Monday, December 07, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
more life in limbo
it's been almost a full 4 months since i've been in limbo, and i've thought of enough stuff to write up a bit about life as of late. how does a person manage infinite time?
in an average life, most people can divide their time in 4 sections: productive time (work or school), church/fellowship/serving life, family and friend relations, and fun free time. the productive time usually is a very large part for most people, but for those unemployed, this time now becomes freed, and as a result must be distributed between the other parts of life. therefore, any issues regarding those 3 sections of life are also magnified. i've already said my bit about difficulties living at home. that's been diverging to a plateau, so it's been manageable as of late. i have tried to do more things at church, but for obvious reasons i cannot just DO things at church to fill time, but there is a very direct connection between serving and your spiritual life and your relationship with God. i experienced 2 worship teams at a time for the first time, and that was a party and a half. i had something like 5 worship practices in 2 or 3 weeks. i got to experience the differences in style in 2 teams and that was interesting. i have since said no to a group and things will be back to normal. teaching the gr12 sunday school's been going okay so far, but the real test is coming up this week. the one thing out of the ordinary that i've been doing is the tutoring, which is starting to get a bit routine but it's moderately enjoyable and keeps my brain working. it's a shock when you see something an engineer would consider fundamental and how you have actually forgotten it (what is a cross product again.. and how do you do vector proving questions :|)
i taught on "spiritual identity" at sunday school this week, with some material taken from the "making sense of church" sermon series by jon tyson, and i find it quite relevant to what i am experiencing. in the sermon, he defined modernism as "where reality validates media" and postmodernism to be "where media validates reality". we are in a postmodern age. we are so entranced by the media and overstimulated senses that it begins to shape our worldview (looking out) and our identity (looking in). we begin to see real events like it was from a movie. how did we get so desensitized to pain and suffering in the world? maybe because we watched too many movies with people dying. but not only that, our timing moves at the same rate as a movie. we never see movies that have boring scenes because it is not fun to watch. but in life, there are times where it has to be boring, but we cannot accept that because that is not the same pace as a movie. our timing is screwed up and we don't know how to wait. i don't know how to wait for a job opportunity.
secondly, i said in class that people often define you by what you do. we start our conversations with "what have you been up to?" if you know them, or "what do you do for a living?" or "what do you study?" if you don't know them. well lucky me, those questions do not apply to me. limbo means you do not fit in the social definition of identity, and we are looked down upon. an article i read up in a business week magazine says that unemployment is getting worse for those just graduating from university, because there aren't enough jobs opened and people won't retire because of the instability and risk. when employers look for people, they naturally frown upon those with gaps in their resume, but really they are subconsciously discriminating those victims of the recession-induced unemployed generation, who are probably more than capable to do the work (ahem, me). the work force says they want me, but they don't actually want me.
we naturally agree that we can get along best with those most similar to us. i am no longer a student, but i am not a working professional. well lucky me, guess what all my friends are. i have seen a pretty obvious decline in interactions with people, whether i was close to them or not before.. but the change occurred in the span of months. and the reasons sometimes understandable. people just don't have as much time to sit in front of their computers to just talk to me. but it is clear that the things that all the students and young professionals are doing.. i am not doing these things. so you have just lost one very large slice of conversation pie because i don't do the things that you do. interesting enough that the people that i've been seeing more often are also unemployed.. granted that they are close friends, but they are in the same stage as me. i am not complaining, but i just think people should smarten up a bit, because these boundaries as mentioned are at best defined by society and relationships should not be based on stupy society. for some time i panicked that i have become less interesting because i'm in limbo, but then i shook it off and realized that was bull crap. we can all do better, no matter what stage of life we are in.
