resolutions

i've been doing some thinking, now that a new year is about to dawn.

i have never usually cared about new year's. to me, time has always been just that -- time. it's just there, whether you like it or not and, in the end, time is god. it marches on, whether we are cognizant of it or not, evermore bringing all of us who have been endowed some way, somehow, with the gift of life all the more closer to death.

not to be morbid. i'm just being realistic -- that's all! i swear!

i'm finally reaching an age where i can appreciate just how precious little time that all of us humans are given to be alive, even those of us who manage to live a long, fruitful lives and reach decrepit ages. as such, i can appreciate the symbolism behind the otherwise seeming arbitarariness that is new year's day more today, at age 27, then i could have even a couple of years ago at the age of 25.

that being said, i've been in the midst of reassessing my life and the occurrences this past year, which made 2007 simultaneously one of the most difficult and emotionally draining and yet one of the most hopeful years i've had in my life thus far.

i won't get all cheesy and re-cap every little detail that i loved and loathed about the year. that kind of stuff is hokey, ain't it?

instead, i'll talk about revelations.

one of the things that i had hoped for, when i started up this abbagirl persona here on blogger, was that i could make an attempt to honestly explore my feelings on certain personal matters that i felt that i could not express to anyone who knows me in real life. and to a great extent, it has helped me so much in that department.

but at the same time, being abbagirl has not been everything i thought it would be, either. in fact, i find that having this persona as well as my other "normal," "real-life" blogging persona on another blog-host site has only caused me to do that which i otherwise do in real life and often find to be a burden: maintain and juggle facades.

it is no one's fault but my own. i let myself get so caught up in trying to be so damned likeable. on a general basis, i consider it to be no big deal to be the one to make my personality malleable to those of others. if i have to be the one to bend a little to get along with others and be likeable, then so be it; i can do it.

i think i've talked about it on this blog before, how easy it is for me to get along well with others because i can put on any kind of social mask to match up with other people's personalities, no matter how diverse they are. and my genuine interest in humanity also helps me find those other commonalities i have with other people.

i had hoped that being abbagirl would help me get rid of all these social masks that i wear and let me show my true self in all its ugliness; having social masks, while a great asset a lot of time, can also be a burden, too. not being very savvy or skillful, i have only managed to make myself feel just as lost as i did before, if not more so.

so what i have found is that this mantle of abbagirl has come with a number of its own burdens. i will always be this abbagirl to a certain extent. at the same time, abbagirl is just not me as much as i had hoped she'd be.

don't worry -- abbagirl will still continue to exist. she will post comments on all her favorite blogs just like she usually does. she abba-solutely loves all the blogs that she's had the good fortune of finding out here on the web and will continue to read their witty, insightful, hilarious, and moving words each and every day.

but abbagirl as blogger will disappear into the night as unobtrusively as she appeared.

it was a hard decision to make, surprisingly. you'd think that since this is just a blog, i'd have no problem just up and deleting it when the time came. but no, this has actually been on my mind quite a bit the past couple of weeks. and there has always been something holding me back all those times when i considered hitting the "delete blog" button.

but this is a new year. and i want to make changes to how i live, how i think, how i act, and how i let the personalities and whims of others dictate the type of person i show myself to be.

that just needs to change. and it starts here and now.

however, i leave open the possibility that abbagirl is not outright dead. maybe she is more "me" than i give her credit for, and i only need to discover this for myself. who knows. i'm still on the journey of self-discovery that i never thought i'd be on when approaching the age of 30. so i may resurrect dear sweet abbagirl if or when the time is right. after all, it has already happened; she did fake her own death earlier this year only to make a sudden reappearance a few weeks later.

so why don't we just say that she is currently in at least a comatose state and leave it at that for now?

by that, i mean this kind of comatose state:

not this:

so no goodbyes!

just a boston song. for now.

Boston- Long Time (1976)

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happy new year, everyone! i love you all!

i need richard!

as much as that dear old man richard had begun to annoy me, in those last days of class leading up to christmas, i am finding that i need the old coot desperately.

i haven't studied all week!!

i need the discipline he provided. i need the structure! i need incentive to set time aside and to put earnest effort into studying.

without him, i'm floundering and aimless!

i started up my efforts at studying again yesterday. then got distracted because a friend called me and needed some help on something. and that ended that effort.

but i am trying again today. i've been at this coffee shop for about two hours now, trying to plow through a contracts outline.

