Monday, June 16

Today was a not much of anything day. Shocker. BUT I did get through my entire To Do list, AND had a long nap, so…there’s that.

The rainy season has come early to Seoul. Which fits perfectly with my “I don’t want to leave the house/depression” era, but not so good with my “there are a lot of things I want to do before I leave Korea” list.

I’m enjoying being “on the computer” productive but…I know I’ll regret not doing some things before I leave…if I don’t do them before I leave.

Today I was updating my “things I definitely want to do before I leave Korea” list and my “things I’ve done,” a spreadsheet I started when I first came here in the fall of 2023…and haven’t touched since July 2024 (the whole friend break-up thing just killed my motivation to do things). So going back through my Naver lists and camera roll, I was able to reconstruct maybe 90% of the things I’ve done while I was here…I’m sure I’m missing some minor things: cafes, restaurants, etc…but for the most part I took good notes. And it made me feel really…melancholy. Looking at all the pictures from the past two years….thinking of the people I’ve met and friends I’ve had and people who left and things we did…

I really don’t want to leave. I’m excited about the other places I’ll be going, but…this has been “home.” And I like it for that.

Tuesday, June 17

So many drops

Ohh…last night was STRESSFUL. I was trying to get one of the old blog posts (from my old photography blog) onto Fashion Schlub and a formatting error led to a bigger error and then the page was going crazy…and I REALLY do not know the ways of fixing blogs/websites…but bravely, ChatGPT came to the rescue and saved the day, talking me through it step by step PHEW. But tomorrow (June 18, which will already have happened last week by the time you read this), we will not mention that the spacing between Picture 1 and Picture 2 is slightly larger than the spaces between all the other pictures. In this case, I’m going with Done is Better Than Perfect.

And suddently I’m not sleeping well again. So it’s 10:30am and I’m just sort of coming to life, even though I was previously awake from 1-5am. Ugh. I need to get outside more.

Wednesday, June 18

Ombre tea

I had a long talk with myself today. I had to repeat myself…to myself…that I shouldn’t be pushing myself to Get Out There if I don’t want to. I had a place to go on the list for today…a nice Chinese garden in Suwon, which is about 30 minutes outside of Seoul on the KTX (high-speed train). Doesn’t sound bad, right? But it takes about 45 minutes just to get to the train station with the high-speed train. And because I’m me and wanted to be on the train to Suwon no later than 8am, I had to leave my house by 6:15. And suddenly…it was just too much. Too much time, effort, and expense to see one garden that I don’t even think is a particularly LARGE garden. And I talked myself out of it.

Came up with a different plan. Something more local (but not CLOSE. NOTHING is close.) A museum in the afternoon, and then a palace at night. The museum is On The Palace Grounds. This was one stop shopping. This was buy one get one free. This could not have been more simple.

Did I do it? I did not.

I woke up this morning…Not Tired. That’s not common. I felt productive. I did all kinds of things in the room – things that have been needing to be done forever. Laundry (the comforter), took cardboard downstairs for recycling, picked up some deliveries that I’ve been ignoring for days cuz I didn’t want to have to get dressed to go downstairs, cubed the steak that’s been waiting and got it marinating in soy sauce, sent some overdue emails, wrote an entire blog post start to finish, pictures and everything, in one sitting, drank water, ordered a birthday present for my great-niece, sorted thru my eyedrop collection for my appt tomorrow, sorted through books (keep vs donate).

I was having so much FUN, the time came and went when I would have needed to leave…and I’m okay with that.

No guilt.

Thursday, June 19

My home away from home

Eye appointment this morning. All looks good, she said. Keep eye-dropping. The goopy weepiness (really annoying) should stop after about another two weeks. She said the oil may not have to stay in for a full year – it might be able to come out after six months.

It’s really hard to time all these medical things with my in the US/out of the US schedule.

Friday, June 20

Stripey rocks

I had a lazy day. Stayed in bed, did the bare minimum of life things. It was delightful.

You haven’t heard me mention THESE guys in a while, but the last BTS member was discharged from the military today…and now they are scattered to the four winds, enjoying their freedom…to some that means staying hidden, out of the public’s eye, to another it means churning out dance videos on TikTok, to another, a visit to Art Basel in Switzerland, and all the accompanying press that goes along with it. One has gone to the US, I’m counting on his security/body-guards to keep any ICE agents away. I’m glad they’re getting some time off before they have to get back to work. They’re still in contract with their management company, Hybe…until 2026…which is not that far away. I wonder if they’ll resign for a third time. That’s all but unheard of in k-pop, bands lasting for 3 contracts – each one is 7 years long. Only the top of the top, the cream of the crop, have stayed together that long. Anyway, all that remains to be seen.

Saturday, June 21

Yellow

I had a FOUR HOUR PHONE CONVERSATION with a friend back home who I have not spoken to since I’ve been here. It was good.

I’m not generally a phone person. Everyone who knows me knows that. And making calls out from here are not always easy, I don’t even know why, and with the time difference, yadda yadda yadda. And recently I’ve really been feeling the desire to talk to people who know me, you know what I mean? The friends here are fine, but they only know “for the past 6 months Bettye,” they don’t know ME, they don’t know my STORIES, we don’t have a past, memories, shared experiences, we don’t have things we laugh over. So, yeah.

So it felt good to really catch up. And laugh and commiserate (#whatistheuscomingto) together.

My eye has been particularly bad these past few days and it’s best to just…lay down with my eyes shu with a damp cloth next to me so I can keep wiping the bad one.

Sunday, June 22

Is this not the cutest camera you’ve ever seen??

I thought…I need some extra motivation to get me out of the door (no, I’m no longer feeling guilty if I don’t, but I don’t want to leave here in six weeks – SIX WEEKS – and think DAMM, I seriously just sat in my room for the past two months??), so I bought a cute little toy camera that prints on thermal paper, like store receipts. So it’s like a mini polaroid, just in black and white…and I thought that would be fun and get me out to take pictures that I can print.

I’ve saved so many things (sadly, not everything)  from my time here: tickets, brochures, etc., and I MEANT to make a journal/scrapbook while I was here but I swear it was like I was swept up in a cyclone the minute I stepped off the plane in Korea in August 2023, and I just could not focus on a JOURNAL. I was just trying to not drown. But going forward.I do want to do that and I thought it would be fun to have quick pics of places I go. I do not have a printer here with me, and the lack of pictures has been another stopper from scrapbook journaling.

So I got my little camera this morning – It Is The Cutest Thing Ever – I charged it up, and then I went out (YES! OUTSIDE! ME!) for a quick little photo walk right around my neighborhood.

Someday when I’m not paying off credit card debt, I’ll buy one of those little mini printers that you hook up to your phone (or maybe it’s wireless, I don’t know) and can get color pictures. But for now, this suits me just fine. 

Sometimes we just need a little motivation, or jump start, to get out us out the door and into the day.

Okay, see ya later luv ya bye.

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