Tag: states2021

Hitting Rock Bottom

On By shaoIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I think there are moments of growth when you hit a lowest low. But it’s never easy or fun and sometimes I can’t see the opportunities in front of me or appreciate all of the amazing things in my life. I have so many beautiful friends and I have food and shelter and the opportunity to find work. I have people who love me and I have the opportunity to love abundantly.

I’m working with local Asian American organizations and meeting new people. It feels overwhelming and scary. I’m interviewing for other full-time positions still, but for now I’m an Immigration Justice intern with a Korean/Asian American organization based in Chicago and DC. Sometimes I stay awake at night and wonder if I made the right decision. But I know that everyone leads their life one step at a time the best they can. And it’s okay to miss people. It’s okay to miss places. And know that there is no right way to live. I have to make peace with my decisions and do what is best for me.

I know that I developed really maladaptive coping habits. I’m trying to reframe my emotions as “I feel depressed/sad/anxious” rather than “I am depressed/sad/anxious.” I don’t check in with myself often enough and I often isolate myself from telling others how I feel. This only leads to heartbreak for both sides. I didn’t even tell my therapist how bad it had gotten when I was at my lowest points. I was ashamed. I wanted my therapist to like me, too, so I hid parts of myself. I know that this isn’t the way to live fully or feel supported. I keep seeing videos pop up about anxious-avoidant attachment styles and I wish that I wasn’t like this. But knowing I am and doing something to work on myself is important. I can’t hate myself. I have spent so much of my life hating myself and that hasn’t gotten me anywhere where I feel better.

I’m scared of change. And scared of not changing. I want to make a difference in the world, but feel so much anxiety thinking about the responsibility. Before I switched medications, I was oversleeping. I wouldn’t want to get out of bed. I lost a lot of weight. Now that I have more things to do, I sleep fitfully. Anxious to always do something, anxious if I mess up. It’s okay to feel anxious. I know that I’m doing my best. I don’t need to earn money like a millionaire. I just want to live happily and be with friends and eat out once in a while.

Doing work in equity spaces does get heavy, though. You’re constantly confronted with the injustices of the world and have to think about how to help others. How do I help myself? How do I handle these emotions? The world isn’t a bad place. I don’t want to believe it. But I know that capitalism and racism and systems of oppression make it so much harder for some than others. And I know that people are working for better. I know that I can find joy in the small things. And I want to. I want to romanticize my life. I want to be happy cooking and hanging out with my sister. I want to laugh with coworkers and feel secure in myself. I will. I’m learning.

Here are some things that have been keeping my spirits up lately:

  • Bonding time with Kelsey, not arguing as much, dreaming about where we’ll be
  • Doing yoga/work outs with friends ❤ We’ve been doing a 3 week challenge and seeing each other online every day makes me really happy. So does yoga and being more intentional with my body
  • Meeting new people at my internship. They’re all pretty young and so intelligent and passionate! I get discouraged sometimes, but I love their passion
  • Watching WandaVision with my friend
  • Getting more grounded in where I am… This is hard. I have moved around so often that I cling to people to help me feel safe somewhere. I want to be able to self-soothe and enjoy my life and purpose. I don’t dream of a dream job. I don’t dream of labor. But I dream of stability and love and people who are constants in my life. Writing this down makes me feel very grateful.

On Changing Directions

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I always think of the “what ifs” and this stops me from living in the moment and trying to enjoy what I have. I think of the worst possible scenarios and this fear has me spiral into despair. I thought that maybe if I relocated or changed or stopped taking my medication or just got “stronger” I would be okay. But the thought of going for an extended period of time without access to the mental health resources I’ve had… What would I have done if I really was in a crisis? I wanted so desperately to escape and feel better that I stopped taking care of myself in the moment. I thought it would be better somewhere else. With someone else. Where I could start again. But that’s not fair to them and I realized how utterly selfish I really was.

I live with so much fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of failure. Fear of not belonging. Fear of not having people to rely on. And I know that I should be self-reliant. But I always look to others to validate me. I realize that this won’t change overnight, but I know that I need to do better and I can’t burden people with taking care of my ego and mental health all of the time.

