Its a bit macabre, but I like it. Someone said something that got me to thinking, which got me to writing.

The steady silent juggernaut
Drones on
Stony indifferent scowl
Oblivious
To the ropes tied to it

Pulling it forward, dragging it back
All the little ants
With their
Heels firmly dug in
Feet kicking
Mouths open in agony

Those ants
Whose
frustrated
cries and pleas,
For haste or hesitance
combined will,
Oaths to God Himself
Cannot amount to so much
As a tickle or prick
The ears
The skin
Never reach the heart
Or change the pace

And day after day it methodically barrels on
So fast or slow it goes unnoticed, so slow or fast it causes panic
Crushing lives and empires
Wearing away everything

And the ants below
Continue to push and pull
Begging for something to change
For one minute more or less
Spending their days tugging it in this direction or that
Constantly switching
Until finally
They themselves succumb
Under its weight

Ground to dust

In time.

"How my current plans have affirmed my mortality" or "Goddamn. I'm leaving my job in two days and and turning 30 in two months"

It's a common plot theme. Someone always begs for a few more minutes of life. It happens, one way or another. The young cancer victim, the rich old man that squandered it all, the villain trying to cut a deal, the immortal who thought they wanted nothing more. Most normal, healthy people don't realize it. usually. Or maybe they do. Maybe after enough goodbyes, or enough chapters close, or enough opportunities are realized they realize that, yes Virginia, they too will die. Probably not today, odds are not tomorrow, but nobody makes it outta here alive.
So, there I was, cleaning my room...
Cleaning has a meditative effect like few other things. It gives you something to focus on, which keeps your mind from wandering too much, while not challenging it enough to keep it fully occupied. The one thing that kept coming to mind was the end of this current volume in my life, and how I wish I can't stop it from happening. Can't even slow it down. Not one bit. I was thinking about this earlier this month. I know this because I penned a poem spontaneously about it. If I had access to it here at work, I'd share a piece. I realized, before I know it, I'll be wrapping up my next adventure. Not the one I'm about to embark on, but the following one. The one I haven't paid for or planned yet. And I'll be at my desk again, doing FKnows. It'll be about the next trip, the next adventure, and life will continue on some other sub par level, hesitantly awaiting with baited breath the next adventure.
And it's all grinding to a halt. Slowly. So slowly all we can do is look back on it and mistake it for a blur rather than a smear.

I'm not going to stop getting older
Life isn't going to slow down
If it did, I'd probably only get more bored by my little life.

Interesting.

Skipping a beat

So, I'm staring down the barrel of the next two years of my life (will explain that in a second), reflecting over the last and doing what I can to make everything happen the way I want it to.

Okay, so, I FINALLY received my EPIK interview (to teach English in Korean public school). I've been working and slaving just to get to this step. It was a little nerve racking completing the application, with its lesson plan and personal statement, which seemed to consume entire weeks of my life. I was constantly revising and second guessing myself. I'd like to thank Alexander and Ashley Guererro for tearing it apart and torching the shreds over and over again. My final submission wasn't perfect, but it was definitely much improved. 

Then came the waiting. That part was worse. It's like writing a girl a letter, asking her flat out if she wants to go to the prom with you, and having to wait for a letter back. After about a week, you start buggin out. I emailed my recruiter to see how many days it takes for the average response. She said 7-10 days later. Eleven (may have been more like nine) days later, I email her again asking if I might have been rejected. She quite tactfully tells me to sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up, and be fucking patient. I email her a week later to check in, she tells me the same thing again. 

Yesterday, I got her email. It said that I have an interview Monday, 1140. At first I was ecstatic. Then my day happened. Then I read the sample questions for the interview. Then my heart sank into my shoes.

