interim

Leave it to the end of a good trip to make me feel existentially depressed all over again. (Nothing to worry about; just another one of my usual mood swings.)

1. I don't often talk about a lot of the emotions I really feel throughout the days, or rather aside from whatever ends up reported here, which is more like a tiny sample of what I really experience. For the record, I'm an F by Myers Briggs standards [ignore if you dislike Myers Briggs; I understand lol]. I don't necessarily talk about my feelings that often with people, but I generally go through the same motions mentally as a lot of other F's I know who tend to be more vocal about them. Most of the time I don't think my emotions are worth voicing aloud, as they tend to feel shallow or naive in retrospect; I can get jealous over the stupidest little things and upset over issues that aren't worth getting riled over.

But I still feel, and I can't help but experience feelings that I regret having later on down the line... like becoming over-possessive of my friends. There was once a time when I become so obsessive about how close I was with people that in one circumstance I just had to have a conversation with the same particular person everyday or else I'd start growing paranoid about growing distant from that person (which I uh... tracked using our chat logs during a time when AIM didn't automatically store them) and it progressed to the point where we kinda grew sick of each other and stopped talking for a year (which might've been considered abnormal at the time). This was only with a friend though- I still worry about what would happen in a romantic relationship, like I might turn into one of those jealous and over-possessive boyfriends.

It's partly why I've kinda kept my distance sometimes from friends when I might not emotionally want to otherwise- because I'm afraid of growing sick of someone whose presence I used to enjoy or likewise alienating them. I don't want to repeat the past again.

2. I worry about becoming so preoccupied with the little things I tend to obsess over (for the last few weeks it's been Pokemon again >_>) that I grow more distant from the people I do get a chance to see, because nothing else going on in my life happens to be relevant to them at the moment. This also means that when I do see signs of the closeness of other people's relationships, I randomly feel jealous pangs inside, even though it's no business of mine and really my own fault for letting my own relationships wither anyway.

Not that they're really withering right now... but for lack of a better term, I don't feel as "connected" to most of my friends as I sometimes wish I could be (and other times I just feel apathetic about it). Sometimes I come and go in people's lives for various reasons, and then the next time I see them they tell me that it feels like they haven't seen me in ages, even if it's only been a month. This last month being Japan, two weeks of jetlag and sickness triggered hermiting, Fog City Stomp, Thanksgiving in Socal, and then Tahoe. I've kinda lost what consistency in seeing people that I had even a month ago... although my current life-flow might be considered normal by some people's standards.

3. Sometimes I feel like I'm just going through auto-pilot motions even when I'm around people now. Like I'm going along with whatever plans happen to come up as another means of keeping me distracted from the little things that might otherwise demand my attention... like my future, which I keep putting off to some later date when I'm not occupied with trips (Indonesia and NYC coming up... I know, I travel a lot) or the weekly/bi-weekly movie night-swing dancing-small group-sometimes game night routine I had going earlier before everything got all jumbled up. I don't know what will happen in the coming weeks either.

I need a break from life to figure out my life, but that's probably not that feasible without pulling something drastic like arbitrarily quitting my job or something but I don't intend to go there.

But in the meantime... I'm keeping my calendar minimal for the next couple of weeks. I need room to breathe and think again. I was starting to forget what it was like to pay attention to my own thoughts till now.

-- I also went snowboarding this weekend for the second time (and for the record it was exponentially better than this depressing post because I took a lesson instead of trying to free-form learn and failing), but that's another story. Kinda knew this already, but I find I enjoy activities a lot better when I actually understand how to do them properly. This will sound petty but I still feel a little bitter about that first experience... but that's what I get for not preparing for it ahead of time.