i'm coming to enjoy some of the perks of limbo. some of you would pay me if i could transfer sleep to you.. 10 hours of sleep a day is just a beauty. doing quadrant 4 stuff is sometimes a waste of time.. but with infinite time, you can afford a few hours to play video games or whatever haha.. quite fun. procrastination never felt better because i give myself a full week to do stuff.. and if you don't make it, then there's always next week. if i wanted to, i can take trips whenever i want, while you are all chained to your school and work. and because i tutor, i get money by teaching kids stuff that is engineering bread and butter.. easy stuff after you glance at your old textbooks again haha, so it funds my fun activities, toys, etc.
the good? the bad? if only we could decide what we want.
in an average life, most people can divide their time in 4 sections: productive time (work or school), church/fellowship/serving life, family and friend relations, and fun free time. the productive time usually is a very large part for most people, but for those unemployed, this time now becomes freed, and as a result must be distributed between the other parts of life. therefore, any issues regarding those 3 sections of life are also magnified. i've already said my bit about difficulties living at home. that's been diverging to a plateau, so it's been manageable as of late. i have tried to do more things at church, but for obvious reasons i cannot just DO things at church to fill time, but there is a very direct connection between serving and your spiritual life and your relationship with God. i experienced 2 worship teams at a time for the first time, and that was a party and a half. i had something like 5 worship practices in 2 or 3 weeks. i got to experience the differences in style in 2 teams and that was interesting. i have since said no to a group and things will be back to normal. teaching the gr12 sunday school's been going okay so far, but the real test is coming up this week. the one thing out of the ordinary that i've been doing is the tutoring, which is starting to get a bit routine but it's moderately enjoyable and keeps my brain working. it's a shock when you see something an engineer would consider fundamental and how you have actually forgotten it (what is a cross product again.. and how do you do vector proving questions :|)
i taught on "spiritual identity" at sunday school this week, with some material taken from the "making sense of church" sermon series by jon tyson, and i find it quite relevant to what i am experiencing. in the sermon, he defined modernism as "where reality validates media" and postmodernism to be "where media validates reality". we are in a postmodern age. we are so entranced by the media and overstimulated senses that it begins to shape our worldview (looking out) and our identity (looking in). we begin to see real events like it was from a movie. how did we get so desensitized to pain and suffering in the world? maybe because we watched too many movies with people dying. but not only that, our timing moves at the same rate as a movie. we never see movies that have boring scenes because it is not fun to watch. but in life, there are times where it has to be boring, but we cannot accept that because that is not the same pace as a movie. our timing is screwed up and we don't know how to wait. i don't know how to wait for a job opportunity.
secondly, i said in class that people often define you by what you do. we start our conversations with "what have you been up to?" if you know them, or "what do you do for a living?" or "what do you study?" if you don't know them. well lucky me, those questions do not apply to me. limbo means you do not fit in the social definition of identity, and we are looked down upon. an article i read up in a business week magazine says that unemployment is getting worse for those just graduating from university, because there aren't enough jobs opened and people won't retire because of the instability and risk. when employers look for people, they naturally frown upon those with gaps in their resume, but really they are subconsciously discriminating those victims of the recession-induced unemployed generation, who are probably more than capable to do the work (ahem, me). the work force says they want me, but they don't actually want me.
we naturally agree that we can get along best with those most similar to us. i am no longer a student, but i am not a working professional. well lucky me, guess what all my friends are. i have seen a pretty obvious decline in interactions with people, whether i was close to them or not before.. but the change occurred in the span of months. and the reasons sometimes understandable. people just don't have as much time to sit in front of their computers to just talk to me. but it is clear that the things that all the students and young professionals are doing.. i am not doing these things. so you have just lost one very large slice of conversation pie because i don't do the things that you do. interesting enough that the people that i've been seeing more often are also unemployed.. granted that they are close friends, but they are in the same stage as me. i am not complaining, but i just think people should smarten up a bit, because these boundaries as mentioned are at best defined by society and relationships should not be based on stupy society. for some time i panicked that i have become less interesting because i'm in limbo, but then i shook it off and realized that was bull crap. we can all do better, no matter what stage of life we are in.
