So this article on Asian parenting by Amy Chua has been making the rounds through the papers, blogs, Facebook, and just about every other venue for debate. She tries to keep things light, but for most of us who were raised this way, the article rang true. There was some initial amusement, a feeling of recognition: "Yeah, that's the same kind of crappy childhood my parents inflicted on me!" which then transitioned into resentment and frustration: "Yeah, that's the same kind of crappy childhood my parents inflicted on me."

I've participated in a few discussions, and my feelings about the topic, initial joking aside, are really mixed. Other people have written long and detailed responses and articles about this, so I won't go into great detail. This is just what I think about my own experience.

On one hand, I am grateful to my parents for pushing me to do things that I wouldn't have been motivated to do -- by forcing me to do well when I was younger, they made it much easier for me to do well as I've gotten older. Getting straight A's and participating in every single extracurricular activity with the single-minded goal of getting in college has its benefits, the main one of which is that you get into the best college you could possibly get into. Going to Harvard (which happened almost completely because of the passive-aggressive and sometimes plain aggressive parenting that my parents used to extract high performance from me) was awesome while I was there, and it has made the rest of my life infinitely easier. I will always have a job and money and security, and it's because my parents made me do things I didn't want to do when I was young. I appreciate that, and I enjoy the benefits of it every day.

On the other hand, I don't like my parents. I love them and respect everything that they have done, and I have a dutiful kind of attachment to them, but I think that this parenting style builds walls between parents and children. I will never tell my mom any secrets, except for some kind of strategic gain. I call them every weekend out of a sense of obligation, not because I enjoy the conversations. I have visited their home, where I lived until I left for college, only once in the last 7.5 years, and even then, it was out of guilt and obligation, and not out of a desire for any kind of homecoming. In establishing themselves as taskmasters over my life, they also removed any idea that I might have had of them as friends. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, as I have found my friends elsewhere -- parents just need to know that when they take a certain path in raising their children, there is often an inverse relationship between the number of rules and regulations that they set and enforce, and the level of positive emotions they will receive back from their children. If high achievement is the goal, and you don't need your daughter to be your best friend, then there is no conflict. The problem only arises (as it has with my mother) when you spend decades telling your child that she has no free will, that she is a failure and a disappointment, and that she isn't good enough, and then one day wonder why she isn't your best friend.

The other point that people have been raising is that this style of parenting can have very high stakes. It's a big gamble with your child's life -- if you're lucky, you can end up with an extremely successful overachiever who probably has some mommy issues, but is otherwise living a charmed life. If you're not lucky, you can either end up with a less-successful rebel who hates you, or you can end up with a dead kid. Just because your child falls into one of those categories now doesn't mean that she won't find herself in a different one a year from now -- these paths diverge and converge and intersect without warning. I think that today is actually the 9th anniversary of the day I got out of the hospital, and even now, I remain firmly convinced that if I don't die from some unforeseen disease or accident, this is what will kill me in the end. Being raised to believe that the options are either total victory or total defeat really messes with your mind, and things can just add up, and what might seem like a perfectly acceptable state of existence for 99% of the population can still sometimes look like humiliating, unacceptable defeat, and if you're wired to believe that your self-worth is completely tied into whether you "won" or not, the world can sometimes look like an overwhelming collection of an infinite number of ways to fail.

Failure is still my greatest fear, and as I grow older, it becomes harder to define success and failure, and it becomes even harder to figure out if I'm succeeding or failing. When faced with that uncertainty, I tend to assume that I'm failing. Without a clear picture of what success would look like, it's hard to figure out how to stop failing. Sometimes, job + money + boyfriend + house + dog feels like success, but when it feels like failure, I have no idea what to fix to make it feel like success.

I don't plan on ever having children. I am selfish and want to spend my time and money and attention on my own interests. Beyond that, however, I don't want to have to be responsible for another person's life, and I don't want to have to make those choices that will determine whether that person succeeds and whether she will resent me and whether my attempt to give her a leg up in life will kill her. I also don't want to avoid making those tough choices and then have her wonder why I didn't help her succeed when I could.

