19 August 2023

She's a scab.

You know, that thing, when you're wounded, and it appears to support your healing, and then, when you're all healed up, she leaves, never to be seen or heard from, ever again, and even though she leaves remnants in your scar, she's gone. She's beloved and loathed in equal measure.

^..^

Why isn't this ship going anywhere? This ship just goes around and around the Sun. I'm so bored I could die, and the dominant species is so primitive that it's constantly at war, with ITSELF! 

^..^

And they dream... of wage labor. 

^...^

And they're actively destroying the one ship that is their only home. Literally, they know exactly how to save their ship and themselves, yet, they refuse. Earth is an odd place; it is. 


Monfri plus one Friyay, because we, as millennials, have a responsibility to show the next generation that jobbing, going to a fucking job, and spending most of your free waking hours at some goddamn job, is normal, one-hundred percent, absolutely fucking normal, and because i keep the highlights to myself, cause the internet deserves nothing more than the scraps, so don't get it twisted thinking that i'm serving up any flex or brag through my pics & posts, ugh. You're clueless unless you're experiencing me in the flesh.


Dream job? I don't dream of jobbing. 

Striving toward wealth has nothing to do with not wanting to work, and yes, working and jobbing are two completely different things. If you need an explainer, then you prolly need to read more, in general, nevertheless, I will explain myself.

A job is where you go make money for someone else or some entity owned by shareholders (people who have invested in a company that is financially made available to the public to invest in, financially). You are doled out meager wages (your hourly wage, e.g. the federal minimum wage in these United States is $7.25/hr., which means that every hour you are at a job, on the clock, for your employer, they MUST pay you no less than $7.25 for every hour that you are on the clock) in exchange for "doing" (in quotes bc it's apparent that some people do not actually have to do their jobs well) some meager task(s). 

The company at which I am currently employed, has a $12 (and some change) minimum, which means that they pay its employees more than the federal minimum. 

My point is that the wages, no matter what they are, are meager. When compared to the wages earned by those who sit in cubicles, the wages of the people who actually do the on-the-ground jobs are criminally low. Physical labor is no more or less valuable than brain labor. This is a simple fact. 

That's jobbing.

Work is all the stuff you do to make money for yourself and/or your own business/companies. Decades may pass as you work with zero income coming in, thus you job for someone else in the meantime. My work largely consists of thought thinking and word working. THE thing for which the world absolutely hates to pay. Ironically, nobody wants to pay for it because they think that anybody can do it because everyone knows how to do it, but this does not mean that anyone does it well. 

And so, I toil away at my work as a thought thinker and word worker. 

My weeks consist of spending five of my glory-given days at some job that doles me out meager wages, and I have the few hours in-between sleeping and on weekends to work my work. I am allotted two days off every five days from my job, and over time, I accrue sick pay, vacation days, float days, and meager retirement funds. Basically, the job that I currently hold is one that pays me so poorly that I will have to literally die before I could quit my job. Well, not ME, specifically, cause I have the sort of financial intelligence that this will not be the case for ME, but for "me" as a day-jobber, the larger "you," will have to work until we die. 

This is the case for most people, and so, the fact that GenZ is not getting out there and jobbing is troubling to me, and one of the main reasons why I think they have failed to understand that the internet does not dole out money the way that it thinks it does is because of social media. They are under this impression that they can somehow "make it" online, go viral, have a following that financially sustains them. This is never going to happen to YOU. It's like winning the lottery, and people who play the lottery as their "job," well, go out and find that person and meet them, and find out how "great" their life is, etc.

Anyway, my point is that we all need to come to terms on SOCIALS that we all go to a fucking job; we all job for someone, like little beggars being doled out cash to show up and do some meager jobbing tasks, etc., etc., etc. And we're supposed to be grateful for these titans of industry employing us. Barf. But seriously, we're supposed to be grateful. 

Also, this is capitalism. But that's a post for another time. Well, actually, that's an entire website of posts that I've already written and uploaded elsewhere, that "where" being LOPSIII.com, that's "lop-see" dot com. 

*sigh* Happy Saturday, lol. 

Get a fucking job! 

MONDAY
finally had enough energy
to cook after jobbing
the poor bodybuddy/lifemate
has been coming up with and cooking
all of our meals for like two months


TUESDAY
I looked at my phone at 0123
quickly got onto IG
used the daily filter I love so much
bc it specifically only works in-app
(no fudging the day/time)
&snapped this selfie
nailed it.


WEDNESDAY
a co-production
w/ the bodybuddy/lifemate
yommy.


THURSDAY
I'm not entirely sure why
but it has taken me two and a half months
to realize that I haven't used our lanai
so we started using it
*sigh*


FRIDAY
the bodybuddy/lifemate and I
job the same shift on M/W/F
he works T/R
naturally, we take our breaks together
is the best.


