Last Legs

 

My recent disgust and distaste at almost everyone around me has been the cause of a huge self-driven mental and emotional wall.

This walled-garden of mine is serene, quiet, and predictable.


But this forced, self-imposed isolation is a lonely and testing existence.

You tend see all those around you in a considerably less-than-favourable light, and the cycle continues, deepening into ever more catastrophic feedback loops.

Can’t exactly say that I’m delighted or pleased at the current situation, but I’d rather it be so than to stoop down and accept alien values, ideals or realities for which I do not share, or beliefs that make every sinew of my soul cringe at the sheer monstrosity of their absurdity.


I was once passionately empowered against religion, against the belief of imaginary omnipotent men/women/being[s] floating in the blue skies above us, and I thoroughly railed against the people who lived their lives under these ridiculous little umbrellas of illogic.

That was one lesson in life I never forgot; I still haven’t the slightest respect or regard for religionists or believers. The greater their beliefs, the farther I wanted to be from them.


Today, I am empowered once more.

Today, I say enough to stupidity.

I will not be cowed into accepting nonsense, misinformation, prejudices or idiocy, just because that’s how the way the world is, or just because that’s the norm.

There is a better way than this.

 

I Made It.

Honestly, I feel like deleting every single post I wrote for the past five months.



Success is sweet, though watching your closest, truest friends and comrades fall most definitely isn’t.

Theirs is a solemn reminder of the grave consequences of not having made it through.

Theirs is a bitter reminder of the human costs behind the thick cold faces of ruthless academicians who trump the “standards” flag.



Where most expected —especially coming from me, of all people— is the relentless gloating and praise of all the wonders and joys of life, there shall be none. 

This seriously isn’t at all funny, or worth celebrating for.



I am lucky to have just scraped through, to have saved a brand new Gen.2 and twelve additional months to repeat two subjects.

These were perhaps the two most expensive marks in my life.

Eating the Cake

 
Sometimes, I stop and I look, and I then think to myself just how much better your lives have now become, and I smile --I am happy for all of you.

Your lives are now rid of such monstrous academic torment, free of all the unduly pressure and ridiculous stress, emptied of all the painful, obscure, mind-boggling theory, calculation and hundreds of years of humanity’s accumulated knowledge.

I see it in your eyes. I see it in your faces. I hear it in the ways you talk. All of you look so much better, so much more at ease, so much more relieved, so much more cheerful, and so filled with life.


All you who have jumped out of this wretched hell-bound train live better lives now. But on this flaming carriage, there is little life.

In fact, beyond that of academia, there is no life at all.

Many times, I do wonder if I too, should jump. Sometimes, I wished that I too, had called it quits.

But I have already threaded so far down this path —one that so many have said that I neither should or could all those years back. But then again, I am neither closer to the end nor farther from the beginning.

Guess this must be how it feels like to be stuck between a rock and a hard place!

 

 

Cycles

 
Last night was the second I spent drenched in a blaze of alcohol, a state initiated by conscious choice of course.

Sometimes, doing what feels right needs no explanation. And for the past two nights, swirling in pool of quarter-consciousness under the sheets of a 16°C night was something that felt good, and justly right. 

Sometimes, one must accept that there are just too many things in life that one can never control, and can never foresee. We are forced to do things we never wanted to do. We are forced down paths we never chose to take.

We are just little pawns in a continuum of chaotic variables.


I have lost sense of everything.

For once in my life, I know not what it is that I actually want.

For the second time in my life, I am consuming my self like a cannibal.


What if being, studying, and failing in (and perhaps one day graduating from) this tough, glitzy and expensive place isn’t what I want?

What if taking the easy way out, what if a simpler, easier, less pressured and less grand or impressive piece of paper at the end of a three year programme, all the while being closer to home, to the people I loved, and to all joys of a more sane and more ordinary life is what I wanted instead?


Perhaps acknowledging that mystery is an unavoidable part of life is the most sensible thing to do right now. It is, perhaps, the only thing that can be done. Which essentially means doing nothing but to sit here and wait for the hands of time to do their thing.

And hope. Hope that perhaps in time, things will solve themselves out (or not).


And no, I am not as "emo" as I sound =) 
 

Energized

 
With eyes glued to this LCD and fingers epoxied to this keyboard, I watched as the hours flew by last night.

It was round about midnight when I ended the hour-long call back home.

Then it was one in the morning.

Then two.

Then three.

Then four.

Then, with extreme reluctance, I forced myself to shut the unibody's aluminum lid.

So there I then laid: beneath the moderately thick sheets, in the blanket of silence that was my room, my eyes opened as wide as they could possibly be opened.

