What's in a name?

When I was younger, I hated my last name. Not in Korean, mind you. It flowed and made sense when spoken in the context of its home language. But in the mouths of non-Koreans, in particular those who had not a clue about how to pronounce Asian names in general (“it’s just so confusing!”), the name felt clunky. An intrusion. An interruption. An inconvenience. Or even worse, when it flowed too easily, it felt like an onomatopoeia. The kind people will use to disparage Asian names. Saying “My name is Min Kahng” felt like a punchline to a racist joke.

How to explain the pronunciation of 강? How to explain to non-linguists that that K is more like a G, but aspirated? That the “ah” is actually brighter than you think?

But it’s ok. I don’t need you to pronounce it 강. Kahng is an acceptable approximation. In English, it will *always* be mispronounced. My own attempts are colored by my American accent anyway.

I don’t even care if you get it wrong (once or twice) and make it rhyme with “hang.” Or if it’s misspelled (I get it. You’re used to seeing “Khan,” cuz... Genghis...? Star Trek, I guess? So that H gets tossed about. Sometimes even ending up on the tail of my first name. The most egregious spelling I’ve gotten? “Kahagn”). As long as you’re open to me correcting you, and I promise I’ll try to do so gracefully (for the first couple of times at least...), we’re good.

But give it an eye roll? Nuh-uh...
Talk about it like it’s ruining your day? No thank you.
Make it about you and turn my last name into an excuse to talk through all your insecurities around public speaking or name recollection? I’m a busy man, can I have my name back, please...?

강 is a river.
강 is strong.
강 is as complicated as my relationship with the man from whom I inherited it.
강 holds a history of dynasties and kingdoms that Kahng could never hold.

But Kahng has its own history too. A history of reclaiming something. Of finding confidence. Kahng is what I’ve got. In its imperfectly anglicized form.
Kahng rhymes with “song.”
Kahng is a needle. It slices into your comfortable tongue and causes you mild discomfort.
Kahng is a crowbar, wedging open space for itself to belong.

I wish I could give you a Pinterest quote about how proud I am now of Kahng. My levels of pride, love, frustration fluctuate every day. But at the very least, I no longer hate my last name. And I’ll be damned if I let you make me feel ashamed about it.

And this isn’t just about my name. But my name’s siblings and cousins and third cousins twice removed, distant relatives from other continents. Give any, any of them ‘tude, and you will see just how strong a river this 강 can be.

Faking it till faking it no longer feels like faking it

You know how they say “Fake it till you make it?” I feel like I’ve been operating under that notion for the bulk of my playwriting career. But recently, I’ve started to actually feel like I’m making it, not because I’m faking it, but because I have the knowledge, skills, and grit to actually make it. It’s a very odd feeling. After years of using my best guesses, I’m actually starting to feel like I might know a thing or two about what I’m doing.

Someone recently said to me “You’re the expert!” and there was a tiny twinge inside me in response. No, I can’t be an expert in anything. I’m still figuring it out as I go. But maybe I have become quite practiced at the figuring out. I still don’t love the connotations of the word “expert,” mostly because of the expectations others might place on such a title. But if, if, I am an expert, it’s not because I have it all figured out, but because… I’ve gotten good at figuring things out as I go. With enough “faking it,” I’ve now gotten enough experience to know how to think through decisions and problems in my career. Decisions and problems that might be fresh and new for others.

Yes, an odd feeling. Oddly quiet. Oddly reassured. I’m not flailing about trying to make sense of everything. After all my flailing (and failing), many things have come together. And the things that still don’t make sense, I’ve learned to maneuver through and with. Of course, the “faking it” hasn’t ended. Each time you level up in a video game, there is more to learn about the skills or items you’ve acquired along the way. And I’ll still need the expertise of others. But this lifestyle of “fake it till you make it” has started to look more and more like… “this is how you make it.”

Creativity Quotation #31

“Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new. And as such, should be seen as valuable. Without them, we’d have no originality.” - Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.

Learning to Research Smarter

I have completionist tendencies. Rather than stop when the enjoyment or meaning stops, I will carry on with a book or a video game or a TV series, because I feel compelled to finish it. I’m learning, however, that life is too short to be focusing on things that aren’t bringing me enjoyment. And the completionist tendency is tied somehow to guilt. I’ve associated not finishing with being lazy or wasteful, especially if I’ve spent money or a considerable amount of time on a thing already. I’m learning, though, that sometimes it’s actually wise to know when to stop doing something, and I have been able to more frequently say “I’m done” in the middle of things.

This completionist tendency has translated into my research as well. For my writing projects, I will often build a long list of media to research, and internally declare that I will consume each piece of media in its entirety. More often than not, I don’t get through all the media. Or even worse, I get stuck. I might get to the relevant stuff in a research book, and then realize I still have 100 pages left. Cue the guilt. Even though I can make a good guess that the remainder of the book will not be relevant to my project, I still feel bad that I’m not finishing it. Or I might ask for recommendations from others on what I could read, and then feel overwhelmed at the volume of texts and films I “need” to go through.

But, as I said, I’ve been learning. For Untitled, I did do a crowdsourced recommendation on research books, but then sifted through each one to determine whether it was actually appropriate for my purposes. And yesterday, I started reading a book, then got to a section that I realized was not relevant to my project and decided I would skip it. There is still a lingering guilt in the back of my mind. But I believe that’s the rational brain acting up in the face of letting intuition take the lead. Besides, the rational brain should also realize that there’s no way, no time, for me to go through every possible research material in its entirety. It should be happy that I’m trying to figure out a smarter way to research.

Here's the thing about a template...

When you fit perfectly snug in a template, you don’t question it. You marvel at how amazingly appropriate and perfect it is for you. And you believe everyone would benefit from this template.

But when you don’t fit - or no longer fit. Even after you’ve stretched and warped yourself into so many shapes to keep trying to fit. And you’ve questioned your value if you can’t ever fit...

Eventually, if you’re one of the lucky ones, you start to wonder - maybe the template is the problem. Maybe it is the *template* that doesn’t fit *you.*

And then when you’re finally out of the template - in spite of those snug-as-a-bug Templaters who coax, plead, shout that you should get back in! get back in! When you’re finally out...

You realize how many templates there actually are. And you marvel at how amazingly illuminating this realization is. Even moreso the possibility that you might not need a template at all - or that you can learn from the existing templates to forge your own.

And you start to believe everyone would benefit from this awareness of the multiplicity of templates, and see the folly of asking all people to fit into just one.