Revisit

Preface

It's been 5 years.

I've tried coming back to this blog and writing up something new a few times since the last post, but those attempts never really panned out for some reason. 

These days, it feels a lot harder for me to write for myself than it used to. I'm usually either not in the mood, too tired from work, or too... 

...whatever about my thoughts, which I don't hold in the same regard as I used to. I used to operate in a manner where I actually wanted to document every little thought I had, because I liked keeping track of where my thoughts went and I tend to forget a lot when I don't document things. 

But since the pandemic (or arguably in the years leading up to it),  I stopped valuing my thoughts as much. You may notice it in the more serious posts leading up to the last entry before this, but those posts were starting to become too heavy for me. I don't enjoy coming back to them. 

I also feel like a different person today than the person who wrote them. 

It feels weird re-reading my older writings. I remember the feelings I had when I wrote them at the time, but I'm also relying on memories of those feelings and not the feelings themselves, which I no longer feel so strongly. In a way, I feel very detached from the thoughts I had then, which used to mean something more to me.

And I don't know if I like that or not.

I would say I'm much happier, much lighter today than I was in the past. The scars are still there, but they're less obvious to most people who interact with me unless you know my history. And it's not something I bring up most of the time these days anyway.

But I do miss the intensity of my feelings sometimes. Which may seem like an odd thing to say, but if you know... you know. (just kidding)

All I mean to say is though, the depths of my pains were also some of the moments where I felt the most alive in the past. These days, I'm still alive, but I also feel more muted in comparison. It's ultimately better for me in the long run, more sustainable, but what it means to feel "alive" is different to me now, I guess.

So with that said, let me try to recap a bit.

The Past Few Years

The process of trying to figure out my career, sexuality, faith, politics, and relationship with my family and friends led to me having a mental breakdown when I was 27 and a multi-year long battle with depression that I believe only really ended with the eventual return from the pandemic. 

I believe my breakdown fundamentally stemmed from me feeling unable to live up to the values instilled in me by my upbringing, which were in conflict with the values I had developed from my own life experiences. I felt like I was trying to please everyone when everyone was giving me conflicting advice, and I could not handle the knowledge that I was going to fail people in my life.

Two years after the fact, I had another quake in my life that I am not inclined to describe in more detail here, except to say that it fundamentally changed how I see relationships (whether I wanted it to or not). I still enjoy the presence of other people, but I also tend to see myself as equidistant in some way to everyone, even the people I am close to. 

About a year ago, as I was finally coming out of my nearly decade-long depressive slump, I decided to change therapists, in part because of an off-hand comment that was made one time suggesting that I might be on the spectrum (to my friend replied, "you've been seeing him for 8 years and he's only telling you this now??")

So I switched to my friend's therapist on his recommendation. Within the first session I was recommended to see a psychiatrist, which after two inconclusive sessions led to a $10K assessment at a Neuropsychology clinic where I finally got diagnosed with Inattentive ADHD... + Other. Other in this case meaning having unspecified subthreshold symptoms of autism without actually having autism. One of those symptoms being the fact that I like to spent inordinate hours of my day writing to-do lists without actually doing them.

Apparently from assessments, I'm relatively high in intelligence, which means I'm also good at masking my symptoms, which is why this slipped under the radar until I turned 35. But high stress at my job was really starting to expose cracks that bled into my personal life.

As my current therapist puts it, I didn't really have the support system to address my needs as a neurodivergent (ADHD+) person for decades. I've bled into more of a caretaker role with my family (which is half-disabled) over the years, and a lot of the underlying things I struggle with in my day-to-day were often treated as personal failings (i.e. "Ryan is careless") with both family + peers, which led me to internalize a lot of shame as an adult. 

I spent more than 17 years of my adult life not feeling like an adult, and also feeling incapable of learning how to become more like one. I had this life-long feeling that something was fundamentally wrong with me, and wondering why I struggled with issues that other people in my life seemed to have no problem with. 

I feel like everyday chores and adult skills do not come naturally to me at all, and that I do not have the physical intuition to figure things out for myself without someone else showing me how first (and even when they do show me, if it requires lots of intermediate steps, I forget very easily unless I turn it into muscle memory). I often tell people that you should assume I will break something if it is a physical object that requires being careful when handling. I am accustomed to seeing other people maneuver around me to accommodate certain things like me not paying attention to my surroundings, and while I am not totally oblivious to what they are doing, I have a kind of learned helplessness about it.

From all outer appearances though, I'm actually doing quite well for myself (at least financially and career-wise)... so why am I so bothered by the littlest of things like how to measure how many cups of hot chocolate it takes to make for a party when the container is listed in fluid ounces, and now I'm beating myself up over not being able to do basic complex mental math with unit conversion because my short term memory is shit handicapped by my ADHD impairing my attention?

(I also spent a half hour trying to reattach a cap to a shampoo bottle which resulted in me breaking the cap and substituting it with a completely mismatched bottle cap that stares back at me hauntingly everyday.)

So anyway, after all of the above happened, I went back to my psychiatrist and decided I didn't want to do drugs for now (would have worn off as soon as I stopped taking them), and instead opted for this much more expensive option called neurofeedback, which entails my sitting in front of a laptop watching Netflix while wearing a cap wired to an amplifier that sends EEG signals from my brain to the computer and makes the screen go brighter/dimmer depending on what signals the treatment program is looking to amplify/discourage. It operates under the idea that my ADHD is leading to neurotypical neural pathways in my brain not functioning the way they should (some combination of too fast and too slow), and is trying to course correct them over time.

It sounds like a lot of hokey to be honest (I honestly was skeptical), but I think studies have shown that Inattentive ADHD is one of the areas where this has the most efficacy, and I am starting to see some apparent improvements in my day-to-day, so fingers crossed this actually helps in the long run. My therapist has also noted more recently that I'm not struggling with executive dysfunction lately in ways that I did originally when we started talking.

So I have some hope that things will get better. Just a bit of a lament at how long it took me to get here.

Current

On a much less serious note, I'm trying to prepare for several back-to-back trips happening this coming week (Yosemite-London-Amsterdam-NYC) and instead of preparing for those trips directly (aka packing), I've been agonizing over which Broadway show I'm going to give up seeing on this trip due to lack of time and writing this post.

The shows I'm seeing are the main highlight for me; I'm trying to cram 13 over this trip lol. 

What I'm most excited for:

• the new Mischief play (Comedy About Spies) as I'm a huge fan of the other Goes Wrong shows for their British slapstick humor
• Jonathan Bailey performing live again in Richard II (last time I saw him was 2018 in Company in London)
• Benjamin Button on West End, which feels like they took the original Fitzgerald short story and replanted it in a Cornish folk village with Come From Away vibes
• Oh Mary!, a dark comedy play about the wife of Abraham Lincoln (the premise drew me in immediately)
• Old Friends, a revue of Stephen Sondheim (my favorite Broadway lyricist/composer) with Lea Salonga and Bernadette Peters
• Jeremy Jordan yodeling in Floyd Collins
• Nicole Scherzinger in the noir inspired Sunset Boulevard (I watched the original film with William Holden and Gloria Swanson a decade ago)
• Dead Outlaw, a Western by the composer of Band's Visit (and feels completely different/new)
• Sarah Snook in Dorian Gray, apparently like no other theater experience
• Audra in Gypsy. the only musical I was already familiar with on this trip, but looking forward to seeing her take in person (I've already been streaming the soundtrack...)
• Maybe Happy Ending (well really for Dez Duron's singing <3)
• Pirates of Penzance with David Hyde Pierce, looking forward to the camp in this one

for next time (likely September+ at the current rate...)

• I wound up giving up on Operation Mincemeat this trip, but will likely return sooner than later this year because I already spoiled myself on Dear Bill and need to see it live (edit: wound up seeing Mincemeat instead of Gypsy)
• the new immersive Phantom-themed Masquerade
• Heathers coming back to NYC
• maybe Little Shop of Horrors finally

Another Update

Currently Listening: Porco Rosso - Joe Hisaishi in Budokan
(if I could describe what bliss feels like, it would be this song. amazing live.)

I recently (as in, yesterday) just got off a two week depression period that came with not really wanting to do anything (aside from playing Pokemon Go in distracted I'm-walking-40,000-steps-today bursts), and now I feel like want to reclaim my life again.

