ACTION, of course.  Funny, I just wrote about this earlier today and now it's the featured question of the day. 

"The older I get, the less I pay attention to what people say and more attention to what they do."
   

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The older I get, the less I care about what people say and more about what they do. 

My intuition's pretty good these days, I just stupidly refuse to accept the truth sometimes.  My uncle always told me there is a difference between pleasing people and serving people.  When you try to please people, you let go of your true principles in order to accommodate their wants.  However, when you really serve people (the right away), you are honest with yourself and their truths to what they need.  I have a tendency to please people first...letting them do some ridiculous things, thinking that if that makes them happy, then it'll make me happy.  WRONG! 

There are things I don't want to do, but I do it anyway...the only reason to tell whether or not it's a good thing to do, is to ask myself "is it and will it be worth it?"  If the answer is yes, then do it.  If it's really worth it, then it is the right thing to do.  If it's not worth it, then it is wrong.  I lost part of that mental toughness awhile ago, which allowed me the unpleasant experiences of pleasing people who aren't worth it. 

Only when you fall can you test your ability to stand up and rise up.   Sometimes you just need to tell yourself straight -- I deserve a whole lot better than what I allowed myself to be.  

I can blame being a twenty-something for my rash behavior, or my impatient astrological nature when it comes to grasping onto what stability I can find in my chaotic world, or my unlucky history with bad relationships that forced me to put up a defensive front/a wall to guard my heart...

But HONESTLY, I can just admit now that I've messed up.  I've fucked up something by jumping into it too soon, pressuring it to work too fast, and not spending enough time to let it grow at its own pace.  Instead of keeping it casual, I asked to have a status ... whatever it may be.  I couldn't accept that it was seriously too soon to make a decision on our status.  Hence, I shot myself in the foot by making him decide whether we're going to try or not. 

I should have just left the topic alone, kept my mouth shut, and not scare the poor guy off.  He's a good catch really and I would hate to share him (even if it was just a date)...but you know, the scenario of having to share him hasn't even come up and I've prematurely prepared for it.  Ha!  Oh Nancy Nancy Nancy...what a fool rushing in to something way over her head.

Hopefully he's not scared off yet.  I totally see his point of view...we barely know each other and the distance doesn't lend any help to bringing us together.  I just want to revert back to the days when it was just casual, of two people enjoying each other's time and energy around one another.  An email here or there, a chat when possible, a text when we feel like it.  It was so much fun before emotional attachment got involved. 

WOW, this is one of very few regrets I've ever had in my life.  Talk about learning from your mistakes, huh?

"If you don't know where you are trying to go, it is difficult to know whether or not you have arrived."

"If you don't have a strategy and a plan, you are likely to end up as a part of somebody else's plan."

"If you have a destination in mind and intend to get there, it helps to know where you are starting from."

Where you are today is a result of years of doing what you've always been doing (or not doing). 

How many of you remember wanting to grow up when you were a kid?  Like when you were 5 and wanting a family pet, arguing "I can take care of a pet!" when you can barely put on your own shoes.   Or when you were 16 and wanting your first car, and screaming "I'm responsible enough to have my own car!"  Or when you were 18 and wanting to date, and telling your parents "I'm old enough to do know what I want!"  Or when you were...nevermind, you get the point.  Not only have I always wanted to grow up, I was forced to do so at a very young age.  At 15, I took over as head of household...mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially.  It was a role I accepted because I felt my mother was too weak to carry the responsibilities for the both of us.  It was a role that would add experience, stress, sacrifices, and a sense of worth to my life.  I'm not saying I regretted this role but I admit it definitely come too soon in a young girl's life and this burden is part of the reason for why I am unhappy.

I was not born to be ordinary.  My family is not ordinary.  Despite always wanting to be ordinary, I have always achieved the extraordinary.  It is a privelege I am blessed and cursed with at the same time.  We are what we take on and I have always inadvertently taken on more than I can handle.  The reason for this is that I have too much hope but little faith.  Does that make any sense whatsoever?  Let me explain...it's like being both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time.  I have hope that a person can make a difference, but little faith that they can change the entire world.  It's like injecting the dreamer with a dose of reality.  So you do what you can, what you must, what you dream of doing...until you cannot possibly do anymore or you just simply get bored and then change direction.  I have not always done what I wanted or what I dreamt of doing, but in the end, I somehow have done much more than what I ever thought I could do.  I told you I was lucky.

Every destination is meant to (and should!) improve your life. 

If I'm going to move, it should be to a better place, for the right reasons.  When I started dating again, I told myself that every new relationship should be better than the last or else it's not worth being in.  Afterall, we're supposed to be growing together.  If that person brings me down or does not believe in me, that is a sign to exit.  What I want is love but what I need is friendship.   I'm worth waiting for.  I'm worth fighting for.  I'm worth keeping.  No matter the distance, time, effort, energy, or difficulties.  He is not the reason why I am leaving, and he will not be a factor in my destination.   If he is the one, he will find me.

If I'm going to move, it will be because I have something to look forward to when I arrive.  A rewarding new job, an opportunity to make a bigger change, whatever positive tangible/intangible that may be.  When I thought of just uprooting my current life and plopping myself somewhere new without a plan, as exciting as it sounds, I realized it required much more thought (even if I knew I'd survive).  A good game plan.  Because while you don't always need to know your destination, you should find the right reasons to be there. 

Don't change the direction of the wind, adjust the sails to reach your destination.

