January 31, 2024

It’s Never That Serious

After a long and restful weekend filled with 12 hr sleep days, tissues of snot, and a whole season of “Love is Blind”, me and the rest of Hasiru Dala make our way to HQ. Here we meet with Sarika, the head of the research initiative within the company to learn more about past research projects, current ones, and more concerns they are facing. Many of the issues they are facing seem very broad and overarching, like getting the government to support policies that help workers or getting more funding for housing projects. However there are copious amounts of smaller issues like marketing reused multi-layer plastic, garnering public support for DWCCs, and finding smaller ways to optimize their living conditions. Our challenge now is narrowing down what we want to do and who we want to work with specifically, but other groups seem to be well into doing different jobs and contributing to projects their organizations provide for them. Perhaps it is just the structure of our company that makes being a solid part of their team more challenging than others, or maybe we need to be assertive in wanting to help in any way we can. Nevertheless, I feel as though I am in a limbo, idly waiting for a task to be bestowed upon us or an ingenious idea to strike. This is the first mental roadblock I’ve hit since coming here, and it’s starting to feel like my body is just a bottle of pressure with no room to let any coherent ideas form. My self-doubt feels especially heightened now, and it’s like I want time to both speed up to when this is all over and pause completely so I have time to think about every possibility. I’m pretty used to this feeling though, and the fact that I am still here is evidence enough that it always works out in the end, despite my constant worrying. I keep telling myself 6 weeks is not that much time, but that’s like two years for a dog, so I just gotta embrace that dog in me I guess.

By Taekyung