The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

The Best: I met Amy Tan tonight! I love her books, though I haven't touched one in ages, and I didn't even get to hear her read because I had to leave early, but meeting her was such an honor, and I got her to sign my yellowed paperback copy of The Joy Luck Club and take a picture with my sister and me. All in all a pretty great Monday night.

The Great:

1. I went to a reading last Tuesday evening by my wonderful former creative writing professor, Emily Fox Gordon (www.emilyfoxgordon.com). She is one of the most intelligent authors I've ever read--in my adult life, other than when reading, say Moby-Dick or Midnight's Children, never have I had to look up words so many times while reading a book. Emily's cadences are nearly always spot-on, and I am so proud to have been taught by her. She struggled with trying to write fiction for many many years before realizing that personal essay was the genre for her (and, I think, the genre for me--this is the class I took with her), but she had to write two memoirs and one novel (the last a triumph for her, because she never thought she could write fiction) before FINALLY getting to publish a collection of her personal essays entitled Book of Days. I bought this book at her reading and had her sign it, and she signed it "To Chaya, one of my very favorites," which made me feel really special. I'm hoping to have lunch or coffee with her some time in the near future. That reading came at the perfect time: between my first medical school exams. It reminded me that there's a whole other amazing and happy side to me and my life that isn't sciencesciencescience, and I had nearly forgotten about that aspect. So it was just. Great.

2. I've realized that I can count on my best friends to see through my facades and know exactly, exactly when I need them and to be there when I need them, and that is comforting in a way I cannot even express. I don't know what I'd do without the wonderful people I have in my life.

The Good:

1. I've made soup twice since moving into my apartment, and both times, the soup has come out great. Really, great. This is absolutely wonderful, partly because I love soup, but also because I've always, always wanted to be a wonderful recipe-less cook like my mother, and I'm finally starting to edge towards the possibility of that. I've eaten tons of sub-standard Indian food (prepared by myself) for the past few years as I've tried to find my cooking rhythm, and I'm finally starting to get that magical intuition that all Indian mothers seem to have. And my newfound cooking savvy seems to extend to pastas and soups as well! This is wonderful news.

2. I'm one block into medical school, and I've not only made it so far, but enjoyed it. I'm a little loath to begin studying again now that a new block has begun, but I'm hoping that my enthusiasm will grow slowly but surely.

3. The new Sara Bareilles album is filling me with great joy. How wonderful when an artist one loves proves her worth with a second album that is quite possibly better than the last.

The Bad:

1. It's 9:10 PM and I've only reviewed one of the four lectures I had today. And I wanted to go to bed early tonight as getting up early (after four days of vacation) was particularly difficult this morning.

2. Crazy as it sounds, medical school is the simplest, most manageable thing in my life right now. On the one hand, this makes medical school not so bad. On the other hand, it shows how much of a struggle many other things are being right now.

The Ugly:

1. I'm trying to write a piece for my medical school's literary magazine, and I'm running into problems from the outset. I haven't written anything worth anyone else's revisions in an incredibly long time, and I really want to make this piece great, because I know there's substance there. I just feel like the lolcat in that lolcatz picture, the one that's sprawled across a keyboard with the caption "Writer's block. I haz it."

2. I just want so badly to be substantive, real. I feel that I'm not really either.

We Should Be Happy, That's What I Said from the Start

This morning I took a partially eaten box of Club crackers to lab. Starting two summers ago, one of my labmates, James, has consistently kept dark chocolate chips at his bench, and I spent many a quiet lab afternoon munching on those dark chocolate chips and chatting with him and the rest of my labmates. Unfortunately, I don't have much of a sweet tooth, and dark chocolate chips don't exactly fill me up. So forever, I've been telling myself that I need to bring savory snacks into the lab for everyone to snack on. Finally doing what I've told myself I would do for so long really felt good. Even better was that I finally got to snack on crackers in lab! And the best was that my labmates enjoyed [and are still enjoying] the crackers as well. I didn't realize until some time in my college career that I'm turning into my mother in the sense that I love it when people eat food I offer. So to see the cracker box slowly emptying brought me more joy than something like that normally should. Ha.

You know how people talk about the straw that broke the camel's back? I feel like eating three Club crackers on my way out to the parking lot after my day in lab was that for me, except in a positive way. It was the one incident in the day that made me realize that, once again, I'm happy today. There are just so many reasons to be joyous. The weather was beautiful today, and I ate lunch outside with two of my closest friends. I started a new mapping project in lab, and if things go well, I'll leave the lab [forever, which makes me sad] two weeks from now having mapped two mutations in about 10 weeks. Actually accomplishing things in my labwork makes me feel so good. I got to leave early today, and beat traffic coming home, but also managed to do real work in lab--yet another thing to be happy about. Last but not least, it didn't hurt that I wore a bright red shirt today that made me feel pretty. Course, I ruined the whole look (tunic and skinny jeans) by wearing chunky flip-flops, but said flip-flops are very comfortable, so I'm okay with that.

I very recently reconnected with two friends I haven't really kept in touch with throughout college (one via facebook message, the other via phone), an act definitely galvanized by the funeral I went to last weekend. That it was so simple to get back in touch with those two, especially one of them, that all it took was one facebook message, one phone call, made me feel...hopeful. It's great to make new friends, but the Girl Scouts weren't kidding when they said, "Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other's gold": there's nothing like the comfort of knowing that someone who knew and loved you back in your middle school dork days is still at least mildly interested in your life and your future.

And a lot of other things are going well in my life right now: my family, my future, my love life. There's just a lot going right, right now. It feels a little precarious, but hopefully life will stay this way. = )

"Hopelessly, the hope is we've got so much to feel good about." (Good Life-OneRepublic)

Note: Entry title is lifted from a line from "Happy" by Nevershoutnever, some of the lyrics of which confuse me, most of which make me, well, happy.

Good Week

I found myself unaccountably and unusually happy yesterday. Starbucks gave away free brewed coffee to every customer who brought in a travel mug, and I took advantage of that promotion before I left for work, which meant that I was sipping on an inordinate amount of coffee all day long. I've found that, oddly, caffeine tends to make me feel sanguine, so perhaps that's what spurred my happiness. Additionally, over the past two days, prospective students [high school seniors] have been visiting Rice for the annual "Owl Days" event. I love witnessing their eagerness and awe as they experience college--for many, it's the college they've already decided to attend--firsthand for the first time. I miss that feeling. Prospective students, or prospies, as we call them, always make me smile. It has also helped that in just the past eight days, I've:

1. Gotten my new cute netbook
2. Decided to go to Imogen Heap's concert--and purchased tickets for said concert!
3. Decided to go see John Mayer AND Owl City (it's like my dream come true!) in concert
4. Had dinner with an amazing group of friends who always have me laughing like a maniac and feeling loved
5. Booked a trip to New York City to visit a friend right after graduation
6. Had a ridiculously good end-of-college night on campus

Ostensibly, it's been a relatively good week. Then again, it's also been an unpleasant week in many ways. A friend of mine from high school passed away on Easter, and I went to his funeral and wake this past weekend. I've been to too many funerals for people my age, but this was the first one for a person I could truly call my friend. I have a lot of memories with this guy [granted, they're mostly from middle school, and thus at least 8 years old], and he was truly a nice person. I'm still sad about his death, but more than anything it's made me painfully aware of how precious my own life is.

It's amazing how forcefully perspective can be pushed upon you--and also how easily it can slip away.