This Stuff Isn’t Worth Worrying About

March 14, 2009

Again I’ve been thinking about the future, my future, where it lies and what I plan to make of it. And again, everything seems so damn uncertain, even more so when you throw China into the equation, and China is an important part of the equation. I like being comfortable with where I’m heading but the past few years, my ideas seem to escape me.

Coming back from China has thrown everything to the wall again. Now there are two countries involved and that can only be messy. Now that I’ve thrown my marketing major away to the fishes, I also don’t really know what I’m going to do, when my time at University is up. I don’t feel particularly qualified for anything.

I’ve been looking through job classifieds and the Uni web portal in search for possible jobs. I’ve found some, but not many. My specialization is now design, and I don’t feel well suited to do that, so with that out the way, I am left with language/writing. I guess this could vary from anything such as a language teacher/writer/cultural consoltant of sorts.

In Shanghai there is an obvious demand for language teachers, so I could do something along those lines. Over here in Australia, I’m less sure. So many jobs are either management/marketing/business and I don’t want to do anything within that trifecta. Of course, I could also do writing for the web or something like that. I’ve been doing some freebie posts here and there, but have also started receiving money and other bonuses, which is reassuring. On the whole though, I don’t think that I’ll be able to make any sort of full time work out of writing, it needs to be accomodated by something else.

There’s also the matter of whether or not I want to return to China, and I think that is likely. I enjoy living in the challenging environment – it’s ideal for improving my Chinese and that’s a bankable asset, many of my bestest best friends are located there, living expenses are incredibly cheap and it ensures that I don’t seem like a lazy moucher if I am living overseas. I love the latter, you get a good image from living abroad. Still despite all this, everything is up in the air.

Which I why I need to stop worrying about it, I think. These things will undoubtedly come in their due course, I’m a good person and fortunately have plenty of options.

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Writing Out the Homesickness

February 28, 2009

Something that I didn’t really think about, even up to the day I left Shanghai was how much I would miss the place. Just like going there in the first place, coming back felt right. It felt like the thing I needed to do; I’d done my time and now I can go back and ponder the thought for a while.

Even being home, doesn’t stop me from being home sick. It feels like a good part of me has fragmented off and waiting for the other half to return to Shanghai. I haven’t just left part of myself over there, I’ve also left some of my dearest friends from the last couple of years. My regular Chinese friends since studying Uni have all more or less left me, or in fact remained where they are. I guess this is the problem which such circumstances, you can never have everyone you love together in the same place, and if so, it’s over before you realize it.

Before I went to Shanghai, over the holiday break several of my friends returned to their homeland, in which I followed (albeit to different places) shortly after for the exchange. When I came back to Australia, they all stayed put of course.

It’s not all bad, a couple of my friends are still here, or will be returning about now in time for the new semester. That’s comforting to have. Still, I sometimes feel terribly homesick even within my own home. It’s not a good feeling to have, and I know that even if I return later in the year, the other side of homesickness will occur.

Whatever the case, this is only a “sometimes” issue. While I miss my former life as a Shanghai expat, I just try and move on with what I’m doing. I still keep in contact with my good friends, more or less everyday which is great. I sure do miss them though.

On another note, I’m rather determined to make this year a year of words – corny! My University timetable is surprisingly slim through to year’s end, so really I’d love to use my free time writing as much as I can. I’m still clueless on what occupation I plan on occupying(!) once I graduate. Looking around on various job websites has made me even further dumbfounded. For now, I know three things; I enjoy writing, I would like to return to China sometime and this year I have ample time to kill. Put those things together and it’s rather telling of how I plan to disperse my time.

Considering that I have some workable subject matter, I’d also like to make this blog a little more prominent than just an emo-dump. At the same time, I’ve started a new Chinese only blog in which I can use to practice since I don’t have any formalized Chinese classes this year – as by personal decision. My goal is to eventually break down the barrier that I have between writing, publishing and posting, so that I can post more frequently, write more fluently and overall get all of my ideas out with much greater ease. Especially for my games blog, every post feels like a package that requires superfluous amounts of work for a single post.

I’m not suggesting some dip in quality. No, no, the quality control is in check, I just want to make the process a little more fluid and dynamic, to open up a wider platform of content delivery.

And that about does it for now. Still trying to figure out how exactly to write about my experience away. It really feels so overbearing that I have to cover so much, at least I have the time and space for it. Just gotta chunk it out now.

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Talking to The Walls Again

It’s been long enough so I might as well attempt to start talking about myself again. I must admit, I make a good topic of discussion, do I not? Obviously not, but as I mentioned somewhere on here before; there are plenty of reasons for me to blog for myself, which is why the time has come.

I guess the backlog will come soon enough -as I say again- but for now let’s talk just do the intro. If that’s one thing I want to do with this blog is start using it as a journal of “cultural discovery”. Woo! That sounds exciting. It would because it’s probably not what will come out. Whatever the case, my field trip in Shanghai had me on a constant train of thought, one that I’d like to dispel with some conclusion/closest thing to a conclusion here.

To do this, I’m going to force myself to chunk it out, otherwise I’ll just be here all day writing one long stretch of dribble that I’ll eventually tangle myself in and die.

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This is The New Blog Design, I Hope it Goes Up Soon

While in China actually, I managed to whip up a new design for this blog. The current one is great, but a little out of date and takes up too much room. I really just want to condense this all down before I properly get back into writing here. Unfortunately I don’t think that’ll happen thanks as once again it’s in the hands of my elder brother. Whatever the case, this new design will be up soon. So in the meantime I’ll just pretend like it is up. BTW, here is what the new design looks like: