All right, I've been in a slump for a couple of weeks. Discontent can be the fuel to drive me to constructive action, or I can just moan and groan about it and wallow in self-pity.

I've noticed that my parental relationship angst is starting to affect my health. When I lived with my parents, I used to get upper respiratory infections all of the time, and I had horrible allergies, too. This year I had been doing really well, health-wise, with credit going to God and my progress in working out my physical and emotional issues.

In the past two weeks, my dad's health crisis, coupled with my disappointment in my job rating, and the ability to vent about it here, seems to have put me in a slight downward spiral. I read a lot of stories last night about Asian kids who have trouble dealing with their parents (a lot of them were profanity-laced rants), and it made me even more depressed. And wouldn't you know it, I'm starting to develop a slight case of allergies and sore throat. It could be coincidence, I suppose, but I think there is a correlation. I realized that without knowing it, I have tried to deny a large part of my Asian identity. It's even hard for me to pray as an Asian person!

I think it's because as an Asian woman, I feel like a failure. As I said before, I have not been able to live up to my parents' expectations of me. Heck, after reading up on some of my high school classmates' Facebook and LinkedIn pages, they seem to be even farther along in their careers than I am! But then again, they were always the super achievers in class. I had best not compare myself to them.

I know my personality, that I do much better when encouraged. But now that I am an adult, I will have to encourage myself most of the time, because most likely no one will be there to encourage me. What troubles me about my attitude is that often when I push myself to do things, unless I am doing it with positive motivations, my heart won't be right in the end. For example, I can do all the right things to gain a better job rating next year. But if I'm doing it out of anger and discontentment, even should I achieve my goal, my innermost attitude towards my job and my boss will still not be positive. I will be doing it more out of revenge or self-interest (an "I'll show you" attitude), rather than wanting to truly serve my company with excellence.

At the risk of offending my fellow Asians, I think this is one of the reasons why Asian people sometimes lose out in athletics and other areas to non-Asians. It's because the work and the drive to succeed is there, but not necessarily the innermost passion or desire to excel in something because you love it and want to give it all your heart. This leads to perhaps an outward success, but without an inward foundation, and the success is therefore hollow. You are doing it because you have something to prove. An example of this is a famous Chinese Olympic ice skating pair. They managed to win a gold medal, but the sportcasters noted that they were really not very proficient in basic skating skills, such as sit spins. Without proficiency in those basic skills, I doubt that they can have longlasting success.

Tiger Woods took time to re-learn one of his golf strokes, even though it cost him some down time. I respected him all the more for that, because he could have coasted on his current skill sets and not done it. But I believe that he truly wanted to improve his game, not because he had something to prove, but because he truly wanted to excel.

Bottom line, I have to find a way to care. I know that I should care, if I want to be a good Christian, a good person, etc., but I want to want to care. When I care about people and how my job affects them, then I will do what it takes to serve them from my heart, not because it's a duty, or because I want to prove something to them. I think a mentor would help, too.

Okay, I've gone on long enough.