The idea of going to Asia as part of the diaspora is so romanticized. And it is important to be connected to your roots and learn more about how other people live. The US is sometimes all people know. But I got stuck in a cycle of comparison and feeling disconnected. I got stuck trying to make people and places tell me that I belonged. My original goal was to go to China and I ended up in Korea and met amazing people and had amazing experiences. I have so much guilt for it though. I kept telling myself that I don’t belong there like other people do and I shouldn’t try. The Korean adoptees have so much to learn and connect with there. I didn’t and it made me jealous and heartsick and I looked to other ways to make me feel better. I met other friends and kept denying that being there made me so insecure. I kept reading about how TEFL teachers aren’t taken seriously and how it isn’t a long-term career. I got scared and anxious. It is so easy for me to go along with how other people judge me because I don’t really have a direction. I want to feel loved and important and like my life has meaning. But this means my sense of self is so fragile. I am at a breaking point. I need to take care of myself but I hate disappointing people and it feels like that is all I do.

Being back on my medication is hard. I forgot about the side-effects. I shake a lot. My hands tremor. I feel like my heartbeat is up in my ears. I can’t sleep well. Sometimes my chest hurts. But I also know that it’ll stabilize in a few weeks. My mom and sister have told me that I have been more on edge and more irritable over the past few months. I just didn’t want to believe them. I wanted to feel like I had a say in where I went and how my emotions were. I didn’t tell anybody what I was going through. I was ashamed to think that my brain has a chemical imbalance that I can’t control. Isn’t that stupid? Why in the world would anybody let me live like this? Why has my body evolved to be the weakest link? Chronic depression/anxiety is something that doesn’t go away.

I let a lot of people down. I let myself down too. I’ll keep trying to do better. I hurt people and it doesn’t matter that I didn’t mean to end up like this. I’m sorry. I feel too ashamed to reach out to the people who expected me to come. I didn’t want to talk about it with anyone and it blew up in my face. I hope I can stay in contact with the people I met and love no matter where they are. But sometimes it’s too late and it hurts and I can’t choose who will want that. But I hope the best for us.

Education Jobs

On By shaoIn Future PlansLeave a comment

Today I talked to 5-6 people about their career paths in education. I joined Facebook networking groups for Asian educators and also started a few LinkedIn conversations with people who had previously worked abroad. Here are some of the things I’ve gathered:

  • A lot of people don’t choose to stay in international education unless they go back to the states and get a graduate degree and/or teaching certificate. I spoke with a few people who ended up staying to teach in the states. One of them had been in Korea for 6 years, but told himself that he wanted to settle down before he was 30. He now works at a charter school teaching Kindergarten in CA. He used to be a substitute teacher, then got his teaching license and started a MAT, which his school subsidizes. Another educator is planning to do a second Fulbright in Korea, but is also enrolled in an online MA for international educational policy and development. She wants to move back to Asia eventually, but isn’t sure she’ll be able to go back to Korea this year. She studied for 4 years in China through NYU. She seems really knowledgeable about the field, but doesn’t want to be directly in a classroom forever. One woman was planning to teach for just 1 year in Korea, but ended up spending 8 years abroad in Korea and Japan. Now she transitioned to work in agriculture abroad. Educators never really seem to have a set career path.
  • A few teachers who got their credentials stateside offered other viewpoints. Most went directly through a MAT program, but a few were substitute teachers who then got their teaching license. Grad school is good, but the loans that come with it aren’t. There aren’t many MATs that are fully-funded except for at some Ivy Leagues.
  • I added a few alternative teacher programs on the resources tab of this site. But the acceptance rates vary. I think I would want to do one that provides help with getting a MAT/MEd over one that just leads to teacher certification. Unless I decide to change career paths altogether, having a MAT would increase my salary substantially in the States. The alternative certification process would really depend on where I wanted to live in the states, though. Although there are teacher reciprocity agreements across states, there are various tests that some states require you to take when you transfer there. Honestly, I don’t have one specific place I’d want to live right now. I think it would depend on where I could find a support system.
  • The small minority of people who stay in Korea while they get certified are usually the ones who have permanent residency visas. This meant it was easier for them to be an intern/student teach without having to worry about being employed for a visa. The certification costs for that path are around $6,000 though. Would it be cheaper than going back to the states and getting certified? I’m not sure. This wouldn’t lead to a MA either, so if I wanted to pursue that it would be more.

