tabula rasa

Going back to this blog after seven months, I am feeling an intense wave of secondhand embarrassment. It’s just weird because in almost all of my previous film reviews it’s always me trying to say something clever; looking intently for something I’d miss until I found something interesting in someone else’s review, which is pretty great, but it wasn’t me, it was just echoes. Then, putting out my half-cooked thoughts is a dangerous option–I’ve learned it the hard way. When it comes to voicing an opinion I either think about it too hard til the moment passes just like that, or embarrass myself by saying something problematic.

This is only one thing on top of my long list of insecurities that has been piling up for the last week. Another existential crisis, what’s new.

Lately, I’ve discovered that I actually like meeting new people. This self-portrait of me as a human-hating potato comes from my nature of constantly craving something new. I get tired of seeing the same useless people over and over again, I’d try to piss them off, or like, reply to everything they say sarcastically. Sometimes they don’t even get mad, but rather see this as a sign that we’ve gotten along quite well and that I decided to take this form of social interaction to another level: losing civility. It’s fun, being an asshole.

But then, meeting people is something else entirely. You’re stuck with the same people throughout your three years of juvenile imprisonment, and then you found out that there’s actually OTHER PEOPLE beyond your demonic circle!!!! And then you’d get through the exact same introduction stage with each other, you get to identify this new species and associate them with a bunch of similar human beings in your life, or probably they’re something else entirely new and exciting. They will ask you questions you’re never prepared to answer because everyone else already knew the answer–no one had bothered to ask you for a long time. You can impress them! with your tiny quirks or Interesting Experience! in contrast with your friends who are probably tired of your shit.

Like a few weeks ago after the Sarinah bomb, I made some friends in my exam prep course. When they ask me where my school is (it’s not really as famous as I thought before attending it) I had to mention Sarinah, the closest known place to my school, and suddenly they all wanted to hear about my bomb story (there isn’t one since we weren’t witnessing it, but everyone just went crazy with paranoia at the time. Our early dismissal had to be paid with three extra days of prep course, which sucks).

The thing is, I was just chatting with a new friend yesterday, and like almost all of conversations I’ve had with people my age, we ended up talking about uni and major choices. I found him interesting, as his aura of confidence just kind of stands out because he cares about lots of things besides what others say. Not a lot of people are confident in that way. We’ve got too much overconfident people coming in these days, but most of them branches out to narcissism, egocentrism, arrogance, or those comfort zone-confidence when they only feel okay surrounded by their kind. It’s not easy to stand up as an individual, which is why people with this attitude are most likely to survive.

He already had his future plans laid out carefully, while I didn’t quite know what to say. Last year my major choices were constantly changing; I was into Psychology because I’m interested with the human mind but I didn’t even want to be a psychiatrist nor any company’s human resource guy. Then I looked into Philosophy since I liked too much to ponder on existentialism and everyone says I think too much, so I might as well put a ring on it–but then I always give up too soon before any conclusion was reached. My dad suggested English Literature for my love of books, and I was pretty happy with this idea. I’ve been reading and writing since I was a child. I wanted to be a writer, but then I discovered procrastination long before I even knew what that word meant. By the age of seven I was practically a smol Kafka.

He asked me what are the career prospects for an English Lit graduate (and apparently he felt the need to add that he didn’t mean to offend me; that it was pure curiosity). It still felt like an insult. Though he wasn’t the one insulting me; I felt insulted by my own unpreparedness. I don’t really know what I wanted to be, and to be honest it bothers me a lot. His plans for the future just pisses me off even more, because, is THAT how things should work? Am I not doing this 12th Grade Hell thing properly?

I’m gonna have to end this train of thought here and let you decide for yourself (even my blog posts have cliffhangers. Amazing). Right now I’m gonna study for tomorrow’s Maths tryout and reflect on this tomorrow evening, or the next day. Or the day after that.

There would be no time left to reflect anything, so I guess you just jump into that freefall and live my life in the /now/. The day I receive my first paycheck, would I look back and laugh at all the plannings and me fussing over this? I guess that’s what they mean with the life that happens while we’re busy making plans.