I also randomly had a feeling that I wanted to write more often again, but I don't necessarily feel like doing long-form posts as much right now because it takes too much of a [mental, emotional, time] toll for me to write them right now... and a lot of what I'd have considered writing in the past has become too personal/interpersonal to publish here, so I'm going to revert back to a little more frequent but less serious format akin to how I used to post back in the old days; most of my thoughts tend to occur this way anyway. So let's see how this goes.

I'm also bringing back the Currently Listening feature I used to have back in my livejournal days, because it's nice to keep track of what I'm listening to in a non-automated way sometimes. Although this may be less "currently listening" and more "currently stuck in my head," as I've been wanting to know where my involuntary recollections have been taking me lately.

a bundle of nerves

I've been having trouble figuring out how exactly to put the rest of this into words lately, as every time I try, I feel like I only vaguely capture what it is I'm really feeling, and only through the extremities or what could be seen if anyone were actually looking. Like I can only describe my symptoms rather than the cause of them. Perhaps this is just the only straightforward way to go about it. Words can only go so far in describing an emotion anyway.

Other friends have noted my tendency to avoid actually describing my emotions, which is more or less on point. It's not that I'm unaware of my emotions; I just don't trust them anymore (as mentioned in the previous post). I am incredibly fickle these days: in one moment I can go from experiencing pure bliss, to jealousy, to self-pity, to paranoia, to paralyzed fear because by this point I have no idea how to function in front of people anymore, only to have to try and remind myself of what was giving me joy hours earlier. In a social function I can happily respond to a query from a friend and then put on a brief smile for a picture, only to start mulling over what went on in the immediate aftermath because all I could see in my own face was an emotionally impoverished individual about to collapse under the weight of having to be "on" two days in a row. (And also frustration because the photographer couldn't get the lighting right on my phone's camera after three tries. -_-)

And then it takes me a full day to recover, a day I promised parents over the phone I would spend studying because they're worried about my health and my future. If I were still working right now, I would be somewhere in a quiet room whiling the time away till the day ended-- except oh wait there weren't many truly private spaces in the new building anyway.

I can't focus on much else right now except revising my music playlists to reflect my current mood because a couple of the guys told me they'd been trying to channel my music taste for this event and it hit my pride in the right spot (although I noted to them that if you really want to get people on the dance floor, you need to use more widely recognized songs; people don't usually get up to dance for songs they don't know.). I don't have many friends who share the same taste as me, and of the ones that do, I rarely see them because my closer social circles evolved out of other circumstances anyway. And I'm not sure if I'd even fit in with the demographic of people who do share my interests. I find it a multiple-year-long struggle to fit in with most groups of people anyway, and some of those connections still feel tenuous or seasonal at best.

A few months ago, one of my friends had the foresight to tell me that I should ask for help more often, because I'm often stubborn and hate asking people for help even though I have no problem when others do the same of me. In light of more recent events, I would say that half the time, I don't know that I need to ask for help until it's too late. The other half, I'm just tired of having people worry about me all the time... even though I often behave in such a way as to invite worry anyway, because that seems to be the only way I know how to ask people for help these days: out of desperation and pity, so that my own self-pity can feel justified by others' responses.

If I were to expound on why I personally don't feel like an adult (as opposed to my parents' opinion), I would say that I feel ill-equipped to deal with or respond to the complexities of an adult life. Or at least, relative to my own view of what that means, because I am aware that many "adults" probably don't meet that standard either.

I question my ability to function in a 9-5 weekday work environment when I frequently have days like today where I can't even focus on anything (oh, so much moreso when I was still working) and struggle to fall asleep at a normal hour, for no real reason other than my mind being unable to "turn" off despite not actually thinking about anything. I am easily overwhelmed these days by deceptively simple situations like shopping or the prospect of having to interact with people more than one day in a row. I don't trust myself being alone away from home for extended periods of time (more than a day), out of fear of having a breakdown in public or even in front of friends, even though I have wanted to be able to travel independently in the future for a long time now.

Sometimes I wish I could just disappear from the view of people for a long, extended while, just long-enough to get my bearings-- but then I fear for what will become of me when I come back after so long, if I will find it even more difficult to deal with people because of my absence and being out of touch with conventional social situations or whatever they've evolved into in the future. I wish more relationships were as easy as just showing up as if you both had never left in the first place.

And it's hard for me to plan for how much rest I would really need anyway-- ugh the notion of even planning for rest turns me off; rest should not be "structured" around. I might only be able to afford a day while I have work when what I really want is a month or semester, like I do now. In that respect, my current situation is really a blessing here. But it makes me worry for what might've happened now or in the future if/when I find myself stuck in a job I no longer want but unable to muster the fortitude or tenacity to just quit and figure out how to continue living from there.

In the times I've been able to get by recently, it's only been by temporarily shutting off the part of my mind that worries about all of the above until I can barely handle ignoring it anymore. Pressure to perform in front of other people? Just do it, you'll be fine. And I actually do perform fairly well under
some level of pressure in the spur of the moment, when I know what I have to do. I think my performance at work even improved significantly when I actually felt that there was pressure to finish by a certain deadline. I have trouble just making things happen on my own otherwise, even though part of me so earnestly desires to be able to do that.

And then I find myself a couple of hours later just sitting there, not knowing what else to do with myself now that I've finished my work. I have nothing pressing waiting for me at home, so I just wait and linger, not inclined to say anything but not inclined to leave just yet either, while little moments I am thankful for later still occur. And when I finally do manage to leave (because everyone else has has had their time), I just wait in my car, trying to allow my uncertain emotional state to settle before driving, because my awareness of my own fragility in these moments just makes me even more prone to falling into shambles. Why am I even crying right now? Oh right, because I feel spent and overused like a ragged doll that's been around for too long even though I still long to be needed by someone more than I already am. Because I can still see places in which I could've been available had I known, and had I been asked, but can't actually conceive being able to perform now that I'm wrestling with the doubts and insecurities that emerged from the newfound knowledge that neither happened in the first place (and this is not the first time nor the first group of people I've experienced this with).

I wish I could be more present for other people and not so consumed with my own internal affairs all the time. Perspective helps in providing a corrective to my insecurities, but at the end of the day, I'm still overly introspective, self-contained, and then self-conscious, particularly of the ways in which I'll never match up in the same terms. I know I've received a lot of advice from other people about needing to focus on improving my own circumstances rather than comparing them with others, because everyone has their own shit they're dealing with on their own terms. I've even given said advice.

But it still hits me hard sometimes. How long it takes me to deal with long-term problems that others around me have surpassed given the same opportunity in much less time, because I am easily distracted and preoccupied with every little detail along the way and otherwise purposefully ignorant of the reality of my own situation until I can ill-afford to remain so. How lacking I am in initiative, because a good percentage of the times I do initiate something, I end up killing myself internally with self-doubt and knee-jerk stress responses and actual physical cramping in the face of uncertainty that has yet to materialize into anything meaningful, even when it's for something I do actually want. How often I screw up and make simple mistakes, wasting money in unnecessary situations (like just now with the tux rental I wound up not using), and then receive remarks from other people no longer surprised at my capacity for clutter in all aspects of my life. How even more frequently I'm just not in the "mood" to do work, errands, and things that just need to be done when I actually have the time to do them. How emotionally ill-equipped I feel to deal with all of these unexpected moments as they come swinging at me head on, forcing me to try and hide my emerging sense of helplessness because most social functions (that I've had to be present for) are not the time nor place for those feelings to come out.

How even my happiest moments are tinged on the underside with thoughts I do not want to be having, but cannot help but have, and so have to live with the reality of being self-aware, of knowing that I am capable of wishing ill on even my closest friends, in order to make myself feel "better." And that I cannot voice it in front of them, because the last words I ever want to hear from a friend again are, "Why are you telling me this?"

I am a nervous wreck of a person, overwhelmed by the burden of the adult responsibilities I already have, wrestling with insecurities that have been eating away at me for years, telling myself I can't keep internally shutting down like this every time another life event happens. And I know I can't keep living the rest of my life like I have thus far, forced to carve out space and time I've had difficulty finding out of a pre-defined "schedule" for my life in order to actually deal with my mental health issues.

