
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Monterey Bay Aquarium
dirt enthusiast
Stranger Things
todays bird
trying on a metaphor

Kaledo Art
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

No title available
will byers stan first human second

JVL
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
One Nice Bug Per Day

shark vs the universe
Mike Driver
NASA
cherry valley forever
No title available
hello vonnie
AnasAbdin
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@kimchifriesandcoffee
Double decker
heartbreaking: local cat has never been fed in entire life, says local cat
sources close to cat claim cat may have actually been fed between four to six hours ago. these claims are still under investigation.
Never went to IKEA before, but building my first item only took 4 minutes.
The second took a full hour.
And somehow…
…I can’t quite…
…put my finger…
…on what…
…it might…
…have been…
…that could possibly…
…have delayed me so much.
“if wood box not for sits ‘n’ explores, why u put it on mah floor?”
–Salvatore the Cat
Auntie Hella checking on the Papillon puppies… she never had a litter of her own so she always cared for all the pups born here at #tantezampekennel
imagine having such a beautiful fairy godmother
this is the content that keeps me on this fucking site
Truth.
Rainy old bookstore
Stabilized
After the deep disappointment of the husband’s job offer in Korea falling through, we took a month to discuss (and argue about) our options. In the end, we decided to contact the company he had worked for briefly here in the US and see if by some crazy chance, the position was still open.
On the likely chance it wasn’t available anymore, we planned to pack up and relocate to LA (this rural US life is rough--we want to see people and sunshine...and traffic?).
We sent the email to his former company and the husband went to a dental appointment. When he returned about an hour later, the company had responded.
“How soon can you start?”
And so we stayed here.
The past few months have been rough as we stabilized with two jobs for the first time since we came to the US. We signed a year-long lease at our current apartment. We booked vacations. We got a puppy (THE MOST PERFECT PUPPY TO EVER PUPPY but I digress...).
For me, however, the sadness remains. I hate my career and my job. I’ve lost more friends than I’ve gained. I’m not living days that I want to remember or document (hence the lack of Tumblr activity). I’d prefer not keep adding up more days of my life like these.
My mind is full of that toxic “should”. I should be happy now that my husband got a job and we’ve achieved “success”. I should be proud of my career and what I have accomplished given my three years away in Korea. I should focus on the positive.
But anyways perhaps our story is leveling out now. The husband finally has a full-time career job in the US (in spite of everything, I’m so impressed at what he’s done! He didn’t even have go to an expensive academy!) and we’ll be staying in our current place for at least the next year. I’m sort of locked in to my current job for a while, so changes in our lives seem to be slowing down to a more glacial pace compared to the tsunami of the past few years.
Hopefully there are more adventures to come in life, but at the moment, living in suburban fly-over America, I’m not sure where we’ll find them.
The husband quit his American job that took a year and a half of hard work and effort to get (it wasn't a great job, but it was one in his career path).
One of his friends in Korea had called with an awesome job opportunity, exactly what we had been looking for. The husband was preparing to leave for Korea because the job was expected to start like two weeks later.
We told my family and his family and all of our friends, had goodbye dinners and made packing plans and sent in for my visa in preparation for the fast coming move to Korea.
And then, the job start was delayed. And then delayed again until the end of the month. We decided to take a trip to Korea (after which the husband was going to stay there and I was going to come back) to finalize my visa and buy a little more time on my side to wrap up the apartment and my job.
And then....well, I won't go into the details but the job has evaporated. There is no job in Korea. There is now no job in America either.
The husband's friend had guaranteed they absolutely needed another person, had confirmed with the client and his boss. But turns out he was wrong.
So we're still in America. Me, stuck at the job of hell that I thought would just be temporary, surely I wouldn't even have to be there for a full year (my one year anniversary is in the next few weeks). And it's looking like I'll be here on a longer-term, more permanent basis.
The husband, back to unemployment.
It seems I'm fated to stay with my current job, every attempt to leave has failed. My only purpose left in life feels like it's working this job. All I need to do to live is to wake up every morning and not fail at this job. Repeat, repeat.
Over the past year, to keep us afloat, I've slowly been throwing my dreams one by one into the fire. But now the last one is gone and I don't have anything left to burn.
I don't want to be awake now, I don't want to face today. I'd like to quit and lay down in the ditch and just let Earth spin me around for a while. The future appears like a wrung out rag, limp and drained.
And yet. I'll keep working, and working, and burying my tears in the stars because somewhere deep in my soul a little voice whispers hope.
Definitely didnt expect this
We've decided on our next steps. To be more accurate, we made a decision and then another one.
Just as we had determined with near finality to move back to Korea and take the husband's friend's offer, we had a total turn of events. The husband got a phone call and a job offer from an interview he had done over a month before. They wanted him to start just four days later, on a Wednesday.
