"...something vaguely pretentious"

I'm also - and this is the ambitious part - going to try to work really hard and do lots of things and find a truer integrity, an artistic integrity, so that I can actually be an artist and stop pretending I am one. (Hence the "something vaguely pretentious" of this blog's new subtitle.)

The social side of things will also be interesting. I'm definitely intending to spend a lot of time writing, hopefully with the perspective that supposedly comes to a writer far from home, but this is not meant to be some On Walden Pond-type thing. According to the forums I've been reading, one can keep very busy on the weekends and see all of South Korea by making lots of friends during the orientation period ... Another interesting experiment in extroversion. So hopefully it will be Charming Nicholas who turns up, and not the other one. People tend to think I have more control over that than I really do. We'll see.

It's gone quickly, but it's also been a long time. A long time since I wrote the above, since I first posted the Google Earth image of Apo and speculated about whether I'd be living in a shack in a corner of the Apo cloverleaf or a "boxy high-rise in Gimcheon or Gumi, one of the neighbouring small cities." I can now trace my path to school along that map. Gumi is my 'hood; "let's meet at seven at the yeok [train station]" is a sentence I or someone else will say most weeks. I've got a little bit of an accent - American As and Korean Os - and sometimes catch myself stressing the first part of words in a very Korean way. "MP3", for instance.

I've been thinking a lot lately about whether to extend for another six months. There are reasons for and against, and I haven't made a decision yet, but this week I'm leaning towards going home. The big reasons seem to cancel each other out and the simpler, more emotive ones start to feel more important. I will have been here for a year, seen all the seasons, and perhaps a season in Korea is maybe enough (there's a definate Korean flavour to the way I used 'maybe' there, by the way). I have a feeling that I want to see it out with some of the great friends I've made here, and not stay on after they're gone. A feeling that it is better to end it while it's still good, and not risk staying too long, until it's not fun anymore. Which is something I've done in the past.

I've been thinking about the "something vaguely pretentious" that I declared myself, half-jokingly, to be looking for when I left. I did make lots of friends at orientation, and I have gone off somewhere and done something most weekends. I went to see the cherry blossoms with my friends on the weekend. I was talking to Lisa, one of my friends here, and we agreed: the first six months were easier, they were about partying and having fun; the next six months are harder, and when the internal journey takes place. We both felt we were more confident and independent. Lisa, by the way, has recently put up a great post on her blog of observations on Korea. About half of them are things I'd worked out, the other half are interesting to me; she has the advantage of speaking Korean. It's here.)

I suppose I've learned that it's a slow process. I go back and forth. I realized that I'd changed when I went to the Kolon Hotel to help coach the new 4th gens. That was a great experience for me, to return to the place where I'd once been a novice, now in a teaching role. Watching the fourth gens' demo classes, seeing them make their mistakes, seeing their nervousness, I knew that yes, I'd changed. I feel more confident in being dropped into an unusual situation and being able to cope, both personally and socially. I feel more confident that I'm somebody who can make friends easily and whose company people enjoy. There is still Charming Nicholas and The Other One; I still have little control over who will show up. I've realised that tiredness has a lot to do with it. And I think I've become much better at untangling the internal feelings and unreliable perceptions I have when I'm in that mood from external reality. It was The Other One in Jinhae for the cherry blossoms, I was feeling incredibly self-conscious the whole day, although I had a really nice time and I don't think other people noticed.

I was learning about mindfulness before I left, and that was one of the principles of it; to become conscious of your own mind's furious activity, and acquire a bit of distance from it; to become an observer of your own mind. That's a bit of wisdom I've internalized: to realise it's not so much about changing your feelings as about changing how you let yourself react to them and the thought processes that lead to and come from them. And that, ironically, can lead to a positive change in your feelings.

I'm learning wisdom from other people: Koreans, friends. I like a lot of Korean attitudes, in moderation. Respect for your elders and responsibility to your juniors, viewing friends as family, a good work ethic, veiwing yourself as part of a group and not a selfish individual, hard work, politeness and propriety. Those last two are not quite right; I forget the Korean word for it, but I heard it well-defined once as "understanding what is expected of you by others without having to be told." Generousity, grace - all these things combined. There are certainly problems and traps with these attitudes and expectations - you see that as well - but there's a lot to learn from them.

The writing? It hasn't gone as well as I might have hoped, but in this too I'll try to forgive myself. I've written a couple of essays that I liked, and I've been keeping a journal. When I came back in January I decided to make a serious effort at getting a big chunk done of the novel I'd had in mind for a long time. I tried to write every day and put an amazing amount of time into writing not very much. I found it painfully difficult and it went very slowly. It was completely unlike what writing is like for me when it is going well, and I hated what I wrote. I think I've decided to abandon it. The problem is that the themes of it, which seemed so important to me once, now seem completely self indulgent. It was about pointless heroism, something which I used to find admirable and moving, but which I no longer see as heroic. That probably doesn't make a lot of sense - it's quite personal - but I can't get emotionally invested any more in those ideas. I just didn't like the characters I was writing about. So that, too, can be seen as emotional progress, rather than failure. I think. My plan now is to go back to the kids' book that nearly got published and spend my last few months here trying to fix that up, so I'll at least go back with something. I haven't read it in over a year, so it will be interesting to take another look at it.

This has been a very vivid experience, and I want to write about it when I get home. I thought of writing a travel book, but I'm just not sure it's a daring and dramatic enough travel experience. Of course it's in how you write it. Bill Bryson has made a career out of writing travel books based on some pretty humdrum, touristy sorts of experiences. But in terms of marketability I'm not sure stories of trips to Daegu with my friends would cut it, however amusingly told. But I've been thinking about Alex Garland's The Beach. It's a great example of taking what I suspect were some pretty common travel experiences and turning them into a gripping, fictional narrative. The idea of doing something like that is appealing, if I can think of a "gripping fictional narrative" to attach to my memories and observations of Korea.

What's left? I hope that in my last few months here - if it is my last few months - I'll be able to calm down and find a peace with myself. It's something that seems within grasp, and I hope I can achieve it. Slow down my frenetic, overactive mind; stop worrying things to death; take each moment as it comes. Spend more time in the present, observing the world and enjoying it, and less time lost in my head. There are lots of cliches there which have truth to them. "Love yourself", "live in the present", "don't make mountains out of molehills", etc. Somebody here was telling me something like that recently - it seems people are always telling me something like that - and I had to explain to them that those ideas, which some people know instinctively to be true, are things it has taken me years to prove to myself, and which still approach and recede on a daily basis. I think that's the "truer, artistic integrity" I was looking for. I still hope I can get there.