Why I Feel Average

I'm feeling a bottleneck of emotions right now so here's a break from my usual program to pour out some thoughts. Pardon the authenticity...

One of my driving modes in life is to always share kindness and compassion with and for other people. And when I fail, I will accept all that life has to teach me about kindness and compassion, even when it reveals the ugly side of my egocentricity. I'm not trying to be a saint or anything, I just strongly believe that this world is better forged in love. Maybe I watched too much Disney and other movies as a kid... because, honestly,

"I want to see the world with eyes unclouded by hate." 

Maybe it's cheesy and maybe there are few people in this world that genuinely believe in the "power of love/friendship," as trite as the idea is in movies and popular media. Maybe I just feel more than the average person. Maybe I'm just naive and I've been brainwashed to want to "change the world/my community." Maybe it's all just empty emotion paralyzing me. I can't change the world with just a feeling... and sometimes I feel like these feelings aren't genuine, either. Because it's so difficult to trust the cheesiness of it all.

Maybe, after all, I'm just an average woman.

I'm especially tormented by my averageness when I feel envious, jealous, insecure, or irrational. Illustrate this with my most recent struggles with poverty mentality, body image, an overwhelming need to be validated by my loved one(s), and, most debilitating, a repressed tendency for social comparisons followed by a hidden obsession with social media stalking.

I've grown a lot over the past decade... but I still struggle and I still waste energy and mental bandwidth over these. The best example is this (and this is taking a lot of vulnerability to write): I've never been one to be jealous over exes but when she's a big part of your boyfriend's past, it's hard not to run into her ghosts, like when the world's smallness leads you to meet his high school friends, one of whom you met your boyfriend through. It's somewhat validating to hear that M and I are better matched but, even when this feeds my need for validation, I cringe at the hint of self-satisfaction I get. The only way I can cope with this is by telling myself how much I care about M and that, no matter who the ex was, what she looked like, how different they were, how different we are, she was a huge part of his life. She helped shape his personality, his viewpoints, his weirdness. I love him for those things and ergo, whoever she was, I'm thankful for her and she must be an awesome person to have been a part of his life for so long. I think this is a wonderful and very human way to see such a situation. And, when I have setbacks, this thought often moves me forward. With it, I've made a lot of progress.

Similar coping thoughts keep me forward in other aspects of my life. My body image has improved over the years but I still feel extremely insecure about my muscular and fuller build and body fat percentage. Now that I'm back to full activity, I have no excuses for myself. If I had any self-respect and real self-compassion, I would do what it takes to feel fitter and healthier instead of moping. I've learned to love my muscles and my curves but I'm angry about the body fat. So I wake up in the morning at 6:30 and hit the hills at 7am and most of the time, I really don't want to but by the end, I feel alive again.

It's that feeling of being alive, that feeling of self-respect, that rewards me along the journey. I just need to tackle my "averageness" with determination and wake up each day and...

"DO IT!!" *unh*

I've been unproductive in the past, paralyzed at my most emotional moments. And at those times, I've wished I wasn't so damn emotional. I find that while emotions can be an excellent driving force for action, it definitely seems easier to make yourself devoid of emotion completely. It's less painful, less vulnerable. Emotions as a driving fuel is like trying to harness solar or hydro- power--it can be limitless, renewable, powerful... but they're highly dependent on the weather and difficult to store. Fossil fuels (reason?), in the meantime, are so much more reliable until you learn how to utilize and manage your emotions properly.

Maybe humanity can't really ever let go of emotions because emotions succeed at making you feel alive whereas pure reason would make you feel robotic. It infuses life into what you do. It makes you more compassionate and kind, to yourself and to others. It makes you feel "human," whatever that means.

And if that's average, maybe we all need to be a little bit average...

Recently Watched: Inside Out (2015)
Currently Listening: About You (Fine Print)
Currently Reading: Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays (David Foster Wallace, 2005)

Fine Print - About You

Pride is something we all hide behind. Maybe life teaches what is justified. 
I must confess the past is not behind me yet.
Bring down my name--it only serves to slow me down. 

You know I felt like love was never gonna claim me, every fall was fraught with the sense of going under. But when I think about you babe, it all goes away, the skies have been blue lately (the weather's changing here)... when I think about you babe, when I think about you...

Turning tides is something that is slowly done but deep inside there's nothing we can't overcome. 
Then there are some days when nothing seems to go my way. And all my mistakes: loud as burning thunder. 

And it felt like love was never gonna claim me and it felt so hard to keep from going under.  But when I think about you babe, it all goes away, the skies have been blue lately (the weather's changing here).... when I think about you babe, when I think about you.

Life Updates: Full-Time at UCSF

I no longer have two jobs!

I'm at the Department of Physiological Nursing full time now, under a professor whose name is homonymous with Dr. Who. My main responsibilities include data science (data acquisition, data analysis, data interpretation, database management), project management (running operations for our SuperAlarm project at superalarm4patients.com), and research (my own research project- integrating medications into our SuperAlarm algorithm).

It's very stimulating being here full time as it is fully collaborative within this lab. The School of Nursing and the School of Medicine seem to have very different cultures. Where SON is much more team-oriented, collaborative, and social, SOM seems much more standalone and consists of little islands of research. SOM is still collaborative, but not as intensively as it is where I currently work. In physiological nursing, everyone gets a taste of everyone else's projects and, while being serious about patient care and our expertise, we always try to cultivate teamwork in both social and professional ways.

