Just a random plug for goodreads, that social network I use for tracking books (...since I have a site for everything).
goodreads is awesome and I wish I had more friends who actively used it so I could stalk their reading behavior I mean discover more awesome book recommendations. Ever since Eric randomly convinced me to start writing reviews there (because "stars are meh"), I haven't really done book posts on this blog in a while since it'd probably be redundant, and I don't really foresee it happening again in the future, unless I read a book that triggers such emotion that it ends up overflowing onto here or something. I like reading friend's impressions of books though, even if they're just brief one-liners.
I usually go on book binges during family vacations because we end up having a lot of downtime (or my family is just lazy), and this trip has been no different. 4 books down, how many more to go...
This post is already a week old in writing, but eh, what else is new.
Nothing like an average conversation with friends to make you realize you don't feel like you've grown much in the past year.
Well if you want to be technical, I guess you could say there's been some change, but it's not really the kind of sudden-in-your-face-growth that people expect an answer for whenever they ask you how you're doing and what your goals are in life. I sound like a parrot repeating those all the time even though I actually don't get asked them that much either, but maybe such phrases are enough to put me on edge now that I probably should be addressing them for once and not in the tone of a chronic procrastinator.
what else is not so new:
- Early on last year I went through a panic attack phase that stemmed from social anxiety, a fact that surprised one of my friends this year who told me that he would never have gotten that impression from me whenever we hung out. I guess I'm good at hiding it from the right people. But regardless, the fear doesn't feel so real anymore and I'm more comfortable now around people I'm not as familiar with... but I can't really describe why that is, though, other than perhaps that I don't really take a lack of proactivity from people so personally anymore. Maybe once in a while the sentiment will linger, but it's become more of a fact of life for me now that I recognize my vulnerability in this area and that it's really just okay to not be as naturally engaging as whatever average you perceive to be the norm all the time.
- I also recognize that I spend a lot of time and energy exerting myself on manners of little consequence. I doubt most people who ever get around to reading this entry actually care about anime, and yet the subject of the post below this one actually preoccupies my head for hours sometimes and I can't get it out unless I write it, and then share it with the world!- because a backlog of lists on Evernote (oh god that phrase sounded horrible as I wrote it) isn't as mentally fulfilling. The music of the openings I like in particular is my guilty-pleasure or fodder for music I like to listen to when I'm working or driving and don't feel like paying attention much, compared to podcasts or new music which I only prefer when I have the energy for them.
Ironically, I don't like the full length versions of anime songs so much as their bridges and second verses tend to incorporate elements that turn me off. It's the same dilemma I have with Christian music that sounds good in church but horrible to my ears when performed by their actual music artists. But lately I haven't been enjoying modern worship music much either, compared to the older hymns and stuff. I take it as sign that I'm growing old...der. and possibly more than that.
- I frequently worry in the back of my head about becoming irrelevant and retreading over the same thoughts again, like for example on this blog where I'm paranoid that half of what I write has already been said by me on a previous entry on here. It's a blog-world problem that occurs when you realize that you've been consistently writing blog entries every month for the past 10 YEARS what the heck (livejournal counts as 2, and no, I am not linking to that crap on here).
I forget sometimes now that the original reason I started blogging was for myself, and that I am the heaviest consumer and harshest critic of the words that I write. I would probably have bolded that sentence or something, except that frequently bolded phrases (as well as excessive hyperlinking) in blog entries and articles on the internet are one of my biggest pet peeves.
- If I sound looser in this entry than I usually do, it is probably because I am not filtering my written thoughts as much as usual... for no particular reason other than the first line I wrote. All I've had in the last hour [edit: as of the writing of this sentence] is milk that I don't expect to finish before I leave town for Hawaii in a couple of days, and I hate wasting food so I will be imbibing as much [lactose-free] milk as possible before tomorrow.
When I was younger and lacking any symptoms of lactose intolerance, I used to drink reduced and later fat-free white milk everyday for breakfast and dinner. I never grew sick of it, just like I can never grow sick of rice and freshly baked bread and other plain foods. I love being vanilla!
- I'm not really anywhere near the markers I subconsciously established for myself as goal posts for personal growth around the time I finished college, and part of me also questions whether those markers are actually markers in the first place because one of them was quite literally "figure out what you want to do for the next five years," which isn't really much of a goal in retrospect. I have trouble visioning that far ahead because I tend to care more about the immediate future in general, and from years of planning schedules that I never actually adhered to or finished can attest that I don't practically work well with long-term visions... unless it has to do with making small to-do lists, because I do tend to finish those... just years after the fact.
