jayroop

no matter what i do, i can’t escape japan.

today might be more than three years since i left, but i’m still a bit caught off guard with how much that experience has affected me. maybe that is the beauty of being lost in translation. unfortunately, i’ve never been able to explain it very well in words, so here it is (one more time):

i think i just left part of me there forever, and sometimes i’d like to be able to get back to where that is.

when i first went to japan, i had no idea what i was getting myself into. on the plane ride over there came a moment when everything stopped and i realized, quite suddenly, that home was far, far away and it would be a long time before i went back. in essence, i realized that the situation i had put myself in was not one that i was prepared for, nor knew how to prepare for. i now had to face the consequence of my seemingly rash decision to study abroad 6 months prior.

what i didn’t understand at that point in time was how the next four and a half months would affect the rest of my life, and the degree to which i would have my outlook on life + the world reshaped. it would be many, many months after i had returned from studying in japan before i started to gain even an inkling of how i would be changed. so when my new friend in sweden, duck, left to return home to korea this week, it reminded me of the solitary feeling of departure and the uncertainty that the future holds for those at the end of a journey, not yet aware of the new ones yet to come.

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for me, the kind of change experienced from living abroad is one that has come from the inside out, and from the outside in. i have opened up to a new reality, a new way of viewing the world – one in which i exist as a struggling entity rather than a knowledgeable adult. thus, the power of traveling and finding yourself in new and unfamiliar territory is something that i will forever embrace as an agent of change that can be deployed at will, time and time again.

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good bye duck, you might not know it yet, but there are wonderful things to come.

(re)discover + (re)capture + (re)live

it’s the mantra i’ve been repeating for the last half hour of my life.

last fall i applied for a scholarship that would take me to korea for an entire year’s worth of research, study, and experimentation with hanguel typography — korean typography — while providing me with time to explore a country that is both familiar and very, very foreign. in preparation, i enrolled in korean classes and have been studying (with some degree of success) for the past 6 months. i prepared my portfolio, wrote my proposal, got an amazing and inspiring affiliate, and in january found out that it wasn’t meant to be.

now let’s pause for a second. from past experience, i know that things don’t go as planned. in fact, that is for me the rule and not the exception. so that means that i always need a plan b. and a plan c. and in some circumstances a plan d. but with all these variations in plans, it also means that there is a large amount of room for misguided directions and tangents; the equivalent of flailing about a barnyard hoping to find a needle in a haystack. i’ve found (or am finding) that taking the time to really understand the ‘why’ part makes it much easier to come up with those subsequent plans.

that being said, my reasoning for going to korea was both to find inspiration in korean culture (specifically typography + design) and spend some time in the country where i was born; both items of fair game. for the sake of clarity, let’s define the priorities as follows:

 

1) travel to another country to be inspired and explore culture through design

 

2) go back to the source of my roots, find comfort in awkward familiarity, live

taking these requisites into account i came up with this:

 

plan b: attend graduate school in sweden (the academic + professional development approach)

 

plan c: look for another job in the land of stripes (the conservative, yet non-complacent approach)

 

plan d: hold tight and stay put (the logical approach)

see, the problem is that after plan b, things get way off track and start becoming stop gaps. they don’t have a thing to do with the catalysts for this change of direction, and therein is the problem.

so now let’s come back to the present. plan a (going to korea for a year) hasn’t panned out, so it’s time to move full steam ahead with plan b (studying in sweden). the program is great (business + design), and i love sweden. the problems are that they are currently not teaching the program in english, and i don’t speak swedish. i don’t know, this might deter some people but i’m still going to apply. it’s a school whose reputation with me has grown over the year’s as i’ve seen what my friends who attended the school are doing and whose student work is generally very solid. and then there is the real problem, i still want to go to korea.

here’s how it came about. over the past few weeks i’ve noticed that my interest in korean class has started to wane. i’m not as excited, i don’t do my homework very well (although i’m still doing okay in class) and it has become hard to focus on it knowing that i may not be putting it to use anytime soon. this is disappointing to me because i have put time, money, effort and even a little bit of dreaming of the future into the process of learning korean. it also signals to me that i’ve been losing the passion i had for making that trip a reality and this has been the real turning point.

i’ve realized that because i’ve stuck to protocol in moving from plan a to plan b, i’ve inadvertently backed down from my original goals. in fact, the assessment of my reasons for traveling were made just this evening, not months ago when i made the plan. i’ll still follow through on plan b, and maybe this feeling will pass, but i can’t help but think that what i needed was not plan a, plan b, plan c, plan d, but plan 1a, plan 1b, plan 1c, plan 1d, i.e., a variety of ways to achieve the same goal.

after dwelling on this idea for the past week or two, tonight has been a mini-milestone along what will be a long, long journey. i’ve realized that it’s not a failure for plans to fall through, but it is a disservice to yourself when you let your dreams creep away in a clouded moment of panic. with a mind that is constantly whizzing and whirring away, i need to remind myself that i know what + why i want to do, and now is the time to find out how to do it.

and so, here is to the future and keeping dreams intact. let’s go.

okay, i admit it. i am one of those hapless fools who starts a blog with good intentions, only to neglect it and let it sit by the wayside. my desire for this blog was to record my thoughts during a period of my life where things were changing fast. i moved clear across the entire country, picked up a job, made some friends and fell for a girl.

a girl? yes, a girl. which if i’m honest, is a pretty damn good excuse for having fallen off the train. so, in what i hope and pray will be a short series of posts, i will attempt to stitch together pieces of the past; pinching, squeezing and otherwise desperately trying to pull out some worthwhile details of my otherwise quotidian life.

