soulscape

First there was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon…then there was Hero…now here’s the next visually-interesting martial arts epic directed by a formerly “high-brow” Chinese director: The Promise

The trailer looks beautiful. The director? Chen Kaige of “Farewell My Concubine” fame. Check out the trailer: http://wip.warnerbros.com/promise/

What are the other things? Real briefly since I really want to actually get 8 hours of sleep tonight, which means being asleep in 15 minutes:

March was as busy as advertised…many dances, many performances…an ex-roommate and my co-workers actually came to one of my performances, which marks the first time in years and years that I think invited friends from outside my dance circle to a performance.

And yes, the grad school responses did come. NYU’s rejection letter came on Saturday, March 25th; U. of Virginia’s rejection letter came on Friday, March 31st. BUT IT’S ALL GOOD.

April is still going to be very busy with dance stuff…and by the end of the month I hope to be able to create a new dance number on the subject of “Religiosity”…

until next time…

Recently, some of my friends have pondered where to go next in life, what to do. One friend had decided to stay in New York City after finishing her yearly gig dancing with the Rockettes. Another had to make the decision whether to move from Kansas City to Los Angeles, or Kansas City to New York City. Just this week, I believe she bought her ticket to NYC.

Another friend has lately been debating whether he should make a career change, leaving the world of IT/Network Administration to go to seminary. Another friend just took the real estate license exam, although he’s also trying to cultivate a career in illustration.

These are mostly friends ranging from their mid-twenties to mid-thirties, which makes sense, since I’m exactly in the middle: 30. From my vantage point, I see that those who are younger than me and older than me are all facing the same struggles in decision-making. We all face so many options. Only in America do you feel that you can do so many things and go so many places that it actually makes choosing HARDER. We actually have a lot of viable choices, but with this freedom to make our own path, we often feel stranded — lost in indecision.

For the last couple of years, my big choices have had to do with education. First, I chose to go back to UCLA to finish my BA, which I’ve discussed. Then, I chose to apply to graduate school. I found out as I approached 30 that I’m insanely indecisive. So these decisions were BIG. And because I’m so indecisive, I know I have to stick to my guns once I do make a choice. So it’s as simple as this, if I make it into one of the two graduate schools I applied to (New York University and the University of Virginia), I’m going. Good bye Los Angeles, hello East Coast.

Because, I’m in this rat race too. And it’s true what they say: it’s better to make a bad decision than to make no decision at all. So if I make it into grad school, great! If I don’t, I’m back to square one — too many options to choose from.

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Oh, and if you’re wondering, I should hear back from both schools by the very beginning of April.

I’m about a month behind in welcoming in 2006, at least here on my blog. But I succeeded in posting something up before February hit (about four and a half hours to spare). Why have I been neglecting this? Well, I don’t know, but it has been a melancholy month and a half since I last posted. As December wound down, I had to accept the fact that my job search was effectively on hiatus until the new year.

Back in September, when I finished the last of my undergraduate classes at UCLA, I had decided to work as a Production Assistant on a low-budget movie FOR FREE, just for the experience. I wasn’t in a hurry to start my job search at the time because I figured I had plenty of time. After all, in the past, my job searches had for the most part been quick and efficient. If you had told me I would still be looking as Christmas approached, I wouldn’t have believed you.

With my job search sputtering, I spent some time applying to a couple of grad schools for Creative Writing. In the end, I had applied to New York University and the University of Virginia. When January hit, I must admit I got a slow start on things. I think I had gotten lulled to sleep by the holidays. But by the second week, I had started sending out my resume again. I ended up interviewing for three different positions (in real estate, steel import/export, and for a non-profit union).

Now that I look back on it, perhaps I was meant to come back to the non-profit realm. After some frustrating months of searching and waiting, the non-profit gig kind of came together pretty quickly and smoothly. Today was my second day in the office, and I will say it’s a busy office with some interesting characters. In only my second day, I found myself sweating a little bit trying to keep pace with the workload. Interestingly enough, though, since it’s a union, they seem to be very insistent that we take hour-long lunches, two fifteen minute breaks, and that we leave promptly at 5:30pm. Now I can get used to that!

February will be a month of getting back into the swing of full-time life, of getting used to not having all the free time I’ve gotten used to. But I look ahead to March and see a busy and exciting month. March, and perhaps April, will be for a very specific reason one of the most important months this year.

Couldn’t sleep last night, even though I had to get up fairly early this morning. My mind was running and I started thinking about work/career/the future. I started searching the net and eventually ended up looking at graduate Creative Writing Programs, in particular the MFA programs at NYU and John Hopkins. They both require GRE scores, so today I ended up making an appointment to take the GRE. In TWO days! HA! Why can’t I plan ahead like everyone else? These sudden decisions are fairly common for me though. And yes, I’ve talked about film schools in the past. In the future, I may be talking about something completely different than either creative writing or film. Who knows. Welcome to my world.