Panic

I panicked during an interview and have so many regrets now... I feel worse when I feel like I didn't do my best and that was probably my worst. I also feel like I'm the only person supporting me.

Erhu

Lately I've been watching reaction vids to both Avatar: the Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, reminiscing both series and the banter I used to have with my friends about nerd shit in general. It was refreshing and sad at the same time. I was thinking about what I would do after I inadvertently finish both series (the reactions to them) as I still remain in a mental quagmire of my own disciplinary doing of refusing to start anything new as it would seem wrong to do anything new while in a state of transition that I wish everyday would end but ultimately rely on good fortune to take me out of. Just a random thought, I think at this point I'm too lazy to label or flair my posts. Although I still might.

So I decided one of the ways I used to calm down and go to bed was by blogging. It's tough right now even after a glass of milk because of the amount of coffee I drank and the lateness of it. I even knew kind of what I was getting in to but I could not say no to my mum offering some to me as I knew it would probably make her happy. Ultimately, it's because of the sharp contrast of going to bed so isolated from all my friends, which was not the case in collage of course. My friends here in Singapore have naturally settled into other friend groups they've had in university or work, and I am ultimately separated from all the close friends I've made overseas, and Chris - something I anticipated and accept. But perhaps I am being too inflexible and should try watching something new.

Meeting Yams was nice, however long we've not seen each other, she was very astute in asking whether I was lonely here - and I am. I miss Chris, my fraternity brothers, and my brother and sister-in-law for the brief time they were still here. I am not close to my parents or my younger brother by very much, and my VS and NAPS friends all have their own things to do as I said, although that might just be work. Ultimately, I don't want to spend money either, so I am going to try and stick youtube or games I've already bought for entertainment when I need to escape job hunting or need motivation. Right now, the truth is my biggest two leads are things I just have to wait for, and I am not even confident after the (in my opinion) fiasco that was my 21 hour Stata assessment. I ultimately fell into the same error that I've always had with GP papers and open-ended assignments - I lose track in my creativity and naturally divergent thinking methods.

So here ends I guess my first 'talking to the internet' in a while, as I don't really have anyone else to banter to. I really cherish the fact that such a medium exists - online communities provide a niche that is I think underappreciated by those who do not use it or stereotype it. This post was titled erhu because the legend of Korra's finale theme (just titled 'legend of Korra' by Jeremy Zuckerman, the composer) makes me cry.

Why Lambda Chi was meaningful and important to me

I'm recalling Jeremy Bell coming back from work one day frustrated that his workplace made him go through a lecture on 'building your personal brand'. If you find that not odd at all (the lecture, not his reaction), well idk I guess we won't connect very much. I find such a world where such topics are 'taught' to others as absurd to the extreme and dystopian even. Yet it is pervading across the so-called 'business world' as if business administration and marketing was objective science (and people will swear by it, which I cannot really understand), and now it is treated as such since places like 'investopedia' exist, placing finance on a strange commensurable pedestal as chemistry and history.

Anyway, I felt like despite having differences elsewhere, that kind of weird disgust and cynicism to the ironic consumerism society we live in is what made Lambda Chi's bond together (well mostly, except Armaan), and the variance was in acceptance of that reality and eventually landing a consulting job. I feel like my fault then is that I was self-deceived, I feel like everybody knew it was mostly a joke but I did not and tried to live by principle if I was already joking about it, and nobody is actually on my side and so here goes my mental health as my perspective of the world is torn down. Back to linked in and the sort of banal life we lead anyway.

Mental Health

Recalling a time when I had to support one of my men going through mental health problems while in the army. Back then, I think my understanding and empathy was extremely poor, all I could do was feel bad while being helpless.

Sleeping

I was thinking just now about how my blog is a place to express myself, and maybe it's because of the difficulty of sounding emotional out-loud, in-real life as a guy, or otherwise normal human being. I think it ruins the image of sounding stoic and in-control and not attention seeking and not needy.

I slept for 18 hours by accident and by design since I didn't set an alarm. I woke up normally yesterday and so I didn't think I would need to honestly, but I guess the jet-lag really didn't reset that quickly... so it's back to square one. I overheard my mother joking that I was useless, having heard I slept so much. My dad said it probably means I needed the sleep. I think it really shows their different approaches to life. The capitalist and the 'normal'. I guess now I'll start looking again. Another thought I had was that I slept 18 hours because it's a sign of depression? I don't think so though.

