Today, I came to the realization that relative to my time spent on things, I do not spend enough time reading for myself — reading books on my own to-read list, reading up on current news/events in the political, social, and economic spheres…

While I give myself credit for the overloaded class + extracurricular schedule I always have for myself, relative to my own time management and time-spent-on-other-things, I could totally be reading “for myself”…it’s just that I choose not to.  One “excuse”/reason is that many books I do want to read tend to be nonfiction (thus usually more ‘dense’/educational)…which makes this type of reading similar to the types of readings I have to do for my classes (so then it’s as if I never get a break), but it honestly is NOT an excuse.

I started to think about how much I used to read through middle school and the first half of high school… And I realized that partially, it was because I really did not watch TV. Nowadays, I’m following TOO many shows for my own good and perhaps spending too much time socializing on weekends… And that’s when I realized/decided that this type of hedonistic lifestyle I’ve adopted for myself during my free time isn’t really what I want for myself. Or is it?

I watch so many TV shows and indulge in mindless activities…all of this only makes me  a victim fallen prey to our escapist-, entertainment-obsessed society that I too criticize. I mean, while I am not watching TV shows/indulging in mindless activities, I know it’s not like I’m “wasting my life away” and being unproductive, but when I do have the “free time,” I AM being “unproductive.” Perhaps we all need the “mindlessness” of such activities and the escapism into worlds that are not our own — but when done in excess it becomes a dangerous lifestyle, at least for myself.

I always used to justify my love for mindless things, such as watching chick flicks, watching trashy TV shows, watching non-trashy-but-purely-entertainment-based TV shows, etc. by saying it is one of the few times my poor, over-analytical and over-evaluative brain gets to rest… Maybe it’s true. But it does not serve as an excuse!!!

Anyway…this has been probably one of my more pointless rambles… Just documenting my “journey” of attempts for self-improvement, don’t mind me…

I’ve always, always enjoyed reading..as a kid, I loved going to libraries, although I must say..a majority of what I read as a kid included The Babysitter’s Club, Sweet Valley series, and others like those…but regardless it has always been enjoyable to me.

As I went through high school, I never lost that love for reading (books that I want to read) but I just found less and less time to do so. I don’t think it was really until the summer after I graduated high school that I began to read a lot again, and re-discovered how amazing it was.

After starting college, I still tried to maintain some for-fun reading, but mostly it ends up being during the summer time that I get to do this. So, this summer (well – the 4 days left of it..) I’ve also been trying to get some reading done. The list of what I want to read just keeps getting longer and longer, and I order some of these books and they just keep sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read, but yet I can’t seem to give them the time of day!! I feel bad for them, really. I’ve been meaning to read Atlas Shrugged for a YEAR now (and I know this because I’d added this book to my Library last year..) and finally am just starting to read it!

I know that I really DO have time to read books for fun – I just have to make time for it. I think that during the year when I’m in school, it’s just harder to want to read for fun with my spare time because I already am reading so many books/articles/etc. for my classes… Who knows. But I just know – I need to spend more time doing it in order to read everything I want to…..

Ahhhh! I have been wanting to update for the past couple of days but just have not had the time to (or I guess have not made the time to)… I’ll just make this a quick update. Basically, I’ve only been back at school for not even a week, but already it feels like it’s been a month. Good news is that I’ve been doing a lot — seeing (some but certainly not enough) friends, going out, eating dim sum at Chinatown, annnnd today I went to the city with my housemates for some shopping and to watch Revolutionary Road. Not quite sure why (although I guess I do know…no time to explain now) but that movie definitely made me emotional. I really would like to read the book now just to get a clearer picture of the message of both the film and the book (although I know at times they can differ).

Anyhow, the gist is that I’m trying to be more social this semester and have more fun than last semester, and with my lighter (supposedly, anyways) load of classes, I hope I will continue to do so.

More updates later. Meanwhile, Happy Chinese Lunar New Years and have a good week to all!

Wow, I’ve had a quite eventful past two days!

Thanksgiving dinner was quite delicious… Of course it was a mix of Asian food and American Thanksgiving food, haha. I thoroughly enjoyed the turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. MmMmmMm! After dinner at a family friend’s house, all the kids came over to my house and we watched The Departed. It is such an intense movie. It actually reminds me a lot of the movie Burn After Reading, except with less dark humor and more action/suspense.

Today, I woke up late..big surprise. I was probably hungover from my food coma. My family and I ate delicious, delicious dim sum, came back home, and went on a 45 minute walk around on the trail in my neighborhood. It was such a nice day today… It makes me happy.

Afterwards, we came back and watched Iron Man since my parents and I have never seen it (although my sister has). It was such a good movie. Yay for movies since I don’t get to watch many of them. After the movie, we went to dinner at a really amazing Italian place. (Have you noticed a trend here? Movie, eating, some walking, more eating.. life story, minus the movies!) Then my dad decided we should go to The Montage to get drinks. So we did. And then he decided the wine there was no good..and wanted to go to St. Regis for more..so we did. Haha. The music was really nice, not gonna lie. But two hotel lounges in one night? A bit much!

Anyway, after we got home I’ve been working on my Haas business school app. It’s frustrating for me to try and explain why and what I want to do with business, in so few words. Blah.

I need to finish it sooooon! But for now, I’m going to bed. Goooodnight.