Enough is enough. I don't know what the future holds yet, but I'm only looking up from here.

---

I'm writing this now because I do not want to forget what I have felt in the past days, no, weeks and months-- semi-frequently trapped in states of utter, seemingly inescapable emotional despair, until I finally had spent enough time for them to feel distant, as periods of isolation coupled with (some amount of) sleep are apt to do for me these days. Unfortunately, this leaves me with little to process afterwards when I get around to it, because trying to conceive of those moments in retrospect often feels like trying to decipher the mind of another person who only shows up in your dreams. It all feels so foreign after the fact.

That, and I know I will likely experience all of these feelings again in the future, quite possibly at a time when someone else is actually paying attention for once. And I want to be ready for them then.

As an aside, because of this weekend I've unwittingly spent some time fantasizing what my future wedding playlist would be like if I ever were to have one. At this point I imagine it covering musicals, Disney, ambient IDM, jazz and swing, indie rock and pop, hip hop and R&B, oldies, video games, anime, and classically orchestrated, remixed, and normal versions of danceable guilty pleasures... because I have unrealistically crazy daydream ideas like that. (Okay, I know I tend to hate on popular songs, but sometimes if I like the main melody enough, there's a chance that I won't get sick of it as easily. though that may be in part from seeing such songs paired with inspiring dancers, as in these videos.

Also props to last year's Cal students for this. and shout out to my favorite Cal a capella group of all time, which I was reminded of today at lunch when I heard a speaker playing this.)

things to order at Jayakarta

Just visited again last weekend and I forgot that there were things I wanted to try there from the last few times I went... note to self, check this next time.

Menu

appetizers:
- otak-otak
- martabak telor
- pangsit goreng

regular dishes:
- bihun
- mie tek-tek (or mie goreng. this is the only place I've seen that does bimie?)
- capcay
- ayam kalasan
- kangkung belacan
- lontong cap go meh
- rendang daging
- sate ayam/kambing/sapi
- pepes ikan
- plain nasi uduk

how did I not see this on the menu:
- gado-gado
- soto ayam/babat/betawai
- ikan bakar
- telor bali
- bakmi ayam
- baso kuah

dessert:
- es teler
- es cendol

when they're in stock:
- bakcang
- risoles

Can't wait till family visits again so we can order ALL OF THIS.

Ladybugs

Lately I've been finding couples of ladybugs hanging around the toilet in my bathroom. I smacked one of them only for it to fly-fall onto my pants-leg AHHH MAKE IT STOP.

I'll have a more substantial update later. Between traveling and work and the new Durarara!! and being obsessed with [looking up] books, I haven't had time to do much else... and now I have to wake up for a 6 AM meeting. -_-

Till next time.

Plane Crashes

Air Asia QZ 8501 vanished early this morning local time, somewhere to the east of the Indonesian island of Belitung while en route to Singapore from Surabaya. The plane is still yet to be found.

This feels uncomfortably close to home right now considering my family and I just flew the opposite route (Singapore to Bali, specifically - but they're pretty close) two days ago, and we're flying Air Asia tomorrow to Jakarta.

I used to have a major phobia of plane crashes over large bodies of water and air turbulence during flights (ironic considering the number of times I've been on a plane in my life: too many), but lately I've been feeling mostly apathetic about it, considering that the likelihood of dying in a plane crash is statistically much lower compared to dying in a car crash. It's just that it's easier to picture escaping from a car crash compared to a plane crash (especially from a plane going into the ocean), and the crashes this year have been more high profile than usual even though the overall frequency was lower, so it seems a lot scarier than usual.

(Then again, I haven't experienced any turbulence on a flight as bad as one particular trans-Pacific flight from 8 or so years ago that apparently caused planes smaller than the one I was on to shift a few thousand feet... I thought I was going to die on that flight.)

It's really more like a "I won't be paranoid about it until it actually happens" kind of feeling though, since if it ever does happen I probably won't be worrying about it for very long anyway. Que sera, sera.

Still, for the families awaiting news on the fate of that plane... Lord have mercy.

contrast

It’s a Monday night and I’m not feeling particularly in the mood to do anything right now. I’m having one of those existential mood swing kind of days… actually, maybe for the past couple of days, though I can’t seem to pinpoint the source of it all. One of those days where I feel like crying but I don’t know why.

To paraphrase something said by Louis CK once, sadness is a beautiful emotion. We focus so much on the pursuit of happiness, the need to feel content with our lives or otherwise get to a point where we can feel content if we’re not, but often without considering that sometimes the sad moments are fundamentally necessary to our being. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I didn’t go through those periods of sadness experienced in the past, honestly. (Of course, I’m the kind of person who tends to focus a little too much on the sad sometimes… I’m drawn to it like a moth to a flame.)

Happiness… or euphoria even isn’t something that just comes to you naturally or normally just like that, unless you’re purposefully being ignorant of the bad in the world today. This weekend felt like a mixed bag because I was feeling cognizant of how I was pursuing pleasure at the expense of being present with people.

I saw bodies in the ground. Selfishness that was celebrated. Judgement while recognizing you were the one judging. Ever since he flashed the red light I've been seeing red all over. You want to just enjoy the moment.

To fundamentally be next to someone and not know him at the same time. That is the tragedy of living the human life.

Back in the college days, I used to idealize this concept of selflessness. That truly loving another person meant being fully present with them, being willing to accept them in all their flaws and virtues, surrendering my own selfish desires for the sake of serving another person. It was the kind of paradigm of living that I saw in Jesus’s life story, a description of the kind of person who I would admire and look up to as a person. I would see these qualities lived out dynamically in some of the people around me and almost idolize them for it.

But as anyone in the church would probably tell you, idolizing anything in this world is a dangerous course to follow. You essentially take something that’s otherwise fundamentally good and turn it into an unhealthy obsession, and left unaddressed with time, that turns into a nightmare of inescapable proportions. And in some cases you start to wonder if your life would be better if you’d never discovered this “good” thing to begin with, if it could somehow also lead to so much bad in your life. [That’s pretty much what the church’s problem with sex has been, for that matter.]

Digression aside, I don’t know how I feel about selflessness anymore… other than perhaps a fleeting ideal a lot of the time. Subconsciously I still value it a lot, which is why I feel so upset inside when I start to see how selfish I can really be in unexpected situations, how I can somehow act apathetically about other people but still feel enough to be bothered by the fact that I'm being apathetic. But at the same time I can see the value of preferring to be alone over being with people sometimes... I've had some of my happiest moments alone, to be frankly honest. And I'm reminded how ironically some of the best artists and workers perfected their craft at the expense of their interpersonal relationships with the people who were closest to them. Did this devalue the great work that they did, the impact that they wound up having on future generations anyway?

You think the world would be better if everyone simply got along and never had to experience sadness or brokenness in their life. If they never had to deal with unfavorable people, never had to go through a period of loss, never had to deal with humiliation and failure and depression and anxiety and suffering at a fundamental level, because those experiences damage the heart and soul and leave behind scars that don’t ever really go away and memories that you wish you could forget, because oblivion is bliss when you really think about it. Life would be a lot better if you didn’t have to deal with shit all the time from other people and your environment and yourself.

But that’s not how the world works. You learn to accommodate the unfavorable experiences in your life, with all of the disappointments and heartaches that they bring, and hopefully you grow from them. The good things in the world will sometimes lead to bad experiences, and the bad experiences will sometimes lead to good things. These bittersweet moments may make me feel sad, but I have to remember that that’s just how they are. It’s okay to be sad for now, but remember that it’s not all just sad in the long run.

Sometimes you have to be a little selfish to really appreciate the value of selflessness.
Or as Matilda puts it, “sometimes you have be a little bit naughty."

Ryan. Photo Edition.

So I started a new blog to keep track of the random photos I take on my phone (and rarely used digital camera) sometimes. I used to just post the photos onto Facebook, but after a rather disappointing experience with the UI last time, I decided it'd be easier and maybe a little more personal to gradually post them in a blog-like format. I'll get to the pics from Europe and New York last year eventually!

http://r-swars.tumblr.com/

And that is all. (well, other than the ant invasion I discovered in my car today, but that's another story...) Good night!

