From Point A to C to Y to B: A Sentimental Journey Through Hawai'i and Wisconsin

By Lanning Lee

Have you ever known exactly what you were going to do only to find out that you don't do it?Did you have a life plan with an ultimate goal all laid out perfectly? Did you then pursue that goal only to find out that it was not the right one for you?In this memoir, I decide upon a career path that suddenly becomes a dead end. Seizing upon another goal, I come up against an insurmountable wall, and while I beat my head against that wall, a new goal develops almost by accident.Can you find your true calling? Here it appears for me in the form of pursuit of a major in English Literature. This journey follows me from earning a B.A. at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, through an M.A. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And then . . .Dreams die hard, but sometimes they do die. So how do you get yourself back on track?Through a series of truly disparate events, experienced on a winding road of various jobs and fortunate coincidences, I discover myself and return to my true calling, finally setting my sights on earning a Ph.D. in English Literature.At one point in Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, there is a page where Tristram attempts to diagram the story's arc. These are the four squiggly possibilities you see on the front cover of this book, lower lefthand quadrant.My journey has been circuitous as well, perhaps not quite as comedically so, but close. The title of my memoir is a map: Point A: This is commonly accepted as the point from which we all start.Eh: By the way, in Hawaiian Pidgin English, this expression can be the beginning of any statement: Eh, whatchoo goin do?Eh, I like grind some onolicious food.So, eh/A, I begin my journey in Hawai'i.Point Y: Why? What is the point? Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life?Point C: We have to see our way to find the answers to life's questions. We have to get out there, try things. So anything and everything we can do we should do.Point B: Mathematics may say it's so, but the line from Point A to Point B to finally C Y you are here is not always a straight one, as Sterne illustrates. Hopefully everything that happens to you along a winding path from A to B will lead you to be what you were, in fact, meant to B.The rest of my book's title is a reference to Sterne's second best-known work: A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy. This is the book that lays the foundation in multiple ways for who I've become today, and you'll understand why as you read along with me.If you really want to hear about it, and I hope you do, this memoir, told in a reader-friendly voice with an enthusiasm that sparkles through -- I hope -- will inspire readers who have doubts and questions about the true course for their lives, and I hope to capture all that great David Copperfield kind of mystery and joy with my tale.So Eh/A, try read this to C Y Lanning Lee came to B him, and maybe I can even help you to become You.While you read along, I hope you will be both enlightened and entertained as you walk this humorous and poignant path together with me. The two of us will travel a road to self-discovery, and that journey, I'm hoping, will captivate and surprise you in ways that promise to keep you turning pages.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B08R9VF8HB
• ISBN13: 9798587016620
• Release Date: December 2020
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"