jayroop

(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.