A history of poking

So some of you are probably aware that I have a bit of a phobia when it comes to being poked. I'm really sensitive in my side area, so nowadays any motion that people make towards me that even remotely resembles a poke there is enough to put me on edge or in defensive mode. A lot of this has largely stemmed from a history of being poked since middle school... some of which was in jest, and some of which I still feel bitter about sometimes.

Exhibits:

A. In fifth grade, people in my class used to make fun of me for using the word basically, because apparently that's not a word fifth graders normally used and it made me sound nerdy or something. One of my classmates took made a point of this during PE by yelling "BA-SIC-LY" while poking me in the side with each syllable. And I was a bit miffed because I'd helped this person in class before, and it hurt a lot.

B. In seventh grade, during math class and either history or geography or some sort, both of which were held in the same room, both of the people sitting behind me in class would get bored and decide to poke me in the back with a pen. If you've never been poked in the back with a pen before, it stings a lot more than a finger poke does. 

In a fit of anger I used to retaliate against the second person, a girl, by whacking her in the head with a planner, and for some weird reason that would just make her laugh. The more times I whacked her in the head, the more she kept on laughing... and she just wouldn't stop. -__- I never understood her.

C. Also in seventh grade, during lunchtime my friends and I had wars that pretty much reduced to me and my lunchpail vs. an army of pokers (at this point it was more in jest than really hurting me persay). It was like freeze tag except tags were pokes in the side, I was the only person who could get "tagged," and I could fight back by whacking attackers with my lunch pail. 

One person managed to successfully catch me off guard with a poke so sudden that it caused me to collapse and lie down on the ground for several minutes. Probably the "best" poke I ever got, although it worried everyone else haha. I also broke the tupperware inside my lunchpail once after whacking an attacker with it.

D. In eighth grade, one of my friends pulled off an arbitrary poke into my side, and I instinctively swung my arm backwards at him and my fist made contact with the inside of his mouth. He wasn't hurt, but ugh, saliva.

E. Sophomore year of high school Spanish, the girl sitting behind me decided to poke me in the back with a pen cause she was bored. Ironically this girl had no knowledge of my history of pokes, but I didn't retaliate because this was high school and I didn't feel like getting in trouble (also I have no idea how we got away with the things we did during middle school). But ugh, she was incredibly annoying, and I'd forgotten how much more painful pen pokes were.

F. In college, my apartment-mates got wind of my poking weakness and I distinctly recall one incident that resulted in me grabbing a trash bin filled with firewood (...I don't think it was the axe) and marching towards his suddenly locked room. But nothing came of it luckily.

G. A few of my church friends today like to greet me by poking me, although one time I was holding a cup of hot tea that I almost reflexively splashed on him. I don't get poked as much anymore, but sometimes... Bush...

And that is my history of poking. I'm not generally a violent person, but this is one area that has been able to rile me up in the past and I would caution anyone considering approaching me in this fashion to tread lightly. 

addendum to the last post

Tonight was the most fun I've had from swing dancing in a loong time, literally. A reminder to not become subservient to my moods, especially when they discourage me from enjoying the good things in life.

Also to eat less spicy food before dancing because ow my intestines.

Weekend Blues

"The mind of an introvert is like a hurricane that never ends."

- my last roommate, Sang. (or something along those lines as my memory's hazy.)

This blog is full of thoughts. When I'm not actively or passively thinking about some particular topic, I wind up thinking about how empty my mind feels, like it's been dulled or distracted or aimlessly meandering somewhere. And I end up feeling like I'm not really here right now, like I'm actually in some other world mentally, or some other plane detached from reality because I'm not capable of paying attention to anything around me.

Of course, it took a rather humiliating first snowboarding experience for me to actively notice this trend of thinking that's been cropping up every so often. Well, it's not like I hadn't noticed it before- I've probably mentioned it a bunch of times on this blog or something- but to connect it with the feelings of wounded pride, my tendency to overthink things in every situation, and another offhand conversation just earlier about the disconnect between what goes on in a person's mind and the words that come out of their mouth, it all kind of came together to the surface as I lay there in the snow, unable to get up because it hurt too much to. Snowboarding can be fun, but not so much and rather much more exhaustingly so when the only way you know how to stop sliding is by crashing and falling onto your arms and knees and then occasionally somehow flipping over and landing roughly on your ass [because no one really opted to take lessons and you have no physical intuition for these things].

At the end of a run I'd find myself spacing out at the bottom, not really able to do much else. I was running through my head all sorts of random explanations and scenarios, what kind of things I would say the moment I saw people again cause they'd all finished first. That part in the brackets above is my "official" explanation so to speak, the one that I finally came down to as a logical response to people asking how my experience was, because it's actually true for the most part and makes sense and if anyone actually asks me I'll probably say that. But it wasn't the only reasoning that came to mind.

The first one: "I'm not evolutionarily fit for this most physical activities." Mainly because of how slow I am in general to pick up on sports of any kind, and because having exercise-induced asthma limits the extent to which I can try. I am easily discouraged when I can't breathe.

Second: "I'm averse to physically risky activities and don't really enjoy this." Which then led to the inevitable question, "Why am I even doing this if I don't enjoy this?" To fit in because it sounds logical to try snowboarding at Tahoe in the winter if you've never done it before and most of your other friends are doing it? To be honest, in the days leading up to this I wasn't really looking forward to it or dreading it even - I just felt more apathetic overall.

Third: "I just naturally fail at this, like many things at life." I was reminded of my friend who likes to call me out when I fail at things (last time it was parallel parking, when I usually don't have that many problems parallel parking except for this time when this friend was in the car, because like all of my other failures in life, it had to happen only then) and who I may or may not have an unacknowledged grudge against in this respect. 

Fourth: "I didn't sleep enough, and my body feels sluggish right now and isn't really responding to what I want it to do." Which is kinda true; after each of the first two runs it took me awhile to just muster the energy to unlatch my boots from the board and get up. I couldn't even unhook it properly the first time and had to ask a couple of passerbys for help until one of them finally figured out that I was pressing the wrong object to unhook it. And then after the third run it took me a while to figure out how to take my helmet off after having already done it several times earlier. 

[I also didn't notice the first time around that there was a bar you had to lower over you to prevent yourself falling off of the skilift. Or rather, I was wondering why there wasn't a bar because I was sitting alone and didn't see it behind my head and mused 3/4ths of the way up that it would be really easy to just fall off right there and break my legs or something. I resisted the temptation to do so.]

Fifth: "There are too many damn people here." Which was also true; the line grew excessively long over the course of the day and from the very first part of the course onward I spent most of my time crashing because I was trying to avoid running into people, even as I got crashed into several times, once in the arm and another time in the leg from behind by a skier who fell while getting off of the skilift. And then another time as I was trying to walk back up the course a little bit to avoid sliding through the course boundary.

Sixth: "What have I been doing with my life?" When I think of my other friends who do this more often and enjoy it, and those who talk of buying snowboards and going again, when the thought of that doesn't really evoke much desire or interest in my mind.

Seventh: "I can't recall any of the how-to-deal-with-anxiety exercises we did." So much for small group. Or rather, I predicted this would probably happen because it's a lot harder to recall such things when you're really feeling anxious.

It feels sillier looking back on it all now. But in the heat of the moment when you're exhausted from crashing too much and also experiencing what feels like a rather shitty not-your-day- not to mention...

- failing at attaching my ticket to my jacket several times with the un-reusable latch thingies

- thinking I'd lost my goggles while I was wearing them

- having the skin on my knuckles get chafed off by the wrist guards I was wearing
- having dust and snow blow around my sunglasses into my eyes in the parking lot 

- witnessing a neighboring car door smack my car while I was inside it

- experiencing that evening what felt like the effects of a worsening alcohol allergy from a single Fireball shot: palpitating heart/head, difficulty breathing, shivering without feeling cold, and then a headache. Not that this hasn't happened before, but it happened a lot faster this time. I may just have to give up alcohol altogether (not like I'd be missing it much).

- "why are you always like this, Ryan?" 

  "I feel too hot; I just need some cold air right now."

