uncertainty

it really is funny how life is truly about the journey. and before anyone gets on me for saying cliche things, well sometimes there is always some kind of truth in these things. achieving something is only as worthwhile as a stepping stone. once you have accomplished your set goal, you find yourself looking around and wondering what is next. whether it is a relationship, or marriage, or finishing board exams, or residency, or buying a house, a fitness goal, or whatever - the importance is not the achievement of these things - but rather the maintenance of these good things in your life - and about setting the next goal. 

i used to think to myself, oh i could deal with everything else wrong in my life as long as i made it through med school and residency and passed my boards and found a job. or that life would be complete with a romantic relationship. or the millennial dream of buying a house. and i guess, in hopefully a relatively matter of fact voice, i have achieved those set goals. 

and yet i am still not satisfied. this is privilege speaking, of course. a person without the necessities would probably shake me. but don't get me wrong, i am sincerely grateful and appropriately understanding of my life.

but ultimately it isn't enough to achieve those things - it must be continually worked upon and maintained and used for it to be any good. what good is getting married and not pouring into it to make sure it is a good marriage? 

i think what i'm trying to say is two points.

first, i think that humans (i) will never be satisfied by anything in this world. achievement is transient and fleeting, i will always be looking for the next thing. only God can satisfy, right?

two, good things in life are not just a point in time. a wedding day is lovely, but it is not what is important in my relationship. passing boards is vice grippingly relieving, but being a continual learner and a good physician is more important. buying a house is nice, but the maintenance while i live in it is more important than the day i got keys to the house.  

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i struggle a lot with uncertainty and probably even more with failure. but failure is a therapy session in and of itself, haha. probably some asian culture issues with face concept mixed with being a high achieving but low effort personality, surrounded in a culture and friends that are also high achieving. i worry a lot about applying for fellowship again. sometimes it feels like a lose-lose even though i always verbally word it as a win-win when i talk to people. i joke, well either i get the fellowship or i make money! how can i lose? but not getting in would feel like a failure. sigh. 

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technically it is my birthday today. i actually forgot while writing the previous parts of this post, even though i got cake and gifts from steph and stephen. idk this probably should have been a happier post on looking back of last year (which actually is chock full of positive life milestones: passing boards, finishing residency and chief year, getting a job, buying a house, getting a dog, getting married, able to hold a headstand haha). i'm just in a pensive/depressive mood i suppose. i did have a wonderful year as a thirty year old woman. i am looking forward to see what thirty one brings. maybe just maintenance of all the good things that happened this year. maybe a fellowship. who knows?  

Post Wedding

 We finally did it. After basically a year, we finally did it. It was lovely and beautiful and basically perfect. I am so lucky to have such wonderful friends stand by me. S flying all the way from Hawaii and lifting sand bags, S from Cali post partum!!, and N even though she was worried about COVID. I am really so lucky. My family, my friends, his family and friends, good food (best thing was the salmon and the mashed potatoes), a fun time, a beautiful dress, a beautiful venue, a hot but sunny day, and all the vendors who made the day easy. 

I do wish I could have tried the hor doerves, but ah well haha.

And also precious was just the time my bridesmaids came to just sit and talk with me at home after the ceremony. I wish I had so many more days just to hang out with everyone.  

I do think I regret just a little bit of not writing our own personal vows. But I might just make us do that for an anniversary or something.

Stephen is not someone I dreamed of marrying when I was younger and making up characteristics of my future husband as a lark. But he is what I didn't know I needed. To accept me as I am no matter how stressed out or cranky I get, teases me out of a bad mood, lifts me up (literally, a lot of the time), clever and witty - he keeps life interesting; for me, who finds life boring so many times. Pushes me to stop procrastinating, to go to the gym, to pursue the things I want to pursue. He wants me to succeed and accomplish my goals. He loves deeply. I never doubt him or his sincerity. He is not afraid to speak his mind, even if it is unpleasant or controversial; and I admire that. I love his loyalty to his friends and family. He is competent, takes care of problems, a source of stability. He is not perfect. He has lots of flaws. We disagree on things. I am not perfect. I have lots of flaws. And I can't imagine life without him anymore. Or if I could, it would be very, very hard. 

