the beginning of the end

I'm leaving to london (AHHHH!) in a week and i'm seriously considering reviving this blog, or at least starting a new one about my life abroad with pictures, which i'll use my new camera to take. Or at least, what i thought was my new camera. There's a good chance my dad might have confiscated it indefinitely because i broke the filter lens the first time i brought it out (and ironically did not use).

The past few days have been the most packed in my entire life. Yes, even busier than IB. My last two days (as copied and pasted from my sticky notes on my desktop) :

wed 8/9

driving lesson 9.50am - 11.20am

lit tuition 11.30am - 1.30pm

visa 2.30 - 4pm

make tiramisu for dinner party on friday 4 - 6pm

BRAZIL dinner 7.30pm

thursday 9/9

make and pack sandwich for lunch

driving lesson 9.50-11.30am

driving theory lesson 12.20 - 2pm

chem tuition 4pm - 5.30pm

tennis lesson 6.30pm

zouk (uk pageant) 8.30pm

I am convinced that because I can cram all that into two days, I can make 3 perfectly edible meals for myself when I'm alone in the uk.

"To have all ifs and buts of life stripped away - to have everything thought out for you every day and minute of your life - prison is the opposite of freedom, and, as such, is almost as liberating."

- Eleanor Rigby, Douglas Coupland

this is not just a parentheses.

Apparently jobs are fulfilling. They give you a sense of purpose and they're supposed to fill your life with meaning. But you know what? I only have this period of my life to do whatever I want before I become another cog in the machine of life - university, job, marriage, kids. So I'm going to do whatever the hell I want to do that I will never have the chance or time to do again. I don't need to lug myself awake every morning just to go to some stable, boring job that will "give me a sense of purpose". Okay, I admit it would be nice to have extra money to spend. But is it worth it if I don't have the time to spend it?

Maybe this is all just a way to comfort myself for the fact that I haven't been able to find a part-time job that makes me happy and distracts me from my apparent lack of purpose, but I'm pretty content where I am. I'm learning new things everyday - guitar, yoga, dance class. I finally get to read what I want to read, not what the school wants me to read. The best thing is, if I feel like doing something, I can just do it. No more lines like, "I can't, I have to study" running through my mind or passing through my lips. I have no more excuses. There is only now and if there's something I want to try, now is the time to do it.

Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it.
Frank: You know Marcel Proust?
Dwayne: He’s the guy you teach.
Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real job. Unrequited love affairs. Gay. Spent 20 years writing a book almost no one reads. But he’s also probably the greatest writer since Shakespeare. Anyway, he uh… he gets down to the end of his life, and he looks back and decides that all those years he suffered, Those were the best years of his life, ’cause they made him who he was. All those years he was happy? You know, total waste. Didn’t learn a thing. So, if you sleep until you’re 18… Ah, think of the suffering you’re gonna miss. I mean high school? High school-those are your prime suffering years. You don’t get better suffering than that.

Now what?

I know I shouldn't think that my life is on hold right now, and that I'm just waiting for it to start moving again. I should be living in the now, but it's so hard when there's nothing to do because everything you want to do just isn't happening the way you imagined it.

Here's the half of my post-IB list that I haven't completed, compiled when I was drowning in the demoralization of facing ib final exams.

list of things to do after IB

4. get a job teaching literature

5. lose weight

9. photography

11. bake/cook

12. dance lessons

Typed on a yellow sticky note, it's been stuck on my desktop for the longest time. I delete everything I've completed, hence the random numbering, and now I have 5 things left to finish or get started on. Dance lessons start in march, tutoring when the agencies get back to me and losing the weight is an ongoing process (though it doesn't actually seem to go anywhere). Til then, I'm here on my laptop watching my crime shows, reading random novels I find lying around the house and watching my friends abandon their lives for NS one by one.

"I've met God across his long walnut desk with his diplomas hanging on the wall behind him, and God asks me, "Why?" Why did I cause so much pain? Didn't I realize that each of us is a sacred, unique snowflake of special unique specialness? Can't I see how we're all manifestations of love? I look at God behind his desk, taking notes on a pad, but God's got this all wrong. We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything."

- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club