Hello world and welcome to my little slice of the interwebs.

I admit I am here selfishly to help fill the hours of my unemployed life with something constructive and interesting, but I am eternally grateful for any readership. Before I get ahead of myself, I would like to introduce you to your loyal and sincere writer.

My name is Kim and I am an aloha-minded girl living on the Jersey Shore (no, please do not insert fist pumping, orange tans, or jager bombs here). I love to learn, read, write, travel, create, cook, and live! I am quite curious about all topics and plan to exhaust my mind though researching it all.

I am the only child of a multi-racial family and find that my multi-cultural upbringing has positively engaged my mind with questions of place, home, race, etc. What I am trying to say is that being a little different from my classmates, friends, and colleagues all of my life has made me appreciate and celebrate the differences in all people and enticed my craving for knowledge on a global basis.

I have a liberal arts education with a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature. I find Hawaiian Literature and culture fascinating and argued why Hawaiian Literature should be included in the American Literature classroom in my master’s thesis.

I finished my M.A. in the spring of 2012 and have been a bit adrift since then. I spent more than 20 years of my life as a student and now that I’ve severed the umbilical cord of academia, I feel lost. Academia, to me, is just as my metaphor suggests – a warm comforting womb that cannot nurture you forever. Survival in the “real world” has proven to be more difficult than I had anticipated; and since Hurricane Sandy factored into the loss of my last job, I have felt more lost than ever.

So here I am, a twenty-something with degrees under my belt, a man on my arm, a family to die for, and all the time in the world to experience life. I suppose that’s where this blog comes into play. I have had all this time on my hands and I have felt more limited than ever.

Having lots of introspective moments while sitting at home alone (with my kitties) has led me to the following conclusions about myself:
– I have defined myself as a student for all my life
– I look for the approval of others to value myself
– I limit my career opportunities because of my refusal to move away from my family
– I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up

I know these things seem silly, but they are truths that I have a difficult time vocalizing about myself. The most biting of those conclusions is that I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Because of my inability to decide, I wondered what others thought about this. Do my parents feel that way? What about my peers? Are they living their dreams? What are their aspirations and where are they now? I hope to follow these questions through a number of interviews with people, both strangers and friends, about what they want(ed) to be when they grow/grew up. Hopefully, with their input I can come to understand my lack of decisiveness.

To properly conclude my welcome message to those of you who are still reading, I want to say thanks for taking the time to stop by. I look forward to embarking on this editorial journey and can’t wait to share it with you! Don’t forget to live ALOHA!