once more before a break

This weekend is the first real weekend I've finally had to myself, with no pressing plans, in 3 months. It didn't really hit me until a few minutes ago... and I am so relieved right now.

One of the reasons I stopped blogging as much recently was because I never really felt like I had the time anymore, and whenever I tried to make time, I'd either get paranoid over how much time I was spending (because writing takes me 6+ hours, and I dislike interruptions once I've started), or I lose sleep in the process and end up going to bed around 3 to 5 in the morning. And these days it takes me 3-4 days to recover from one night's worth of little sleep, even if "little" happens to mean 6 hours. After that, I can't really self-process or partake in activities that normally would require some level of mental acuity, like reading, or job search prepping, or even starting everyday errands. And I hate it.

It is nice to not have to be so rushed for once.

Now that I've (more-or-less) recovered from emotion hell and have had some time time to look backwards and forwards... here's a lengthy post on four things I've had on my mind while in the process of moving on. Some of this may be more frank or straightforward than would be expected of a technically public-but-personal blog, but eh, I like openly processing things in this manner sometimes. I'm still in the midst of figuring all of this out for myself, so consider the thoughts and opinions represented part of an ongoing work-in-progress... because it's taken me years to come this far.

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On job searching, resumes, LinkedIn, positioning statements, and "building a personal brand": I've seen it often stressed by career counselors and in stuff I've consulted in my own research that you should emphasize your accomplishments, or what you achieved, rather than your duties or simply what you did, when talking about your past work experience on your resume or in other places that recruiters and potential employers will check. Things that you would be willing to brag about to other people if you had the chance. But well, what if you aren't necessarily proud of even the work you did do?

Barring the fact that I can't really quantify the accomplishments or the effect that my previous work had (since much of it was structured around simply doing what needed to be done anyway), compared to say, managers or people in finance, I find it difficult to really speak excitedly about my past work at work in the same vein; after a certain point, I felt like I was just working to get by. Ironically, I've found it more exciting to talk about what the overall project goal for my team was, rather than what my individual contributions towards that goal were. Part of that may be tied to my own self-doubt regarding how valuable I really was to my own team and some of the frustrations I experienced in working with them in the past, which hasn't been helped by fact that I did get laid off before our last project was completed.

If anything, I'm more proud of the little things I've done outside of work in the past years (schedule planning for friends and family; successfully conducting multiple Bible studies in spite of ongoing faith issues; individual conversations and personal emails; making headway with a number of friends, some of whom I've struggled to be present with over the years; this wedding I just officiated), most of which isn't really all that relevant to any potential future employer in the field that I actually want to find work in.

And that's not to say that I'm looking for work in the wrong industry or place. What few strides I've managed to make, exploring my options and working on side projects in my spare time, have made me feel more confident that I honestly do still want to work in software. It just feels harder for me to leverage my past in a way that may captivate potential future employers, the way all these career advisors and recruiters in the industry talk about it. The implications have even been imparted to me in more negative terms by some: spend too much time situated in one job, especially a job that you don't like, and it actually can reflect badly on you as a person or prospective employee.

That's honestly something I've struggled with for a long time. I like coding, but I'm not as driven to pursue new opportunities or developments in the industry (or at least historically, anyway) compared to other people I know, especially the ones I would look up to. I highly value the time I get outside of work to do other things, because I believe there is so much more to living than simply "what you do" as Silicon Valley puts it, but for me personally it often lopsidedly turns into prioritizing my free time above anything else... because in a normal 9-5 work environment, I don't have to "make time" for work like I have to for anything else.

Even more than that, I usually just feel like I don't have enough time outside as it is, because there's simply too much else I want to do in life. Even now that I'm unemployed, I still don't feel like I have enough time; I've barely scraped the surface of all the little things I've wanted to do since I got laid off, and that's not including unplanned time that I've needed to recover mentally and emotionally, and it's already been three weeks. Time just feels like it's moving faster than ever for me, and I don't know if I can keep up with it.

But that's enough musing about my professional life for one day.

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One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is the limits of relationships-- my own limits in particular, as I've been a lot more conscious of how my desire to maintain connections with people in different areas of life comes at odds with my low tolerance threshold for being around people. Under normal (non-traveling) circumstances, two days in a row is pushing it for most people; by that point my mind starts to shut off and I just want to chill at home alone. And then I get disappointed when I experience a conversation with a good friend that breaks off into the silence of uncertainty, even though a lot of that silence reflects my own state of being.

Consequently, there are individuals who I've known throughout the years who I still think about sometimes, but haven't really kept in touch with for a long while... or was never really close to to begin with, but part of me still wonders what might've been if we did actually talk more than once at some get-together every year. In some of these cases, it doesn't even make much sense given that we lack apparent common interests, or opportunities to meet (did I mention I haven't really had a free weekend in months?) combined with physical distance. And then I wonder why I even bother thinking about it then.

Social media has a weird effect sometimes-- in the sense of fooling you into thinking that you're up-to-date with someone's life and therefore are still in some sense "close" to them, or close enough to be able to talk to them like you're still a part of their life. And I fall for it so often, failing to acknowledge how one-sided it is. Even while there's some part of me that still at least wants to know, at least wants to not be out of the loop the next time I might see them, at least not miss out on the privilege my other friends are getting in being able to still be part of this person's life. Because I am inclined to like (or think I like) being friends with people even when I don't really know them well... or only know them from the image they project online.

