on clarity

What is it? 2018? Summer? Where has time gone

Recently I’ve received an amazing and very unexpected opportunity that, if I accept, could shake up the course of my university life. I also have a final for my summer course (Intermediate Microecon, woohoo! much fun! yikes) tomorrow that I need to study for.

The past week and a half (or two weeks) have been very up and down, and I have been excited, nervous, fearful, and very very anxious. Anxiety is a hell of a feeling. But I am here to talk about what comes after that.

On clarity-

  • Understanding your priorities: understanding that I need to focus on one thing at a time given my anxiety and given the time-frame, determining my priority, and knowing it is okay and 100% needed to put away thoughts about another worry until this priority is finished.
  • Taking concrete steps towards a well-made plan: that is the “fight” in this fight or flight response
  • Reaching out for help: this may be part of taking steps, but it is also good to know that people want to help you understand things, troubleshoot things, and everyone has difficulties.
  • Anxiety -> excitement: I am excited to take on this challenge the best I can.
  • Love & support from friends: what can I say. They’re the best.

Aaaand now I’m gonna head back to studying.

Cheers to you & your lovely self,

minty

 

good morning

Good morning. A new day. Rise and shine. The sun. Everything will be ok. Well it’s actually 2:30 am BUT I’m saying good morning because there’s been so many changes and new starts and transitions going on right now in my life and good morning quite simply sums up the mood.

Good morning, I welcome myself back to this bloggo and just writing and acknowledging my emotions in general. I have been for too long out of touch with myself, my growth, and my ambitions. Journaling is what helps me process life: my feelings, difficult situations, anxiety, happy memories, gratitude, growth.

And I’ve been pushing off taking care of myself because of reasons that shouldn’t be prioritized over my mental wellbeing. So today, I’m embarking on a journey of: daily journals. Good morning, I can do this.

(I’m wearing my sunny yellow Better World by Design t-shirt right now. I love the color. It’s a bold & warm kind of happy. It radiates. What a nice feeling, to be full of positivity and gratefulness and excitement for life. That’s peace.)

I’m going through Really Big Major Changes right now, and should probably chronicle them here before talking any more:

  • I’m at Brown! WHAT?? School started about 3 weeks ago. It’s been a hectic time, but things are finally starting to settle into rhythm.
    • It’s so weird to finally be here, in reality, to actually step into this culture, this environment, this ambiance, this space that I’ve imagined and idealized and spent so much emotional energy on. Coming here with so much imagined, it’s like trying to overlap footprints in the snow. You expect so much to be the same as your imaginations, you know that’s not realistic, you don’t know if you want reality to be more similar to your expectations, you become surprised maybe confused and perhaps even disillusioned because it isn’t, you experience cognitive dissonance, you knew it wouldn’t be like what you imagined… It’s just very much ~idk~ in general.
  • I’ve met so many great and awesome and kind people. I think I’ve met some people I can call my best friends! (!!!!) so wonderful, so grateful
  • MY CLASSES ARE AMAZING. I am not kidding. I’m taking:
    • POLS 820H Race and Visions of Justice: this is a small (16 people) seminar about theories of justice, esp racial, and ultimately asks if modern liberalism is a viable theory to solve racial inequality in the US. Tell me this isn’t interesting af ??? We do a lotta reading and get to critically reflect on it and discuss together in class, which is super nice because it makes you think and question deeply about the material. The other people in my class are so intelligent and class is always just so stimulating. It challenges what I’ve understood and provides so many more perceptions; it makes me think so much about things.
    • POLS 400 Intro to International Politics: bruh. My professor is So Good. He’s so good at lecturing. It’s a huge class (220~ people) but I love how he dissects the material in a clear & straightforward & logical way. Also, international politics is just very interesting for me (I’m probably majoring in International Relations because I love!! it! but that’s a long post i might write up later).
    • CS 1300 User Interface and User Experience: ok so I love design and esp. UI/UX this course was literally made for me we do so much interesting homework and actually learn about the science of designing things ?? like did you know that tactile response is faster than auditory which is faster than visual – so that’s why keyboards are springy & we have vibrations on our phones. also things called affordances are super nifty like they are features of the product design that “suggest” to you what to do to make a product work so it makes learning how to use a new thing super intuitive (e.g. a round door knob is an affordance that tells you you should turn the door knob to open the door, as opposed to, say, push or pull the door). AND LIKE WE DISCUSS how to better design things so that they are easy to learn and use and are more efficient like hello ?? i love??? also the professor is super funny and chill and lectures really really well.
    • ENGN 90 Management of Industrial and Non-Profit Organizations: ditto the title. We go through case studies of actual businesses and their certain management or marketing dilemmas. In general, we study business decisions and entrepreneurship, which is something I’m heavily interested in. (Also the prof is really nice and chill.)
  • I’m in a relationship! wth????? wth???? wth??????? ya it’s true! (!!!!) He’s funny and considerate and caring and loving and smart and compassionate and we vibe super well and he likes me a lot what else can u ask for??? it makes me happy when I think about him, life is good I’m v lucky 🙂

