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When I'm not here, you may find me wandering the pages below. (If I'm a regular visitor to your site and I've left your link off or mislinked to you, please let me know! And likewise, if you've blogrolled me, please check that my link is updated: thisroamanticlife.blogspot.com. The extra (a) makes all the difference!)

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For posts sorted by date or label, see the links below.

For posts on frequently referenced topics, click the buttons to the right.

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Body: in sickness and in health

I won't lie; this body and I have had our issues with each other for many years. Body image -- sure. Physical and mental overextension -- comes with being a Type A kind of girl. I still struggle with these things, so they show up from time to time in my writing.

More recently, illness, pure but not simple, has added itself to the mix in a multi-system sort of way. And the challenges in figuring out exactly what's gone wrong are many. As problems have revealed themselves in the last few years, beginning with reactive hypoglycemia in late 2008, I've documented them here, partly to gain a little clarity on managing complex conditions but mostly to give voice to vulnerabilities I feel but don't normally share with anyone face to face. Better out than in, they say, right? (Oh yes, humor is one way I deal.)

The links below cover the different angles I've examined (and from which I've been examined) within that experience.

Travel: neither here nor there

When the person you're married to lives two time zones away, you log a fair number of frequent flier miles. And if you blog about commuter relationships, you log quite a few posts en route too.

Since we're no longer in separate places, I blog less often from airports. But we do travel -- together now! -- which is much more fun to write about. So in addition to thoughts on our years of commuting, the links below cover the places we've been as a pair and, in some cases, the adventures that have happened on the way.

Writing: the long and short of it

Why do I do it? Good question. Maybe it's not so much that I like to write but that I have to write, even when the words refuse to stick to the page. Believe me, I've tried doing other things like majoring in biochemistry (freshman fall, many semesters ago). Within a year, I'd switched to English with a concentration in creative writing and wasn't looking back.

After graduating, I taught English for a few years and then worked as an editor, which I still do freelance. In 2007, I applied and got into an MFA program at a place I like to call Little U. on the Prairie. I finished my degree in 2011 and have been balancing tutoring and writing on my own ever since.

The following links cover the writing I've done about writing: process, content, obstacles, you name it. It's not always pretty. But some part of me loves it, even when it's hard. And this is the result.

Heart: family and friends

I'd have a hard time explaining who I am without being able to talk about the family I grew up in as well as the people I've met beyond its bounds. But even with such context, it's not easy! In the simplest terms, I'm a first-generation Asian-American who has spent most of this life caught between cultures. That, of course, doesn't even begin to describe what I mean to, but there's my first stab at the heart of it all.

That's what this group of posts is reserved for -- heart. The essential parts of my life whose influences I carry with me, for better or worse. The links below cover what I've written as I've learned how these forces work within me, for me, against me, in spite of me. They anchor me even as they change me, and they keep life interesting.

Recommended reading

What do I do when there's too much on my mind and my words won't stick to the page? I escape into someone else's thoughts. Below is a collection of books and articles that have been sources of information, inspiration, and occasional insight for my own work.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Let's be careful out there


My physics teacher used to say that before every lab -- with good reason. My lab partner and I actually set one apparatus on fire when we failed to release the brake on a (so-called) frictionless wheel to measure the acceleration of gravity. Who knew a dot timer could be so incendiary? Then D, who was also in my physics class (but not my lab partner), took a projectile launcher's hammer to the hand when his partner released it too soon. To top it all off -- and this one actually elicited a laugh from our usually poker-faced instructor -- my sister clocked herself in the back of the head with a cork while trying to measure its angular momentum. I wasn't there for that last incident (we're six years apart in age), but let's just say that this history of mishaps in a controlled environment has reinforced, for me, a certain wariness of the forces of nature in the real world.

All this is to say that I hope my students have their heads screwed on properly this weekend during all the Halloween hoopla.

