right person, wrong place (week 21 of 2024)

RM's "Right Place, Wrong Person" released a few days ago and I have been looping it non-stop for several hours now.

It is such a gorgeous album! Really funky but with deep layers of instrumentation. Groovy and jazzy and cheeky, too. I love how raw and alternative and experimental it is. I think this will be one of those albums that I will keep coming back to over the course of my life.

I have been not totally motivated about life recently, so this album has come at the right time. A much needed stimulation after a draining semester and a worsening disillusionment with academia. It has been a few weeks after grades have been submitted, and usually right about now I am re-starting writing projects and diving back into research and reading. But not this time. I don't feel like it.

I see my email inbox fill with requests from so many people who want a slice of my time, for good but mostly bad reasons. Because there is not much to spare I don't respond until I am sure I have the time for you. But my considerate actions don't stop the emails from coming. They keep coming, and drown my silent pleads to just leave me the fuck alone.

Why I am feeling this way is hard to explain. I've always found it difficult to connect with people, even people whom I consider good colleagues and friends. Increasingly I feel alienated from the academic community. Am I the wrong person in the right place? Or am I in fact the right person, but in the wrong place?

The MV for LOST! is good fun too. The imagery of the personas of RM running around in a maze of corporate offices feels like a very concrete depiction of the kinds of thoughts that circle in my mind. There is this feeling of being trapped in the dullest, most sickening environment for my creative soul where I can't express my true ideas and show my potential as a human being. I am scared that I won't achieve anything meaningful in my life. All I have to show is a long list of academic papers that no one reads, has zero impact on the field, mass-produced for the sole, selfish reason of trying to hang on to a job that I am not sure I really like, actually.

So yeah, life feels kind of sucky lately.

The last track, "Come Back To Me", is a beautiful finale that gives a lot of comfort that I'll get through this phase and come out of it feeling better. Perhaps this pain will be divine, divine.

(If anyone is actually reading this post and feels like I am just being a whiny bitch from a strawberry generation that can't take life stresses or a bursting email inbox, you can fuck off. Everyone has struggles. And these are all legitimate struggles even if they are hard to understand because the full context isn't always available. Even a K-pop star has problems and needs to let it all out in one of the raw-est albums I've ever listened to. I don't know what these struggles of RM's are, but they are real and they hurt. I am still trying to understand mine.)