I feel like I've learnt to quickly the normative nature of words, without any experience. Like 'networking' - what is that supposed to mean? It sounds ridiculous, and a lot of people give me a lot of shit for it, but when I think about it, I can't grasp it conceptually, it sound estranged, foreign and scary. Is it fear then? Maybe. In my head I just see negative things, a room full of tired, fake, uninterested people. But that isn't true. Supposedly it 'happens all the time', but I think that is a lie. I don't know if it is possible to 'network' and do other things at the same time. It just sounds like a deception. This ricemedia article I'm reading doesn't help: https://www.ricemedia.co/culture-events-diary-forced-boss-visit-funan-mall/?fbclid=IwAR3dBkoEZqMyI7A5v2I1LxG_Vt7eCff-Z3jmvu7sas9j-Czj2yTl38J5Lcc. I think the worst emotional feeling in the world for me is embarrassment, which is extremely Chinese. I don't know how this came to be, but it is. I just read that LinkedIn is apparently one of the top 10 sites visited in Singapore. Jesus christ that's banal. Fyi Blogger is telling me to capitalize the word Christ lol. When people smile so cheesily in the camera, are they thinking of memes, or are they genuinely blissful? My brother saw my graduation photos and saw my half-smiles and said I looked like a monk. But to tell you the truth I didn't know if I was happy enough then, which was the real problem.

I wonder who are the 1 or 2 views that see my post, or are they just search algorithms parsing through my site? It's hard to know these days. I'll tell you something though, this ricemedia article really stings, because I was in the process of accepting I must become a 'liberal-leaning' type they describe, and it's displaying it in full glory. Mostly I feel caught in a contradiction. On the one hand I've decided to pursue an education in 'capitalism' but am not particularly seduced by that work space. I am told by my mom most people are lying all the time 'but what to do' as in this is the reality we live in. On the other hand I feel like I relate much more to the artist-type 'outsiders' of sort, although they lean-in to society in odd dysfunctional ways too, but I have no talent in that regard, even in photography which I've given up almost entirely. There are thousands of 'tips' on career-building on all these sites, and I feel uneasy, why are they helping, and I can already hear a retort from Christelle. I don't know, but I feel put off by smiling these days, for the same reason that Musée des beaux arts is a great poem.

Thinking some more

I feel emotionally very stressed and lost whenever I think of job hunting, or trying to learn something 'professionally-related'. It's like I get a sick feeling in my heart and stomach and I'm not sure why; maybe in my head I've just been building up so much disdain and vitriol that now that I must confront it like an adult, I've only shot myself in the foot by literally triggering a bad reaction every time I try to deal with it. I feel like I am being pounded by contradictory advice, values, and I have so much fear that I cannot be myself or that I will get so good at imitation as I always do that one day everything will explode once more when shit hits the fan. I feel like I have so much regret but can only move forward, and only now witnessing the proverbial Jenga tower collapse in slow motion as I am left behind by everyone in the rat race and am only not sleeping on the streets because I can draw upon immense privilege, i.e. I am making my parents suffer for my arrogance, childishness, stupidity, laziness, etc. and have no confidence in anything that I do at the same time that I judge others less clever and yet employed - again the arrogance - but then this cannot be and it must be that I am just blind, unaware, unable to build up any form of the 'street-smartness' that was my passion and example to follow. I am constantly afraid to ask for advice as it makes me look dumber and dumber, and as I told Steele I hate feeling like I am dumb, patronized and spoon-fed like a damn amateur. I feel so fucking stupid, and a failure of a Singaporean compared to my peers because I should have, could have given up my ideals earlier and thought long-term. Now I might work in Singapore and essentially lose the only real connections and relationships that I really value at this point, for all my years of self-perceived social ineptness, because I was a fool. It's good to write this in words at least. But unfortunately for new algorithms they might be read, which I why I like being honest, so nothing can be held against me ever. I feel like I've been indoctrinated, turned against society by my education and made a fool for it, because I cannot seem to hold down reading any business news without cringing, when I know that the world is grey and made up of people who are just trying to do their best, as I saw in the museum today. I have squandered what was given to me instead in some lame rejection of position, as Chris pointed out, and am now the hapless and useless son that I despised in my mind. So it's self-hate really. I don't want to hear any comfort because I'm the recipient this time, and nobody's convinced me otherwise yet. I have to focus.

