Soaking Up Wine
HELLO JANUARY!
HOW ARE YOU?
Mhmm, I’m sensing that you feel rushed? Yeah me too. How is it 2022? What is 2022?
So break ended yesterday and well, I’m not ready. I thought I was but the part of me that’s like I need to soak as much knowledge and make the most of my last semester basically culminated in the most amount of stress I felt in a long time. Even more so than the stress I was feeling during the worst of my Bayesian statistics class and well, that’s saying a lot. Not unexpectedly then, chronic pain which I forgot about and hadn’t experienced since moving to NYC came back and reared its ugly head. I’m that person who loves to be back in my routines when work or school starts again. I’m that person who loves the smell of going back to school. Like deep breaths and feeling all one with the world and how everything is how it should be. Yeah, go ahead throw at me some popcorn. What kind of school positivity ambassador is this person? LOL same. What a nerd pffft. This time around, and well last time around…entering into 2020 and going into the second semester of a pandemic affected school year has me feeling a lot of feels and exhaustion. Mostly exhaustion. To be completely fair to my body, I am writing this after a zoom seminar class and four zoom seminars yesterday. All 2 hr long seminars. Yeah. My brain, my body. I slept for 10-11 hours because I felt like I fell down the stairs and got trampled over. Or a better metaphor, I just ran a marathon and not the good kind. Well, this is me. New year, and kind of a new me.
In all seriousness, I’m going to give myself this weekend and I’ll be back. I’ll be fine! At least that’s what I keep telling myself and do not worry, I am okay with not being fine. There are parts during this break, where I wasn’t. And perhaps, even during the not-so-smoothest transition back into school I’ve had like ever, I know that these cycles of life will pass. SOOO let’s do a better recap because I have so many good moments and not so fine moments that I’ve worked through and can’t wait to share in the honour of being transparent.
At this exact moment, my spotify is on high volume and it’s playing ‘All By Myself’ by Celine Dion literally. That was a relatable moment during the break and I felt very Bridget Jone’s as I spent much of the holidays and beginning of January before school started in solitude. Friends out of town, isolating from COVID exposure, or down with COVID. In 2018, I really learned more about how to just be with myelf. And it wasn’t easy sometimes confronting all your thoughts and just looking at who you are (all of it). I went to France and fully felt comfortable with it and enjoyed it. And then in 2021, I also found more enjoyment in just being present with my body and my surroundings. And so, the beginning of January after the side effects of my booster waned off were so quiet, beautiful, and peaceful. I often took long walks through Central Park (from the western most highest tip to the eastern lowest tip), or along the Hudson River from Columbia to around Chelsea, or biked around. It was so nice not to have to think about anything substantive or be critical or process much. I could just be me. I could address the parts of me or the thoughts that I wasn’t the most proud of and let them go. And then yes, there were times when I fully appreciated the solitude of full attention at this incredible world in front of me and life happening but there were times of loneliness. Hearing friends and watching people come together with the people they love during the holidays made me feel like some part of me was missing even if I could Facetime friends and family for hours, the lack of bodily presence made my heart ache. I felt a bit proud that this was it, I was doing it! I could enjoy time during the holidays by myself and not feel awkward or weird about it. And then NYE rolled around. A flood of emotions rolled in. That was okay and it was another crucial learning moment for me. That intimacy is important and my needing people to be around sometimes is not a sign of weakness, it’s an integral part of being human.
I guess what I’m trying to get to here in my fifth-month recap of living in NYC and going through grad school is that I love this city. I want to stay a little longer beyond just experiencing it through the eyes of a student. As I graduate in five months and recognize how it will all fly by, I am trying to make the most out of it but I realize that I can take it too much to heart. I need to pause and be okay with not maximizing everything at all times. And so when people ask me what I’ve learned and how’s grad school, the thing is it’s just as great as I’ve imagined in terms of what new things I’m learned and how I’m being intellectually challenged/ stimulated… I’m also growing and grad school is hard not so much in terms of the academics or material (which don’t get me wrong are pretty challenging and frustrating at times) but it’s just as much as the mind games and all the other things that circle around it. It’s about finding balance with your time. It’s about navigating who you are without letting others get too much in the way of what you want to pursue, what you think about, how you think about things, and how you go about pursuing learning or x, y, z other things in your life. It’s about addressing your weaknesses and acknowledging your mistakes; taking responsibility for them and moving forward rather than getting too much into the muddling and marinating in the stickiness and feeling stuck. It’s about feeling so out of your depth and uncomfortable like pretty much all the time and then finding a way to be at ease with it. It’s about how to appreciate and learn from others’ ideas and ways of approaching things without letting it necessarily crowd out what you really want and what you truly need. And it’s so many more things. I know that I would have had a great grad experience at UBC or U of T, the other two places I applied to for master programs. I’m certain of it. There is no best choice because we can make our choices into the best ones. Another way of putting it, life only makes sense when we look back and connect the dots (a paraphrase of Jobs I think). The point is, I know I would have learned and been exposed to different things if I went to UBC/ U of T. My familiarity with those environments may have given me more bandwidth to take on more research projects or different opportunities.
The biggest thing I’ve learned in the past month is that no, we can’t do it all. Society might try to get us to buy into this idea that we can as some empowering tactic and it’s true, it’s empowering and I believed it too. But we can’t do it all by ourselves, we need people. Moving to NYC, meant a lot of my mental energy and general energy was put into transitioning and adapting to a new environment. In the real world where resources are finite which meant realistically, I couldn’t have as much energy to invest into x, y, or z. And that’s okay. I was so lucky to have people who supported me and sometimes that’s the thing–the people who seem to do it all or can do it all, is that they have people who invest in them and pour their own energy into someone they care about. It’s not really one person who does it all. It’s a community. It’s a partnership. So the point I’m trying to make, is that wherever you are, you can learn and you can grow. It doesn’t require a move to a different city or finding a new job (though it can also take on those forms), but there are opportunities all around us that exist to challenge us if that’s what we’re looking for within our particular season of life. And for me, in particular, it’s recognizing on how to truly let people in. I used to think that it was being vulnerable but I wasn’t being vulnerable with the things that really hurt me or scared me even though others might have thought so. The true insecurities, dark thoughts, anxieties, and much more. Perhaps, I learned that I used my independence as a crutch and so within this past month alone, I’ve learned how to be uncomfortable when it comes to fostering relationships and growing there.
