Blogging has become one of my favorite activities this year, after I made the commitment to express ideas just as regularly as taking them in (mostly via books). Blogging isn’t quite like my experience with journaling, which is private, self-oriented rather than audience-oriented. I have noticed that my voice in journaling and blogging does not…
This is a rant about a topic very close to my heart that coincides with some of the events happening in the world at the moment. In a way one can say this issue has been around for a long time, and there’s no doubt it will continue to plague human society far into the…
“Aesthetic” is a word I have seen thrown around a lot on the internet these days, and you might have too especially if you’re part of the tumblr/pinterest/instagram crowds. Being “aesthetic” or “aesthetically pleasing” often means abiding by a set of visual concepts or patterns that appeal to the eye and/or represent a certain subcultural…
It has been a while since I last published a blog post that isn’t a book review. At the start of this year I sort of made a promise to myself (though no pressure) to dedicate more time and effort to blogging and sharing my thoughts publicly with others. I already keep a journal and…
In 2022 I will be turning 25 and as much as I resist the thought, I’m feeling like this is meant to be a significant milestone in my life. From what I’ve seen among my friends, I (we) need to either visibly struggle with a quarter-life crisis or otherwise transform into a fully functioning adult…
I didn’t intend to read so much this year but reading sort of became (once again) my procrastination mechanism aka my excuse to not do actual work. So I just picked up one book after another whenever I saw them recommended somewhere on the Internet, or popping up in the catalogue of my library. Clearly…
Reminders for self, to change up my way of reading going forward. At least for the next while. Read more well-established works. Don’t just skid around and pick up books that only pique my interest in superficial ways (pretty covers, intriguing titles, cool synopses). Selecting books this way is fun and can open me up…
The film An Inconvenient Truth was released 15 years ago. It triggered a monumental shift in the media and public awareness regarding climate change (then recognized more widely as global warming), both in the US and internationally. The film also immortalized an illusion that the politics and economics of climate change have come to embody.…
Life feels unreal. WHY are we just 3 weeks away from freaking twenty TWENTY TWO when my last REAL memories are all from twenty NINETEEN? I’m just steps away from officially wasting two full years of my life, at least mentally. Nothing really came out of 2020 and 2021, and I feel like my mind…
I’ve had a particularly acute fit of anxiety in which I just couldn’t escape doubts and worries about my existence in this world and what I ought to make of my life and future. All I would do all day was to sit and feel helpless about every situation I could possibly envision, which then…
I had a funny thought the other day. How would one live their life if a whole life were to fit into only 24 hours? If each day we woke up and it marked the beginning of a brand new life, in which our attachments to the past were but severed, and any events happening…
I just finished a book titled How Do You Live?, written by Genzaburo Yoshino almost a century ago. It’s a heart-warming and humane story published in the midst of one of the ugliest, most brutal eras of Japan. The coming-of-age story of fifteen-year-old Copper and his friends and uncle was dedicated to a generation of…
If you ever exist in a society (which I figure you do, since you are able to read this text on the Internet), you have most likely been experiencing in one way or another this thing called social comparison. Depending on how fortunate you are to have been raised by a family or community who…
I’ve for a long time entertained this idea that I could possibly squeeze about six or seven careers into my life, based on this (unscientific) assumption that it takes on average 10,000 hours to master a specific field. If I manage to live to eighty something years old and stay in good health, I have…