Nostalgia

Deviating from my usually analytical style, I went through some of my old blogging accounts, reading old posts and looking at how the level of my writing has changed over the years.However, I came across an old post with this picture in it (the one you see to the left), and this weird feeling of nostalgia came over me, as well as reading through the comments once more. Most of the people that looked at it originally thought I had just taken it from some random website, but no. My midterm final in high school, before our winter break, 2010, we were required to make a still life, and that had always been my forte when it came to art (and actually, replicating things usually seems to be what I'm good at).

The original image I used as the centre of my focus was an image was a PNG from aethereality.net, a full rose including its stem and leaves. As you can see, I clearly disregarded those features in this imitation for the scale I decided to sketch it at deemed it impossible. Nonetheless, it turned out very satisfactory to my taste, what do you think? (you can click the image itself for a larger view)

On the other hand, I randomly decided to blog today just for the heck of it, not that there's really anything too terribly exciting to blog about at the moment. Rather than spending my entire afternoon doing daft things by myself at home, I decided to accompany my family to my niece's birthday party that we were invited to at the last minute. Wasn't really comfortable there considering I don't really talk to that cousin, and thus, other than just my intermediate family members, I didn't know anyone there at all. Although I did have to admit, the food was rather delicious.

...but I digress. And Filipino food is always delicious (except when it's not...).

My friend invited me to this bioethics seminar this coming Tuesday (and friend who I will not reveal the name of online, you know who you are). I don't know whether to look forward to it or be absolutely terrified. I mean, for the ethics part, I pretty much know what most would say and question about certain situations, but then, an entire seminar of just repeated ideologies and theories over and over again would make me much more unwilling to stay. On the other hand, the subject has always intrigued me and what others have to say about it, so my internal debate continues. In all honesty though, I'd probably end up going anyway, seeing as how I don't ever have anything extremely productive to do during the evenings, and that would fill up a good chunk of my time with something I'm interested in.

That's pretty much it, lest I find something else slightly intriguing to write about. Til next time.

An Obtuse Hybrid

I am now roughly three to four weeks into my semester (because I’m a bit too much of a lazy ass right now to actually check for accuracy) and I’ve come to the realisation of something extremely weird.

First, allow me to introduce my current circumstance. I’m currently enrolled in 16 units this semester along with 27 hours in my work schedule per week. Going by this, along with that common recommendation given to one that explains that it is very much helpful for every hour you’re in class, another 1-2 hours outside of class (on your own time) should be devoted to studying for these hours, 59-75 hours of my week is solely devoted to school and work, not including sleep, and of course, whatever remainder, as meagre of an amount as it may be, is my “free time”. You’d think I’d be dead by now, and you may be right to some extent, because I don’t know if I’m completely alive or not anyway (though this opens one up to too many philosophical or existential interrogations, so we shall deviate from this topic appropriately).

A good bulk of my classes are scheduled on Monday. I don’t remember my exact reasoning for having my schedule originally like this other than the fact that perhaps I thought it would be a good idea to get a good amount of my classes out of the way in the beginning of the week and then I would have an easy rest of the week, leading to a relaxing and stress-free weekend. One of my classes is online this semester, which is also taking a bit of getting used to, probably because this is my first experience having a class that did not physically require my presence, and it’s a bit disconcerting but also a bit liberating in the fact that I get to choose when I do the coursework at any point before the scheduled deadlines.

The problem with that single online course that I am now feeling the stress of is the fact that because I have that disconnect from a physical class setting, I tend to put off the class work until hours right before its due, which in this case, is usually Sunday right before Monday. Couple that with my four classes (one of which is my three hours lab) on Monday, and I’ve managed to become even more sleep deprived than I have been the last 7 years of my life.

So what’s up with the really vague blog title?

Well, here’s the thing. I am completely worn out, I am constantly getting frustrated that even with me driving separately from my brother so I don’t have to go to school at 7:30 am every morning just for parking, I am still barely getting to my first class on time. I am even more frustrated with the fact that even before my current school schedule, I am working the same amount of hours that I did last semester, but I’ve had to spread it out to even more days because of said schedule, and thus, even more time and money lost because I’m having to drive to work one more day than usual.

But I am more relaxed and happier than I’ve ever been.

Even more so, it’s weird that with the level of courses I’m taking this semester, I am only tired because of the fact that my sleep is lacking and the work is numerous, not necessarily because the work is difficult.

