I’m pretty sure I’m not bipolar….

My friend Lemon occasionally organizes his blogs in theme of the week.  I thought that’s a pretty neat idea so I decided to do something similar.  Because I don’t have the time/energy/spirit to write a blog everyday, my themes will last an entire month.  The current theme, something I decided yesterday after having a great idea for a blog, is story month.  Most of my blogs before this aren’t stories.  They’re more like essays.  This time, I’m hoping to preserve these stories before my memories betray me completely and let me forget about the whole thing.  Today’s story is one I’ve recounted to myself more times than I want to.  No matter how many times I analyze it, I can’t reach any kind of closure out of it.  It’s an open wound and all I can do is watch it fester.

            A person’s identity can be summed up by all of the interpretations of their own memories.  Two people can share the same experiences but come out as two unique individuals simply because they interpreted it differently.  In this sense, memory evolves us to who we are today along with our conclusions of those memories, but what if your memory fails you repeatedly?  What if you don’t remember specific yet important details?  What if you simply forget?  As an expert on this field, I’ve come up with a totally terrible-but-better-than-nothing solution.  I use my feelings.  That’s right, my feelings.  “Did I take a left or a right on this intersection yesterday?”  I think it was a left.  It feels right.  “Did I eat lunch already?”  I don’t think I have yet.  Yea, that feels right.  My feelings have replaced my need to remember things as far back as high school when I realized that memorizing things for me just doesn’t work, but what am I to do when the feelings won’t go away?  I’ll be stuck in the past without any hope of moving forward.  Of growing up.  Of evolving.  This story left me with an intense feeling that simply will not rest.

            About a year ago, my sister, my dad, and I went out to eat lunch together.  We ate at a Marie Calendar close by to our house.  We had a pleasant meal together and we talked a little bit about this and that.  As usual, my dad was doing most of the talking. While I was listening trying to look interested in what he was saying, I decided to look out the window a little bit when he finally said to me “You know something Li, you’ve looked very sad lately, is everything OK.”  I was shocked to hear him say that because I was actually trying to not look depressed during the meal. 

            “I do” I asked absentmindedly.

            “Yea.”

            “Oh.  Well yea, I’m just tired from work that’s all.”

            “Li,” My sister said “You’ve been tired from work almost everyday now.”

            “I remember you used to look like this when you were working at kinko’s.  You looked….lifeless.”

            “Yeah…I remembered you told me that once.”

            “I think it’s time you quit working at Toys R Us,” my sister added.  “It’s obvious that you don’t like it.”

            With this, something inside of me came alive.  I’ve pondered the idea of quitting months before, but that was the day I heard it from outside of myself.  With that, my mind raced to defend itself much like a wife trying to defend her own abusive husband.  I would come up with some lame excuse for not quitting, and one by one it was silenced with a very simple “I don’t care.”  Quitting became my mantra from that moment on.

            Fortunately for me, the dinner was already coming to an end.  Any longer than that and I might have changed my mind.  I doubt it, but who knows.  My sister and I went home while my dad went back to his home/office in Benicia.  When I got home, I told my sister I’m going to Toys R Us to quit my job.  She thought I would do it the next day or something and was surprised to hear it.  From there, I started my journey to Toys R Us to see if I can actually go through with it.

            I really wish I could remember the situations, circumstances, and events that led me to quitting.  I spent the whole time driving there racking my brain for those specifics.  All I can come up with is an emotion, hate.  That hate was the culmination of all my feelings left behind by faded memories.  Memories such as driving home at 1AM after an “8 hour shift” that lasted 10 hours, trying to do my job while also trying to do what they ask me to do (two very different things sometimes), having to sell something I know people didn’t need.  These are just some that I managed to hang on to.  None of them seems to be the reason I quit.  The only reason I have for quitting all hanged on that one emotion.

            My uncertainties rose to intolerable levels as I drove into the parking lot.  Feeling as uncertain as ever, I walked in.  I could still turn back I keep telling myself.  No one has to know why I’m here.  As I stood there thinking, I realized they probably want a reason for my resignation so I grabbed some flyers and a pen, walked into the break room and started writing.  Nothing came at first as my uncertainties continue to ring deafeningly in my head, but soon I broke through it.  The first page was just a declaration of me quitting.  The last three pages were the reasoning for it.

            I gave them 2 “truths.”  The first one was really, really, really generic.  “I can no longer accommodate the physical, financial, and mental burdens of this job.”  Those exact words on the second page.  The second “truth” took up the last two pages where I let it all out.  I wrote everything and anything I’ve been feeling about working there.  I was impressed by the end result.  It felt as if that piece of paper can finally justify why I was quitting.  Funny thing is, under different circumstances, it could have passed as a suicide note.  I walked out that room feeling more sure than ever that I can quit.  More importantly, I felt more justified for quitting.  I walked up to a manager, told him I want to quit, gave him my resignation, and left.

            On my way home, I had a rainbow of emotions flooding me.  Happy to be finally free of that horrible job.  Confused as to what to do next (I always feel that way so I guess that one doesn’t count).  Dismal for giving up on something I probably could have worked through.  Isolated for being the only one there to feel the way I felt.  Angry for not quitting earlier before all the damage has been done.  Guilty for letting down all of my coworkers at Toys R Us.  In case you haven’t noticed, the bad feelings outnumbered the good feelings.  To put this entire paragraph into one sentence, I felt like crap.