It's why I get excited sometimes when people reach out to me out of the blue. I like to think of myself as always open to people (given time availability), even though that's not really the case. But when another person is willing to give you a chance first... I guess it ultimately makes me feel good about myself. Like someone actually wants to talk to me!

Basically, I base a lot of my self-worth on how much other people validate me even though I shouldn't. It's what makes reaching out so difficult for me at the same time: because when I'm rejected, I take it so personally, as a reflection of something wrong with my own identity. It's something I really need to work on; I can see all the ways in which I've let opportunities go and relationships die by not acting out of fear. I just wish I had more energy to be present for others with the chances I do get.

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At present, I'm kind of in this weird situation where I happen to be more continuously involved with church, or particularly small group, than I ever really have in the past, while at the same time I'm also more distant from God than I've ever really been (or as I put it to my therapist: "we aren't on speaking terms right now.") I've been more-or-less open about this with most of my small group, in addition to a lot of other personal things that I'd never have imagined sharing with anyone even a couple of years ago. And they've been incredibly supportive in the process.

To be more specific: I don't really know what or how much I really believe anymore... although I say that with a very heavy caveat to follow. Ironically, I have no problem with conducting a Bible study for other people (in fact breaking down and analyzing Scripture is something I still enjoy doing a lot), but I have issues more with how we apply the messages that we take away to real life experiences. Perhaps I'm going too far on the academic side of things here, but I've found that the more I've learned about the Bible and its history and the nature of how it's interpreted across different churches and denominations in the world... the more difficult I find it to just accept what I read or hear at church at face value. At this point I'm more inclined to doubt the historical accuracy of much of it (at least up until David's time period), and even when it comes to the specifics of Jesus and Paul's lives, there's a lot that I'm skeptical about for now.

To add to that, church that we have today is not the same church that emerged two millennia ago, nor is it as monolithic as some people like to imagine. The fact of the matter is that it's possible for one Christian to come to a completely different interpretation of what they consider to be truth from another, with both using the Bible as justification, and it's not always clear which view is really more valid to everyone else (unless you have something like Sacred Tradition to define that for you, as I imagine Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox would expect). Even with the aid of contextual analysis, the Bible is not a one-size-fits-all reference for how to live your life; there are plenty of issues that are current today for which it is silent. But people will pick and choose what they consider to be right through the lens of their own experiences, more often informed by their own cultural context than anything else, often beginning with an assumption on a topic (see: abortion) and trying to justify that assumption by going backwards to Scripture instead of the other way around.

This problem is not just limited to the Bible either; I can see a parallel in say Supreme Court debates regarding the constitutionality of laws and whether we should care more about what what the original writers intended at the time of writing, or whether we should revise our interpretations as our culture evolves and new and unforeseen situations emerge for which past precedent doesn't hold as well anymore. But in that regard, I don't think Christianity could've survived till today without continuously evolving, and adapting to new and unforeseen needs and cultural situations, and as a result certain understandings and beliefs that may have been taken for granted in the past may make less sense today. And yet a number of people will insist that a statement made in one book of the Bible holds true for everyone in all situations. I mean, the Bible itself documents the evolution of a people's understanding of and relationship with God over time, so naturally there are already laws and ideas in earlier books that get annulled over by later ones anyway. And I'm pretty sure the same holds for the way churches come into being and operate today.

This is not to create a slippery slope for bad theology nor to try to completely invalidate the church, but rather to point out what I see as a reality that's too complicated to be restricted to a notion of complete and total acceptance or rejection of it. I would like to think that at least some of the Bible's authors earnestly believed in the purpose for which they wrote, even if some aspect of what resulted doesn't reflect the actual historical record.

I've seen the argument made from a conservative standpoint that if you disregard the accuracy or truth of one part of Scripture, like say the creation story or the fall of man, you have to disregard everything. That is to say, if the Fall didn't happen in reality the way Genesis recorded it, then Jesus's sacrifice is meaningless, and likewise if Jesus didn't rise and come back from the dead, then the continued existence of the Church that we have today is also meaningless. I used to worry about this all the time too, back when I initially started doubting: that if I came to some realization or conclusion of Scripture being historically false, then all the experiences I'd gone through over the years would've been invalidated and our continued striving ultimately futile and pointless... up until I figured out for myself that that sort of fundamentalist-driven mindset is more like digging yourself deeper into a hole to try and save yourself from the tsunami that is about to come. So much church doctrine that is followed today isn't explicitly spelled out in the Bible at all to begin with, but rather emerged over centuries of fine-tuning our understanding of both Scripture, as well as our understanding of how God works in the world at large. I don't believe it's fair to attribute the entire basis of the Christian life to a book that didn't even exist in its entirety during the early years of the movement; it obviously came from much more than that.

Even if I were to come to reject the church's teachings, I cannot ignore the impact that it's had on my life and perspective, along with the good I've been able to witness and experience in the midst of my worst doubts and fears. There are many things that churches do well that I wish I could see more of outside of them, to the point where I almost wonder sometimes if man was meant to only accomplish greater good in the world through an infinite series of misconceptions or misunderstandings of the way the world really is. How many people in the world would be as motivated to be thoughtful of others, to love and forgive their enemies, to sacrifice time, money, and hospitality for strangers in their midst were it not for the influence of religion in their life? How many people would be as intentional about building relationships and communities even when it inconveniences them?

