Friday, October 30, 2009

"It's not your fault."


The past few weeks I've been going to this new cell group. I like it. We've been talking about things that are very introspective, and quite illuminating as well. There are smart people in there and they pique my curiousity. I find myself gravitating to the oldest people in the hopes of learning something from them. I don't like making mistakes, that I know. And I want to find out people's views about how to live.

I think I would have crashed a long time ago if not for Levis.


Things are crumbling now. Some very important things are not working out. In fact, things look really bad at this point. And as we hurtle forward I'm scared I'm headed for the F word once again. But somehow I seem to be in denial at this point, or maybe it's not so much denial but more akin to feeling stoned. Like seriously, I couldn't care less right now. It has come to the point whereby I'll just walk away. Less is better.

Nevermind. That's why you need to be grounded. There's something intrinsic inside that should never be compromised. You are your greatest asset. Go sit by the feet of the sagely and learn. Go seek the company of the wise and reflect.

Softball is getting more fun =) We actually played a bit of frisbee today!


If I could just prolong my moments of sports, I think, I would be just fine. I think it's strange, sometimes, when you're standing on ground and the walls and mountains are falling all around you. Somehow.. I don't feel so bad. It's like... yea circumstances suck, yea the environment sucks, but hey, I'm still here and I know I'll do great. With or without. One day.

My writing is getting worse. Or maybe it's just this blog and its irrevelancy. Funny how the greatest parts of you are unseen.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Phew. *wipes sweat off forehead*

Sometimes, I feel better even though I'm supposed to feel worse. Strange heh. But I guess not so strange after all, when you've laid your cards out on the table and it's just time to sit back and relax, watch the unfolding drama/comedy/tragedy/massive self-joke.

Punches are numb already. It's like in New York, when you're whittled down to the barest of threads and you know you've got nothing left to lose. And you decide to go out into the world and f*ck care whatever happens, you would do whatever. Just because. You could, and you did.

For that reason alone, NYC has a special place in my heart.



"If life fucks up, go do something crazy. Two fucks sometimes make one right."

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Today I learnt a calming exercise in my new time-based cell group. There is a seemingly wise old dame in my group, I hope I can learn much from her, and the rest of the people too.

I nearly had a heart attack today as well. This episode better not repeat itself. Or at least, that kind of emotion better not repeat itself. There is a lot of unfinished business. I can't even distinguish between anger or pain or hurt anymore. Everything is one big stomache lurch. Maybe, what I need is to take up kickboxing. Maybe. Or yoga. Or something physically calming.

Softball isn't the answer, it's a social sport, not the kind that brings inner calm. But I'm glad for its presence anyway. Last weekend was good,we won 2nd place although that was kind of expected, since the only competition was the other university and they definitely trained a lot more than we did. I won best batter. I'm not sure if others really performed poorer than I did but I know I did pretty decent for batting. Just too bad for the foul-but-almost-homerun ball. It's been too long since I hit a homer and I miss that feeling. Still, the more accolades I gain from these unimportant aspects of my life, the more I feel the hole.

I'm still abit rattled by the near-heart attack. Going to the library right after in the quiet and presence of friends was calming. I need to lash out somewhere. Somehow.

On a more serious note, I am kind of scared about my internship prospects. So far there has been no reply from the companies I've written to or applied for. I need to keep trying. There is no way in hell that I am going to study next semester. No freaking way.


I am beginning to suspect that during the early formation of my gay identity and socialisation, I mixed too much with the gay men such that there is a disconnect with the lesbian part. As a result I am now
a) lousy with girls socially
b) fantastic with guys socially
c) have the mindsets of gay men (a.k.a. sex is supremely important and youth is also supremely important)


fuck lah.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

I can't sleep. So I'm up.

I've decided not to go to school tomorrow, if my determination holds. See, I'm scared of missing one class. Since that class's TA takes attendance and since this is my last year, my last year of maintaining the 1st class honours gpa. I can't falter. I'm too afraid of failure. But lately I'm sick of this fear, this incessant need to be on my toes and not let an inch. How much could I lose really? If I just fucked up once.