i'm coming to enjoy some of the perks of limbo. some of you would pay me if i could transfer sleep to you.. 10 hours of sleep a day is just a beauty. doing quadrant 4 stuff is sometimes a waste of time.. but with infinite time, you can afford a few hours to play video games or whatever haha.. quite fun. procrastination never felt better because i give myself a full week to do stuff.. and if you don't make it, then there's always next week. if i wanted to, i can take trips whenever i want, while you are all chained to your school and work. and because i tutor, i get money by teaching kids stuff that is engineering bread and butter.. easy stuff after you glance at your old textbooks again haha, so it funds my fun activities, toys, etc.
the good? the bad? if only we could decide what we want.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
"for one more day?"
i reminded myself what a reading machine i can be by reading "for one more day" by mitch albom in one sitting. granted that the book is a short read, i read the whole book despite that i had more important things to do. (spoiler alert).
the book is an inspirational fiction novel about a man named charles "chick" benetto who forsook education to attmept to make big league baseball teams, but ended up not being good enough because of injury. his mother loved him greatly, but his father left the family at a very young age for very selfish reasons. charley's life after he quit baseball deteriorated drastically. he hated his boring sales job, and started drinking a lot. as a result, he started falling away from his family. his wife divorced him. his only daughter did not invite him to her wedding, because she was afraid he would embarass her. charley just couldn't take it anymore, and decided to commit suicide. through his several attempts, he was led back to his old home where his family grew up. he was absolutely astounded to find his mother, who had passed away 7 years ago from a heart attack. they recounted the events which showed his selfish motives to please his father through baseball, but also the mother's unfailing love for her son, and her spirit's eventual inspiration for his son to keep living. of course, he does, because he loves his mother.
the model of the heartfelt story.
so i have discovered that around 3 months is the time that i start getting very agitated and impatient when i am home. i think that this is approximately when i run out of patience with my family. today i had lunch with my mom and my cousin, and when i was driving him home after i dropped off my mom, i was once again commended for living with not ONE, not TWO, but THREE post menopausal chinese women. i have observed that 95% of the things they say to me involve either them commanding me to do something, or commanding me not to do something or what i am doing is not right. each nagging me in their own sort of way. i can only take so much of.. telling me what to eat by watching what i eat as if i don't know how to eat, criticizing me about job hunting, criticizing that i am wasting my time and my choices for the future are poor, cleaning up my stuff and reorganizing my stuff when i didn't ask them too and then feeling their contempt and only result in me having to find my own stuff again because they put it somewhere else, their tones of disrespect, all their crazy and menial food restrictions, staying away from the computer restrictions, don't do this don't do that, yelling for 20 minutes about nothing when i show a bit of attitude.
sometimes on days like that, i get this feeling in my heart like there is a heavy weight on it, and the heart muscle has to support that heavy weight. and it's so heavy that i can't support any other system of the body. or it's like something is squeezing your heart and it has to push against the squeezing just to beat. and even when their nagging stops, that feeling is still there, and it sometimes carries over the next day. like i would wake up, and that would be the first thing i feel.
it really is hard to read the book and try to learn the same lesson as chick benetto did. from all human standpoints, is it fair to learn that lesson? does anyone have the supernatural patience to deal with all that? sometimes the only words that i can say is.. unbelievable.
tonight i had that heavy heart feeling again because of lunch, and then i got an idea. what if i nagged them back the same way that they nagged me, each in their own ways? i wonder how they would take it, sounds like a fun activity haha.
the book is an inspirational fiction novel about a man named charles "chick" benetto who forsook education to attmept to make big league baseball teams, but ended up not being good enough because of injury. his mother loved him greatly, but his father left the family at a very young age for very selfish reasons. charley's life after he quit baseball deteriorated drastically. he hated his boring sales job, and started drinking a lot. as a result, he started falling away from his family. his wife divorced him. his only daughter did not invite him to her wedding, because she was afraid he would embarass her. charley just couldn't take it anymore, and decided to commit suicide. through his several attempts, he was led back to his old home where his family grew up. he was absolutely astounded to find his mother, who had passed away 7 years ago from a heart attack. they recounted the events which showed his selfish motives to please his father through baseball, but also the mother's unfailing love for her son, and her spirit's eventual inspiration for his son to keep living. of course, he does, because he loves his mother.
