What's truly important

So I've come to realise why life feels so aimless and dull and dreary. It's not motivation I lack (well actually it kinda is but it sounds better to say it this way), more like a lack of something to motivate me. I need a challenge. Not only that, I need fierce competition. Having embraced the calm of lying in bed unable to sleep and letting deep and transcending thoughts attack my mind (well, not calmly and not embraced), I've realised that shockingly, I can't remember when was the last time I actually set a goal and fulfilled it. I mean there were certainly high points in my life this year when I did achieve something semi-noteworthy in contrast to the drone of everything else, but it didn't come about as me setting myself a target and doing whatever it takes until I reached it.

To think I used to cry over a Merit in English or that I'd gained 0.5kg. My past self is almost laughable when I think about it that way. The conclusion to all this however, is that I've realised that I can't be satisfied living day after day devoid of the need to prove myself. I need to need to prove myself (WORDCEPTION; wait not really). I need competition to overcome so I can prove myself. Oh, won't you come out and play darling little rivals of mine? Maybe I should be like Monica and learn how to compete with myself. But I'd most likely lose to my past self, so that's no fun at all.

When I think of the unfairness so many things gone past, people who've wrongly assumed the worst of me, accused me of things I didn't do, recognition that I should've been received for blood and sweat and hardwork but instead went to people who were simply lucky and blundered on into the prize, most of all, the injustice of so many things still going on in the world; if somehow I was given a voice, then I can speak out? Then something can be done to make those close-minded, ignorant people see, to see why they are so wrong, why their vision is so narrow that it hardly permits then to see anything but what they want to see.

Something I've also noticed is how this blog has progressively become more self-centered and "woe-is-me". I don't like it, although I'm not sure if I can help it. There are days when my mood is so dark, my outlook so grey that it seems like I have to write it all down, pour out the venomous black liquid filling me with bitter resentment or else be at risk of imploding/exploding/becoming a black hole of gloom. Maybe if I manage to work this self-improvement thing and succeed in my goal (note the goal setting; I'm beginning to improve already!), maybe it'll inspire me to write about other things, more important things than myself (haha). The need to make this blog arose because I needed to publish something really badly; that first entry was a message I wanted to convey to as many people as possible: and I still do. If you haven't read it and you're reading this, read it please.

http://bittersweeted.blogspot.com/2010/10/look-at-us-all-living-little.html

I know I've changed a lot from the person who wrote that. It's so hard to not be superficial and not become absorbed into the over-indulging, materialistic lifestyle around us. It's very, very hard to keep a grasp on that feeling of transcendence when you realise the world has much bigger fish to fry than your little woes and joys, and likewise you, should have bigger fish to worry about than your own silly little goldfish dilemmas. When I lose my grasp on that mind set (okay, to be honest it's been out of reach for awhile; playing hard to get), I read back on what I wrote last year and the undeniable emotions of sadness and disgust at our superficial come back to me for a that brief moment. It's still there. I just have to sort out myself first before I can fully grasp it and show the world what's really important.

A great man's words

“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn't matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”

“Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

~ Steve Jobs

Whether you think he is a great man, whether you think he's corrupt or greedy or someone who's got the blood and pain and sweat of millions of workers out there, whether you like Apple or loathe Apple, admire his work or hate his work, you cannot deny that regardless of what sort of man Steve Jobs might have been, he still accomplished many, many great things in the life that he was given. It could have been great and wonderful or great and terrible, but it was great. Even if such technology and innovation, such addiction and distraction becomes the ruin of man, it would be at the hands of only one man; one great man; and it would be this man.

His inspiration is for all of us to have done something wonderful for the world. Something that has at least changed the lives of a small group of people for the better. I recently watched the film Ballet Shoes. Three orphans, all abandoned by their parents at birth become sisters, and they vowel to put their names into the history books, to achieve greatness, to have the names which are uniquely theirs engraved into the history of humanity.

Our lives are at stake every second of everyday. The ultimate threat of death is always there, we always have something to lose. Take the leap. Make the jump. Take a risk if you think it could take you somewhere wonderful, and perhaps one day make the world just that little bit more wonderful too.

For some reason

For some reason these days I feel like I can't be bothered to do anything.

(Which sounds really bad. And it is. I'm not really talking about just school work either. By this time throughout the year I've sort of had the time to deduct that nothing I take right now can be so hard for me to master that I'll actually struggle intensely. So I've slipped into a sort of over-confident mindset (always a warning sign), skipping class and skimming texts until the week or few days before an assessment when I know I have to study.)

I feel like I'm just so tired of my life, everything, day after day, it's all so monotonous. I can't take it.