Obviously, there are people outside of religion who do this as well. But I've seen enough in my experiences outside of Christian community to note that the exact or entire standard for what it means live a good life isn't always well-established or widely accepted even in those contexts. Some people are willing to forgive old grievances, and others aren't, but whose place is it to say who should or shouldn't? Whose responsibility is it to help the poor, and where do we draw the line before it turns into a waste of time and resources? How much of what we possess and own is really ours, and how much of our success in life is due to our own accomplishments as opposed to the privilege and opportunities we received because of what family or social status we were born into and genetics we were given? Is grace even worth considering? And what are we ultimately striving for or trying to achieve with our lives; or is it even necessary to have an answer for that question?

There are also many religious communities out there that work specifically at trying to cultivate an attitude of mindful awareness, particularly about the way we live and make use of our limited time on Earth, and in the end try to achieve something good out of that, even if their conception of why they do so may seem at odds with those around them. And I'm not convinced that they're just doing good "in spite of" the trappings of their religion or whatever cynical view that may be taken of their work. And to turn the chessboard around (sorry, Umineko reference >_>): to what extent does the Bible have to actually be historically accurate for the truths that people have taken from it to still hold? Is it really pointless if, somehow, its adherents still earnestly work at making the world a better place because of it? If they still strive to do better in the process?

Of course, there are plenty of ways in which Christians over the years have caused more harm than good as a result of problematic thinking or discriminatory practices and the divide between good intentions and good results. But as I said before, the church isn't a static entity. Understandings will evolve with time, and I believe more people will become more cognizant of these issues, just as our culture at large is becoming more open and aware of issues and injustices that have long hidden under the surface of society with impunity (like the current state of race relations in America). At least, that is also part of what I would like to try and help accomplish within my own church: an increasing awareness of the beliefs and behaviors that are often taken for granted in the community, and the impact those can have on the people they seek to reach, in the hopes of being able to mutually understand and build relationships with other people and communities, regardless of their faith affiliation.

As for what all this musing has to do with my relationship with God... I found it easier to talk to God in the past when I honestly believed the words in Scripture to be an accurate reflection of what really happened in the past and of what God really said to us. But now that I'm not so sure anymore... it's been hard for me to say much of anything directly to him anymore, other than to wonder if I'm still doing the right thing sometimes (which is kinda inevitable). Otherwise, I don't really feel much of anything, unless you call apathy a feeling. I also find it difficult to partake in prayer and worship these days, because I lack the conviction or faith to do such things honestly, and worship music is so often structured or written in lyrics that do not reflect what I honestly feel anymore. But I still try to take to heart what truths I do see in Scripture, the ones I see as more reflective of how life ought to be lived. As my therapist put it to me recently: the imprint of the image of God is still on me, in my desires and intentions, even if my specific beliefs aren't entirely in line anymore.

When it comes down to it, even with all of my personal issues regarding the nature of truth and Scripture itself, I don't see my life as any less enriched or wasted by still being involved with church. Perhaps I'm just lucky to have been able to find a community that still accepts me for who I am, even when I don't always feel like I fit in with what is considered orthodox or normal, and when I'm aware that many others have been ostracized from their church communities because of their beliefs. But in that regard, I believe that church communities that do so aren't living up to the standards set by the Jesus that can be seen in the New Testament, the one figure who they claim to follow, who went out of his way to be present with the outcasts of society in his day. There is more to life than simply trying to live it "correctly," and punishing those who fail to meet our standards of right or proper living; but unfortunately, that is what we are prone to doing most often.

All that to say, I'm still in the process of figuring out what all of this will mean for me in the future. Someday, our group will disband and people will leave, and I don't what will happen then, if my beliefs will have changed by then to the point where it no longer makes sense for me to remain anymore, or if I'll find a niche somewhere where I can still contribute somehow. Will I stay, or will I go? At this point, I honestly don't know. But I refuse to give up on it all yet.

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Little things I look forward to in the coming months (aka a giant list of lists):

- Finishing Ace Attorney 6 (Spirit of Justice). So far it's feeling a lot more "polished" than Dual Destinies did, perhaps because the current development team (which originally started with the spinoff Miles Edgeworth games) has finally figured out its groove on how to handle a mainline game. I like how it combines all of the investigation elements that have been introduced in past games: Psyche-locks, Ema Skye's crime scene investigation techniques, analyzing video footage, Apollo's Perceive bracelet, Athena's Mood Matrix, revisualizations, and now Divination Seances. It reminds me of how far the series has come from its early days. That said, the new character names thus far have been rather cringe-inducing (Pees'lubn Andistan'dhin and Tahrust Inmee... ugh), although granted this is the same series that started with Frank Sahwit and Sal Manella so I dunno if I should be surprised.

Other games in the long-term to-play queue: Trails in the Sky II, Fire Emblem 4 and 9-10, Arcanum, The Witcher III, Baldur's Gate II, Pokemon Sun/Moon, FFXV, Persona 5, Torment.

- Refreshing my knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithms in preparation for interviews-- okay I know, you can't ever be truly "prepared," but I just want get some practice in dealing with both familiar and unfamiliar problems and articulating my thought process, since it's been years since I last had to do a real live interview, and I still remember what it feels like to be frustrated with yourself over not being able to answer a question that you could've had you actually studied your basics beforehand. Like for one thing, I haven't actually had to analyze algorithmic runtimes or really been pressured to try and optimize my own solutions to a problem in a long time, and those are areas that I want to get better at for my own sake.

This probably sounds weird to some people, but I actually do like revisiting things I used to know, or potentially developing an even better understanding of them than I did before, as has happened in recent years when I've reread books or revisited subjects I've studied in the past, like American history or Japanese. Perhaps it's the sense of becoming a master of my own "domain" for once, since I'm so used to behaving more like a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none, as Ryan has called me more than once in the past (thanks a lot... even though it's true, sigh).

