Fxxk It

It's been a while.

I have my own theories about why this blog has essentially become a relic. For one, medical school has become more and more all-consuming. I am more than halfway through my third year, which has been a year akin to holding a full-time job while studying in the evenings. Another culprit is the fact I have been in a serious relationship for over a year and a half now. No need to pour out lovelorn musings when things are fine and dandy, correct? But I suspect one final factor is influencing my retreat from blogging---my frustrating, desperate attempts to finish my damn story.

I first dreamed up of EP ten years ago, during my sophomore year of high school. And the thing is, until this year, I never truly got tired or sick of it. I went through a number of years barely able to scratch out some sentences, but during that whole time I was constantly tinkering in my head. Then my gap year in 2014 rolled around, and my productivity level hit the roof. And now, as we enter the close of 2016, the wretched first draft is almost finished.

It's been a painfully slow process, and it is not helped by the fact that EP has finally begun to lost some of its original spark for me. I mean, when I really think about it, I'm kind of shocked that I was able to stay interested for so long. But there are days when I'm just tired with wrestling with these characters and storylines. There are days when I really start to question whether it will ever happen. If I will ever finish the goal I've been pursuing for so long.

It doesn't help that one of my acquaintances from college has become a successful writer. She isn't like me. She didn't obey the prescribed "doctor-lawyer-engineer" route her parents wanted to see. Every month or so, I see her updates about the awards she's been winning, the stories she's publishing, or the tweet from a world-famous author praising her work. Each time I see those posts, I think about the mountain of practice questions I need to finish, the looming residency applications I need to fill out, and the half-baked story that's been cooking for too long, and I wonder if this is all just a pipe dream.

Good things came on Thursday. My friend informed me that BIGBANG had released two new music videos for their new album--the last production for the next several years, as all the members leave to fulfill their military service requirement. I hadn't listened to their music in a while. But as I played the music video for "Fxxk It," it was like 2009 again. I could hear each individual voice in that aural tapestry and tell you who was singing at each moment. And when The Badass One entered the fray with the voice that never fails to electrify my core, I remembered that dark period of my life when his songs carried me like a life ring. I remembered how learning about his hunger to succeed inspired a ferocious determination of my own, one that helped to finally pull me out of my slump.

Defying all odds, BIGBANG are still kings at the top of the game in an industry with notoriously rapid turnover. The Badass One is as close as it gets to religion for me.