I just went on a shopping trip to buy groceries and got back finding my zip open. MAN. Second time in a week.

The weather has been downright vulgar for the last few days… and all hell broke loose yesterday in Toronto when the transit system workers went on strike… more on that soon.

Ugh.

Hello peoples, I’m back. Back from what, I don’t know. Two weeks of procrastinating from writing here, I guess. As usual, lots of stuff’s been happening, but I just haven’t got to writing it down.

driving
In this time, my dad’s been back in South East Asia and China doing business, so the car has been um, mine. I’ve never driven around so much, and at first it was tiring driving through and fro from my house to the subway station or downtown every other day, but I’ve gotten used to the hour long commute by now.

I heard on the radio the other day that a correlative study has been made and like, it shows that the longer a person spends behind the wheel, the higher his/her stress level (and tendency to be obese). I think driving is kinda stressful to most people I guess, but I find driving to be extremely fun. I tell my dad that driving is fun but that throws him into “a car is a deadly weapon in the wrong hands, you have to responsible yada yada” rant.

Personally, I think driving is therapeutic; not that my family has a fancy car – I drive a 2000 or so Camry – but honestly, I love driving so much, it’s downright addictive once you get better at it and stop being nervous whenever big trucks come near you or brain dead pedestrians with a deathwish pull crazy stunts around you.

So, yeah. Moral of story: driving is fun. And it can be done responsibly. Haha it seems that I see some poor schmuck getting caught by the police for speeding right before my eyes every other day. Speed is overrated… a five year old can press down on the pedal and make a car hit 140 kmph. What isn’t half so easy is the little things – the ability to brake smoothly so your passengers don’t feel like puking at every traffic junction, to transition from braking to accelerating whilst cornering, etc. Loser poseur speed demons can kiss my ass… since most of em have the skill levels of five year olds. And like if you knew your shit you’d know better than to speed at places where tons of police cars lurk in the side roads, haha.

(I think this is why I’m not that great with Grand Theft Auto… since I drive around trying to follow traffic rules. When I manage to steal a bike in GTA, on the other hand, it’s a whole different story haha.)

boat cruise
Ooh I went on a boat cruise this Friday for the birthday party of my twice-removed (ie. second degree) Woman. Very awesome party, and embarrassingly enough, the first time in my life I wore anything remotely formal to an event. Took very cool pictures, though! And it was a tremendous pity that Friday was foggy, cuz the view was already fantastic as it was, and it would’ve been even more magical were we all able to see the Toronto skyline in a clear sunsetey golden sky.

summer school
Summer school so far’s been aight. Not too great, I’m doing MGT 252 Marketing and RLG 100 World Religions… not half bad classes on their own but I’m not reaaally feeling school at all, somehow. I’ll give em a chance, though, since the professors are good people and the textbooks are getting interesting for both classes.

Ugh readings for tmr. Ugh.

There’s something poetic about driving alone in the incessant spring rain (it’s been raining all night) at 12 am, slow jazz music playing on the radio.

Something almost romantic… because you’re so alone, its so dark and its, well, romantic because it isn’t. If that makes sense. Just cruisin’ along with misty, steamy fog in front of your headlight beams; its times like these which make you think.

Think about good memories, about everything in the past and present that make you smile, that make you shed tears, or both. Think about people who’ve touched your life and how nice it is to be with them, because as you drive down the empty lanes, as your car’s wheels cut through the sloshy puddles of water, there isn’t anyone out there but you, and you can’t help but think.

I thought I would have written something more eloquent here, when I was in the car I was pretty sure I would have a really good entry. But words just fail me here again. Maybe I’m too tired, I had two cappucino’s last night and as a result didn’t sleep till four am.

I’m off to bed. Good day.

If anyone’s noticed, I’ve been pretty disturbed emotionally lately, for the past month or so.

I’m fine. It’s just that I buried some emotions that got in the way earlier this year, some really deep emotions, covered some deeply hurting wounds with makeshift handiplast; as a result, I’ve probably shown the world the semblance of someone who’s very in control, someone who’s cocky, even.

