It is already 2:32 AM as I am beginning to write this monologue. Why do I stay up so late? What keeps me awake? I probably have been asking this question a thousand times everyday. Ever since I was in middle school, I always have been much more active at night. At night, I do not have to go anywhere–no school, no appointments, nothing. Yes, this is the only time during the day when I am finally able to sit back and to be myself, look back on myself, and speak to my inner self. For the past six to seven years, there has been a lot going on in my life; no matter how hard I tried, it ended up pretty badly. Everything that I wanted so desperately that I swore I would even die for, I could not achieve them. For the past two years, I have not been attending any school. I have been working all sorts of odd jobs. Wake up, take a shower, go to work. Wake up, take a shower, go to work. Last year in the summer, I finally came to think: what am I doing here? what do I want? Should I even bother to try anymore? There was only one good thing that I wanted to do, my pursuit in the career of MMA. But, I got a bad injury on my right knee and was told that I have to stop any exercise, for at least 3 months. I could not even walk because the tendon on my knee was torn, and the nerves were in bad shape. So, did all these stop me? No, I kept looking forward. When I am by myself, I sometimes picture myself as a man in the wilderness–I have the power to turn this vastness into a great city myself, or I can just leave it as it is. You know what, Kibae, let’s build a city. Your whole freaking empire. You might be in troubles sometimes, but there is nobody here who is stopping you. You are the only one who is setting limits to yourself. We still have a whole lot to achieve. So, let’s do it.

Often times, we are overwhelmed with so much information provided to us. We are constantly on social media: facebook, twitter, instagram etc. getting all these necessary or rather unnecessary information. Our brain needs some time to relax. I feel like it is necessary for everyone to give themselves some time and take a break. It could be for an hour or even 5 minutes of their everyday life.Put your phone on airplane mode and just have some “you time”. It could be during the beginning or the end of your day. I do it everyday and I realized it brings me inner peace. It is really not hard to find some time for yourself no matter how much of a busy person you are.

All my life I have gone with the flow. I do not feel like I have ever decided an important decision. I feel like I have given into all my choices without being completely sure. This habit can be seen in all aspect of my life. I live my life following what seems like a single path to my destiny. This is rather worrisome because I do not believe in destiny. I believe that most choice I made have an effect on my live. A single decision makes a drastic change on my life. If this is so then I really should give more thoughts and consideration to the decisions I make, but that is hard to do when I have no idea what I want my future to be. I guess before I fully decide what I want my future to be, I will have to keep going with the flow.

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If you ask me what is the best part of a day, my answer is the dark night. I enjoy lying on bed, exposing myself to the silence, to the darkness, to a sense of nothingness. I just love the feeling that I am the only living being in my little world, love the illusion that everything is in my hands, love the sense of liberation that I am totally disentangled from the others’ judgement and others’ expectations. At that moment, I am completely free. When I close my eyes, stretch my body and fly my thoughts, I breathe in my inner world, a world which even I am unfamiliar with. For years, I always try to explore the outside world, but sometimes I don’t even have a good understanding of who I am. The social self is the self in other people’s eyes, but not the self in my heart. I acted as the social self too long that sometimes I forget what I really am. Only in a dark night where even moonlight can’t go through, a dark night where all the chaos disappears, a dark night where nothing can distract me from exploring my secret world hidden deep under my skin, I can finally meet the real me which has been deliberately ignored for too long. She is wacky but naive, selfish but kind-hearted, rebellious but vulnerable. She is what I was supposed to be but somehow failed to be. I hug her, kiss her, tell her how much I miss her, and say goodbye to her, before another day is dawning.

