There’s some days where the little guy or gal up in the brain decides to call in sick unexpectedly. That’s alright — the rest of the body turns to autopilot, or the collection of mindless habits that have accumulated over time. So long as the positive habits > negative ones, that’s perfectly okay.

But then the days and nights start stringing together, and then a few weeks have zipped right by.

What happened?

I was so motivated, stress-free, on a roll, and then all of a sudden not. Minute 25 of a 50-minute break, and I still haven’t started lesson planning. Arrive at home telling myself I’ll practice Korean, but then it’s somehow already 8pm.

Nothing drastic or noteworthy has happened either, and it was (probably) not related to the Dodger’s 11th-inning Game 2 loss. Or their Game 3 loss either.

Each week, I spend about five minutes teaching my students a ‘Slang of the Day.’ Stuff like, ‘What’s up,’ ‘This is my house,’ ‘Raking in the dough,’ etc., etc. Usually, I intuitively know why the idiom exists, but once in awhile, I have no clue where the term “bringing home the bacon” comes from, and neither does Google (at least definitively).

Coincidentally, next week’s slang of the day is a combo of ‘where the heck did that come from’ and ‘I really vibe with that right now.’

The straw that broke the camel’s back.

From students calling your class boring (in Korean they don’t know I understand), to office miscommunications to nuclear missile tests a few hundred miles north, there’s been a lot of straw of late. Little by little, the burden becomes a bit heavier, the body weaker, and temper that much shorter.

Somehow, daily life has turned into the same college paradox: yearning for the semester to be over even as you know it’s the best time of your life, waiting for the weekend but forgetting to enjoy the other five days for what they are.

And then there’s a second paradox — being fully aware of the rut you’re in and wanting to get out, but continuing to spin the wheels in the mud.

I think it’s easy to reach that second paradox of awareness, turn around, and head right back to the college paradox. As long as life is at that level that’s slightly better than mediocre, life goes on just fine.

But just as responding to “How are you doing?” with “I’m just fine” leads to prying question from a friend, telling myself “I’m just fine” shouldn’t be the end of the conversation.

Awareness isn’t the destination — it’s a checkpoint.

Working with one of the Jubilee Project founders in publicizing his documentary addressing Asian American mental health issues carried me to the awareness stage and then pushed me further. Knowledge is useless without application, and thoughts should lead to action.

For starters, it’s the little things—person-to-person interaction (in my first language), calling family, relishing the sounds of the baseball diamond. To grow up, the roots need to grow down too.