I’ve been living the strangest existence lately. It’s been a life without structure or meaning. I wonder what I’ll think of this phase of my life when I look back in five years.

Some days are easier than others. Sometimes, it’s a struggle just to find a reason to exist.

I have to admit that every pain, every sadness is inspiring. It may make my fingers bleed and my lungs ache, but the pure emotion that comes out of it is worth it, because that means I’m feeling something, instead of the numbness that scares me most.

My one mistake was trying to forget someone, when instead I should have been trying to forget life in general. I’ve always had the habit of thinking too much, and not doing enough. I’ve been trying to set goals to get somewhere, when it’s working toward those goals that’s the important part.

I made an appointment with my therapist again¹, because something is definitely wrong with me right now. It feels like I have the world at my fingertips. I have so much time and opportunity on my side. I laugh at the right jokes. I dance at the right songs. It’s all staring me in the face, but everything still feels empty.

I’m not looking for answers. I just want to stop asking questions.

1. I haven’t been back since last October [↑]

My Tai Chi teacher recently added the Yang style broadsword to the curriculum. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t ecstatic, as I’ve waited quite a while to learn a weapon form. There’s something romantic and exotic about wielding one of the four great Chinese weapons. I find it delightfully ironic that it’s a gweilo who’s catalyzed such an interest in my own culture. Take THAT, my racist and sexist Chinese ancestors.

As for the ukulele, one day I found out how inexpensive they can be and bought one right away. It’s a Mahalo Les Paul style ukulele (right down to the square tuning pegs) with an extended neck for higher register notes. In many ways, the ukulele is the perfect instrument for me right now; cheap, easy enough that I can teach myself¹, and not too hard on the fingers².

It feels fucking fantastic to be playing music in some form again. I did years of piano and flute lessons in elementary school to high school, and took a very long hiatus from then till now. And that was mostly in band, when I couldn’t choose the music I wanted to play. Now I can play the songs I like, and the advantage is that I’ve probably heard them a few hundred times so I already know them inside-out.

With my years of music lessons and performances from my youth, it’s not like I’m learning music from scratch, I’m simply figuring out how to apply what I already know about tone, posture, tuning, volume, fingering³, timing, and intonation, to another instrument. Admittedly, it’s been very slow going, and it’s like I’m learning a new language as I train my fingers to achieve a dexterity that was never there before.

The interesting thing is that my last few years practicing Tai Chi has helped me learn the ukulele. In my Tai Chi class, I’ve gained the patience and perseverance required to practice the same moves over and over again until they become a natural part of my muscle memory. In the beginning, it was a lot of concentration spent just trying to remember what to do next in the form, but now that I don’t need to think about them when I practice, my concentration goes into fine-tuning the little details. The same principles can be applied to the ukulele (or any instrument, for that matter), and I’m trying to get to the point where I don’t need to think about what my fingers should be doing, and just concentrate on playing with the right kind of expressiveness.

Which is why I have a broadsword and a ukulele resting on the wall next to my desk. Any time I need a break, I pick up one of them and practice for a few minutes.

1. Because I really don’t have time for another time-consuming hobby [↑]
2. The strings are nylon, instead of the metal of guitars, so the callouses aren’t as bad. The health of my hands is also an important thing to me. [↑]
3. Though the fingering for a stringed instrument is really different from piano and flute. [↑]

In my last year of high school — which was also my first year at that school, so no one really knew me — I had a creative English class. We were given 15 minutes of free writing time at the beginning of each class, of which I mostly spent making verbal doodles to any kind of cinema stimulation I had recently seen at the time. Around then, it would have been quotes from Monty Python and lines from Casino. Anyone could put a CD in the stereo for everyone to hear, so one week I put my most recent mix in.

In the middle was Creep by Radiohead , and another guy in class suddenly exclaimed, “A great song!”, amidst the silence of our working minds. Everyone looked at him, then at me, and I felt a redness flush on my face.

That was followed by One by Metallica, and again he said, “Another great song!”, and the same chain of events happened as last time.

He was that edgy kid with bleached blond hair and always got in trouble for wearing walking shoes with his uniform. He did his own thing, had his own tastes, and fit in with the crowds he wanted, not necessarily the crowds that wanted him. I was that awkward kid who had no real friends, had a mop for hair, and a perpetually taciturn demeanour. To have him acknowledge my taste for two songs in a row had suddenly given me some kind of street cred because he was far more popular than me.

Some of the other kids started looking at me differently from then on.

When I look at this picture, I see the flaws. The stretch marks on my back, and especially prominent on the side of my ass. Those strange red blemishes on my shoulder that I don’t remember having. The lack of junk in the trunk so common in Asian people. I didn’t even know I had a mole down there.

I used to have body-image issues. Always thinking I was too skinny, and too ugly.

Then someone made me feel differently. She treated every part of my body with as much attention and love as I treated hers. She was the first person to ever make me believe that I was attractive too. Some days, I felt as handsome as she was pretty.

I turn 30 in nine months, and now that she’s gone, I wonder if anyone will ever see me that way again.

The Turning 30 Series

• 29: The Child
• 29 1/12: The Adolescent
• 29 2/12: The Lachrymologist
• 29 3/12: The Once Loved
• 29 4/12: The Mask