...it just makes the doom and gloom depression feel all too real. I can say with a straight face in the midst of it that I'm just being overly dramatic and making a big deal out of everything and yet still continue to fall prey to my emotions and stress and pessimism, all over a simple snowboarding venture that would otherwise barely faze the likes of most other folks. It makes me wonder why I feel so out of place and disconnected from the experiences of everyone else, like I'm not really here (and then end up aimlessly thinking about that), and why I couldn't simply just fit in and enjoy this trip like everyone else. And of course why I think so damn much, when I don't really want to, because it makes me start to do weird and erratic things that make other people worry when I'm really just trying to clear my head.

It'd be easy to just focus on my raw emotions immediately as they happened, to end up calling this day one of the worst experiences I've had in a while because of how unenjoyable it may have felt a lot of the time and how much of it I spent worrying over how I might respond to people when they saw me. Would I be able to cover all of this up with a straight face, to play it off with the excuses I came up with, to convince them that their worries were really unfounded all along? (I was surprised at how much I was able to play it off, anyway... kinda.) 

But over the course of the day, I was pleasantly surprised by a friend reaching out trying to help me when I didn't realize I'd needed it, even if just for a brief moment. People who were willing to stand outside with me in the middle of the snowy dark night and just talk for a bit, who were nice enough to ask how I was doing (even though it might've felt a little redundant after a while... I hope I wasn't too worrisome), and a friend who was willing to stick it out with me on the course for a bit while I was trying to get up and failing... and then somewhat ineffectively coach me to go "LEFT! LEFT! LEFT!" when I had no idea what LEFT meant [with respect to my legs]. 

I don't regret the experience, or the chance to be able to share it in some way big or small with the other folks that went; I'm really thankful for it. But too often I am prone to focusing just on the bad moments or rather on the sheer weight that they seem to take on in my mind, as a way of centering my life on my own immediate emotional well-being, when there is so much more going on around me that I'm not even paying attention to. It's times like these where I wish my mind weren't so overactive, so that I could just relax and focus on the good for once. But that's just something I'm still learning to deal with even now.

It was difficult to consciously resist the temptation to just blow up at everyone and everything and make a scene or something like I might've done in the past- well in my case that tends to lead to me running away more than anything- but now, it all feels like a brief moment or footnote in time, and like the majority of thoughts it just goes by unnoticed mostly... which is fine, honestly. Just as this life is but a moment... or a dream.

"...to realize that all your life-- all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain-- it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person."

- True Detective

This has been on my mind often lately - the sense that I place too much emphasis on the details of my own experience without acknowledging how much of it doesn't really matter that. As Cohle says on the show, we would like to think that our own lives are really that significant, that meaningful, largely in part because this life lived through our own eyes is the only thing we know. And a good deal of what I really felt this weekend amounted to me just selfishly wanting my own misery to be acknowledged by other people, as if that really mattered, and then worrying about how irrelevant my life felt when I couldn't communicate that and was afraid of alienating others. And this wasn't the first time either; it happens fairly often when I'm in social situations... only that it was more poignant this time around. Why do I get so hung up over these little things? 

I guess it's because... I'm human.

[And yes, I realize the length of this post is in itself a likely product of my overthinking mind, but that's just how I roll.]

Shen-Yun

So apparently I've already developed a reputation on here to the point where people are expecting me to write reviews for the latest shows I've seen... I didn't realize haha. I've actually seen a number of shows already since the last couple of posts that I haven't bothered to mention or write up on here- partly out of laziness and partly because I have to be in a certain mood to write up those kinds of impressions to begin with, which doesn't happen often enough. I guess by request (this is for you, Becky) I'll do a bit of a write-up here, although more impression than review as judging dance productions isn't really my kind of thing. I'd be interested in hearing perspectives from actual dancers, though.

Most recently I was up in SF over the weekend to see the much fabled advertised Chinese dance production, Shen-Yun, with a few folks, and which if you didn't know already (or couldn't tell from how often people advertising it in the streets of SF will throw fliers at your face as you're leaving a theater production) is apparently run by some cultish Chinese offshoot of Buddhism/Taoism called Falun Gong/Falun Dafa that officially claims to not have anything to do with either... which is probably correct. This influence came across rather clearly in the production itself, what with almost all of the operatic songs (am I using the term correctly?) having propaganda-ish lyrics: "the world will be destroyed, and only after following Falun Dafa will we be saved!"... or something like that, don't quote me on it.

The dances themselves were the real highlight of the show, showcasing influences from what I guess would be fantastic stories in Chinese history and just the general culture of the laypeople, although considering who operates the show, it's bit hard to judge how accurate the stories are to the original... stories themselves I guess, without having foreknowledge of them. Regardless, I was entertained enough by the dances themselves; the production quality was pretty good and some of the visual effects the dancers pulled off with their props were mesmerizing in a way. The performers themselves are pretty talented at what they do. Better than what I would expect from a cult- okay fine, I'll stop saying that.

That said, the first time I saw a cartoon character in the background animation suddenly pop out from underneath the screen as a real-life person, it was a bit jarring, if not amusing.... actually, I'm not sure how well animation fits with historical interpretive dance anyway; considering the quality of the background animation, it felt a little unnatural if anything, looking more like a polished version of the kind of graphics you might see in a video game like Age of Empires... 2. Or maybe it's somehow more authentically Chinese that way- I don't know haha.

Some of the scenes depicted in animation were really weird, and part of me wonders if it's just a cultural thing or whether native Chinese would consider it normal for random ancient and modern Chinese laypeople and Buddhas to fly across the sky and slay dragons and battle toads with magical giant rings and invisible... whirlwind powers... or something. while dancing and somersaulting. I don't even know. Actually that description makes it sound more surreal and awesome than it really was. It was a bit more mixed in reality.

(For some reason right now I'm randomly reminded of the penultimate Avatar: The Last Airbender episode where the gaang see a hyper-exaggerated theatrical production based on their own travels over the course of last three seasons. Best episode ever, but besides that perhaps the same kind of analogous interpretation.)

Overall, I thought it was a worthwhile performance to see once as well as an excuse to dress up just for the heck of it. They said they change up the show every year, but I'm not sure if I'd be willing to see it again so soon given the price of admission (~$80) though.

Sleep No More

http://sleepnomorenyc.com/

So I was in New York this past weekend (it was awesome! more on that another time), and I wound up seeing the production Sleep No More last night before leaving. It's a bit hard to describe, but at best I would put it as an immersive noir play experience set across 5 floors of a hotel building. The story's loosely based on Macbeth combined with elements of Hitchcock films, most notably Rebecca, and some elements taken from Vertigo (like the name of the hotel, the McKittrick. they also play the theme from the movie during a few key scenes).

The way the production works is that the audience members are given white masquerade-style masks to wear throughout the show, and then are randomly introduced into the hotel itself from the elevator in groups at a time on different floors. Everyone is pretty much left to explore the hotel at their own volition, with the chance of randomly encountering actors (anyone who isn't wearing a mask) in rooms or running across the hotel and its stairwells. The location itself has the atmosphere of a glorified haunted house (or the Tower of Terror from Disneyworld/land), except the environment with the music is more creepy and dark than it is haunted; there isn't anything out rightly frightening or jump scare inducing so much as it just feels tense and eerie, which I like more.

The main storyline of the performance actually loops around each hour for a total of 3 cycles, although I think I only managed to catch wind of the actors during the second cycle, as much of the first hour for me was spent waiting to get into the hotel itself and then orienting myself with the surroundings. I was only partway through exploring the second floor I was on before running into an actor, after which point I lost track of where I was pretty fast since I was too busy focusing on trying to catch up with one of the actors. It can get annoying with the number of audience members they let into the hotel, which often results in other *cough slower* people getting in your way, and I was half-apologizing (silently because you aren't allowed to talk) for running into people and tripping over their feet a lot. The fact that most of the staircases are only big enough for single/double file doesn't help so much when thirty people are all trying to catch up with the same actor at the same time. No wonder the show sells out all the time.

Given that you have events happening across all floors of the hotel at the same time, it's pretty much impossible to experience the entire thing in one performance, and in that sense it might be more stress-inducing for people who are prone to feel anxiety about missing out on the best parts. Not to mention, it's kinda pricy to see the performance more than once, but judging by reviews online there seem to be quite a few people that do that, to the point where they generally know where to go and at what times. I'd say the highlights of the experience, or what most people talk about after, anyway, are most of the scenes taken from Macbeth itself, so if you stick to following him at least for 1 whole cycle, you'll get the gist of what's going on and then it's better to deviate from there to see the rest of whatever action is going on. There was a whole other subplot going on involving the Rebecca inspired characters that I didn't really quite get, and I ran into them first. One of them actually led me into a Macbeth scene, after which point I was pretty much following Macbeth and related characters for the rest of the night because they struck me as generally more exciting to follow at that moment.

