On indecisiveness and time and God

huzzah!

I have kept this blog for more than two weeks, which is quite an accomplishment for me (even if it seems to be more neglected recently). And I can feel myself slowly starting to lose control of my time as school begins to take over again. Oh, it’s only been three weeks back since winter break, and it honestly has felt like three months. January isn’t even over yet!

I always tell myself, gotta enjoy the moment, because there’s only once when that moment will be in existence. The next second and poof, it’s gone. But of course, this thing I tell myself is one of the hardest things to believe and to put into action. I find myself begging for days and weeks to end, looking forward to three months ahead, and completely throwing away the importance of well, the present. And before I know it, it’s over, and I had no idea what on earth I had accomplished during that long brainless period of time. So maybe we shouldn’t be saying “we can get through this”, but rather “let’s do it and get the most out of it.”

Ha. This kind of motivation will last for about a week, if not for only three days. But if you are able to live this way, I applaud you. A lot. (:

Hm, monotone, routine days. Interesting class periods. Getting off with a good start. Stopped reading Crime and Punishment out of boredom and started reading Pride and Prejudice. Troubles with the classes I should pick for the next two years of school (see? already looking ahead, and second semester’s not even halfway over yet). Art or science or newspaper or psychology? Choices.

I’ve always hated choices. Well, not so much that I hate them, but simply that I’m SUCH an indecisive girl. At restaurants, I’m always the last one to pick out of the menu, even if there’s literally 6 things on the menu. I can never decide what to wear, what colors to choose for art projects. And I especially can’t pick classes for myself, because I want to do everything.

So how have I decided to make decisions for myself? I’ve started to do things out of complete whim. Out of the spontaneous moment during that last minute. Which is horrible, because then things can’t be planned out and etc etc etc. But what’s an indecisive girl to do? I tried pro/con lists too, but it usually ends up that the one with the most “pros” is the one I don’t want to do as much. It’d just look better on resumes or be another accomplishment to add to my pride list. So now, the ultimate decision goes down to this: my own interests or my pride?

My interests, duh. But what happens if you’re interested in about a million and one things, that you don’t even know what your’e interested in anymore, because there’s SO many things? SO many choices? Hum. I’ve always wanted to try everything- food, clothes, places, activities, jobs. Unfortunately, I find that impossible with so little time. Or perhaps with such bad time-managing skills.

Anyway, one last thought as I was walking home from the bus today. I started talking to myself, like I usually do, about reminders for the afternoon and what I needed to get done before piano lessons. And then suddenly, I stopped, and I realized that I didn’t have to talk to myself anymore; I could talk to GOD.! What a revelation. I do tend to talk to myself alot; you may think I’m strange. But it helps me release my anger and get my thoughts into coherent phrases, so that by the end of my talking-to-self sessions, I’ve talked myself out of my problems. You should try it sometime. Except instead of talking to yourself, direct it toward God. Like prayer! And you may be surprised to find that He’s talking back the whole time.

Joy

 To be honest, my life is quite boring. Why? Because everything is going so great. And it’s great. And I feel great. But when it comes to these blog entries, there’s no exciting piece of news to report. No depressing poems that readers can connect with. No stories of how I’m trying to get through, well, life. (Hm, it seems to me that depressing things are more interesting for readers to read, and more easier for writers to write about. Wonder why? Perhaps because it’s something that everybody connects with). But I’m happy.

I usually amhappy, but before, it was a different kind of happy. It was the type of happy where I’m content with my both my friends and myself. But yes, it revolved mainly around me. It was the type of happiness that comes from naiveness, an immaturity of the world around me. And then, mr.boy comes along and ruins this type of happiness for me, and here goes my time of trying to find that light happiness that I once had before. But I couldn’t reach it, and you know why? Because that type of happiness can’t be regained once it’s lost. It’s from being naive, and once maturity comes, you can’t go back to being innocent.

So when things got better, of course I was happy once again. This type of happiness, I categorize as the type of happy where I’m temporarily content with how things are going. This type, however, changes from ups to downs then from downs to ups. There wasn’t much permanence to it, and needless to say I’d turned from optimistic to pessimistic. Comes from “maturity”? I don’t even know what maturity is. But anyway, mood swings everyday.

But now? Wow. I try to describe this happiness but I don’t know how to explain it. Perhaps it’s joy? My pastor once told me that there was a difference between being happy and being joyful. Happy is just a feeling that comes from the situations that are occurring around you. But joyful is this permanent feeling of happiness that comes from the knowledge of knowing God loves me. Of knowing that you’re blessed beyond words. You can be sad, but still be joyful. And after realizing at winter retreat of this one single fact, God loves me, everything changed.

