paralysis.

wah, long time no blog ah?

so what have i been up to since the last time i posted, which was about a month ago? in short, *nothing much.* let me think...

- golf. you'd think that with the amount of time and practice i have now i shoulda been able to shave a few strokes off my game, but that hasn't happened. why? i believe the beauty of golf is in its infinite frustration. it's the neverending challenge. you can never count on doing ONE THING well because your own body will betray you, with its aches and pains and its cursed muscle memory. it's the ultimate battle between your brain and your body, and right now my brain is generally the loser.

- reading. i recently finished the memoirs of barack obama, the recently elected democratic senator for illinois. his story is really an amazing one, and his memoirs are quite modest about everything he's managed to accomplish. growing up in hawaii and never meeting his father till he was 10, moving to indonesia, moving back to hawaii and finding a way to go to a decent school and stay out of trouble, getting a high paying job in nyc and leaving it to become a community organizer in chicago. (i never knew what a community organizer was till i read this book btw.) going back to kenya to retrace his roots, meet his family for the first time, and finding a sense of self within his multi-racial and multi-cultural background that doesn't fit into any nice societal bucket. that's something i constantly struggle with as well, not really being an american, not really being chinese. the sad thing is, the longer i stay in america, the less chinese i become, but it's not like that is replaced with feelings of belonging to an american culture. as the chinese side slips, so does the overall self-identity. a sad fact i've learned over recent months.

- thinking. you'd think that with a good 8-10 hours a day to do nothing but think, i'd have thought of something to do by now. but as the title of this blog confesses, i've been stricken by paralysis. ya think too much and the result is inaction. so i need to find a way to start doing - jump start the old engine, so to speak. sitting around and considering all the alternatives is not doing me any good. one of the big problems is that i've reached an age where i don't feel like i can make any mistakes anymore. ok so xoom was a mistake, i've accepted that. but i don't feel bad about it because it wasn't a mistake i felt like i could've avoided. maybe i could've interviewed with a few more people. but it's not like i can request that sort of thing, when i'm asking for a job. so rather than try something and run the risk of making a mistake, the path of least resistance is to not run the risk, and instead, do nothing.

this can't go on forever. at some point my patience, mental energy, and funding will run out.

on a lighter note, my suns are doing well in the playoffs so far. no signs of rust or backing down. it's a strange feeling for me. i'm so used to the suns being a huge underdog, always struggling and not quite making it, that i don't know what to do with myself when they're stomping all over the opponent. it's almost...not as exciting. seriously, my proudest moment as a suns fan was 2 years ago, when they sneaked into the playoffs, game 1 against the spurs, and amare stoudemire hits a 3 to send the game into overtime, and at the end of OT marbury sinks a 3 from midcourt to win the game. now THAT was drama.