How Much Should You Love Your Job?

Whenever people ask me about my job, I tell them the truth.  I don't love the job itself, but I love everything the job brings with it.  The work/life balance.  The 9/80 schedule.  The benefits.  The monies.

I see all these people striving for a career that they absolutely love, and I get it.  You spend 8+ hours a day working, so you should be working for a place or a cause that you can fully stand behind.  But I don't know, that's just not me.

I guess the primary question is this: how much should you love your job?  Is it "wrong" to just view it as a means to an end?

Just some food for thought.

A Penny for my thoughts on Fresh Off The Boat

I was called a chink a single time in my life. It caught me off guard and I froze, not knowing how I was supposed to react, and the moment passed. It was at a random middle school where I was somehow coerced into attending a summer reading class. We had some sort of break, and a couple of black kids who were there for mandatory summer school came across me, a Chinese kid proudly wearing his favorite Anfernee Hardaway jersey over a white tee in a school hallway in the dead of summer (relatively) voluntarily.

They were making fun of me, a skinny, short yellow kid wearing the jersey of a skinny, tall black kid. (The irony being that my game was closer to Penny’s than theirs could ever dream of being.  While we're briefly on the topic, I've always hated being called Jeremy Lin or worse, Yao Ming, on the court just because of my race, but the worst name I've ever been called was JJ Barea.  I was furious.  But I digress.)

Fast forward a couple decades to today, and we now have a sitcom on ABC that shows another young kid getting called a chink. He handled it much differently than I did, but he was also under much different circumstances.

He grew up as the token Asian kid in Orlando (after watching The Book of Mormon, I chuckle everytime I hear the word "Orlando"), Florida, and I grew up as one of many Asian kids in Sugar Land, Texas. We both grew up loving Penny Hardaway (who wouldn’t?), but my schools’ student body was almost 1/3 Asian, and I never really felt any sort of racial tension, definitely not to the degree Eddie Huang did.

What it all boils down to is ignorance. Where there’s no diversity, people don’t understand what they don’t understand. Does that even make sense?

I get what Eddie Huang is trying to do, and I understand his frustration with how watered-down the sitcom is compared to his book. Trust me, I’m reading it. There’s a lot of hilarious anecdotes in the book, but there’s also a lot of animosity, hatred, and pain. Nobody wants to watch a sitcom that is a visual depiction of an Angry Asian Man rant, not to mention how exhausting it is to be angry all the time. So it’s tough to expect an ABC sitcom to go as hard in the paint as Eddie’s memoirs did over his own “growing up in America” experience.

That’s what we all need to remember when watching Fresh Off The Boat. It’s a sitcom. There’s no need to break down every little detail of the show or its jokes or its ratings and make it a racial thing. Look, I’m not putting down the show by any means or trying to downplay the significance of having an Asian family front and center on network TV – I enjoy the show (especially Constance Wu) and realize the show is unprecedented – but at the same time, I will watch it the same way I watch every other sitcom, for entertainment value. Let’s not expect every episode to be a groundbreaking, bold statement for Asians in America – the sitcom has enough pressure of its own, you know, just being a sitcom.

The "Thank You" Wave

Driving is insane in Jamaica, but they have a code.  Two short honks equates to a display of gratitude, and a single extended honk signals fury.  The longer the honk, the longer the obscenity.

I'm starting to support this horn system here in America because so few people do the "thank you" wave anymore anyway.  But maybe that's for the best.

Yesterday morning, I was nearing the finish line of a 5-mile drive from my house to the Park and Ride.  I was in the middle lane and had to take a right turn soon, so I signaled and changed lanes seamlessly before shortly glancing back in my rearview mirror as I did my patented thumb-1-2-finger "thank you" wave.

All I saw next were the heavy brake lights of the two cars in front of me, and while I slammed the brakes, the short distance and the wet pavement proved an unfortunate combination.  It turned out to be a three-car accident, with me being on the tail end.

The driver of the first car got out, looked at her car, saw little to no damage, and assured the driver of the second car that all was well and fine, and drove off.

The drive of the second car got out, looked at his car, saw little to no damage, and assured the driver of the third car (me) that all was well and fine, and drove off.

