The Evolution of Incubus, Brandon Boyd, and Me

When I was in high school and college, my favorite band was Incubus, hands down. I have never stopped liking them, but as life happened and I paid even less attention to media than the little I'd paid before, I just kept listening to the albums I already had. Not that it's not much. I have everything from Fungus Amongus and Enjoy Incubus to Light Grenades. Today I realized they made another album in 2011, and Brandon Boyd made a solo album. I immediately looked them up on YouTube and they are awesome. Of course they're awesome. Some bands sound the same album after album after album. For example, Maroon 5 is great, but within 10 seconds of listening to one of their songs you know it's them. The musicality is the same, even the lyrics are the same things said with different words. But Incubus (and now Brandon Boyd on his own, too... next thing to Google is his new band?) is a sound constantly in flux with an underlying personality that ties everything together. Every song resonates with my heartbeat and respiration in a different way.

Forging New Paths

It is becoming increasingly clear that despite my fleeting ambitions otherwise, I am most likely going to end up teaching ESL for the rest of my life. It's been my safety net, my fallback plan, often my main career, for the past 6 years. I'm good at it and I enjoy bonding with students and watching them improve. That look that plays across a person's face when understanding dawns is priceless, especially when the thing being understood is useful in daily life or more complex than the person expected to be able to understand. Many ESL teachers treat their adult students like children, which often doesn't go over well. I aim to learn as much from them as they learn from me, and I show them the respect they deserve for working hard to learn another language. I could build many good relationships and be content as an ESL teacher. I guess that's all I can ask for in life.

How Salsa Saved Me (and helped me ruin my life)

I wasn't going to post this because I've done my best to keep this blog rated PG and keep the exploits I'm ashamed of off. But, as I was reading over it and fixing things here and there I realized how important salsa was in my life in Korea and how it's become an integral part of my life. My friend, Kiki in this story (all names are aliases), asked me to write about the impact dancing has had on my life. She said it could be any length, and as I'm very wordy, it ended up being 10 pages in MS Word. To my regular readers, some of this may be repetitive, but I guarantee there are some things I never told you. Enough of my introduction. Here is the story of how salsa saved me (and helped me ruin my life). Nothing is embellished or fictional.

Fragments

Shattered
Fragments scattered across the world
My sanity littered around the universe
Multiverse
Confused verses
Uttered curses
In tongues
Screaming in my brain
To drown out the thunderous shame
At the memory of what could have been
And what I chose instead
The fighting in my head
My life in tatters
Glaring daggers
At the mirror
The future's looming nearer
I am unarmed and ill-prepared
I don't dare try again what I dared
Luck was on my side
But now I hide
No confidence in my stride
No definition in my character
A smiling caricature
Ready to burst

Insomnia and Fogged Windows

I am not neglecting this blog because I'm busy or forgot about it. I merely have nothing to write. The days are blurring together. I have no idea what to do with my life or how to do it. I don't know where to start. I feel useless and small, unimportant and afraid. I am a child in an adult's body. The day after my 21st birthday, I was on a plane to the other side of the world to start a new life. The day after my 25th birthday, I felt like I was still 21 and that my time in Korea was a dream.