- Upcoming musicals: Assassins, Hedwig and the Angry Itch, The King and I, Finding Neverland, Into the Woods, HAMILTON, Roman Holiday, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and possibly Rent. I may consider another trip to NYC next year once Anastasia starts running on Broadway next spring.

- Catching up on all the books I don't feel like listing (see goodreads). I haven't finished a book in a few months... which is a long time for me haha.

- All the online classes I've wanted to at least audit but never had the time to focus on cause of work. Currently going through: Probability, Astrophysics, Chinese history (empire to present), Italian opera, Linux, and Parallel Programming in addition to Data Structures/Algs Review and Interview prep. Also looking at both Medical and Computational Neuroscience, God and Consciousness in Philosophy, A Global History of Architecture, the Ancient Greek Hero, the Meaning of Rome, Human Anatomy, Paradox and Infinity, Justice, Shakespeare, European Paintings, The Quran, Visualizing Japan, and the American Civil War and Reconstruction era, among other things. And not currently in online class-form, but I'd like to look more into the history of Britain, the Spanish Civil War, and Southeast Asian conflicts of the 20th Century including Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

Why exactly? Because all of these subjects have piqued my interest in some way at some point in the past few years or even decade, and in some respects reflect my overall desire to understand more of how the world works, in its full and total complexity. I quote this post from Wait But Why that I have yet to finish reading (woops), but which encapsulates my general feelings on learning about topics that are unfamiliar and difficult to understand:

A Wait But Why post can be a few different things. One type of WBW post is the “let’s just take this whole topic and really actually get to the bottom of it so we can all completely get it from here forward.” The ideal topic for that kind of post is one that’s really important to our lives, and that tends to come up a lot, but that’s also hugely complex and confusing, often controversial with differing information coming out of different mouths, and that ends up leaving a lot of people feeling like they don’t totally get it as well as they “should.”

The way I approach a post like that is I’ll start with the surface of the topic and ask myself what I don’t fully get—I look for those foggy spots in the story where when someone mentions it or it comes up in an article I’m reading, my mind kind of glazes over with a combination of “ugh it’s that icky term again nah go away” and “ew the adults are saying that adult thing again and I’m seven so I don’t actually understand what they’re talking about.” Then I’ll get reading about those foggy spots—but as I clear away fog from the surface, I often find more fog underneath. So then I research that new fog, and again, often come across other fog even further down. My perfectionism kicks in and I end up refusing to stop going down the rabbit hole until I hit the floor.

...I’ve heard people compare knowledge of a topic to a tree. If you don’t fully get it, it’s like a tree in your head with no trunk—and without a trunk, when you learn something new about the topic—a new branch or leaf of the tree—there’s nothing for it to hang onto, so it just falls away. By clearing out fog all the way to the bottom, I build a tree trunk in my head, and from then on, all new information can hold on, which makes that topic forever more interesting and productive to learn about. And what I usually find is that so many of the topics I’ve pegged as “boring” in my head are actually just foggy to me—like watching episode 17 of a great show, which would be boring if you didn’t have the tree trunk of the back story and characters in place.

- And to end: a long-term travel itinerary wishlist:

• Chicago
• Great Britain (London, Bath, Glastonbury, the Cotswalds, Peak District, Lake District, York, Yorkshire Dales, Hadrian's Wall, Edinburgh, Inverness, the Scottish Highlands, Isle of Skye)
• Spain (Madrid, Cordoba, Seville, Granada, Barcelona)
• Italy (Venice, Florence, Rome, Pompeii, the Amalfi Coast)
• Greece (Athens, Mycenae, Olympia, Delphi, Meteora, Santorini, Crete)
• Japan round 2+ (Yakushima, Kagoshima, Kurokawa, Fukuoka, Hiroshima/Miyajima, Naoshima, Osaka, Koya-san, Nara, Kyoto, Hakone, Yokohama, Tokyo, Dewa Sanzan, Yamadera, Sendai, Ishinomaki)
• China round 2+ (Lhasa, Jiuzhaigou, Yangtze River, Zhangjiajie, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Beijing, Mutianyu or Jinshanling Great Wall, Datong)
• Eurail trip (Zurich, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris)
• Turkey (Ephesus, Cappadocia, Istanbul)
• Peru (Lima, Cusco, Machu Picchu, Lake Titicaca, Arequipa, Culca Canyon)
• Boston and Philadelphia

Basically I'm set for the next decade and then some lol.

Aaaand that took me 10 hours to finish. I'll have to take a break from this for a bit to actually get stuff done. Later.

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.)

mind-vomit

I should be sleeping right now if I want to keep in line with the plan I have for tomorrow (first church service, meet up with Sammy, go home and get dressed for Anton and Laura's wedding and then wedding the rest of the evening), but I don't feel inclined to do so right now.

I don't feel like doing anything else aside from this actually, because I haven't written or even tried to write anything in months owing to a self-perceived lack of time available to write, or that is to say, write without sacrificing time to sleep or do other activities and errands, lest I fall behind in whatever my day-to-day-to-long-term schedule is.

It's gotten to the point where having to meet up or even talk with people, take out the trash, do dishes, do laundry, clean the house, show up and be present at work, and so on, feels burdensome and tiring... let alone the usual long-term needs like addressing my long-term professional and life goals, [lack-of a] love life, and coming to terms with whatever this quarter/spiritual/identity-life crisis I've been going through is.