for someone who hasn't studied much lately, i'm pretty sick of studying. i screwed myself over by waiting so long since graduating from law school to take the damned thing. the instructor of my bar review course, tim, pretty much said so. he said that the further removed you are from having graduated from law school, the crappier your chances are of passing. further, if you are taking the bar in february as opposed to july, your chances are even slimmer. and to make things even more disillusioning, he said that each time a repeat bar exam taker has to take the bar, his or her chances for passing grow more and more miniscule. to illustrate this point, the instructor held up his thumb and index finger only millimeters apart from each other.

he might as well have gone ahead and stabbed me in the gut 100 times.

so i'm keeping those words of warning close to my heart right now. i'm trying to get into the mindset that these are the kinds of words that should inspire me to defy the odds. i cannot fail again!

and yet i'm not feeling all that inspired. i just feel rather . . . down. among a whole host of other things.

it's really hard to precisely describe how i feel about the bar at this point because all the feelings are so conflicting. "down" is only one of the feelings.

i do feel a sense of determination. obviously, i do want to pass~

but i feel defeated already, like there's no point, no chance of success.

i feel like i'm not up to the task and just don't have the brain-power to surmount this shit.

i feel ashamed because i kinda skipped out of an extended-family gathering recently out of shame and fear of having to confess my failings to the family -- only to find out that my absence still caused them to talk about how i did not pass.

i feel irked because, having been out of work for as long as i have, everyone assumes that i am mooching money off my parents to get by -- which makes me mad! because that's not the case at all! sorry, but believe it or not, it's been all me so far. and i am actually quite proud of myself for learning how to curb what were otherwise really bad spending habits and learning to live frugally. financially, i am still doing quite well right now, thank you very much.

sure, i do give in to the urge to splurge when i need to -- i.e., my recent purchase of hanae mori perfume. but bottom line is that i take care of myself, just like i always do.

and i get the feeling that lots of people -- family, friends, and strangers -- are of the opinion that i'm only wasting my time by going back to school. it is not so much that i want to be a perpetual student so that i can avoid "facing up to reality" and "becoming an adult." screw the people who think that! for me, it's all about the pursuit of my livelihood. when i finally get myself situated into a career, i will be stuck for the next good twenty or thirty years of my life. it's therefore essential that, whatever i choose as my career, i will have no qualms about spending a good chunk of my life doing it and that i will always have passion for it.

screw these downers!!

so yeah, throw feelings of irritation into the mix as well.

but on top of all that, a part of me has nonetheless kinda bought into those criticisms. and i wonder what i'm doing wasting my time re-taking the bar and in applying to grad school.

yeah, i am starting to question the whole ph.d. thing, too. i am stacked knee-deep in student-loan debt that i don't think i'll ever be able to pay off during my lifetime. the idea that i'll be adding even more debt to my name makes me sweat cold bullets.

*big heaving sigh*

people don't know what it's like to be me!

it's gotten to the point where my face is seriously breaking out. i haven't had this kind of break-out since junior high! it's heinous!!

thankfully, i came across this post by sugarshock, which says that omega-3 has properties that are good for one's skin in addition to gads more other benefits. so i got myself some supplements the other day. i hope this solves the problem, and if it does, i will definitely start raving about it here on this blog.

seriously, i have no idea where this break-out comes from, other than pure stress. even though it is the holiday, i.e., goody-eating, season, my diet hasn't really changed. in fact, since i'm conscious of how much weight i tend to gain while in study-mode, i've actually been eating less. i still have my toasted bagel and cream cheese, plus coffee, for breakfast, and then rice or whatever for dinner. so i have really not been eating very much crap lately. . . . at least i don't think so . . . .

it's the damned stress!!! and i'm not surprised if i also have gads of white hair growing on my head! the last time i was at my stylist's, she had to pluck a good number of white strands out.

this law crap is making me grow old before my time -- and disgusting to boot!!

speaking of, it's time for me to go find some dinner now. my mom is making bun cha lua for dinner tonight, so i must rush over to her house. my tumbly is all rumbly now.

in the meantime, until bar review class starts up again, i'll be missing richard. i need him to help get motivated and thinking positively about the damned bar exam again.

richard! i'm so sorry i started getting annoyed by you. i need you! please save me!

what's your celebrity bmi?

Diet reviews and weight loss help. © DietsInReview.com

do yours!!

my bmi is 18.8%, and my celebirty bmi is apparently angelina jolie.

too bad i ain't as scrawny as she is!! i think i like food just a tad more than angie does.

today i . . .

• changed the colors of my blog again.
  
  i changed the background color to blue because i was thinking of the fleetwood mac song, "storms," during my drive home tonight. there is a line in the song that goes, "never have i been a blue, calm sea / i have always been a storm."
  
  for the first time in a long time, i felt like a blue, calm sea today.
  