If I want to change career paths, I can’t imagine doing it while in Korea. I would have only had experience in the education sphere there. I guess we’ll see how I like it and go from there. The high need areas of certification in the States are Special Education and English Language Learners. Much to think about. If I wanted to get certified as a high school teacher, that may open doors in working with nonprofits later down the line. But I could also just be certified in k-8 and do volunteer work on the side. The burnout rate is so high for nonprofits and teachers though. Ah!! I like talking to people about their journey because it makes me realize that everyone is kind of figuring it out as they go. This isn’t true for everyone, but for most people I’ve spoken with in nonprofit, advocacy, or education, their roles change so frequently. Sometimes it’s because of location, sometimes it’s about the people they meet, and sometimes it’s just about their financial goals long-term.

I’m going to work more on the API nonprofit’s website today and then maybe submit a few drawings to an independent Asian American journal. In some ways I have too much time on my hands to figure out what to do. I miss structure and having a set schedule. On the other hand, I really have to set a schedule for myself now. Tomorrow I have a meeting with someone who works in student affairs at Cornell University. I feel like I’m just trying so desperately to figure out what I should do. I know there is no “right” decision, but there are definitely ones that would offer a more stable future. What makes me happy?

Mindset (TW: Suicide)

On By shaoIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I don’t have to have my whole life planned out. Living with someone who is constantly stressed about their future just compounds my own worries. I try to wake up every day and think about the things I can gain rather than the opportunities I’m missing, but I’m not always successful.

I’ve read a lot about adoptees going back to Asia recently and there are a lot of stories about Korean adoptees repatriating. Obviously, that’s not a choice for Chinese adoptees, but I like reading about people’s stories. (Note: there are some stories about Chinese adoptees returning to China, but there just aren’t as many narratives out there because the peak wave of Chinese adoption happened later). I was looking one adoptee’s blog about how he quit his corporate job and started travelling. It was really interesting to see where he’d been. Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Thailand, Korea, Cambodia, China, etc. His list went on and on. His name is Troy and he grew up in Colorado. He worked as a producer, consultant, English teacher, etc. But I noticed there weren’t any recent posts. I assumed he got tired of blogging. But, because I can’t let things go, I looked him up on LinkedIn. Maybe he had changed jobs again. Nothing there. But a Google search showed he had committed suicide a few years ago. Nobody can really know what goes through someone’s head when they decide to do this. But sometimes I worry that maybe one day I’ll end up like this too.

I over-think what my life has to be. And when I put myself in his shoes I wonder if I’ll end up the same way. Trying to travel and find out my “purpose” and getting even more confused. But I also look at stories like NikkiOften and get more hopeful. Nikki returned to Korea after being adopted and worked there through her twenties. She was able to reunite with her birth family and figured out she had nine siblings. She works in California now and makes cartoons about her life. Some are related to adoption and some are just everyday worries or silly thoughts.

Lisa Wool-Rim Sjöblom also makes similar comics. She’s a Korean adoptee who lives in Sweden. She started the #IAmNotaVirus campaign and does a lot of work around adoptee advocacy and writes/illustrates her own books. This started to tumble into a list of adoptees I like to follow, but I’ll just continue.

I also finished a book by Xinran about the One Child Policy and how it affected birth mothers in China. It’s called Messages from an Unknown Chinese Mother and the author records her interviews of women from the late 1990s to mid-2000s. Some of the stories were so brutal. Many women had to kill their babies themselves, have a midwife do it, or abandon them, especially those who were in more rural areas. It wasn’t that they didn’t want a daughter, but rather that they couldn’t keep one. I think being abroad and also reading stories like this makes me realize that adoptees can never really count on “closure”.

Jenna Cook’s story also was really emotional to read about. She tried to find her birth parents and although 50 families tried to reach out, none of them were her biological ones. She now is a Sociology doctoral student at Harvard and does a lot of research about gender, fertility, immigration, and trauma. I don’t see myself staying in higher education, but I really appreciate all the work that other scholars do in areas like this.