the model of the heartfelt story.
so i have discovered that around 3 months is the time that i start getting very agitated and impatient when i am home. i think that this is approximately when i run out of patience with my family. today i had lunch with my mom and my cousin, and when i was driving him home after i dropped off my mom, i was once again commended for living with not ONE, not TWO, but THREE post menopausal chinese women. i have observed that 95% of the things they say to me involve either them commanding me to do something, or commanding me not to do something or what i am doing is not right. each nagging me in their own sort of way. i can only take so much of.. telling me what to eat by watching what i eat as if i don't know how to eat, criticizing me about job hunting, criticizing that i am wasting my time and my choices for the future are poor, cleaning up my stuff and reorganizing my stuff when i didn't ask them too and then feeling their contempt and only result in me having to find my own stuff again because they put it somewhere else, their tones of disrespect, all their crazy and menial food restrictions, staying away from the computer restrictions, don't do this don't do that, yelling for 20 minutes about nothing when i show a bit of attitude.
sometimes on days like that, i get this feeling in my heart like there is a heavy weight on it, and the heart muscle has to support that heavy weight. and it's so heavy that i can't support any other system of the body. or it's like something is squeezing your heart and it has to push against the squeezing just to beat. and even when their nagging stops, that feeling is still there, and it sometimes carries over the next day. like i would wake up, and that would be the first thing i feel.
it really is hard to read the book and try to learn the same lesson as chick benetto did. from all human standpoints, is it fair to learn that lesson? does anyone have the supernatural patience to deal with all that? sometimes the only words that i can say is.. unbelievable.
tonight i had that heavy heart feeling again because of lunch, and then i got an idea. what if i nagged them back the same way that they nagged me, each in their own ways? i wonder how they would take it, sounds like a fun activity haha.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
end of summer thoughts part 2
i've been starting to take offence to those people that have been critical about how i am bumming around or am wasting time doing nothing. members of my family have said that they thought if i was not working or not in school, then i was wasting time. i thought that that was one of the most ridiculous things ever. the summer is officially over now, and there are some things that i wished i did different, but i certainly do not regret how the summer went. i still have no job, and there is no end in sight for that right now, but i believe that i learned a lot about myself this summer. let me count you the ways, all of you who think i am wasting my time.
my men's group at scbc have been studying the 7 habits of highly effective people, by stephen covey. men's group has been a big part of the summer, as we meet every other week to do the book study, but we have also worked together to plan a camp together for high school students at our church, and we also spend a lot of time together outside of small group time and church time. the concepts in this book are frightfully relevant and life changing, and i have so far been terrified at organizing my life as they intensely describe. but even while i avoid to do some of the things they ask, i find myself subconsciously noticing concepts or ideas in my life. the following observations are made by myself, and not by the book, but i will later explain that the book reinforces these concepts.
as young people of this generation, how have we learnt to manage and organize our lives? at an early age, discipline was forced upon us by our parents, usually by threaten of punishment: deprivation of pleasure, or sometimes of necessities.. poor you if that's u :( once we grow past that young age, we are introduced to the education system. our organization is then guided by assignment or project deadlines. we do our school stuff based on those dates, otherwise resulting in poor grades. poor grades result in a feeling of failure, rejection and dissatisfaction. when university comes, these concepts are further reinforced. because of the volume and intensity of the work, urgency of getting work done is higher, and deadlines have greater weight to them than ever before. the feelings of failure, rejection and the like are also increased, though we become well conditioned to deal with these feelings. but in the end, this is what what education has done to us: it has conditioned us to manage our life based on arbitrarily defined deadline dates only to prevent feelings of failure and rejection. in addition, we realize that these feelings end up being inevitable (unless you're a genius or a brainchild) and become conditioned to numb ourselves from these feelings, further making this discipline ineffective.