 

Yep, a lot of big major changes going on here. Good morning. I’m trying, I’m surviving, I’m thriving.

ok it’s like 3:13 i will sleep now! more tomorrow!

good morn,

cath

hello hello hello!! (updates for my own sanity)

hello person!! how was your day?

so this is a story of me, I, a turd, on a journey to become a rainbow turd with sparkles and fairy dust.

recently I’ve been:

  • doing my independent study project! which is really cool but should have spread work more … proportionately throughout the year *cough
  • trying to improve my time management – gosh dammit I’m getting progressively worse at doing things and I HATE IT
  • fighting off senioritis with my bare knuckles & anything chuckable nearby
  • occasionally dabbling in IR & design & photography
  • trying to be better at writing
  • spending WAY too much time on social media >> needs to stop

my big projects:

  • independent study whoop whoop (i get to do it with one of the most talented person I’ve ever met & we gripe together)
  • web design for: independent study, my high school, a company, my own site
  • 2d design for: my high school

things to do things to do:

  • grad speech wow its so hard to write
  • organizing CSC things & certificates
  • thank-yous to my teachers
  • prom prep
  • letters for friends, letters to cool strangers I admire a lot

things to STOP DOING!!!

  • comparing myself to others AND BEATING MYSELF DOWN FOR BEING A TURD
  • sleeping at 2am
  • procrastinating & living in fear wtf mate
  • spending 2-3 hrs each day on social media

OK some personal goals:

  • time management
  • fear less
  • be a critically thinking turd
  • organize your words, your desk, your shopping list, & reciepts

 

i’m scared

I’m 19 and I’m scared.

I’m scared of who I’ve become – overwhelmed, discouraged, a procrastinator; naive, unconfident; always finding excuses. Becoming dependent on and then desensitized to pick me ups. Knowingly making the wrong decision. Over and over; once, twice, thrice, four times, and I lose count.

There’s such a major cognitive dissonance that exists within me: I wish with all my heart to be someone better, but I refuse to take any steps in that direction.

Instead, I procrastinate, I sloppily disregard personal plans and deadlines, then it becomes normal. I know I won’t finish on time. Justifying your mistakes is such a painful process: you’re wrong, are you going to lie to yourself?

I find myself looking more and more backwards. 9th grade, 8th grade, 7th grade; heck, 2nd grade, kindergarten. That kid that read so much, that laughed so much, that dreamed so much; she knew so much. She knew she had to work hard. She knew life didn’t owe her any excuses. She knew what she wanted, a heart so small filled with an imagination of the future so enormous. She knew the whole world couldn’t stop her.

But who would’ve known; she was stopped by herself.

I’m 19 and I’m scared. I haven’t lived up to the idealistic goals that I envisioned when I was eight, but that’s ok, when you’re young you want to do everything. What terrifies me is losing this sense of pushing oneself to improve, to be who you’ve wanted to be, to do what you’ve wanted to do; these important feelings have been absent.

I’ve wanted so much to free myself from rigorous discipline to find honest curiosity, that I’ve also freed myself from this search – sparks dissipate instead of flaring into flames.

g’luck, 19 year old. this life is still yours.

December; subway

I walk past the old man, white beard, wrinkled fingers. Thin gray garments, traditional Chinese buttoning, shoes made of cloth. His hands move the Erhu bow, slightly, weakly; it only shifts the bow 2 inches where it should have been pushed along 5. There’s no sound. His eyes are half-open, or maybe closed; I can’t tell. There’s no sound, no cacophony, no string rubbing with string to the point of screeching.

His hand moves the Erhu bow, faintly, painfully. There is no sound.