My last post ended with the declaration that I would get out and about and start doing things.

I’m proud to report back six weeks later that I have done just that in the name of friends, fun and productivity (imagine that!). I have not only moved a mere 2 blocks away from work (thereby reducing my commute from 1.5hr to 5 min), but spent a couple of great weekends with friends from the far coast and the rest of the time plugging away at my own personal work.

I’ve also managed to spend a good amount of time outside of the confines of the city and enjoyed experiencing The California Suburb—much like any other suburb, but with better weather with the addition of some “extra thing” that keeps it from feeling like the mundane and quotidian neighborhoods that I grew up in on the East Coast.

This upcoming weekend will be spent in the great outdoors, under the blue blue sky of Lassen Volcanic National Park and I hope to keep up the fun with a flurry of events of the next couple months.

It is with some regret that I must confess that I have no great (or even not so great) thoughts on life at this point.

If there were anything I could say along those lines, it would be that it is very rare that we come across people that we create strong bonds with and life has shown me thus far that the saying Few and Far Between is a true statement in regards to finding friends and companions.

It’s always nice to make friends.

sometime this morning while walking through a cloud (i could tell it was a cloud because when i pulled out my phone, it was instantly sprinkled with water and when i stopped staring at the ground in front of me as i walked, i saw that my glasses were also misted over)...anyways, so i realized that recently, i have made a point to be in the point of realizing things. this is great and all, and i have come to some good conclusions and thought very pointedly about a whole list of things that have been on my mind, but i’ve not really given myself the chance to stop “realizing” and start living.

so, with that being taken note of, i am off to what will hopefully be a wonderful weekend with friends from east coast, west coast and no-coast of pure living.

My mind is spinning in circles. With what rationale do people make these decisions?

It is way too early for me to be awake. 5am and I am cruising (probably the wrong choice of word) through San Francisco with some strangers knees jutting into my back on the way to the airport. I don’t know when I will be back to this city, but one thing is certain - it won’t be on the same terms.

Generally, it has been a successful trip, receiving good feedback from NY to SF. I’m not tooting my own horn, but if I’m honest, it has been nice to hear people’s feedback. However, maybe like most journeys in life, I have been left with more questions than answers. Oh, and a lot more confusion, too.

So long San Francisco, I may be rolling out but am I rolling on?

From Here to There

So this past week has been a blur of movement, from Baltimore to New York to San Francisco and on Tuesday, back again. (My apologies, but this will be more of a summation of these events.)

My job search has led me to these places both near and far and along the way I have run into a fair number of friends. At Meg’s Birthday in New York I saw many friends in one place (can you ask for a better thing?) and had my entire job search world turned upside down by none other than the realization (again) that I enjoy my friends all too much to easily uproot myself and transplant myself onto the west coast.

It actually took one of the partners at a studio that I interviewed at (they are, unfortunately, not hiring at this point in time) who spun my own work and words back around me in such a clever way that I couldn’t help but seriously consider his words.

This project was for a travel agent who specialized in setting up more “adventurous” vacations, hence the name, Gallivant Nouveau (my own naming). Josh (who interviewed me) said that it takes a certain amount of up rooting if you really want to gallivant and that I should keep that in mind when making my decision. He also said, “You can come to New York City and 5 years of your life will go by and you will wonder what you’ve been doing all this time.”

And so, this has been on my mind quite a bit. Or rather, it helped snap me out of my determination to make New York work for me.

My time in San Francisco has been chock full of running all over the place. That is the reason for the lack of updates (I’ve tried to keep those on Facebook in the know with my status, but not everyone can see that). In a nutshell here is what I have done:

Thursday
- Arrival in SF
- Met my cousin at her apartment where I am staying

Friday
- Intervew #1 @ Albertson Design (http://www.albertsondesign.com) went very well
- Interview #2 @ Noise13 (http://www.noise13.com) also went very well (+ they have 2 dogs!)
- Met with my friend Sarah from the high school days in Maryland and her boyfriend, got burritos, went out to a couple bars and stayed the night

Saturday
- Lazy day, took a nap
- Went out with my cousin and her roommates to a party and then Hookah bar

Sunday
- Met a friend of a friend in Berkley, went to lunch and then to Amoeba Records on Telegraph
- Relaxed in the afternoon!

Today
- Interview #3 @ Mende Design (http://www.mendedesign.com) went very well (this is a trend, apparently)
- Made baklava with one of my cousin’s roommates
- Dinner with cousin and roommates + friends

All Loud on the Western (and Eastern) Front

So, for whatever reason, I have thus far had good feedback from all of my interviews (still waiting to hear from Interview #3 which was today and I have a second interview at Moment Design in New York this Friday). It’s a bit overwhelming and I really have no idea what to do. Maybe I will have some heart to hearts with people this weekend. I just don’t feel equipped to handle this kind of decision despite the fact that it is mine to make in the end. So, who knows what will happen…I certainly don’t.

I’m finding it harder than ever (despite the lack of anything to hold me back) to take the plunge. The question becomes, with the ability to do anything I please and go wherever I want to go, which side will win out?

Old + Familiar or New + Exciting?

Stable + Secure or Wild + Spontaneous?

New York or San Francisco?

Solids or Stripes?