i had two very distinct events with different sets of women today. in my lunch with sunhee, maria, and cynthia, i believe i was the youngest there, and we were all single. the conversation undoubtedly meandered to dating and being single.

maria actually directed the conversation there, as she's in the middle of writing a "how to date book" for men. although there is no doubt that it's needed, i am skeptical.

tonight, i had four women over to my house, and all of them are in long term relationships of some sort -- marriage or something similar. i am the oldest of this crew and i am the only single one. we got into an interesting conversation about what people want to do and what they actually do. sometimes it's not as cut and dry as i sometimes imagine. i have a luxury that some of these women do not. my responsibility is only to myself. i do not have children, husband, or mortgage. it's just me and my student loan payments.

*****

i made meat for the first time in years. i think it turned out pretty well, although i didn't taste it. who knows. they seemed to like it, but i don't think they would have said anything otherwise. i used this recipe.

i'm stuffed.

although this came from my horoscope, it's something applicable to everyone.

"Happiness is about finding joy in the simple and routine things that must get done, [insert name here]. Try not to see tasks and chores as something that you necessarily need to loathe as you do them. Set your mind into a framework in which you find pleasure and satisfaction in attending to details like watering the plants."

*****

i'm late. i am meeting wendy and brooke at the farmers market at 9. i'm still in my robe. today is going to be a busy day. lunch, cleaning, dinner at my house. should be fun!

it's friday night, and i just had dinner at home. i actually went into work this afternoon. i *worked* for 2.5 hours and then hit the gym. the drive home was relatively painless in spite of the rain the started as i approached the city.

now, i'm trying to decide what to do tonight. rebecca just called and is going to call me in a bit after she eats dinner with some people she just met tonight. i don't know that i feel like going out for a drink.

as i was running today, i thought about how sluggish i felt, and i know it's cuz of the drinking from last night. yikes. i think i had one too many cocktails. i didn't get sick or anything, but i'm fairly certain that i woke up this morning a bit hung over, in spite of the slice of cable car pizza i had at 12.15am.

i'm kind of leaning towards staying in tonight. reading a bit. maybe organizing a bit. tomorrow's actually a full on girls day for me. i have lunch with three women at farallon then a wine tasting girls dinner in the evening at my house. i also want to meet up with hill later tomorrow night, if i'm inspired.

wendy wants to meet at 16th and 3rd tomorrow morning at 8.35am. she runs from her house to the farmers market at the ferry building every saturday. i don't know that i'm going to make it there. i have a feeling that i'm going to sleep well tonight.

*****

last night, i ran into a guy i haven't seen in a while.... probably since november. everytime i see him, we hang out, but we've never really made an effort to plan to spend time together. the last time i saw him, i got his number, but i'm never good at initiating, and i wasn't sure what the purpose of it was. i mean, i am attracted to him, and i think he's fun, but i wasn't sure that there was much beyond that.

we talked quite a bit last night. alcohol makes me chatty. i have a feeling that i talked a lot. i got to know him more last night than i have in previous conversations. there's definitely more there, but i still don't know what the point of hanging out would be. it would probably just be fun, which is fine, and in some ways it's probably perfect for me right now.

with my intention to take off for a while in a year or so, it doesn't make a lot of sense to get into something *heavy* right now. although, if i met someone and i felt like it was really something unique, i might consider taking off. that's an interesting thought, actually. i don't know if that's just my subconscious fear of leaving, or if i actually value a relationship more than the trip and time off.

as i learned from a comment today, *checking out* is slang for committing suicide. i guess in need a new phrase or term. i think i'm going to call it my renaissance. i've been called a renaissance woman, cuz of my various interests - ceramics, violin, various sports, intellectual interests. however, i think the impending time off will engender a new flavor.

i'm tired today, but i had a productive day. i still felt good. however, i'm planning to spend some time tomorrow morning in meditation. it's time.

tonight, i'm NOT working. i'm going out to the bambuddha lounge to have a cocktail or three with some friends and colleagues. i'm looking forward to it. genghis has graciously offered to pick me up. what a sweetheart.

what i do today will set the tone for the year. it's going to be a great one!

talked to mom this morning. she gets it. she sees how this is the best time to take a year off and travel. i'm lucky. she gets it.

if anyone knows how to read japanese, please let me know what this says.