In Las Vegas, I took huge, risky bets to ensure I won't lose my whole capital. Sometimes I even betted my whole capital to gain it all back, plus some. I got lucky, I won. Then another time I played mahjong and lost almost everything, a lot of it since the bets were much bigger than what I was used to. And the consequence was too big for me to realise, I refused to pay. It can't come true. I can't crumble like this. There's too much to lose.

Some things you can't help if you fuck up though.

Today I was studying for my test on organisational behaviour. I think the textbook should be re-labelled as "human behaviour" instead. Because most of what I read started to intrigue me as it could be applied to my own social and real-life experiences. For example, self efficacy means the perception of a person regarding his/her own ability to achieve a task. Those with low self efficacy are so because they have few personal successes upon which to base their confidence. This leads to a vicious cycle.

Actually, I have this cartoon in my head which I thought up once before in a spark of inspiration. I've always had this fantasy of being able to draw, produce and upload it onto youtube (anonymously of cos). My little creation out there in the universe that speaks a human truth. I have everything all thought out. The plot, the characters, the simple but unspoken message that it's trying to drive across, the funny comical parts. It would be a tragicomedy. Kind of like my face sometimes, cute but sad. Ha. Like everything else, it would be a metaphor for something. Too bad I don't have the skills, or the patience and effort to learn to create it. The cartoon would just play out in my head, some kind of bittersweet amusement. The kind whereby you have a joke to share but no one to listen to it at the moment, and you smile inwardly. Or the kind of joke which you know no one will get and will cause some puzzled furrows instead.

Some days you oscillate between wondering if you need or do not need external assistance. Sometimes you wonder if path A or path B is better, and ancedotal accounts tell you that it can "go both ways". It depends. Sometimes you wonder if you should stop "thinking" and start "living". Then reality faces you and it's scary. You dance around the edges and try to make a smooth, discreet entrance into the center of things. And then you throw off all the wrong messages. But when you bumble into things, you might somehow hit the right note and get out your message. However, the end result is always a belly-flop finally. A bit like the cartoon. Then more philosophies like the "self-fulfilling prophecy" idea floods your brain to explain your realities and you're thinking shut the fuck up this isn't getting me anywhere. Thinking, doing, nothing. Zilch. Then someone tells you to have the patience of zen. And then the cycle of thoughts go right back to square one as you question again.

Maybe I'm not meant to find the peace. Maybe this is good restlessness. They also say in the textbooks that a bit of stress is always good. I'm not sure if chronic stress is always good.

There once lived a girl in a dusty small town in Texas. She lives by herself in a house near a hill. Atop that hill is a large rock outcrop where she goes to air her thoughts. She has a good, comfortable, simple life managing a grocery. You could describe it as uneventful. One day some other out-of-state girl comes riding into town on a bike and sweeps her off her feet. She has never felt this way before, and suddenly supposedly asleep eyelids flew upon and she saw Life for the first time. But the other girl did not hang around forever. She walks in and out of the girl's life until finally, once, she stopped calling or coming forever. Stopped talking. She didn't understand. Worse, she had no avenue for contact. And to damn everything to hell, she had no closure. Only left hanging. Like a receiver dangling by its line, the conversation cut abruptly. The caller left.

Inwardly special, but outwardly silent. She decided one day to carve the rock outcrop on the hill in the shape of her lover. In the hopes that one day, as the other girl drives through the Interstate highway, she might see that rock on the hill, that symbol of her devotion and have a change of heart. It's an arduous labour of love. She spents 10 months working on the sculpture. One night she decides to go to the bar, the local newsvine, in hopes of hearing word of her love. She gets it indeed. The news was that it seemed that the other girl had found another man somewhere else and might be settling with him soon. She left the bar deflated, and went to her unfinished rock. There was something inside her, love maybe, but not quite so simple. "Damn it. I'll still finish the work that I've begun anyway". She couldn't explain why she felt this compulsion to finish it. But to give up on her work seemed like some sort of personal betrayal to herself. And so she took three years to finish that sculpture. It is a ten-feet high sculpture and can be viewed from the Interstate highway, some 20 kilometers away. We don't know if her love ever saw her sculpture and came back. We don't know what happened to the girl in the end.

I just know it reminds me of me.