One of my problems is that I try to think about all the possible outcomes of something before it even has happened. What if I waste my life at a dead-end job? What if I fail? What if I don’t get the opportunity I applied for? What are my backup options? Am I making the right decision? Is there a right decision? What if I don’t have friends? What if I’m not doing enough? And then I end up making spreadsheets and lists of all the various paths I can take. And sometimes this has worked out well. Applying for scholarships and colleges meant that I needed to have that kind of information. But right now? It’s more stressful than helpful. I don’t even know if I will end up liking TEFL. But I keep looking up graduate programs or fellowships or alternative teaching certificates and I can’t stop myself from snowballing. Would I come back to the states for a few years and get certified and then go abroad again? Should I have just majored in English education like I had planned? But then I wouldn’t have been able to study abroad or take more Asian American Studies courses. But will my friendships and relationships last if I keep moving around?

Maybe I’d like user-interface design? I joined a bunch of online groups and asked questions to people who work in the field. I even went to a few online workshops for it. It’s not like I felt drawn to the job, but wouldn’t it make sense? Or what about getting into a graduate program in Korea? Or what if I want to go back to China? Or what if I do a Fulbright or Peace Corps or graduate degree somewhere else? I spend too much time on LinkedIn or job boards or fellowship websites comparing myself to others. I get frustrated because I want stability, but I also have no idea where to go from here. And I compare myself to my sister even though the work that she is doing is not appealing at all to me. I cannot work in local politics and listening to her meetings just reinforces that. So, here’s to figuring something out this year. Thanks for reading this far. It’s almost 2 am and I just needed to get all of this off of my chest.

2021

On By shaoIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

It’s the first day of January and here are my goals for the year:

  • Start growing my art account. Set up an Instagram and see if I want to do RedBubble or Etsy later. I’m not sure about Etsy because I won’t be in the US, but I want to see if I could sell my things. But RedBubble takes a lot of the money if I wanted to sell items on there. I guess I’ll have to figure out the cost benefits of both.
    • Look more into how other small art businesses run their platform. Talk to my friends who set up their own art shops/commissions and see what works for them.
    • Research Etsy and marketing tools for at least an hour a day while I’m waiting for my Visa.
    • Collaborate with 3 other artists this year. Reach out to mutuals, friends, and other people to help promote my page. And also hold onto the joy of creating! I don’t want this to be stressful.
  • Try to let go of resentment. Being back home brings out the worst in me sometimes. Coming back makes me feel so stuck. Living in an area without much diversity or sense of community (especially when I can’t go out and meet friends or new people) is so stifling. I keep all of this inside and then just get frustrated. I need to let that go.
  • Meditate for 15 minutes a day and exercise for 30. I can watch videos while I exercise and meditate in the mornings before I start my day. I always forget how helpful it is to practice mindfulness.
  • Read at least 20 books this year! I’m not in school anymore and finally have a little bit of freedom to just explore what I want to. I don’t know what the future will bring in terms of location or career, but I do know that I can listen to audiobooks or get physical books and constantly learn more about what I want to do.
  • Stop letting my location dictate what I can enjoy. I keep thinking, “I don’t know how long I’ll stay here, so I’m not sure if investing my time in [x] is worth it.” But I want to just try things without worrying about how long I’ll stay. If I move around, that’s okay. I can find other ways to incorporate that activity in my life. But I have to at least start.
  • Start studying Korean more… I really have been slacking on this and I feel a lot of guilt. I don’t want to feel as lost as I did the first time I went. I know that I have some friends there to help me, but I don’t want to be a burden. I should adapt a growth mindset instead of thinking I’ll never get better.
  • Look into publishing my writing. Maybe pitch a few ideas to big publications. One of my friends got accepted into the South China Morning Post! It was so cool to hear her talk about it. I have to brainstorm and draft at least 2 ideas each month, even if I just sit with them.
  • Reach out to 1 old friend each week that I haven’t spoken to. Keeping in contact with people is important to me, especially if I keep moving around. I’ll make a spreadsheet to keep track!

I’ll probably come back and edit this, but I know that these are the things that have been on my mind lately. Much to think about… I also got my visa issuance number for the school in Korea! Hopefully I can go in mid-late January! I’ll update you later once things are more concrete.