The truth is that I’m hurting inside, more than I have ever been, and that this wound has been tearing me up bit by bit, and now with the exams over I’ve had nothing to do that can exhaust my energies to the point where I don’t have to worry about this issue.

I used to get all emo and stuff, but I’ve learned the hard way to suck it up and… and keep workin, keep fighting. But for the past week, I’ve… had nothing to occupy me. I have to face this… thing which’s fucked with my head and made me reconsider my entire life, consider whether everyhing’s been a farce.

I feel like crying right now but I won’t. And my chest really hurts from all of this.

I’ve been thinking, about why I am what I am, why I do the things that I do. What my motivations are.

Recently, someone compared me to Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Asuka – yeah, the hottie in red – who incidentally happens to be my favourite character in the Evangelion series.

I realize that I love Asuka because (okay, besides her body-hugging red flight suit) of her personality – on the surface, at least, she deals with her issues by channelling her frustrations into working harder than everyone else at striving to succeed, to fight better than her colleagues Rei and Shinji and outdo them at every turn. In this, she largely succeeds… and this is why I love her, because I realize that my friend was right – I deal with situations the same way.

Which brings me to the question: is everything I’ve achieved just that – just the sublimation of me running away? I’ve said it myself, and I really feel this way – I’ve strived for the past 20 years to be something bigger than myself; I realize I’ve strived to be “the perfect son”, “the perfect student”… and then, in my later teens I misguidedly tried to be “Mr. Nice Guy” all the time.

Has all that I’ve done (not that I’ve done a lot, mind you, but I’m just… I’m just sayin’) been done not because of me trying to reach for something higher, but rather, because I’ve just tried to push myself to outdo everything and be the best possible person I can be… just because I wanted (whoever it was) to accept me, to love me? A 20 year long attempt to attract attention and be loved for what I am…?

Is it perhaps because of my place as elder brother in the family, that I grew up having to think about other peoples’ problems, grew up taking responsibility for things that were never mine? That I feel a burden of responsibility for the well being of everyone around me, that I feel obliged to help and set things right? And at the same time outdo them, thus maintaining the status quo??

I don’t know, man. Am I really running away…? And it’s frustrating because whatever I’m doing never has seemed good enough for… for people who matter, or at least that’s how I feel. Straight A’s in every subject – but what does that buy me? It seems to me now that I could be failing in school, be a failure in the army or in life and… it wouldn’t make a difference to the people who matter, right…?

Perhaps I did mould myself into the “perfect son” to please people, to seek attention, to gain acceptance. But at a point, I think it became innate, it “internalized”, this motivation to achieve greater. At some point I guess it melded with the chip on my shoulder that my basketball coach placed when I was in 13 to form this… motivating force that drives me to this day.

However, back to the root of things. I think I have begun to realize that I have to stop striving and outdoing stuff for other people, and to do things for myself. External motivation can only… get you so far, I think. And I probably have been successful so far in doing this, in shifting my paradigm. I don’t have to compromise my fire, my motivation, my drive…

I stopped being “Mr. Nice Guy” more than a year ago when I realized that living to please someone else won’t cut it – you just set yourself up for heartbreak. You set yourself up for losing yourself, losing everything… but for what? I had forgotten a lesson I learned in BMT (basic military training), when one day it dawned upon me that when it came to the wire, when someone’s ass is on the line, people are always gonna look out for their own interests. They will save themselves first, and only when they can will they lend a hand.

It’s not something I should’ve been bitter about, even though I was bitter for a while – my friends noticed it and talked me out of it – but like, back then I was such a kid, I thought everyone would help you out if you tried your best and helped them first.

I’ve been going around in circles, but that’s how I think, so there. I guess I very much am a work in progress, but I’m going to continue to strive to outdo myself (most importantly), to push myself to… to actualize my potential, I guess. I don’t think I’m even close to it, but unless I ever “self actualize” (in a Maslow-ish, humanistic sense) won’t I be a waste of a human being? Unless everyone does, don’t they waste all their years away, like a badly developed RPG character who wastes his skill points and level ups on lame skills and statistics?

Still. I’ve written an entire page on this and I haven’t figured myself out yet. I don’t want to run away anymore. I don’t want to please anyone anymore, don’t want to make myself some… some trophy for anyone’s ego. I can’t do this anymore, I don’t want to live my life for anyone else anymore.

