Winding Road

Being back at work is better.

People like me, and the phrase "Sam can do it" is widespread. I try to make myself irreplaceable. I think at work it works, it just never has in relationships.

I am down to 15mg of temazepam a night with an end in sight to another dependence I don't need. I'd rather sleep less.

Gnocchi, sauteed in butter till crisp, with Pesto Rosso is delicious in all countries.

I work 50-70 hours a week. And then when I come home I work some more. I love it.

I am making friends.

Life is good, and I can stick this out.

What's In a Name?

I don't think I've ever been more fascinated by names than I have been since moving to China. While there's more often than not a distinction between what is a "name" in English and what is a "word", in Chinese, at least from an outside perspective, there is much less of a difference. In English a name usually doesn't have a direct meaning, primarily because it was derived from a language other than English. Obviously exceptions exist, most notably those among us lucky enough to have been named after a virtue (Chastity? Verity? Patience? all women, of course). Generally, though, we are able to distinguish and we look at the text "Richard" and think "male person" and look at "queen" and think "royalty" (or "drag").

Rarely when we look at names do we think of meaning. I don't think of my own name "Samuel" and think "Oh, derived from Shemu'el, Hebrew for 'name of God' or 'God has heard'". However much I may appreciate the meaning of my name or the situation that called my Mom to choose it for me, it's not the first thing that comes to mind.

My Chinese name, on the other hand,  is a different story. I have a two-character name (most surnames are a single character and given names are one or two characters). It was given to me by my Chinese professor at North Central. We were given the option of an artfully transliterated name that sounded like our English name, or a new name entirely. I thought of the process like a birth, and opted for a new name entirely.

My name is 林風 (Lin Feng)，translated directly the first character means "woods", and the second character means "wind". Overall it comes off as something akin to "the wind going through the woods". When I see my name written, I see "woods", and I see "wind", and the name has meaning to me, and a meaning that I like, at that.

The names of my coworkers are no different. There's 刘天明 (Liu Tian Ming), for example, who sits behind me. Her last name Liu means "to see", a fairly common last name. Her first name Tian Ming (literally "heaven/sky and bright put together) means daybreak, or dawn. I can't help but wonder if their name is just a name to them, or if this meaning is embedded into it since all three of those characters appear frequently in what's read on a daily basis.

What's even more interesting to me is the names that Chinese people often choose for themselves in English. More often than not they pick a common name (Jessie, Jack, Eileen, John, James) that they like the sound of and go with it. Sometimes, they choose a name they like the meaning of. The coworker I mentioned earlier's English name is Ivy, chosen particularly for the plant. Another consultant who works here chose Apple as her name. Perhaps my favorite, though, is the consultant who sits across from me, Seven. I think I might actually have to name my first child after a number. Five or Six if it's a boy. Seven if it's a girl.

So, in short, go look up your name. It might mean something fun.

Time to Think

This is my living room. In the last week I've had off (for the national holiday) I've had quite a lot of time to stare at it, sit in it, rearrange it, and photograph it. 

"Sometimes I think Sam could convince God of anything" - Mary S., a therapist I had my freshman year of high school.

Well that might not be true (and may actually be blasphemous, especially coming from a Christian counselor) it is true that I can convince myself of just about anything. I'm good at fabricating a reality based on some idea I've had too much time to think about. Those realities have taken a number of forms: I need to major in something different, I need to take up a certain hobby, I'm in love with such and such person....I could go on and on.

I can't possibly convey the negative effect of having an empty week in which to ponder and "fabricate" has had, and now the reality I've created seems to be one that's screaming what am I doing here?

It's a fairly typical Sam reaction to a situation: take an offer for an internship, get offered a job based on that internship, tentatively accept the job in reaction to some semblance of security that it offers....

....and then scrutinize the hell out of it. 

Maybe the grass is just greener on the other side of the Pacific (in fact, I'm pretty sure it is greener), maybe I miss Amy, and Lauren, and Jayme, and Jaysin, and the jobs that I had where I knew what I was doing and took comfort in the fact that the lack of any chance for advancement meant that I was already on top and there was nothing else I had to learn. 

Someone once said I was negative, or more of a "glass half-empty" type of person. It hurt to hear it, but I have to acknowledge the truth in it. I just wish for once I could be a little more positive, a little more upbeat. I really hate facing that I'm just not that happy of a person, and I probably won't ever be, and there are a lot of things I would never have learned if I were an optimistic person. 

So, I'll eat the bitterness, and see what happens at work on Monday.