• re-discovered how much i hate real property law after a four-hour session on the topic in bar review class that ran from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. without a break.
  

• marveled, as i drove home from bar review class, at a number of extravagant christmas light displays that were in front of a number of homes.

• put aside my cravings for chinese food or a guacamole bacon burger from red robin, instead eating a fried egg sandwich along with a stick of celery with peanut butter as my late dinner.
  
  so my eating habits are weird. so?!
  
  i tell ya, it didn't taste as good as this would've:
  

• let my best friend, whom i've known since the fifth grade, talk me into having lunch with him and a couple of our old high school classmates later this week, both of whom, although quite weird in high school, have tripled their weirdness in the almost-ten years since we graduated and whom i have not seen nor wanted to see nor even thought of seeing in all that time.
  
  ugh! you can bet i will be bloggin' 'bout that experience later this week. :-P
  

• miss someone a lot.

"storms" -- fleetwood mac

OMG! OMG! OMG!*

there is only one show on t.v. between now and the february bar exam that could take me away from my studies. in fact, i would, without reservation, miss class just to watch it.



8 episodes, starting january 31, 2008!!

* i've stolen this post's title from skinbeatergreg, who put up an "OMG!"-worthy post himself this afternoon.

bah humbug!

omg. the dude who likes using the ladies' restroom instead of getting his lazy ass on downstairs to the dude's restroom is at it again!

he is also a pain in the butt to me personally. he has a crush on me and likes to give me his unwanted attention.

i can do without! he's annoying! he is not even anywhere near hot, either.

bleh!

as long as his germified hands don't go anywhere near the delicious cookies that richard brought out for us, though, i'll be fine.

i am finding christmas to be an obnoxious time of year.

just going to the store to get school supplies or to get groceries ends up being time-consuming and an agonizing, patience-eroding time. sooo many people are out and about, and they are ill-tempered and rude. and when they are rude, then i get ill-tempered, too.

it doesn't help that i have to wait forEVer in line just to buy a sack of apples and a batch of bagels while everyone has gads and gads of stuff in their shopping carts so that they can do their holiday meals and stuff. at the post office, too, i have to wait forEVer in line to use the automated, self-serve machine just to mail a single grad school application envelope while, in front of me, there are gads of people who have to mail thirteen thousand christmas cards.

ugh! my ease of life is made all difficult because of christmas!

it seems to me that people are getting even crazier on the roads this time of year, too. i'm especially hatin' on suburban types who drive those big ol' dodge ram or chevy trucks. i also especially hate minivan drivers.

have i mentioned how much i hate suburbia? suburbia blows!

so i desperately cannot wait for the christmas season to be over and for life to get back to its usual pace. the only good thing to come out of the holiday seasons in my eyes is the fact that starbuck's offers, for a limited time, their gingerbread, eggnog, and peppermint flavored lattes.

oh, and all the holiday sales at all my favorite shops aren't bad, either.

but other than that, christmas is not my favorite time of the year!

it just blows my mind that for a holiday that is supposed to be imbued with a sense of selflessness, hope, and a whole host of warm touchy-feely sentiments, what it actually does is bring out the worst in people. what is christmas these days but a way for people to indulge in their sense of materialism and get all short-tempered when things don't go their way?

that's why i say "forget it!" i don't need to play that game.

the one part of christmas that i do have fun with is the gift-giving part.

the problem is that i probably can't give as much as i'd like to this year. . . .

for me, i don't give gifts merely to go through the motions. i do it because i like it. i think about the personality of the person i'd like to get a gift for, what happened to the person during the year, inside jokes that we may have between us. the way i see it, good gift-giving is like working through a puzzle with the ultimate goal being to surmise exactly what material good best befits the recipient's personality or mind-set or yen.

but the key is not to do it because you feel you have to but because you want to. there's no fun in going shopping and buying gifts for other people if your heart is really not into it.

the way i see it is this:

life is short. it is too short to be wasting precious effort on words and actions that have no meaning. so when you say something, mean it. when you do something, make your action purposeful. i don't want to die, whether tomorrow or in fifty years, and have wasted all that time doing things that were empty and meaningless.

it's a philosophy i try to apply in all things, including this christmas craziness.

but hey, maybe that's just me.

bar review still going strong

i slept too much this morning.

but i couldn't help it. i was having a wacky dream, the details of which i can't even remember at this point. in the dream, there were lots of people i know and lots of people i didn't know, and we were on some mission together because some other distrustful people had been messing with us. and so we were plotting together, a la mission: impossible, a retaliation.

