Autoethnography

Korean.
Buddhist.
Painter.

These are interrelated different identities that I correspond with.

I struggled to be a Korean because of my mixed environment that I grew up. I was hiding in my closet with a flashlight after 11pm every night to finish my homework when I was in the high school. I tried to speak well and do well in this English speaking world. But I couldn't not be the American, because I was Korean. When I realized this, I didn't have to try so hard on myself any more. Also, Theses years were worthy, because it gave me an opened eye to understand America and Americans better, moreover, cultures, values, the difference in general.

I was born in a buddhist family. But I didn't think about being a buddhist seriously until 2008(though I some time to time said that I wanted to be a buddhist nun to mother when I was a child.) But now, this is one of the strongest identities I find myself. I do not know how to explain my understandings of it, how they affected me. The learnings and all practices really helped me to see things without ends, to see the unseen etc. I constantly try to "know myself."

I paint because I survive. This is what I think every Wednesday when I drag my body to the painting studio. I need to paint in order to function normally without getting depressed. I can forget things that is attached from everything around me and paint so painting is my exit to my own world. It's a step to my wonderland, that I can focus on me.