I believe the most important thing in life is optimism, and I always try to follow this motto in life. It is a natural process how at many certain situations in life, we do not exactly achieve what we wish for, or face a situation which we dreaded or least expected. for example, we often get bad grades in academic courses or have misunderstandings with a person we love dearly( breakups maybe? 😛 ) . These are situations when people feel completely heartbroken and failed . we, as humans, tend to lose confidence in ourselves as we feel we are unable to achieve anything good in life. but little do we realise, that this mentality actually hampers our future activities as well. the fact that we failed once, makes us weak and leads to many other failures. but do we deserve that? Absolutely not. If we possess the quality of staying positive at all times in life, regardless the severity of the situation, then we can achieve everything in life.when we could not achieve what we we wished for, then we had to strengthen ourselves and inspire ourselves from within to move forward. we couldn’t get an A this semester? fine, ill study like crazy to get an A next semester!- this should be the type of mentality we should have!

well, yeah i used to have so much enthusiasm that always kept me alive. I was not afraid of anything and I was the center of my world. i could see the delighted confidence in my parents’ eyes when they looked at me. I didn’t really think about the reality stuff: money, stable future, and other people’s eyes. But, now as a grown-up, I can see myself too confused and too weak to step into the real world because i didn’t learn how to give up my dream yet. Every single night, right before i fall asleep having my eyes closed, i imagine these beautiful things that i have always wanted to do and that are almost impossible to be achieved in real life, and the next morning as i wake up i see these frustrating real life problems that criticize me to be realistic. Meanwhile, my life ceaselessly continues and never even lets me pause for a second to rest agonizing over my paths. Even right now as im speaking, im wandering around to find a path that i really should go.

Does anyone ever wake up and say “Today, I will not have a goal” and actually mean it? I’m not talking about those personal days off where you step back from this frenzied chaotic world and indulge in personal pleasures. No, I’m talking about waking up knowing you’ve failed in life and you’re ok with it; where life has failed you and you’ve accepted it; where life becomes an acquaintance you wave ‘hello’ from across the street but don’t cross for mindless chatter of the nice weather; where life is no longer known in yourself; where it became a stranger that you won’t look him in the eyes if he bumped into you. I want to say I feel sorry for them, I really do. But I won’t, because I don’t. I envy them. I admire their bliss in goals and direction. How can anyone be given such a gift? I’ve never been so lucky. I’ve been slapped with responsibilities, fed formalities, bathed in ideals and Colgate my conformity. And you, you’ve been happy in that Nintendo t-shirt and purple vans. I want to feel that worn out joystick at two in the morning. I want to know what it’s like to be in a bar to socialize, not mute my life. Where the only time I ever face a monitor is to say my story, not to annotate and punctuate. It’s a secret, I guess. One I wouldn’t understand.

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I was born and raised in Yangon, Myanmar, except for a few years when I lived in Singapore. I am very close to my family. As I said in the slideshow I’m very passionate about movies. My other interests are playing video games, reading, watching tv, playing basketball and tennis (Although I only had a chance to play tennis just for a while). I included a picture of me at the beach because (other than the fact I couldn’t find any other photo) it is one of my favorite places to vacation. That brings to another fact about me – I love to travel. One last fact about me is that I listen to all genres of music but my favorite is rock.

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My name is Kibae Lee and I am from Korea, obviously not the one controlled by the Kim family. Like I have mentioned few times before in class, I have a serious passion in MMA, or Mixed Martial Arts.  I am a semi-pro MMA fighter, but I also have a semi-professional background in kickboxing as well. Here are some of the pictures of my fights few years ago, when I just stepped into the world of MMA and fought in an amateur league. My record, so far is 5-0 (5 wins; no losses). I am planning to become a professional fighter in about 2 to 3 years in Korea. Besides all this fighting that I am into, I own a dog named Bokdaeng, which means “lucky,” if translated in English. She is only 10-months-old. Since I am staying here in the US by myself, I sometimes miss my cute dog in Korea. When I am free from exercise and work, I hang out with my friends a lot. Rather than sitting in a coffee shop and chitchatting about things in life, I like to go out with my friends and love to find really good restaurants in NYC to eat.