We debated over the full weekend, but this is what we wanted and came to the USA for, right? It was a family run business with a lot of red flags, no dental and terrible health insurance, but it was also a professional job in the USA! After a lot of agony, the husband messaged his friend and turned down the offer in Korea and took the job in the USA.
The work environment was fine, the technology they used was ancient, and the husband didn't really feel like he was doing actual dev work that would translate to any marketable skills. But also it was a small company and a great place to learn business English and American work culture.
But as his first week passed by, we increasingly realized that this accomplishment brought us no closer to our near term goals, and wouldn't solve the aspects of American culture that we've been continuously struggling with almost since arrival.
Due to the anecdotal experiences of those close to me with the American medical system, we agreed that we should both maintain full time jobs if we're going to live here in order to maintain financial, and even more importantly, health insurance stability.
Which means that I'd have to keep working my high stress job while trying to start a family, then take the 12 weeks maternity leave, then put the baby (if we get that far, of course) in daycare while I return full time to my high stress job. (I should note that there's a lot more to discuss regarding my job and career but I won't detail that in this post.)
We'd have to buy a second car and take on all the second car expenses. We'd have nearly no one to support us and help us out with a baby due to my very small family and the fact that we've made no friends here (partially or mostly our bad, but it happened that way for a lot of reasons). It would be us and our baby and my mom and that would be about it.
And while that would sound great to a lot of people, especially considering our financial prospects for the future, I felt totally hopeless. Pehaps its weak and dramatic of me, but I just couldn't imagine facing business trips and all the pressures of my job while maintaining our financial foundation for the foreseeable future as well as dealing with pregnancy and that whole ordeal. I felt devastated and crushed, which is...exactly the opposite of how I expected and anticipated I would feel when we had finally "made it" in America.
I'm ashamed to say but I spent the better part of two or three days crying from the deepest part of my soul, the place where I realized I had been storing my dreams of starting a family and staying home with my baby for a little while, more than just the governement-allotted 12 weeks.
And then the husband's friend called again. He wanted to confirm that the husband was definitely not taking the position. So they talked and discussed more of the job conditions, and the husband brought up his concerns about the work schedule and time off expectations.
We saw that in Korea, he'd make enough that I could work part time or totally take some time off. That his mom is there who would be able to watch the baby during weekdays if needed, and his friends who are our age and also starting families are there as well. We'd be reversing the tide of me being the caretaker of everything in our lives back over to him so I could take a break and have some flexibility with my career (meanwhile he'd be working with Kakao, which he was very excited about).
While life in America would take more struggle and more and more effort, we felt Korea offered an alternative path, where we could reset and realign. So The husband called his friend back and said he'll take the job.
He put in notice at his new American job, we sent in my visa papers yesterday, and I told some family and friends of our decision.
I feel intense fear that Korea will turn out to be harder and more crushing than America has been, but if that's the case, then we'll come back and close the book on Korea permanently. But the time to make the mistake, the time to try this out, is right now before we have a family and a mortgage and two cars and the complete American picture.
We're moving back to Korea, the husband is leaving very soon, and I'll be leaving a little later so I can pack up and spend some more time with friends and family.
This could be a huge monumental mistake overflowing with piles of regret, but we're throwing in our bets and giving it our best shot.
I don't know what comes next, but this is what we've decided. We'll just have to figure out the rest as it comes.
“Growth is painful. Change is painful.But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.”
— Mandy Hale (via perrfectly)
Close your eyes and listen
I wish this video was 6 hours long
this is literally my favorite video ive ever seen on tumblr
…it’s hypnotic…
ALSO- I’m glad this is my second most successful tumblr post. A little background about this video: I took it the day there was the nuclear missile threat while I was on Oahu. That morning, I thought it was my last day on earth and I was about to meet my impending death by nuclear missile. After the island was notified that the alert was actually false (mind you it also took them THIRTY-EIGHT minutes to tell us it was fake) my friends and I drove to Costco, bought a bunch of snacks and fruits, and spent the entire day at this beach. We didn’t talk much, as the concept of life and death was all across our minds. I swam in the water during the sunset, and had just gotten out to record the last light rays that remained. This video reminds me how precious life is and how I will always remember that feeling
The Colbert Report 11.19.14
You see how she explained how race is a social construct (it is) while ALSO SAYING THAT RACISM EXISTS AND IS FUCKED UP? You see how she did that? Don’t mistake this for colorblindness because it clearly isn’t.
Toni Morrison breaks it down.
I feel this in my soul.
I don’t know what we did to deserve Mr. Rogers but I’m so glad we had him.