22.

It's fascinating how different my girlfriend and I write. I mean, I don't consider myself much of a writer at all, but I do write occasional movie reviews on Letterboxd (which I enjoy very much), so that's something I guess. Anyways, the way I tend to write is analytical. I pick stuff apart and try to make sense of the parts to make sense of the whole. So in a movie, I usually go for the characters, story, cinematography (camera moves and such), acting, etc. and talk about how each part fits into the whole (at least, when I can be bothered to write such an extensive review... very often I don't really feel like it and I just come up with a lame joke instead). It's all very dry and very much non-fiction, like these writings I'm writing here, actually! But she writes very differently. She can turn everything into a story. A movie review will almost certainly be in the form of a little story. And by writing this story, she gives every word so much meaning. The words explode in your mind and they give you vivid images of the thing she's writing about. She can describe beautifully, colorfully. She doesn't analyse, she paints with words. I really admire that, and I wish I had the talent to write like that. But when I write, it always comes out like this: long paragraphs, painfully detailing the elements of a thing, to end in an inevitable conclusion. Meh.

I guess my style of writing is stereotypically philosophical, and it probably suits my field of study well. So I'm not so unsafistied with it. But I would also really like to be able to write colorfully, to write in stories, to give flavour to words and sentences. But maybe I'm condemned to write analytically for the rest of my life. To write books full of dry paragraphs, in an attempt to understand the universe, and to end up having written thousands of pages, and without the slightest idea of what this world is about. I'd have made a 0% progress in decyphering life. There might be some poetic, tragic beauty in that future. The meaning lies in the attempt, not in the result, or something. In the end, the only result is the result that we notice, that we feel. So even if we, as humanity, never really "figure out" what the universe is about, maybe it doesn't really matter. What matters is what we think the universe is about. Or our lives. And that we live them fully according to that standard. And that we die having lived, not being the slightest bit closer to the truth about the universe. I guess that's a good thing to strive for.

That might be what I'm striving for, anyways. I'm definitely not striving for some kind of external goal, like money or success or recognition. Why make your end goal something outside of yourself? That makes no sense, if you ask me. Make your own happiness your end goal, I say. Make other people happy if your heart tells you to. Love boundlessly if that's what makes you thrive. I think that's the case for me. So I will do my best.