The experience will probably vary by person, and to some people the acting might come across as too exaggerated and the overall deal overrated and priced, but I honestly found it a worthwhile experience at least for the novelty of it all... Although Justin did tell me it sounded like a very Ryan-thing to go to. >_>

What follows are spoilers for the production as I try to recall everything I saw that night. It's interesting to compare with the impressions other people have written online; I've been starting to make sense of what scenes I actually did manage to see and which I didn't. It gets confusing sometimes since you aren't given any context for who a particular actor is initially when you run into them; I didn't recognize who Macbeth was until I came across him a second time in a scene that made it pretty obvious. (And if you don't know the story of Macbeth beforehand, it's probably even more confusing.)

A reminder

that the number of experiences I have to be thankful for far exceed the number of personal disappointments in my life. It's easy to forget sometimes.

Thanks for the past few days.

---

I was about to write something about experiencing anxiety with regards to the "appropriate" way to act in certain situations, but when it came down to it, I realized it really was more about not wanting to be embarrassed. Because I've never really been able to deal well with embarrassing situations borne unintentionally from my own actions and mistakes, and my ego won't allow me to expose myself to anything that might pose that kind of a risk in front of people I'm not as close to. Or even my own family. (hence why I refused to let my mom to teach me Indonesian when I was younger, and why I became so reticent growing up. I couldn't stand it when my family would make fun of me, let alone other people.)

The real me is a lot more vulnerable and easily flustered than whatever image I seem to be putting up in front of the people I know nowadays. Oftentimes now, I feel like I'm coming across as distant or "sophisticated" or stoic or whatever term would come to mind there, and it's probably hindered me a lot from the kind of meaningful relationships I wish I were experiencing more often nowadays. Sometimes you just need to be open to embarrassing yourself in public every once in a while.

I might come to regret that statement later. -_-

---

Things to look forward to:

- next installment of Phoenix Wright coming out next month! Download only for 3DS, but still. (and then Layton vs. Phoenix Wright next year! and the ongoing translation of the Miles Edgeworth 2!) and Pokemon too I guess.

- the weekly's: Breaking Bad, Legend of Korra, One Piece. BrBa finale this Sunday!!

- New York this weekend!!!

- West End production of Merrily We Roll Along in theaters next month!

- going home at the end of the month to see Evita in LA with the brother! And maybe pick up a thing or two.

- finally reading A Dance with Dragons at the end of the month because I've been waiting for the paperback version to come out for ages. and lots of books I've been meaning to get to in general.

- living in the moment. still a work in progress, as I'm so prone to getting caught up mentally in other things.

---

Aside: I like how my two line post winds up being the most viewed post ever on this blog. About a TV show, no less. Maybe I should just stick to tumblr-style quick posts.

(Just kidding... that's what tumblr is for.)

Rolling Along

I went on a retreat this weekend with River folks to a camp in the mountainous woods (okay, maybe not the right usage of words but whatever) between San Jose and Santa Cruz. The route there was about the same as the one taken for Justin and Miki's camping trip to Big Basin last year up to a certain point, and it invoked a few old memories from last year (including me getting owned by a root on a hiking trail, but that's another story). Overall, it was a great opportunity to take a moment to relax, away from the hustle and bustle-or sometimes lack thereof- of working life and coming home tired and wittling the night hours away on Fallout 2, which was pretty much all I did last week.

(...seriously, the old Fallout games are like a time sinkhole once you figure out how to not get massacred by every random radscorpion and evil plant and big gun wielding band of thugs you meet. Where I last left off I was trying to figure out how to become a made man of each of the 4 ruling families of New Reno without getting killed off by the other three for siding with their rivals, and then how to assassinate the family heads after joining them. It's fun.)

The speaker at this retreat was Dave Schmelzer, the author of the book Not the Religious Type: Confessions of a Turncoat Atheist and former pastor at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Boston, which I knew little of prior to this weekend. When it comes to books that tend to get sold at the "book table" at these retreats like his book, I tend to have a like/dislike interest in them. They usually have something interesting to say, but at the same times there's always something else about them I don't like as much, like some aspect they overlook in what they're saying that merits criticism or just something in their argument that's lacking. Dave's book on the other hand (which I haven't finished yet), seems to fit in a weird niche of being more rambly-thought-tangential than usual but in a way that still makes sense, which also happens to be how he speaks in person as well. It also partly addresses a topic I find personally relevant - the disconnect in thoughts between religious and non-religious people, only not so much black-and-white because like everything else these fall along a spectrum.

Dave refers to the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck's 4 stages of spiritual development, which surprisingly makes sense (at least to me) as a model for understanding where people stand spiritually (although I'm curious as to what criticism there may be of it since relying too much on models like these tends to be a slippery slope. cue the rampant and incessant discussion of Myers-Briggs whenever I hang around church folks). It categorizes this in a way such that atheists and agnostics, particularly those who have left a faith, are possibly actually more developed in this respect than many of those who consider themselves religious... which would explain why some religious populations (as in America) feel more backwards in thought. It also delves into why people on both sides have issues communicating with each other - the disconnect between people who are at different stages of development. It's an interesting concept - although granted, even Dave admitted that it's normal to still have thoughts from previous stages even when someone is supposedly at stage 4.

Dave also referenced the famous "This Is Water" commencement speech of David Foster Wallace, an author I've been meaning to read for a while if I ever get around to it, who's been called the voice of our post-modern age and whose posthumously published work The Pale King was a factor into why the Pulitzer Prize for fiction wasn't awarded last year. If you have the time, it's worth a listen. It addresses something I've been finding more personally relevant ever since I started working: the importance of being conscious in spite of the mundane and the frustration that generally accompanies everyday adult life. To be able to consider other points of view and modes of thinking besides the lens of self, to have agency in choosing what exactly it is you think about, because what's important isn't so much possessing knowledge as it is simply being aware of what's in front of you... and not just get lost in the stream of your own internal monologue, which I'm almost always guilty of on a regular basis. But David Foster Wallace words it better than I can.

It's funny, because on the way to the retreat while driving, I was just thinking about this. How unconscious I've been the past while, constantly on auto-pilot in my responses to people and motion through life without consideration of bigger things, with the majority of my days of late revolving around thoughts of some form of "how am I going to finish this game this week" and nothing else. I've been neglecting personal responsibilities, what I'm doing with my life, where I am with God, and a bunch of other concerns all for the sake of entertaining myself just one more day. One more day, when days can turn into weeks and then years, where a subtle disease like cancer could spring up out of nowhere and end it all when I least expect it. Okay, maybe I'm being somewhat melodramatic and border-line hypochondriac there, but the fear exists. I don't know when my life will end, and yet I'm trudging on waiting for another day to go by at work so I can go home, while silently ignoring that voice in my head yelling, "what are you doing with your life?"

This weekend was a time for me to stop constantly moving for a moment and reconsider the trajectory my life has taken. How long can I keep sitting around here at this job and continue the humdrum routine I've been following for the past two years? How long am I going to continue to let these burdens continue to weigh me down, stop me from moving on with my life, continue to make me grumble inside and cynically complain whenever a worship song is playing? How long am I going to keep on pursuing random entertainment for the sake of a short-term distraction, an activity to keep me occupied from reexamining my thoughts and beliefs and face concerns I've neglected over the years? How much longer?

I realized eventually that when it came down to it, much of my lack of action in a direction I would find meaningful up to this point stems from an overwhelming sense of fear. Fear of uncertainty, fear of not knowing the truth, fear of lacking control over my future, fear of failure, fear of being rejected, fear of missing out. I settled for where I am now because it's the safe thing to do. I grew up with the view that the world was a scary place and that I should avoid risky situations and dangers and trusting people too much, and instead favor stability and comfort over anything else. And while that isn't an overtly bad way of life in itself, overemphasizing it tends to make life feel static and devoid of, ironically, life.