- One of my friends asked me how long I'll continue to let my company abuse me, and after having a decently productive work day today and reflecting on what I liked about my job, part of me just wondered, "is it really abuse if I enjoy it?" and the other part of me just realized how horrible that sounded after typing it. But honestly, I feel like I have it easy compared to other people I know, so I don't generally find reason to complain much beyond little nitpicky things like the fact that it took a year for me to finally get a sit-to-stand desk configuration approved by the ergonomics department.
(This stems from a company policy to avoid situations that they could become liable for, except that allowing my back and wrist pain to worsen from a lack of action on their part ought to be considered just as bad as accidentally making it worse from an action taken.)
- To summarize: help, I'm aging and I can't stop myself.
Because I haven't done a list post in a while. More relevant if you watch anime or are open to it.
Favorite Anime Openings:
I know they say not to judge a book by its cover, but sometimes a good opening is enough to make me want to watch a series- especially the less conventional ones. The main criteria for this list is that I have to like the song at least, and then the visuals, but in this case I tried to prioritize visuals that didn't look too overused or familiar and so wound up with a bit more variety than usual. This could probably be taken as a recommendation list if you're looking for something to watch, although I actually haven't gotten around to watching a few entries yet. :P
Anime sometimes gets a bad rep for being immature and catering to unrealistic fantasies or stereotypes and the subculture that it represents, and I'll admit that there is a lot of shit out there... but just as with any other medium, there are worthwhile series to watch if you look around enough. I think anime in particular has strength in its ability to convey creative settings and scenarios that often can't really be captured anywhere else. Of course, some of the titles on here will still come across as weird to people, but what can I say, I have a higher tolerance threshold for these things now.
Also, the order in this list doesn't really matter, but I'm counting down just for the heck of it.
Angel Beats feels like the darker reverse cousin of Clannad After Story and is even sung by the same person, Lia. I like how it mimics the style of a visual novel opening without fully going there.
Disappointing Anime Experiences:
I usually try to avoid watching series that probably would end up in this category if possible, but sometimes it just happens.
5. Sword-Art Online
Premise had potential (it's like dot hack, people trapped in a MMORPG, but less emo), but wound up being way too cliche'd and tropey for me. This isn't always a problem if the series is fine with acknowledging it, but in SAO's case, it felt like it was trying to pass off as something more substantial when it wasn't. They just had to make every girl fall in love with the main character, who isn't really that interesting to begin with, and the villain in the second half was laughably pathetic compared to previous one.
4. Eureka 7
So to be honest, it wasn't really that bad, but I think I watched this a decade too late. The themes are more high-school age oriented and aren't really interesting to me anymore, and the only arc that really drew me in was the one in the middle with Charles/Ray, which by online consensus happens to be the main high point of the series anyway, as it dealt with issues such as foster parenthood and loyalty to a cause in the midst of war. Most of the rest of the cast came across to me as either annoying or forgettable, and I couldn't really stand Renton's whininess... nor Eureka's even once she started developing a personality for once.
3. Code Geass R2
I enjoyed the experience of the series overall... but the second half felt a lot weaker compared to the first. The show took itself seriously as if every character's story mattered, but the stories themselves towards the end relied largely on arbitrary mistakes and unfortunate coincidences (essentially Murphy's Law) to create suspense and tension to the point where it felt like half of the plot didn't need to happen at all, and only did so because everyone (including the most innocent character, Nunnally... wtf) happened to be hot-headed and stubborn and failed at communicating with each other.
It was one thing to create a huge plot changing twist out of an innocent mistake in the first season; it was another thing altogether to continue in the same vein of creating scenarios out of unfortunately timed coincidences up to the point where the rest of the series started becoming laughably predictable. Not to mention, the animation style overall tended towards the bombastic and exaggerated in order to come across as epic. Well technically, the series has always been over the top like that, but I was really growing tired of it this time.