How do you even know someone is the right person for you? I've thought about that so many times before him. I still don't have a good answer. Questions like, what does love feel like? I still don't know how to answer that. Love and marriage is such a weird thing. This is the person you choose. For the rest of your life, hopefully. How do you know? As someone who likes concrete answers and actionable items... this is an impossible questions because there is literally no right answer. 

 And yet... I still got married. 

Love is a mysterious thing.  

Just ramblings

 I have had a lot of thoughts in the last few months, heck even years. I have been neglecting blogging these days, mostly from lack of motivation. And with that, lost some of my reflections on going ons. I have had a lot of big life changes recently. Gotten engaged, then courthouse married, and now ceremony married. I bought a house, got a dog, passed my boards, found a new job, am now in my thirties. I technically hit a lot of "life milestones". Of course yes I am happy, I am content. But the predominant feeling is a sense that - life goes on. No matter the decisions you make, life keeps going along and we all get older. Time stops for no one and we must make the most of the short time we have on earth. 

Relationships has been the area of biggest growth for me, for obvious reasons. And I have come to the realization that truly my upbringing has stunted me emotionally romantically. Stephen had to break down all my walls and conservation about dating, he waited patiently for me to accept that we were even dating, he gave me space but was intentional about meeting. He pursued, he waited, he was certain about his own feelings. And I think that if left to my own thoughts and devices, I might never have found or dated anyone. I am lucky he waited for me. But yeah, he's lucky he found me too ha. 

I don't think marriage changes anything big. It simply announces and confirms what is already there and places a label on it for the rest of the world to understand. But the day to day? Exactly the same. I wonder what the future holds.   

Children

 Stephen's niece came to stay with us for a week and it was interesting... I have firmly realized that I am not very good with children. I think it stems from a lack of being around them in general. I just don't really know what to do with them. Rachael is a sweet girl and I think there is some lingering... trauma? or slight hole in her heart from having divorced parents and really never seeing her mom except for maybe 1 week of the year. And I, the now designated Aunt Rainbow Pancakes (a nickname I don't quite understand), am somehow one of the few older female figures she has in her life. It's unsettling. 

I had a lot of thoughts this week. Ranging from how spoiled would my kids be. How hard it is to say no. How I can worry about a kid's future that isn't technically mine. How Stephen is with kids. How to get a picky kid to eat different foods. How to entertain an 11 yo. How much technology is okay - and also how to model good behavior with technology.... I think, in the end, I do pretty well with responsibility. If there's something that needs to be done and I can do it, I generally can fulfill that role. But sometimes that role is a little ambiguous when it comes to kids.

I hope it really is different with my own kids in the future. I hope it gets more natural. 

blogging

out of nostalgia, I spent the last 30 min or so just rereading my blog. And I haven't even gotten to the end of all the words I've written. Accumulated over years (actually now I think it's officially at least a decade) of my life. And I am transported back to those memories. 

And the strangest, strangest thing is that rereading the words that I've written.... I've forgotten that I wrote some of those posts. And reading those words that I've written, it feels like my past self knew me more than I know myself sometimes. Those odd musings, those random thoughts, the strange epiphanies, they all become fleeting memories when the humdrum of life floods my brain and erases those moments. 

Perhaps I used to be more thoughtful back then. 

Do you ever feel like you change so much and so little all at the same time?

time of year

it's getting to that time of year where i have to start wondering about my future again.

where am i going to go
what am i going to do

but if i really look back on the past (omg) 7 years, i could never have predicted i would end up here.

it's all in God's hands.

and yet i worry. anxiously wondering what the future holds.

Choice

Do you believe faith and belief is a choice? Or is it something that is?

Is it like love, where some say it is a choice to go through with the actions of love even though you may not feel the neurons firing and the “feeling” of love?

Is attraction a choice? I don’t think so. Attraction and sexuality are things that simply are.
Someone that says I just don’t find so and so attractive has every right to say that.
But can you say I just don’t believe and that’s how it is. Or I just don’t love them, and that’s how it is.