It is time to do what I have not been doing, and to increase the energy and frequency in doing what I have always loved doing.  Travel is my passion.  I am lucky to
have the company of friends and family in almost every place I travel
to.  Their companionship and guidance has been the light leading me to
the most wonderous places.  With a few underlying principles in mind, I should be able to change my course of action with relative ease.

1. Stop procrastinating on ME time.  And while on ME time, stop thinking about what I should be doing for other people.  I've dreamt of work way too many nights...that is no way to live!
2. Learn to say no.  Seriously, NO NO NO NO NO.  I can't be responsible for every detail of every minute.  Delegate!
3. Never settle for less.  Never let someone be my priority when I am only their option.

What guides my life is a book called Safety Net.  Everything I've ever done has always been "safe".  I've always set high goals for myself but made sure they were achievable.  Even when I've purposely gone and messed stuff up, it was because I knew I would be forgiven for my sins and there were those that supported me to learn from the experience.  So really, it was a soft fall.

Freedom and independence.  What is that really?  I live a very comfortable life.  I'm an Asian-American with lots of liberty and freedom.  I have a job that's flexible and allows me to travel if I need/want to and a boss that is kind enough to give me the independence to call my own shots...really, most people don't have this luxury.  My financial situation can adequately afford me enough to support my mother and I, the necessities as well as the material luxuries.  I live in California, one of the best places on earth where mountains, valleys, lakes, rivers, oceans, cosmopolitan, country, weather, food, and life just explodes with beautiful radiance everyday.  I couldn't find this perfect variety anywhere else, can I?  But even with all this time on my hands, I don't feel I have the freedom of time.  So many things are structured and planned.  So what am I so unsatisfied about?  I have a life most people could only dream of. 

I have a business I cannot neglect, family I cannot ignore, love I cannot get in return.  To buy a house or not?  To live here or move?  To continue saving or risk having to deplete it for the love of travel?  To risk a decent paying job with all its flexible perks for some uncertainty in the future?  To leave familial obligations behind and just run run to wherever my heart is pulled?  This is the T-intersection.  The middle of the road.  Left or right, I must choose.  Can't look back, but can't go forward.  I'm angry, dying inside.  My heart has already left but my mind refuses to follow.

As a California chick, I'm playing in the snow only a couple of times a year (at most).  Snow's gorgeous, I've always wanted to experience a true White Christmas. But to be this deep in that much snow is ridiculous:  

Dating is pretty simple, in my opinion, or maybe it just seemed so much easier than we make it out to be. 

I remember my first "boyfriend", I can't recall his name but he was a cute kid (of course!).  We were in kindergarten then and I can only remember that he always bought me candy or ice cream during recess.  See, my love for food was evident even at a young age.  I don't recall him ever holding my hand or kissing me on the cheek, but the memory of us eating ice cream in the school yard will always makes me smile.  

Growing up, the rules of dating were pretty easy to follow.  Boy likes girl, girl likes boy, one writes note to another or asks a friend to see if there is interest from the other party...then next thing you know, somebody makes the first move to hold your hand...then boom, you're automatically boyfriend and girlfriend.  The time span from first crush feeling to bf/gf status takes no more than a month.  We were impatient then, I guess, but I'm a late bloomer and didn't begin dating until I was 16 years old...I remember he wrote a poem to ask me to be his girlfriend.  Does anybody do corny/sweet things like that anymore?! 

Dating wasn't so complicated until I got to college.  The difference was that I stopped crushing (high school) and actually took a more active role in pursuing my interests.  And as an active pursuer, I was able to be more selective.  Afterall, if I have to work for his affection, then he better be worth it!  We run into incidences of "right time, wrong person" / "right person, wrong time".  It was also at this time that I learned there are many fishes in the sea...for both parties.  Competition somehow became the norm.  It was no longer the simple days when someone took my hand and then I was his girlfriend...nope, we had to go on multiple dates to see if we're compatible, make sure we can hold lighthearted and serious conversations interchangably, be able to have some physical chemistry, and be rated everything from our fashion senses to our intellectual capacity to our familial ties.  The one step dating process became a five-step process...talking to, hanging out, seeing, dating, then finally you are in a relationship.  The home run could stretch for month after month...and in the end, you could stagnate in any of the stages indefinitely, without a plan to take that leap of faith. 

I'm at the stage in my life where I must be absolute adult, the person that should put dating in the back burner since I have to buy a house, maintain a business, work a day job, etc....well, now my mother must disagree because she decides to give me a little BOOST in the dating department.  Do you have parents that want to hook you up with their good friends' children?  My mother never tried her hands at matchmaking before but she must be feeling like it's crunch time or something, like I should be married soon (darn Asian parents!!!).  For the past year, I've heard her friends asking about me and she'd go into tidbits about my dating life..."oh, she's just picky, you can't rush these things"...but now she goes full throttle in discussing the possibility of setting up a meeting "for the two children to see each other in good light."  She told me today that a friend's son is graduating and that he has invited me to attend his masters degree graduation in June so I should plan my vacation times accordingly to make the trip out of state to attend such an important event.  I've hardly ever spoken to him in person, we've exchanged emails a few times.  If he wanted to contact me, he has my number.  I doubt he's asked me to come; I suspect it was his mother or father that invited me.   Awkward.

Maybe dating can never be that simple.

a ballerina.   yeah, as a child, i would dance around in a dress all day long...i've always loved dancing but it is my biggest regret that i've never developed skills professionally.

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As a child of a "broken" home, divorce is one of my worst fears. 

I just answered this Featured Question, you can answer it too!