Missing The Old

I’ve been read­ing Andrea’s blog late­ly. Normally, I don’t read blogs of peo­ple I’ve nev­er met1, and even though I’ve met Andrea, I’ve nev­er had a pen­e­trat­ing con­ver­sa­tion with her, let alone got­ten to know her. Andrea’s blog is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent though. To the unini­ti­at­ed, it’s a reg­u­lar jour­nal, but there are bits of insight and emo­tion scat­tered through­out that leave you feel­ing like you’re look­ing at some­one stoned, naked, and through their kitchen win­dow. The ordi­nary mixed with a dash of extra­or­di­nary is what tru­ly gives one a sense of empa­thy, and it was this that drew me in.

It’s been mak­ing me feel so fuck­ing nos­tal­gic.

I remem­ber being in that stage of life. Back in school. Getting drunk. Chasing girls. Unsure of any­thing but the way I was feel­ing in that exact moment.

It’s made me real­ize that I don’t write like I used to. My entries used to be so exper­i­men­tal. Aside from a sin­gle sen­tence as a last, con­clud­ing line2, and a pen­chant for being a lit­tle too per­son­al, I had­n’t devel­oped a par­tic­u­lar writ­ing style. Back when I post­ed some­thing almost three times a day because I had to. When my posts had no titles (the same way Andrea has noth­ing but an incre­ment­ing num­ber and loca­tion stamp) because they were about every­thing and noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar.

Now, there’s too much pur­pose to my writ­ing. Carefully planned out posts, try­ing to express some­thing spe­cif­ic, with­out the stream-of-con­scious­ness I used to enjoy. Lost is the old whim­si­cal nature, the ordi­nary mixed with the extra­or­di­nary. I nev­er used to care whether some­thing was sig­nif­i­cant enough to post, and would just write it and hit that pub­lish but­ton.

I miss it.

But I can’t tell if it’s the way I used to write, or my life back then, that I miss.

  1. Blogs rarely inter­est me when I don’t have a bit of per­son­al insight from a first meet­ing. [↩]
  2. Almost every sin­gle pots in this blog ends this way. [↩]

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Tai Chi Deadline

I’ve start­ed learn­ing large san shou in my Tai Chi class. While it’s fun to be prac­tic­ing anoth­er inter­ac­tive form of the Yang style, it’s also a lit­tle scary to be learn­ing some­thing new as my teacher nears retire­ment (when he reach­es 60 in four years). I’m start­ing to wor­ry that I won’t reach a lev­el where I can prac­tice effec­tive­ly on my own before his time is up.

At 2 class­es a week, 52 weeks a year, and 4 years left to go, we can expect rough­ly 416 class­es total; every class is worth 0.24% of a very lim­it­ed resource.

A class­mate once told me that his com­ing retire­ment is a good thing. We’ll be forced to go else­where to expand our knowl­edge of Tai Chi, because we reach cer­tain lim­i­ta­tions when prac­tic­ing with the same part­ners, skill lev­els, part­ners, styles, body types, and even teach­ers. While I under­stand his rea­son­ing, it doesn’t change the fact that I may not be able to con­tin­ue learn­ing what I know now, if anoth­er teacher doesn’t offer the same cur­ricu­lum.

Added to this is the fact that mar­tial Tai Chi teach­ers are hard to find in a city as small as this. Good teach­ers, espe­cial­ly ones suit­ed to your learn­ing style, with the right bal­ance of patience and dis­ci­pline, are even less com­mon.

It makes me won­der where I’ll be with my Tai Chi progress in four years.

Back To Life

Christmas lights

Thumbnail: Present wrapping paper
Thumbnail: Cat under Christmas tree
Thumbnail: Scented infuser sticks
Thumbnail: Blue-pink gradient
Thumbnail: Powdered candy
 

The hol­i­days are over. I sus­pect that I’ve eat­en more choco­late over the last two weeks than ever in my life.

The two New Year’s par­ties were great, although I missed see­ing Rob at Aaron’s. I did get a New Year’s kiss though, some­thing I nor­mal­ly feel awk­ward about when the cou­ples are all par­tak­ing and I hide behind my cam­era.

The holes in my ceil­ings have yet to be fixed, and it makes me cringe every time I walk into my bed­room or bath­room, so I spent all my time in the liv­ing room. Every day, I’d wake up, eat, play games, watch movies, then fall back asleep there.

On occa­sion, I’d vis­it friends or see a movie, if only for the sake of get­ting out. Some nights, I’d open the blinds and let the burn­ing sky pour in, just so I could know that there was some­thing out there out­side of my lit­tle micro­cosm.

I’m glad to be back to life. I was feel­ing so lack­adaisi­cal and dis­con­nect­ed, drift­ing aim­less­ly with­out any rea­son or pur­pose. In a strange way, I feel recharged, if only because I had two weeks with­out a reg­u­lar sched­ule.

There Is No Such Thing As Love

Let me give it to you straight, straight like an arrow.

I’ve had these words stuck in my head for some time now. Lyrics from the tit­u­lar Dears track I first heard in uni­ver­si­ty, back when I would go home in the sum­mer and watch The Wedge on Friday nights.

I know that’s awful­ly cyn­i­cal to say, but I need proof that it is pos­si­ble today.

I just wish I could accept that fact. I’m start­ing to won­der if that’s why I keep hear­ing the words in my head. It’s my sub­con­scious remind­ing me, keep­ing me ground­ed.

Maybe that’s why we watch these movies. Hollywood would have us believe that love exists.

It’s the same sto­ry, where guy sees girl, falls in love, and hap­pi­ly ever after. In between, there’s always the overused plot ele­ment of the guy win­ning over the girl by reveal­ing him­self and his feel­ings. After all, this alone is enough to win any girl over, regard­less of whether she found him attrac­tive or not, she was mar­ried or sin­gle, or he was the nerd and she was the cheer­leader.

But love does­n’t exist in real life, as much as I want to believe that it does.

Not for me, any­way.