Tag: angst

I’m in a bad place right now

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not going to sugar coat the fact that over the span of my last posts, things haven’t exactly been going swimmingly for me in my life.  As much as people of the internet bemoaned and stated how much of a dumpster fire that the year 2016 was, I’d have to say that 2017 hasn’t exactly been a drastic improvement over the year removed.  If anything at all, I would say that I’ve been more stressed, more emotionally drained and more taxed this year than I was last.

So to update from the last time I sat down and wrote for a site that’s still down and out of commission, Jen and I finished moving out of the house.  The house is not only empty and completely vacated, it’s up on the market, and doing surprisingly well in terms of buyer interest and awareness that it’s on the market.  Obviously, interest does not equal it actually selling, so only time will tell just what happens with all these people and realtors marching in and out of my house on parade because I can see it happening because I still have security cameras that let me see timestamps of when people come and go.

Getting the house prepared for listing was a tremendously taxing task both physically and emotionally.  Every single day for just under two weeks, weekday and weekend, was spent painting walls, patching up gaps or holes in walls, painting walls, cleaning out belongings, painting walls, cleaning floors and painting walls. 

Painting walls is pretty much the worst activity ever.

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It’s like the ending to a very special episode

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Kind of quiet and without applause or music.  The screen just fades to black and then the credits roll.  Silence.

That’s what it kind of feels like every time I close the door to the garage of my house after setting the alarm, lately.  I sit down in my car, close the garage door, watching is in my rearview mirror as it comes down, always making sure it always goes all the way down and stays there, as if I’m concerned by tech-savvy thieves trying to pilfer the open/close signal and then rob me after I’m gone.  And then I back out of the driveway and I pull away, continuing to look at my house in the rearview mirror.  Often times, I verbalize the words “alarm set, garage closed,” so I can have some degree of self-confirmation that I’ve secured the place, before I often times get hit with a wave of paranoia 500 feet later that I forgot to do one or both.

With each time I do this in recent days, I’m ask myself if this is the last time I’ll be doing it.  The answer has always been “no,” because there’s always been more chores to finish, more walls to paint, more cleaning to do, and more things to haul away, whether it’s to trash, storage, or my new home.

However, today marks the day in which there might not be a “no” at the end of the day’s query.  If everything goes according to plan and schedule, my house for the past 13 years will be empty of all personal effects, and I will have effectively moved out entirely.  When I pull away from the house tonight, and ask if this will be the last time, the answer won’t quite be “yes,” but it’s also not necessarily going to be “no,” either.

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It’s funnier when it’s not applicable

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I make a lot of references to the Jessie Spano caffeine pill freakout from Saved by the Bell.  A lot of people make references to the Jessie Spano caffeine pill freakout from Saved by the Bell. It’s a great pop-cultural reference for when one is super excited about something, almost almost to the point of it being scary, or maybe it actually is scary.  Or maybe the part where she breaks down and talks about being scared is omitted, and it’s just a reference to the part where she sings I’m So Excited, all drugged out and addled that we all laugh at.

But how many people remember the context of the rest of the episode?  Why Jessie Spano was on “caffeine” pills in the first place?  I doubt nearly as many as the people who make references to the signing part actually do.

Jessie was taking speed because she felt that there weren’t enough hours in the day to study and cram for her lofty academic aspirations, and used the extra time not sleeping to hit the books.  Sure, it created a mild addiction and an eventual crash that led to the iconic exciting moment, but the context of it revolved around the perceived feeling that there is not enough time.

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The occasional heartache of moving

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I have vague memories of when I was eight years old, moving from my birth home in (then-) rural Virginia to the bustle and civilization of Northern Virginia.  One of the things that stuck with me was that when my family pulled away from the house for the last time in our old Toyota Celica, was seeing a neighborhood girl that was my age standing in her front yard, and she waved at us.  I remember her name was Evan.  I remember being at an age where moving wasn’t that big of a deal, although my sister was pretty miffed at moving from an area where elementary school was K-5 to a place that was K-6, meaning she had to put up with one more year of elementary school and sharing the bus with a little brother.