Now digression- you might be wondering how on earth I did not know that God loves me, especially when I’ve been going to church since zero years old. Of course, I’d learned those little songs about Jesus and I carried around those keychains with bible verses about His love. But it’s not something that you can grasp with songs and keychains. At winter retreat, the pastor did something that nobody in the history of me has ever done before- he opened up the microphone in front of about 100 kids for confessions. (James 5:16- Therefore, confess your sins to each other…) To go up there, make yourself vulnerable, and confess. So it was deathly silent for 5 minutes. The girl next to me was like, shaking from fear, because we were all thinking that same thought- who on earth would seriously confess in front of so many people?

But miraculously, people started going up, one by one. Confessing things like pornography, like violence, like theft, like lust, like thoughts of killing. And it wasn’t like, dang, that person is gross because he watches porn. It was like, wow, he’s making himself vulnerable. And all you want to do is pray. And His presence just filled up the room, and I was overtaken by it, because for the first time in my life, I finally opened the door to those sins of mine that I’d shut the door on, simply because  I hate admitting things like that to myself. And I finally realized how hard I would be to love, how unbelievably imperfect and dirt-like I am. And I broke down, because then that voice came. God loves you.

Which is why I’ve found myself to finally know what being joyful is. I could and should be depressed about many things, like how I’ve completely crossed out science in my possible future careers, or how I should be absolutely stressed out with this thing called school, or how my mom is trying to make me give up church Fridays for piano.

But it doesn’t matter, because I can talk to God and know that He’s listening, even if nobody else will.

judge me

i’m just kidding. I hate it when people judge me. (Hm, am I going through a proclaim-hate-phase?). But here’s the thing. I doubt that people can help it when they judge, when they label. Human instinct, perhaps. I find myself doing it all the time, looking at someone and having stereotypical thoughts racing through my head upon first sight. It happens before I can even think twice. Oh, look at her dress that barely covers her thighs, she must be a slut. Gee, look at that asian who’s reading that book with a thousand pages, must be a nerd. Wow, look at that passed out guy with a million bags under his eyes sleeping on the bus, must be a druggie. Must, must, must. How do we know?  

And now that I think about it, we probably act certain ways in public just so that we can be judged- in a good way. Dress nicely- don’t want anyone to think I have no sense in fashion. Walk with confidence- don’t want anyone to think I’m a loner. Paste a smile- don’t want anyone to think I’m emo. Or perhaps we do these things to try to make others jealous, an attempt for superiority and attention. Or is that just me? Me, messed up, and probably.

An interesting dilemma. Frustrating.
I dress in a trench coat, they call me rich (it was for sale!).
I dress in knee-high boots, they call me a slut.
I dress in a dress, they call me high-maintenance.
So I dress in sweats, and they call me lazy.
(disclaimer: “they” is not equivalent to the mass population. more like, one or two people who are only kidding. But it brings up an interesting point.)

What if I just want to keep warm? To be classy?
What if I like fashion? What if I just want to be me?

Which is why I admire the humble and sincere, who don’t need to act certain ways to proclaim to the world of their existence, whether it be bragging about how it only took 10 minutes of studying to get a 100 in the class or dressing outrageously in neon pink and green (just a side note, I don’t feel like there’s anything wrong with dressing outrageously. But neon, well, that’s pretty bold). Oh how do they do it, when they accomplish the most amazing feats and keep silent, or when they donate dollars and time to charities and still nobody but God knows.

God. Well wow, I think I just answered all my silent questions among this rambling, of what we should do at least. We should act certain ways in public (and private), but not to be judged by people. But instead we should act to be judged by God- the ultimate judge in this court of earth. The best reward comes from Him, not our neighbors. Easier said than done.

Well, I think I’m going to go delete that picture of myself that shows up when I comment on other peoples’ blogs. Because I know that there’s always some way that my blog can be judged according to that face. (But who cares about how I’m judged anyway?). But either way, there’s always been something intriguing about not knowing the face behind a blogger. It lets my imagination run loose as I try to match up faces to blog posts, until I’ve envisioned the face of that anonymous person. Like I said before, I feel like a stalker. But point is, pictures do ruin that for you. It’s just like how watching movies can ruin really great books.