The driver of the third car got out, looked at his car, and was deeply saddened by the damage.

Thank God that nobody got hurt and I'll only have to pay my car insurance deductible to fix up my own car, but I still can't bear the sight of my beat-up car in the garage.  But I guess as I always tell people at the craps table: "It's just money!"

Trusting In God's Plan

Few things make me cringe more than a bad Christian cliche.

I've been going to church since birth, so trust me when I say that I've heard nearly all of them.  "Wait on God's timing!" "He won't give you more than you can handle!" "Ask and you shall receive!"  The list goes on.

While I hardly ever question the intent behind the hackneyed message, I'm usually just not sure what purpose it really serves.  More than anything, I worry that it's just filler material to fill an otherwise potentially awkward silence.  But most of the time, I think what a person really yearns for is compassion.

Of course, I'm as guilty of this as anyone.  As a guy, when I'm presented with a problem, I assume people are asking me for help to find the solution.  But sometimes, we're left helpless, with seemingly nothing we can physically do to alleviate the situation.

That's when we Christians like to throw out encouraging Bible verses rapid fire, thinking that if just one dart hits the target, we've done our job.

Jeremiah 29:11 comes to mind.  "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

Ah, yes.  The almighty Plan.  For many of us, this verse is easy to recite.  We come from healthy homes with smiling parents, and we've jumped from one stepping stone to another in our walk of life.

Trusting in God's plan is ridiculously easy... until it no longer matches with our own plan.

I've always been a big proponent of wrestling with your faith.  You aren't going to grow spiritually until you first break down what you actually believe in.  So it's okay to ask questions.  It's okay to wonder why things happen the way they do.  It's okay to not have anything helpful to say because no matter how much we want to believe otherwise, we don't have all the answers.

You Can't Handle The Truth

Sorry to be so accusatory with the title to this post, but, you know, a movie quote is a movie quote.

23 days ago, my friend Cynthia mentioned Serial to me.

21 days ago, I got hooked and listened to all 12 podcast episodes consecutively.

Then for the next 21 days, I've found a way to wiggle a mention of Adnan Syed into nearly every conversation to panhandle for thoughts and theories.

The one thing we can all agree on is that there wasn't enough evidence in the case to convict anyone of murder, but as far as who actually committed the crime, there are only two plausible scenarios in my mind:

1. Adnan did it and continues to deny it.
2. Jay did it, and Jenn helped cover it up.

I just can't wrap my head around the absurd idea of there being a 3rd party serial killer involved... that Jay also somehow knew/witnessed and is scared to death of.

But the crux of the matter is, to put it simply, we can't handle the truth.  And the truth is, we will never truly know what happened to Hae Min Lee.

This shred of human nature also brought the downfall of Adnan Syed at trial.  The victim's family, the jurors, the prosecutor, the police, they all needed someone to blame for such a tragedy, and when nobody else presented himself as a viable suspect, they started thinking (as I have myself, many times), "if not Adnan, then who else?"

And from that point forward, call it bias or cynicism, but it was easy to take the (lack of) evidence and manipulate it to be used against Adnan.  "How could he not remember that day at all?" they thought, when in actuality, if we are under the assumption that he is innocent, how many of us could remember details of a "normal day" 6+ weeks in our past?

At this point, I'm not sure what the next course of action is.  Obviously, if Adnan is actually guilty, I'd rather the system "fail" than let a murderer go free.  But on the other hand, if he is in fact innocent (which I'm currently inclined to lean towards after reading Rabia's blog), then hopefully more can emerge out of this hoopla than a few months of rabid entertainment for us wannabe detectives everywhere.

Living in the Moment

I know it's too early in the year for new pet peeves, so I'll reframe this into the form of a resolution: let's all live in the moment in 2015.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like we're too mature (see: old) to still be desperately looking forward to things, like an overgrown kid still wanting to grow up too fast.  If there's one thing I've learned since college, it's that everybody lives on their own timeline that's as unique to them as their fingerprints.

Long ago I made it a goal of mine to never rush someone else's timeline, whether it relates to a job, a relationship, a child, a house, or anything else that's life-changing to that degree.