*****

i got sit today. can't wait to read it.

*****

had a better than expected run. is it still the meditation? is it the new focus on checking out? is it just today? who knows. who cares. i just feel GOOD.

it may be time to hit the gym. it's almost 6.30, and i'm losing focus. i decided against yoga tonight, as my arms and stomach are feeling thrashed. i think i'm going to have an easy workout, go home, do a little more work and go to bed. i have a feeling i'll be in early tomorrow as i am meeting with a partner company tomorrow.

i need to reply to an email soon. it's not a big deal, and i'm sure it would be fine if i never replied to it. but, i want to. and, i know i need to be clear headed when i write it.

*****

last night i found out that a friend of mine lost his/her job. the position was *eliminated*. wow. i have no perspective on this at all. it's not ego or arrogance, but i haven't ever been laid off or fired. i've never quit a job without another job, either. there's a lot i haven't done. this is clear. however, it reminded me again, that in 5 minutes your life can be completely different. unfortunately, it seems that lately, i've been hearing about turn of events that are generally negative.

the optimist in me thinks that they will all work out for the best.
the realist in me thinks that it could go either way.
the fatalist in me knows that everything happens for a reason.

*****

quotes that i keep thinking about ...
albert camus: "What gives value to travel is fear."
henry miller: "If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having."
wook kim: "enjoy everyday as it is, as good or as bad as it is, you are living today, not tomorrow and yesterday has already passed"

*****

in a conversation with wook last night, he suggested that i write self help books or create a self help program, the self promotion program. interesting. i've never really thought about this, but strangely, it makes sense to me right now.

surprisingly, i feel strong and positive today. i didn't get enough sleep last night. after a productive night of work, i finally got to bed after 1. i didn't fall asleep instantly as i anticipated, and i had strange dreams.

today i realized that it was probably due to the tea i drank yesterday. when i went to get tea today at work, i realized that the tea had caffeine. maybe yesterday's tea wasn't the caffeine-free green tea that i thought it was. i had chamomille instead.

i had a pretty productive day at work. tuesday is boxing night, and i expected a hard night. i was surprised at my energy. yesterday, i worked out harder than usual, and i thought for sure i would feel it today. i am pleasantly surprised. i feel strong and energetic.

i've been talking to more friends about this checking out thing. mike suggested that i wait until my original options fully vest. they are a very low price, and it would only be an additional 6 months from my anticipated departure date. what's another 6 months? i don't know that i could last that long. he made a good point, though. i could save more money and still take short vacations. this might be a prudent option, but is any of this really prudent?

talking to people about this gives me more inspiration to do it. it also makes me more accountable for doing it.

tonight i talked to a friend of mine in ny. she wasn't in great shape tonight, and we talked about getting out of our comfort zones and trying something different. our problems are similar in that neither of us really knows what we *want*. she said that a year off sounded wonderful, but that she couldn't do it cuz she is married. i told her that married people do it, too, alone even. her constructs keep her from doing it. i suggested a week or 10 days alone, somewhere. maybe the desert. maybe a ranch. somewhere that would take her out of her urban settings. they seem empty to her now, played out, uninteresting. i guess that's what they are ultimately; empty in lots of ways.

in spite of the fact that i'm not really sure if my energy and focus are due to the 20 minutes of meditation on sunday, i suggested it to her. there have to be zen centers in nyc. looking inward is always a good thing. over an im conversation with another friend at work today, he asked if i needed some spiritual tuning. i told him that EVERYONE needs spiritual tuning. how true.

i have yet to find the time to meditate since sunday. i doubt it's going to happen tonight. however, i'm hoping to go to an integral yoga class tomorrow night, which sounds a lot more like meditation than yoga. i'm hoping that this will provide more clarity and time for self-awareness.

my friend in ny told me that i sounded like i was turning into a granola. hmmm ... maybe. however, i'm certainly not looking like one. i'm actually dressing a lot better since the new year. not sure why that is, but it's kind of like a little experiment i'm conducting to see if i get a different reaction from people. too small of a sample set to determine this yet.

i have a lot of work to do tonight, too. however, i'm ok with that. sometimes you have to work, and if everything is fun, what is not fun?