My 2010 goals (with Q3 and final evaluations) were as follows:

1. Calm down. I'm not sure how to score this one, really. I think I'm by nature a rather anxious person and prone to worry, if not outwardly, then inside my head. My approach to life might seem pretty calm, compared to my peers, but inside my head, I am constantly plagued by ghosts and demons of my own creation, and driven to do things for unknown reasons. On my reading mission, for example, I set myself a leisurely target of 40 books in a year, but once I exceeded that, I started setting higher and higher targets, to the point that I sometimes actually got a little bit worried that I might not "finish." Finish what? I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have picked "calm down" as a resolution, because although I handle things that normal people stress out about pretty well (paying bills, getting work done, etc.), I really excel at finding my own things to worry about. Q3 evaluation: Needs improvement. Final evaluation: This is still something I need to work on. The time off for the holidays definitely helped, but as soon as I got back into the office, all of the familiar anxiety restarted.
2. Figure out what to do with my money other than spend it or let it pile up in a bank account. I have continued leaving most of my money in the bank. I have continued spending it whenever I feel like it. I am slowly accumulating stock and options, but that doesn't really count in my favor, since I get them automatically for work. On the other hand, I still max out my retirement contribution, and have reallocated it to a somewhat more aggressive portfolio (although it's still on the conservative side for someone my age -- I am boring myself to tears just typing this). My biggest change on this front was to write a very large check and send it to 2FX's most recent business venture. If it turns out well, I'll call it an investment. If it turns out poorly, I'll pretend it never happened. Q3 evaluation: Has shown some progress, but still needs improvement. Final evaluation: No further progress. Hm.
3. Read at least 40 books. As mentioned, I've consumed 81 books since getting a Kindle. Even if you take out the twelve that were in 2009, and the twelve that I listened to in the car, that's still 57 books in 2010 so far, which means that my 2010 total has a chance of hitting 70 (excluding audiobooks). Q3 evaluation: Exceeds expectations. Final evaluation: I made it to 100 books in 2010. I'm going to say that this one makes up for all of the others.
4. Get really good at my job. On one hand, my manager said that I've exceeded expectations for the last three quarters, and he is putting my name in the running for a promotion this cycle, but on the other hand, I probably won't get it this cycle, because there are other, more senior, more capable people who are ahead of me in that line. So I think I'm doing pretty well, but still have much to learn. I've pulled off some pretty big deals and some heavy-duty drafting, but there's a chance I might have to go to Germany to negotiate a very big deal while stranded nine timezones ahead of all of the people I usually turn to for real-time help, and the fact that I find this possibility extremely daunting means that I'm not good enough for me to consider myself really good just yet. Q3 evaluation: Has shown improvement; meets expectations. Final evaluation: I got great reviews this year, and my manager says I'm probably on track for promotion in the next six months, so I'm going to call this a win with room for further improvement. 

2010 Highs:

• Palau and Yap with Superman, Kanga, and Roo (especially coming out of the water on a night dive in Palau, and seeing an sky full of stars above and an ocean full of phosphorescent plankton below). Such an amazing vacation.
• This is technically in 2011, but on January 1, we (Superman, Kanga, and Roo) had an amazing dinner at Alinea
• Fun times in Z-town, where I got to celebrate Kanga and Roo's engagement firsthand and catch up with lots of friends
• Boston for the first time in years and years, catching up with college friends and singing through the Brahms Requiem
• Remembering many times how lucky I am to work at a company that basically worships its employees
• Discovering that frequent mini-blogs about good things really focus me on how many good things there are

2010 Lows: 

• Dealing with a super-frustrating client, who is a lamentable combination of being very senior, very pushy, and very useless, and who calls random fire drills, which then require me to stay late at work, so that the lights turn off automatically every 20 minutes or so, and then I have to run out of my office and wave my arms until one of the motion sensors notices me, and I get annoyed because my office is in a dead zone, and I just want to get the work done and not have to waste time running around and waving my arms... Yeah. And there are some other annoying ones, too, but he is at the top of my list.
• Suddenly having to pack up and move (but this turned out OK, since the house is good, and Superman is finally all moved in)

2010 Weird Moments:

• Strip club in Vegas
• An unfortunate conversation with my mom

2011 Aspirations:

• Keep calm -- This is a repeat from last year, but I think it's important enough for me that I need to keep it as a priority.
• Carry on -- I need to get used to the idea that everyone I know is growing up, and stop letting it make me sad.
• Be well -- I need more calcium and an occasional trip to the gym.
• Be good -- I'm going to find more ways to be good. More charitable donations and volunteer work. More kindness and patience with my friends and family. More treats for my dog.
• Stay on target -- Stay on top of all of the other stuff, like reading, working, saving, and figuring out how to do everything better, faster, smarter.

