what might have been

well. i am really embarrassed right now. i've been in the process of archiving all my old e-mails, and as a result, a lot of older correspondence has come floating to the surface of my inbox. one unread piece has been bugging me for a couple weeks now, so i went ahead and clicked on it, with the intention of glancing through and then archiving it once and for all. it turns out that this e-mail was NOT what i've been thinking it was.

i guess last year i started filling out an americorps vista application, but i THOUGHT that i decided to hold off on finishing it. i guess... that was not actually the case? this e-mail, just over a year old, was an offer of a job interview with an organization that i probably would have been thrilled to work for. craaaaaaap! i feel terrible now, but the reason i never opened it is because i assumed it was a random americorps update that i wasn't interested in reading at the time.

last february... i was seriously looking for a job. if i'd managed to get this position, i would still be in san francisco now, just finishing up the year-long commitment. what on earth would the past 12 months have been like if that were the case? it's enough to make a girl wonder if she's really better off the way things are now.

oh well, there's a lesson for me: READ ALL YOUR FRIGGIN E-MAILS.

ok, correction: i would have been in concord, NH, not san fran, but that just makes it even crazier. i think i feel bad mostly because i never responded. like, i'm sure they contacted lots of people besides me, but it seems so impolite. and now that i look at the details, yeah, i would have enjoyed this immensely. alas!

This time next year

Insane. So this thought has been slowly digging at me for the past few days, and every time I acknowledged it I'd sort of be in awe, and then get distracted by something else enough that the thought lost its relevance, only to stew around a little longer, getting more relevant as time wore on. Ok, I know I said just a "few" days, but it's been a weird week for time, what with the long weekend.

Anyways, one of the tasks I have set for myself at the library is to catalogue, label, and store a box-load of CDs that was left in my possession back at the beginning of my tenure here, as well as all the new ones that get recorded as we continue to have programs. At first it seemed like a pretty daunting order, because someone's really been neglecting these things for a while now, but with a trusty (or as trusty as it gets) mail merge set up in Word, it's going way faster than I'd ever anticipated. In fact, I have already completed pretty much every program that I have been present for, and am now moving on into the territory they usually call "before my time."

It's eerie, really, and I'm having trouble articulating why, to now be faced with all of these program names and speakers to which I have absolutely no emotional attachment. Trying to come up with a proper comparison has only led me to remember what I read about the Capgras delusion on wikipedia. Documenting these CDs hasn't exactly been a pleasant stroll down memory lane, or nostalgic at all for that matter, but I was getting used to expecting familiar titles and flier layouts, and such. First of all, to have rushed through that whole time span in a matter of hours was jarring, and I admit I'm a little confused when I look at some of these old program fliers, since information that I now expect to find in certain places is now hidden elsewhere.

It's been like going through a geological sample, watching the devolution of style (not to say that it gets worse, or to say that it doesn't) as the dates go farther back. It's just weird to suddenly be among such unfamiliar objects, and also a little weird to think that while these were being recorded by people I may or may not know, I was somewhere else entirely doing something else entirely.

Which actually leads to the thought I referenced at the start of this whole thing. I have been here almost a year. While it's unlikely that I'll continue loitering here until September (I'm not planning on it at least), that would mark a year of being *here* and that's hard for me to grasp. In less than three months I will have been back on home turf (as it were) for a full year.

A year ago today, this whole situation was as distant from me as the moon. Actually, no... more distant, because I can see the moon pretty clearly. What was I doing? May 29, 2007 (ok, technically May 30). I guess I would still have been teaching as if it weren't no thang. Riding the bus to China Care a few days a week. Breaking out the tank tops for summer. Buying those shorts and capris probably happened at some point around here. Stopping by the fruit stand, drinking lots of water, getting tofu after classes with Russ & Dave, perhaps watching YooHee with Alice and Tara, interviewing teachers, stopping by the French restaurant, reading Lolita, listening to the Stars, shopping at the new grocery store, eating modified ma la chuan and squid and diao zha bing and popsicles, sitting by my window, dreaming about coming home. The entire month of June is missing from my blog, so I have no record of it except for the dates embedded in my digital photos, but I'm assuming that I was busy enough that I didn't waste much time reflecting on it. I wonder if I knew already at the end of May that I'd be spending the rest of my summer in Beijing? I mean, a quick gmail search could answer that question for me, but I'd rather just pose it. I'm wondering if I ever mentioned the frisbee game that we struck up one afternoon, or our various attempts at badminton, or that one housewarming party I went to with Alice.

So it's weird, to be removed from all that by the length of a year. And a strange year. I've been in San Francisco for about 9 months, and I'm still of the mindset that it's temporary. The result is, of course, that I'm even more disconnected from the people around me than even new transplants. It's awkward, but I get the feeling that I don't want to invest myself too much in my surroundings because I *should* pick up and go.

Ok, that was personal. But anyways, should I pick up and go? I'm committed until the end of July, at which point, I ought to have a next step. I don't really remember how to set that up, nor do I really know what I would count as a valid "next step" anyways. What am I going to do in August that will eventually lead me through the course of another year, back to yet another today? That is a very good question.

Part of me says very much that I should just go back to China, no matter what it takes, because something interesting is just bound to happen there. What a bizarre rationale. But...

A very brief entry today, since a WAC program is about to start... I'm just still feeling a lot of anxiety right now, and rather than obsess about it to someone else AGAIN, I'll just unload here.