2. Umineko: When They Cry
I love the Umineko sound novels (although they do have their own problems), but I don't think this series really adapts well to the animated medium to begin with. A story meant to be a metafictional narrative about detective novels doesn't really make sense as much in an animated medium- particularly the red text battle sequences, which fundamentally would cause a lot of confusion to an anime-only viewer. The lack/butchering of music from the sound novel also really killed the mood, in addition to the unnecessary fan-service and excessive amounts of creepy Maria moments even by Umineko standards.
To be honest, though, I think the only adaptation that Studio DEEN has ever really done decently well was the second season of Higurashi, and that was after listening to the fans when they fumbled up season 1. But at least the overall creepy atmosphere of Higurashi was able to carry first season along well enough; strip Umineko of its epic atmosphere and you don't really have much else left.
1. Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki OVA 3
The Tenchi Muyo series probably isn't actually that great relative to other anime today, but the first two OVAs at least somehow managed to pull off an impressive genre bending combination of sci-fi and traditional Japanese slice-of-life... while at the same time serving as a quintessential example of the comedic harem genre. And it's one of the few such examples from that genre that I'm not turned off by (as opposed to say, Love Hina), just because it did the sci-fi and everything else well enough- I mean, how many other series can you think of that uses giant trees and cat-rabbit hybrids for spaceships? It had a surprisingly decent amount of character development for everyone in the cast as well (aside from maybe Mihoshi, who's such a ditz that she doesn't really need it anyway).
All of that is just to say that OVA 3 totally butchered that formula. It pushed in too many new characters all of a sudden and meandered about aimlessly while focusing on them over the main cast... until the last episode, where it suddenly pulled off a massive plot dump (without any exposition to explain what was happening) that attempted to resolve all of the questions left over from the previous two series. In other words, it turned into a rushed, almost incomprehensible mess, which was disappointing considering how much potential the three goddesses storyline had. I guess for now there's still a possible future for a Kagato story as hinted at by the last episode and the Shin Tenchi Muyo novels, but considering how the author's handled all of the newer Tenchi OVA universe series... oh well.
Apparently there's a new Tenchi series coming out this fall, but with the five minute shorts style, it sounds more like something in the style of Teen Titans Go! without much substance. I don't really expect much anymore anyway.
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.
There are days where I stop for a moment and realize that I don't really feel like I've grown up. Like this job I have is just to sustain the kind of lifestyle that I would've wanted to live in middle/high school if I didn't have existing obligations or restrictions like that of money or age or dependency on parents for rides and so on. Well technically, the job itself is a restriction on its own... as it is now, wouldn't it be even more freeing to be funemployed, maybe?
These are the days when I have to remind myself that I can't have everything in life. I think part of becoming an adult is learning to accept and deal with the restrictions that life imposes on you, and will continue to impose on you as you grow older. Family, food, money, housing, relationships, children, and time itself... no one is ever truly "free" in the literal sense of the word. It would probably be more freeing to simply be able to come to terms with that and still find fulfillment in other ways. To still remain content with your own life at the end of the day.
Putting it that way, though... I still have a lot of growing up to do.
(Because I think there's a relevant song from a musical for every occasion:)
So recently I started reading this nonfiction book (that you may have heard of as it's been popular as of recent years - how I heard of it I don't remember) called Thinking, Fast and Slow. It's a pretty fascinating take on the psychology behind the mental processes we use to make decisions in everyday life, which the author, Daniel Kahneman, characterizes as two agents or systems. System 1, the fast thinker, is prone to make automatic judgments without you realizing it and falls along the lines of what most people would call intuition, whereas System 2, the slow thinker, is more deliberate and takes effect when you're actually conscious of what you're thinking about. Most people regularly rely on both systems on an everyday basis in decision-making, but often don't realize how often their System 1 factors into that process, particularly when it leads them to faulty or irrational conclusions that they might not have otherwise if they'd actually employed their System 2 more.
The book itself spends a good deal of time elaborating on other mental/logical fallacies that often emerge as a result of both systems and their interaction with each other. A lot of it may come across as surprising, though perhaps less so particularly if you're already familiar with statistics/probability, as a good number of fallacies are related to that subject and how often people will ignore statistical conclusions even when they've been convinced of their validity in favor of continuing to satisfy their own personal biases (but what else is new, really). I could go on about it more but I'll leave it at it's a pretty enlightening read so go read it and yada yada.