I came across this musing by Alisa Bowman, who wrote one of the millions of self-help books that I'll never read, but I thought this particular quote was interesting: "Depression follows me like a shadow. Sometimes it’s noon and I can’t see that shadow. Sometimes it’s twilight and the shadow is long and dark. I know I can’t outrun that shadow. It’s part of who I am. But I can try to keep it as small as possible." 

I really like that our office has Goodwill donation bins and pickups at the end of the year. It's the perfect way to get lazy people like me to go through my stuff, find items to donate, and actually donate them, simultaneously accomplishing several things: decluttering, doing something nice, and getting one last tax break in before the end of the year.

Last year, I managed to find 100 things to donate. This year, I didn't have as much time (or as much backlogged stuff to pick from), but I still rustled up 70 items, which was still enough to pack the entire trunk of my Prius, and took three trips for me to haul into the building. Respectable.

It's an interesting process trying to decide what to donate. Some items are obvious, but some things have either sentimental value ("Oh, I used to love that sweater.") or a guilt factor ("I never used that. I really should have used that at least once. I really should use it now.") or a denial component ("I have had no need for that in five years, but I'm pretty sure I can find a way to use it soon.") that make it hard to put the item into the pile of "I don't want you anymore."

This year, I forced myself to part with, among other things, a Roomba (I finally concede that I am not even able to muster up the motivation to get a robot to vacuum my house), some brand new pants that I have never worn, computer speakers, Rollerblades, a barely-used (and at the time very expensive) cell phone, and a bunch of clothes are are too dressy for work and too lame for anything else. 

I had my one-on-one with my manager the other day, and he gave me the results of this year's annual performance review. Overall, it was really good. Several of my clients said some really amazing things, and I was pleased to see that even the engineer I had asked for a review wrote a really good one (engineers are wild cards when it comes to reviews -- they tend to be really blunt and they never sugarcoat their dislike of lawyers, so I was secretly pleased to read that this one basically said that I changed his opinion about lawyers and he likes working with me).

In our peer reviews, we write a general summary section, a section about the person's strengths, and a section about the person's areas for improvement or development. A couple of my reviewers left the last section empty, but several of them said that they think I have difficulty separating my work life from my personal life, and that I should consider working less at nights, on weekends, and on vacation. I found this rather amusing, since I was doing the work for their urgent projects, and I don't think they would actually be all that pleased if I were to try to unplug myself during my alleged free time.

I realize that this is the kind of thing that you put into a review when you don't want to say anything negative about the person. It's just a token comment, something that my clients probably didn't really mean. It's like when people go into job interviews and when asked, "What's your greatest weakness?" they respond, "I'm a perfectionist, and I'm a workaholic."

So I should be flattered that this is what my clients chose to say when asked if I have any weaknesses.

But.

Yes, there is a but.

This is not my intention. I am not a workaholic. I am someone who prizes my free time and my personal life and my sleep and my weekends and my vacations. I never understood my dad when he would work long hours and not take all of his vacation time, or when we would go on vacation, and he would still be taking conference calls and exchanging faxes at the hotel. I left the law firm after only a few months when I realized that work would take over my life. I reveled in my strict 40-hours-a-week, 45-weeks-per-year job for four years. So how did I become this person who gets accused of being a workaholic? 

I know that it's good for my career, to be perceived as a workaholic, but seeing it on my reviews inspires all kinds of mutinous, irresponsible thoughts. 

"I have a good work-life balance. I only left my house once this weekend, and that was to go to a holiday party. I spent the rest of the time sleeping and reading. A workaholic would never do that."

