14.8.17

stagnation – a negative post about feeling discontent with oneself

i am a little over 2 months into my 8-month break from university and already i feel like my brain is rotting.

i feel no motivation to do anything; anything other than lying on the living room couch and staring at the rotating ceiling fan feels like too much effort. netflix is no longer the treasure chest it once was when i discovered it just before my year-end exams. the books lying haphazardly in my wardrobe are suddenly too bland, too unfulfilling. studying for university feels like a task too far away, its consequences not in the horizon of my sight. my trips to tokyo and pulau redang happening in the next couple of weeks are no longer exciting prospects. the lives of my friends and acquaintances seem to be a world's distance away from me, after i decided, one day, that facebook and instagram and twitter disgusted me with its shiny, lacquered film of perceived glamour, the scent of desperation and desire to impress. i feel isolated, despite spending all of my days eating and sleeping and breathing in a house with 7 (and sometimes more) relatives.

in the past, i escaped discontentment by filling my days with shows and books about people unlike me. now, even escaping is too tiring.

it's absurd how, even after deactivating my social media accounts, trying to bathe myself in the ignorance of what my old classmates are doing, trying to revel in a blanket of disinterest, i still feel so discontented with what i am doing (or not doing) with my life. although i no longer see smiling pictures of gatherings i am not at, my mind keeps wandering, when i am lazing around the house, to how i'm just wasting my life away, whilst everyone else is living it up every day, making new friends and laughing at new jokes. whereas once i compared myself to an image others had created for themselves, now i compare myself to an image i have created for others, and my self-loathing multiplies: i want to stop this incessant comparison, and i also want to use my life for something useful so that i will no longer feel the need to compare.

every time i have too much time on my hands, my brain becomes stagnant, and, like stagnant water, it becomes an incubator for bacteria, parasites that leech any trace of positivity from my mind, leaving me with a stinking swirl of grey, poisonous thoughts. it's horrible.

21.6.17

what a year


my first year in uni has ended, and although part of me feels like i haven't achieved anything i had planned to before moving to london, another part of me is also really proud of the fact that i have survived a year of adulthood.

i'm happy to be back home, breathing in that familiar sweet scent of smoggy air, but i also miss the independence and the flurried life that i've come to associate with london. i miss being able to stay up and talk to friends about Life until the wee hours of the morning; being able to get turkish food, vegan ice cream, and egg tarts all in a 30 minute trip from my room. this constant movement is what i reminisce about in boredom-drenched days, as well as the wholesome (as mariana would put it) friends that i've gotten to know.

so – cue awesome segue – i have compiled a whole bunch of photos from the year to feed this nostalgia and to escape my current lacklustre state of mind.

brick lane vintage market
rough trade
mariana
zaana

kyoto garden, holland park
yvonne

v&a museum


over and out,

2.6.17

grainy photos from shanghai

photos from december on grainy film, taken in shanghai two days before i left for london.


over and out,