FRIYAY
a nondescript pic of our friyay
cause its a buncha noneya
the highlights are for that afk life  



13 August 2023

Clamber we will, if clamber, we must.

On this day (I honestly cannot remember the exact date, and I do not wish to rummage through documents to find the exact date, because this date is close enough) in 2013, the bodybuddy/lifemate and I touched down in Daegu, South Korea, from Denver, Colorado, USA, because the bodybuddy/lifemate snagged a job as an English teacher. We were shooting for Seoul, but after landing in Daegu, we ended up being very grateful that we were able to spend our first year in a smaller city. By September 2014, the bodybuddy/lifemate snagged a spot in a Seoul academy, etc. At the time we first landed in Daegu, we experienced some serious growing pains, but the pain was different. How do I put it?

Imagine standing at the base of a large staircase, a set of stairs wherein the next step is many meters above your head. You jump to try to reach the next step, and as you're jumping up, someone grabs you by the back of your shirt and sorta pulls you up onto the next step. This is what it was like to move to Korea to teach English. 

Yes, you still have to jump, but the process of relocating to Korea is largely supported by the institution that hired you to teach. They setup your visa; they setup your flight; they setup your airport pickup; they setup your housing; they setup your training, etc., etc., etc. You are thrust into your life very rapidly, and the stress of it all is too much for some would-be teachers to bear. Nevertheless, you're there, and it's all happening to you. As long as you can hang on for the ride, the stress and burden of reaching that next step levels out. 

In 2023, our move to Oahu has been a completely different sorta jump.

Imagine a cat. It looks up at a thing onto which it wants to jump. It peddles its back feet a bit. Stares up at the height it imagines it can jump to reach the height of the thing upon which it wishes to be. Its butt wriggles back and forth until it finally decides that it will jump. It jumps. Its front feet reach the height, but only about its chest makes it over the ledge, and then it has to reach one of its back feet up to the edge of the ledge and clamber its way onto the thing it tried so effortfully to summit. Maybe thirty whole seconds go by as it scrambles to get itself comfortably atop the thing. 

This is what our move to Oahu has felt like. We knew how high we were attempting to jump. We made all of the necessary measurements. We took in as much information as we could. But at the end of the day, we did not know anyone here. We have had zero help aside from the internet to get here. And at some point, we had to jump. We jumped as hard and as high as we could; we also had to drag along our unfueled rocket. We were strong enough to reach the ledge, and then we had to clamber our way over the ledge's edge and essentially roll our bodies onto the top of the next step. 

It was rough, unglamorous, a bit clumsy, and I've had more meltdowns in the past three months than I've had in my entire life before then.  

But we fucking did it. 

We fucking moved our life to Oahu. 

And along the way, I lost sight of our goal. 

I lost sight of myself. 

I lost sight of what our move has all truly been about. 

The point of our move was not to make some grand statement about how "we've made it," or whatever the fuck. Instead, when we were easing out of the pandemic, we looked at each other, and thought out loud about how, if this is our life (the life we were living in Colorado, working day jobs as our businesses grow), where would we, ideally, live, while doing the exact same thing (working day jobs as our businesses grow)?

Joking, we both said, Hawai'i (we had skid stopped through over the course of a 72-hour layover between Auckland, NZ, and Seattle, WA back in 2018). Neither of us knew that the other had, essentially, fallen in love with the place over those 72 hours. 

But then we looked into it, and the goal was never to prove anything. The goal was to simply relocate. If we are going to job day jobs, we'll just job day jobs in Hawai'i. And back in late 2022, we started seriously planning our relocation.

By April 2023, our plans would be put to the test, and our plan worked.

What failed was my own internal struggle with my own dissatisfaction by not "being someone" by now. I had crossed some wires at some point between April and June, wherein I was thinking of this relocation as some proof of my success, my having "made it," until one day, the bodybuddy/lifemate gently reminded me that that was never the point of our move. The point was simple. Move our current life to Hawai'i. That's it. 

We still have the mundane task of day jobbing to do, and the daunting task of fueling our rocket, but we got good day jobs (we stayed with the same company), and our rocket made it in tact. We fucking moved to Hawai'i. And we're simply living our everyday life here. We haven't "made it," yet. We have nothing to prove. We simply wanted to live the simple life we were living in Colorado in a place that we thought we'd love enough to finally settle down in and call home. 

^..^

According to the bodybuddy/lifemate, I have BIG DREAMS. For one, I am an orphan who believes she can be a billionaire. Two, I am not a nepo baby, which means I have no fancy connections, who dares to be a widely-read writer. Third, I'm under the impression that (as a normal person) I can attain both of the aforementioned before turning thirty (I'm thirty-seven). 

I laughed out loud when the bodybuddy/lifemate put my dreams/aspirations in these terms for me to understand myself. 