"I like my job, I like my company, but I'm not addicted. There's no '-aholic' going on here."

"I could leave any time. I could leave and go travel for six months and find another job later."

And yet, despite all of that (and aren't those all things that every ___aholic says), as I woke my computer up to write this blog entry, I couldn't actually bring myself to start writing it until I had responded to an email from a client. The email could have waited until tomorrow, but I was actually unable to make myself leave it unanswered overnight. When I realized that, I thought, "Does that make me a workaholic?" And I thought about it, and I still think the answer is no. I don't respond to emails in the middle of the night or on vacation because I am addicted to work. I do it because I live in a state of constant, irrational fear that I'm going to get fired. I have always had this fear in every job, and I can never shake it. No matter how many good reviews, raises, bonuses, promotions, or new jobs I get, I think I'm always going to feel and act this way until I have enough money to retire, because I'm never going to feel like I'm going to be able to fool everyone forever.

So then I thought about it some more, and I still can't figure out why I think this way.

Is it because my dad was always like that? He was always worried about being able to provide enough for our family; if he ever lost his job, then how would my parents pay the mortgage and tuition on just one income? Maybe his fear got passed on to me, but I don't have a mortgage and two private school kids to support. Is it because growing up and being expected to do everything perfectly (and never really succeeding), I got in the habit of thinking that I wasn't actually able to meet expectations without faking it? I don't think this is right, either, because I'm pretty sure that underneath all of it, I've decided that the world has very different standards than my parents, and I can pass muster out here better than I did when I was little. Also, I hate the thought that "oh, this is all because of my parents," it's just so cliche, and I would rather think my obsessions are of my own making. So then it's just something wrong with how I think. Maybe I'm always subconsciously sabotaging myself. Why just relax and go with the flow, when I could panic and worry all night, instead? Why look at the world and say "All is well," when I could give myself stress headaches about what I can mess up next? 

...

I don't just do this with work.

I went to see my shrink the other day -- I only see him every two months, when we have a brief check-in so he can make sure I'm not getting caught in some self-destructive cycle of some kind.

As I was describing what I've been up to, he pointed out that I make a lot of rules.

"Read as many books as possible in a year. They have to be at least 150 pages each. It's OK if they're audiobooks, as long as they're unabridged. That way I can read even when I'm driving." -Why 150 pages? Why unabridged? "Dunno. That's just the way it is. I can't really set a goal without having some kind of structure in place."

"Don't buy any new clothes for a year. Required items that cannot be substituted, like bridesmaid dresses, are OK." -Are you having financial troubles, or are you trying to save more? "No, it's just an experiment." -Why? "I dunno. I was just curious. I'm a lawyer; I like having definition and rules."

Ah. 

...

I'm not sure where this post was supposed to begin or end, but I suppose that what it comes down to is that there appear to be two thoughts that steer me, even if I don't like admitting it (because there goes my free-spirited, free will illusion -- even if The Man isn't trying to keep me down, I can always just do it myself):

(1) I should be doing this (whatever "this" is) better, faster, or smarter somehow.

(2) All things (no matter how arbitrary or insignificant) must be defined.

In the right context, they are probably productive thoughts to have. The first one makes me work harder, and the second one makes me a better lawyer. I just worry that they overflow out of their proper places and bleed into the rest of my life.

Which is kind of what my clients were saying, even if they didn't realize that they were right, and contrary to whatever they may have intended, they weren't just putting an empty comment into the "areas for development" section on my performance review.

I spent today lounging around, napping, eating, reading, napping, and reading some more. 

I had two dreams. You know how they say that if you study a language for long enough, you start dreaming in that language? Something like that happened to me, but it wasn't about language, it was about format. I've been reading even more than usual this year, and I think it influenced my dreams today.

In the first dream, the entire dream unfolded to an audio narration, as if someone were reading a book out loud, and I was in some kind of live adaptation of the book. It was quite a vivid narration, which was somewhat disturbing, because it was a rather twisted thriller of a book that ended up with an "Oh my God, they're cannibals, but that was actually pretty delicious" moment.

