Category: quotation

Categories
NaNoWriMo quotation

Tea Bag Wisdom

Every week, when I visit my friend, I look forward to drinking a cup of Good Earth Tea, which always has a quotation attached to the tea bag. It’s almost like opening up a fortune cookie, the anticipation of looking inside to see what words have come to me by chance.

I had written an entry during the middle of summer how one of these particular quotations struck me in a way that really opened my eyes up. To this day, I still have that quotation tucked away in my wallet to remind me that I really do not need to feel like I must do everything all at once. One thing at a time will do.

In other news, it’s less than a week until NaNoWriMo, and I honestly don’t have anything really brewing in my head in terms of a plot/storyline. I have been brainstorming, sure, but nothing seems to be accumulating into something captivating. I suppose that’s the point though: I just need to be writing something, period. Despite not being surrounded by other participants physically, I feel like the energy I feel from the forums really feeds my motivation. It’s too bad I can’t go to the Write-A-Thon this year, but I suppose I can have my own private Write-A-Thon sometime this next month.

Well, onward!

Categories
change quotation

Cutting Down The Duties–

I’ve come to a big realization the past week: it’s really no surprise, but I admit I am quite a perfectionist. It’s come to the point that I notice how many goals I set each day and how all these little goals continuously stress me out to no end.

Last Tuesday evening, I was sipping on some Good Earth Tea; it’s a nice brand of tea since it also features quotations on each tea bag tag. I got a quotation last week that really stung me (in a good way) for its truthfulness/relevance to my situation:

“Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.”
– Eugene Delacroix

Every day, I’m making lists, it seems, with all these lists and goals I create, I’m just making myself feel worse over things that don’t get “finished”. This flows through everything I do, including my writing. I feel disappointed when I’m unable to get some writing done, e.g., some sort of progress on my Novel 1 rewrite.

So, I’ve decided to cut back on a lot of things to get myself back into a better state of mind. For one, I have reduced my blogs down to just this one and my Cinnamon Juice food blog; I was working on Photo 365 for the past six months, but, since May, I’d fallen behind and found myself constantly in need of “catching up”. It’s still like that with Cinnamon Juice, but, well, there’s no need to feel like I need to catch up on things all the time.

I suppose the same can be said about many things in life.

Categories
quotation time

Time flies–

“The bad news is time flies.
The good news is you’re the pilot.”
– Michael Althsuler
Categories
life quotation

One step at a time.

From my daily calendar:

“It is a mistake to look too far ahead.
Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”
– Winston Churchill

Sometimes I forget that I need to just take everything one step at a time. After all, if I rush towards the finish line, how can I enjoy everything?

Categories
Asian-American My San Francisco Chronicles public library quotation race

Jennifer 8. Lee Reading at SFPL

(This post is coming…rather late. Backdating the entry)

Jennifer 8. Lee had a book reading event at the SFPL on March 26, 2008. The room was mostly packed with Asian-Americans; a little surprising and amusing to me. Lee’s slideshow was fun to watch and was basically a short summary of what was all in her book. I had managed to read all except 20 pages left in the book; really good read in general.

One quotation from the book that really struck me was this:

“Look at me, and you may see someone Chinese. Close your eyes, and you will hear someone American.”

This quotation strikes me because of how accurately it describes most of what Asian-Americans experience in this country…probably everywhere else in the world besides their homelands. I find myself always getting confused for a “foreigner”, wherever I go in the US. People don’t seem to believe me when I say I am American; they give me this look as if I’m crazy for thinking that Americans can be Asians, too.

Even in San Francisco, I get mistaken as being “one of them” in Chinatown. Although I guess it makes them less discriminating towards me, at the same time, it gives me an uncomfortable position when I actually have to speak and they realize that my Taishanese is really limited.

I don’t know why it’s such a hard concept–after all, isn’t the US known for its diversity? Yet, I guess Asian-Americans seem like a “new breed” to many people. Who knows.