The point, he says, is that I am living my life in pursuit of these goals, and the goals that I've set for myself will take a lifetime to attain, reach, behold. They are, according to him, BIG GOALS, BIG DREAMS. In short, I want a BIG LIFE. But I've really come from very little. I am a 99 Percenter trying to escape into the one percent of the One Percent. 

And then I felt stupid and selfish. 

But then I felt happy.

I felt really proud of what we've accomplished. The point was never to be done jobbing, because we've "made it." The point was always to continue living our simple lives, here, in Hawai'i. Showing up to our lame-ass jobs to collect our lame-ass paychecks as we continue to build our businesses and fuel our rocket. Then, when our rocket is finally fueled, Hawai'i is our location of residence, the place to where we will come home after our months-long business trips take us around the world and in and out of D.C. 

When we think of our life as a pair who has attained their lifetime goals, we will need the stability of a home base, a place where all our stuff is stashed while our business takes us wherever our clients need us. As a vacation hot spot, having Hawai'i as our home means that when we are home, we are not working, which essentially means we'll be on vacation when we're home. 

In the present moment, however, we are not on vacation. We drag our asses to our day jobs, and we live our mundane lives in this tropical paradise. This is not a bad situation. This is not a situation about which I should be complaining. And so, my deepest hope is that I have not been misunderstood as a complainer for having successfully relocated my life to one of the most expensive places on the planet.

When understood, my lamentations revolve around my own personal dissatisfaction with reaching my personal goals and dreams. But like the bodybuddy/lifemate reminds me on the daily (something it seems he's decided to take upon himself), my dreams are enormous. They're of the biggest variety. And dreams and goals like mine will take a lifetime to attain. 

This perspective shift (along with a dynamite video by @kiesha_evolving) has helped me understand both how spoiled I am (having gifts and talent at all) and how far I've come (putting my gifts and talents to good use).

My soul has found a new peace. 

I have nothing to prove to anyone.

Every day, I am inching closer and closer to my goals and dreams.

Like the bodybuddy/lifemate continually reminds, I have BIG GOALS, the type of dreams that require a lifetime of striving. To be able to work toward my goals, at all, is a life worth loving. 











06 August 2023

a Midsommar (not the summer solstice version but rather, the middle-of-summer style) Saturday Arbitrary Day

When we moved here, we started new jobs for the same company, and when we started our new jobs, I decided to go by my birth name turned middle name, Sun. The name given to me at the time of my birth is a name that my birth grandfather chose, which was the name 선 (Sun or Seon; my paperwork has it spelled Sun), which means that my Korean name is 김선 or Kim Sun. My birth family name is Kim. I'm a Kim, and my first name is Sun (yes, it's odd that I have a single-syllable name as a Korean, and I wrote about this a while back after feeling certain feels when Koreans would ask me if I had a Korean name and I'd tell them, and then they'd look at me like so sad, because they thought that a] my paperwork was wrong, or b] I didn't actually know, so I was making it up or something). 

Anywhooo, when I was adopted two months before turning four, my adopted parents decided to give me a white name. To this day, I do not understand the logic behind giving me a new name at all. I was FOUR YEARS OLD, which means that I had been being called "Sun" for all of my life. I knew my name. I recognized being called Sun. My birth mother, to this day, still calls me Sun, not Kim Sun, just Sun or something like Sun-ee-ya. 

My point is that my birth family looked upon my face upon my birth, and my birth grandfather gave me my name. They were the people who saw my face as a little baby infant and decided to name me Sun. Later, when times got tough, I was dropped off at an orphanage and internationally adopted to the United States. I blame no one. I understand Korea's history.

Again, I do not understand why my adopted parents would give me a new name, and why is that new name so White?

If I'm being really honest, I've wanted to go by Sun since about the sixth grade, but society makes changing one's name seem so odd and strange that I didn't work up the nerve to ask to go by my birth name until this year, at the ripe age of thirty-seven. 

And so, here in Hawai'i, at my place of employment, everyone calls me Sun, and quite frankly, everyone knows me as Sun, and it feels so strange, and it brings me an odd sense of peace-discomfort. 

At this point, I really have no point, because the rest of this post is pics from our Midsommar Saturday Arbitrary Day. We decided a few weeks back, that once I've settled into my new job and started receiving paychecks at my new pay, we'd do some vacationing on our weekends, and so, this was the first big official weekend, so we celebrated an Arbitrary Day.

First, we walked out to the place where all knowledge is kept, wherein I accidentally walked into the courtyard and took some pics of some beautiful foliage, but then realized that there were signs everywhere asking that we NOT walk through the courtyard, so then I was horrified and embarrassed, and promptly deleted all of the pics I took, hence the [redacted] photo below.