i don't think that this is bad in itself provided that you have the strength for it, but i think that it is a poor discipline and management system. this summer i was able to experience something i have not experienced before, and i found it a worthy experiment. for the first time, life was not managed by deadlines. also, quality of life was no longer measured by your academic results and your feelings of failure/success based on those academic results. in fact, life no longer had deadlines, and life no longer had instructions like school had. my experiment was.. based on my previous conditioning/training, how will i react in this new stage of life?
i found out that my resolve to be productive was not strong at all. i think some of that had to do with it being the summer, and the summer was all about having fun. as a result, i would do whatever i want, whenever i want. most of the time, these things were relatively trivial (trivial in purpose and meaning, but still times that are treasured and relationships closer. fun things are not utterly pointless). there were a handful of times where i did things that are considered productive, and i was usually much more willing to play than to do these productive things.
so am i just saying that i've been totally undisciplined and wasted my entire summer? i'm not exactly saying that. what i am saying is.. we've believed that school has taught us what discipline and organization and management is. i believe that it has not taught us that. it teaches us the basics, but there are some very deep ideas that are missing. let me go over the first 3 habits briefly. you can also read up on it on the wiki link i gave, or google it.
habit 1: be proactive.
do you act or are you acted upon? if you are acted upon, your life is in the control of the one acting upon you. if you act, then your life is in the control of you. the more we act, the more control we have in life. proactivity can be developed by first destroying negative thoughts of your ability. then..
habit 2: begin with the end in mind.
focus on the end result, and fill in the in between path according to that result. then you will not lose sight of what you want to achieve. first plan (leadership), then do (management). in order to do these things, your result must be based on principles and values other than anything else. these must be your internal beliefs that you will hold true to. mission statements and personal goals help here.
habit 3: put first things first.
to manage our time to do the right things according to our purpose, we need to analyse our activities. in a 2 by 2 matrix of urgent/not urgent and important/not important, we need to adjust our life to do the not urgent but important tasks (quadrant 2) first. this will cause us to do things according to our purpose and goals, and will drastically decrease emergency type tasks (quadrant 1), and minimize the need for unimportant activities (quadrant 3 and 4). managing your time to be a quadrant 2 person involves once again planning your activities according to your values.
discipline is HARD. why is it hard? it might even be because we don't know how to do it. saying that we will do it doesn't mean we can actually do it. not only is much intricacy required for a fully disciplined life, but also great mental, emotional and spiritual strength is needed. this must be built up. the truth is here. the truth is that none of us are really disciplined. this is only a taste of what it really takes.
these concepts are not exclusive to general life. i think that a poor spiritual life has very much to do with these concepts. when i was young, i learned that as long as you have God as your center, then everything will fall into place. i think that this is not necessarily true, because a poorly managed life will still result in a poor christian life (being the activities you do to further your relationship with God) because everything else is a mess. i don't believe that there's such thing as one thing being perfect while everything else is a mess. the mess of a nonchristian (activities not deliberately for furthering your relationship with God) life will drag down your quality of life, and then you won't have a good relationship with God. this is what it takes to be close to God.
phew, that was long, wasn't it? september is here. time to pull your sword.
my men's group at scbc have been studying the 7 habits of highly effective people, by stephen covey. men's group has been a big part of the summer, as we meet every other week to do the book study, but we have also worked together to plan a camp together for high school students at our church, and we also spend a lot of time together outside of small group time and church time. the concepts in this book are frightfully relevant and life changing, and i have so far been terrified at organizing my life as they intensely describe. but even while i avoid to do some of the things they ask, i find myself subconsciously noticing concepts or ideas in my life. the following observations are made by myself, and not by the book, but i will later explain that the book reinforces these concepts.