When my family moved again when I was in the fifth grade, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal then either.  Sure, it kind of stunk knowing I’d have to start over again at another new school, but my family was doing well financially at that time, and we were moving into a huge baller home, and there was something exciting about switching schools mid-year.  It also helped that my new school was slightly behind in curriculum than my former one, so I literally coasted for a while before actually getting back to learning.

It was during my sophomore year of high school that my family moved again.  This one I remember being a little harder to cope with, mostly on account of the fact that I was a moody, broody 15-year old then, and the fact that the circumstances behind the move weren’t necessarily positive or free will; the restaurant business was going downhill, the family’s finances were following, and it was more like being forced to downsize and move to a smaller home, rather than it being a bright and promising change.  I didn’t particularly care for moving back then, but growing up has made me understand and accept why it was necessary.

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TRUCKS TRUCKS TRUCKS

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a few days since I last allocated some time to write, which is typically something that I’m not a fan of doing.  But things have been busy at work, and even busier at the house, so I haven’t really had a nice chunk of time in which I could throw down some words, much less dick around on the internet to look for things to write about, or even glance at social media.

Being an adult sucks and is depressing, and I very much dislike this feeling of not feeling at home no matter where I am currently.  But like all adverse weather, this storm too shall pass, and eventually things will get back up to a more satisfactory par.  But first, I wish everyone around me at work weren’t sick and carrying the plague into the workplace and I feel like I should propagate Asian stereotypes and start showing up with a surgical mask on, because I actually value my health and have consideration to stay away.

Anyway, when I want to get back into the swing of the written word, I tend to go for low-hanging fruit or easy fluffy things to help jog the mind and the typing into a groove.  And there’s no better things for me to get fascination out of, than trucks full of interesting contents, crashing all over Atlanta highways.

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Discontent

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I am not happy.  I have not been happy in quite some time, to be perfectly honest.  It has little to do with the year, or things that are happening around the world, because I feel that the state of my country is going down the shitter in my humble opinion, or that the Atlanta Falcons choked the biggest choke there possibly could be in the Superb Owl.  Although, alternate outcomes of either of the last two might have made some days brighter than they’ve been, they are not the reasons to why I am not happy.

It’s the world immediately around me that’s making me feel brought down lately.  I thought I’d feel a little bit of reprieve when some particular events came and went, and would be in the rearview mirror, but I can’t honestly say that things do.  I’m relieved of the unburdening of some of the responsibilities, but the fallout and aftermaths of them linger, and they are still far from resolved, and no matter how much I can tell myself that I shouldn’t care, I still do, because that’s what I do, I care, I give shits, even when I don’t want to.

In a nutshell, my parents’ divorce is going poorly, my family is basically in shambles and I’m in the process of moving all my shit out of the house I’ve lived in for the last 14 years and dealing with a lot of anxiousness pertaining to changes in life.  I do not feel like I have an adequate support system behind me leading me to feel like I don’t have people to really speak to without conflicting interests, and it doesn’t matter where I go, because I don’t really feel like anywhere is necessarily home for me right now.

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Fuck, politics

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve made no secret that I don’t particularly care about writing about politics.  But it’s gotten to a point where I can’t go anywhere, turn to any channel, open up a browser or look at Facebook without there being mention of politics.  I’m getting to the point where I don’t want to seek out the news and or look at social media, because I just know that all people are going to be reporting on or talking about is what’s going on in the political scene, and it’s going to again bring that surreal feeling that this is truly reality, and will be for the unforeseeable future.

At the time I’m writing this, I’m back in Virginia, visiting my parents, on what is admittedly not a leisure trip in the least.  That being said, I really could use some distractions from what’s going on in my life and my family, and hope that others out there are doing more positive things in theirs.  But nope, people are using social media to vent about their disdain towards all of the seemingly asinine thing that are happening at such a breakneck pace, and I’m asking myself if the headlines that I’m being exposed to are actually real.

But then I turn on a television or walk past a screen showing the news, and the same types of headlines are being broadcast to larger audiences outside of my Facebook feeds.  Healthcare being repealed.  Women’s rights to be seemingly reduced.  Christians to receive priority about all other foreigners seeking entry to America.  A fucking wall to divide the United States from Mexico.

Seriously, how are these headlines factual in the year two thousand and seventeen?

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