Posts tagged with "reflection"

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. [↩]

A Significant Year

I gen­er­al­ly loathe such arbi­trary mea­sures of time, but the fact of the mat­ter remains that there were some fair­ly impor­tant things that hap­pened in my life with­in the last 365.

I had my first art gallery exhi­bi­tion. So far, I’ve sold 12 pieces, which I’m ecsta­t­ic about. I’ve also since become good friends with the gallery own­ers, Frédéric and Misun.

I start­ed — and fin­ished — pyscho­an­a­lyt­ic ther­a­py. After my crip­pling pan­ic attack exact­ly one year ago, I was encour­aged to seek some help, and this ther­a­py end­ed up going much, much deep­er. I was­n’t scared in my rela­tion­ships because I did­n’t real­ize how much bag­gage I had. But now I know.

I got my sec­ond tat­too. This sig­nif­i­cant thing about this is that it’s prob­a­bly my last tat­too. After the first one, I final­ly feel com­plete (and sym­met­ri­cal).

I got a car. And I’m lov­ing the free­dom. After buy­ing my house and being gain­ful­ly employed, a car was the only thing left. This means I can buy large items, I don’t have to depend on friends to get me places inac­ces­si­ble by bus, I can go home from par­ties when I want, and awe­some road trips out of town.

I kissed her and she kissed me back. Sometimes, there’s noth­ing more impor­tant than hav­ing the right girl kiss you the right way.

I released ver­sion 10.0. This was by far the most pop­u­lar design of my site, being fea­tured at places like Perishable Press’s Web Design Showcase and at the top of Crestock’s 13 Minimalist Blog Designs You Really Should See. Unfortunately, this also meant I high­er pro­file, and more attempts by peo­ple to copy it.

I went through a course of Isotretinoin. This effec­tive­ly end­ed my acne, which became a pret­ty big prob­lem in the last year. It’s a won­der­ful feel­ing to wake up and not have to wor­ry about what my face was going to look like.

I got this let­ter from a read­er. I receive many let­ters and com­ments, which I great­ly appre­ci­ate, but this one real­ly stuck out because some­thing that I cre­at­ed had affect­ed some­one in an intense­ly pos­i­tive way. I hope to be able to do this again some day.

Deuteragonist

I’m the au pair with the jazz tapes, telling him to use Davis and Coltrane on the first date. The hero’s child­hood bud­dy, who dies in mor­tar fire dur­ing their ser­vice in the Second World War. The awk­ward friend who isn’t attrac­tive enough to play the lead. The sib­ling con­fi­dante, who con­tra­dicts the pro­tag­o­nist with cyn­i­cism, only to be proven wrong in a sat­is­fy­ing fit of glo­ry.

All my life, I dreamed of great­ness, of being the main char­ac­ter in some quixot­ic sto­ry.

But I’m slow­ly real­iz­ing that I’m only a deuter­ag­o­nist.

I wrote this entry about four or five months ago, but nev­er pub­lished it. I held off because I was­n’t sure if it would be true a week after I wrote it. Weeks turned into months, until the sud­den real­iza­tion that I don’t feel this way now.

I regret not pub­lish­ing it at the time. Even though it holds no rel­e­vance any­more, at the very least, it would have been a time stamp of how I felt in the moment. There are so many fleet­ing mem­o­ries and emo­tions that change here, part of my ephemer­al nature. But part of me thinks that it took this real­iza­tion to give me the strength to say it.

Maybe I’m start­ing to believe in myself.

Your Interest In My Love

I’ve always enjoyed read­ing about peo­ple who are in love, but most of all when that love is unre­quit­ed. Vivid pic­tures paint­ed in details about a saucy diastema, the observed rit­u­al of walk­ing by a cer­tain table every day to get a cup of water for paint, an unso­licit­ed brush against a hip. Stories about awk­ward­ness, weak­ness, burn­ing desire.

Perhaps it’s because I can relate to these expe­ri­ences, or because they make me feel like I’m less alone in my own clum­sy deal­ings with the oppo­site sex. Even though there are count­less sto­ries writ­ten about unre­quit­ed love, there aren’t enough. For the few of us who are “oppressed by the fig­ures of beau­ty”, as Leonard Cohen calls it, noth­ing makes us feel bet­ter. All we can do is silent­ly com­mis­er­ate with the words of those who share them­selves in this way.

When I look through my old entries, it seems like most of them are about love or a torch I car­ry in one way or anoth­er, and how this affects me.

And some­times I won­der if this is the rea­son why peo­ple come here to read my words.

Life After Now

When you get to my age and most of your best years are behind you instead of ahead of you… it is a lit­tle eas­i­er to both appre­ci­ate what you have and to regret what you will nev­er have again.

—Michael on Randomness and Disconnection

In this cul­ture, we’re bred to believe that every step of our lives will affect the next one with dire con­se­quences. If you don’t choose the right class­es in grade 10, you’ll be stuck in some­thing you don’t like in grade 11, and end up scor­ing poor­ly. If you score poor­ly in grade 11, you’ll lim­it your options for grade 12. If you don’t have the right class­es in grade 12, you’ll have few­er uni­ver­si­ties from which to choose. So on and so on, until the C+ you got in his­to­ry class means you’ll be mow­ing lawns for the rest of your life.

Maybe this is why I always feel like it’s too late.

I wish I nev­er stopped learn­ing piano, so I could have anoth­er medi­um to express myself. I wish I grew up learn­ing Tai Chi, so it’d be more nat­ur­al to me. I wish I bought a house soon­er, so I could have cap­i­tal­ized on amor­ti­za­tion in the ris­ing hous­ing mar­ket. I wish I had start­ed con­tribut­ing to my RRSPs at a younger age, so I could retire at the age I want. I wish I paid more atten­tion in French class, so I could still use it as a lan­guage. I wish I had gone to ther­a­py ear­li­er, so I would­n’t have messed up the rela­tion­ships that mat­tered.

All these sit­u­a­tions where I feel like I’m too old and passed the point where I can achieve some­thing effi­cient­ly, or max­i­mize my gains.

But then I see how hap­py some peo­ple are, who are twice my age, and haven’t planned for retire­ment yet. Or some who still live in an apart­ment, with­out a house or car for equi­ty. Some are new­ly sin­gle at fifty, and dat­ing, and hap­pi­er than they’ve ever been (and here I am, think­ing that I’ll be sin­gle for the rest of my life because every­one my age is already mar­ried). Even Lloyd, who just obtained his doc­tor­ate last year at 36, told me that one’s skills can take them any­where, and that age is nev­er a mat­ter. I’m not sure if I believe that yet, but I’d sure like to.

It all makes me won­der: is it real­ly too late? Are my best years real­ly behind me?

Perhaps they’re not.