My particular class has had what seems to be an abnormally high number of emergencies this semester -- and not from any poor decisions on their part. So far there have been three medical emergencies from chronic conditions requiring hospital attention and two family deaths. Last night, one of my students e-mailed to say that a family member had been in a car accident and that she needed to go home right away (the most recent update is that the family member had not woken up yet by lunchtime today). Then this afternoon, another student e-mailed to say that she would have to withdraw from school for the rest of the semester for health/personal reasons. Would the universe kindly lay off my people already???

I've been so busy getting my students ready for this last push before Thanksgiving break that I've had to leave my writing at a standstill in the middle of some serious work on an essay due next week. But tomorrow -- TOMORROW shall be the day I get back to it. Really.

I've been having trouble deciding what kind of structure will best serve the story I'm trying to tell, so the essay is really kind of a mess. With impeccable timing, this week's memoir reading for one of my classes offered an amusing example of how to apologize for it:

The apparently haphazard chronology of this memoir may need excuse. The excuse, I fear, is Art. It contains a number of surprises, perhaps I may call them shocks, which, as history, came to me rather bunched up towards the end of the story. Artistically shocks should never be bunched, they need spacing for maximum individual effect. To afford them this I could not tell my story straightforwardly and have therefore disregarded chronology and adopted the method of ploughing to and fro over my ... life, turning up a little more sub-soil each time as the plough turned. Looking at it with as much detachment as I can command, I think I have not seriously confused the narrative.
~ J.R. Ackerley, My Father and Myself

Well, here's hoping I have enough to turn in such that it appears to have some kind of chronology, haphazard or otherwise.
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Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Let's be careful out there


My physics teacher used to say that before every lab -- with good reason. My lab partner and I actually set one apparatus on fire when we failed to release the brake on a (so-called) frictionless wheel to measure the acceleration of gravity. Who knew a dot timer could be so incendiary? Then D, who was also in my physics class (but not my lab partner), took a projectile launcher's hammer to the hand when his partner released it too soon. To top it all off -- and this one actually elicited a laugh from our usually poker-faced instructor -- my sister clocked herself in the back of the head with a cork while trying to measure its angular momentum. I wasn't there for that last incident (we're six years apart in age), but let's just say that this history of mishaps in a controlled environment has reinforced, for me, a certain wariness of the forces of nature in the real world.

All this is to say that I hope my students have their heads screwed on properly this weekend during all the Halloween hoopla.

My particular class has had what seems to be an abnormally high number of emergencies this semester -- and not from any poor decisions on their part. So far there have been three medical emergencies from chronic conditions requiring hospital attention and two family deaths. Last night, one of my students e-mailed to say that a family member had been in a car accident and that she needed to go home right away (the most recent update is that the family member had not woken up yet by lunchtime today). Then this afternoon, another student e-mailed to say that she would have to withdraw from school for the rest of the semester for health/personal reasons. Would the universe kindly lay off my people already???

I've been so busy getting my students ready for this last push before Thanksgiving break that I've had to leave my writing at a standstill in the middle of some serious work on an essay due next week. But tomorrow -- TOMORROW shall be the day I get back to it. Really.

I've been having trouble deciding what kind of structure will best serve the story I'm trying to tell, so the essay is really kind of a mess. With impeccable timing, this week's memoir reading for one of my classes offered an amusing example of how to apologize for it:

The apparently haphazard chronology of this memoir may need excuse. The excuse, I fear, is Art. It contains a number of surprises, perhaps I may call them shocks, which, as history, came to me rather bunched up towards the end of the story. Artistically shocks should never be bunched, they need spacing for maximum individual effect. To afford them this I could not tell my story straightforwardly and have therefore disregarded chronology and adopted the method of ploughing to and fro over my ... life, turning up a little more sub-soil each time as the plough turned. Looking at it with as much detachment as I can command, I think I have not seriously confused the narrative.
~ J.R. Ackerley, My Father and Myself

Well, here's hoping I have enough to turn in such that it appears to have some kind of chronology, haphazard or otherwise.
Posted by This Ro(a)mantic Life at 10:39 PM
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