136 - The beginning of the end

Before an individual presents bad news to others, sometimes they will feel the need to mention that it breaks their heart to even say this, that even the very act of presenting upsetting information evokes in them a sense of helpless shame and sadness before they've even brought others into that same dark place. They may also phrase it in a slightly different way, the clichéd old line of there's-no-easy-way-to-say-this-so-I'm-just-gonna-say-it. Most of the time when people utter these words, they aren't really thinking hard about what their words imply. These two approaches to sharing thorny matters are effectively meaningless and false, because they miraculously provide the user with the exact 'easy way to say it' that he/she so desperately needs, but perhaps sacrificing the level of concern that should be raised - as if those disclaimers make it easier to bear. Saying it is easy any way you do it. It's deciding what you're going to do next that's the hard part.

This is going to sound very egotistical, but I feel that my whole life is a hard one, with many hard parts. I have come to realize that I have an aversion to doing things the easy way. I find myself thirsting for challenge all the time. On multiple levels of consciousness, I create the Hell I so mention in this blog's title, and proclaim it to be some sort of epic battle against the odds. But I don't believe in chances. My faith lies in the individual paving his own path to walk on, and any challenges that arrive in the near future are those reared from his very own actions in the recent past. Not long ago, a friend of mine told me that she notices from this blog that I always try to give everything in my life a logical cause - a reason for their happening or existence. She hit the nail right on the head with that comment. I need to rationalize. And the idea of fate or destiny just never seems very rational to me. I want to attribute everything that happens to me... to me.

And so whenever I'm faced with a problem nowadays, I like to think about what I can do about it. I draw from experiences in the past, I analyze their relevance to the present dilemma, and I make plans for the imminent future. I don't believe that the hands of fate exist and can help me. I have to take matters into my own hands. I know my livelihood isn't that hard, as long as I try not to think too much. While I tend to inflate the severity of my stress, I also tend to exaggerate my own ability to deal with such stress. I often forget who I really am and what I'm capable of. And I forget what matters to me because I'm thinking too hard and there's just too much going through my mind.

Who I am is very simple. As it has always said on every online profile I have, I am an 18-year-old, Filipino-Chinese student living in the UK, and originally from Hong Kong. I'm also a TV fanatic, an avid reader, a food zealot, an aspiring forensic anthropologist, an inborn outdoorsman, a learned bartender, an ambitious globetrekker, an internet addict, and a passionate Pokémon master. There's one thing not on the list, but I'll get to that soon. Despite all of that, though... I'm afraid there's one of those terms that just bears greater weight on who I really am and should be than all the rest.


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And so here I must finally tell you what this 'bad news' is, how this is 'the beginning of the end', and how everything I've talked about so far comes together. Now, it really does bum me out to now tell you that for maybe as long as a year now, I disliked blogging a lot. I didn't want to. And the logical reason as to why I continued to blog in spite of that was to feel like I was trying to conquer some challenge, like I talked about earlier, and avoid the easy way out, which was to simply stop blogging. I mentally overstated my own capabilities and I ended up posting over a hundred posts, on four/five different blogs, that I was not proud of or happy with. It was a big mistake, my own mistake, reared by my actions in the recent past. While I went through this Hell I put myself in, I got lost, and I forgot who I really am.

But who I am is and has always been very simple. I'm just a university student - that is what I have been taught, been molded, and been working to be for my entire life. Along the way, I found 'additions' to my life, but the basic foundation is my student status. I don't consider myself a writer. I may write well, but that doesn't mean I feel... like being a writer. I have always known in my heart that truth, and nothing anybody says to me can change my mind about that. I'm just a guy who wants to talk about my life and meet some interesting people in the blogosphere along the way. I don't want publicity, I don't want money, I don't actually think of this as practicing writing, and I absolutely hate how crowded these sidebars have become.

I just want to be me. Being anything else... is the hard way, the hard part...

So, while I was sitting here considering what I should do before I started writing this post, I looked back at my experiences in the past, and observed that I tend to enjoy my life most when I'm given a fresh start. Having a clean slate invigorates me, gives me motivation that will sharply contrast the indifference I've had for so many months. I'm going to announce the end of this blog and Do you hate it too? sometime in mid-April. Then, sometime between April and July, I will start a brand new blog, with a brand new look, and a brand new focus on just me. No gimmicks, no funny business, just my honest thought and emotion painted on a clean canvas. I'll probably post once or twice before I announce that end in mid-April just to tease about the new blog and inform you of how you can be notified about it ASAP when I launch it.

