tetralogy

I live in an apartment complex that's big enough to require one of those large green dumpsters for trash. A couple months ago, I was walking past the dumpster on my way to my car when I noticed something stacked on the ground next to it. Because I am basically a human raccoon, I went over to investigate and discovered one of the tenants had made three large stacks of hardcover books! A variety of authors and genres, in very good condition and free for the taking! Naturally, I ran back home to grab some bags. Here's the haul:



(Don't worry, I treated them for bed bugs just in case lol) I didn't take everything--maybe a third of what was out there? I mostly just focused on what looked interesting and tried to get an even spread of fiction vs non-fiction. I thought it might be fun to write up some reviews as I work through them. I've already finished Spyder Web (should have left that one in the trash tbh) and I'm almost done with My American Century (much better).

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well. I moved to the east coast in January and have been missing the Midwest something terrible.

After a very intense last few months scrambling to get everything prepared, I successfully defended my thesis at the beginning of December and have finished my PhD.

It feels weird.

I was kind of a mess in my late teens and early twenties. I had no direction, no drive, and no idea how to be an adult. I dropped out of college twice and then fumbled my way through a series of minimum wage jobs until I found one that seemed okay—this gave me some much-needed stability, but at some point I was staring down the barrel of the rest of my life and just thought, "I can't keep doing this."

On little more than a whim, I decided I would go back to school to get the highest degree in a field I had absolutely no natural aptitude for.

That was over 12 years ago.

As I went through the process—community college to undergrad to grad school—I never really had the end goal in mind. I had to keep working full-time for six years until I got to grad school, so I didn't have the time or mental energy to even think about where I was going, beyond "forward." I was just trying to get to the next homework assignment, the next exam, the next semester. I'm still not sure how I got here.

I think that's probably why I'm still trying to sort through my emotions about all of it. At some level I'm proud of myself, and conceptually I understand that I accomplished something monumental, but I haven't been able to bask in that feeling at all. And a big part of that is because I was fortunate enough to land a job halfway across the country, so I've been trying to prepare for all of that. And I'm sure another big part is the lingering adrenaline rush of slapping together a 300+ page dissertation in a matter of months—I know that's not going to disappear overnight. But it's led to this persistent low-grade tension for the past three weeks. I want to properly enjoy this time before my new job, but I just feel off, like there's a constant hum of anxiety trying to convince me I have more to do, I must be forgetting something important, what if the UHaul breaks down on the way to New York, maybe I should have bought the insurance for it, I need to send more emails and make more phonecalls and keep packing, I have to see my family for Christmas and I don't want to, oh my god what do you MEAN I have to go grocery shopping AGAIN?!

I guess I thought graduating would feel more definitive, like the end of a very, very long book. Maybe moving to a new city will give me the sense of closure I'm looking for? I don't know.

As an addendum to yesterday's post, I finally watched the video my wife took of the sendoff in San Francisco.

For the uninitiated, a sendoff is where all the fans line up after a concert and the idols walk down the line, saying goodbye to everyone. It was offered instead of a hi-touch (where the idols stand in place and fans walk by and literally high five them lol) this tour, and honestly it's so much better? There weren't a ton of us there, so the members could actually spend a few seconds with each of us.

When I started learning Korean, I never intended to speak it. It was just supposed to be a way for me to consume content without relying on subtitles. But I had a lot of opportunities this tour to try speaking, and it was so much fun? Though I should probably practice speaking more in situations that aren't quite as high stress lol.

Anyway, here's a short conversation with Yoohyeon.

Transcript:
Me: 고마워 (Thank you)
Yoohyeon: 고마워 항상 (Thank you, always)
Me: 너무 자랑스러워 (I'm really proud of you)
Yoohyeon: 진짜? (Really?)
Me: 진짜 (Really)
Yoohyeon: 너 너무 한국말 잘해! 명예 한국인! (You speak Korean really well! Honorary Korean!)

I missed some of what she said in the moment (especially the "honorary Korean" part lmao), so I'm really glad my wife was able to record it. Also Yoohyeon was so distracted that the manager had to move her along and she kinda skipped over my wife lol. Guess I might have to try for a fancall after all...

Pictures!
And alternative if Imgur breaks again

Okay, so we left off last time with the cryingfest that was the Melbourne Dreamcatcher concert. Our flight to Sydney was at a pretty comfortable spot in the afternoon, so we had time to grab one last breakfast and amazing cappuccino at Otherside Coffee (I miss it!) before taking the shuttle to the airport.

