i've moved!

I'm so sorry for the severe lack of posts recently under inferior goods - 2009 has been an utterly crazy year both personally and professionally. I was checking out some site statistics for this blog, and realized that I still had a fair amount of visitors here, so I'd like to redirect you all to my most current blog venture (hopefully one I'll keep for some time) - KethyWang.com! Please bookmark, update your bookmarks, whatever you need to do, and please come see me there.

To all, hope you've had a great 2009 and looking forward to a wonderful and prosperous 2010!

Kay Read more!

parallels.

"when it rains, it pours."

boy, wasn't that statement ever the truth.

maybe it's the weather, or maybe something else entirely altogether, but my lips have been swelling up intermittently lately. usually the episodes only last about a day or so, and during the episode i actually don't quite mind since it makes my usually non-existent lips appear existent, but it's the days after that get and stay under my skin (literally). my lips are never the same after these days. they're stiff, the top epidermal layer is cracked and sensitive, and the color is all but there - it's barely noticeable the change in color from the rest of my skin to what's there where my lips normally would be.

which brings me to the title of this post: parallels. through swells and lows, rises and falls, ebbs and flows, things are never really the same once it's gone through any of these episodes. it's not that they're completely different, it's more just they're now there with some slight hint, some slight sign (albeit however small) of change. for my lips, it's a case of the telltale skin. for others, it's a new wrinkle, a gray hair that wasn't there the day before, or a fonder appreciation for whatever it is they may have taken granted only some slight time ago, before. and even though it's fundamentally the same, ultimately, it's different. and in that slight difference we grow with it, we progress forward with it, we experience compassion for it.

that is progress. Read more!

now and later.

the gift of hindsight is a very strange thing.

in memoriam of days yesteryear, i've experienced more than my fair share of personal growth. granted, i'm no more than slightly over a quarter century old at the time of writing and many would (rightfully) express that i've many more years left of self-discovery, yet i can't help but notice specificities in those around me that remind me of myself, though myself reminiscent of a time long since passed. this difference though, however slight, creates a very interesting dichotomy - kay in early twenties, versus kay during mid-twenties.

now for specifics.

when i was in my early twenties, i constantly felt as though i had something to prove. i had a pretty solid idea of who i was, but that wasn't nearly enough. as some sort of bizarre, adolescent interim solution, i developed a nasty little habit during those times that make me cringe even as i think about it now - i developed a habit of "picking up" (but mostly feigning) interests that were largely those of surrounding company at the time, truly believing those were my thoughts and my interests (though honestly, i probably could not have cared less). i even went to extravagant lengths to prove to the group and to myself that they truly and really were my interests; in a time of livejournal and myspace, my about me, interests, music and etc would constantly change every time i joined a new circle of friends or involved myself with a new male interest. it was as though it wasn't enough to just tell myself that i now loved this band or loved that book, i had to somehow proclaim to the online masses that i now really loved these bands and these books through mass internet updates, as if that somehow verified my true affinity for whatever it happened to be at the time.

i say this now, given the gift of hindsight and seeing more clearly through an older, wiser pair of eyes. it's strange, seeing these things and these actions of a younger self being put on show by others and recognizing yourself within them - it evokes a very strange and confusing combination of self-loathing, compassion (for both others and yourself) and annoyance at the outside guilty parties.

hm.

i guess i haven't quite figured out how to deal with the above concoction for disaster quite yet - maybe the gift of hindsight hopefully might solve that one, too. Read more!

uncertainty in a time of decline.

when there's everything to say, but nothing can be said. Read more!