In the second dream, the first two-thirds or so of the dream were actually in a book. I dreamed that I was sitting and reading a book; I could see the words on the page. In real life, when you read a good book, you get sucked in and get that "you are there" feeling. In a dream, when you read a good book, you get sucked in and you are actually there, in the book. It was interesting to see the transition from words on a page to live action happen in a literal way, even if it was only a dream.

Not that I would want to, but Superman and I will never be able to break up, because he is privy to way too many of my foibles and weird things, more so than anyone else I've dated, and not just in an abstract way. I think he has witnessed most of my freakishness firsthand, whereas most of my other boyfriends knew about some things but not others, or were exposed to limited tranches of my obsessions and nonsense.

I thought I had finally gotten to a point where he had basically seen everything, and there wasn't anything left for him to discover, because I was already letting it all hang out.

As usual, I was wrong, as we learned on Saturday night. He knew about this one in theory, and had always thought it was strange and probably exaggerated. Not anymore.

Meeting people (and sometimes dating them) was always a fun pastime when I was a student in Boston and New York, and being an expat in Europe meant that there was a constant ebb and flow of people in our social circle. I discovered during my senior year, however, that certain people (there are very few of them -- I've only met five in my entire life) trigger an inexplicable reaction -- simply being near them makes me feel suddenly and violently ill. My fingers get cold, my face goes numb, the blood leaves my head, and I get dizzy and extremely nauseated. My options when this happens are to either immediately put distance between the person and me (it is directly related to proximity and the symptoms abate very quickly if I just leave the room), or to puke (which I once did on a dinner date, which was really embarrassing).

We were at a birthday party on Saturday night, and I was driving, so I didn't have anything to drink. Superman had a drink or two, and we were chatting to the birthday boy (a good friend) and his friends (very few of whom we knew, as they run in a completely different social circle than we do). I suddenly started feeling ill, and it got increasingly worse. It had been so long since the last time it had happened, though, and it had never happened in a random social setting, always with an individual that I could identify as triggering it, so I didn't realize what was happening until it was almost too late. One of his friends, and I don't know which one, was making me ill. I realized what was happening so late in the process that I was barely able to grab Superman, tell him that "We. Have. To. Go. NOW.", and then run outside to retch in the bushes. When I was finally able to tell him what had happened, he was so amused that he wanted to go back into the party to talk to each person individually to figure out who was triggering such a violent reaction in me (the people were almost all strangers, and packed into a small enough room that I couldn't really narrow it down to one person or even someone in a particular cluster of people).

Sigh. I had kind of hoped that I had gotten over my odd "allergy" (is there any way to describe this) to certain people, or that the "allergy" only applied to dates or potential dates, but apparently I still have it, and it could be triggered by anyone. Really awkward.

I had always harbored kind of a secret hope that this was not an uncommon problem, and that maybe lots of people experience it but just don't talk about it, but based on Superman's reaction, I'm guessing that it's not so common...

On Thursday, Superman and I had our two year anniversary, which for me is an extremely impressive milestone, given the fact that I've only had one other relationship which survived past the two year mark, and that was FX, and it was ten years ago. Another three months, and Superman will break that record, and be my longest relationship ever. In the more recent past, I've had a tendency to enter into relationships somewhat impulsively, realizing too late that they weren't right for me -- the person was too spineless, or too needy, or too arrogant, or too boring, or too ____, (I realize that my faults contributed as well, but I'm talking about these demises from my perspective), but by the time I realized these things, it was too late. I am not nearly as capable when it comes to ending relationships as I am at getting into them, so they tend to limp along for twice as long as their shelf life, which is just a bad scene for everyone involved.

For some reason, my relationship with Superman has made it to the two year mark, which is an achievement on its own, and for some reason, I still like him.

It's crazy, I know.

I've been reading some of the entries that I wrote when our relationship was in its earliest stages (like this or this), and the memories still charm me.

Superman took me to Hawaii last month for my birthday present this year. I realized that I hadn't really written or posted anything about that trip, other than the fact that he planned it, and I read a lot while I was there. We ended up doing a lot of work while we were there, but we still went on eight dives (including two night dives with mantas), slept a lot, and read a lot. It's good to go somewhere else, even if you have to work while you're there.

