Cognitive Dissonance August 6, 2008

Playing catch on the playa with a local friend back in January

Last night I was chatting with a guy on the internet about traveling. He has been to many different countries. More importantly, he has lived abroad. He taught English in Japan and was a dive instructor in Costa Rica. And he’s only 24! I was very impressed at his ability to just up and move to other countries and actually work in these countries for peanuts. He uses his parents’ address for everything…so I’m guessing he lives back home in SLO for the time being.

Then we started talking about how expenses are cut when you travel to other countries in Asia, Central America and South America. Rent is obviously cheaper, especially in my case since I live in San Francisco which is probably the second most expensive city in the nation.

I don’t want to give up my apartment. And he said that that is a big reason why many people don’t want to travel. They do not want to give up their homes, cars, jobs, etc.

I didn’t even realize that I’m falling into that category of non-travelers but I really do love SF enough to want to spend at least several months out of the year here.

Also, I pay a very good rate for rent due to good ol’ rent control. I also have a roommate and that really helps my situation. I LOVE my apartment. I love the location, my sunny room, the cute kitchen, I love love love love love it – at least in the Summer and Fall. It’s weird how our seasons are awkward. Fall feels more like summer than summer itself does!

I want to be able to travel for months at a time to save money (aside from experiencing other cultures and learning new languages of course) but unfortunately for me, subletting is against our month-to-month lease. This means that if I want to keep the apartment I have to keep paying rent, even though I won’t be there!

So what are my options? Here they are in order of preference:

1. Temporarily add another person to the month-to-month lease for the months I am gone. (Well if this first one is even an option) This way I can legally still keep my apartment. I hope my landlord will go for it since my roommate is pretty cool and I’m sure he’d keep a good eye out on the place. The only thing I’d have to worry about would be the PG&E bill, since it’s under my name. I could always just kindly ask my roommate to open his own account after cancelling my own? (Only if it’d be cheaper for the both of us). The only downside to this is that because the lease will end at a specific time, I’d probably have to come back…or at least start paying for my half of rent again.
2. Move out of my SF apartment so that I can travel. I can always just stop my paper bills anyway and just receive and pay for them on the internet. The only downside with this option is that if I do choose to come back to the states, where would I stay? Do I even really want a home base at this point? I mean…would I even want to come back to San Francisco? I’ve been living here for two years now and I feel that it’s been a long time already. Hmmm. I have that itch.

I may have some thinking to do but I think I already know what I am going to do. Either way, I am going to get my ass out there and travel.

Progress July 27, 2008

Photos from last night, my birthday night. I am now 27 years old.

Wow, I can officially say I am in my late twenties. Or can I still push it and say mid to late twenties? Teehee. I just feel so young still it’s unbelievable. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know if it’s because of the stereotypical, youthful Asian genes or my carefree (or rather careless) attitude, etc. Either way, I still feel young. I had a good birthday. Towards the end I was a bumbling idiot but for the most part, it was a great time. I spent the day by myself at the park lying in the sun while listening to music and trying to reflect on the past 27 years. At night, I had dinner with several friends and we went out for drinks and pool afterwards. I couldn’t have thought of a better way to celebrate my birthday. I’ve always liked smaller groups and not making such a huge deal off of birthdays so last night was definitely a sweet time for me.

The weather outside was quite crappy today which almost put me in a depressed state. It also didn’t help that I woke up with a throat burning like hell.

What a great time to update my blog. Haha.

I went ahead and filed for a sole proprietorship to get everything off the ground for my new business and also have an EIN number so when I work with wholesalers, they’ll see that I actually am trying to be legit. So within the next two months, I’ll technically be a woman business owner!

Now that play time is over it really is time to buckle down so I can travel again by Winter. I’m so fortunate to be able to work from anywhere. Even though I’m starting a retail business, I still completely support the company I work for. I love my job. Does that sound crazy?

Time for some spinach enchiladas. Hopefully, now that I only have one job, I can update this blog on a more daily basis!