So you think people should find the career of their dreams right out of college, then find their significant other, then get engaged after a minimum of 1.5 years and a maximum of 3 years of dating, then get married after a minimum of 9 months and a maximum of 14 months of engagement, then have kids after a minimum of 1 year and a maximum of 3 years of DINK (Double Income No Kids), and your magical ideal timeline goes on and on and on.

That's cool.  That's fine.  But that cookie cutter formula just isn't for everybody.

Perhaps I'm harping on this too long, but I just hate when people are pressured into monumental decisions in their lives.  And on top of that, life is going by way too fast to perpetually waste time looking toward "the next step."

(Come to think of it, maybe this entire post should have "Trace Adkins - You're Gonna Miss This" playing in the background like an old school Asian Avenue page.)

Let's all just take a deep breath, laugh a little more, and enjoy where we're at.

Education: Game of Molds.

"Obama to propose free community college," the Headline Reads.

After browsing through a few more articles, Obama's "plan" is less of a plan and more of a "conversation starter" (as described by Obama's domestic policy adviser). If this loose wish eventually comes into fruition, we can all point to Obama and praise him. The more realistic outcome is that a dumbed-down version results and only 20-30% of community college applicants receive 40-60% of their tuition paid for. Politics, y'all.

Getting Educated On Education.

I finally finished schooling in May 2014 with 2 degrees and 25 years logged on Earth. If I live to 75 years old, I would've spent 1/3 of my life in school. Isn't that crazy? Isn't that a waste? 1/3 of anything is a huge chunk. Like I said, I know nothing about education, but I'd say 1/3 of my life spent towards education is too much time (and money) spent on education. Of those 25 years spent in school, I likely could've learned everything I did in 1/3 of that time: 8.33 years. So why's it take so long? 

Higher education is a business. Think about core-curriculum at your university. Think about how useless that stuff is, especially if you have a decent idea of what you might want to do. Do you really need TWO separate history courses? I remember one thing from my college history course: the route from my apartment to the classroom. I recall nothing substantive. And those two semesters cost me a few thousand, not to mention the time wasted.

Even law school. An American legal education is so blatantly a business. Law school most definitely does not need to be 3 years long, ask any law student. Heck, ask most professors. People think you finish law school and you're just good to go, able to tackle any legal issue. Your friends ask you about really specific laws, expecting a black/white answer, and you know how a law school graduate responds? "Well, it depends..." because you don't learn much actual law; you learn how to think, which is a very, very valuable thing. But it shouldn't take 3 years to get there. I recall sitting in half of my classes in my 3rd year of law school thinking, "what a complete waste of time." Where I went, you needed 90 credits to graduate, but only 40-50 hours were useful in my mind.

This is the greatest fault in our education system. There is no individualism. Think of education as a consumer product. Education is this massive product that mostly everyone feels like they need, or at least they're told this, and so it's mass produced. But with any product created on a huge scale, there are issues with quality control and customization. When you create something for the masses, corners are cut. To cut corners, molds are made. When there are molds, individuality suffers. And when individuality suffers, there is wasted time spent navigating a course that rarely takes you to the exact location you were searching for. Think of a mathematician at a state college who is required to spend 80% of her first 2 years taking courses like History, English, and Biology. This process sort of makes sense though, right? A good chunk of people enter college with absolutely no idea what to study, so they close their eyes and blindly choose something that sounds remotely interesting (more or less), maybe because that's what their friends chose, or their parents said it would be good for them. For these people, core curriculum is a decent place to start searching for direction. But for those who have a more focused idea on what they want, core curriculum is synonymous with throwing away hours and dollars. So who's to blame? How come so many 18 year olds entering college have no idea what they want? I was one of them. Well, it all comes back to molds and minimizing individuality. Our education system does very little to help us navigate all the varying avenues of possible vocations. And frankly, for the vast majority of us, our environments at home and in our communities likely do very little to usher us towards finding passions. I'm using passion here as a very general term with a low threshold. Passion merely means being interested enough in something to propel you to want to know more. Passion is curiosity, and curiosity may be the most crucial aspect lacking in American education.