How easy was it for me back when I still had mainstream hobbies and interests, and now everything seems so listless and hopeless. It's as if I've discovered myself and discovered nothing and no growth except realization of self-deception as I talk to the internet. I've thought about suicide some more but it's too selfish and too pathetic so I must ride it out. I have to try and hope for the best and meet mediocre standards and be prepared for jealousy and ridicule as I go below people's expectations. The thought of it only makes me want to work triply hard for any job I get. I must learn to discipline my mind and treat things as important and regain my confidence that things will work out, that the child in the basement will be uplifted if you participated, that this is MLK's struggle for integration and that revolution is a red herring. I must learn to remember that people opening the window, eating, walking dully along smiling while others suffer is a normalcy of reality, and that they truly mean no harm or perhaps are ignorant in self-protection. That you can help with a smile, though that still feels wrong to me, because only the people supposedly helping have that choice to carry on, smile and forget about everyday woes. I feel angry on behalf of people I do not know, that being a symptom of my own privilege still, which leads to further frustration that there can be so much unfairness but as long as it breaches no thresholds it is tolerated regardless.

:thinking:

I think I should start by admitting that I've had the beginnings of what people would consider suicidal thoughts. I know that suicide ideation requires planning of method, time, place, etc. so I should not kid myself in thinking I've gone that far, but I have been thinking about it much more than usual.

It's pretty pathetic though, which is why I chose to write it on my blog which I haven't posted in a while. The ironic thing is I think a lot of it is stress from job hunting but this absolutely does only harm in a job hunt by putting your mental health on the internet. I say stress from job hunting when in fact everything is my own fault and I have not really done much about it because of a mental block. I supposedly pride myself on being adaptable but can't seem to manage something that supposedly everyone does. I remember a lot of things in different orders that I wanted to include in this post. One of them was just thinking about a friend whom I visited many times in the hospital when he was checked in for mental health. That friend told me the doctors were not helping, but the sheer helplessness and hatred of the situation he was in (having his movement controlled, meds, etc.) made him absolutely want to never go back and motivated him to try and get better. That's just honestly, very tragic... I don't know, perhaps we are being selfish by being depressed, and that logic of the system only seems to confirm this. A shame that most things are a lie these days and for all days. I should read Kurt Vonnegut after Infinite Jest.

The other thing I wanted to include was this poem, and perhaps 2, both of which I was crying to when they were spoken by Professor Natasha Trethewey  during Weinberg's convocation. I took this from Emory's website:

Musee des Beaux Arts
W. H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

It takes up a good chunk of the text, so I'm not going to write the other way here. I told a few brothers this, but the true banality of the poem manifested itself in the setting of its delivery - while I listened intently in awe at how ... correct... the poem was, my two neighbouring graduates were looking at their phones, maybe listening, maybe not, maybe texting about how someone was crying next to them, or how depressing the speaker was, and how they didn't need to hear it, because ironically, her tragic life, was not an important failure to them either. But it certainly helped me to feel, and that's how I know I can carry on, or how I know I must learn to praise the mutilated world.

Soon I will have to leave my blog as is and write other things.

The poem goes even further; it reminds me of times when I felt that the suffering of others was not my own, and I had somewhere to get to and I sailed calmly on. Right now it frightens me how little I can do for others, how little attention the homeless man sleeping on a pile of soft garbage must get, and yet he carries on because he must. And yet I am upset over my own privileged life because I am upset that he does not get that same opportunity, and I believe the system will only benefit me if I play it. But this is not true, according to everyone around me, and yet this is not what my classes have taught me, but surely this is what all the fancy-clothed people around me must believe, as they stroll past Icarus in the dumpster. How curious that it follows the opposite pattern as another story I've been thinking of lately, the Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, which if you have not read... well you should and if you've forgetten its premise, you could catch up with this well-written article.

My mind strays then to the Little Match Girl, another story about poverty... But what is this abstract poverty I'm thinking of? Am I not just romanticizing the poor and exploited? That is when I think of Brave New World, about a happy socially-stratified country which somehow still makes absolutely no sense. Because maybe the book was about how happiness is meaningless without freedom, yet today the latter is easily traded, and you would be childish to go against the meta. OK, I think I've cried enough for now.

well shit lol

Things have finally come to a head and I must choose between pragmatism and integrity it almost feels like, or principles and 'not being an idiot'. A lot of things are contradictory right now and I feel paralyzed by a system not designed for some people.