eat me henger

i'm a guy in my 30s.  the kind of youth i have gotten used to feels distant. artifacts help re-live the vibe. oh how mentally limited and physically limitless was i. that was it. unceremoniously passing by. unlike the graduations i had gotten used to, there is no culminating activity marking the commencement into full fledged adulthood. living in the past feels nice. the world is changing into something i haven't absolutely accepted yet. i have all these seemingly useless learnings that aren't as applicable today. having all these memories feel like a burden. i have lived experience that anchors me to a bygone era. but these fragments also form part of my wisdom. being wise now feels less chaotic. no matter how much life changes, some patterns stay the same, still discernible, still actionable. seeing it all before brings me closer to the right path. living presents a constant challenge to adapt, and i chose the hard way. i never sought guidance. it could have saved me from...

i write to capture the present. moments are far too fleeting, their essence intangible. but even so, thoughts immortalized in writing hold very little in archival value. it's not like i will re-read every single entry. they're just there to serve as a symbol of a habit. a habit of documenting my reflections and committing to publish them in this infinitesimal niche of the internet. i don't do this for the renown. i don't do this for any material return. i write because - under the immense strength of the universe - it's the only way i could get a semblance of directional narrative in life. people need stories. people need to live their life with a story. stories provide structure to life's ups and downs. it cautions us from risk of downfall. it gives us hope that circumstances can improve. even if it turns out that life is a random mess of remotely consequential occurrences, convincing ourselves that such a pattern exist to weave the tapestry defining human expe...

today is the only "today" i will get.  each person hold cherished moments. almost always they will realize how meaningful the moment actually was afterwards. lucky are the instances when we recognize the present value of a moment. it ought to be an essential life skill. it's a lesson i wish i could teach my younger self. time machines are fantasy. we can't re-live the past, only remembering will help us look back. we can't re-direct the course of history, only wisdom will help us recalibrate our direction. we can't redo our mistakes, only reconciliation will help us make amends. practicality dictates that there is an obvious choice between "a way to go back to the past" or "a way to thank your past self" and i'm done living la la land

i get to live the life i want, and yet i still choose to want the life i will live.  today and tomorrow will be as tough as yesterday because someday it will get better. but every now and then i look into the mirror and see mediocrity embodied in a bag of sagging flesh. i put up with what felt like agonizing difficulty for what? there's enough years in me that i can look back with longing and regret. i wish i knew at the time that it was going to be as good as it could get. my inexperience muddled my expectations. i thought it was a predictably linear trajectory from inadequate anonymity to accomplished relevancy. but life is a roll of the dice. so many last moments passed by, so many peaks i was unaware.  all because i lacked the gratefulness in the present and humility in uncertainty.

i'm a mess.  i thank my job and my family for keeping me together. but without a pre-determined obligatory schedule, without other people keeping the home in order, i probably would end up in the streets. i'm naturally unmotivated. i give up easily. i don't derive a huge deal of delight from life's pleasures. the term for it is "depression", and that topic is a pummeled paste from what previously was a dead horse. in all likelihood, without the external pressures of a workday or the nurturing commitment of a household, my days would be spent aimlessly anticipating for the next sunset. i have a natural tendency for addiction. i have difficulty divesting from dependence. once i get started, i jump head first into becoming a junkie. i've seen myself build tolerance to psychoactive substances. i can always tell when the usual dose isn't doing it for me anymore. good thing i posses a combination of rudimentary medical knowledge and sufficient self-awareness...