The title of this post makes a lot of sense to me because yes, I did indulge with the wine and luckily, my stomach has done its soaking up wine literally. But you know how I love my metaphors. I spent much of the break listening to music I love and new music including Adele’s 30 on repeat. On there, she has a song called ‘I Drink Wine.’ I’ve included the parts of the lyrics that really resonated with me:
How can one become so bounded
By choices that somebody else makes? //
You better believe I'm trying (trying, trying)
To keep climbing (climbing, climbing)
But the higher we climb
Feels like we're both none the wiser (ahh) //
So I hope I learn to get over myself
Stop trying to be somebody else //
Oh, I hope in time (hope in time)
We both will find (we both find) peace of mind
Sometimes the road less travelled
Is a road best left behind (ahh)
I’ve learned how our decisions have profound consequences on those around us long ago but I’m coming to terms with how decisions others (who are close to me) have made that have drastically changed or affected me. And rather than being caught up with the pain and focusing on my own mistakes, I’m also relinquishing up total responsibility and letting go of relationships that no longer serve me. That is the scariest thing. Ever. I am so sentimental and have the hardest time of letting go (even of inanimate objects like running shoes that have been with me during certain runs or a laptop cover that saw me through undergrad). Letting go of people and letting go of the choices they’ve made that have hurt or continue to make their mark on me, is pretty difficult. But I’m learning, accepting, trying, and letting go.
I’ve also realized that I have gotten wiser with time but it’s not necessarily through the ‘climbing,’ which I used to think brings the most amount of growth and change. As a very ambitious kid and perhaps still ambitious young adult, it’s not easy to see how the meritocratic structures of society have instilled within us a sense of continuous longing. And so the climbing has helped me grow but most times, it has made me cynical and sad. So when Adele sings this part, I relate on some level to this feeling of intermittent chasing hopelessly for something our younger selves valued but in the process of current striving, we realize that it isn’t what we really need anymore and that somethings have changed, but somethings really have not changed.
Next, learning to get over myself. Less of me and more of everything else. This means just not to get so caught up in my own thoughts and perceive everything through my own experience (which as David Foster Wallace eloquently writes is our hardwired default condition) but to try thinking through the lenses of others experiences in my daily routines. Oh, and the being someone else! Cast that away. Seize who I am!! A work in progress but getting there. Especially, in comparison to even where I was a year ago, I am so proud of me.
Each time Adele sings this, I pause because when I was reading Robert Frost’s poem and rereading it throughout grade school, we were taught that the road less travelled by is the good one. It’s the one that represents the uniqueness of experience and not following the crowd. I always sought that for myself. But it hits me. Sometimes, getting so caught up in the pursuit of trying to be different defeats the actual purpose Frost might try to be indicating. It’s not so much about having to go out of my way all the time to ‘take the road less travelled by perse,’ it’s more so about my intentions and the real ‘why’ behind why I’m pursuing a certain path in the first place. Sometimes, indeed, rather than getting so caught about these things, it may be best to leave the road less travelled in the past, where it belongs.
Now, I’m not necessarily finished (haha I know it’s getting to be a long post, again, what’s new)… one of my other songs that I enjoy listening to that references wine is called ‘New Wine’ by Hillsong. And the main lyric I think of is “In the crushing/ In the pressing / You are making new wine.” For me, this is a key reminder in recognizing that sometimes in the pain, there is a transformation occurring within me. I am in the state of becoming a new wine. So as you know now, when I’m drinking wine a thousand things are coming up in my mind. From drinking wine along the Seine with friends to these life lessons of wine songs. The very act of me looking at the label and appreciating a bottle of wine is a process of recognizing hey, you know what? Patience. Growth. Transformation. To get a good bottle of wine, there was a lot of work and a lot of patience. And of course, as time goes by, a lot of change ;) *You see what I did there? I hope so!
Recaps of the past month:
biking around governor’s island during sunset
visiting the fotographiksa (photography museum) to catch the Andy Warhol exhibit
getting in my italian intake at rezdora!
swimming 3x a week again and hitting 40 laps (25m/lap) under 35 mins, which I did not think was possible for me
watching the magic flute at the met opera!!!
walking around in the snow
finally, getting to see the surrealism exhibit at the met (mornings at the met, I’m going to make this a thing)
discovering the best french food I’ve ever had at le crocodile in williamsburg (SO GOOD, my #1 restaurant atm); service unparalleled and food OH MY, cue Adele’s ‘Can I Get It’ *the duck was heavenly and cooked to perfection
walking around williamsburg with ariel!
finished emily in paris season 2 as a guilty pleasure
strange encounter with the youtube algorithm and discovered ‘community,’ and watched some of the episodes to realize how un-cultured i am when it comes to movies/ films
Things I want to do:
check out the edge @ hudson yards (have been past the hudson yards but have not yet been)
celebrate ringing in the year of the tiger on Feb 1 :D with delicious and authentic dumplings
visiting MOCA
going back to brooklyn (hitting up the brooklyn museum, propect park, and the botanical gardens)
trekking out to flushing for some much missed chinese food?
skate!!!
check out restaurant and broadway week (watch broadways to my heart’s desire)
