Update: Sunday, Dec 10, 2023

It has been 21 days since my last post. What happened to updating every week, indeed. Oh my, remember when I said I was going to write everyday?

Things change. Plans change. I suppose that's life for you. I suppose, I say, because I'm not actually sure. I'm not actually sure about a lot of things, but I'm working on it.

So yeah, a lot of things have happened in the past 21 days. I'll walk you through it.

I was planning on writing over Thanksgiving break, but then I thought to myself, "I should wait until after it's over to write a post about Thanksgiving break." Notably, that did not happen. The last day of Thanksgiving break was the start of a week-long anxiety-fueled bender (drugs were only involved on one of those days). It turned out to be a bit longer than a week, but I was lucid for a section in the middle before I plummeted again. The week after the week after Thanksgiving break (so this past week) held both of my final math tests and also a bunch of music performances, so I told myself that I just needed to get through them and I'll be fine. I guess I just inundated myself with tasks to do because I was going through a rough patch and my coping mechanism is to overwhelm myself so I don't feel feelings. Honestly, normal MIT student moment?

Anyways, I'm fine now. I really don't have anything to do except study for my physics final, which is whatever because I don't care enough in that class to do anything except the bare minimum. And so here I am, sitting on my bed, propped up with pillows and covered in my comfy blankets, waiting for last week's clothes to finish their time in the dryer.

I redownloaded TikTok when I got my new phone (yay!), and I chanced upon an account which posted life blogs in the slide format. The words resonated in me a little, and I was curious about this person's life. We live completely different lives, yet I felt that there was something similar in the way we approach living in general and making sense of the world around us, and so I followed them. It's been nice, seeing their posts pop up on my feed (I swear it's not some kind of parasocial relationship). It's interesting to see how other people, and specifically this person, approaches challenges that they encounter in their everyday life. They also write in such a cool manner, like poetic but also Gen Z.

It inspired me to write more. There are so many things that I've thought of writing over the last couple months that I never got to. Most notable of which was writing about poetry, and also writing poetry. I really hope I get around to writing that post in the extra time that I have coming up. Oh, and my thoughts on Doctor Faustus: Lights the Lights. There's also some "philosophical work" that I should write about, but like whatever.

I've been saying "like" a lot lately. I mean, that's always been a part of my casual speak, but I've also been watching Class of '09 gameplay, whose characters have the most stupid valley girl accents, and I think I've been talking more like them as well. It's like when I binged all of the Harry Potter movies when I was in elementary school and I was talking in a British accent for a day or two. Except, this time my consumption is a bit more drawn out over time, so it's slowly absorbing into my pores. I've actually had to consciously stop myself from writing "like" in random places in the last paragraph I've written. It's quite bad.

It's kind of scary, the stuff that I'm consuming lately. Class of '09 is quite dark. The main character is a self-proclaimed sociopath, and all the characters generally care so little or are unaware of other people's emotions. It's okay though, because it's a really cool story because of how it talks about trauma or something. Also the snarky comments are quite funny. It's just probably a little too dark for me right now. I mean, I've been consuming a lot of dark media in general, like songs and TikToks.

If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you type of shit, you know? I feel like I've been looking at the darkness for a long time now (like a month, but that's quite a long time to me), that I can hear it calling to me. I can feel myself beginning to not care about myself or the people around me, justifying potentially self-destructive actions with "how long you live is so arbitrary anyways." It feels like I'm losing myself. I didn't have much sense of self-preservation to begin with, but now that's being coupled with an unhealthy dose of existential nihilism and it seems very very problematic. Even now, I can hear the voices in the back of my head go "why is this problematic?" and the only reason I can think of is because other people would tell me it is. It's okay though, because I tell myself that there's is a reason, and I'm merely forgetting because I tend to do that in general.

I'm really grateful for my friends. By some odd coincidence, a lot of people are popping back up in my life and talking to me over the past few days. I've talked a little about these things with them and they've offered some insight into it. Honestly, it's also just nice in general to remember that people you thought didn't think about you actually care about you (since these people were friends who I didn't talk to on a regular basis). If y'all reading this, thank you.

On a related note, I wrote cute little notes of gratitude to some of the people that I do talk to everyday. There was some kind of event happening about kindness notes and I decided to write some on a whim. I was really really surprised by how much those words meant to people. I received so many texts about it making their day and whatnot. I'll have to write more when I get the chance to. It's really not that hard to make someone feel better. Well, if you know what to do. Actually scratch that, it is kind of hard sometimes. Or maybe it seems hard because I'm bad at reading people. I don't know.

I suppose I should say a little more about what happened in the past 3 weeks. What saved me for a moment on Wednesday in the week after Thanksgiving was playing Minecraft with my friends in my entry until like 4 or 5am. It served to be more than just a distraction from my life. It was just nice to have fun with my friends for a while. A lot of activities in Minecraft is also repetitive enough that it was therapeutic in some way. I was actually processing my emotions! Things got better after that.

The weekend after Thanksgiving, I smoked weed for the first time. It was quite cool, feeling the smoke in my lungs. The high kicked in very fast and that was the first time I can say with certainty that I was high. It did feel weird against the back of my throat though, and after taking a hit from a pipe yesterday (or was it the day before), I'm now worrying about the physical repercussions, only as it relates to clarinet playing. I'm planning to lay off it for now. An upperclassman (well, an upperclassman's girlfriend) said she wanted to see me smoke a blunt, and I think I'll try that once. A high school friend of mine also wanted to see me smoke a blunt back in the day. I'll send a picture to him.

He told me to read Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. I think I will do that with all the extra time I have on my hands now that my math classes are over and I only have one final to worry about (but I don't actually care about that class so I won't worry about it). I think I'll take a little break from working on math, or anything academic, for a while and just recover. Also have a little fun with my friends before I go back for winter break. I'll go crazy when I'm back home, honestly. I don't have any friends to visit because I moved after graduation, so I guess I'll have plenty of time to just to learn math and also learn how to code in Java, because I signed up to do Battlecode over IAP.

And of course, I'll write more. It's really fun. I really do enjoy writing.