If anything, what I ought to be most afraid of is living a dead, unexamined life. If I take a look at the journal entries I've actually managed to write this past year, most of them are hardly joyful and instead tend toward being anxious or cynical. I ought to have plenty of reason to be happy or even thankful for the experiences I've been having, given how "busy" I somehow seem to be this year, but for some reason the main feeling I can recall experiencing from these past two years is an overall sense of anxiety and cynicism. I stopped believing that God would actually do anything in the problems I continued to see in myself and others and the world on a day-to-day basis. I stopped really praying for anything. I lost confidence in my own ability to maintain meaningful friendships with anyone I met given a lack of consistency in having even normal conversations. I went through a debilitating series of depressive moments earlier this year that led me at one point to drive to work (and then McDonald's) at 4 in the morning because I couldn't sleep anymore. I would frequently find myself somewhere, whether it be at church or at a social gathering or some other event, and wondering, "what am I even doing here?" I was even afraid of going to this retreat because I might just suffer that same thought the entire time I was there. What am I doing here. What am I doing here. What am I doing here.

After all of this, I'm just tired right now. Tired of not really living life. All that I have now, all this so-called convenience and privilege and comfort and job security and complacency means nothing if I can't enjoy it. The numbers of reasons for why I might be dissatisfied right now are too great and overwhelming as it is, although it could probably be easily summed together somewhere along the lines of, "suffering exists." But that's no excuse for not standing up, looking back at it in the face, unflinching, and continuing to live consciously, meaningfully, and with purpose. I'm making a commitment to live each day in the moment, and not solely for my own self-interest. Of course, it'll more difficult to keep up than just saying it would suggest, and I don't really have that great of a track record with commitments so far. Staying conscious everyday in itself is enough of a struggle as it is - even David Foster Wallace committed suicide. But that's how it goes sometimes, I guess.

Following along with my thought that there's a song from a musical for every occasion, there's a musical called Merrily We Roll Along whose opening song ties into this theme (and is probably my favorite musical that I haven't seen live yet now, ever since I finally saw Into the Woods this summer). The title and lyrics say it all. Merrily we roll along. How did you get to be here? What was the moment? When I was feeling depressed earlier this year, I kept coming back to the songs from this musical: Merrily We Roll Along, Like It Was, Old Friends, Not a Day Goes By, Now You Know - all of them cautious reminders of how easy it is for your life to fall off track if you don't pay attention as time goes by. At least you can still fix things and try for your dreams while there's still time... while you're still alive.

limitations

This doesn't pertain to anything recent other than a random thought train in my head during a long car ride.

I sometimes wonder how different I'd be if I didn't have certain biological limitations. Like the following. 

- I never felt encouraged or motivated enough to actively pursue activities like running or hiking up high altitudes because I have asthma that seems to only manifest after strenuous activities. Actually, the last time I went hiking up a steep slope at Lake Tahoe, I almost blacked out after the first climb. Luckily, we were forced to take a break because of an ongoing bicycle race on the trail we were taking, but thereafter I lagged behind the rest of the group with a friend for most of the upward hike because it constantly felt like someone had dropped a medium sized weight on my chest every time I took a step, and it hurt to breathe even after medication the entire time until we finally got back down to the base 8 hours later. There was also that time with my cousin's wedding in the mountains in fifth grade when I genuinely thought I was going to die because I couldn't breathe.

I'm too afraid of tackling any higher climbs in the meantime. That said, I think I would appreciate it a lot more if I could. Pain or not, Tahoe was a beautiful sight.

- The last allergy test I took... or rather, analysis of a blood sample, told me that I was allergic to dust and pollen (as usual), household mold (also common), and every type of tree and grass on the list (ugh). But not animals- although I remember a classmate's dog in middle school triggered my allergies really badly... but it did seem to shed hair nonstep- and thankfully not food, including peanut butter, which I thought I was allergic to in elementary school because of that poking test and ever since have never really liked much (but since college I like eating peanuts by themselves now). 

I don't have any life-threatening allergies, luckily, but I guess I'm so used to sneezing at home and at work now that I don't really pay attention to my allergies unless it leads to something really annoying like barely being able to keep my eyes open while driving. I think the reaction my eyes develop from daily allergies in particular is one of the reasons for my eye-damage phobia and why I cannot apply eye drops for the life of me; my eyes refuse to stay open even if I'm trying to force them to... and I refuse to even consider contacts for that reason. That and I HATE the air puff test they do at the optometrist. The assistant administering it almost gave up on me one time because I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough for the puff to go in, and the device felt like it was getting dangerously close to my eye so I was mentally starting to panic.

Okay, semi-rant done.

- Alcohol. I don't mind having a drink just to be social, but I can't really partake in drinking games (or drinking much of anything) for personal and biological reasons. My heart rate rises to an uncomfortable level after a little more than 1 drink and I can feel my head pulse. More than that, and I develop a really severe headache that feels more like a terrible migraine. Last time this happened (after having already consumed 8 cups of water), I had to lie down because my head hurt too much to stand up. This naturally also makes me really antisocial... or as I described it to one person, exacerbates a sociability problem that I already feel like I have around people.

The second to last time this happened (which led to... this post), I had a moment of self-awareness of "what am I doing here?" The friends I came with had disappeared somewhere at the venue we were at, so I wound up walking outside to get a fresh breath of air as I couldn't bear to be in that atmosphere much longer, only to run into some other people I knew outside in a moment when I didn't feel like being seen. So after a few minutes of hesitation, I went on an impulsive walk around the block, with my conscious screaming, "what are you doing stop this." Back in college, I'd had a few moments like this (not involving alcohol) where I ran out of the apartment out of frustration into the wilderness that is northside Berkeley (I swear I almost ran into a mountain lion on the street on one of these excursions, but Ryan still doesn't believe me). This was just like those... that momentary hesitation, the voice in my head telling me not to go but my body moving anyway, feeling like something was controlling me and causing me to run against my will even though part of me did want to escape from wherever I was at that moment.

And of course worrying whoever I happened to be with in the process. I got yelled at when I came back ("you almost made us search for you all over SF.") and I deserved it.  I didn't actually wander far - just circled around the block and sat on a stump around the corner and tried to talk to God for a while. To some people it probably sounds crazy... but I hadn't really done it for a long time either. and I suppose I really needed it at that moment. But on the car ride back I felt incredibly ashamed and upset with my own behavior afterwards.

Does it make you think that something is wrong with you? Because you don't feel like you can fit in?

I guess since then, I've tended to avoid most engagements that likely involve more alcohol than I'd be comfortable with (...more than 1 drink) if I can help it - because I don't trust my own behavior in those circumstances and I'd rather not cause other people to worry about me again. So yeah, something like a Vegas trip isn't really an option. I've wondered sometimes, if I could actually tolerate it more, would I be more like some of my other friends and actually partake in drinking festivities more often? Maybe.

Although I'm more for all things in moderation anyway. There's also the moral concerns that come with it from a Christian perspective that I've tended to feel ambivalent about with regards to the behavior of other people, perhaps in part because I find some people really entertaining when they're drunk. (...cow-children hehehe. although that wasn't even a drinking party.) But there is good reason not to go too far, and I've never really bought into the concept of drinking for the sake of getting drunk/wasted otherwise. Or maybe I'm just saying that to justify my inability to drink much and preference not to. But really, I tend to not find it worth it.

All said and done, I am the sum of my parts and circumstances, and I think it's probably better that way. To still be thankful for the things that make you who you are, even when it isn't apparently convenient for you... it's something I still have to work on.

a little of

Less serious post:

A: My P is coming out right now.

K: Oh, yeah, I should tan right now. *pulls up jacket sleeves*

I'm thankful for these random moments.

- I started writing reviews for books on goodreads after Eric suggested I start, and I got kinda carried away after the first one. Probably will start writing short blurbs on there more and save posts on here for more in-depth impressions when I feel it for certain books.

- Our Comcast internet started hating on all things Google the past few days, and in the process of trying to google I mean bing the solution I got bombarded by messages about how much better Bing is than Google... and got results to help sites hosted on Google servers, which didn't help much... and of course it all magically started working again a few hours later each time. I just hope this lasts long enough for me to finish writing this, cause of course blogspot and 70% of my other internet activity is hosted by Google. >_>

[It wasn't a service provider DNS issue cause the problem persisted even if you used direct ip addresses to the sites or used alternative public DNS servers... and my hosts file didn't have any references to google either. Sigh.]