About a month ago it was suggested to me that I'd been giving off this impression as if I were fed up with incompetence in the world (not sure if that was the exact word but it was along those lines) To be honest, I hadn't really thought of it that way before, but my immediate reaction was of spontaneous immediate agreement- I mean seriously, why is there so much incompetence in the world?- while neglecting to mention the second half of what I was really feeling- "and why do I feel like I'm just contributing to it?"
The flaws and mental fallacies that Kahneman brought up in his book struck a similar chord along that train of thought, for I couldn't help but feel incredibly annoyed and moreover pissed off while reading about them. Defects coming from people who essentially were unwilling to admit their own mistakes, satisfied with continuing to live in a fantasy world that catered to their own preconceived beliefs and immediate experiences, while rewriting other contrary facts and findings in their own minds so that it could fit whatever bullshit yet coherent story or interpretation that they came up with in their heads. (Okay, I'll admit that's a rather pessimistic way of interpreting Kahneman's book thus far.) Even though these are flaws that pretty much EVERYONE is susceptible to at some point in their lives or even regularly... but that notion just frustrated me even further.
We live such messed up, imperfect lives, it's a wonder we're able to still live and marvel at the simplest things, the beautiful (and not-so-beautiful) things, and get by day-to-day as if our lives aren't... really so imperfect. I look at all of the evidence I've been coming across of the ways in which people and the world around them don't entirely function the way that they should... the way that they ought to... the way that they feel like they should or ought to... and it just brings about an overwhelming sense of confusion and disbelief. To look at a problem in the world today and have this sense that this didn't have to happen; if only people actually communicated and empathized with each other and tried to focus on something beyond themselves for once, looked at the bigger picture, examined their own thoughts and motivations and actions and took responsibility for their own mistakes and shortcomings. But one can only hope for so much sometimes from a selfish and (to use a term parents mentioned from the weekend) "stiff-necked" species, in which these faults are almost essentially programmed from birth. There's no avoiding it.
And to see some of these same glaring defects in my own self on a regular basis, and find myself starting to grow apathetic about it because I too have that innately selfish part of me that doesn't really want to give a shit about it anymore. I see how I'm also a part of the problem I complain about, but I'm paralyzed by my own self-centered desire to settle for the status quo, a hedonistic life focused on the day-to-day to maybe even the next few months that doesn't have to worry about the long term plan because it's tired of people asking "when are you going to get a _____" (insert topic of choice here) and "what do you really want to achieve with your life?" I mean, I'm still too mentally busy being hung up on "why is this world the way it is?" and "what if that question doesn't have a real answer?" when I'm conscious enough to be bothered by it.
...
Anyone reading this who's been in or around an Intervarsity-related community is probably familiar with a book called True Story, which often gets recommended as a summer read in those circles due to its accessible message regarding how to reach out to others in a society that is becoming increasingly hostile to [the largely Protestant evangelical brand of] Christianity itself, which makes it pretty relevant application-wise. The book espouses a 4 circle diagram intended as a more sophisticated update to the bridge diagram that I'm guessing most evangelical Christians have probably been exposed to at some point in their lives (in my case it was elementary school), and I've personally seen two different communities that both happened to set up trainings of some sort teaching people how to engage others using the 4 circle diagram- aka how to draw it from scratch.
The diagram itself is nice in that it provides a structured way of explaining the basic idea of the Christian worldview to anyone who isn't familiar with it or perhaps even has a misconception of what it is Christians actually believe and why they would believe it. But as with any diagram or model that people come up with, it doesn't quite suffice as a satisfactory answer to all of the questions an outsider might have, particularly anyone who's given serious thought to this. (from a logic standpoint, I imagine one might take issue with the claim, "Just like hunger points to food and thirst points to water, so our universal ache for a better world means that such a world either once existed or will one day exist.") And I'm not entirely sure whether it suffices for the believer sharing the message itself- it probably varies on how much or well that person already understands their own faith and its implications. But the impression I got from seeing the enthusiastic push to have this diagram taught and spread in both communities was that people are willing to settle for a story that makes sense to them, even if it doesn't fit with or capture some or all of the details. And that isn't just limited to Christian circles either; I'm pretty sure that's applicable to everyone at some point.
And that happens to be the same message that Thinking Fast, and Slow expresses: our tendency to create stories in our heads that satisfy both the evidence we see before us and our own direct, personal experiences, when oftentimes there just isn't really enough information to form a realistic or universally accurate impression of that sort. And then we judge the validity of the stories we create by how coherent they are in themselves rather than how well they address all of those details, finding it easier instead to ignore the small things that don't conform to the story we're satisfied with, if needed.