It just scares me to the, to the core – the possiblity that all this I’ve done, whatever I may have achieved as a person – all this could’ve been just a symptom, an avenue to run away into. That all this time, when I’ve thought that I’ve been trying to reach higher than I could before… I could’ve possibly just been running, running farther away from… from things.

I don’t want to run away any more.

Saturday night, haven’t really left my house / room all day. Not that I feel like going anywhere today. It’s been barely two days since I stepped out of an examination hall and I already feel really, really restless.

Not that I mind holidays; I love holidays, in fact. Just not long ones. Maybe this is why every long holiday I have, every extended break I have had since I was a kid, I end up in this jumpy semi depressive state.

In my last days in the army, I had barely ORD-ed before I found two jobs to occupy me, though after working 6+ days a week for a fortnight I exhausted myself and quit one of them. Hell, during my days in the army, when my buddies were out drinking or doing dumb stuff, I locked myself in the bunk with an SAT prep book hoping to better my SAT grades (which I did by a hundred points before I was done).

My point is, and perhaps as someone pointed out recently, I’m something of a workoholic. I don’t think I’m uh a really “intense” workoholic (like umm someone my NS buddies would call “seriousss!”). But I’m something of one nonetheless, and the sudden vaccuum of purpose which has hit me is just so much in pure stark contrast to the almost manic studying state I’ve been in for the last month and a half that well, maybe I don’t really know how to handle this.

Add this to the fact that in the last week or so of my exams, I had been really emotional about certain things, certain nagging worries, certain little doubts buzzing and biting at my consciousness like a horrible black swarm of insistent flies. And now I have to face them? But what if I don’t want to, what if all this emotions I’ve been putting off, I don’t want to face them, or am not ready? Hell, what if… if you asked me what’s been bothering me these last few weeks, I wouldn’t be able to answer? Because I don’t bloody know?

I really stressed out, burnt myself out during the last few days of my exams. Particularly because of my math exam. No, well, not because of my math exam but it sure seemed so. I barely slept, I sat in my chair from the minute I woke up until the deepest loneliest hours of the night throwing myself at test paper after test paper, chapter after chapter of economics and math. Honestly, I do not stress over academic stuff, not really ever. I do create a level of tension within myself but that’s just to drive myself from that steep slippery slope of complacency into the bowels of vanilla mediocrity. Fucking, fucking mediocrity.

No, this shitty restlessness of a million thoughts appearing and disappearing from my consciousness, again and again, appearing long enough to worry or frustrate me, and then disappearing before I can place my finger on its source; this, this I think this was the real reason why I appeared to stress myself out over the last weekend. This horrible looming cloud of negative omnipresent pessimism and apathetic… vibes. It’s been sapping my energy, draining my spirit, making me frustrated and jumpy and down and short fused, making me ask myself the question “what is the point, what is the whole damn fucking point?” of what, you ask – of everything, dumbass, of everything.

I want to be alone but right now, no, sometime since the sun set I just have felt this aching sensation of loneliness creep into my soul like some… like some black cancerous tumourous glove choking the life out of me. I was watching the Lakers play the Suns just only, and every time they got outhustled, every time I saw that dolt Kwame or some other Laker get shot over with their hands down I felt even shittier.

Honestly, if you’re a seven footer all it takes is for you to raise your hands up to affect a jump shooter’s shot, unless he’s one of the Great Ones like T-Mac or Kobe to whom pulling up a fadeaway three pointer with two hands in their faces and bodies flying at them is easy. Otherwise, all it takes to defend well is shifting your feet with your hands in the sky.

I hope the Lakers go on to win this game as I type this but when I left halfway through the third quarter their deficit was in the mid 20s. Do something to prove me wrong again please, Mr. Bryant.

So back to my point before I digressed for three paragraphs, I want to be alone right now but its hard for me to feel even more lonely. Right now. In my own house, in my own room in my own bed I feel alone. Alone and lonely and frustrated at God knows what, at these phantasmal frustrations tearing at me since longer than I can remember, since before I realised they were there.

