an exercise in honesty

i've never not had a plan for my life. as much as i like to think so, i'm really not that spontaneous or wild. so now, here i am freshly graduated from law school and completely plan-less. i do not want to be a lawyer, i frequently wonder if i've wasted the last 3 years of my life, i have no idea what i want to do next, and because i don't know, i can't even start planning on reaching those phantom goals.

suffice it to say -- I AM FREAKING OUT.

and if i'm completely honest with myself -- as i so rarely am -- there's something else going on too. now, i rarely get into any serious discussion about my relationship with N. on this blog both because i'm half afraid he'll find it and read it, and because it's just very...personal. but i've already talked to him about this issue so i don't feel quite as nauseated at the thought of him reading this, and this also directly impacts any future plans i may be cooking up. if it seems a little voyeuristic for you to be reading about the inner workings of my 4.5-year long relationship, please feel free to stop. but most of you readers are close friends anyway, so here goes:

over the last 3 years, my friend M. and i have had numerous discussions about the fact that we both moved to new cities we knew very little about because the men in our lives were there. we both changed our lives to suit these men, and we have both been hyper-dependent on these men ever since. as much as i hate to admit it, and as much as i try and tell myself that i really moved to CA for school, the fact is that school was an excuse to move closer to N. i was miserable without him. it was like the city i once loved had been stripped of everything i had loved about it. i felt lonely, like he had just gone and left this huge gaping hole in my day-to-day that i had once filled with him. so when the chance came to make some changes in my life, the first change i made was to move.

prior to this, i had always been the type of person who swore she would never make any big decisions based on a guy. i was strong. i was independent. i was also terribly naive. but my parents had always taught their daughters to put themselves first, to accomplish all they wanted to do with their lives before settling down, to not end up in a relationship that kept you from doing, from living.

to be fair, N. never asked me to move to be with him. he never put me in that position. just like he unilaterally decided to move from where i was to CA, he left the decision of where i would go to law school up to me. i think that's one of the things i respect most about him: he knew what was right for his life and he did it, regardless. and he wanted me to do the same. that was the type of person i used to be.

and i'm not saying that moving to be with him wasn't right for my life. because i think it was. law school may not have been, but N. remains one of the best parts of my life, and of me. quite honestly, he will probably be the man i marry one day. so all in all, moving down to be with him may have been one of the best, and most influential, things i ever done.

but the fact remains that, in a way, i did it more for him, and less for me. well, that's not really fair; i guess i did it more the me that was part of a couple, and less because it would have been best for the me that was an individual. so that huge decision will always be...tainted. i actually remember having a conversation with a friend prior to leaving WA in which i couldn't stop questioning if moving down to be with him made me really strong because i could do it, or really weak because i had to do it? i've never come around to believing that it made me strong. and there's just no getting around the fact that i've been conforming my life, my dreams, my goals, to his ever since i made that decision. he came back to CA and has been doing everything he ever planned to do. i came down to CA and have been fitting my life around that plan of his, throwing out whatever i may have wanted that won't work, and replacing it with what will work for us.

i started doing this because, to my thinking, our relationship, our future, was my new goal. and it still is. but now that i'm older and more...secure...in that relationship, i think both N. and i have realized that who we are and what we want as individuals won't just disappear in the face of who we are and what we want as a couple, no matter how much we may hope it does. so those dreams i once had? those goals? they're still there.

one of those goals has always been to live abroad more, to see the world. i studied abroad, both in northern ireland and in new zealand (where N. and i met), when i was in college, and i've always wanted to do so again. when i made the decision to go to law school and move down here to be with N., i just assumed that that goal was just a childish, i-don't-want-to-grow-up goal that i would get over. but it wasn't, and i haven't. instead, i've talked about it non-stop for the past 3 years, and i've periodically thrown out the idea of us just picking up and going, to the point where N. has asked me numerous times why i just don't do it. my answer? i don't want to leave him. and that answer has worked thus far because i've had a life plan to go along with: Plan A.

but as we all know, Plan A didn't work out. so here i am, on the cusp of a new chapter in my life, an unwritten, un-outlined chapter, and i'm faced with another big decision. what do i do? where do i go?

