What would I do if I said no?

Since I wrote last there is one piece of my responsibility list that might be coming to an end. I will say more when it is official. For now I am just trying to maintain sanity until the end of the semester. Part of maintaining that sanity is to consider what I might do with my time if I said yes to fewer people.

Today I was reminded again of the necessity of being able to communicate in Korean. This came to mind today because I had a meeting this morning about the history of the hero of Korea. Even though foreign professors were given a translation of the content, the person speaking in Korean did not stop while we were given the translation and the content was presumably difficult to translate into another language. So I found myself being frustrated with the experience of waiting for a translation. This is why I find it less frustrating to listen only to Korean. Not that I can understand much of Korean, but in that case I am only tuned in to the person speaking in Korean.

So what would I do with the extra time if I had said yes to fewer people? I would be learning Korean. Now this sounds like a noble cause, maybe, but don’t let me fool you. I am not a good student. But the studying I have done so far has led me to the weak ability to send text messages and e-mail in Korean with a little ability to speak Korean when push comes to shove. But I think I need to find a way to immerse myself into Korean culture somehow.

This leads to my desire to practice justice. As I may have indicated before, I am thinking about ways to get involved in NGOs in South Korea. In order to do this I have to be able to speak in Korean. I am wondering if there are ways for me to get involved in NGOs in such a way that it would immerse me in Korean culture which would force me to learn to communicate in Korean. This would seem to be the best of all possible worlds.

Having less things to do outside of my university job would also enable me to take more time to invest in personal relationships. To be honest, this is my biggest downfall right now. This has probably been true most of my life. It seems that even after a year of living in the same place I still struggle to develop strong friendships. I often hide behind a busy schedule saying I don’t have time to do social things.

Now of course if I had more time on my hands I could do other things I am interested in doing, like writing, for instance. My current project is looking at Korean culture and seeing how that affects the English education system in Korea. Saying yes less often would give me a chance to do more with this. I have been itching to get into writing in some way since I graduated from seminary and especially since I moved to St. Louis. I started working on a project right before I came here and had to forego it due to moving to Korea. I couldn’t go to the conference anyway so it didn’t seem necessary to write a paper on the subject of the conference.

Am I missing anything?