Today, working is hard. Writing is not coming to me. Therefore, I'm blogging to give myself the feeling like I am doing something productive. That said, I have been writing a lot lately. But today, I have accomplished nothing. Wanna know why? Because I'm procrastinating by surfing the internet, shopping for my son's 5th birthday party, paying bills, checking facebook. But I guess I am allowed mindless time so that I can let my brain stew. Actually, yes, that's true! Just as I was driving, I saw a girl crossing the street and she was texting on her phone. And I thought, "where would we be without our fingers?" -> "middle fingers" -> "Kim's middle fingers"-> "an idea!" You see, being aimless is good. Okay, now I just need to get that idea into a funny comic strip... ah dang, c'mon work mojo, make me focused! (but the clock says 4:43 pm. It's so close to quitting time...)

I love the end of the year and the coming of the NEW year! It means it's time to take stock of what you've accomplished and assess where you want to be in the coming year. I am admittedly, an ambitious person. And well, having kids kinda side-tracked my ambition. BUT, they did not squash it. I want to get back to what I was doing before kids, and that means I was acting a lot and I was trying to get an animated show based on ALG on TV. I was really on a roll acting wise before I got pregnant. But alas, I wanted to have a family and I didn't want to regret not having kids. So I decided with my husband, that it was time. And I hardly worked in acting during the 5.5 years I was pregnant, nursing, sleep-deprived and then deciding it was time to have a second to do it all over again. Well now the second child is now almost 2, and I'm done having kids. (I can't handle more than 2, hats off to the moms and dads that have more.) Anyhow, I've now gone back to acting class. And it's like turning on the lights to a darkened room. And my ambition to get an animated show has been re-awakened. It's time ladies and gentlemen for me to make my resolutions, and these 2 things are part of them! I hope you too will rise to your challenges and make your goals come true. Happy New Year and may all your dreams come true in 2012!

I drew this comic because I really did believe my mom thought I was a nobody. It's very sad but true. Her nagging made me think that. Now I'm more wiser and realize that's just her way, but it was hard to realize that back in the day...

I came across this article in the NY Times about how failure can be a catalyst to success.
And as I read it, I thought, yes, I do believe there is truth to this. I know from my experience, that failure (and I've had lots of them) builds you up to overcome. That is if you want to overcome the failure. Failure can make you work smarter. It makes you think about what didn't work, and what could work. I thought I was wired in a strange way. That I wouldn't take no for an answer. But I think being the youngest of 4 girls, being bossed around, and knowing the people in the position to tell me what to do were wrong, somehow resulted in me being a bit gritty. (I'm borrowing Duckworth's term here) And this article went on to say, that test scores do not predict success, but the character of one's grit does. There's even a quiz, the GRIT TEST, to show you where you land on the scale of grittiness. Take the quiz, it's kinda fun and insightful. And if you have kids, it gets you thinking about what kind of lessons we want to teach them.
(If you're interested, I scored 4.4 on the scale of 1-5 on my GRIT test.)

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This week's annoyance is...my brain! So I have a tendency to be negative. Um, does this surprise anyone?  I sometimes wake up thinking the day is going to be a fight. Or that it will be a struggle. But my life is really not that bad. I mean, I'm so grateful to have clean, running water and a fridge that keeps my food cold! I just wake up grumpy, or if I'm not grumpy, I find something to be grumpy about. Can't I just be optimistic from the start? I think because I am a child of a mean, cranky, penny-pinching Korean mom, I am wired to be negative. So I will have to work at changing my mentality. So today, I decided I was not going to focus on anything negative, and instead, focus on the positive. And when a negative thought creeps into my head, I'm going to change it to a good one. I'm going to try this over the weekend and I'll let you know how it goes next week.

You know what made me so annoyed this week? The post office. I filled out a customs form because I realize everything needs a form. After being prepared and filling out a white customs form, I wait in the long line. But when it's finally my turn, the clerk tells me that I filled out the wrong one. "This package requires a different customs form than the one you filled out." I say, "Uh, okay, which one do I need to fill out?" He points to a pile of forms. "That white one." I answer, "I did fill out a white customs form." He says, "No, you need to fill out a different one." I walk over, "This one?" "No, that one." "Which one, the piles of forms are not labeled and they are all in a box?" He replies, "The big white one." I point, "This one?" "Yes." I'm totally annoyed because how am I supposed to know there's a different form to fill out if it's not labeled?!! I grumble and roll my eyes at him, I'm sure he gets this a lot, and well a post office worker probably should, because WHY WASN'T the form labeled for me to find in the first place?!!! I clearly realized it needed a customs form and filled one out. So why don't they mark it, "for packages over 1 lb, use this form." Grrr!!!! Thanks USPS for taking 15 extra minutes of my life that I'll never get back!