N. worries that if i don't take advantage of this time in my life, where we don't have a mortgage or children who need to be in school, then i'll wake up one day when we're 40 and regret our life together. or resent him for holding me back (his words, not mine).

i worry that if i don't take advantage of this time in my life, i'll be passing up my chance for one of my last adventures. i know it sounds crazy, and friends have been telling me that we're so young, this isn't my last adventure, and i know that's true (marriage is an adventure, kids are an adventure, growing up in and of itself is an adventure), so let me clarify by saying that i mean it very narrowly: adventure in the sense of picking up and traveling whenever and however you may like. because realistically, you just can't do that when you have a family and children and all those things i want someday. we have a narrow window of time in which to be young and selfish, you know? why not take advantage of it?

i'm also worried that if i don't grasp this chance to take back a certain amount of the individuality i feel i lost when i began conforming my life to N.'s, i really will begin resenting myself (and him) one day. and i don't think i could stand that.

which is where yesterday's post comes from.

i've been considering going back to school for a while, i guess, so this isn't really out of the blue. i just haven't talked about it very much to very many people because it's been nerve-racking coming to the realization that i've failed so utterly at Plan A. and the fact is that i don't have the faintest idea as to what i want to do with my life right now. so while i'm considering a Master's or a PhD, i don't even know if i want to teach, or that i'd even feel qualified to teach after getting a PhD. so i worry that i'd just be buying time, postponing the inevitable that is having to figure out what it is i want. but really, what's wrong with that? if i'm not getting a job anyway, or if i'm only getting jobs i hate, why not spend three years doing what i love to do (i.e. research, writing, possibly abroad), while i figure it out?

because there's also a certain level of fear that comes with it. i'm afraid of starting something new and not having that work out either. i'm afraid that, after getting my PhD, i'll be in no better position that i'm in now. i'm afraid of being more in debt. i'm afraid of moving to a place where i know only a handful of people (i.e. New Zealand), and starting a whole new life. and i'm afraid, again, of being without N. who has been my security blanket for so many years.

i obviously have more to think about than i care to. i guess possible big changes will do that.

i will, however, say that i am excited as well. scared, but excited.

a possible Plan B

explanations to come:

From: Julie A.
To: Me
Date: Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 12:24 PM
Subject: Re: Inquiry

Hi Kahea,

I just heard back from the University of Auckland so I am glad you clarified that with me! It looks like you would be eligible to apply directly into a PhD program or the master’s year. You would not need to do the postgraduate diploma if you wanted to do the master’s route and it would take about a year.

As for the PhD, they are 3 year programs with 100% research. You would be matched with a faculty supervisor and have to submit either a research outline or proposal. The nice thing about PhD programs is they can be started at any point throughout the year AND as an international student you will be paying domestic student rates, which is about $5000 a year depending on the school.

If you are interested in the PhD, I would encourage you to fill an “Expression of Interest” (EOI) application online. This requires you to provide your academic background online, plus a research proposal. The faculty will then assess both your academic qualifications and whether the research you intend to do is applicable at University of Auckland. You will need to go into: https://xyz and follow the instructions. If you already have a supervisor in mind, you will be encouraged to mention it in the EOI.

If you are interested in the Master of Arts in Anthropology, the deadline will be November 1^st for the February 2010 semester.

The honours year is only available for New Zealand students and it is considered their “fourth year” since bachelors degrees are only three years there. You would not have this requirement and honors from the U.S. is not equivalent. You should be able to bypass this requirement since you have a graduate degree.

Let me know what sounds like the best option for you. I have attached the application instructions for you to apply through your MyLearn account if you are interested in the master’s.

Cheers,

Julie

on the eve of battle

you know those moments when your hair looks perfect, you don't feel overweight, you've got a great outfit on, you're about to be promoted at work, the love of your life has just proposed to you, you found the world's most comfortable pair of shoes on sale, and life is just generally one big tub of happy?

this is most definitely not one of those times.

actually, this is almost the exact opposite. because tomorrow morning i will start the three day nightmare that is the california bar exam. and if you just scroll down and read a few of my other posts you'll quickly realize that, for me, this exam is simply an exercise in humility. i don't want to be a lawyer. so why am i taking it? because this is just the type of person i am. i was too afraid to leave law school when i realized that i didn't want to practice (and i honestly enjoyed parts of it too much to stop). i was too invested and had gone through too much to give up when i could see the finish line right ahead of me. i was too wrapped up in what i thought was the only version of My Life Plan that i would ever have to pause before taking out a hefty bar loan and applying to for the test. and now i'm just...in too deep.

so i'll sit for the bar tomorrow and let whatever happens happen. because i'm not prepared, and i don't care that i'm not prepared. at least, not for me. does that make sense? what i mean is that, in regards to how i feel about most likely failing the bar, i'm okay. i've come to terms with it. i'm already looking to plan out the next stage of my life (because, let's face it, i'm a planner), find a job (side bar: it was quite an eye-opener when i realized yesterday that none of the jobs i envisioned myself having in the future required bar certification), live my life.

