Posts tagged with "reflection"

Personal Horizon

Andrew and Alex are going on a back­pack­ing trip to Europe until the end of this month. They’ve request­ed a list of peo­ple inter­est­ed in receiv­ing infor­ma­tion and details about their trip, so nat­u­ral­ly I let them know that I’d like to have some doc­u­men­ta­tion dur­ing their jour­ney.

And while I under­stand their moti­va­tions for try­ing to have such an inter-per­son­al cor­re­spon­dence, I don’t under­stand why it has to be because of a trip.

Isn’t every­day life inter­est­ing enough to talk about? Can’t one learn as much on the bus ride to work as being some place com­plete­ly for­eign? I nev­er decid­ed to make an extra blog or some­thing for my trip to Hong Kong/China/Macau, even though it was still a some­what life-chang­ing event. To me, the month was anoth­er part of my sched­ule, some­thing I had planned to do. It was as sig­nif­i­cant as any­thing else going on in my life, or maybe I should say, any­thing else going on in my life was as sig­nif­i­cant as that. I hope I nev­er have to rely on trav­el to con­sid­er my life impor­tant enough to dis­cuss with some­one.

Perhaps, I feel like I still have so much to learn about every­thing else that I would gain as much just think­ing in the show­er as I would being exposed to new things. Every day can be excit­ing. Every sec­ond, there’s a chance to learn and grow. There are still so many things to fig­ure out.

And I prob­a­bly con­sid­er myself to be one of the biggest.

The Taste

I feel like speak­ing tonight. I feel like express­ing myself in some way, but can’t focus on what I want to say. I feel like I’m total­ly addict­ed. I feel like shar­ing some­thing that’s com­plete­ly embar­rass­ing, like the face trace trick or the wing chun dream.

I feel like singing. I feel like shout­ing. I feel like every­thing is just right.

I feel like I final­ly have peo­ple I can hang out with. I feel like I’ve final­ly had a mean­ing­ful rela­tion­ship.

I feel like I can dream with­out dis­ap­point­ment. I feel like I can think with­out hurt­ing. I feel like I can admire with­out jeal­ousy.

I feel like every song is the last I’ll ever hear. I feel like I’m final­ly liv­ing.

I feel hap­py.

The Uncertainty of Complacency

What do I have left to do today? I’m not real­ly sure. I’ll roll my frozen choco­late mix­ture into truf­fles tomor­row. I should show­er tonight. Fold up some clothes. Throw expired trans­fers in the garbage.

Sometimes it feels as if my life has become sim­ple, and all I have to do is turn on auto-pilot. I don’t real­ly have any­thing to wor­ry about. Money, com­pan­ion­ship, school, health, every­thing I used to think about con­stant­ly before have all ceased to be prob­lems for me. I even have peo­ple that I would con­sid­er friends.

Lately it feels as if I’ve reached a sort of equi­lib­ri­um, where any­thing can hap­pen but I’ll be able to deal with any prob­lems that arise. This is quite a change from before, where I was always wor­ry­ing, turn­ing over in my head the things that both­ered me.

It’s almost a form of com­pla­cen­cy. However, this is a sense of total com­pla­cen­cy, unlike even my pre­vi­ous com­pla­cent feel­ings. I’m unsure of whether or not this is a tem­po­rary thing, and how long it will last if this is true. Being com­pla­cent means that the excite­ment I used to feel, from the strug­gle to con­trol unde­sir­able emo­tions, to the ner­vous­ness asso­ci­at­ed to attrac­tion, to the sim­ple uncer­tain­ty of pass­ing a course, has most­ly lev­eled out. These were all scary things, but exhil­a­rat­ing nonethe­less. This com­pla­cen­cy is dif­fer­ent from feel­ing numb because it’s on a dif­fer­ent lev­el. Numbness deals more specif­i­cal­ly with emo­tion, where­as com­pla­cen­cy refers to life in gen­er­al, includ­ing emo­tion. This means that com­pla­cen­cy is not nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad thing.

I’m just not sure what to make of it as of yet.

Talking to the Walls

Why do I write? Mostly because I feel like it. I can’t write with a pen because a com­put­er allows me to orga­nize my thoughts much bet­ter. I choose to pub­lish my thoughts online. Yet I don’t write for an audi­ence, I don’t care who reads, I don’t know who’s inter­est­ed.

Does it take a read­er to val­i­date my thoughts? Not quite. I doubt I’d feel as good as I do after post­ing an entry if I just typed it in a text file and saved it on my hard dri­ve. Everything I write is post­ed and made pub­lic. So why do I post if it does­n’t mat­ter whether some­one reads or not?

It’s the act of pub­lish­ing that makes me feel val­i­dat­ed, not the belief that some­one will read it. My sat­is­fac­tion comes from self-expres­sion, not pop­u­lar­i­ty.

This is sim­i­lar to my style of dress. The clothes I wear are a reflec­tion of my mood, even though I don’t think any­one takes notice or actu­al­ly cares.

An exer­cise in expres­sion is its own reward.

Brain Scan

I nev­er talk loud­ly on my cell phone, espe­cial­ly on the bus, so that the peo­ple around will have no idea what the con­ver­sa­tion is. Actually, I rarely talk loud­ly ever, whether I’m just in class or walk­ing down a street, because I don’t want peo­ple around to know what I’m think­ing. I avoid try­ing on clothes because I’m scared peo­ple will know that I’m think­ing about buy­ing a cer­tain pair of pants. I hate ask­ing about an item on a menu because some­one will know that I’m con­sid­er­ing a cer­tain food. I almost nev­er run for the bus, because if I miss it, I’m afraid that some­one will know that I want­ed to catch that bus.

I sup­pose that it’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from what peo­ple get to know of me on a day to day basis. My clothes and my elo­cu­tion are both ways in which I express myself, but these are both things which have been decid­ed on before­hand. It’s the uncon­clu­sive sit­u­a­tions that make me ner­vous. I think I’m just scared that peo­ple may think that I’m slow.

It’s fun­ny that my mind con­sid­ers such a thing. I gen­er­al­ly don’t care what oth­er peo­ple think (unless I respect them, in which case an opin­ion becomes over­ly impor­tant), so why this? Perhaps I’m just sen­si­tive about my intel­li­gence.

I hate it when peo­ple know what I’m think­ing.