May I state two more things that bother me? One- how I can’t categorize my posts. I made a category called “thoughts”, but all my posts are thoughts. Not to mention that they’re never centered around one central thing (although I’m trying). Might as well stay uncategorized. Oh, and plus, my titles are usually misleading for the second portion of the post, which usually is about some other completely irrelevant thought floating in my head. I’m organized, I promise. Two- how wordpress time is about five hours off from Georgia time. Oh well, puts me in a different country anyway. The time zones of Spain, France, and Africa! How exotic. (Isn’t that funny? I wonder if they call Americans exotic.) I guess it’d be more appropriate to say something like “How cool” or if I want to use a better adjective, “How swell!” (I looked in a thesarus).

I’m trying not to judge.

words.

Words have so much power…

They can turn an entire nation for your favor and spread this sensation of hope around every corner. They can promise a new life and they can overthrow old worries. They can give you insight as to what to do for the rest of your future, they can give you the notion that anything, absolutely anything, is possible; they can tell you yes and they can tell you no. They can sway an entire mob of people.

Words can condemn, words can bring chaos to a country. They can start revolutions and they can start high school dramas. They can stab a friend in the back, deeper than a cut from a knife could. They can lower someone’s self worth to nothing more than dirt, and they can raise another’s to the level of a god. They can persuade you to buy cigarettes, and force you to leave your family. They can bring depressing news of death, or great news of births. 

Words. The masterminds of newspapers and journals, blogs and speeches, talks and talks and talks. 

And yet we still can not trust the intention behind these words, voiced or printed. After all, they’re just words, and actions speak louder than words. Yet how is it that the mouth can still have so much influence over the entire body? That little black unfeeling characters can evoke the most heartbreaking emotions? That both curses and blessings can come out of the same mouth?

It seems to be that the people who can speak can hold the whole world in their hands.

Oh, and have you ever noticed how some words can really just make someone else’s day? I missed you. I love you. Thank you. You’re great. You’re like my sunshine in my rainy days! (mm, okay.) Compliments and compliments, the secret to a happy life. Humans just bathe in attention.

But why do some people feel uncomfortable receiving them? Is it because they don’t like attention, or that they think the compliment-giver is mocking, is lying? Why do people try to be humble when others say “I like your outfit” or “You look pretty” or “You’re smart!” instead of just saying a thank you? I honestly hate it when people reply with a NO when I give a compliment. What does that even mean? NO, I think you’re wrong? NO, I think I’m ugly? NO, you’re rude for telling me your opinion? Take this situation.

Me: You look pretty today!
Compliment-rejector: Oh, no I don’t.
Me: Well, yes you do!
Compliment-rejector: No I don’t!

At this point, I can either be silent and imply that I agree with her, or I can say “fine” and imply even more that I agree with her, or I can say “Why don’t you just say thank you?”, which is what I always do, which always ends the conversation (and attempted friendship)  in an extremely awkward manner, simply because I was stating my goshdarned opinions.

So please, just say thank you.

Oh gosh, I hate it when people say “I know” to my compliments too. As if I’m inferior for stating the facts too late.

Words are great, but I think I’ll just stick with smiles and waves down the hallway.

Victory!

        

My room has transformed from this junkyard in shambles with absolutely no walking space to the cleanest and most aesthetically place in the house. YES! It took approximately four hours and thirty-eight minutes of lugging furniture around and dragging unwanted clothes and books to the basement and back up. I am so unbelievably proud. I literally just got rid of ten years worth of my past, stuffed them in boxes, and stashed them under my bed. (So it’s not really getting rid of…) I don’t know why, but I really can’t get rid of these little trinkets and gadgets that my parents classify as “junk”. It’s just that they hold some kind of sentimental value, treasures that nobody but myself can understand. Throwing them away and knowing that they’re going to end up in the STATE’S messy room (junkyard) really tears me apart, cheesy as it sounds. It’s my junk, after all.

Here, to give you an example of how crazy I am about my stuff and how unwilling I am to let go of any of it, I’ll list some things I still have. Hmm. Well of course I have all my beautiful artwork from kindergarten. It holds a special place in the box that holds all my transcripts, report cards, and memory books my best-friend-from-fourth-grade and I made. I still have the letters my first friend wrote to me, whom I moved away from in first grade, as well as the gossip-filled notes I passed with that girl in math class. I still have rubber ducks and fishes from a Hawaiin-themed birthday party in seventh grade. I still have Hershey wrappers, Pocky stick containers, expired gift cards, wristbands from five amusement parks, and my brother’s felt cup holder. Oh, and about thirty stuffed animals stashed in a huge vacuum cleaner box. Dude, I’m crazy. You still can’t see the bottom of the floor in my closet because there’s this huge box filled with shopping bags and tissue paper that I save to reuse.

But anyway, it doesn’t matter. I finally have space to hang my clothes. Even better, I finally have space to walk, which means space to pace, which means space to think. Today is the best day of my life (not quite, but near.)