but i've been flip-flopping on my emotional stability lately because, while i'm okay with my own failure (in this case), i can't stand to have to tell my parents. i'm the type of person, as sad as it may seem (and believe me, it's sad), whose self-worth has almost always been wrapped up in my academic/professional achievement. it's crazy and completely unfounded, but a part of me feels that if i don't become this wealthy, successful lawyer, then i've failed my parents. they wanted me to be something, you know? and if i'm not this, then what am i?

so this is where my head has been at lately.

and then yesterday happened. getting back to those perfect moments i mentioned earlier, let me just say that, while my moment was definitely not perfect perfect, it was pretty incredible. there i was, sitting in the car with N. listening to NPR, thinking about failure and about "how can it be failure when it's not even something i want?" or "what am i going to do if/when i'm not a lawyer? how am i going to make a living?" and about disappointment and how my parents want so much for me and i worry that it's not what i want for me, or that my j.d. doesn't seem like much anymore (i think i actually thought having only a mere j.d. was a failure as well, so deep was i into my self-deprecating snowball) etc. etc. etc. just generally having a silent nervous breakdown there on the 580. and then i hear it.

it'll sound ridiculous when i say it, but i don't care. at that exact moment when the bar was indeed getting the better of me, NPR began to play j.k. rowling's harvard commencement address, entitled, "the fringe benefits of failure, and the importance of imagination."

while the entire speech is fantastic (which is why i'm posting the video in its entirety), it was the section on failure that forced me out of my whirlwind of insanity and gently requested that i stop, take a deep breath, and think. and while i'm still sitting to take a bar i don't want or need to pass tomorrow, the panic has receded, the breakdowns have come fewer and far in between, and i'm in a place where i can say: whatever happens...let it just happen quickly.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

Text as delivered follows.
Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.

yes, i think they can dance

i love this. and not just because i've got to support the kid i apparently went to high school with (go native hawaiians!) and the girl i think should win the whole competition. but because it is amazing. i literally cannot say enough about how powerful i thought this dance was. the judges need to get their heads out of their rear ends on this one.

sooooo much fun. so much fun. so good. and i'm kind of in love with this song.

ch-ch-changes

N. and i are officially settled in. officially. it's only taken us a while because we had to stain our ikea kitchen table and chairs (which now does not look so ikea-ish, yay!), and get a dog. so we now live together, on our own, in a very, very cute place.

i like to call it "casa de awesome."

and i thought i'd share some pictures of the whole process.

this is obviously the before pictures. our stuff overflowed into the living room of the house we'd been living in. this isn't even half of our stuff and, funnily enough, most of this stuff is from my bedroom. we were so lucky to have a bunch of our friends come over on what was possibly the first hottest day of the year to help us move.

i'm proud and glad to say that the apartment looked like this for only a few hours. as soon as we got the stuff moved in, my old roommate, M., helped me unpack the entire kitchen while N. and her husband J. went to go and pick up the new grill his mom bought him for his grad school graduation gift.

happily enough, we now live in a very comfy 2 bedroom apartment. we use one of the bedrooms as an office space, we have a nice fenced in backyard, and we are so excited to finally be on our own. i think we've both had reservations in the last three years about taking this next step in our relationship (which is why we kept deciding that we weren't ready to), but now that we've done it, we're both realize that it was just the natural progression of things.

and finally, meet finnegan! this is finn, our newly adopted 6 year old border collie/australian shepherd mix. he is possibly the smartest dog in the world, but i may be a bit biased since i've noticed that i've been acting like a new mother ever since we brought him home.

dogs are so interesting and entertaining. he never tires. he always wants to play. he's extremely well-trained and is apparently an escape artist (he got out of our 7 foot fenced in back yard the first day we left him alone and leapt in to our neighbor's - whose name is also finnegan! - back yard).

he's also terrified of loud noises so we're already a little apprehensive about the fireworks on the 4th of july.

my life has become consumed by caring for my dog.

this is another one of those reasons why, thank God, i no longer have room to stress out about the bar exam.

me v. the burnout

so, apparently, i've hit The Wall. my own personal, great big barbri wall i like to affectionately call, "kahea doesn't want to do s**t." it's like i know i should be studying day and night, night and day, but God help me i have the motivation of a small bag of rocks. none.

for the passed two weeks, i've barely spent any time outside of class studying for the upcoming bar (which, hahaha, is now less than a month away!). i go to class for 3-4 hours each day, then come home, stare at my outlines, and retain absolutely nothing.

