126 - Stressed

I'm really stressed and I don't know why. I mean, I know why, but I don't know why I give myself that stress. Now, I feel burned out emotionally and physically.

In two days, my mother is coming from Hong Kong to visit me here in the UK. We're planning to head up to Edinburgh for a couple of days, and booking tickets and accommodation for us has been mentally taxing. In the past few days, I've been trying to research and brainstorm all the things we could do in Scotland and in Kent, and I'm just very, very tired now. You would think that her going to visit one of her old students in Exeter for two days would help lessen the burden, but I actually have a test the day after she comes back. My break-from-Mom gone, just like that. In the next month, I'm also planning to meet up with two of my closest friends, three times, separately, in London. I have two essays due and a lot of computer stuff to do too. I've also had to search for accommodation for next year, and it's been a complete nightmare so far...

I actually have plans to open up another blog... on the 15th of February in fact. On top of getting that ready, I also have to prepare posts on this blog and Do you hate it too? for each day that I'm with my mother, from the 10th to the 20th. It's all just snowballed, and it's all really, really, really working me hard, but I just have to power through it, I guess.

There are two times during the year that have notoriously been very busy times for me. One is around February/March, the other is around May/June. Every year during these times, I'm so, so stressed out and I just cannot feel relaxed. In the past, there have been plays to perform, examinations to take, orals to do, 4,000-word essays to hand in, presentations, reports, and so many birthdays and anniversaries to attend...

I'm so tired. These two times of the year I always see coming my way, but I never have any defense set up to protect myself from it. This year, it's going to change - it has to change. I need to quickly pick up my efficiency so that I can deal with things faster and more effectively, hence prevent stressing myself out during these times again.

And now, I'm a little bit hungry.

Okay, actually, I'm very hungry. So I'm going to go make some pasta. Toodles.

121 - How do we know that's the right thing to do?

Every few months or so, I get told that I think too much, that I'm over-complicating things and I should learn to just relax and let the little things go. My defense mechanism to counter these claims is substitution by alternative phrasing. Instead, I call it logical reasoning. I call it careful assessment of my situation. I call it elaboration. I call it attention to detail. I call it keeping a critical eye. I call it making an informed decision. I call it wisdom. I call it not judging a book by its cover. I call it an evaluation. I call it reflection. I call it effective writing. I call it a rant. I call it a simple train of thought. I call it the pursuit of clarity. And last but not least, I also call it my blog.

I call my obsessive-compulsive infatuation with specification by a great number of titles, all with the aim of shrouding my immoderate committal, my limitless passion, my exorbitant ambition towards the practice of rationality, due to which I strive to act in the most sensible, practical way possible, that reaps the most benefit with the least hindrance, but truth be told, I'm a walking, and way too often, talking, load of bullshit.

Because somehow, despite my incredibly analytical mentality, bad things still happen. Call it fated by the wrong pantheon of gods, call it rotten luck, call it the very consequence of my excessive contemplation - bad things happen to me, around me, because of me, anyway, in spite of the fact that I try so hard to avoid setbacks and tribulations and the other half of reality that doesn't go the way I want it to. And the only thing that seems right to do at this point, is to push myself harder, and harder, and harder, and harder, until the finish line brings a peace and harmony to my life that took years, and decades, what feels like my entire life to reach.

But that's not the way it works at all. The way it really works is one never truly feels completely matured. One never feels old enough. One never feels like they're one step ahead in life. One can never learn the ideal combination of life lessons that will allow for pure faultlessness of existence. We are forever young and inexperienced. We are forever surprised, and unprepared to face the obstacles on our journey. Just when you think you have it altogether, one tiny little thing screws up, and then another thing gets spoiled as a result. And then it's like the house of cards just came tumbling down, just as you were putting down the last 7 and King for its roof.

I feel like it's time to start all over again. But then again, it's always time to start all over again. There's always something going wrong, just as there's always something going right. There's always something to mend, and once you've fixed it, something else has shattered, something else fell off the table, or that first thing was vandalized after you had just cleaned it up. There's never any time to simply stop. There's never time to feel perfect. It's always something - something that makes you look and feel like an overly complacent idiot.

I wish I could mean it when I say that the trick is not to get too caught up with it all. But I don't think I, or anyone else, can perform that phenomenal trick. That is actual magic.

So I don't know what to do. And I forgot what my initial point was. I hope this was enthralling literature for you nonetheless. For the seventh time tonight, I'm going to go to bed, and try and fall asleep.