The things I get distracted or preoccupied by: games, shows, music, books, podcasts and news, travel-planning, bookstores and museums, learning new things; these are all hobbies I enjoy regularly, but have focused on (read: made to-do lists of) unhealthily to the point where it would take me years to get through the combination of all of them without even taking into account normal life functions like those listed in the last paragraph. I've curated those lists to the point where I don't ever have an excuse to be "bored," because I always have something I could be doing that happens to line up with both an existing list and my current mood (and I can only have so many different kinds of moods before they start to cyclically repeat themselves. Right now I'm in a Fire Emblem/podcast/read-this-long-ass-article mood.)

And then in the back of my mind, real-life starts to kick in, and I remember that I too have life-responsibilities I need to keep up with:

- this project at work with an upcoming deadline that needs attention because everything that could go wrong feels like it's going wrong right now (although not all of it is my problem, and in fact I'm probably the least stressed on my team on that front).

- this upcoming open-ended small group that I have to prep for leading this week... and for which I still haven't figured out what I want to do yet because the ideas I have in mind need at least a week for me to prepare mentally, and I don't actually have a week because my family is coming up.

- speaking of which, this home I need to clean up for family coming up because I haven't unpacked or sorted out anything or done the dishes even since I got back from my trip a month ago.

- this wedding (the first of 6 this season) that I need to figure out how to dress for because my formal-attire wardrobe is out-of-date, because I've been losing weight (just cause I felt like it although I kind of also have body-image issues; stop telling me how skinny I look already) and never really had my suits fitted to begin with because I never normally need to dress up anyway, and the stuff my parents left me feels 4 sizes too large compared with my current fashion-taste/mood (and whoever invented the concept of formal attire should just go die in a fiery pit in hell ugh fml firstworldproblems nohashtaghashtags unnecessarystress depression)

- these friends I have to try to make some time for so that I don't look like I'm falling off the edge of the earth right now and I wonder sometimes how I can still function in front of them.

- these therapy sessions that I never seem to have the right thoughts prepared for because whenever I'm actually at therapy, that means I successfully got out of bed in the morning and was able to prepare to go to work (not that I haven't yet but still), so whatever frantic thoughts I'm feeling now feel completely alien to me then.

tl;dr: When I was running down the stairs tonight to head out for my friend's bachelor party-dinner/frantically running back up the stairs to look for the things I usually forget or misplace, like my keys or water-bottle or phone or jacket and it takes multiple trips to get everything, because (as my mom says) I'm scatter-brained and careless about where I put all of my possessions and can't even remember to put them in the same designated place every time, I collapsed in a heap in the middle of my stairway for about 5 minutes and broke down sobbing because I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take being, or trying to put on the air of being, an adult when I don't feel like I behave like one, because I am the opposite of everything I value/have internalized as value in an adult.

I haven't heard myself cry that like in a long time. Usually I don't listen to myself when I cry (because I'm generally not self-aware enough to), but it was jarring to be able to both hear myself cry on a meta-consciousness level AND actually be engaged in the act of crying at the same time, all while drowning in the onslaught of thoughts I couldn't even entirely form into words yet:

- thoughts about how not "on top of things" I was (the way my old college roommate Jason used to put it) and how out-of-place I felt in the wider scheme of adult life when trying to buy my suit today and the (possibly-imagined) funny looks I got from the attendants for my lack of familiarity with all things formal fashion.

- thoughts coming from moments of feeling both alienated in the presence of others and unable to relate to their normal everyday experiences because my empathic senses lately have been out-of-whack and mostly self-centered. (Yes, that sounds nice but that has nothing to do with what I'm feeling right now.)

- thoughts and feelings of inadequacy and futility whenever anyone these days tries to ask me about my work and love life, because ultimately I haven't exhibited any sense of ambition or desire in those parts of my life lately, and haven't really in a long time, and I don't know why outside of a growing sense of being unable to force myself into that mindset of really wanting those things. I don't want anything right now other than the little things I already am pursuing, things that generally matter little to most other people anyway.

- thoughts of anger and frustration:

-- at the way my life itself feels artificially constructed from a combination of my baser impulses and societally imposed life goals (love, job, house, family), rather than what I really want, even though what I really want is still ill-defined right now.

-- at my general inefficiency in time management when it comes to simple things like shopping for clothes for myself (spent 6 hours today although half that time was figuring out where to go/eat) or leaving the house in the morning because I never know where I put things a half-day or a half-hour or a half-minute ago.

- thoughts of paranoia, that something is fundamentally broken or sick in my head right now because what normally functioning person breaks down uncontrollably right before attending a normal social function and successfully gets away with it without anyone noticing

- and don't even talk to me about God right now (I know I've said this here before but this still holds), because I have so many other unresolved problems with God and the church and basically the world at large (enough to fill up another 5-page long letter like the one I already sent my pastor earlier this year), that I'd have to address first before even considering bringing this up. (This John Oliver video, while not directly related, captures a similar sense of the frustration I feel, including my inability to trust my own feelings in dealing with any of this because my own feelings and emotions are fickle and at odds with reality.)

Don't ask me if I'm okay if you've read this post, because at this point I wouldn't know what else to say any more than what's already been said here (and I'm not suicidal, just existentially depressed). During the dinner tonight I was wrestling with conflicting emotions, happy (because the company and food were great), sad (because of earlier) and confusion at my own state of being because I don't know how to behave outwardly in that situation, other than to simply react to whatever's happening around me as I normally would. Sometimes I wonder what it would really take to make me crumble in front of other people, because I've somehow managed to survive for this long despite all internal mind-spasms to the contrary.