and i know i should be worried. i should actually be freaking the eff out. any sane person would be. but i'm not. i think i've figured out why:

1. before barbri even began, i promised myself that i wouldn't let it beat me. this course, this exam, these 2 months of hell would not get the better of me. it would be over my dead body that law school would get one more nervous breakdown out of me. so here i am, doing whatever i think is healthiest for me. even if it's blowing off the california bar exam. i'll still try my hardest when push comes to shove, but i won't let it kill me in the mean time. i'll study when i study, and when the day draws nearer i know i'll buckle down because a part of me just hates to fail at academia, but i can't let myself get lost in this again. i whole-heartedly stand up and refuse.
2. but i'm also not freaking out because a part of me, and i don't know how big a part of me yet, just doesn't care all that much right now. i mean, the fact of the matter is that, comparatively, i almost have it easy. i don't need to pass the bar. unlike so many of my friends and fellow barbri students, i don't want to practice law, so any job i may get in the future isn't contingent on my passing. my driving force at this point is that i don't want to face the, well, embarrassment of not passing (particularly since, fyi, anyone and their mama can go online in the fall and find out who passed and who failed the bar exam). i don't do failure well, so the humiliation will be a hard pill to swallow should i not pull myself together soon.

but i have to admit that there are moments when the exam tries (and nearly manages) to get the better of me. i'm talking about those times when i hear the way others are coping with it. when i hear the guy behind me in class saying that he's going to be doing 1 essay and 1 hour of mbe's a day, along with reviewing and shortening his outlines, it makes me either want to kick myself or throw my book at him. when i hear friends freaking out because the answer they wrote for their practice essay wasn't exactly like the model answer, i want to put my head down, close my eyes, and scream. and when i see the exam getting the better of others, it makes me feel like i should let it get the better of me too, because maybe that's what it'll take to succeed.

but this happens less and less frequently now since i've learned to just pop my earphones in and blast music from the likes of paramore to van morrison to muse to jack's mannequin. that's how i'm coping with the burnout from three years of law school which felt like 10 years in prison. music, and shutting everything else out.

N. and i also just adopted a dog, which helps me slack off, but more on that later. :)

thoughts on a novel

i've always been a voracious reader. it's difficult to really remember a time when books didn't interest me. i've just always loved them. i love the telling of the story. i love the voices of the characters and the description of places i've never seen and, perhaps outside of the page, will never see. i've been trying to figure out lately how it is that i "read" a book.

i mean, what sound does the written word make in my head? whose voice is it when it's not the dialogue's or narrator's? even now, as i sit in bed writing this blog post, and i'm reading over words i myself have just written, it's hard for me to hear the voice that plays them back to me. once i concentrate on it, it changes to fit whatever or whoever it is i'm consciously thinking about.

and aside from my obsession with the chatter of my internal monologue, i've been noticing that i'm much more of a dialogue person than i once though. i mean, i love a good description, but once i've got the look of a room or a road or a forest in my head, i tend to just skip over other descriptive passages and head straight for the conversation. and i let it play out in my head the way it would naturally, organically. then, if it doesn't quite work in my own imagination for some reason or the other, i take hints from the author.

it's a strange way to read a book.

and it's almost impossible to do with harry potter.

i've been re-reading harry potter and the half-blood prince and harry potter and the deathly hallows again. finished them both just this passed week and am completely obsessed once more. i mean, you all thought i liked twilight? it doesn't even come close to my deep love and appreciation for j.k. rowlings and her hogwarts universe. like twilight, i came in to harry potter later in the game than those in the know, but early enough not to be considered among those living under rocks. by the time i picked up on the frenzy, the fourth book was just about to be released (again, like twilight). i was at the public library one day during a school break and picked up the first book. then made my mother drive me the half hour back into town the next day to borrow the next two. i can't remember her being more irritated with me and my reading habits than she was when i discovered harry potter. i read non-stop. i read all day, all night, i read at the dinner table, in the car, wherever, whenever.

it was amazing. a whole new world. and the details! how can one person come up with so many small details? how can so many small details be so integral to a book? it's impossible to concentrate on voices when you're so engrossed in the story line. it's impossible to skip over passages after you realize that what you once thought was a mundane description has become the lynch-pin of the entire book. that is what makes for great story telling. when you can't fill in the blanks for yourself. when you don't want to.

these are the things that i'm thinking of as i consider how to take the leap and begin a novel. i've been putting it off. chances are, i'll continue to put it off (because i'm scared i'll write it and it won't be any good?), but i'm trying not to.