- Played Ultimate Werewolf for the first time the other night. It's like Mafia but with more official roles cause there's a rulebook and role cards and artifacts that totally change up the gameplay. For the Hilgard folks, all of the roles we had when we played are there: Mafia = Werewolf [kills one player each night], regular folks = Villagers, Doctor = Bodyguard [prevents one person from dying each night], Detective = Seer [checks if one player is a werewolf each night], Town Fool = The Tanner [wins if he/she gets lynched], and Cupid is there in his full glory [chooses two people to be the Lovers and if one dies the other dies automatically] and I had a hell of a time being him twice in a row.

There was also the Sorcerer, who happens to be on the Werewolves' side (although they don't know who each other are) and gets a turn each night to ask the Mod if a person is a Seer; the Hunter, who immediately shoots someone dead the moment he's killed (and in one game unwittingly killed both of the Lovers I chose as Cupid hehehe); the Lycan, who is actually just a normal villager but appears to be a werewolf to the Seer; the Witch, who chooses once per game to kill/heal a player; and the first person to die in the game gets the ability to send a message from beyond the grave the next round in the form of a single letter to help identify who the killer is, so long as that letter isn't someone's initial (examples we used: "G" which meant glasses, "F" which meant fan, "M" which meant muscles, etc.).

Each player also got an artifact with a special ability that they could use once during the game. Some examples: copy a person's ability if they're special... which prompted the moderator to say "sorcerers wake up" rather than "sorcerer wake up" on accident once, so everyone knew who the sorcerer[s] were; force one person to answer a yes/no question truthfully; demote one player to a villager if they aren't one for the rest of the game; force the last lynched person to send a 1 letter message from the grave; steal another person's artifact; void, which means this artifact does nothing; and so on.

And there were a bunch of roles we didn't even touch because we'd need way more than ~10 people (Vampire: Kill a villager each night, who dies in the middle of the day; Drunk: is a villager until the third night when they find out their real role; Hoodlum: chooses two players on the first night and wins if they are dead and he/she is still alive; and the Chupacabra and a bunch of other stuff). Dan was complaining that there were too many special roles going on at night, which made the nights extremely longer than usual cause every single special role had to wake up on their own turn every night. To be honest, though, I thought it made for a really funny game even during the nights... which got compounded by the moderator having to ask people to wake up cause he/she forgot who they were haha. Fail mod.

- I've effectively been on a video game hiatus since I moved [not counting Dota cause that's not a game I binge on for days in a row and I only play when asked to], but I still follow news on video games semi-frequently along with all those kickstarter updates. I can't recall the last time I've been so hyped for upcoming games. Just this week:

-- Chris Avellone (writer for Planescape: Torment, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, Mask of the Betrayer, and Fallout: New Vegas among others) and Patrick Rothfuss (author of The Kingkiller Chronicle, of whom I'm not solid on but this could still be good) added as stretch goals to the Torment kickstarter, which hit 3 mil today.

This combined with Ziets (creative lead on Mask of the Betrayer), Mitsoda (lead writer on Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines), Morgan (composer for Fallout and Planescape: Torment), and what we've seen from McComb, Saunders and Cook so far... this is the game I'm most looking forward to... that isn't a sequel anyway, otherwise it'd be Dreamfall Chapters.

-- They also released a sample track from Torment that I've been listening to on repeat: The Bloom.

-- Double Fine Adventure officially announced with the title Broken Age.

-- The makers of Bastion announced a new sci-fi themed game called Transistor.

-- Ducktales (NES) announced coming out this summer remastered with the voice actors from the original cartoon. NOSTALGIA.

-- and this was from a couple of weeks ago, but season 2 of The Walking Dead, the adventure game, was announced as targeted for this fall.

- Since Sammy forced me to buy the latest Starcraft 2 expansion a few days ago, I'll probably be breaking the hiatus now... except I feel like playing Fallout 2 and Alpha Centauri and Front Mission 2 while watching videos of Anachronox instead and I should probably stop now.

randoms part 2

- Spent a couple of hours taking apart Lappy2 for the first time (up to removing the central cover, keyboard and palm rest) since its fan was getting so loud. I finally discovered a thick layer of dust surrounding the interface between the fan and the fan vent... that wasn't reachable by just using a can of air on the vent from the outside when I'd tried in the past. Why do laptop makers make it so difficult to clean your fan? -__-

At least I can barely hear the fan now. Yay!

- After two previous fail attempts at buying a new journal (first was a Moleskine from Amazon that turned out to be too small, and second was a a pack of three from Target that wound up being too thin), I finally have a new journal! It's a little more expensive than I would've liked, but it's bigger and cheaper than the biggest Moleskine B&N had (192 pages. pft.) and made of recycled stuff (by ecosystem). Apparently if I use the code printed on the back inside cover I can see where all the recycled parts came from. It's pretty cool.

- After seeing several unrelated people suddenly make posts that mentioned crocheting in the past month, I took it as a sign that I should start crocheting again. I actually have never finished a project I've started before- the further I got was a scarf that I gave up on in elementary school cause it got too ugly and full of holes- but I managed to find some yarn and a crochet hook in the closet from a previous endeavor and started on a bookmark for now. Been sneaking lines of stitches between work and playing Fallout anyway.

- Speaking of which, beat Fallout 1 yesterday. I think that was the hardest WRPG I've played so far (I mean, the game expects you to reach the end with all of your companions dead, and your companions have an annoying habit of accidentally shooting you or each other in the back cause everyone's aim sucks). Granted, I've only beaten 3 WRPGs so far though. I'm looking forward to playing 2 and New Vegas now- skipping 3 for time and cause it lacks the developer/setting continuity the other games have. But maybe in the distant future. but maybe not.

Games anticipated that aren't Kickstarter related:
(but you should support Hero-U anyway. 52K left! So close!):
- Primordia [December]
(after Gemini Rue, Blackwell Deception, and Resonance all in the past two years. Wadjet Eye is on a roll.)
- Front Mission 2 [assuming my import arrives next month...]
(doesn't look too impressive by today's standards but the gameplay and story are better than 3 and 4)
- Front Mission 5 [whenever I finish 2...]
(the culmination of the series. what I've been waiting for...)
- Ace Attorney Investigations 2 [the fan translation - likely December?]
(to make up for Capcom never localizing it... I already know who the culprits are by now, but still looking forward to it.)
- Professor Layton vs. Ace Attorney [the end of this month in Japan, localization not announced yet..]
(they'd better localize this. considering how every Layton title gets localized anyway.)
- Ace Attorney 5 [2013 in Japan, TBA here]
(Phoenix is back!)
- Tales of Xillia [next spring? if they're on the same track as Graces, anyway]
(mainly in anticipation of the sequel, which came out in Japan this month and is supposed to be better... agh. Ryan, you'd probably like this one more than Graces cause they went back to TP again.)
- Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm [March 2013]
(mainly to continue the campaign... not expecting much story-wise since the last game kinda ruined the Kerrigan-Raynor dynamic, but the missions were fun.)
- Dreamfall Chapters [April 2014]
(FINALLY. It's only been what, 6 years since Dreamfall ended on a freaking cliffhanger. Ugh.)
- the sequel to Virtue's Last Reward [???]
(speaking of cliffhangers... I had a moment where I thought the game was still going when it actually had ended. but at least they announced the sequel already, unlike a certain Chrono game. -__-)

Today I went with some coworkers to SF and did the biking expedition that goes from SF, across the Golden Gate bridge, and then winds west->north->east? into Sausalito... which involved a rather painful hour-long uphill hike in the middle of it all (actually, all of the uphill parts were horrible), and a moment where I got separated from the others and wound up crashing off my bike into a nest of plants at a randomly steep intersection.

...and then I went home and proceeded to code until 4 AM this morning. I am probably going to hate myself mentally and physically at work tomorrow. aaaagh.

[I would have something longer to write about but now probably isn't the best time. Good mornight!]

Summary of Seattle Trip

Shimul: Are you limping?
danced for ~12 hours this weekend at camp jitterbug (+ brunch with shimul after!). it was eye-opening. although after staggering through the airport just now, I'm starting to wish airport hallways weren't so freaking long, uggh.