The worst thing is I've recently fallen into a state where I just can't be bothered interacting with people. It's just too much effort, really it is. When I bump into someone and stop to say hi which consequently leads into a conversation about uni and life, all I'm thinking is that really right now I'd much rather be in my little shoe box room by myself, curled up in my bed watching doctor who and eating instant noodles. But then I get tired of that too, being alone and eating noodles. (I ran out of doctor who to watch) It's just that it's become like an instinct to stop trying to be social at all. I'm too tired. Thinking back to the beginning of the year when I tried so much, chatted to people in lectures and tutorials, at lunch, at my hall.. now it's just too tiring. It's not my natural instinct to talk. I prefer the silence. To think instead. I've always been used to doing things by myself, because I grew up doing almost everything by myself. I remember when I was little, at first it was a weird notion to ask someone to go on an errand with me, to go toilet, to go to the office, when I could do it perfectly well by myself. That used to be my mindset.

But then high school and things change you. Going to camp, suddenly meeting such an onslaught of new people, faces, you start to evolve and blend in with the status quo. And even though I still feel like I'd rather be alone instead of trying to talk to people, I can't, no matter how hard I try, revert back to the mindset that it's okay to be alone instead of trying to talk to people. So now when I have lunch by myself, I feel lonely. When I'm eating instant noodles by myself in my shoebox room and I can hear the laughter of people downstairs in the dining hall, I feel lonely. When I fall asleep at night listening to my neighbour and his girlfriend laughing hysterically and (for some really strange reason; haven't been able to work out why) doing monkey impersonations, I feel so, so lonely.

I wish I was still that little girl who could wake up in the middle of the night from a bad dream and run into the next room to sleep with my grandma.

I wish I was still that little girl who was perfectly content with spending a glorious day in a little corner of the library, reading to her heart's content and, when the sun starts setting, start walking home in the fresh evening air, licking a 50c ice cream from maccas (because I had 50c and I was old enough to buy one without parental guidance).

(I also wish that right now I had more than 99c in my bank account so I can go downstairs and buy a pie/melona from city star.)

I never thought I'd say this but I even miss high school sometimes now, which is really, really strange because by the end of year 13 I really hated it. Maybe I just miss those days spent in the design room with permission to skip all my classes so I could finish a brief on time. I definitely kind of miss that last hectic week of art painting; the whole class sprawled over every inch of ground and corridor in the art block, painting, painting, gluing, drawing, sticking smoothing.. a year's sweat and pain accumulating to those final few hours of marathon painting.

(Is that why I miss high school; art? Because with art and design I could always challenge myself to do better, create better? Yes, there were no boundaries to what was good enough, you could never be good enough, always better. But with programming and logic and maths, all there is is right or wrong. All you need to do is learn it and do it. No need for brainstorming, inspiration, hours of designing concepts, thumbnail sketches and fiddling with every single little detail because you know it all matters, every last layer, every last stroke.)

Hang on; I just remembered (yes I'd forgot..) what else I miss so much about high school is English. Scholarship English on thursday afternoons, Mr. Edgecombe digging up some short story or novel from the literary canon, and while analysing the first passage of the text our conversation would somehow wander and get swept away by a controversial debate. I remember thinking at that time; "This is what I enjoy and I want to be able to talk to people like this in the future, have discussions like this, philosophical musings and analysing hidden meanings simply talk about deep things that make you do a double take and go, wow, that was deep". Guess that didn't exactly work out :|

I don't even know what I'm trying to say, just all these random emotions and thoughts floating around in my head when I still can't fall asleep at 3 in the morning.

I think the reason for all this is that I don't feel like there's any point to get up every morning. There's nothing to look forward to anymore. Life is dull, life is lonely, and life is full of boring, unchallenging and mundane tasks to do that presents itself to me with no great interest. Basically, life is go to uni (feel hungry), class, eat, procrastinate, (study maybe), home, doctor who, (occasional midnight snack), (deduce that it's time to vacuum/laundry/clean up), sleep, and repeat till I want to bang my head against the wall in monotony.

This is a really long entry.

But anyways, I've just finished watching doctor who behind-the-scenes on youtube, concluded that 99c is not enough to buy anything from city star apart from a lollipop, deduced that yes, I really need to vacuum and wash my clothes soon (note: cash out one dollar coins next time at city star) and yes, I need think to think about sleeping sometime within the next hour.