I'd been having a normal day at work. That is to say, nothing special or different had happened that day. I'd walked in, taken between 15 and 40 minutes to prepare for my whole day, remembering to put my torn, dog eared, tattered half of a fuck in my back pocket, so it'd be there for me to give it in case of emergency. ('Emergency' is a technical term defined the way an insurance company defines a 'valid claim.' For something to be deemed a 'emergency' it must first be run through a flowchart involving the amount of urgency or importance my director places on the even, the actual objective absolute value of urgency or importance the event has [usually there's a great discrepancy there], the amount of inconvenience the suggested remedies place on me, the amount of blatantly tactless or disrespectful conduct that occurred when informing me there was an emergency, and finally, how feasible/effective the proposed solutions are). I rolled through my classes like a gunslinger, living recklessly and shooting from the hip. It seems that every day my objective is to try and plough through the seemingly pointless and ineffective material in the book so that we can play a game, which is fine by the students. It gets them rehearsing the same English small talk over and over again, and in a way works, considering they never would use this much English if it were left up to the design of the books. It all was capped off by a resentment for having to do anything more at all other than sit there and stare at my newest desktop: a wide angle shot of Ha Long Bay with a beautiful cherry red stained wooden 'junk' (I'm guessing its the name for such a design of boat) floating across it.

The funny thing is I had read the questions, which included ones like 'Tell me about your passion for teaching,' and 'why do you want to teach public school in Korea' juxtaposed against dire fire-and-brimstone sounding warnings that surmounted to 'don't go looking like a shitbag' and 'EPIK wants teachers, not some foreigner looking for a working holiday!!!' After my day at work (which, if you recall, was nothing special or different) I was feeling lackluster, ineffective, useless, void of any passion, resenting my job, and wishing I was on a beach anywhere else in the world. I think I'm officially burned out at my current job. 

The rest of my night was spent pulling myself out of this tailspin. In fact, it was quite effortless. A good friend offered me some good advice, "Don't let short term burnout get in the way of long term goals." Well said. It also helped that I practiced a bit, and when I practiced I found myself diving into the few wellsprings of passion I do have. My answers to some of the questions were genuine, and I found that bit of myself that really loves doing what I do. Because I do. I love teaching. I love helping little kids learn. I love getting them to get it. Once I started talking out my responses, I found I had a lot more to offer than my current job inspired me to do. I am still a little concerned about the amount of prep I have to do, but for now I know I'm better than I thought I was when I started the whole interview review process. 

So, Monday's the big day. This will pave my way into the second year of my Korean life. Really, I'm more here to travel than anything. Screw saving money long term. Now  is the time to see everything. In fact, I've been wondering why I'd want to come back to Korea at all. Maybe I don't.Its not that I dislike it, but there are other things out there. There's always Vietnam, with its dirty dirt cheap cost of living, kingly salary, lax laws, and...who knows what else? The only real thing I have keeping me here is a barely ridden motorcycle. Seriously. I mean, I love all my friends and such, but I'm effectively leaving them all in 36 days (shudder!). Even if I end up in Daegu, only 30 min by train, this is it. It's spaghetti against the wall time. Whoever sticks, sticks, and the rest of them all will just slide off into the depths of my facebook friends as memories and former good times. Its reality. It's the way it happens. Why stay? I guess because what's comfortable is comfortable. I guess, unless Vietnam steals my heart in the meantime, I'll be back.

Speaking of Vietnam, I only have THIRTY SIX DAYS UNTIL MY UUUBER EPIC TRIP AROUND SE ASIA!!! AASSSSAAAAAA!!!! So excited. In fact, I think its part of the reason for my burnout. I mean, you have a month left at some mickey mouse operation school, and you're staring at over seven weeks of history and big cities and jungles and white sandy beaches and...well...paradise! Two dollars will get you a beer, a sandwich, another beer and another sandwich!! I MISS SANDWICHES!! Ohhhhh man! It's gonna be INSANE!! I already have my gopro and my kindle (memory maker and time passer), plus my backpack and such, now all I need to do is get myself a snorkel and some fins and I'm set!! I'm so excited it keeps me up at night!