Manta dives are pretty much the reason to go diving in Kona -- five or ten of them come and do crazy acrobatics for 30 or 40 minutes, trying to scoop up as much plankton (which is attracted to the divers' lights) as possible. If you want to get an idea of what it's like, here's an example that someone else put on YouTube. I took some short videos of mantas, but haven't gotten around to editing and uploading them. (On a similar note, I knew it wasn't going to be a hardcore diving trip, so I only brought my little point-and-shoot, and only took that on a couple dives, so I didn't come home with many pictures.) 

When we went last year, we went on a dive and found ourselves in the middle of a pod of about 100 dolphins... and I didn't have my camera. This year, I was lucky enough to have my camera down with me when we saw some dolphins. Not as many as last year, but at least I have a picture of them this time.

A little nudibranch, about two or three inches long. This one was on its way to go meet another one, who was only a few inches away.

As I mentioned, we went on two night dives with mantas, which are pretty awesome. This little squid (about the size of my hand) was puttering around in the shallows as we swam back to the boat. He was changing color as he swam -- in another shot, taken a few seconds later, he was deep red.

Since I was looking at my resolutions for 2010 and grading myself, I decided to take a look at some of my goals from previous years to see if I have made more progress on any of them. Current updates in bracketed italics.

2006 Aspirations:

In general... happiness and stability. A bit greedy, perhaps. -- [I think I've actually got this one covered for now.]

2007 Aspirations:

• Travel more (OK, I know people think I already travel a lot, but I want to get as much in as possible, especially since I'm thinking of leaving within a year to go back to the real world) -- [I did pretty well on this until I left Europe. From 2007 until now, I've taken around 50 trips, of varying levels of exoticness.]
• More specifically, travel to more countries I haven't been to -- [In 2007, I went to eight new countries; in 2008, I went to four new countries, and in 2010, I went to two new countries.]
• Find more things to enjoy -- [Not sure if I've found more things to enjoy. I probably indulge in the things I enjoy more consciously, though, like junk food, TV, sleeping in, spending an entire day at home without putting on pants or leaving the house, reading a lot...]
• Enjoy things more -- [I've been working on this one a lot this year, actually, and it's largely chronicled here.]
• Figure out what I want to do after I'm done here -- [I figured it out and I'm doing it as I type.]

2008 Aspirations, both Low and High (this won't all get accomplished in one year):

• Learn how to finger whistle -- [Alas, not yet.]
• Learn Swahili (because how cool and useless would that be??) -- [The reason for this was partly to know a language that few people speak out in the real world, mostly so I could talk about people without them knowing about it. After much delay, last week I finally checked out a DVD and book to learn sign language, so that's a good first step. Now I just need to follow through and also get a few other people to learn it, or I'll be signing to myself.]
• Learn how to dive (not scuba dive, but the opposite-of-bellyflop dive, because no, I never learned) -- [Nope.]
• Learn how to write with my toes -- [Nope.]
• Learn how to blow bubble rings -- [Done.]
• Get a job that's a worthy follow-up to this one (please let this happen soon...) -- [Did this one, too.]
• See the Northern Lights -- [Not yet. I don't see this happening any time soon because I hate cold weather and long nights.]
• Visit my 50th country (currently at 43) -- [Almost! I think I'm at 49 right now. Living in the U.S. again makes this a slow process.]
• Log my 200th dive (currently at about 180) -- [I think I'm somewhere between 225 and 250 now.]

2009 Aspirations

• Sanity and stability -- mental, financial, and everything else ending in -al -- [I don't think I'll ever have all of these totally under control, but I'm doing relatively well right now.]
• Find a place and buy it (gasp!) -- [I consciously decided not to do this because I realized that I'm just not the buying type.]
• Plan a trip and take it (oh, how I miss my former life full of crazy travels) -- [Done. In 2009 and 2010, among other, more mundane travels, I also managed to get to Vegas and Hawaii twice, Palau and Yap, Z-town twice, Spain, New York, and Boston]
• Move from adequacy to proficiency at my job -- [I think I've mostly met this one.]