I have a lot of mini-goals that I want to accomplish before I turn 25 next year, but this may be the most important goal on my list.

I want to get better at keeping in touch with people.

I’m really bad at staying in touch with people. Usually, if I do keep in touch with someone, it’s because they do most of the contacting. And I appreciate that. But friendship is a two-way street, so I need to start meeting people halfway.

Goal:

I will initiate contact with friends that I haven’t seen/talked to in a while. Hopefully it will lead to rebuilding and maintaining old friendships.

I will find a way to maintain and strengthen the friendships that I currently have. Even if it’s not often, I will make it a priority to touch base with people once in a while and see how they’re doing.

There are a number of people I genuinely care about that I haven’t talked to in a while, and it’s time to change that.

I need to take a break from studying, but I’m not ready to fall asleep.

I’ll be up for a while because of that nap and cup of iced coffee.

I figured that even though I’m technically taking a break from looking at prompts and practice problems, I might as well practice writing so that I’m exercising my mind in some way.

I could’ve written in my other blog, but for some reason I had the urge to make an appearance on Tumblr.

On a related note, I finally wrote in my blog everyday for a month (just another reason why May 2011 was amazing)! I’m not going to plug the link, but it shouldn’t be hard to find if I’m your friend on Facebook. I know I’ve been MIA on Tumblr, but I’ll probably repost some of the things from my blog on here after I take the GRE on Tuesday.

Back to studying for another hour! And then, hopefully, I’ll be able to sleep.

A month ago, some alumni decided to chip in for an SPCN alumni ad and a donation to SPCN. First of all, thanks to Emily for starting the thread and everyone else who was down to help out. I finished the ad last month, but I didn’t want to upload it until it was closer to the actual day of SPCN. With SPCN 2011 being hours away, I guess now is a good a time as any.

I spent about a week on the ad. I may have been a little too organized in planning it. I took out all the old SPCN programs that I had, so I’m glad I saved all of them. I made an excel sheet that lists all the alumni donating and what suites they were involved in for each year of SPCN. And I made a list to make sure that everyone had at least one picture in the ad.

So maybe I spent more time on it than I needed to, but it was worth it. I’ve never looked through that many pictures in such a short amount of time. And I’ve never looked through so many different people’s facebook albums. But it was fun walking down memory lane. SPCN was the one of the first things that I got involved in at UCLA, and I’ll always be thankful for that.

I’m excited to see the hard work of SPCN 2011 Committee and Cast on stage tonight!

And so, with love from the alumni, here’s our ad:

Posterity

[po-ster-i-tee]

-noun

As defined on Dictionary.com:

1. succeeding or future generations collectively; 2. all descendants of one person

I haven’t written a post in a while, so I’ve been trying to figure out what I wanted my “first” post to be about. Since I’ve been trying to work on improving my vocabulary, I decided it would be appropriate to start off the entry with a word and its definition.

I’ve heard of the phrase “for posterity’s sake” before, but I didn’t always know the actual definition of posterity. The idea of documenting thoughts and events for the future may seem like a given, but I think it’s overlooked sometimes.

Keeping a record of things for the future is something that’s especially important for someone like me, who really values memories and past experiences. I don’t think I realized how important this was for self-reflection until recently.

I’ve been cleaning my room and I decided to clean up the files on my external hard drive too. In the process, I came across some old AIM conversations and I decided to look at some old blog posts that I had online (Xanga, Livejournal, personal site, etc.). Most of my posts weren’t very substantial. They were usually about how my day was or what updates I would be making to the layout. However, I wrote just enough to give a glimpse into my outlook on life at the time.

I’ve always known that my self-esteem was low in the past. But looking back at all these conversations and posts, I never realized how dependent I was on others for validation. And although I realized a few years ago how loving myself would allow me to love others more, I don’t think I realized how not loving myself really got in the way of my friendships/relationships in the past. To this day, I know I still have a lot to work on as far as maintaining friendships and possibly reconnecting with old friends. But I think I finally understand how important it really is to have a mutual trust. If I expect others to open up to me, then the least I can do is open up to them.

[On a related note, this has opened up the possibility of focusing on mental health if/when I go to graduate school for public health.]

I know I’ve grown a lot over the years, especially during my time as a SPEAR counselor; but I didn’t realize how significant that growth was until I looked back at all these “personal archives.” And that’s part of the reason why I really wanted to start writing again - both in my tumblr and on my old personal website. Whether I write posts about my personal life or about current events, I’m hoping it will help me articulate my thoughts better in person too. And I hope that it will lead to discussions that will give me insight into others’ opinions, whether they agree or disagree with what I think. I hope that this also helps me (re)build stronger friendships.

This post ended up being longer than I thought, which tends to happen when I start to write. Some of my entries may be long, like this one, or more concise. And some of them may never be read by anyone by myself. But neither of those things matter. From now on, I’m going to document as much as I can for posterity’s sake.