Self-Reflection

I did a lot of self-reflection last night. And it seems to me that, over the past year, some of my best qualities had waned a little -- independence (emotional independence, in particular), confidence, and appreciation of little things in life. I think those were at their peak from Spring 2005 - early Fall 2006. Between now and then, I worked on Senior Week, started dating Matt, graduated, moved to Korea, have been working at SNU and living with my family. I'm not sure how exactly all these things have influenced who I am, but looking back, trying to figure it all out:

I had always dreaded moving back to Korea, and when I did, I was so determined to minimize re-adjusting to Korean culture and therefore minimized my social activities here. Obviously I started to feel very lonely, relying on talking to Matt and other friends in the US to feel connected. Very unhealthy, needless to say. I'm still not 100% comfortable with letting myself go and immersing in my life back in Seoul. I tried so hard to assimilate during my years in the US, and I'm afraid of losing my connections to the culture and people there by changing again. And not having a "big" job brought the feeling of inferiority. All my close friends were working at "big" companies, and I kept drawing the comparison. I wanted to feel responsible and challenged without having to trying so hard to on my own;

Then my relationship. I dreaded losing my "American" qualities because I felt the connection we had was based none of my Korean sides, and as soon as I became even slightly more “Korean”, our connection would weaken. Matt was also in a pretty intense program at Google, meeting a lot of people and going through various new experiences. I was alarmed that we weren't sharing as many experiences as we did at Cornell. Again, I was afraid that our connection would weaken from it as people bond over going through similar experiences. And the fear of drifting apart from not seeing each other often made me obsess over making sure that we talk every other day and for a longer period of time every weekend and also setting up definitive dates for visiting each other as soon as possible. I put all my efforts and time toward talking to him and visiting him. For example, if I got vacation days, I wouldn’t even consider visiting other places other than Mt. View. It makes sense to keep up the communication and visits, but what if I’m so caught up with it that the rest of my life is not growing? I think I’ve been overly paranoid and refused to take any risks. Now that I’ve decided to stay in Korea longer, I will have to figure out a way to get over my fear of drifting apart so I can be comfortable with exploring different opportunities and experiences. I think I’ve been making a progress here already, mostly due to the visits and all the other things we’ve shared over the past ten months that showed me our connection has only grown in spite of the distance.

In conclusion, I will have to be okay with immersing myself in my life here, be confident that I will only grow and not lose anything, and be excited about the positive changes.