Posts in category "Daily Life"

Slow Down Honey

Thumbnail: Egg yolk

“Try to hold you in bed you shrug away instead oh I don’t know why.” I found this song dur­ing a recent tran­si­tion, and it’s stayed with me since. It fits so many moods — con­tent­ment, sad­ness, lon­li­ness, morn­ing, mourn­ing, and moult­ing.

Thumbnail: Bloody Mary

In a way, I’m forc­ing myself grow and improve, and this scares me. In the book my ther­a­pist rec­om­mend­ed, it explains “Change requires will­ing­ness to expe­ri­ence pain”, and I’m going through this exact­ly. I’m con­stant­ly step­ping out of my com­fort zone, and at this point, it’s much more trep­i­da­tion than excite­ment. It’d be so much eas­i­er to fall into old men­tal habits, as unhealthy as they are.

Thumbnail: Games night

On morn­ings like this, I sit in my liv­ing room with the cur­tains open. It makes me self-con­scious to be sit­ting there with hous­es across the street get­ting a clear view of me in my PJs and mussed up hair. But it reminds me that some­one else is out there. That the world is full of life, and vibran­cy, and peo­ple just like me.

Continue read­ing “Slow Down Honey”…

Cranium Party 02

Cranium Party invitation

The sec­ond Cranium Party went exceed­ing­ly well, even though not a sin­gle one of my core friends was there. In fact, aside from Jess, it was an entire­ly dif­fer­ent group from last time, and none of the four groups of peo­ple knew each oth­er, but that did­n’t stop it from being an awe­some par­ty and every­one got along famous­ly. Through the night, I heard peo­ple ask­ing each oth­er, “And how do you know Jeff?”

People brought all sorts of snacks, but more impor­tant­ly, they also helped me eat them. Of note was Audra bring­ing a tub of green tea and hon­ey vanil­la Häagen-Dazs ice cream, which I had nev­er even heard of before.

To make it inter­est­ing, I told every­one that the los­ing team would have to per­form a tal­ent. Some came pre­pared, oth­ers came with the atti­tude that they would­n’t lose.

Audra’s tal­ent is speech writ­ing, but since she could­n’t per­form that, she did a ren­di­tion of a song she wrote with Jesse three years ago about their cat Zoey. And the song was­n’t just a short jin­gle, it was a full piece with prop­er song struc­ture and clever rhymes. If only I was­n’t laugh­ing so hard that I kept shak­ing the cam­era.

Sergei did­n’t have a tal­ent pre­pared, but since I knew that he used to study mar­tial arts, I asked him if he could demon­strate what he knew. He sug­gest­ed that he could blow out a can­dle with a punch, and no one was left unmoved.

Shawn brought his beau­ti­ful­ly carved didgeri­doo to play as his tal­ent. Even though he did­n’t lose, peo­ple were still intrigued enough that they want­ed to try it. And, of course, Jesse added his own flavour at the end.

On The Mend

My ther­a­pist has the curi­ous habit of push­ing his low­er lip into his upper gums when think­ing. He also has a very par­tic­u­lar way of talk­ing, and some­times I won­der if I could imi­tate him.

I went into my ses­sion feel­ing great, and left with a lit­tle more mod­esty than when I start­ed. I may pride myself on my self-aware­ness, but he’s always there to remind me that some prob­lems are root­ed in my sub­con­scious. While my feel­ing of empti­ness has dis­ap­peared, there are still a few under­ly­ing issues, such as why I start­ed to feel that empti­ness in the first place. He said that when we meet again that it should be on a reg­u­lar basis, and I should­n’t wait for a cri­sis to begin fix­ing issues. I agreed, but want­ed to give things a chance on my own first, armed with this new-found enlight­en­ment.

He approach­es my sit­u­a­tion from such a per­pen­dic­u­lar per­spec­tive. It’s always a view I’ve nev­er con­sid­ered before. When I first went to see him, it was for my anx­i­ety attacks. Not for the oth­er deep-root­ed emo­tion­al prob­lems I had (and was unaware of). Sometimes, I won­der if we’ll ever get to the point where he’ll say to me, “You know what, Jeff, I don’t think you need to come here any­more.”

Brunch with Jason

Brunch with Jason Shim

Before get­ting on his train, Jason asked me if I was a hug-per­son. It was the right ques­tion, because I’m most assured­ly a hug-per­son, and we embraced before he stepped out onto the plat­form.

We grew up at the same time in the same neigh­bour­hood — a small sub­urb some­where in the mid­dle of the 500km that sep­a­rates us — but nev­er had a chance to meet until he gave a pre­sen­ta­tion in town for the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector. Until now, we only com­mu­ni­cat­ed through blog com­ments and e‑mail exchanges.

When I first met him, it struck me how much tall he was, and how much deep­er his voice was than I expect­ed.

Jason is like me in so many ways, some­thing I find extreme­ly rare. We share a strong self-aware­ness and a pen­chant for self-improve­ment, as well as the same views on love and tastes in women. Perhaps it could be said that Jason is an extro­vert­ed ver­sion of me. We could dis­cuss things we nor­mal­ly reserve for our close friends, and con­tin­ue as if we had already known each oth­er’s sto­ries for years. He’s a true kin­dred spir­it, and many times I felt like believ­ing in him meant I believed in myself as well.

Brunch was filled with such stim­u­la­tion that I for­got to take a pic­ture, so I set­tled for this one when I went to see him off at the train sta­tion. I’m so glad I was able to cap­ture his per­pet­u­al smile, that same smile I see in his pic­tures when he trav­el­ing the world, in Budapest, Ghana, New Orleans, and oth­er places with names too for­eign for me to remem­ber.

Fishing Without A Hook

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 [↩]