I don’t know, mates. It’s an awkward feeling to say the least, “an obtuse hybrid” of emotions, as per the blog title that I came up with in probably half a second. Needless to say, I’ll take all the frustrations and stresses that I have right now, because it’s better than being bored out of my mind, or being completely frustrated because I’m finding my coursework difficult.

Re-piqued Interest, Lexicon

Admittedly, I would have probably been the first to admit that perhaps this online journal of mine was abandoned ages ago, yet for some reason, here I am, writing another post. You know, those rare, once in a blue moon posts that just happen to find themselves on here from time to time. In all honesty though, it’s more than likely that not many people will be reading this, but there’s this certain solace I find when writing as if I were talking to some unknown audience, just to have them listen (or in this case, read) without receiving an immediate response, whether it have been positive or negative.

Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that this was my form of venting, though I’m not even sure that would be the word to describe what I’m doing.

I digress.

As you can see (yes you, the random person I’m talking to who magically stumbled upon my page) I’ve finally managed to make my page look a little bit more formal. Frankly, I find it a bit overkill for a blog, but there’s just something about minimalistic/gradient-flowing/shaded designs that I find appealing. However, I will admit that I had turned lazy. Originally, my plan had been to reopen my long, dormant Photoshop and design my own layout, and then look up the countless tutorials to study the HTML/XML codes for blogger templates to fit my own needs, but lo and behold, it took up way too much time and effort for me to do so. I did in fact make a header image…a rather generic one that would be deemed more appropriate for some Photoshop resource site, but I never actually finished it. So that’s less than 50% of the work right there (I never even bothered to look at the coding for all the widgets involved and such).

And then life took most of my time again. I didn’t go on vacation this summer, opting to temporarily work full-time hours at my current job (yes, I have one of those now) to earn a little more spending cash in the case that I feel that I want (read: need) to spend it relentlessly when school starts up again. Now, a mere week before classes commence and that I’m finalising my off days with a more appropriate end note, I decided that it would be interesting to see what I’d written on here before.

Surprisingly though, I’m quite impressed with what I’d written before. Though this seems daft to mention, rereading my other posts, I can’t help but think that they’re just so…me.

Of course, I wrote them, so why wouldn’t they be, right?

But I can see the evolution of my own mannerisms and persona through the words alone. I was foolish back then (hell, I still am right now), but I’ve grown somewhat. It seemed as though I was creating a facade that I was this supposedly intellectual individual with highly admirable viewpoints on certain issues, not hesitating to back them up whatsoever. The truth is, it was honestly just me trying to find some subject to write about that would supposedly get others to talk to me, as minimal as those exchanges of words may have been. I used the internet as a cloak, a veil, and my own words as a weapon, to where I expressed an idea in such a manner that unless one honestly thought and pondered on it for more than a moment, they couldn’t help but automatically assume that this person had as least some brains within them.

What I mean to say is that I’m constantly in the stage of epiphany, even when it comes to my own identity. And all this discovery coming from rereading those words that came from myself a few months ago? Words are more powerful than I ever dreamed.

One of the posts (here) I reread was a ramble of me switching subjects almost every other paragraph, talking about friendship, language, self-expression, as well as an array of a few other subjects. It even started out with, what I thought was cool at the time, a lame intro sentence: “And as the threshold between yesterday and today is surpassed, here I am, once again, wondering what this next set of twenty-four hours will have to offer me.”

Sometimes, when you’re trying to sound more eloquent, you seem to completely disregard your own personal literary limits, and your words just sound stupid, but you don’t realise until much, much later. In this case, it’s taken me two and a half years to do so.

My point with that post is that (and I’m totally not stealing this from James Joyce or anything) it was definitely some rudimentary form of stream of consciousness writing from moi, and I didn’t even know what that was at the time. As primitive as it was, there was a certain flow to the words that only I seemed to familiarise with because they originally came from me, but how did I even see it?

And that’s when it finally came to me.

It didn’t matter that my writing was (and probably always will be) a bit random and childish at the time. Personal psychology makes up for it, we always try to make sense of something when it seems as though we can connect to it somehow, and how did I connect?

With words, and nothing but.

So that’s my final note, as well as my explanation as to why I finally changed the title of this blog. Before, I tried to make the title sound cool by adding some weird tagline that alluded to my username (or the one associated with this blog, at least: DarkHybridx). Aesthesia was a form of feeling, sensual, and sometimes eliciting certain emotions, and I tried to get that across.

Now, I’m reverting to the most primitive form of expression there is, disregarding the type of synaptic feedback that aesthetics give.

The words, and only the words themselves. Because as long as there are words, there is essence.