Both and Neither (Pt. I)

    I feel like I haven’t posted in an ETERNITY, though it’s only been a month or so. Samhain is coming soon, and personal work/play, school and family has kept me busy. Still no excuse (even if no one actually reads these), so here we are finally putting up something new.

    Today’s post is part one of a two part entry, and a little bit off topic for this blog - but it‘s important nonetheless. It’s about something that’s played a large part in my life over the years. Something that’s affected people’s perceptions of me, and  influenced their reactions to me. It’s resulted in biases (both for and against me), it’s colored the humor and hate in my life, and despite all this, it’s been something I’ve pretty much ignored for most of my existence.

It’s my race.

    As I’ve mentioned before, I’m half-white, half-Korean. I say ‘white’ because, though that bit of my ancestry most likely comes from Germany, not a lot of the history on that side is accessible to me. My father’s side of the family hasn’t gone through a great deal of effort of trace the family tree back very far, and the matter has been made foggier by the numerous divorces and second-marriages that tied in additional blood and history. On my mom’s side, it’s Korean all the way back.

Not that it meant much to me until recently.
  
    Last year, performing in a Stand-up Comedy competition at my school, I made the comment that “I’m about as Korean as Taco Bell.” The routine - which won me first place, by-the-by - mostly focused on my relationship with my Mom, a Korean who came to the states as the wife of a G.I., my father. I didn’t realize until sometime in my preteens that there was a history of Korean women coming to the US in such a way for nearly half a century. It was something I mistakenly thought that had little to nothing to do with ‘me.’
  

I'm getting older, Too.

WARNING: Downer thoughts ahead.

You know those “blah” kinds of days - I think we all get them sooner or later, some more often than others. Days where everything seems to come together to bring you down: the weather is terrible, you didn’t sleep well, and nothing seems to work quite right. And it doesn’t seem to matter what good things happen, what friends you hang out with, what you eat, what you listen to, nothing feels good or right and it feels like nothing can quite light the spark and get you going again. Sometimes it’s fleeting, and all it takes is one really bright, wonderful thing to get you going again. Sometimes it lingers, and when it does, it’s usually for one of many fairly typical reasons - like realizing, honestly, truly, that you’re getting older: and for just that reason, you can‘t seem to reconcile yourself with the world anymore.

*sigh*

I can’t stand those kinds of days.

A big part of preparing posts for this blog/journal is reading and research - other blogs, articles, updates to online publications, watching documentaries, films, going into forums to ask questions and discuss things, and generally exposing myself to a lot of input from around the world regarding spirituality - and human behavior - overall.

Much to my chagrin, despite my efforts I look around and I can’t understand a lot of what I see. Everything moves so fast now, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any chance of slowing down or catching up if you fall behind. Near total access to anything from around the world allows for flash-in-the-pan celebrity status for the most trivial of things, and people I wouldn’t have ever imagined when I was a child being given five minutes on TV take up News reports for days, weeks at a time with pointless shenanigans.

I can’t tell the difference between enjoyment and ‘ironic’ enjoyment of a lot of things anymore in a culture that embraces and celebrates its worst aspects with shows like “Toddlers in Tiaras,” “Jersey Shore,” or “16 + Pregnant.” Even saying you don’t like these shows doesn’t mean much - it’s been shown that just being exposed to these shows are bad for you. The problem is made worse by the fact that, because so many people watch reality television and it's become a big part of social interaction around the water cooler or at school, if you're not watching the shows, you're left out of the loop. Reality television has also taught a good chunk of the American populace (from a very young age) that immoral and unacceptable behavior is worth money and fame: and that it's okay to be humiliated or to humiliate others rather than question why a behavior is wrong and stop it. This attitude has taken deep roots in the newest generation.