Back to reality July 23, 2008

So as much as I like to be travel, I will not be doing it until Winter. Honestly, I actually LOVE being in San Francisco in the Summer and Fall but Winter and Spring are when I like to go to other countries.

I’m down to one job (the one I actually like) but there’s been a cut in hours so I’ve been getting more involved with the company. It’s definitely a company within an industry I’d like to grow in.

On my business front, I am meeting with a lawyer this week who will give me legal and tax advice on getting everything started. If I am going to start my own business, I want to make sure I am doing it right! I definitely want someone who knows what they’re doing to help me out.

Other than that, going back to a lower cab lifestyle. I really need to watch myself from now on…

I’m just not good at office jobs! Time to take control! July 20, 2008

So I was let go from my boring full-time office job last week and this is how I feel about that:

Happy

This is what I’ve been thinking about a lot:

Travel

July 20, 2008

The first meetup at Washington Square Park today was amazing! Thanks to EVERYONE who came out. It was such a great, chill time with lots of cupcakes. We all just sat around eating and talking cupcakes and we all made new friends. It was amazing. Can’t wait until we have our next meetup in August at Dolores Park! Will be putting the info for that together soon! Thank you again!

July 20, 2008

The first meetup at Washington Square Park today was amazing! Thanks to EVERYONE who came out. It was such a great, chill time with lots of cupcakes. We all just sat around eating and talking cupcakes and we all made new friends. It was amazing. Can’t wait until we have our next meetup in August at Dolores Park! Will be putting the info for that together soon! Thank you again!

Random thoughts at 3 in the morning July 13, 2008

Birds of the same feather flock together.

I took this photo of this super stylish group of
pretty, fake blonde Japanese girls in Tokyo back in April.

I ended my last blog with a little about the law of attraction. Let’s just forget the hype because that really is how it is in real life. In sociology class back in college, I remember finally noticing how people are usually attracted to “their own kind”; whether it’s race, level of physical attractiveness, social standing, etc…people always end up with those similar to them. I couldn’t believe it had taken me 20 years to learn something so simple. Duh, Jan!

Anyway, lately I’ve been around some inconsiderate ass people. And when I say inconsiderate, I mean flat out THOUGHTLESS. Maybe it’s stupidity or flat out selfishness but either way, it’s inconsiderate. Am I that way too? Am I thoughtless? Because if I am, I need to change my ways! You really are the company you keep. I want to be kind and loving towards others but the minute nothing good but something bad is reciprocated I’m going to step away. Life is too short to dwell in such negativity.

My So-Called Universe July 11, 2008

It’s foggy again.

Photo taken while being carefree in LA

Man I really need to find the time to blog more. Perhaps if I blogged more I’d actually be able to let my feelings out. I don’t like hard journals anymore because people actually read that stuff. It is a shame that people can’t keep private journals anymore because other overly curious people give into their desires instead of honoring the other person’s private thoughts.

At least on here, it’s pretty obvious that I’m typing only things I want other people to read. There.

So I want to take a step back and look at my life for a moment and see where I am actually going.

Right now I am working two jobs. One job is your typical 9-5 office job (in my case 8:30-5) and the other is a part-time job with a media company.

The 9-5 office job is my bread and butter. For now. It pays the bills and gives me some fun money. It also gives me money to invest into my LLC, which I am currently setting up. I am going to start micro testing as soon as I get my business tax ID. If things go according to schedule I can do this by the beginning of August. (Haha we know how things never go according to schedule! ) Right now, it is a bit bothersome to have 8 consecutive hours consume my whole day. I also only get a half hour lunch break (which could be both good and bad). But it pays once a week.

The part-time job is so much better. The part-time job is something I am learning so much from and it’s such an amazing learning experience. It’s something I’d rather do full-time. Of course the biggest problem is the pay. It doesn’t pay nearly as much as the full-time one. But this job…pays only once a month…making it perfect to have for rent money. $$

So right now I gotta definitely do both. Once I have my LLC set up I will most likely get rid of my full-time one. I just gotta wait until everything is up and rolling. And if I can’t keep my full-time job, I will just stick to my part-time one.

