generation, have voluntarily or quite unwittingly, avoided adulthood for most of my life and I'm now beginning to understand what my parents meant with their finger-wagging sermons about how there were no options outside of the ambitious pursuit of a respectable profession. I have been at all out war with their value system for years and have used up the reserves of my defiance to their narrow, bourgeois definitions of success. I have resisted any slight concession to the truth in their damning and critical world-view. But as what was once a leak in a boat now grows to waist level, I have to concede that their fear-based value system could boast some merits -- insofar as putting oneself on the right side of the financial divide goes. I've been more or less steadily employed since July so I shouldn't complain too much. This has put me in an overall better frame of mind and enabled me to move into better and more centrally-located digs in a hipster enclave of the city that is soon to be converted into condos and chain franchises. In late October, I was able to bring my girlfriend over from Taiwan and she stayed for an entire month until early December before returning to Taiwan to deal with all the crap that she had stockpiled. During her visit I was reminded of how similar our natures were -- our tendency to put off matters and avoid taking care of the minutiae. This pattern, I think created an unspoken sense of unease in both of us, despite how much more responsible I had become in her view. My instinct tells me it's over but my emotions want to hold on. The long distance relationship that we had going for two years gave me solid goals to work towards. Completing my TESOL and finishing university, getting my credentials for teaching, burying my father, setting up my own place. The prospect of having her come here and stay with me fueled these initiatives and inspired me to make important changes in my life to accommodate her potential visit. I am proud of the fact that we stopped the vague promises and cheap talk and that, through my initiative, her visit became a reality. She made it here, spent one month in my apartment (unfortunately it was November -- the most rainy and dismal time of year here) and then promptly turned around and went back to Taiwan. I showed her my best, I demonstrated to her that I was competent and could manage my situation (working two jobs and being gone all day must have been a good tip) and I showed her I could take care of her but this was not enough of a glue to hold it together and the nagging priorities she felt needed addressing at home meant that this relationship could not compete for her attention. We were both dismayed at this realization and as it stands now, I don't think we are likely to continue. It may very well be that she had come to psychologically symbolize my lingering attachment to Taiwan, in effect, she was that link, that purpose that could provide me with the excuse to return one day.
What else needs be said here? This is a case of making a huge personal investment in what I believed was love. It has certainly let me know that I am capable of doing it again should the opportunity present itself and that maybe this served as an anchoring "goal" to work towards. With that gone I feel a bit hollowed-out and thrown into slight confusion about my next step. I have resolved to get back into promoting myself as a graphic artist, but it seems so daunting, and to continuing to make music. I have alot of ambitious directions in mind and sometimes I get stuck in my tracks because of the "dizziness that comes with too many possibilities" but I have resolved this year to take myself far less seriously and to appreciate the transient and brief nature of my existence as a call to action in the here and now.
The Science credit I had to take to fulfill the requirements for my B.A. was the a combination of Earth-Ocean Sciences, a course designed for non-Science majors. The theme of the course was the science of natural disasters. Throughout it we studied modules on earthquakes, storms, volcanoes, landslides and impacts from space. It was fascinating and informative and helped me to appreciate the scientific discipline much more than I had in previous years. What struck me the most in this course was a unit devoted to the Earth's age and the relative age of life on our planet. I learned that all life forms comprise barely a quarter of the Earth's history and that in that history of 4.6 billion years alone, there have been five major extinctions of life due to external circumstances of climate change and the re-configuration of continents. What is astonishing to me is how infinitesimally brief and insignificant our lifespans are in the time of the cosmos and yet how phenomenally precious we are at the same time. This alone should serve to liberate the soul and to ensure that we consciously pursue lives of fulfillment. This is perhaps the hardest task before us.