And I apologize if you're one of those people who've complained to me in the past about never talking/hanging out/reaching out anymore. Perhaps I'm doing a good job of putting on the air that I'm busy (well technically, I am busy too; see above), but lately I've been lacking the capacity to really initiate things with people unless it was already convenient to do so, like people who I already see around on a regular basis cause of circumstance anyway.

These days whenever I have free time to myself, I've been selfishly guarding it because I can only behave normally in front of people for so many hours in a given week. That and I can't handle the uncertainty of texts with no response right now (oh god I'll never survive online dating at this rate if/when I start). Even something as simple as a delayed overnight response about ordering dinner the next day made me go into fuck-this-I-hate-dealing-with-people mode for a few hours this week. No hard feelings towards that person, just towards the evil necessity that is the institution of texting and instant messaging at large, even though I am just as flaky at responding to people given that I can only respond when I am in the right "mood" and therefore am a hypocrite.

And with that, I need to sleep now if I'm going to survive tomorrow. This is why I haven't been blogging these days even though the process of writing this out feels somewhat cathartic. Good night.

Actually, I'm getting tired of ending my posts the same way every time, so I'll finish this by noting that the noise my air conditioner makes (especially at night) feels uncomfortably like the sensation of falling down a seemingly never-ending but possibly definite pit. Not that I've ever done so myself, but I've experienced something close to it at some point in the half-awake/half-asleep state while in bed in the past, which typically leads me to wake up in a jolt, because who likes the sensation of precariously falling and not knowing the moment when they'll crash into the floor.

the state of things

Haven't felt like publishing anything these days because I'm not satisfied with what I end up with, as usual. I need more time in life for this stuff. Sigh.

In-person conversations these past few months have been great on the other hand; always open to talking with people. Thanks to everyone who's listened. :)

Now, where were we again?

For lack of a more cohesive thought process and the sake of time, I'm just going to throw things on here that may or may not be related to each other but are relevant to whatever's been going on with me of late. Or perhaps "for years," as one of my friends has put it.

- Imposter syndrome. and simply being apathetic about the day-to-day process, and even on those days where I'm productive at work, wondering what's the point of it all. The things I actually feel like doing (like writing, as I am right now) are not financially productive enough for me to just give up whatever else I ought to be doing right now.

- That night Jade and I walked the streets of Manhattan and I picked out a set of husky earmuffs. To phrase it in terms not actually used in the conversation because I already forgot exactly what we said, questioning the narratives that have been placed in front of us because they conflict with the way we approach life-- just what are we really striving for? And the conundrum that comes knowing that we are able to experience these issues now because of our having already achieved in life what others have had to spent a lifetime to achieve, or in other words, because of our privilege.

- I'm sick of the phrase, "what does it mean to" + ________ + ?, even though it comes up in church all the time. Or just Christianese lingo in general. My therapist made a comment today about how he doesn't like using the word "sin" in a therapy context because it's such a loaded term that can mean different things depending on who you talk to, since not everyone has the same understanding of it, and I wholeheartedly agree.

- Oh, and therapy's been great. Just a little too short and too expensive for my liking given that I could probably talk about my problems all day and not for 50 minutes a session, and it's not an end-all kind of treatment like you might expect. But it's been nice to have someone who can provide insight and constructive feedback in an understanding and non-judgmental way.

- I think I've spent more money on clothes in the past couple of months than I did in the past few years. Lately I've been thinking about things (like fashion and dating) that I never really had much consideration for years ago. I feel like I've just been maturing really late or something in those respects.

- If societal pressure/expectations weren't an issue, I would be okay with being single for the rest of my life. Not that I don't want a relationship, but I don't see a relationship as the end-all that other people apparently see it as. (And don't throw "man was not made to be alone" at me when Paul also advocates for celibacy in 1 Corinthians. Or for that matter, just don't throw out-of-context verses at me in general, when people have been debating on the proper meaning of these things for ages.)

Most of the time when I do something alone, the thought that sometimes goes through my mind is, "it would be nice if someone else were here," but NOT "it would be better if someone else were here." Having another person there introduces a whole other set of concerns and situations that are probably equal, but not necessarily better to me. Some of the happiest moments I experienced in the past year happened when I was alone, honestly, and I couldn't imagine another person appreciating those moments the same way I did... or at least, another person out of all the people I know currently, best friends included.

- People have asked me lately what I've been looking for in an SO. I honestly can't tell off-the-bat because I'm just not automatically attracted to most females I meet for the first time (cue conversation for another time, or feel free to ask me), and I have a much easier time discerning what I don't like than what I do like. But I guess one thing, in light of the conversations I've had lately: it would be nice to find someone who can keep up with an intellectual discussion and eventually formulate their own opinion about it, even if they don't know anything going in. (Yes, I like having fun, stupid conversations too, but I can have those any day of the week. The more interesting, thoughtful conversations-- those have been more rare for me lately.)

-  On a semi-related note, the problem I have with the typical church-goer is that a lot of people are looking to be told how they should live, simply because the Bible or their pastor says so, rather than really reflecting on why that is so and whether they actually think it makes sense for themselves. If they can at least contemplate why someone outside the church would see things completely differently from it, and in a way that doesn't automatically see the other worldview as inferior, then that'd be a good place to start.