I just saw some things on the internet that made me realize that anything IS possible but accomplishing something is NEVER easy. And I’m not talking about being able to accomplish wiping your own ass on the toilet. I’m talking about legit shit like a kid finishing a book report, high school kid making it onto the basketball team, me finishing college, etc. Everything is a challenge and I feel that sometimes we get so caught up in our many self-imposed complications that the goal seems to be no longer there or even just fades away.

I have been wanting to file for an LLC through a legal firm since May when I first got my jobs (I was hired for both a week between each other) and I still haven’t done it. I’ve been at each job for less than three months so I’ve been doing a lot of catching up on bills and whatnot. Now it’s July and I feel as if I am so close yet so far. I feel as if all I have been doing in terms of career/business is just working working working – for other people. I need to start setting aside time for myself to make things work.

So I decided that in order to make it work, I will just work from 8:30-5, walk home, have a snack take a 30 minute nap, work out (which probably means go jogging for half an hour), shower, eat a healthy dinner, work on JAN stuff for a couple of hours (it’s important to have that block for me and cross off everthing on that to-do list…only vital things go on there) and work my second job 10-12. The good thing about my part-time job is that I can switch it up every week if it becomes too much of a routine or is just simply too much.

Other than that, I spent a very low-key weekend in Echo Park in LA and my 27th birthday is coming up. I’m hoping to go to Vegas and go buckwild but who knows what the universe has in the cards for me.

I’m also starting to work out more since I hate being all out of shape and tubby. Like attracts like. I mean, come on, you never see a fat person with a hot, fit person right? Usually their interests are different. More on this later. But for now, time to get ready go to work!

Staying in San Francisco May 12, 2008

So it looks like I will be living in San Francisco for at least another year! Hooray!

I just got another job offer today here in the city so I am very excited about that. I’ve lived here in San Francisco for the past year and three quarters but I feel as if I haven’t really LIVED here. The whole time I was working while living here, I was actually working in the East Bay. Sure I had my San Francisco friends but I spent a lot of my time in the East Bay because of work and didn’t really get to actually take advantage of San Francisco. After I lost my job, I went ahead and pursued a project which required me to travel around the world (not bad haha) so ten days out of each month, I was gone. So it felt as if I didn’t even belong here. And once that stint was over, I was back in SF, unemployed and quite frankly, felt very displaced. Literally. I felt as if I had been bouncing around in so many ways and I really had been bouncing back and forth between San Francisco and many different parts of the world.

The only thing I had going for me was my sweet deal I had with my apartment here in North Beach.

Well, now I am ready to just sit back and chill out here in the city. I’m ready to make more San Francisco friends and am ready to actually hang out here and finally feel like I have a life here. I am also going to be able to work on some side projects for myself and it’s probably a good idea that I stay stationary for a while. So yeah…I’ll be here in SF working two jobs (don’t worry the second job is only about 10 hours a week), enjoying the area, getting healthy, and chillin the f*ck out!!!!!! Yay!!!!!

Been busy lately so sorry for the lack of updates. I am thinking about starting a San Francisco blog as well. Budget stuff, y’all! Hahahahaha. xoxo

I got a cool, new job! May 5, 2008

I am so relieved! I was starting to freak out about not having a job ever since I got back from Tokyo (granted I had only been here for less than two weeks) that it got to the point where I just kinda said F*CK IT. Things happen for a reason and things will fall into place. The minute I let it all go I ended up getting a job!

I don’t want to get into too much detail but it’s for a media company and I get to work from home! I also gain marketing experience (which I don’t have too much of) which is a very big thing for me. I’ve always wanted to get into marketing but just had no clue where to start. So thank God for this job! It’s been pretty cool so far. Thanks also big time to the people (especially R) who brought me on board and gave me a chance.

Hooray!