But that was also besides the point . (I just had to inform the world of this wonderful accomplishment and release this excitement that’s seriously bursting out of the seams of my body. Wow, look at all that space my digression took).

The point is, I had a depressing thought today. The title of this thought is called
“How do you know what you’re good at if you’re not good at anything?”

God gives us all talents, right? I figured out (after years and years of searching) that my talent was people. The most intangible thing that exists on this planet. I’ve always had trouble with this, surrounded by the most talented and exceptional friends, and then I see me, average and average again with grades that prove once again average.  But what happens with those people who aren’t exceptional at quite anything, and they don’t have those people skills to back them up? What’s their talent? Of course I’d say it’s hidden, that they’ve gotta keep trying, keep searching. But to what extent? When do we know that THIS is it, THIS is what I was put on this earth for? And what on earth do we tell those people who call themselves failures and ask you to tell them what’s their special talent?

I guess the best thing we can do is pray.

I feel like a stalker.

I was randomly surfing through these blogs on wordpress with that nifty arrow in the right hand corner, and most of them were, well, developed. They were either ones about God-sharing, or ones with poems and pictures of weddings and such, or ones recounting the whole story of an old mom blessed with a child. Or, they were in a different language. So then, I looked up random tags, and that got me into a whole nother dimension of blogs- personal blogs. And it’s amazing what people write on these things for the entire Internet (which potentially is the entire world, minus a few nomads) to see, leaving their heart and soul so vulnerable on the streets of E-arth (lol, pun?) But I guess that’s the pleasures of having a blog- to have someone to tell about your day to, to have that outlet for fuming anger. And to know that you are absolutely and completely anonymous to the eyes of readers passing by.

Anyway, I felt uncomfortable on some, and touched by others. Some I laughed to, some I related to. It’s almost like music. But you know what’s even weirder? Surfing through these blogs, and feeling as if I’m looking through a window at another person’s life- every single perspective, nook and cranny (what the heck’s a cranny anyway) of that person. It’s as if I know this stranger even better than I know my best friend, which is an extreemely scary thought.

                

But that was a side note. What’s really been taking over my mind lately, besides this Ice Age happening in Georgia of all places (why won’t it snow??), is one single question.

What… is love?

I’m not trying to be deep; it’s just been on my mind, and it’s been nagging me and like, poking my insides out. Ha, what a gruesome picture. But seriously? I thought I had this. So of course the first example that comes to mind is God. You know, creater of love and the one who loved us first. The one who’s love is so unconditional and limitless that our dumb little minds probably couldn’t even comprehend 1/99 of it.

But how do you know you yourself loves someone else? How do you know if that feeling is coming from your heart, or from your mind, or from your hormones and lust and junk like that? How do you know that the guy who’s telling you he loves you really does, when words were never proven to mean anything before? Words are only words, what more could they be? How do you know…? I’m confused. Because I know that God showed His love by giving His only son to die for us… so is love sacrifice? Is that how you know, if you and him sacrifice things like time and money for each other? But then.. how do you know if you or him is sacrificing out of love, and not out of duty?

Gollygee. My rambling thoughts in print. I ask too many questions.

Anyway, here’s a random fact of the day. The largest toy distributor in the world is McDonald’s. This is a sad, sad world. You know in that Supersize Me video? Those kids knew all the faces of Ronald McDonald and Wendy, but they couldn’t even tell you how Abraham Lincoln and the age-old portrait of Jesus looked like.

I can’t believe McDonald’s beat Toys R Us.

Stop running.

check this out; my language arts teacher brought it up today.

“MONDAY, Jan. 12 (HealthDay News) — If you get less than seven hours of sleep a night, you’re three times more likely to catch a cold… And research also has found that people who sleep seven to eight hours a night have the lowest rates of heart disease and death.”

Let me repeat. If you work, you’ll get sick. How wrong and ironic is that?? That teenagers in school who are working their hands and feet off just to stay in school, and yet it only makes us more likely to catch one little cold that can keep you out of school for a few dreaded days, becaues I know nobody who actually does work would fake sick, simply because school seems to be calling out and waiting to crush us and deathly stampede over our burnt bodies… gone are the days of chicken noodle soup ):  But anyway, this discovery calls for us to… stop working! Naw, just kidding. If we didn’t work, this world would spontaneously combust. This discovery is literally telling us to stop working a bit and enjoy life for its people and places, because if you don’t, you’ll simply die earlier, and what happened to that life that you worked so hard to maintain? Gone.