I will admit that I am easily prone to judging people who say things that come across as bigoted or lacking in understanding, though, when their real opinion might be more nuanced or thought-out than it appears to be. But regardless, I'm finding myself in this position where I'm finding being Christian to be more of a turn-off in a person than it is something to spark interest, or at least in the average case. But being antitheist/apatheist/lacking any interest in religion isn't necessarily better to me either. As I put it to one friend, I think I'd have more in common with someone who used to be Christian-then left-then came back (the coming back part being optional). At least, it shows (hopefully) that the person put some thought into it.

- I don't like the way my family sometimes treats Christianity almost like a ritualistic, superstitious activity in itself, which actually is kind of a Chinese approach to religion the more I think about it. Pray before traveling; pray before a big meal; pray with your eyes closed for that matter; go to church every Sunday; take communion and put money into the tithing basket and clap; make sure you're actually singing during worship and listening to the message; "what if you're not baptized before you die?" and little things like that.

This is not something I would've figured out or really understood until I left home, but when you limit the extent of your religious behavior to making sure you're doing everything "correctly," without consideration for what exactly it is that makes your behavior "good," you limit the speaking and transformative power of your faith (not in its full context, I know, but I'm referring to Matthew 5:16 -- "In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." See also any of Jesus' interactions with the Pharisees). And you also reduce it to simply being a means for making yourself feel better about whatever lifestyle you're already living.

I think this is in part why a lot of youth get fed up with the religion of their parents and end up becoming either more fanatical/extremist or just leaving it altogether: because they expect that something as professedly life-transforming as a religion would actually reflect something genuinely better about its adherents' lives, and not just become another organized means of getting by in life or providing structure/purpose to it.

- Ironically, I still feel a compulsion to consult others for advice even though I profess being tired of being told by people what I should/shouldn't do (although I've technically been saying the latter since I was in elementary school; my family still makes fun of me for it). Or perhaps it should be: I'm tired of authority. I just want advice. And the right to not follow said advice without being ridiculed for it if I honestly think and feel differently about it.

- Wishing I could record the conversations I've been having in the past few months, because my memory's going and I haven't had much time to reflect on everything we've talked about.

- Paperman, Undertale, Hamilton, Michael Arden, and Beyonce's "Countdown" on repeat. I've also been getting back into hip hop again.

- The more I learn, the less certain I feel, the more fed up I am with people who expect me to have come to some decision or belief on things that are still hotly contested by tons of people today. The expectation to have had your life figured out by *insert arbitrary age of true adulthood here*:

18? didn't know shit.
21? still didn't know shit, or shit about life in the real world anyway.
25? ugh, I still felt like 22 was last year. and I still didn't know shit, though in part because I wanted to enjoy other things in life that I never got to fully appreciate before because school and other commitments but mainly school.

But really. Politics? Religious beliefs? Professional direction? Sexual and relational identity? Lifestyle?

All of these things take time and years of continuous experiences to have developed a substantially meaningful stance on, and, I feel like it's taken me years longer to figure these things out than familial/social expectations have dictated, let alone the fact that a good number of people around me seem to have already decided on these things at younger ages than I am now. The opinions that I already have right now are different from what I had a couple of years back even, and I expect them to likely continue to change as I grow older, with further experience. So pardon me if I come across as non-commital right now; I'm still figuring things out for myself. Hence, the therapy, among other things.

- I feel like this year is the year I move on from the day-to-day distractions to whatever it is I'm really looking for-- if only because I'm fed up with being stuck in every aspect of my life till now.

I still feel like disappearing from everything sometimes, if only because my mind can only take so much human interaction and feedback and distraction from all parts of life before it shuts down. It doesn't help that a lot of these voices have been conflicting, and I'm the type of person who tries to gauge all sources of input before I really commit to something (except for when I stop caring because I just want to get it over with. Stop bitching at me for my car choice man, I KNOW ALREADY.)

But first, time to breathe.

---

Apologies if I come across as frustrated right now. I'm just perpetually frustrated most of the time these days when I actually bother to think about it (I'm pretty sure I've been in a similar phase on this blog in the past, though this time it's the quarter-life crisis edition). If I don't respond well to feedback or criticism these days, I'm really sorry; it's just the phase I'm going through right now. But at least it helps that most people I talk to don't tend to push my buttons that way anyway. (Johny, you can keep trying, but I don't think you'll have much luck. :P)

And if I don't come across as frustrated in person, I'm probably doing a good job of distracting myself away from it. Friends make for good distractions (among other things), even when we're talking about the very things causing my frustration. I do a decent job of separating my emotions and feelings from the substance of my thoughts, or speaking in a detached manner that is.

Till next time.

on writing.

So back in the day (and by that I mean college, so not really that long ago depending on your perspective), I used to write a lot more. I practically blogged something every few days or so, even if it was only a few sentences; whatever happened to be on my mind at the moment. And it was fun… or at least, it felt worthwhile, even in those moments when I was upset and needed to vent somewhere.

And then, people started discovering my blog. Mostly through not-so-random chance—as in, I allowed it to be findable by hinting at its existence… until I finally caved and (quietly) linked to it on FB and that gravatar thing that certain sites like Wordpress use (it’s not there anymore, for the record.). And suddenly I had a readership of some sort, even though it wasn’t really much compared to other people I knew who were more open about blogging. But I was at least aware that some people read my posts sometimes.

Having a readership changed things, allbeit gradually at first. I started to censor myself more; post less frequently; focus on making longer, more substantial entries, until it started feeling like I was trying to write for some magazine or other publication (but still in my own personal style with the excessive parenthetical thoughts and technically improper dash usage as I just learned recently).