I heard my digital watch blurt out one more hourly beep and recoiled in horror when I thought of what time it probably was. 

It was as if only a mere few seconds later that I heard my phone's alarm, and the sun had risen from the night sky, and it was time for class.

A gruesome six hours of Monday classes, with four still to come, but there is neither time to spare -nor time to waste.

Balancing shaft imbalances in the library, with the phrase "I won't go down without a fight" ringing as loudly as it possibly could.

Bygones

“It’s amazing how people don’t change.”

That has been the single one thought that has been banging in my head since I woke up this morning.

A particular conversation last night brought to me a chance rendezvous with my past, and boy was it an insightful one.

Why am I not surprised? Why -more importantly- does the ringing reverberate and resonate so intently within the confines of my skull? Why -above all else- am I even remotely bothered by this?

I know not the answers to these questions, but if there’s one thing I know, it is that I am thoroughly glad that that element of my past is behind me.

Way, way behind me.

Thousands and thousands of miles so, in the dark recesses of the horrendous pit I got myself out of all those months ago.

Each and every day is an opportunity for me to move further and further away from that hell hole, and it is one that I have duly made use of.

Each and every day I grow more and more pleased with the current reality that is my life -a life made delightfully pristine without the presence of those nasty element(s) that I no longer associate myself with.

Each and every day I become more and more glad that there are people like you, you, and you: all the you(s) who have found me, stepped into my life, bringing along with you, and showing me so much love, so much warmth, so much decency, so much innocence, and so much life.

This is a post as much it is about the past as it is the future: yesterday, and today has been a reminder of the past -my past; one filled with a garbage truckload of negativity, and at the same time, it has been a reminder of how much much much better off I now am.

And how bloody lucky I am.

On this track, there is only one way to go -and it is forward.

Strength

Insomnia strikes again.

In the middle of the night, being too mentally drained to study, and too filled with caffeine to sleep, the alcohol is making little (no) difference to me.

In the 3300 tutorial-cum-quiz today, I for the first time in many, many years, felt what it actually was to be so vastly inferior and sub-standard to a certain 'reference point', so to say in 3300-speak.

It was disheartening, and in that blaze of envy, I felt an overwhelming gush of (negative) emotions.

Yes, I'm certainly not the most gifted tool in the UNSW shed. And I certainly haven't all the intelligence in the world -nor even amongst my peers, for that matter.

Personality wise, well, that's even more of a no-brainer: from the bottom up would perhaps be an accurate description. Oh, and let's not forget the constant emotional outbursts that plague this blog.


But now that the evening/night has settled down, and played itself out, and that the chinks in my ego and the insecurities of my life have all been papered-over and pacified, I can't help but feel how tremendously nice it is to be me.

I have two of the most exceptional people in the world as my parents. I have a warm and wonderful group of close, life-long friends --people that I cannot be more happy or proud to know, or have known.

I am courageous with the things I know and for the things I believe in. I am a formidable combination of good looks, quick wits, and an ocean of depth and a wealth of intellectualism.

Luck, for the most part, has been on my side for the past half decade. And as horrendously wrong as this would sound, I have faith in the future always being a better place than the past.

Truth be told, it's good to be me.

Report

Ah my blog; this almost-forgotten page in the myriad of other pages on the great, big net has been left neglected for... well, for just a short period of time.

But it certainly feels like an eternity to me. I've been busy starting my industrial training, waking up early, scuffling here and there, trying to adjust to the new sleep-wake cycles, learning to do new things at work, and all that other other other other stuff[s].

Still, couldn't be happier with how and where everything is at.

And still wouldn't trade any of this for anything else in the world, especially since of late, it has become increasingly clear to me how wonderful and fortunate a life I have.

I believe we must always move on and move forward in life, and one should never go back to things of the past. And in line with that, I cannot say how glad and pleased I am with the things (and the people especially) that are around me today. Whoever and whatever that are not, well, it's for the better!

So I am to wake at around seven a.m. tomorrow [yes, even on Saturdays =( ] to go through another tiring [half] day at work. Until next time, I'll see you guys soon =D

Life

...is good.

Peace. Serenity. The knowledge of there being nothing that would be troubling me for many, many days to come.

That I survived my first semester in UNSW, that I didn't fail Advanced Thermofluids, that I'm rid of all unnecessary social bonds --especially ones that are detrimental to my well-being, that the world is ripe with opportunity, that anything and everything is possible, that my life is fresh, clean and most of all, that my life is straightforward and simple again.

Forget silver linings, there isn't a dark cloud in sight! =D