The dented ceramic cup sits in front of his crossed legs, a symbol of his situation. It’s a boundary: two feet from that cup, the stream of rush-hour, quick footsteps, earpods, smart phones, human voices bouncing off the gray marble floor, each different but each eager to reach home. The noise is loud and it makes me uncomfortable. The cup is a boundary: a two-feet boundary of cynicism and apathy, a two-feet boundary between exuberant chaos and deathly silence, two feet between this life and theirs. My two feet stand in the boundary.

–

A week later, I walk past the old man again. Still, the thin beard, the rush-hour, the dented cup before him.

His hands don’t move.

He ran to the ocean

He ran to the ocean.

It was truly a beautiful day. The saturated sky glowed azure and the sand underneath it sat delicately: white, soft, and as clean as the clouds. It dampened to a glossy gold where the waves lapped at it. No one else was here.

The boy paused at the edge of the asphalt, before the sand.

The sun bloomed like a chrysanthemum, steadily pollinating the sea with sparkles and glitters that each only ephemerally decorates the dark crests.

He wished he could lose himself in the serenity, the senseless beauty, the nothingness. And for that moment he did. He plunged into the hallucinatory comfort of hallucinatory content. But he could feel himself falling through his own imagination and again he felt afraid.

And rhythmically, the waves came, crashing, crashing.

He didn’t bother taking off his shoes. Pounding through the sand, he ran, wanting to escape the throat-clenching rawness creeping in his chest, the abyss forming and re-forming to eradicate  anything bright he might hide secretly, unconsciously, the intangible guilt weighing him down, always, always.

His feet beat the sand, and each thud drew him closer to the sea. He could barely feel the grains of sand encroaching his shoe; he didn’t know where he was going; he didn’t care. The salt on his face made his eyes hurt. The howling wind rushed to his ears. 

Finally, there was no where else to run so he stopped. The water reached the boy. Water covered his face and poured into his shoes, seeping into the woolen, white socks he put on this morning. That was a lifetime ago. At his feet, there was the crashing of tides, over and over, over and over. He stared. Perhaps this is why he came here, to seek calm in the chaos.

But all he felt were the tears staining his face, the salt-filled wind ruffling his clothes, the rhythmic rush of the ocean. The loneliness and the hurting and the wanting to not feel anything, but also the inability to forget the perpetual weight that filled inside him, dragging.

He didn’t know what to do.

The boy sat down. He couldn’t tell if the salt that parched his lips was from the sea water or from his tears.

But he didn’t care. Tears streaming down his face, he hit it, he struck it rhythmically, he struck the water again and again and again. And the roar of the rush of the ocean came, louder and louder, but he didn’t care.

The problem with words like “doggies”

(This is a weird piece that I don’t want to finish. Normally I would write in a more self-reflective or at least journal-type style, but I really wanted to discuss linguistic conventions and this is what came out. Pooped out. I’ll prob just take it down later.)

I love Tumblr; I love its memorable memes, social justice protests, and useless trivia, yes. Its run-on sentences & random caPATILIZING in the MIDDle of a word & the Trademark ™, its tendency for typos to convey sof and gentl and certain pruhnunciations. It’s cra . zy . punctuations. also its blatant refusal to capitalize in sentences like what im doing here. I love these even more so.

All these unintentionally craft a sense of authenticity. A confident giving of something erroneous, an instinctive rebel against conventions, a stray from the public stream into something not quite private but more like a secret: we both like the same things. On screen, the symbols you type are the faces of your language.

It has a sense of authenticity because with the run on sentences you can show your excitement for something because you just can’t stop ! and there are no pauses for you my reader to stop tooooo hahhahah so this feeling of excitement is shared not only through words but through their form.

It can show your feeling of boredom because when everything is monotone there is no difference in when there is sound and when there is emptiness since everything is dull everything is devoid of feelings and so no one cares.

It is truly experienced. And even if the words do not resonate, their form drags you through the writer’s mind.

It has a sense of authenticity because oH MY GOSH I CAN FINALLY WRITE I ALL CAPS TO SHOW YOU  and the best part is I CAN aLtErNaTe like hoW MUCH BETTER CAN THIS GET??   See, my initial surprise at being given back this choice was made full aware. And better yet, the surprise building up to joy — this increasing and sublimation of emotion — can be felt because oH MY GOSH I can alternate in the middle of my words.

It shares, not communicates. Feelings are clearer, fuller; readers understand better.

But what is the problem with such linguistic conjures? Only one: they sound immature.

Nobody wants to understand a three-year-old kid.