7 posts tagged with "Life and Personal"

A Hill Worth Dying On​

I am living proof of the American Dream, though I fear that my story is becoming less and less common. I was born and raised in Victoria, Texas, a city of 65,534 as of the 2020 census. In this blue-collar town, I grew up in a working-class home. My father is one of 14 children to immigrant parents and spent the vast majority of his life working in the brutal oilfield elements to provide for his family. My mother, also the child of an immigrant, worked as a substitute teacher. They often reminded me to pursue what my father called an ‘office job,’ which, in hindsight, represents socioeconomic betterment. Although I have now worked in the technology industry for 13 years, being a software engineer wasn’t a vocation that I even knew existed when I was growing up. I was fortunate enough to take a Java programming class in 2004, which radically altered the path of my life. So much so that I spent four years volunteering by teaching AP computer science at various high schools in Houston from 2018 to 2022 to pay this forward. Education is core to my beliefs and identity, and in many ways, that started at the University of Texas at Austin.

I’m tired. Existentially.

It feels strange waking up in the Lower 48 again. When I left Alaska, the sunlight was already making people and plants manic again. The grass that was dead for months bloomed vivaciously in a matter of days. The snow was long gone, but the rain hadn’t shown itself quite yet. The midnight sun was already creeping and beaming over me.

My company’s office building is located in the heart of downtown Anchorage. This shimmering, golden beacon of American capitalism seems to cast a shadow over the Downtown Transit Center and its transient residents. Many are drunk and high; many are homeless and hopeless. Some even sell their bodies either for a quick fix or as a means of survival. They spend their dark days on the cold streets of Anchorage.

On Saturday night, I handed in my last final exam. Honestly, it was an extremely anticlimactic ending. The final had no bearing on my graduation or GPA for that matter, so it wasn’t really the concluding push that I envisioned being the end of my undergraduate stay. After a brief test, I said to my professor, “終わりですね...” and stole away into the chilly evening.

My blog is nearing its first anniversary. Admittedly, I have failed to maintain it as I would have liked to over the past year. My instinctive response is to attribute this to a lack of time. As my college graduation swiftly draws near, I’ve been obsessed with the notion of time lately. With classes, work, side projects, and graduation rituals at hand, I find myself constantly thinking that there’s just not enough time in one day. Not to mention that my exercise routine, Japanese studies, and myriad of other hobbies have suffered as well. Inevitably, there isn’t enough time to do everything, but as I found myself updating my old articles about Japanese study, I realized that what I was trying to teach others about language study I should be applying to my own daily life.

Cold air fills my lungs as I inhale deeply and behold this marvel of geologic time. I feel introspective and insignificant as I imagine my short life span juxtaposed with this ancient, undefiled landscape. I try my best to take a mental snapshot of this moment near the peak, knowing fully well that nothing can ever recreate this moment. Gazing down over the untrodden path that led me here. Imbibing water to replace the icy sweat now soaking my clothes. Savoring a brief reprieve from a steep journey. Noting some clever metaphor. Solving the profound, metaphysical intricacies of life.