Then, we walked out to Goodwill to pick up some more kitchen stuff of which we are in need, and on the way, we stopped by the Golden Arches for some tasty lunch, and while we were there, we wondered when United Statesian Mackey's got so classy, cause they are classy in Seoul, but this was the first on U.S. soil we've visited that is Seoul-level classy, etc.

Then, we swung through Daiso for more kitchen stuff and fun stuff to include in my first-ever IG Giveaway :)

And then, the best day ended on the best note ever. We went back to the posh grocery store (one we only discovered last weekend) where we saw a plant that we need-needed, bought the plant, and walked our new roommate home.

For dinner, we finished up the leftovers from Friday and ate more cinnabonners (the bodybuddy/lifemate's cinnamon rolls), and then I promptly passed out, cause we had stayed up much later into the day than we typically do as night-shift jobbers.

Basically, I am very curious about what my life would've been like, who I would've turned into if I had been called Sun my entire life. When my co-jobbers call me Sun, it still feels strange, to me, but sounds so normal coming out of their mouths. They only know me as Sun, and that's so strange to me. I do not expect old friends to call me Sun, since they've all known me as Tiffany, but I do kind of hope that people who meet me from now on to know me as Sun. I've never felt like a ditsy-dumb-blonde (I know, stereotypes suck, #sorrynotsorry) Tiffany, but I have always loved the name Sun, despite not being called by that name (that I can remember) until, literally, two months ago. 

The name Sun feels so me and yet feels so foreign.

None of this really matters in the big scheme of My Life, but it does matter a lot within the small details of everyday living. Someday, I will let go of the frustration surrounding my white adopted parents need to give me a "new" name, when I had had a name and knew myself that way. I feel sad for that little girl named Sun who was wiped white. I feel sad that I must've been confused and felt unseen and maybe somewhat invisible, like Sun didn't matter. It would explain a lot of my social psychology/anxiety when considering how I feel like everyone is hostile, and I must constantly combat that internal feeling, because really, people don't care enough about other people to be nice or hostile. For most people, their own life is difficult enough, too difficult perhaps to even care about being mean or nice. 

Thus, I must believe that I am not being treated, on purpose, in a particular way. I am just me. Others are just themselves, and I can move through the world without being scared that someone is actively trying to harm me because whoever Sun is doesn't matter. Sun does matter. Even if she didn't matter to my adopted parents. She matters to me. And so, Sun and I are on a journey now, together with my bodybuddy/lifemate. 

No, my adopted parents no longer get to go on this journey, until or unless they show me that they understand what they did to me. Obviously, I do not think that they were actively trying to harm me. I wholeheartedly believe that they think that they love me, but they do not know how to love themselves or each other, so there's no way in hell they know how to love me. This is apparent. And so, I know they are upset that they have not been welcomed into my life as Sun, but they can be part of her life, once they admit that they rid her of her Korean-ness, and so now, I am doing double-duty to find myself.

Until then, of course I'm grateful for the opportunity adoption afforded me, the privilege for which I never asked, but the reality is that I'd rather be a Korean orphan than a white adoptee.















  

05 August 2023

My First Instagram Giveaway! (Open from 05Aug23 - 12Aug23)

As an avid fan of @wemakesthree (also broadcasting from wemakesthree.com), I bought a copy of Shana K. Antoine's children's book Manse and Nono: Mama's Here that she wrote and published for her own two children. It's a beautiful story about how a mother's love transcends place and time, and how she, the mother, will always be there for her children. The illustrations were done by Larisa Lungu, and the illustrations are so illustrative they jump off the page like a wonderful animated series.

Since I do not have a child of my own (on purpose), and I am not a child (despite all of the inner-child healing work that I'm doing on myself these days), I would like to giveaway the copy of the book that I purchased to a mother of a small child or children who would like to have this book. 

Giveaway Instructions:

Follow @wemakesthree on IG

Like my (@sunthesailor) post on IG

Share (via comment on the post) your greatest struggle (as serious or as fun as you'd like to make it) as a mother.  

Giveaway ends on 12AUG23, and I will ship the book to the winner the following week. 

See ya on the 'Gram

If you do not win the giveaway, you can easily purchase the book, HERE, on Amazon *peace*



 

02 August 2023

2023 July Reads

 Books Read: 22

yes, i've abandoned my #readinggoal cause i just have too much on my plate, at the moment.
i will keep reading, and i will post what i read.
i simply cannot hold myself to any sort of "goal,"
or i will lose my mind.


21. My Nemesis by Charmaine Craig

Fiction Craig | 2023 | 208 pages

 

22. Voyage of the Sable Venus and other poems by Robin Coste Lewis

Poetry Lewis | 811.6 Le | 2015 | 162 pages

 

23. Momfluenced: Inside the maddening, picture-perfect world of mommy influencer culture by Sara Petersen

Nonfiction | 306.8743 Pe | 2023 | 320 pages


The Books in Images & Selfies




 



Happy Reading!