[ ed's journal oct.26.01 ]

[ j o u r n a l ]

The following online journal entries are from October 2001.

[ 1 0 . 2 6 . 0 1 ]

FRIDAY. 7:45 PM. My most recent, up-sized email update I sent to my friends back east and around the City and around the world:

...from the Otherworld (or at least the Other Coast)...and it's LONG!
Greetings afficionados,
It's that time of year again. Time for bulk bags of fun-sized Hershey bars. Time for early sunsets and falling back. Time for changing leaves and foggy days. Time for midterms, homecoming, elections, and pre-Holiday shopping. And time for Ed to write an update of unusual size.
It's been a while, I admit. And I apologize for the delay. I think I have refrained from spilling my verbage into the tributaries of email because of the much anticipated and modest reception of my personal website [ the ED pages ] (www.edmondchang.com). Nothing says self-love than your own domain name -- at least that's what almost every single Internet Service Provider keeps trying to tell me. Also partially in part because up until now I just haven't really felt like talking much or sharing much. I was glued to my watching the episodes of my hour-long drama called 'my life' wondering how Garrett Wang was cast to star as me. But now some of the veil has lifted, perhaps due to the proximity to the autumnal equinox or the fortuitous full moon on All Hallow's eve, but I clambor wearily back into my writing chair.
Perhaps everyone should take a little educated guess at how long this update will be -- much like those 'guess how many jelly beans are in this giant pickle jar' type of games. But don't let all the swirls and colors and strange smell of jellies and pickles dissuade you from reading further.
SEPTEMBER 11
Right off the bat I'd like to get the whole September 11 discussion out of the way. I must say unequivocably I do not watch the news nor read the papers anymore. I just cannot stand it. I always knew that mainstream media was just another big business, another factory of corporate spin, but this whole packaging, Tommy Hilfigering, hysterifying of the terrorist disasters (and the war on terrorism and the anthrax scare) just makes me want to throw up. So, even though it might make me thin and beautiful by the holidays, I have opted to keep my meals in my tummy and just switch it off.
Instead, I prefer to sit in my own home, peruse bits and pieces of choice media, talk to my neighbors, my co-workers, participate in my neighborhood, and exercise my proactive right to protect my liberties and my sanity. I have expressed a lot of what I've been thinking about the whole ordeal on my website. I won't get into the details again. I think like a lot of people I am just tired, stressed out, and wanting to grieve and live on. Unfortunately, with the media circus wanting us to dwell, it has been hard to move forward.
I am glad that my friends and family are safe. Let's start with that little bit of green and sunshine. Then we can heal inward and work outward from there.
Beyond having "brown-people" owned business down the street for me vandalized, people on the buses cussing each other out over the war, and crazy paranoid covertly racist talk at work, I am troubled how much revisionist history, selective concern, and plain blindness in which the nation participates. We can certainly muster all of this "stand strong," "stand united" community-building, all of this "love thy neighbor" proselytizing, all of this telethon cum televangelism, all of this "giving" of blood, money, food, shelter, medals, and new cars around an attack on America, on Freedom, on Democracy, but we have to drag it out of people when it comes to AIDS, hunger, hate crimes, education, the arts, the environment... (It is times like these that I miss teaching the most.)

[ 1 0 . 2 6 . 0 1 cont. ]

WILD AND CRAZY JOBS AND THE MEN WHO LOVE THEM

Actually, I am still unemployed. I can't believe it's been months since I left my job at CompassPoint. Fortunately, a friend of mine from my old job referred me to her friend who works at a super large law firm in downtown San Francisco. It's super swank. Located right at the end of Market Street in the One Market building, Brobeck, Phleger, & Harrison is straight out of some Grisham novel. I've been working as a Quality Assurance tester for their IT department. Basically it's a lot of repetative grunt work making sure applications launch, work, cohabitate with other applications, print, like their network space, and produce viable document offspring. It's been a good opportunity. I've made a bit of money to save up for the next couple of months. But I'm pretty much certain that I am not cut out for corporate America. My immediate department is very cool, very nice, and very relaxed. However, walking around the different floors and seeing the monstrous views from the lawyers' offices overlooking the city or the Bay Bridge, I just don't feel comfortable or well-received (or maybe that's perceived). Something about green spikey hair and power ties that just don't quite mix. On the bright side of my current situation (other than having money to pay rent and actually go out and enjoy life in SF), I have learned a bit about the tech industry and gained some experience with software I have never even heard of before.

In the end though I am just not meant to be a cubicle drone.

The job search is going very slow, very poorly. It's a bit disheartening, but the market right now is nearly impossible particularly here in the Bay Area. So many people I know have up and lost their jobs, sometimes quite suddenly. Now the number of people looking for work has increased but the available jobs remains the same, if not fewer. I can find a job, granted, but it would be back to doing admin or some such. And I didn't quit CompassPoint to just go back to the same grind. So, the quest goes on.

Wish me luck.

MASTER OF THE UNIVERSE (OF FINE ARTS)

I have officially decided to go back to graduate school. A decision I rue every night when I go to sleep and have anxiety dreams about architecture school, public toilets overflowing, high school, naked-Ed-ness, and other troubling things. But I stand by the decision. I've signed up to take the general part of the GREs... again. I was horrified to find out my scores were invalid. Come the end of November, I'll be in one of those scary testing facilities playing with my future as I key in answers on some overgrown, mutant Scantron machine.

Really, the decision is two-pronged (god I love that word): a) I can escape the Bushwellian recession, b) I need the pedigree to get back to teaching. I still have teaching dreams even three years after leaving the classroom. They always fill me with a sense of great pride, happiness, and sadness like leaving behind a good friend. So, it's back into the mix.

I am applying to four schools: San Francisco State University, New College of California, University of Maryland at College Park, and New York University (really for the giggles of it). I am sad that UC Berkeley does not have a MFA writing program (though I might investigate their journalism MA). The California College of Arts and Crafts has a really neat MFA but it's a small private school and $24K a year without any funding is just sickening to me. I mainly picked the ones that were available to me geographically (because I want to stay either near my sister or near my father) or out of a random shuffling of names. If anyone has any inside dirt on any of the programs, just give me a hollar before I blow fifty to a hundred bucks on applying. I stared dreamily, longingly at the University of Iowa's nonfiction writers workshop program... but alas Iowa is not where I want to be for two years.

Of course, I have still have to finish my applications, gather my letters of recommendation, and write my statement of uselessness.

(If you have any suggestions of where else to park my flabby writer butt, let me know, too.)

[ i n d e x E D ]

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