where am i going? (next)
here. but also, not here.
i booked this five-day trip to Singapore almost immediately after my last period — i hadn’t traveled anywhere since the year started, and i was feeling it.
no, not travel envy, not because i’ve seen too many people in [insert country name here] with their partners / friends / family. i’ve long given up on the notion of travelling with others because of my unpredictable period condition (which, in all of its glory, probably deserves a post on its own here), but something else about this year has been bothering me. gnawing quietly.
i’d promised myself to take writing my novel seriously this year. in the last five months, i’ve written 9 chapters for a new plot that i finally just “screwed it and started writing”, then proceeded to scrap it very recently because i wasn’t happy with how much exposition the story was doing. it was annoying me to no end.
work has been stable and honestly not very challenging, so while i have nothing to complain about, i also have nothing much to be excited about, either. (such as the circumstances, no one is at fault)
family has been… slightly annoying. i found out i was and still am, carrying lots of resentment for my brother. it’s a long story, and a little too private to share here, so if you’re a friend who’s just finding out about this, know that i’m okay to talk about it if you asked me directly. if you’re my brother reading this… well. hi. oop. I’M WORKING ON IT OKAY.
with yet another year flying by, i can’t help but to feel a little on edge again.
what am i doing with my life? what am i really doing??? what do i want????? where am i going????????????
i wasn’t anxious because of my age, or my peers going somewhere further than i, or whatever other social pressure.
i was anxious because i realised… i had goals for myself that i never really made into concrete plans.
i was never the kind to decide on what i would be at a certain age or in a certain number of years, but that just meant that my anxiety stretched into an endless amount of future. every second i wasn’t the thing i thought i was supposed to be, my brain was sinking its teeth into my nervous systems, triggering one bedtime revenge procrastination after another. (i love that we have a name for that now.)
so. the goal?
write the novel.
be an artist.
okay, i admit that the second one is a lot more vague than the first. but we’re fighting one battle at a time, buddy.
being in Singapore led me to quite a few thoughts, but one of which stood out the most:
did i escape my own thoughts under the romantic guise of travel? where i can be someone else, not have any responsibilities, and have no one to be accountable to?
i’m good at escaping my own thoughts. but being here this time around has made me realise something… rather sickening.
i want to be me.
i want the responsibilities. i want to be accountable. i want to be home and be living life fully, instead of waiting for another vacation. i don’t want to live life looking forward to the next best thing. i want the best thing to be living in the now, in the present, doing the work.
insane. i can’t believe i just typed those words.
God literally designed us to work. He put Adam and Eve to tend to the garden and the beasts and whatnot! it was supposed to be enjoyable! (until they ate the fruit and sinned yadayada)
anyways, the big revelation i had is pretty much these two things:
think the thoughts
do the work
repeat (being me) consciously and resist (the world) consistently
yeah. that’s about it. time to go.