And then I started having trouble writing posts. It would take a minimum of 6+ hours for me to write something I was even half-satisfied with, which by working-life standards is 3/4ths of a standard workday already—which made me even less inclined to start because I’d start feeling overwhelmed about “wasting time,” especially considering how often I’d lose sleep from staying up late writing. I’d randomly start a post every so often and never finish it, or I’d finish and then just never publish it for whatever the reason, including my last post “on writing.” (which will never see the light of day as far as I’m concerned. I can’t stand my own writing sometimes.)

Now it’s just gotten to the point where I’m too self-conscious to even start writing about the things that have been on my mind these days.

The reality is, writing is hard. And not just in the I-suck-at-communicating-and-can-never-find-the-right-words sense, but in the sense that it’s difficult to put yourself out there when you know that you’ll likely be judged by your words to some extent by whoever is reading your blog at a given moment. It's almost nerve-wracking, even (especially when no one responds but you see your post’s stats went up and start wondering what that OSX Chrome user thought). And I know for a fact that I don’t take criticism or judgment all that well, especially when it comes to my own personal thoughts.

The point being, I have a lot of things on my mind that I’ve love to write more about on here, but have often stopped short out of fear of not being “blog-appropriate” or simply being unprepared to deal with whatever reactions people might have—because there’s a lot of things I just don’t talk about all that openly with most people. It’s hard because there is some sense to that: in this era of open internet and social media, whatever you share online can come back and bite you later when you least expect it, and there’s no way of taking back what others have seen. I don’t think I’m prepared to handle the scrutiny of “fifty pairs of eyes,” to intentionally misquote Virginia Woolf, let alone that of a single person (and that actually should be reversed to make the comparison accurate but whatever.).

Aside from that, there's this quote from this rather inspirational post on blogging I read the other day that sums up the experience of writing better than I could have:

"You know what writing really is? It’s about putting your completely incomplete and perfectly imperfect thoughts on paper. It’s about facing the stark reality that you’re not as smart as you thought yourself to be and that your beliefs about life (and everything within it) are not as clear as you had hoped them to be."

When I first started blogging, my intention was always rather simple: I wrote for myself. I wrote to keep track of my own thoughts, because I thought a lot, but most of the time only passively and in an aimless fashion to the point where I’d end up forgetting what was on my mind just a few minutes ago.

Of course, while that part of my motivation never really changed, I had to admit that once I became aware of my limited readership, it wasn’t only for me anymore. Part of me wanted to impress whoever it was that was reading at a given moment, almost as a way of saying: “Look at me! My thoughts are deep and insightful and you should pay attention to me!”

But the more I wrote, or tried to anyway, the more I realized this: my thoughts aren’t always all that. I can only say so much before I start repeating myself. And I will never impress everyone, nor is it even worth trying to, because my own concerns don’t always carry the same weight in other people’s eyes.

And that’s just the reality of it. I spend so much time, so many hours agonizing over finding the right words to say, for an entry that likely will just be glossed over within a few minutes by anyone who happens to come across this. It’s discouraging to realize sometimes (and ties into other thoughts I've had on loneliness, but that's for another day). But it reminds me that I shouldn’t be trying that hard to “impress” anyone with what I say anyway. I have other, more personal reasons for doing this, reasons ultimately that make this whole process worthwhile.

All that to say, I’m going to try to be a bit more open and a bit less cautious about what I really want to say when I write here (to the extent that there will probably be more long-form posts of this sort in the future). By not bothering to write out of fear, I’ve been hurting myself more in the long run. And I missed this.

It is now 5 AM, and I have officially screwed myself over for the rest of today. But oh well. To me, it’s been worth it (until I wake up later today and curse past me for not sleeping on this, anyway).

still alive.

I guess I've just gotten more private about things lately... including the things I used to write about. And I can't really sustain this blog with just posts about what I'm currently reading/watching and so on even though that still goes on too. I'd just be self-reporting my distractions if anything, and that's never really been the focal purpose of this blog, else I'd have started a separate entertainment blog or something (which now that I think about it might not be a bad idea but ugh I've started so many blogs by now).

Most days of late cycle between vague tired-of-people-ness, frantically trying to enjoy moments when they come by, and subsequent disappointed feelings but mostly in myself for perpetuating these personal issues indefinitely. Not to mention the host of other problems I don't feel comfortable blogging about for now.

I've been able to speak up more about some of these in person with a few friends, and that's been good... but I still need to see a therapist one of these days. It's been mulling in the back of my head for a long time now (as some of you may know), although like every other major thread in my life, I've been procrastinating on it... just cause. I'm pretty easily distracted. And I suck at asking people for help when I need it since I'm so used to wanting to be independent about everything (and sucking at that too to the point where people nag me about it which only pisses me off more. shut up I know I make mistakes okay).

But procrastination and good talks aside, lately it's been getting to the point where I've started telling myself, "I don't think I can go on like this much longer." I'm sick and tired of letting my insecurities control my emotional day-to-day life, and living in fear of even possibly just having a panic attack or mental breakdown at work when a little unexpected moment just happens to tick me off (not gonna lie; it's gotten close to that). In the heat of the moment- socially or whatever- I can get by fine, and even talk about my issues is a somewhat detached manner... but it's the unpredictable day-to-day happenstances that throw me off.

I would write more but my head hurts (another thing--semi-frequent headaches) and I need sleep. Another time. But yeah, I'm taking therapist recs or advice from anyone who has experience with this kind of thing, secular or Christian. Just putting it out there now so that I'm actually motivated to go through with this for once.

Till next time.