I haven’t even been able to take refuge in computer games like I have all school term long. I can beat the arcade with a single token on Street Fighter Alpha 3 with my Ken Masters even if the arcade owner cranks the difficulty up to “Expert” (I did however turn the speed from Turbo down to Normal so the keys on my iMac don’t start flying off). I also realize that I have probably completed nearly every great Super Nintendo RPG there is to be completed, umpteen times. All the SNES Squaresoft classics. Castlevania. The Megamans. The Marios and Sonics. The Streets of Rages. The Final Fights, everything.

Maybe what I need is exercise. I haven’t gymed at all since school term ended, and recently I was too busy doing paper after paper to go jogging, and once the exams ended well it’s not been as warm as it should since I want to go jogging with as little clothing on as possible so I can get tanned. I need endorphins. Perhaps will wake up early tomorrow to jog in the morning freshness if it isn’t too cold. Or even if it is maybe I will suit up and go jogging to feel… alive again for once in too long.

I don’t know if I’ve sorted this out by typing all this down, but at least I’ve written down how I feel at this moment in time. Maybe I’ll sort it out later, tomorrow, later this week no wait the week’s over. I’ll look back and read between the lines of this thing I’ve typed non stop for maybe the past half hour or so and figure out whats wrong or if there even is anything wrong other than me being… me. Or if this is the norm and the past few months, the past year or so of un-this-ness have been an aberration.

My entire life people have been telling me stuff like “you think too much lah” or “why are you asking these questions? just believe in the Word and pray” but you know what, you people who don’t think… you are bastardizing your sentience, spitting on the humanity that is God-given and surrendering yourselves to the cosy, warm and comforting thoughtlessness of the herd. Of mediocrity. So as much as I appreciate your “don’t think too much lahs”, and as much as you guys are probably “right” (in certain senses of the word) to tell me that, as much as you people mean well and try to comfort me, I can’t stop thinking or feeling and I can’t stop all these thoughts because they are there. And will be for as long as I live.

I think that God created us all with gifts and our intrinsic abilities. Why did He create me with a mind that wanders and “thinks too much” and questions “His Word”? Why would He created a blaspheming heretic in all His infinite wisdom??

Why is there so much frustration, and why is there also anger there? Anger in my soul lurking inside, for longer than I can remember, a constant chip on my shoulder that drives me on, a furnace which drives me, from which I draw strength to outdo myself at every turn – a furnace which is fueled by every slight, every failure I’ve faced, every insult every hit to my person…?

Oh whatever, whatever, whatever!

done with exams!

exams are over!!! summer is here and ive got summer school and possibly a summer job(?) which i havent applied for but am considering.

whatever! time for some well deserved r and r before i do anything yet! ive been feeling exhausted but really restless the last day or two. whatever. time to read some good books i havent got the chance to read since forever.

I just woke up, my economics exam is later. I’m prepared for it.

Somehow though I’ve felt really stressed for no apparent reason over the last few days, because of my math paper, which is very unlike me, since I have never stressed over any silly exam since… May 2001 when over-stressing for a haha Chinese O Level paper was the catalyst for me breaking down into this strange morbid religious crisis that lasted… a while.

I know I should be reading through my eco now but I might as well try and find an outlet for these… thoughts while I’m at this. Plus I type really fast thanks to months of data input haha.

I mean seriously, I might get a bit “spiderish” and edgy when challenges come but like, I’ve met every test / challenge, be it physical or mental or academic, with an “is that all you’ve got?”smirk, with the same attitude that my old coach taught us to bring to the table. I seriously don’t know what’s become of me, but it’s over.

It’s game time, the shot clock is running down and I’ve got the ball on the wing. I may be down two, I may be less prepared than I would comfortably like to be, but so what? Isn’t this what an RI boy lives for – a challenge to rise to?

I’ve been on the verge of choking myself, been letting myself down, not giving myself a chance over the last coupla days. For whatever reason, a couple of which might exist, but I’m not gonna attribute this to any of them. Whatever. Let’s get this on.

PS. To anyone and everyone who’s had to endure me the last coupla days, I’m really sorry. It’s done.

(I actually feel better now. Twenty minutes spent writing this not too wasted I guess.)