            The thing that really got to me about quitting is how weak I felt afterwards.  I know a lot of people who works there has it harder than me, and yet they can still smile every now and then.  I couldn’t even smile even when I was trying during dinner earlier that day.  I felt like if something as minor as this can push me down to my knees, who knows what else can do the same thing.  I debated to myself whether quitting was the right thing to do for me.  Financially speaking, I didn’t need the money, but what if I needed this job for more than just the money?  What if I needed it to make myself stronger?  Did I become weaker for quitting?  What if the opposite was true?  Would staying in a job I hated weaken me instead?  I don’t have any of the answers.  After about a year or so, I still haven’t gotten any closer to a definitive answer.  If only I could remember more about my time at Toys R Us, I could at least come up with something.  Anything just so I can put this behind me.

            The funniest thing that came out of this whole ordeal was what happened the next day.  I came in to work for my shift.  If I was going to extricate myself from them, the least I could do was do it the right way and finish my last two weeks with some pride.  The manager who had read my letter of resignation was extremely shocked to see me come in for my shift.  He figured I had quit and completely abandoned my shifts.  I was glad that letter got the right response out of them.  I told him I was going to finish my last two weeks despite how the letter may have sounded.  He asked me if I was OK.  I just laughed.

Technically speaking, this blog will be illegal (I’m writing it with my office computer and while I’m on the clock), but I’m bored and desperately need to update my blog so here goes nothing.

Last Saturday on July 30^th, Lemon, Sam and I met at Lemon’s house to play Magic and Halo 2.  It was a great day.  We started at around 10:30 AM, and played to our heart’s content.  We had pizza for lunch and my Costco pasta for dinner (I brought my own lunch hoping to save some money on food but didn’t realize that Lemon was going to treat us to pizza.  What a great friend!).  We played some great Magic games.  Memorable moments include: making the spell “Reversal of Fortune” actually living up to its namesake, playing my first Epic spell, and watching someone bring out “The Unspeakable” through the alternative method.  Alas, time flew on and reality cannot be held at bay any longer.  We left around 12 AM with our hearts still wanting more.  On my long drive home, I reflected upon the day, and oddly enough I came upon a realization about our friend Sam.

            Sam is a friend I met from my days in SFSU.  We met through a magical machine called Soul Calibur 2.  I was an accomplished Soul Calibur player, which made me by default an ok Soul Calibur 2 player.  Sam was new to the game but was definitely interested in playing it and against other people.  Naturally we became friends.  As years go by I watched him grow from a fledgling challenger to the tournament contender that he is today.  I can still win occasionally against him, but that’s because he rarely puts on his tournament face when we go up against each other.  Somewhere along the line, during one of our legendary Soul Calibur 2 parties, I introduced him to a very good friend of mine, Halo.

            As if one obsession wasn’t enough, I had to introduce him to another one.  He took in Halo like he did with Soul Calibur 2.  All I wanted was to play against other people not create another even more obsessed Halo fan (you’re welcome, Microsoft).  Sam took Halo as his new religion.  He studied it, practiced it, and made daily sacrifices for it, but despite this, Sam couldn’t deny his one big disadvantage, his lack of raw talent. 

After over 4 years of playing this game, he never reached the level of playing that he achieved in Soul Calibur 2.  Make no mistake, he is better now than when he first started, but I believe he has reached the limits of his talent.  Unlike me, he honed his skills nearly everyday when he started playing and still do today, time willing, but I have seen him in action.  He’s not that good.  Lemon also plays this game and has put considerably more time into it than me but less than Sam.  Lemon is a far better Halo player than Sam.  Every time he plays, Sam eventually gets frustrated at the game.  He would curse at some aspect of the situation or his own failings during the game.  I should know.  I’ve sat next to him during most of his frustrations.  Occasionally I would sit out a game and watch him play.  I can tell when he misses some shots that Lemon or I would have been able to make, and judging by the expression on his face, I can tell that he knows when he messed up.

Despite this, he continues to play, practice, and play some more Halo.  I think he does so for more than just the love of the game.  I think he does so because of his greatest advantage in games, life, love, and just about anything else under the sun.  Sam has ambition.  I realized this that night on the drive home.  I don’t know why it never occurred to me before.  It was so obvious.  He is after all a college drop out who somehow managed to land a great job, find a beautiful wife, and excel in any venture he chooses (talent willing).  In fact, on that Saturday, he told us that he was planning to attend the Magic Pro Tour Qualifier.  That’s the Magic tournament held to determine who gets to join the Pro Tournament and ultimately become this year’s Magic champion.  Aside from skill and money, you need a lot of ambition to go that far.

Personally, I would gladly give up most of my raw talents for some hint of ambition.  I’ve always known that I can do far more than what I’m doing now.  People have always told me so, and I took it too close to the heart.  I never had the drive to go and actually make myself better.  The way I play games proves that fact clearly.  I can probably be a tournament worthy Soul Calibur 2 player if I ever wanted to be great.  I might even be unstoppable in Halo if I ever wanted to be, but I never cared.  I didn’t care if I was great in anything.  Of course moments of passion and drive would occasionally surge out of me, but that’s all they ever were.  Moments.  They never stick.  I may have the talents to go far, but I never had that drive, ambition.  Sam has it lucky in that respect.  He may not begin with much, but with the kind of ambition that he has, he’ll always end up with something to show for it.