eat me henger

i've been struggling with life lately. like "years lately" kind of lately.  i'm at a point in life where the way to move forward is to have intrinsic motivation. i did well when i was being told what to do. now when i have to initiate my trajectory, i fizzle out. like writing here. it's been four years since i had a flurry of material. writing almost daily honed my ability. perhaps it was momentum from intrinsic motivation triggered by external circumstances. i remember having clever phrases come naturally, almost like magic. but now i struggle to even get my thoughts through here because "why the fuck does this matter?" i guess i have to stick with it to make it mean something. perhaps it doesn't mean anything at all and my words are equivalent to time spent doomscrolling. perhaps it shouldn't even matter whether i'm relevant or not. i perhaps just need to orient myself at a certain direction and pursue it wholeheartedly. it's difficult ...

life probably begins at 40 because, by then, our youthful energy has depleted. we no longer have that inner turbulence of wanting to find our place in the world. our diminished neuroplasticity nudge us to things we're familiar and comfortable with. life probably begins at 40 because, finally, we find tranquility with the person we built for ourselves. but until then, i have a couple more years to become that person.

it's been a while since i checked in. it's probably going to be the general theme of my writing moving forward. unless something significant happens.  i can feel my hormones aren't what they used to be. i don't have the same enthusiasm for life as i used to have - or what's little of it. my natural inclination for depression had always dulled my experience of life. it's never as exciting or as dynamic as other peoples' lives seemed to be. or perhaps, comparison is thieving away at my joy. i could very well argue that my perception is the only practically valid perspective. so if other people are living better, then it's none of my business. or, again, it's just the declining hormones talking. humans are such a slave to our hormones. if we're so intelligently designed, then the spike in hormones in our adolescence and early adulthood should've been our springboard to our life's constant trajectory - like entrepreneurship, or a skilled voca...

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.