as young people of this generation, how have we learnt to manage and organize our lives? at an early age, discipline was forced upon us by our parents, usually by threaten of punishment: deprivation of pleasure, or sometimes of necessities.. poor you if that's u :( once we grow past that young age, we are introduced to the education system. our organization is then guided by assignment or project deadlines. we do our school stuff based on those dates, otherwise resulting in poor grades. poor grades result in a feeling of failure, rejection and dissatisfaction. when university comes, these concepts are further reinforced. because of the volume and intensity of the work, urgency of getting work done is higher, and deadlines have greater weight to them than ever before. the feelings of failure, rejection and the like are also increased, though we become well conditioned to deal with these feelings. but in the end, this is what what education has done to us: it has conditioned us to manage our life based on arbitrarily defined deadline dates only to prevent feelings of failure and rejection. in addition, we realize that these feelings end up being inevitable (unless you're a genius or a brainchild) and become conditioned to numb ourselves from these feelings, further making this discipline ineffective.
i don't think that this is bad in itself provided that you have the strength for it, but i think that it is a poor discipline and management system. this summer i was able to experience something i have not experienced before, and i found it a worthy experiment. for the first time, life was not managed by deadlines. also, quality of life was no longer measured by your academic results and your feelings of failure/success based on those academic results. in fact, life no longer had deadlines, and life no longer had instructions like school had. my experiment was.. based on my previous conditioning/training, how will i react in this new stage of life?
i found out that my resolve to be productive was not strong at all. i think some of that had to do with it being the summer, and the summer was all about having fun. as a result, i would do whatever i want, whenever i want. most of the time, these things were relatively trivial (trivial in purpose and meaning, but still times that are treasured and relationships closer. fun things are not utterly pointless). there were a handful of times where i did things that are considered productive, and i was usually much more willing to play than to do these productive things.
so am i just saying that i've been totally undisciplined and wasted my entire summer? i'm not exactly saying that. what i am saying is.. we've believed that school has taught us what discipline and organization and management is. i believe that it has not taught us that. it teaches us the basics, but there are some very deep ideas that are missing. let me go over the first 3 habits briefly. you can also read up on it on the wiki link i gave, or google it.
habit 1: be proactive.
do you act or are you acted upon? if you are acted upon, your life is in the control of the one acting upon you. if you act, then your life is in the control of you. the more we act, the more control we have in life. proactivity can be developed by first destroying negative thoughts of your ability. then..
habit 2: begin with the end in mind.
focus on the end result, and fill in the in between path according to that result. then you will not lose sight of what you want to achieve. first plan (leadership), then do (management). in order to do these things, your result must be based on principles and values other than anything else. these must be your internal beliefs that you will hold true to. mission statements and personal goals help here.
habit 3: put first things first.
to manage our time to do the right things according to our purpose, we need to analyse our activities. in a 2 by 2 matrix of urgent/not urgent and important/not important, we need to adjust our life to do the not urgent but important tasks (quadrant 2) first. this will cause us to do things according to our purpose and goals, and will drastically decrease emergency type tasks (quadrant 1), and minimize the need for unimportant activities (quadrant 3 and 4). managing your time to be a quadrant 2 person involves once again planning your activities according to your values.
discipline is HARD. why is it hard? it might even be because we don't know how to do it. saying that we will do it doesn't mean we can actually do it. not only is much intricacy required for a fully disciplined life, but also great mental, emotional and spiritual strength is needed. this must be built up. the truth is here. the truth is that none of us are really disciplined. this is only a taste of what it really takes.
these concepts are not exclusive to general life. i think that a poor spiritual life has very much to do with these concepts. when i was young, i learned that as long as you have God as your center, then everything will fall into place. i think that this is not necessarily true, because a poorly managed life will still result in a poor christian life (being the activities you do to further your relationship with God) because everything else is a mess. i don't believe that there's such thing as one thing being perfect while everything else is a mess. the mess of a nonchristian (activities not deliberately for furthering your relationship with God) life will drag down your quality of life, and then you won't have a good relationship with God. this is what it takes to be close to God.
phew, that was long, wasn't it? september is here. time to pull your sword.
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