Writing is like sex sometimes. There is a build-up of tension and need, and following the Act, the release and ebb of energy. Gratification. And like sex, the call is pretty hard to ignore. I am up at 2am to write because the thought of writing in my head needed to be fed. And being of the "enjoyment of life" type, I am loathe to deny myself instincts or needs or wants. Want? Then do. Maybe that's why school can be skipped. Because I felt a greater need to write. And as the years go by, my pursuit of grades has seemed like a pointless endeavour anyway. So much for satisfaction. It only gave me bragging rights. It didn't even promise what it was supposed to promise, some path towards a career. One look at my internship prospects and one can see that my grades seem to count for nothing. I feel like tearing up my resume. It's not being acknowledged and deserved.

I feel like tearing up my life resume. It's not being acknowledged and deserved.

In the story, there was mention of only one. In my story, he mentioned few. I look out the dusty window and see the parched earth. No there is none. Or if any, I should be able to see it coming from 50 miles out given that every tree, every blockage has been cleared and the sun is shining brightly out into the land for me. I should be able to see it so clearly that I would fuck it up. Just like when I dislike playing shortstop sometimes because the ball comes too slowly, and I think too much, and then I screw up all over the field. And how I function much better as the third baser, because the ball comes faster and the distance is shorter. And I work best when surprised.

And right now my brain is re-looping to the start of questions again. Maybe I should join this new cell group that is starting. Maybe I need to try something new, some hobby, something different. Something to ... fill. You know beyond a certain age, there is a certain kind of affection that mothers, and siblings and friends cannot give. And even then, teenage angst and cynicism kind of drives familial affection away. Thus leaving space. Some days the space is irrelevant, we have chores to do. Some days the space seems like the only thing that matters. Even all the computer games, and graphic novels and fiction books and movies can't fill out every second and blot out the white. The scenery out there is scary. My perch by the window is scary. Throw your hands up and go into the house. Then someone whispers down your neck that you're making a mistake.

And I hate making mistakes. I think sometimes that the price you pay for mistakes is too much. All too familiar. Sometimes I make calculated errors, some say this is necessary. Sometimes I think it'll backfire. One church member once described me, after some raw prayer session, that when he placed his hand on my back he felt, no he got a vision, that I was like a light that had a cloth draped over it. And it could not shine as bright as it was meant to be because it couldn't shake off the cloth that enshrouded it.

These days I feel like I don't have much to say. I go through the motions and be done with it. Sometimes I try to be a little more sociable. But one wonders what the point is.

The real world is scary. The real you is scary. I can tell you don't like to talk about yourself in that aspect. I saw it in your eyes that sunday I looked across you from the dessert table. I have those same eyes. I get asked those questions. It's like cutlery screeching on porcelain. Unbearable.

The rock sculpture is hidden. But I know it's there all the same. But I know there ain't no driver on the highway changing its mind. Neither should I care. But like the book says, one of the most pointless and frequently given human advice is "don't think about it".

I guess at 230am right now I shall apply two pieces of advice from my thousand-dollar self-help workshop. Accepting the fact that you suck, will help you think less about it. And, oh what the fuck, go for whatever you want anyway.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

I just lost out in two internship applications. I am crushed.

Okay, so I applied for the ones that have like... applicants in the double digits. But sighs... I don't understand why I never get these really good ones. I mean, I'm looking at my resume and honestly I think it's bling bling. And when I think back about my interviews, I kind of get the feel that I did well in them. And public speaking/communicating is supposed to be my ace. So I should be doing well no?

But no.

I don't know why. It is really saddening. These rejections are really painful. Why does it seem like the important things in life are just failing for me. Yeah sure you could say internships aren't important. But they are an important step towards a career, towards knowing what you want in a career. How would I know this certain life path is for me if I don't at least get a 6 month taste of it?


Add to this, a separate note, some other thing I've been working at has blown up quite abruptly. Like wow, I never saw that one coming. Either I must be really doing something wrong or though I can't seem to really figure out why. And upon discovery, I realised that the disappointment pretty much flew over my head. Like okay, not new. *shuffle away*





Life is full of disappointments.


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The only things worth looking forward these days are softball and my computer games. Everything else feels like dead ends.