excerpt from my horoscope for 1.20.04

Like your male friends, it's time that you understood that your period of learning is over now. It is absolutely essential that you test yourself in the real world. If you don't, you are never going to stop speculating about what path to take in life, or understand life's meaning. The current opposition between the Moon and Saturn is summoning you to get out of the classroom and into the most effective learning laboratory of all - the real world.

i got a 889k email today. why was it 889k? there NINE photos attached. seven of them were of him and an asian woman.
who was it from? a guy who found my site on the internet. i'm not sure how he found it.

as i read the email, i found that he wanted to be *penpals*. why? presumably, because "... I like your jumping photos! And I think you are cute. I like Asian woman... just returned from 18 days in Thailand and Vietnam - met many of my penpals and had a great time. And no, I did not go out with any bargirls (this time). ..."

just a friendly piece of advice, communicating something like "i like asian women" isn't the best start to any sort of *friendship*. i think that my female asian friends would agree.

i'm not sure why it grossed me out so much to read this. fortunately or unfortunately, this was my first reaction. GROSS.

this whole asian fetish/yellow fever/rice lover thing is strange to me. while i was growing up, i didn't really experience this. it was only in college that i realized that people are open minded about beauty. having spent a lot of time in nyc and now in sf, i've found that people are even more open minded. beauty also comes in lots of shapes and sizes, as well as ethnicities.

i suppose liking asian women or men, for that matter, specifically is no different from liking blondes, tall people, or intellectuals. i don't know. maybe it's my own small mindedness that's making me feel this way. however, i've always been an equal opportunity dater. i've dated tall and short, fat and in shape, black, white, spanish, asian, whatever. that part has never meant that much to me.

i've dated guys who have told me that they have never dated an asian woman before. ok. i guess they want me to know that they're NOT asiophiles.

i've dated guys who after dating me have said "ngb", in this case meaning "no going back", and only dated asian women or have found themselves attracted to asian women, which was not necessarily the case before. interesting. however, my ego suggests that it had more to do with our relationship than purely my ethnicity.

i'm going to assume this guy meant no harm, but what's the upside to saying something like that? in some ways, it's just as bad as saying "i hate asian women." suffice it say, that saying something like that is not going to help forge a relationship with me of any sort.

i got an email back from mike pugh today, and i was THRILLED. he suggested a book, and i found it and another that i thought might be good, too.

i'm on my way already.

at around 3 today, i decided that i needed to organize my bedroom. there's a lot to do. i need drawers. i hate the fact that my clothes are just stacked in the open.

during a conversation with lanha and talk about *checking out*, she pointed me to this site. wow. inspirational. i haven't looked through it, but i will.

after talking to her, i decided that i would head to ikea. although it's the land of disposable furniture, and i told myself that i wasn't going to get any more, i thought that maybe disposable was ok for now.

instead of going to ikea, i headed to daly city. i had to return my faulty exercise ball/desk chair at sportmart anyway, and i thought i'd hit target after that. if there wasn't anything there, i would go to ikea tomorrow.

somehow i managed to spend over $300 at target. i don't know what possessed me. i got five things to organize my room. i've assembled one. i have yet to move it into place, as it requires more work.

i decided to take a break and have dinner. i would do some work and read my email while eating. one of the emails i got was this:

Hi Jee -

I was surfing and hit jeethang.com. I bartended
at the Hotel Poseidon in Jaco for a year.
Remember that annoying one-armed tourist? He was
a local, actually. He wasn't retarded, just
physically malformed. And, yes, he was EX-
tremely loud and irritating. Can you imagine
being his bartender? Exactly.

Just got word that he stumbled drunk out the
Backyard in Hermosa on Xmas Eve and got hit by a
car. Died. One part of me has the human empathy
side, but the other Darwin Awards side of me has
won out.

Thought that might complete the puzzle a bit.

I'm putting a Jaco section on my site shortly.
I'll let you know so you can relive the glory.