Also I apologize in advance to those hoping for a mostly-travel blog and not a mostly-concert/tetralogy working through her feelings about a Kpop group blog lol.

When we got to Sydney, we were informed that all the metro lines out of the airport were being worked on (on a Saturday??), so there was an exciting few minutes of trying to figure out how the hell to get downtown. We learned very quickly that Sydney is not a cash-friendly city. Or even a card swipe/chip-friendly city. Which would be fine, except 1) the only contactless payment I have is a Discover card, which works exactly nowhere in Australia, and 2) my debit card, which is Visa (and which I remembered to unlock before we left, thank god), does not have touch to pay. Melbourne didn't have this problem; you could use cash to print out a reusable Myki public transit card and then top it up with cash as needed. In Sydney you could only buy a one-way metro ticket with cash, so we ended up only using public transit to get to the airport and back. Not a huge deal, just inconvenient.

( Concert stuff )
( Sydney stuff )

Paging queenlua! (and other bird-loving friends!)

We're back from Australia, and I have a lot of feelings that I don't have the energy to write about just yet, but we saw (and heard!) lots of very fun birds.

I think my favorite was this little guy we didn't get any pictures of. At first I thought it was some random signal going off while we were at the Melbourne Zoo, like it was just a periodic "BEEP" like when you need to change the battery in your smoke detector? But then we heard it again wandering through the botanical gardens, and then I saw it hanging out in a tree and holy shit that's a BIRD??? Google is telling me it's a bell miner, and that definitely matches what I heard. Never heard a bird make a sound like that in my life.

I really had a wonderful time! Hopefully I can talk about it some more when jetlag isn't kicking my ass.

Lately, I've been finding it challenging to stay informed about current events without falling into a pit of despair, something I'm sure I'm not alone in struggling with.

Things I've found helpful, or at least not harmful:

1. Resist the urge to follow breaking news

With how chaotic everything has felt day to day, it's hard to avoid checking the news constantly. But if I do that, as soon as I wake up there's this immediate feeling of dread, like "what fresh pile of bullshit is getting dumped on our doorsteps today?" And then this feeling continues throughout the day, because what if something happens that I need to get mad about?? (spoiler alert: it will!).

So I try to avoid reading the news on a daily basis, instead opting for weekly news roundups that I read through on Saturday mornings. They tend to be a little calmer in tone courtesy of hindsight, and something about the longer format makes them feel more informative than shotgunning quick blurbs during the week. I don't necessarily like reading them, but I also don't want to be completely ignorant about what's going on in the world.

2. Stick to sources and avoid reactions of others, especially strangers

AKA "never read the comments." I'm wary about social media at the best of times, but when it comes to politics and current events, I avoid it like the plague and block/mute without mercy when I can't. It's a hotbed of overwhelming emotions, judgements, and shallow thoughts, and I don't really like being told how to feel about an issue, thanks. I much prefer to read an article and come to my own conclusions about it, rather than marinating in everyone else's opinions. I'm a bit more lenient if the discussion is coming from acquaintances or friends, but I've occasionally had to set boundaries to maintain my mental health if it just seems like every conversation is devolving into a bitchfest.

3. Worry when you need to worry, and not before

I'm a researcher at a public university and gay-married to a Mexican immigrant, which means I'm regularly bombarded by well-meaning but exhausting questions about if I still have a job/if ICE has detained my wife/if I'll even legally have a wife in the near future and shouldn't I be more worried about all of those things??? My response to this has always been, "We're fine, thank you for asking, and I'll worry when I need to worry."

This is probably the hardest thing to practice, but it's something I learned after my wife's cancer diagnosis. You can agonize over the future, try to map every possible outcome, and imagine how you'll deal with each of those outcomes in painful, vivid detail, but it will not help you if the thing you fear actually comes to pass. You'll just hurt twice--or many more times, depending on how much you ruminate. I do not know what will happen (and neither do you, or anyone else). I will deal with it when it does. In the meantime, I have work to do and a life to live, and I can't do either of those things if I'm wracked with anxiety.

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I'm curious how everyone else (American and otherwise) is dealing (or not dealing) with it all. Do you feel more comfortable getting a firehose of news blasted in your face, or do you prefer sticking your head in the sand, or are you somewhere in the middle? No judgement from me either way!