I SHOULD HAVE BEEN BORN NOCTURNAL TRULY I SHOULD HAVE. THE NIGHT IS SO BEAUTIFUL AND FRESH AND DARK AND MYSTERIOUS AND AT TIMES SCARY AND WILD BUT AT TIMES SO SERENE AND STAR LIT THAT IT MAKES YOUR HEART ACHE THAT YOU CAN'T JUST JUMP OUT THE WINDOW AND FLY, SOAR THROUGH THE COOL NIGHT BREEZE AND LOOK AT THE SEMI-RESTING CITY WITH ALL ITS LIGHTS AND GLITTER AND PATCHES OF SECLUSION.

THAT WAS A VERY LONG SENTENCE.

I DON'T WANT TO SLEEP.

:(

PS. I FORGOT HOW TO TURN OFF CAPS OH NOES IT'S STUCK... FIVE-EVER (DATS MOOOOAR DEN 4EVA)

How to succeed in everything

So inspired by this post from Cindy's blog:

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[following excerpt adapted from 'The Genius in All of Us' by David Shenk]

Deliberate practice

Deliberate practice involves repeated attempts to reach beyond one's current level.

Deliberate practice goes far beyond the simple idea of hard work.

For deliberate practice to work, the demands have to be serious and sustained.

Simply playing lots of chess or soccer or golf is not enough. Simply taking lessons from a wonderful teacher is not enough. Simply wanting it badly enough is not enough.

Deliberate practice requires a mind-set of never, ever, being satisfied with your current ability.

It requires a self-critique, a pathological restlessness, a passion to aim consistently just beyond one’s capability so that daily disappointment and failure is actually desired, and a never-ending resolve to dust oneself off and try again and again and again.

It also requires enormous, life-altering amounts of time – a daily grinding commitment to becoming better.

In the long term, the results can be highly satisfying. But in the short-term, from day to day and month to month, there’s nothing particularly fun about the process or the substantial sacrifices involved.

We do not – and cannot – know our own limits unless and until we push ourselves to them. Finding one’s true natural limit in any field takes many years and many thousand hours of intense pursuit.

What are your limits?

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There is no such thing as failure. Only success that hasn't been pursuited. And it'd do us all some good to remember that. If you want something then work for it. No, really work for it. Go above and beyond what's necessary, what's expected. Only then will you always be at your best. We've all only got one life to live (unless you're a Time Lord rofl). Why waste days of it being someone who's only a fraction of what you could be?

That feeling

That feeling of revelation and liberation that you get. You know? Like an epiphany but not really, because what has dawned on you is something that you've always known all along really. It's like you've been living life in a murky marshland swathed in fog and mud and other thick, dirty substances. They just ooze around your life lazily, trying to contaminate you with their nasty little tentacles. Corrupt you. But that feeling of liberation when for one brief second you see everything so clearly, as if the fog has lifted off the marsh and clear sunlight finally shines upon it and you realise it's not a marsh at all, but a beautiful lake of mysterious depths and clear intentions and a wondrous sense of rightness. That feeling is what I'm trying to describe.

Maybe that's why I like going gym so much now, because sometimes after you wipe off the sweat of all that pain and endurance gone past, it's as if life has been put into a new light. Your brain suddenly wants an audience with you. It takes everything that's tedious or troublesome or unwanted in your life, and it presents a solution. It was something you knew all along. You knew that was the solution. But you forced it into the far reaches of the brain, dismissing it. But now the brain dug it out, laid out the evidence, it need not even argue the case, the case had already been won, because it speaks the truth.

And the most important part of this feeling of liberation, is your own acceptance of it. Of what you need to do. Because it was so simple, why wouldn't you do it before? Your brain is now telling you in a tiny but righteous voice, life could be so easy and effortless and wonderful, if you only do what needs to be done in the way that it needs to be done, and voila. So wonderful a time life will present to you.

One can only hope that somehow, this feeling can be grasped and taken hold of for longer periods of time. Maybe there's some sort of magic that can keep the fog at bay. How to stop such contaminative tentacles of laziness, of greed and of the ever growing lure of the material world, so souless and meaningless? They wrap themselves around everyone. It's like a giant shadow engulfing each of us, a black oozing aura; disgustingly obese with sins. But we don't see it. We embrace. We feed and and love it and grow it.

But how do we stop it?

How?

?

Grandma

不久前我爸把这首歌EMAIL给我。

每一次听完了眼泪就会不停的流。

觉得好想家

好想姥姥

好对不起她跟去世的奶奶

好心痛，心酸

觉得自己真的很残忍

长大了以后， 成人了以后， 却抛弃了从小到大对我不离不弃的人

真的对不起

这个不孝的孙女没有好好回报你的善心

这个小孙女

真的谢谢你