Pura Vida! - [sender]

p.s. from your site, i had a hunch that not only
were you a friendster, but that we were
connected. go figure.

how appropriate for today's thoughts. unfortunately, friendster is being cranky and i've not been able to write him back. i'm interested in hearing how he decided to go to jaco for the year and what it took.

after dinner, i had a craving for ice cream. in spite of it feeling like it's 10 degrees in my house, i went to get some at the corner store. the problem with getting a pint of ice cream is of course the choices. at a parlor, you can get two flavors. in the store, i feel guilty about getting two flavors. i settled on hagen daaz coffee fro yo and wafer cones. they didn't have sugar or waffle.

now, i'm going back to organizing. hopefully this will motivate me to keep my room tidy and to create a space in which to meditate. i haven't really thought about if i'm going to do it tomorrow, but i suppose i should.

****

before i headed out, i did the quick math on checking out for a year. i estimated what it would cost to live here for a year. i would have to keep that saved in case i didn't get a job immediately after i got back.

i looked at the number of options i have and how many i'll get in the next year. i estimated what i would gain from selling the options as they vested. it looks like i could actually do this in a year, if not sooner.

there's so much to think about in planning this year off. i don't even know if a year is enough or maybe too long. i don't know what i'd do or where i'd want to go, but i'll figure it out. i'm definitely going to figure it out.

i got up with the alarm this morning, and i stayed in bed for a few more minutes, waiting for the second one to go. after it didn't, i got up to check it. in my sleepiness last night, i had set it for 8.30pm. no wonder it didn't go off before the first.

instead of my usual large coffee, this morning, i did green tea. no caffeine. i wanted to see how it would be to meditate without the caffeine.

i got to paul's at 10. he wasn't ready to sit yet, so i waited and we chatted while he got a few things done. he asked if i had a good sleep, and i told him that for the past couple of nights i've been dreaming. last night's dream entailed packing things up, stuffing them in boxes. the odd thing was that i was packing things that i hadn't touched for a long time. they were folders and papers i had when i was teaching. i was cramming them into boxes, without worry about their state. i just needed to close the box. he said that it sounded like i was doing some cleaning. clearly. in the next breath, he said not to think about dreams too much. i agree.

there were two places for us to sit. there were two small figures nearby, with an incense receptical in between. we didn't face them. we faced each other. this isn't customary, but he wanted to be able to see how i was doing during the sitting.

i sat on a round, bulbous cushion. the full lotus wasn't as comfortable as the half, so i sat in the half. we talked about posture and general body positioning. we talked about breathing and counting between breaths. one of the most challenging things is the way you keep your gaze, with almost fully closed eyes, you're supposed to look but not look.

he said we'd sit for about 15 minutes. a couple times during it, he reminded me to breathe, to count, to let go, to surrender, to release. we sat for about twenty minutes and it went faster than i thought.

we talked for a while after we had finished. had i had thoughts? yes, but mostly that i felt cold. did i have any pain? no, my legs were fine, but i was feeling a little tingly near my butt.

we walked to get some food down on 18th street, aperto. i told him how i was thinking about checking out and taking off for a while. he said that he would do it if he could, but that now was his time to work hard. i told him that i wasn't sure what was keeping me from it, and that maybe it was a sense of responsibility. he suggested that this was just constructs of responsibility i had. i said that maybe it was escapist. he suggested that the root may be that i'm just searching for something and that there's discontent in my life right now.

over brunch, we talked about the fights he went to see on friday night and the freakshow it was. we talked about life, and where we were at individually. i don't think i'm discontent or unhappy. sure, the main thing i do right now is work. i spend most of my week doing that. however, i do find time to do other things like surf, yoga, and ceramics that make me happy. maybe the amount of time you spend doing those other things doesn't have to be equal to work. sitting for 40 minutes is definitely different and has a different effect on him than being at the gym. i think it's the same for me.

we also discussed at length, the benefits and pitfalls of the internet and computers. wow. we have different opinions about this one. i definitely see both sides. he doesn't. i think it's the individual's choice, like with anything, how he/she is going to use these tools. sure, communication in person, in real time is probably better. however, i also know that there are different affordances that asynchronous communication holds that talking in person does not.

in thinking more about my comment regarding responsibility, i guess the real question is what kind of responsibility do i have to myself? maybe this will be a planning year for me. i want to think about what i would do with the time and how i could spend the money i've saved.

i'm in an interesting position right now. i really could just *check out*.

Word of the Day for Sunday January 18, 2004

irenic \eye-REN-ik; -REE-nik\, adjective:
Tending to promote peace; conciliatory.