♥ 新年新我吗?

An emotional one... Had some thoughts last night that I wanted to sort through today.

A few years ago, when I was still studying for my bachelor's in anthropology, I was studying Mandarin Chinese. I love everything about it; it's a beautiful language that has fascinated me from childhood as well as Chinese history and culture. My dream, a few years ago, was to be a librarian that could translate and work with materials in Chinese. Fast forward to this week--it's been 2 years since I have studied my Chinese in earnest. I can clearly see the knowledge rotting in my mind, and my brain struggles when it sees Chinese characters because it feels like I should know what they say--I can recognize radicals! That one looks like a word I know--but I can't read them. It's easy to say "just get back into it," but the reality is not so simple.

Honestly, until yesterday, I have basically forgotten about studying Chinese. I have been drowning in work and grad school, trying to get hands-on experience with archives at work and grinding for my master's in library science when I'm not at work. I haven't been taking Chinese classes because I attend grad school virtually and the only Chinese classes the university offers are in person. I work at a university with Chinese classes and have the opportunity to take them, but it means being on campus longer hours and a second class on top of the one I'm already taking. I learned the hard way I can only take one class at a time while working a 40 hour workweek.

Not only this, but there's an emotional component. I have an ex best friend who learned Chinese and Japanese and is a translator living in Japan now, living her dreams. We were very, very close for a long time (she even introduced me to my husband) and we had a terrible friend break up some years back. We haven't spoken since, even though I have tried to reach out for reconciliation a handful of times. I also want to be a Chinese translator, but there's a voice in my head telling me I'm just trying to live up to the person my ex best friend has become. That I'm just being a copycat, even though she isn't the reason I first was enamored with the Chinese language, and that because I didn't study the languages formally in high school and for a degree like she did, I'll never be even conversationally fluent.

All this to say, I have a lot of difficult feelings about studying Chinese that I think have been holding me back. I do my best learning in a classroom setting, but there are resources online available to me through the university I work for. But why bring up Chinese at all? Why the sudden emotional burst about it? In short, I find myself sick of my current work. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the job and our specialty subject, but it's not my passion. The other day I woke up and cried my eyes out before work because it was a Monday, and I found myself spiraling, thinking "Am I doomed to another 30 years of a lifeless desk job?"

I don't want to be doomed. I want to realize the dream that I somehow forgot in my haze of depression and busy schedule. I want to do translation work. I want to be able to read and write in Mandarin, even if I suck at speaking and listening. I want to not be scared to practice, to learn in public, to have fluent speakers correct me. And it begins with picking up the textbooks again and reviewing what I've forgotten.

Honestly, I am scared. I'm scared because I feel stupid, like I'm going to fail, like my ex best friend will always be better than me in this regard and she'll be smug about it somehow. In another life, I could have leaned on her for help in learning, and it's honestly a very painful thought to know that's not possible.

The emotional pain is holding me back from studying something that has the power to change my life. I have to let it go, and let the love of learning wash over me again. I have to mentally separate this passion from the person that hurt me so deeply. I'm scared, but I'm going to do it. I don't want a lifeless desk job until I'm retired. I want to be multilingual, to read and write and translate, to travel and enjoy it to the fullest. This year, I have only a few goals, and picking Chinese back up is one of them.

我能做到。我会做! 我今年会认真学习。加油!