Basically I just want to angst about the job I've been trying to get. During this whole process, it just seemed very clear to me that this opportunity was somehow tied in to all the random decisions and detours I've been taking since I missed that flight in Shanghai in 2005. People have been telling me not to worry, but it's really hard for me not to. As I explained to a co-worker last week, I want this job so bad that I can't even imagine applying for any other positions right now. I don't think I could be convincing about having a passion for whatever field, or the necessary level of experience for any other job. It's like... now I know exactly what it should feel like to know that you're perfect for something or that something is perfect for you. It would be quite the emotional blow to be rejected for something I was so ready for, and I am having trouble picturing myself getting it all together to start applying and interviewing for random office jobs again.

More importantly, not getting this job might quite literally shatter my entire worldview. The whole basis of my relentless optimism and goodwill... my patience... the very nature of my cosmos... that's what's at stake here.

And that's why I'm so concerned.


I'm really trying to scrape together a psychological contingency plan here, but it doesn't seem like it's really working... though I suppose this is one of those parachutes that you really can't test until the ground really starts coming up at your face.

Mondays can be like this

Ah, today... was a good day that didn't seem at first like it was going to be very good. As I was packing my things this morning, my mom called, rather unexpectedly, to tell me that some company was denied a charge on my credit card and sent a collection notice complete with a $15 fine, also unexpected. The charge was related to the membership fee for the climbing gym, and we did have issues with that last week, but I assumed that they had been resolved. What I was really peeved over was the $15 fee, especially since I'm positive that I wasn't at fault in this situation in any way-- I'd just paid the balance on my card a few days prior, and it was nowhere near topped out to begin with. So my mom said she'd scan the letter to me, and I resolved to take care of it when I got to work.

I left at 8:30 this morning because I just needed to do something other than sleep in from now on. Last week was nice... nowhere to be until 1pm so I remained stubbornly in bed until perhaps 11 every day. But as cozy as that is, it gets old when you're already feeling pretty useless, and so today I went ahead and started volunteering my free time to do random office tasks for Transfair, an organization that I would have liked to had interned for, but whatever. My feeling is that volunteering is similar to interning, if less focused and intensive, but equally unpaid. Also, I've been dying to get to know this org a little better because fair trade is one of those interests that I'd consider pursuing academically and then professionally, out there in future-land. Anyways, the environment there was really nice-- their office space is huge and everyone on the staff was very friendly. I got a fairly menial task, though it was one I could appreciate. But also I got a nice cup of coffee, which had me buzzed etc. for most of the day. I'm headed back in tomorrow and really looking forward to it.

Then, on my way to work, I gave away an 85 cent BART ticket I've had sitting around in my pocket for months, and then made it just in time for the train. I listened to music I enjoyed. The weather was nice.

Once I got up to the library, I tackled the whole creditor issue with every ounce of self-righteousness I could muster. The thing is though, no matter how worked up I get, I can never bring myself to be rude to customer service agents over the phone. This is probably a good thing though. Anyways, I called the company, and the rep said that the charge eventually went through and they already took the fee, which is non-refundable. I was slightly indignant. I mean, if I wrote my card number down correctly and it was copied wrong by others, or if I paid my credit card bill and they denied it anyway, or if someone input the expiration date wrong or whatever, then... the fact that something went wrong has a lot less to do with me than it does with points elsewhere in the system, is that correct? That they arbitrarily charge a fee to the first person they see just seems sort of unfair.

Anyways, I followed that call with one to my card company, who directed me to call customer service at my credit union. Both parties insisted that they saw no attempted charge for the alleged day and made suggestions as to how I should approach the fee-takers. I called back and explained the way I saw the situation, and after two awkwardly long and silent transfers, I got put through to a supervisor who very straightforwardly told me that I had a right to see my money refunded THIS TIME. It was very reliant on the fact that it was the first time anything like this had happened, but I'm assuming it helped that it was probably not my fault in the first place. I'd been sitting in the stairwell at work while this all took place just to avoid making any scenes in front of lunching co-workers, but every once in a while, someone would have to use the stairs, and I just felt awkward having this petty financial dispute on my cell phone in there. But in any case, I fought the Man and won, so what up.

When I picked up the library mail this morning, I was delighted to find my arms just full of stuff. But also, among all that stuff, was a list of labels that I ordered last week, meaning that I could finally complete an odyssey of book-cataloging that I had begun and left incomplete my first day on the job (because I had to wait for the labels). Also, I had two other jobs to keep me busy. So I was fairly busy all day, wrapping and labeling books and other time-consuming things. When the day was almost out, I decided to take a look at the steps in cataloging that involved importing and whatnot with this outrageously stand-offish system that we utilize, and ended up in a battle of wills against that until after the library officially closed. I left about half an hour later tonight, so I figured I might as well stay for the remainder of the lecture going on downstairs, which was a little... random. It was funny cuz I wrote a lot of the planted questions that got asked and was feeling bashful because of it. But also, my questions were not eliciting the interesting answers I thought they would. But whatever

Then I left, had some company on my way to the BART, and after some inexplicable delays in East Bay, got home, ate, and showered. And now I'm here.

So, I actually had something worthy of being tagged "Advice" in this ridiculous blog, but I've forgotten what it was, and now I doubt that I'll even be able to benefit from whatever incredible piece of knowledge it was. Sigh.