But for now, I think we'll just leave the news-sharing at that. I'm sorry it took me a while to say something. And I'm sorry that this one and Do you hate it too? have to come to an end. I never envisioned it, but hey, maybe that little thing called 'fate' that I don't believe in will bring me to blog on them again. After reading this, I hope that you realize that for me, there really was no easy way to say this, and that I'm not just saying that without thinking about what those words mean. It truly, genuinely, seriously breaks my heart.  It's sad to have to think about saying goodbye to something that was a part of you for a long time.  But I guess it's just another white hair on the top of my head. Or another immobile, dormant white dwarf in the universe. Or maybe it's the first signs of white light at the end of a tunnel.

135 - Don't give up

If I could go back in time five years ago and meet myself and have a conversation with the thirteen-year-old me, I would tell him that there isn't anything he can't do if he tries hard enough. Only my parents, my closest friends and I know my deepest, most fundamental flaws, and one of the ones that keeps cropping up in my life is my willingness to give in to pressure, to the difficulties placed in front of me.

Someone once told me that it's way too easy to give up and do nothing. He told me that most people are born with either a need to always keep trying 'til they reach the top, or no such compulsion at all. Either they are goal-orientated, or they're happy-go-lucky.

I was born as one of the competitive ones who thirsted for success. It mattered to me who won at Monopoly games, and what grades I got in primary school, and who could be the most fun to be around and have the most friends at school.

But somewhere along the way, I know I gave up on myself. I started giving in to time constraints, not caring about the grades, or the attendance, and openly accepting punishment from my family and my teachers. I was kicked out of the house one time, I slept past school way too often, I thought to myself that the education system is a joke, I squandered my pocket money, and I became this self-absorbed, antisocial prick because being a friend to everybody was just too troublesome.

Because being well-behaved, and 'fighting' for greater and better things was just too difficult. It took up my time and energy, and that was the reason I gave myself permission to give in.

I can't do that anymore, I have to stop. All the best opportunities that have slipped through my fingers have slipped because I gave up. And five years from now, I don't want to talk about going back in time and telling my current 18-year-old self not to give up on something just because it's hard.

If I'm going through Hell, I have to keep going. I guess the point I'm trying to tell you (i.e., myself), if we're not seeing any purpose in doing something, it's possible that we're just not seeing it in the right way.

134 - Relief

For those of you who have stopped by to just find nothing here, I am so sorry to have abandoned you like that. It's been a busy week with an important essay due and a test to take, but all of that is behind me now, and I've had thirteen hours of sleep since all the craziness ended because I was utterly exhausted from all the work and reading I had to do. It is such a relief, and I should be rocking the blogging world for the remainder of March or so, on all four of my blogs, so you can look forward to that just as I am looking forward to writing them and reading your comments.

As I was saying, getting all of that university stuff out of the way is such a relief. There's a certain lovely feeling you get with relief, the relief of being able to eat after hours food-deprived, when you finally conclude your conclusion of your essay or report, as you're reaching the end of that final downhill rollercoaster ride, and when the buzzer goes off and you win the basketball game by just one point. Relief is that satisfying, calming feeling you get right after you find out that the sky isn't actually falling.

I find that one thing for me that distinguishes a good friend from a great number of acquaintances, or a loving family member from a large number of relatives, is the number of times they provide me with that feeling of relief. Everytime I feel like I'm about to breakdown and submit to the pressures in life, my parents, my family, and my best friends are there to not just tell me that everything's going to be okay, but also explain why and how it will be okay.

It's impossible to be one-hundred percent independent, co-dependency is crucial for anyone who wants to survive. Since the New Year, I've noticed that I have gradually become less reflective and less mindful of myself as I've become more and more entrenched into my studies and the things I have to do. It's mostly because I just have a lot of things to do, that's all. It's simply a matter of not having enough hours in the day to find time to sit back and relax.

Ah, but now I get to do just that for a couple of weeks.

Boy, what a relief it really is.