To be honest, I often feel the same way about the Christian story itself. It can be told well, and it is internally coherent enough to satisfy at least some of those people who are feeling empty about their lives, upset by life circumstances and the failings of their own nature. The gospel is meant to be a message that saves, to preach good news to the poor and proclaim liberty to the captives, and recover sight to the blind and set free those who are oppressed. It's really an uplifting story. But to really accept it, to accept the Bible in the form which it's been presented, one has to learn to cope with a lot of added baggage: internal contradictions, flaws and fallacies, persecution and injustice borne about both outside and within, and often because of the church, established denominations divided among themselves in the most basic of doctrines and subject to bureaucratic powers, all of which came about as the result of human error and wrongdoing and misguided and often ill-informed intentions. For God so loved the world that he evidently chose a selfish, stubborn, prone to error and ultimately imperfect human species to help carry out his will upon the earth, presumably fully knowing of the consequences that would entail.
People in the communities I've been a part of are prone to look at those outside as lost, as misguided, as being without hope, and while that line of thinking does seem to naturally follow from the story that has been presented, it has never really sat right with me. Who are we to judge other lifestyles, other beliefs and worldviews, other experiences, and other existences in that fashion if we haven't experienced the weight of those lives ourselves? And yet we act as though our intuition based solely on our own immediate experiences about these issues is enough, in some cases perhaps without even realizing it.
Dear God, this is what I mean when I tell you that I'm not satisfied... but I'm still hoping to be surprised.
Updated note: So I wrote this entry about a week ago and never got around to publishing it cause part of it didn't really sit right with me. Now it's a week later and I might say that I don't necessarily feel the same way I did when I wrote this, but as a snapshot of a moment that's become more typical lately whenever my mind is lucid enough, it still stands I guess. Original note: I seem to have a habit for having not so uplifting thoughts while driving alone at night for an hour... and another habit for forgetting the contents of said thoughts the moment I get out of the car. But this is my attempt to recall said thoughts regardless. I really should have a recorder on me or something.
Words are all that I'm capable of thinking in, but words do not suffice.
Once you acknowledge that there will always be a barrier between yourself and other people to some extent, that there will always be some level on which you can never really connect, your view of the world (at least in my case) grows incredibly dim. You stop seeing opportunities in the conversations you might have but then decide not to, because why bother if it won't really go anywhere anyway? If, at the end of the day, you'll just go your separate ways, and then probably not talk again for another day or two or three or week or month or couple of months or half-year or year or so it goes on. So life goes on. And then maybe one or two or four or all of those times one of you might lament how you wish you had more time when you clearly don't and never will have any, so why bother bringing up a pointless subject to begin with.
And it's not even about just that fundamental inability to fully connect which is kind of inevitable anyway, because it's also about your own personal ineptitude. Your own inability to appear happy on command, because looking grim just happens to be your default face and smiling actually hurts more than it sounds even though it somehow uses less muscles than frowning. You can't mask what you're feeling because you like being honest with other people, but at the same time you're having trouble acknowledging or recognizing what exactly it is you're feeling in the first place, so when people call you out for not looking happy you respond that you really are happy and just suck at showing it. Which may also be true, but you really don't know.
All you know is that you aren't satisfied, and you can't figure out how to go about becoming satisfied because you don't believe you ever will be. Faith is believing in something despite that fact that you might not ever see it in your own lifetime, because Abraham had faith in a promise that he personally never lived to witness. And in your own case, it'd wind up being more selfish to simply give up and move on with your life than continue to hope for something you possibly [probably] will never see happen, even though to be frankly honest in this case you'd rather take the selfish route because you feel like you have a right to being content with the way things are. And any more talk about this subject is just continuing to beat on a dead horse that you silently killed years ago.
And clearly, thinking negatively in this fashion isn't right either, because other people will then call you out for not being your normal self because you clearly need help and need to cheer up. But why can't it simply be normal to regularly have negative thoughts of this sort? Isn't the majority of life as it is technically mundane for most people anyway, if you really think about it? Why can't you just acknowledge that and just be okay with the fact that you can't always be happy all the time? Why can't you just be content with the fact that you're not totally satisfied right now? And why the hell does that sound like a paradox when it makes sense in your head?