music as promised

because of finals and The Big Move, and family in town and the start of barbri, i wasn't able to make good on my promise to put up the eclipse playlist earlier. i actually didn't even get it from K. until this week because things have been so hectic (i've had no routine, and therefore have only been online once in a great while).

but with no further ado, here is the awesomeness that is another K. playlist, this time for eclipse:

- as tall as lions: where do i stand (jacob writing letters)
- athlete: tourist (realizing highschool is almost over, trip to FL)
- city & colour: what makes a man? (visiting jake, arguing over edward)
- the honorary title: everything i once had (rosalie)
- anberlin: dismantle.repair (acoustic) (jacob, my jacob)
- mute math: you are mine (reconciliation)
- the snake, the cross, the crown: hot anger, soon cold (things missing)
- mewithoutyou: world am i! (and shadow) (bonfire with the pack)
- biffy clyro: love has a diameter (graduation, persuasion)
- frou frou: breathe in (bride to be)
- cursive: the recluse (jasper)
- far-less: surprise funeral (for the charmed) (they may not all survive)
- city & colour: day old hate (watching jacob sleep)
- death cab for cutie: we looked like giants (graduation)
- silverchair: world upon your shoulders (training)
- snow patrol: open your eyes (engagement)
- lydia: ...ha yeah it got pretty bad (camping in the snow)
- alexisonfire: you burn first (the fight)
- bon iver: the wolves (act I and II) (jacob recovering)
- death cab for cutie: translatlanticism (bella makes her decisions)
- barcelona: please don't go (jake)

my favorites are probably obvious: death cab, city & colour, barcelona, lydia. it's funny how i was pretty territorial about songs - i didn't want my favorites to be used on the jake storyline. i got over it, 1) because the songs fit, and 2) because of the preview (lol). what can i say, maybe i am shallow after all? :)

a girl can dream

i've found myself thinking of dream jobs lately, mostly because i've just graduated and am on the verge of having to find a job myself. barbri (which is a course you take in preparation for the bar exam) started just last week and i'm already wondering exactly what i was thinking when i signed on. why am i taking the california bar? no, let me rephrase: why am i taking the most difficult bar exam in the country when i'm not even sure if i want to be a lawyer?

because i'm scared i don't have any other options?

because i'm too stubborn to stray from the path i've already laid out for myself?

because i don't know what else i'd do?

how about a strange, mish-mash of all of the above.

i'm terrified that i don't have the skills to do any other job. this is lunacy, i realize that. i'm a lawyer for crying out loud. i've completed one of the most rigorous studies out there, and have work experience in both the public interest and private sector. my research and writing skills are pretty decent, and i can get great recommendations if and when i need them. all of this i know, but still i worry. am i too specialized? prior to law school, i was an administrative assistant for five years. other than being a lawyer and a receptionist, what can i do?

i also recognize that i may just be too stubborn to admit defeat. i mean, i decided to become a lawyer. i've made it through - maybe not so gracefully, but successfully at the least - the three years of hazing i often feel like law school is, have worked really hard and learned a lot, have incurred an obscene amount of debt, and am forcing myself through to the bar. my family has supported me, my friends have put up with me, and N. hasn't yet decided to drop me for greener pastures. so after all of that, there's a part of me that just wants to scream, "suck it UP already!" i'm almost at the finish line, you know? it's the deep breath, and i'm taking it. so why back down now? and yes, if i'm perfectly honest, there is a part of me that just doesn't want to disappoint my family, my colleagues, those who have put their time and energy into training me, and myself.

and finally there's the question of what else i'd even do were i not to become a lawyer. i can't think of a single rational, responsible thing to do with myself. i mean, yes, okay, i do have a dream job that you all probably already know about. in my ideal world, i'd be a writer. i'd spend my days working from my home office (which i now have! - will post about later), or on my mac laptop (which i will one day have again) in some cafe researching and writing. i'd be published, i'd be able to pay the bills, and i'd love every second of it. eventually, i'd use the money i earned to open a bookstore/cafe. i even have a name picked out, so much like an expectant mother, but i'll refrain myself from gushing. it just isn't reality, you know? how many people out there want to be published writers? millions. how many actually are? not millions.

i am a not million. i am a not million at my dream job.

but it won't always be that way.

so what about you? what's your dream job? are you doing it now? if yes, how's it going? is it everything you hoped it would be? if you're not working at your dream job right now, are you working towards it? or have you, like myself and so many others, almost resigned yourself to the fact that maybe the dream job was always supposed to be just that - a dream?

because you knew it was coming

drool. and laugh a little. but drool, definitely.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: NEW MOON trailer


p.s. um...hi taylor lautner's pecks. my name is kahea.