I really liked my job at Ophthalmology and had the opportunity to travel to Europe thanks to Dr. Damato. The most exciting part about that job was being a part of a technological movement towards patient-centered care. We worked to bring patient-reported outcomes to Ocular Oncology, made headway in creating a database for clinical outcomes in ocular oncology, and integrated that database into our existing EMR (Epic). There are still avenues to return if I want to stick to a career in health IT.

While health IT will always be essential knowledge, a long career in it is not my "Big Dream."

Luckily, one thing I'm starting to love about UCSF (or at least the group I'm with) is that you're allowed to dream and you can make it happen. I'm working my way up to it

Life Updates: ACL Chronicles at 7 Months

Return to full activity

Basketball

Now that the post-operative seventh month mark has passed, I've cleared myself for full activity. So I visited Berkeley to play basketball again with my spicy cilantro team... but in my excitement, I got attacked by a fence and suffered a 2 inch gash on my eyebrow. For a while I had a grey eye (it wasn't so bad as to call it a black eye) that I covered up with extra eye shadow.

Half Dome

In a twist of fate, I also celebrated my return to full activity by hiking Half Dome, a bucket list item I had for about four years now. Thanks to @elainejsu and her sister, I took up the offer for an extra permit for an EPIC Yosemite trip!

We started our hike at 4am and arrived at the cables at 9:30am. Almost to my disappointment, there was no ranger present to check our permits at the top. I've heard that if you start early enough, you might make it in time before the ranger comes and you won't need a permit. A riskier endeavor on weekends, I'd guess. I'll have to do Half Dome again for a SUNRISE HIKE!

Beat the Blerch!

In a previous post, I gave myself some pretty lofty running goals and trained for about 3-4 weeks before I started getting shin splints. I did too much too soon after getting back from surgery.

I've dialed down on the ambition and I'll just try to build my cardiovascular endurance back to 10km. My sister got me to sign up for Beat the Blerch in Sacramento on November 14th. Sixteen weeks to build back up from 1 mile to 6.2 miles.

I'm excited!

Other Active Plans

- Climbing gym at Planet Granite from mid-August through December.

- Archery lessons at SF Archers in February (hooray for living close to a non-profit archers club!) 

- Add to bucket list: Summit Mt. Shasta (Summer 2016)

- Add to bucket list: Outdoor bouldering at Joshua Tree (Winter 2015-16)
- Add to bucket list: Hike through the Grand Canyon! (Spring 2016)

Experiences with the Poverty Mentality

I've always thought I had a "chip on my shoulder" when it came to my socioeconomic background and struggling immigrant parents. It doesn't sound terrible but it's evolved into a struggle with a festering poverty mentality, an attitude that is focused and obsessed with money, or the lack thereof. It can easily prevent you from actually attaining any sort of wealth or happiness.

There are three warning signs:

#1: A constant fixation with money

#2: Anti-rich people attitude

and the most detrimental:

#3: Fear-based decision-making

A high school friend of mine, who is by modern standards very successful, forced me to face this fact a few months ago. I had finally ended my student life and started making money... but not enough to feel comfortable and certainly not enough to help out my family (#1). So every time we'd talk, I'd bring up how I felt out of place and different from the money makers around me in the Bay Area. 

I was obsessed with the contrast of my upbringing with those of the yuppies of SF and more honestly, my boyfriend. I envied all the excessive things that money could buy, like aerial yoga or rock climbing gym memberships. I was concerned with status. I was concerned with not measuring up to my Bay-bred beau.

I didn't realize it but I was becoming very contemptuous (#2). 

Recently, I was in Lausanne with Marvin (admirable for his steadfast and non-judgmental nature) when I decided to make a concrete change in this mindset. We were walking to Lake Geneva to see the sunset. The expenses of Switzerland weighed heavily on my mind--and thoughts about money proliferate naturally to thoughts such as my pedigree. I asked him about the degrees that his parents had and subsequently lamented over my own parents, whose life struggles prevented one from completing a bachelors. At that moment, I realized I was on the way to ruining a perfectly good evening by subconsciously "guilting" him for having had "more." Even if he didn't feel it directly at that moment, that kind of behavior could easily cause resentment on both sides. And resent can be so, so harmful to the health of a relationship.

At that moment, I said: "I have to stop being so hungup on this... I am where I am now, and worked for it, and where I am is awesome." In Switzerland, no less. With my round trip plane tickets paid for by UCSF.

My hangups about money in Switzerland are another example. The first time we bought train tickets there, my mood irrationally plummeted to the point where I didn't want to spend any more even though I had knew I had set aside enough money for the whole Europe trip. I am always afraid of spending and always afraid of losing, which is markedly different from being frugal and simple. The difference is an irrational fear of loss against a logical understanding of necessity.

It is such wasted energy and such a lack of mindfulness for me to feel this way. 

A chip on my shoulder is good fuel to get you started but let's be real. I'm at a pretty good place now and it's time to mature.

#1: Fixation on playing the my cards to the field is better than a fixation on what I don't have in play.

#2: I could be inspired by the success of others rather than harbor resentment.

#3: My decisions should be more motivated by love and a greater desire to make the world a better place.

Lausanne, Switzerland