Is it weird that I find myself drawn towards negative thoughts and emotions? That I love being bleak and depressing sometimes and for the record like talking to other people even when they're also feeling that way? [As my coworker likes to tell me: "You revel in that shit."]
That said, it's not like I don't want to be more pleasant sometimes either. I often do wish I could be that person that brightens someone's day just by being present. I wish I could simply be fully open and sunny and likable and easily approachable and always present and all those other positive-sounding adjectives, inside and out.
But I can't be someone I'm not, and I'm not a genuine happy-go-lucky open and inviting person all the time. I am not someone who likes to draw attention or who is capable of making other people happy when I'm often incapable of doing so for myself. I am not popular or a center or attention or completely inspiring or ambitious or full of dreams for the future or much of a good role model for that matter. And for that matter, nor do I possess any real concrete interest of becoming that person, at least not for everyone or even the majority of the people I actually still see around. Even though I did actually wish for something along those lines at one point, until I realized what folly it was to hope for so much. Because if I really were fully all of those things, I wouldn't really be myself anymore.
If there's one thing I've been hearing a lot, it's that it's better to be an honest asshole than it is to be nice and disingenuous. And I've also been realizing lately that it's becoming increasingly more difficult for me to actually be genuinely... nice with most people. Instead, I notice how jealous I can be when I don't want to be, how apathetic I can be when I shouldn't be, and how self-serving I can be when it comes to me. The me of previous years would've been upset with the me of today, whereas now I don't really seem to care as much anymore except to... lament me, I guess, because I'm fine with lamenting things at least. It fits within my range of low-key emotional capability.
And apparently I'm also fine with choosing to be upset with things I don't really have to be upset over. Or it might be more apt to say that I often end up choosing to focus on the bad rather than the good, because for some messed up reason I sometimes like to feel as though I've been wronged and deserve to be vindicated or something, when in a lot of these cases, I really... don't. It's like saying I want to feel sad so that people will pity me when there really isn't anything to be pitied about (unless you consider it sad that my mind winds up resorting to this state, I guess).
Deep down, I secretly crave attention, and yet I simultaneously hate being the center of attention. I want to be pitied but I don't want to be noticed when I feel pitiful. I want to be close to people but at the same time I don't want to be bothered by them. I want to believe, but I don't want to really believe if it means that I'm lying to myself. I want this entry to be read but at the same time I don't know if I actually want anyone to read this.
I feel like I'm trapped in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance, as if I'm suffering some sickness of the mind, but it also feels terribly normal and expected, as if that's just the way things are and always have been and being not sick is actually abnormal. I lament the fact that I'm even in this situation to begin with, that I couldn't simply just shut my mind off for once, except that the thought of shutting my mind off sounds terrifying and undesirable because I feel like I'd be betraying my own values in the process, by running away from my own problems. A mind can only take so much, but my mind doesn't want to stop taking.
And when my mind isn't lucid enough and people ask me about these things, I just shut down further. I can't truly think about them except for times like now when I'm alone. The moment someone else confronts me about them in person, I feel incapable of answering them honestly because I feel totally apathetic about it when they ask. And then when they're not around, I don't feel apathetic anymore. But I want to be able to still talk about these things when people are around, rather than continue skirting them under the rug... but I don't want to bother people with them.
There are days where I want to be apathetic [about life, the universe, and everything], and then there are days when I don't want to be apathetic, and then when all that is done and over, I can't decide which was the real me speaking, because while one clearly sounds better than the other, both feel equally desirable to me now, in the present. More likely I really am saying both and just keep teeter-tottering from one end to the other, because I can't just settle for one impression or feeling; I have to experience both extremes.
The reality is, sometimes I actually don't mind having depressing thoughts as much as I do mind having them, and that notion is both comforting and disturbing to me. I feel this pressure to conform to a society that values one side over the other, and I stress over the fact that I don't presently feel the same way, but at the same time I don't really want to worry so much over something (my tendency to experience depressing thoughts) that feels so much like just another typical facet of life. Or at least, mine own anyway. Because I would rather be a realistic pessimist than a delusional optimist.
I suppose you could call this my quarter-life crisis.
(yes, I know it's possible to be a realistic optimist or simply just a... realist, but I'm still a ways away from that point.)