The depressing truths of life. Here’s another one to ponder. My mom last night was telling me a story. It is called..
The Fisherman.

“Once upon a time there was a fisherman. He worked for half a day; everyday he would go out to the sea, catch a few fish, eat some, then sell the remaining to buy some beer every night at the bar with his friends. This was what he did day after day; he lived everyday to get through it. One day when he was at the bar, there was an irregularity. A Harvard NBA player was sitting there! (Yeah, I questioned my mom’s sanity at this point too).
So this man said, “You should work full day instead of half day.”
The fisherman replied, “Why?”
“So you can make more money!”
“What would I do with more money?”
“Then you could buy a bigger boat!”
“Why would I want a bigger boat?”
“Well, to catch more fish!”
“So?”
“Then, you can make even more money!”
“What would I do with more money??”
“You could build a business, and make even more money. Then you could buy a vacation!”
“And what would I do with a vacation..?”
“Well.. you’d fish, and sleep, and you could go out every night for a drink at the bar!”

Sometimes we really gotta question what we do in this life. Or maybe just slow down; what’s the hurry anyway? Then we’d miss things like this..

This was the breathtaking sunset yesterday outside my school. Unbelievable, huh? How do the clouds manage to line up like that anyway? It looks like an upside-down UFO, or a marching line of clouds, or a river to a land far, far away… Almost looks like an omen, but it’s too beautiful to be one. So it’s that other word with the positive connotation, whatever it is. Courtesy of picture to epsi, currently the only viewer of this goshdarned dead blog. One’s the most I’ve ever had.

Blog Histories

So here’s the truth.

It’s always easy for me to start things up when nobody I know is here to judge. But then, after a few days pass by, it gets a bit difficult when there’s no audience at all. It’s literally as if I’m talking to an empty room, shouting out HELLO! and hearing a HELLO back only to realize it was me.  And for the record, I hate talking to walls.

And so I always used to try to write in a way that I hoped would attract people. Because here’s the blatant truth- this is not my first blog at all. This is probably actually my fourth attempt. Shall we go for a blast in the past?

1st blog: xanga. Oh, those days when I would keep a record in my mind of every pencil that dropped and leaf that fell during every single goshdarned day of my life, then regurgitate it all onto that square on my computer. And if nothing happened, I’d make up stories about how much white-out can do for you. I was a weird, weird child. And people loved reading my blog because it was so nonsensically brilliant. What can I say.

2nd blog: xanga. Again, perhaps, but anonymously. These are the days when my artistic creativity struck me and poems would come to my head and I’d start snapping to the rhythm of the beat to these great poems I wrote. The cat in the hat sat for a snack, OH SNACK it doesn’t rhyme but it’s okay because I’m so artistically creative that it works… what a joke. My poems were those of a depressed teenage girl lost from love and romance, and they were pretty depressing. It’d be like, Oh I love you but you don’t love me so I hate you oh but I love you… yeah. no views on any of that junk.

3rd blog: blogger. or blogspot, however you might want to call it. Well, this was where I decided I’d go FOR REAL. And so I had a dark layout to imply how deep this blog would be. I tried to make all my entries so poetic with similes and metaphors and anemenssoeds. Youknow, those great speech things you learn from language arts class. I’d write about how growing up was a horrible thing and how thinking was so great that it could lift you into the skies and clouds and.. a bunch of baloney. And not to mention that blogger doesn’t quite have a community. So once again, I was shouting out to an empty room. Deleted that blog too; it was embarassing.

4th blog: this one. Let’s try being a bit more real now, hm? So here’s who I am. I am a crazy asian girl in high school; i’m not in middle school, or college, or rehab, or whatever. I’m a highschooler. teenager. mood swings, queen of the world. I spend a LOAD of time with church and friends. I’m not very smart, or very dumb; I’m well, average (yes, an average asian exists). I draw, I paint, I play piano, I fence, I write, I hate math. Label me. I love laughing and talking, I love cheesy romantic things, and well, if you’ve (mr/mrs/ms. nobody) commited to reading this blog, looks like you’ll get to know me very well. If I don’t decide to delete this one and move on to another one, that is.

hello world.

time to break out of my shell.

A blog, wow. Sure, I’ve done xanga, but that was in middle school, when nothing counts for anything anyway. But I’m pretty excited. A blog, where I can start fresh with fresh people and fresh things. A blog… not to mention that this place is so clean-cut and organized, and that the ginormous font simply rocks.

Let’s get this thing started, shall we? (Or me, since there’s not really a “we” yet, since I’m pretty much talking to myself at this point in time… but maybe that’ll change). SO, tell me some wonders.