Happy New Year

My very first post in Korea (over 13 months ago!) had a picture of the view from my quarantine apartment. It only felt right that I start off my first post of 2023 with the view from my current home. I would say it's an upgrade.

Hello again. It hasn't been that long, has it? Just a year and a month.

Over the past year, I've started and restarted this post so many times that even I was unsure of the original point of it. The longer I procrastinated, the more I felt strange about doing it at all. Even as I'm writing this, my fingers feel stiff and unfamiliar with the motions of typing so much on this keyboard. There were many reasons why I took such a long hiatus from this blog, the more superficial reasons being, "It would be too embarrassing to try to come back after this long" and "No one would care." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized there was something much more significant taking place.

The last time I was abroad for an extended period of time (in 2019), this blog was predominantly travel oriented: a summary of the places I visited, some stunning pictures, maybe an amusing anecdote or two. It served as a way to keep my loved ones updated on my adventures, but also a diary of sorts for myself to look back on fondly in times like now. It served its purpose well, for the time in my life that I was in.

As the year 2022 drew to a close, I realized that the past 12 months were not so much about the traveling aspect. Yes, I was seeing beautiful places and doing exciting things, just like three years ago, but this time it felt different. I wasn't itching to share every detail of those experiences in as much detail as I used to. Something about the idea of it, reducing these wonderful memories to a few hundred words on a page, rubbed me the wrong way. Of course, I still have shared some of these memories. If you follow me on Instagram, you have seen my periodic updates in the form of ~aesthetically pleasing~ photos (usually courtesy of friends) and witty captions (courtesy of yours truly). But you know what they say: "A picture is worth a thousand words."

This is not to say anything against my previous entries or anyone who travel blogs for a living, but it's more about how I perceived these moments. Everything I had experienced in the past year felt so personal that I didn't think a post could do any of them justice, even if I wrote a hundred about each--perhaps because they were not just checked boxes on a bucket list, but formative, unforgettable moments of my life. I didn't think they could to be written about if I would just end up compacting them into "A Foreigner's Guide to Namhae" or the like. When I was studying abroad, I was a kid excited to step into such extreme independence and adventure for the first time. Now, there is still that same independence and adventure, but with the added weight of being a working adult. It's not just about seeing the sights, but also embarking on these early stages of my adult life and figuring out who I want to be in it.

Another thing that truly ran away from me was time. If you know me, you know that I love a good story--both reading and writing them. It's one of the reasons I started this blog in the first place. But for the past year, when I have been reading and writing, it was not for myself, but for my job. For my students. Reading books (albeit simple ones) and essays, writing tests, book reports, and fill-in-the-blank sentences. These skills were no longer just things I enjoyed but things I had to do. And to be honest, all of that work kind of made me fall out of love with reading and writing a bit. I was (and am) feeling satisfied by job, but when I wasn't working, I just wanted a break from it all. Spending time with friends and going to interesting places helped, but I didn't have the energy or motivation to write about them. So ultimately, all of this meant living a life away from this blog.

My attempt to recreate the poster for the movie "Moonstruck." But I also think it's a good representation of what I want 2023 to be: active, freeing, and a little whimsical.

But something about the new year made me reassess (Doesn't it always?). After a trip home to the US and some recent health wake-up calls, I wanted 2023 to be the year when I make good on everything I had learned in 2022. What did I learn in 2022? On the shortlist: how to be self-sufficient, how to adapt to new (read: stressful) situations, how to admit I don't know something. I spent the last year learning so much that I want this year to be when I put it all into practice.

If 2022 was the year to absorb, 2023 is the year to flourish. That means making time to do more of the things I love again, such as reading and writing. It means continuing my Korean language learning not to survive the day to day, but to live a fuller life. It means going on walks in the neighborhood I now consider my home. And it means having the courage to seriously consider the question: What will come next?

So to all of you who read this, happy new year--and here's to ensuring it stays that way.