it's one of those dreams where you hover in and out of consciousness and know you should get out of bed because it is starting to be late morning. but the dream keeps you interested and eager to see how the end plays out.

in the end, i missed out on the ending because my dog couldn't take it anymore and woke me up. she really had to go pee.

an update on bar review study: this week, we're doing mbe questions. one subject per day, and we have to have all our questions answered by the time we get to class, where we will then watch a video-tape of all the answers being reviewed -- kinda like pmbr. tonight's subject is con law and i am all set and ready to go, having sat down and done all the questions yesterday evening.

i got comments back on my timed multi-state essays yesterday. good lord. i got a lot of criticism. like, good god damn! and i don't mean that in a whiny way. i mean that in a good way. like, keep them coming!! i want to pass so bad. the more constructive feedback i can get, the better. i want it -- keep crackin' that whip and beating my ass!



i'm going to try to get away to the gym this afternoon before class starts. i didn't work out at all last week, what with trying to complete a few grad school apps and having to do all my homework for the bar review class. i'm at a place where i can finally breathe a bit more easily, though, and so a good gym session will be just the thing i need.

i was studying at starbuck's yesterday. there was a cute asian girl there studying criminal law. she is still a law student; she had her text book right there. at one point, she got up to take a smoke break outside. i looked after her a bit longingly but, at the same time, i tried to ignore her.

it's not that i crave a cigarette, per se . . . .

well, maybe i do. just a little.

but i also miss the reprieve that it always gave me and the psychological sense of comfort.

i miss it. i really do.

at the same time, i really don't want to smoke, either. i'm hoping that in quitting this time, i'm quitting for good.

well. unless i'm drinking with other smokers, i mean. then i can't guarantee anything.

i'm glad i stopped, though. it does make me feel like crap and makes it so much harder to breathe. i feel cleaner and healthier now. and all it took for me to quit was going on a complete smoking binge for 24 hours straight after finding out i failed the bar.

hmm. imagine that. :-P

and i think those years of smoking were starting to take a toll on my face. i feel like my face was beginning to lose its elasticity and that everything was starting to sag. i'm too young to lose my adorable asian babyface!

more essay-writing . . . .

i have just emerged from a well-needed hot shower. it's made me awfully warm and sleepy. but unfortunately, i can't turn in yet. the night is still pretty young, and i have gads of stuff to do before dawn. . . .

i'm kinda glad i lost my personal statement to the unpredictable glitches of technology this morning. that essay was kinda utter shit, and i managed to re-do it so much better. i'll be re-working it tonight and hopefully can get my three apps. into the two-day mail as of tomorrow morning so that they can arrive at their respective destinations by the 15th, this saturday.

as for bar review class tonight. . . .

ugh.

b-o-r-i-n-g!



it's kind of a double bind for me. i know i need all the help i can get in passing the bar and figuring out how to improve my score. and yet it's so painful to be there, because damn it, i know the law and how to write! and it is just so redundant to have these things pounded into my head again!

if you're a repeater, you know what i'm talking about. we know this shizz. we've already put in the time for three years learning all this stuff! arrgh!

it's just frustrating. i know i should be patient and just deal. but i can't help being frustrated, too.

richard told us a couple of times tonight, both at the start of yet another three-hour practice session and at the end, how proud of us he was. and he guffawed loudly when i told him that i was only there because i was afraid he would get pissed and yell at me the next time he saw me.

ha! no, he's too sweet to yell and get mad. but i am afraid of his displeasure. he'd get on any of our butts if we missed a class for any reason. i know i've said it before, but . . . he cares about our success.

seriously, i think he's so great because of how much he cares. :)

the practice session wasn't too tedious tonight, as compared with yesterday. this time, we had to write essays on evidence, real property, and wills.

what tonight taught me is that i'm pretty comfortable with wills questions. but i'm back to being pretty weak in regards to real property and evidence.

ugh!

on a whole other note: i was in sephora the other day. god, i love sephora! and it was so hard not getting everything i wanted. but i did have to get this one thing . . . . i happened to be browsing through the fragrances and got a whiff of this one by hanae mori. . . . and it was over for me. had to get it. i'm telling you -- smells fantastic! and this comes from someone who's really picky about fragrances; i'm not a fan of overpowering, nausea-inducing scents, and i feel that most fragrances out there are pretty heinous. but hanae mori is fantastic!

i know -- don't tell me i shouldn't have! i know i should be more careful about counting pennies! but seriously, if you've ever had the chance to smell this one, you'll know why i couldn't resist!

plus, dude! i just failed the bar exam! there might as well be a big ol' "L" tattooed on my forehead! if anything, i should be entitled to knowing that i at least smell amazing. :)